Decision

So I started running down the road of self publishing yesterday.

In looking around at the Internet and myself, what I have come to realize is that I continually keep making excuses for not getting this thing done.  Sure, I can send my manuscript through one more round of reviews (and it needs it), but then I start going through the secondary part, the "I need to get information on publishers and or agents, I need to send letters, I need to wait."

I need to wait.  Is it that I need to wait, or that I have reached a point where it is convenient for me to use that as an excuse for not doing more?

In a world of YouTube, I-Pads, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and Kindle, the reality is that waiting is one option - but it's not the only one.

There is one thing though, a thing beyond the money outlay (which seems to be minimal in this case):  it's believing in one's self.

That's the thing.  That's the point of all of the technology listed above.  It's all there and makes putting something out in the public eye easier than ever, but it presupposes that you believe in what it is that you are putting out.  And belief is demonstrated by taking the final step of putting your product out on the market and not making excuses.

And maybe, perhaps for the first time since October 2008 when this become a possibility, the years of making excuses for waiting on others and the simple fact of achieving a goal will be reality.

Being Happy

Snowflake was in town to take care of some business this weekend, and so we had breakfast on Saturday and coffee on Sunday afternoon.  On Sunday afternoon, sitting in the humid New Home air, she asks "Where is Happy Toirdhealbheach Beucail?  You need to find him."

Where is happy me?  It was easy enough to make a comment at the time - "I'm sure he's running around somewhere south of here - but as I went through the rest of my day, the question stuck with me.  Where is happy me?

Am I ever really happy?  A fair enough question with probably a less than fair answer.  Not a lot.

So often it feels like I am going through the motions of my life more because I have to rather than any sense of wanting to.  Yes, I understand this is the way it works in many aspects, but the truth is that there is very little - if anything - I anticipate ahead of time from week to week.

Has this happened suddenly or has this been a gradual descent?  I'm too much in myself to full appreciate that, so I'll probably have to go with the general observations of those around me that yes, this has been sort of a long term thing.

Is it depression?  I'm not sure- if it is, it is not the typical depressions I have faced in the sense of a severe sense of hopelessness.  The sense is characterized more by a sense of blandness, of things that used to bring joy no longer doing so, of a sense of a long march to the sea without any anticipation the destination will be desirable.

If happy me is gone, where do I go to find him?

Rocks and Rapids

Sometimes the interesting thing about life is that you can see a major event coming, even as you cannot control it, may have no idea what it is or any idea what you will do about it.  This is the sense that I find myself haunted by these days, a sense of being directed into a channel to which I cannot see the end.

There just feels like there are multiple pieces in play in my life which I control very few of.  On the one hand I simply suppose this is a truth and should be accepted, as much of life is out of our control no matter how much we pretend it is otherwise.  On the other hand, there is nothing worse than being powerless.

What's in play?  Having moved forward with purchasing a home, we find we are constrained by events three years ago to be out of consideration until December at best.  Can we get a six month lease, or will we extend that search another six months? For work: suffice to say a storm is coming and there is little that can be done about.  Virtually all of the outcomes I can think of are bad, but the alternatives are no better.  Nighean Gheal will be at a transition grade this year and to pull here away from where she has been for the last three years is not the most desirable option.  Contrariwise, the type of work I do is not prevalent in New Home; what other options are there, if any?

I write this things to get them out in written form; I scarcely believe that by my writing them any of them will come any closer to being resolved.  But I cannot escape the sense of staring down the beach at retreating water, knowing what is coming but suspecting that no matter how far I get inland, the water will follow.

Arrival

Hot and humid wind
drives the clouds that hint of rain:
Summer's arrival.

Making a Difference

One thing I've come to realize about myself over the years - and be powerfully reminded of recently - is that I want and desire to make a difference.

I want to feel like I am improving something in something that matters.  I want to leave at the end of the day saying I made a difference in something that was meaningful in someone's life.

For those that know what I do, the thought may already be there that this is the case.  I have worked around people's health and health conditions for 14 years.  I have contributed to effort to see that things are helped on their way to the people that need them.

But I've come to realize that it is not enough just to work around it.  You need to do something meaningful in it.

At the heart of my job, I'm a paper pusher and persuader.  I actually have little power to do what I need to have happen, so I have to use my ability to cajole and convince to see things accomplished.  But most of those things are really just short term - getting one thing done one time, only to see it swallowed up by the next immediate task. 

I've a vivid memory from when I got laid off of the ultimate permanence and importance of everything I do at work - it's the memory of making files for everything, of boxing things up only to see them being sent somewhere else where they would either be used for something by a successor someday or just disposed of.  It's that memory that haunts me every time I pick up a task to do - ultimately, this is all being put in a box somewhere.

Which is why working on something which is making a difference truly matters.  Sure, these are trivial matters - but all things of importance have trivial matters which must be completed.  It's what those trivial matters are being performed in service of that matters.  I can push paperwork to sell a plastic part, or I can push paperwork to help create a drug that fights cancer.  The paperwork - conceptually, anyway - is the same.

It's what it is being put in service of that makes all the difference in the world.

Hard to Believe, Hard to Live Out

How much do I crave the acceptance of others?

I'm reading Hard to Believe by John MacArthur about the watering down of the Gospel and what Christ actually said about Himself and His message.  MacArthur at worst always challenges me and at best cause me to think long and hard about my life and my faith and how I live it.

As I read through the first chapter, what I as confronted with was two items:  1)  The message of Christ calls for self-denial, not self fulfillment; and 2) The message of Christ is, by its very nature, offensive, and that if we preach the gospel we too will, at some level, will be offensive.

The part that I'm dwelling on is the second, the offensiveness of the Gospel and whether we try to maintain our "good" standing with others or preach it.

Offensive?  The gospel of Christ is offensive if you think about to the unregenerate mind:  You are a sinner and you are unable to save yourself.  Salvation is available, but it means confessing that you are a sinner and have no ability to save yourself by anything you can do, only by believing that Christ came to suffer and die in your place.  It's offensive because:

1)  It means that we are not independent entities unto ourselves.  We have a Creator and we are not the focal point of the universe.

2)  It means that we are sinners. There is nothing we can do - no good we can do - that will ultimately save us.

3)  It means that if we are to be saved, we need to humble ourselves, submit ourselves, and deny ourselves.

4) It means that our lives are no long interpreted by what we believe is right and wrong or what society believes is right and wrong but what God believes is right and wrong.

Note that this does not presume any attacks, any particular sins or religion, anything other than the simple message of the Gospel.  Beginning to see why it would be offensive?

The question comes in how as a Christian I live it out.  Do I really seek to follow Christ - to follow the Great Commission - or do I allow things to slide by because I want people to like me?  Is avoiding controversy a byword for fear of speaking lest I offend?

Of course the Gospel is presented offensively - that's not what I dealing with here.  What I am dealing with is the fine line between being true to what Christ said and valuing the approval of others more than what God has called me to.

Would that I loved God more - or at least denied myself more - to be true to Him.

Heroes

Yesterday An Teaglach packed up and when to the local Movie emporium to watch The Avengers. The film itself was quite enjoyable to the age groups represented by our family, and we left feeling that we had actually gotten our money's worth (A rare thing nowadays).

After we left I was pondering what made the movie so enjoyable for me.  Yes, it was well done and the effects were great.  Yes, it had an engaging storyline and very good acting.  Yes, the actors portrayed very well the pictures I had in my own mind of what the characters would be like.  But there was something else, something indefinable that moved the movie from the category of enjoyable to the category of something I want to emulate in my own life.

And I then it came to me:  the movie was about heroes acting like heroes - fighting evil.

We live in a world where the heroes society worships have been transformed from defending good and fighting evil to how much the touch and entertain us personally.  We seek to emulate the successful, rather than emulate those who do good.

And in The Avengers, the heroes are shown as nothing other than heroes.  Personal flaws?  They're there in abundance.  Inability to  communicate?  They all have issues.  But never in the movie are they portrayed as anything less than people who, in the end, are seeking to fight for and defend those that need it.

We have let such a high standard fall.  Heroes serve causes, or even serve themselves.  We have debased the term to the point that either everyone is a "hero", or no-one is.

Which is to our detriment.  If we are all our own heroes, if we only worship heroes that entertain or fulfill us, we have reduced heroism to a narrow band that encompasses ourselves.  There are no greater causes, only that which ultimately serves ourselves. 

And heroes which only serve themselves are, in the end, not heroes at all.   They do not call out to that which is within us which is better but only reflect back a larger image of our own selfish desires.

We are, desperately, in need of true heroes - and a society that values them.

Controlling Outcomes

"No matter what you set out to accomplish, if you engage the project determined to control the outcome you will be confused and confounded throughout.  Some things will go well for you, and when you think you have the key to understanding other things will go badly.  It may be  that you do something well twice before it goes badly once.  If you are happy that it went well twice, you will think you are onto something, but then it will go badly again.  This is because you are trying to force the outcome by applying the same tactics to every situation instead of letting every situation flow of its own accord." - Yagyu Munenori

I wonder how many times I have tried to control the outcome and failed - that I went to something with a predetermined cast of mind of how things would be resolved in the end.  Just sitting here thinking aloud, I can name several:  The Firm, Da Derga, all the plans I held dear before we came to New Home.

Can one predetermine an outcome?  A tricky slope at best.  There is, I believe, something to the idea that thinking through and practicing something with a desired outcome in mind adds value, and that mental visualization of the end gives one a goal to shoot for.  At the same time, as Otis would tell me, outcomes (at least in business) are as random and fickle as the wind:  on one hand, endless effort will product nothing while on the other a chance comment will generate a success.

Can an outcome truly be predetermined?  It would seem no - there is so much that we are not in control of, both outside events and people as well as internal (let's face it - we can't even control much of our bodies, let alone the world around us). 

But there are things that we can control, things that we can use to influence events in our favor.  Be ready, of course.  Set our goaks and plan.  Polish our skills and our words.  Train ourselves to think in a way that we do what we set out to do.

And the outcome?  If we are ready, if we have practiced, if we have skill, then we are ready.  The situation, whatever it is, will flow and can be directed because we have not already determined how it should come out.

Running and Walking

Today was a walking morning.

I've been making a sincere effort to run in the mornings, about 2 miles or so.  I've actually gotten to the point that I don't mind do it too much, and my time is not terrible - not that I'm speedy about it or anything.

But this morning, when I got up, I felt like it was a walking morning.

Walking and running are different - and not just in speed.  The biggest difference is in concentration.  When I run, there is some sense of a goal - I'm either running towards the halfway point, or running back from it.  I also focus on the actual process of running - after all, if I pitch forward when I run it has a much more deleterious effect on my body.  Running is an activity which must be done in the moment.

Walking is more of a meditative activity.  When I walk, I am able to think about other things when I am doing it - to contemplate, to ponder, to meditate.  I move much slower, of course - but speed is hardly the point.  I can also take the time to look at things around me in a way I can't when I'm running. 

Yes, there's a goal in walking as well - I do have to make it back home - but there is no sense that I am trying to reach a point or go back.  Instead, it's more of a large circle that I'm making, which will lead me back to where I started.

They're both different I suppose - one more focused on the body, one more focused on the mind, but both with crossovers.  I'll never speed through a 5k walking all the time, but neither will I find parts of my mind and consciousness always focusing on the next step in front of me.

So I walked this morning with a happy heart and clean conscious.  It's not about always doing one or the other - it's about finding the balance between the body and the soul.

Fear is Like Adrenaline

Fear is like adrenaline:  it gives a burst of energy but will not sustain anything.

I had one of those moments yesterday:  the sudden onset of the end of the world, the increased worriedness, the sense of my time suddenly having to be used to accomplish things now, now, NOW!

So immediately I tried to pick up the pace of what I did:  using my time more "wisely", trying to focus purely on work, making plans for using my other time to the point of being able to dedicate more to my employ.  Plans, plans, plans.  Panic, panic, panic.

It managed to hold itself up almost to this morning where, like a sack that is only partially filled, it sagged to the ground spilling out its contents.  I just sat there looking at them, trying to figure out a way to stuff them all back in and carry on.  Suddenly, I found I had no energy (and perhaps no emotion) to do that anymore.

The odd thing (to me, I guess) is that so much of what we do and what we live in is bounded by fear.  In some cases, fear seems to be the preferred environment created by some for reasons that I don't think I would be able to understand - at best, one could say that it creates a certain sort of "motivation", which it does - just not a very sustaining one.

But the only thing more difficult than reacting from fear is to not react from fear.  It takes far more courage and a far stronger will, because one is making the conscious choice to slow down and act decidedly and decisively.  It also takes the ability to push back on others - people or things - that create and thrive on this environment of fear.

It's hard - but the alternative is worse. One can only take this slight edge of panic constantly for so long.

An Open Letter to Spammers

Dear Spammers:

Hi.  My name is Toirdhealbeach Beucail.  This is my blog.

I figure we'll start with introductions although I'm sure you already know all this, as you (apparently) have come to my blog - some of you multiple times, judging from the statistics that are helpfully tracked for me.

This a formal request for you to stop it.  Just stop it.

Stop coming and posting your advertisements about various drugs I can get for pennies on the dollar or various improvements to portions of my anatomy or great stocks I can invest in for the future.  Stop hiding behind generic websites that can't be tracked and addresses that mysteriously can't be responded to.  Stop wasting your time (and mine) by posting such things.

Three reasons:

1)  Apparently I have a spam guard operating so your postings don't actually go anywhere but into a holding tanks until I delete them in the morning.  If you're getting paid for visibility, you'll make no money here.

2)  If whatever it is you're selling is so grand, go ahead and start a blog on it (www.blogger.com - it's free).  You can post about all the great deals you have and figure how to have Google and Yahoo drive traffic to your site.

3)  This is my blog.  It's where I seek to write about things that are important to me (and occasionally to others).  It's not a forum for selling product (you'll note that there are no Goggle ads posted here - a conscious decision on my part).  It's certainly not your forum.  Have some respect for the creative process and whatever it is I'm trying to do here and simply don't wast your time.

 Thank you.

- Toirdhealbheach Beucail

Glorifying God

How serious am I about glorifying God?

Oh, I know.  We Christians are supposed to be about that, you know.  The Westminster Confession of 1689 states "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever".  It shows up in most church mission statements somewhere - and most like to say "I want to glorify God with my life."

But how many of us - how often do I - do it?  Really?

Glorifying God is the simplest and most difficult thing a Christian can do.  It's simple because it requires only that we point others to God in all we say and do.  It's difficult in that in order to glorify God, we need to get ourselves out of the way.

"Hypocrites come along and try steal the glory of God.  They want a little glory for themselves....God does not reward the kind of giving that competes for His glory." - John MacArthur, The Keys to Spiritual Growth, p. 43.

"If you would aim at God's glory, you must also be content to go unrecognized as long as God gets the glory....What are your inner feelings when someone gains honor at your expense?  How do you react?  One mark of spiritual maturity is being willing to let others have the credit.  How you respond will reveal whether you are concerned with His glory or with your own." - ibid, p. 46.

I don't like to, of course.  I don't very often enjoy life that, at some level, is not about me.  I have a running list (if you're a long time reader, you know it) of things that I want for my life or issues that I would sure love to have resolved. 

The unhappy reality is that if I focus on glorifying myself with God occasionally thrown in, what I will get is the glorification of man, that passing piece of grass growing in the morning and dying in the evening.  God has nothing to do with that kind of glory, and will reward none of it.

The only path for the Christian who is serious about glorifying God is total self-abandonment of any sense of glory or recognition for themselves.  If God is to be glorified, the focus of anything we say or do needs to be only on Him, never on ourselves.

The question is, do we have the intestinal fortitude to surrender our lives in this fashion?  Or have we so succumbed to the culture and world around us that anything that is not about me is not worthy?

The Blinding Brilliance of Others

Another item learned during this sojourn of the soul is that we can not only be blinded by ourselves, but we can blinded by others. 

More specifically, blinded by our desire for the approval of others.

I became conscious over the last week how much I desire the approval of others - and not just the approval, but the conscious sense of being "in" with others.  It's the peer pressure of high school, garbed in professional clothing and returned for another go around.

I find myself wanting - desperately wanting - the continued approval of others, to be counted as one of the "crowd".  Being outside of the circle has always bothered me, especially for that of information - I seem to crave being in the inner circle "in the know" at a far higher level than I want to consciously admit.

Being apart has made that apparent, as well as the not so dormant longings that continue to exist in me.  It's almost like being in grade school again:  one finds oneself unconsciously wandering looking for an aggregation, or lingering near a conversation, all in hopes of being engaged in it.  If one joins happiness ensues; if not, one wanders back to the increasingly empty office and starts the next pile of work.

Which is why enforced aloneness is a good thing.

I need to work on breaking this incessant need to belong, to be part of the group.  I proclaim myself to be an independent individual, yet find that I am too often dependent on others - not for their assistance or help but for their approval.  Being off and alone seems to help me pay attention to this, as well as to begin to sort out who I really need to seek approval from.

The more we climb the mount of individuality and let the dross of self and need of approval other be washed away by the high mountain streams of silence and aloneness, the more we find the true call of ourselves.

Requiscat in Pace, Tink

Tink the Hamster died yesterday.

She lived a long life for a hamster - 2.25 years in our home (a lifespan for hamsters can be up to 3 years) and, except for the last month or so, a pretty healthy and active one.

She was first in our household, not only because we had never owned a hamster before but because this is the first pet which Na Clann saw come into our home, live and die here.

The other pets they remember - mostly cats - all were part of our family prior to their being born.  The other pets we have - Syrah the Mighty, Bella, Snowball, Midnight and Kiki - are healthy (and hopefully have long lives ahead of them). 

I'll miss Tink.  She was always there in the morning, anxiously chewing away on her cage bars, ready for someone to pick her up and give her Cheerios.  To watch her scuttle about on a couch or bed - to see how quickly she moved from place to place - was amusing, as was watching her run around in her ball.  Sometimes in the ball, it almost seemed as if she was tracking you as you walked around the room.

The best memory I have of her is one morning when I was here at the computer typing in the early morning.  I felt something at my foot - "Cockroach" I internally groaned, and consciously did not look down.  It was there again, so I had to look.  There was Tink, looking up at me on her hind legs, nose and whiskers twitching in the light.  She'd gotten out of her cage and made her way from the living room to the family room.

She's along the side of the house now, next to the Iris from Old Home, buried next to Cedric.

One of The Ravishing Mrs TB's friends suggested that perhaps when hamsters go to Heaven, they're placed in small balls to power the stars.  That gives me comfort - the thought of Tink running endlessly in her ball, occasionally stopping to eat a Cheerio.

Requiscat in Pace.

The Blinding Brilliance of Self

We are too often blinded bythe brilliance of self.

I've had the opportunity to reflect over the last week in the aftermath of essentially putting myself outside the bounds of my normal life.  It's been an interesting experience, almost a sense of living a dual life within my body.  There are times when I have physically been able to feel the separation between myself and the intervening space and the outside world.

During this period of inner retreat, I've discovered how well attuned I am to my own self and my perceived needs.  It's a bit alarming.

Everything is filtered through the world of me.  Things are good or bad based on their impact on me; words are spoken not only to relay information or truth but to cover myself with glory or improve my standing with others or make myself look clever; what I do should directly (and quickly) make my life better or improve it.

But self is often a poor guide.

We all know individuals - perhaps we are even one of the them - whose life has been greatly impacted, perhaps even destroyed, by self.  People can and will destroy themselves chemically, relationally, financially, even physically - all by listening to self and what pleases it.

"Of course that's true" we're (really I'm) wont to say.  "But I'm not that way.  Sure, I've made a few mistakes in my time, but generally that's not true."

But to say that is not true is to make a value judgement about what the destructive nature of listening to myself can be.

I've not done "horrible" things  - but that's my own judgement.  Is the elevating of myself by belittling another that much less bad? Are the subtle attempts to sabotage my own work (consciously or unconsciously) because I feel ignored that much less bad?  Is bearing my anger internally by not speaking but acting it out in other ways that much less bad?

The reality is that self unbound by something else is ultimately destructive.  We may have good in us, but we are not inherently good.  It's a subtle difference, but it's a big one.  I can do good things - maybe string a great deal of them together - but that does not make me a good person.  Given time and opportunity, I will soon or later find a way to make the world all about me.  All about self.

I need something beyond myself - something that is not created by my self or by other selves with their own agendas (because other selves have their own agendas which tend to serve them)  to guide me in my own behavior.  Something that has an independent standard of what is and what is not good, judged not by its impact on myself or on others but on the world.

Something, remarkably, like God, who has probably been trying to tell me this the whole time.

It's funny, sometimes, how when you are forced into a space of quiet and apartness, you actually begin to listen.

It Only Takes A Moment

Sometimes there's a moment in which things seem to change.  Occasionally, we actually notice that it has occurred.  I found myself confronted with such a moment yesterday.

I walked into a situation yesterday after being gone for three days expecting to find myself immersed in the same situation as I left.  Instead, I found that I had - at least exponentially - moved to the role of an outsider looking in.

There was no particular warning sign, nor any particular suggestion that I somehow "persona non grata".  It was the fact of walking in a room and realizing that you are just a presence in the room, not an identity.

Throughout the day it remained the same - this sense of being apart, of isolation, of being out of the flow of events where before I was involved in them.  In a real way, it felt as if I had left on Thursday one way and returned on Monday something else.

There are some who might think that I am over reacting to a simple situation or that I am simply being a bit over sensitive after my failures last week. Perhaps that's true - but I cannot be blind to the fact that seemingly in one moment, my life changed.

Is it good or bad?  That remains to be seen overall.  Certainly perspective is never a bad thing, and perhaps in some broken way I am being pushed out of a nest of my own making into a world to grow - into a world where I needed to grow.

But in the back of my mind, there is still this sense of something broken that can be bonded but never fully repaired - of being in but not of. 

Sometimes when you turn a corner, there simply is no going back.

Lists

I am working on formalizing the changes I need to make in my life.

I'm one of those people who seems to benefit from something being put down and systematized.  I find this somewhat ironic, as I have always pictured myself as a sort of free spirit.  But the reality is, apparently, that even free spirits benefit from lists.

And so, my lists start to grow.  Not only my list of things I need to do for the week and the day, but lists for the things that occur within that week. 

Not that it's all bad.  For example, now that I know that I want to spend more time working towards Highland Games competition, I need to insure that I start meeting my exercise goals on a more regular basis.  That means I need to split out what I do and when I do it (trying for shoulders/back/legs MWF and arms/chest T/Th) - and make sure that I keep my running up as well.

Or lists for things I want to do in the future.  I don't want to do what I'm doing forever.  But I need to make sure I figure out how to get to where I think I want to be. To do that, I need to start laying out the plan to get there.

Formalizing things seems so far from where I thought I needed to be - but formalizing brings results that are hard to argue with. 

Let the formalizing begin.

Pride and Humility

Yesterday was a day of being reminded of humility

1)  I exercised my right to make a fool of myself again.  Not intentional, of course - that "funny in my head, not so funny out loud" comments.  The fact it was directed at a friend made it all the worse.  What do you say in such a circumstance?  "I'm sorry, please forgive, I'm an idiot" is all you have, but it hardly excuses the fact that it was done in first place - and for the sake of a laugh, of all things.

2)  I also got to execute of my not so favorite tasks:  that of training.

Training, for those that have never done it, is not just the simple act of presenting the training.  It's creating the training and routing it for approval, insuring people are going to be present and possibly following up, and then sending out the documentation so all have a copy of what was being done.

At the end of the training, as people were dispersing, one of the attendees congratulated me and said "It's a thankless task, but someone has to do it."

The combination of these two things - trying to be relevant and funny when it's really more about me and the execution of seemingly "thankless" tasks made me realize that I have a deep and profound problem with pride - specifically, my own.

I am too often proud - too proud, in fact, to think that I should actually be living the life I am.  I crave recognition - not necessarily for what I've done, but for who I am - and am willing to risk that which should not be gambled for it.

Why?  Because maybe I consider what I do - throughout my life, not just my work - to be "beneath" me.  In reading through my journals last night (I have records going back to 1989), what I found is a constant theme of being unhappy with whatever I was doing and the allocation of time - both to suggest that I think that I should be doing something "more important" with it.

But the reality I have to face  - willingly or not - is that my own life is to be an exercise in humility.

Life is made up of a series of thankless tasks, with an occasional task which garners thanks mixed in.  I have reversed the two in my mind, thinking that "thankful" tasks are the norm and the thankless ones should be few and far between and are to be endured.

My response?  In the midst of a thankless task, I do what I can to generate the attention on myself - even if it requires mocking (I use the word advisedly) someone else or drawing attention to an uncomfortable fact to make myself look better.

(It's odd that I physically shudder when I write this - the truth, when presented in the light of reality, can be a harsh thing).

In plain terms, I need to adjust my thinking.

To perform a thankless tasks - indeed perhaps have a life made up of those necessary but overlooked things - is no less honorable than to do a life of tasks which garner that thanks.  The fact is that what I do for a line of work is essentially an entire book of these "thankless" events - things which have to be done and done well, but function beneath the consciousness of most employees.  The same is true in my life, of course - most of what I do outside of work is necessary and needs to be done without the expectation of reward.

Maybe this is a lingering effect of my birthday last week - the sudden realization that life will probably never be as you dreamed or imagined it.  But that is to look for an excuse for a behaviour which is clearly not acceptable (in Christian terms, it's sin). 

Sometimes it is simply the fact that we must accept that which we have given to do and do it, acknowledging from the first that it simply is something that will never be recognized but that the fact that no recognition will accrue is no reason for us to not do the work - or to find other ways to put the focus on us.

It was never really about us in the first place.

One Thing At A Time

People can really only do one thing at a time.

This thought has been more active over the last week or so due to work, where not only I but everyone I seem to come in contact with seems to have multiple things going on at one time.  The odd reality - at least in my own life - is that I seem to get less and less done, the more and more I get assigned.

Because most things take time - uninterrupted, focused time.  Reading, evaluating, thinking, writing, even doing - these are the products of focus and attention on one subject.  Not delving in fully, not being able to give the needed attention due to interruptions or multiple tasks, means that things will get done poorly - or not at all.

Ironically, this is not how business seems to run.  "Multi-tasking" is the order of the day and (apparently) the road to success. 

But what I've noticed is that most "successful" multi-taskers are not really multi-tasking at all - instead, they're delegators, delegating the tasks to others to complete.  If the suggestion that you as a multi-task drive by victim are not able to complete your tasks is made, the reminder is that really the fault is yours, because you need to "follow up" - repeatedly, like a bull dog.  And having too many tasks to do and have to multi-task too often feels like skating over ice that's a bit too thin:  give it long enough, and into the water you will plunge.

To suggest that more work than can be done in an 8 or even 10 hour day does not represent so much an inability to multi-task as it does unreasonable expectations is to court heresy.  The suggester of such things will be seen not as someone willing to speak the truth but rather as a difficult individual who (who knows?) may be lazy of their own accord.

Interestingly, most of those who become recognized or good at whatever they do - be it art or writing or farming - do so because they've focused and paid the time.  Sure, Leonardo da Vincis and Miyamoto Musashis are out there, but they're the minority.  Most of us do and succeed by finishing one thing, then moving to the next, focusing attention on a small number of tasks over a long period of time.

It's not that I realize this fact about myself - it's the coming to acceptance of the fact and getting others to acknowledge it that is the challenge.  But better the challenge and the clear eyed realism than the constant sense of not quite doing enough - when it could never be done.

Disappointment

The ongoing saga of HomeSearch 2012 continues.

The e-mail I sort of expected but dreaded came last night:
- Yes, we were current when approved for our short sale.
- No, we were considered delinquent when the short sale closed because the bank took 6 months to get their act together.
- Bottom line:  best cast we get a package together and take it to the underwriters for approval.  Worst case, we have to wait until December to start the process over again.

This sort of confirms my customary philosophy on things, which is if the answer is not definitively yes, it's no.

Yes, I understand the e-mail doesn't say we can't and yes, I understand that we already have a pre-approval letter.  But I also understand that the logic of saying that we'll go to someone and argue our case when apparently we don't meet the criteria is a weak argument at best.

It's disappointing and confusing because I'm not sure which way to go.  Do we continue to look at houses?  I don't want to be in the position of putting down earnest money and possibly investing in a home inspection only to hear that we have no possibility of being approved?  Do we renew our lease for another year, putting off any kind of change but putting us another year behind earning equity?   Do we just accept the fact that at this time it's not God's will that we have a house?  (Be fair:  the disappointment I feel is that which I created in myself as anticipation of having a home, not anything that God put there)

On one hand it gets back to what I was discussing yesterday, that while I can see evidence that God is providing for us in the underlying  strata of our life, it doesn't feel like the areas of my life that I'd like to see changes in are really occurring.

On the other hand it reminds me (yet again) of the impact that decisions have (usually all the impact for mine seems to be from the bad decisions, not the good ones).  If we hadn't had to have a new house instead of keeping my old one, if I hadn't had to find my own way in life in The Firm instead of continuing to be satisfied where I was, if I hadn't had to change jobs from the company that was doing okay (and is still in business) to the company that went under 5 months after I got there, things would be different.

But then, they would be different the other way too.  If The Firm had had the two or three successes we had needed to keep things going, if the company I went to had succeeded, if the Bank had moved us through the system in a timely manner instead of making us restart the process, we would also be in a different place.

Where does that leave me?  Frustrated.  Feeling powerless.  Feeling that the idea of making no decisions at all is validated by the fact that the ones I make seem to only have impact for the worst.

Not Forgotten II

I continue to seem to go through this "argument" with God.  "God", I say "why can't I seem to move forward in my life?  Why do I seem to be stuck in the same place without the ability to gain traction?"

I wrote here about God intervening in my life to remind me that I was not in fact forgotten.  The same thing happened to me again yesterday - twice.

1)  Arriving home last night, I saw oil on the front of my car.  "Great" I thought, "now what?"  Turns out that when I added oil on Saturday I either failed to completely tighten the oil cap or failed to put it on at all.  However, instead of burning my engine out and dying on the road, traffic was light enough that I made it home with no problems.

2)  Our garage door came off the drum Sunday night.  I tried to "fix" it but seemingly made it worse.  We called the landlord (a thankful right there!) and a very nice gentleman came out last night.  He looked at what I done and as kindly as possible, let me know that what I did was probably not the best thing in the world (as it "lose an eye" not the best thing).  The outcome?  No severe damage to the door, works better than ever after he fixed it.

I find myself caught between the rock of God's provision and the hard place of my own selfish wants.

I say "rock" and "hard place" as if these two were equivalent items but in fact they are not.  God keeps patiently reminding of his provision in more and more areas of my life.  I, on the other hand, grouse about the few areas of my life which (although they feel like they impact me greatly) are only part of the greater tapestry of my existence.

My comparison (if I have one) is actually Midnight the Rescue Rabbit, whom we found living under a car in New Home.  She lives in our living room now. I wonder if she sees her existence now as better or worse - worse from her point of view in not being "free", better (unconsciously so perhaps) that she's not getting hunted or in the weather extremes and being fed regularly.

Am I willing to accept God at His word that He cares for us - not just in the things we want, but in everything?  And if He cares for us in everything, can I accept the fact that in some things the answer to my wants and wishes may be "No"?

I have to conclude that it is not as if God is not active in my life - He has shown Himself to be so.  The question is if I can accept what He is doing, even if it doesn't comport with my desires.

Turning Thoughts Off

Is it possible to turn your hopes off while you work?

I'm always pulled two ways when I work:  on one way, I try to focus on what it is that I'm doing.  On the other, I'm trying to focus on what I want to do.  Unfortunately, the two are seldom the same thing.

At one time I had the ability to focus on exactly what I was doing.  In particular, I picture working at the convenience store my cousin owned.  Every night, it was my job to fill the walk in.  Every night, that's exactly what I did:  opening each door to face the beers and sodas, then going in back and loading the beers and sodas into the rows, bundled up in a sweat shirt as I did it.  I had it down to an art - approximately 1.5 hours to do the whole cooler, clean up, and get ready to close.

Did I ever spend time thinking about doing something else?  Possibly.  But I knew my routine and I executed it every night. I was there, working away, being where I was.

That feeling of being where I am seems strangely gone from my life at this point.  Even when I am at work, it feels like I have forty things there pulling at my attention, begging to be completed.   I try and focus, and sometimes I'm even successful at keeping my attenion on one project - but when it's over, I am only suddenly reminded of all the other things I have to do.

This, of course, do not play on anything that I want to do.  This is another area that my brain happily runs off pursuing, leaving me to try to wrangle my day with what's left.

How do I do it?  How do I completely "be" where I am, even if it entails a constant struggle to accomplish things that seemingly have no meaning?

On Turning Forty Five

Today is my 45th Birthday.

I don't really know what to make of this.  Forty five sounds so, well, old I guess.  I think of those whom I have known that have been in their mid-forties and have always thought that sounded on the downhill side of disaster.

It's interesting, because I don't really know that is correct.  If I take stock of my life today (never a bad exercise), I find that I am probably in better shape than I have been in for years.  I'm actually doing athletic activities (Highland Games, Iaido, running).  My interests in music, language, history and reading are as broad as they've ever been. 

My family continues to enjoy good health overall; my children are intelligent, interesting, talented, and focused.  My wife continues to be a great wife, selflessly giving of her time to support the children's various activities and interests AND holding down a job AND keeping our household running.

Our menagerie of pets is doing well with minimum maintenance and continues to add joy to our lives.

We are loved of God, have a splendid church family, and opportunities to serve.

My writing continues to go strong and I continue to explore other ways to communicate and express myself.

Sure, there are parts of my life that aren't where I'd like them to be - my career being a huge one - but on the whole, life is going quite well if I really sit down and look at it.  And Forty Five is really sort of a page marker instead of a significant milestone of decrepitude.

I'll have a quiet day today away from work - a trip to bookstore (for me, nirvana), maybe make a little cheese, practice Iaido, have dinner with Nighean dhonn, and read.  The perfect way to celebrate something which has significance only in the fact that I am doing much better than I think I am and have any right to.

Happy Birthday to me.

Strategists and Tacticians

I am realizing I am not a strategist.

Yes, I know that everything can be taught and yes, I know that we can do things which we think we can't.  Be that as it may, I don't know that I'm a strategist.  Instead, I'm tactical.

I have realized that strategists like strategy and believe in it firmly.  But what I've also realized is that strategists - or at least the strategists I know - are too often the most of touch people in any situation.

They have no anchor in the real world.  They don't know how the things they strategize for actually work. Confronted with the need to accomplish a task, they couldn't do it.  Instead, they look for the tactical people to "execute" their plans.
Strategists are important - of course.  But it's a rare strategist that can understand the day to day operations of anything, or talk to someone performing the work without the sense of condescension that so often accompanies a civilization.

Bottom line, we don't value the people that do the work.  Strategists have become the pinnacle of the work pyramid, but the people that actually complete the tasks and execute the strategy are more often than not seen as a sort of speaking tool whose purpose is to support whatever strategies are developed.

Once upon a time, a rise in position was tied to merit.  People who came up to the strategy positions had experience with the actual function of the tasks to be done.  When they planned work and set goals, the understanding of all was that the people setting the work understood the work being done.

No more.  Too often, people with little or no experience in how to accomplish something are put in charge of something.  They make grandiose plans and improvement projects.  When confronted with items to be done, they too often assume how things are done or things that are in place.  The result?    Plans that too often fail midstream or are never accomplished at all.

I'm a tactician.  I solve problems.  I do the work.  Occasionally I strategize.  But I've come to realize that while strategists have the option of planning and not accomplishing, I do not. For many things, if I don't do them, they won't get done. 

Which gives a certain amount of power.  I can exists without the strategists.  But for many things, they cannot exist without me.

Provision

Doves forage above:
Birdseed waterfall trickles
to squirrels below.

Key Performance Indicators

KPI: Key Performance Indicator.   A metric identified as indicative of the performance of a business.

What are the Key Performance Indicators of our lives?

KPIs are even not that easy in business.  Some of them leap out, like "Revenue" and "Profitability".  Others are more subtle.  "Deviations" can tell you how a company's inner processes are performing; "Personnel turnover" can be a guide as to what kind of people are leaving and why they are leaving; "Failure Rates" can tell you not only how much you are failing in production, but potentially the root causes of those failures.

But what about the KPIs of our lives?

We tend not to think of life in this context.  Life is an organic process; business is business.

But life is also a process:  we're either moving forward or we're falling behind.  Too often I myself have never taken the time to actually measure my life against some metric.  I then occasionally freak out when I perceive things as having gone bad.  "Dear Lord, how did we get here?" I wail, as if all of a sudden this incident occurred.  It wasn't all of a sudden, of course; had I been monitoring things on a more regular scale with something to measure them against, I would have at least seen the trend.

But what would these look like for a life?  Here I'm a little less certain.  One could certainly use money as indicator with all of it's intricacies, and perhaps for some things that's a good one.  But it's hardly the only one.

  What is it that is indicative of how one's life is really going, whether forward or back?  Are they different for every person, or is there some kind of baseline that can be applied?

What is there can be measured about a life?

Pondering: Career

I'm grappling with the fact that another birthday week is upon us - well, really me.  I've been in my industry entering 15 years and at my current title for 10.  I have seemingly hit a wall - professionally.
And personally as well. There's a subtle sense in all of my doings that I'm stuck within boxes, not moving forward in anything.  Last year feels like this year; next year, I fear will feel the same.

I took part of yesterday to begin the hard job of looking at where I was professionally and what my potential is, given what I am and where I am.  The initial answer, quite frankly, was bleak. 

Yes, I can get more certifications.  Yes, I can increase my industry and managerial experience with another year of work.  But I suspect that will no more lead me to a better than job than just finding a new job today.

I looked at additional education as well - maybe (given my seeming career slump) it is time to consider looking at something else.  The research there was not particularly more encouraging - 2 years and $20,000 for an MBA (I looked at one school; I suspect they're all pretty close); 2 years + for something in the electronic engineering field (I live in an area with many high tech firms, so there was a certain amount of sense in looking) and experience required.

So what do I do?  What does anyone do when they feel stuck?  Redouble my efforts? "pay it forward"? - I've come to have a distrust of this concept, as it never seems to work out quite as it is portrayed (the effort is always greatly appreciated by management; the reward always seems to be delayed or lacking).
Simply accept the fact that I am where I am and at this point, nothing is likely to change (so shut up and be happy)?

I don't think any of those is the answer - yet I have nothing better.  All I do know is that the thought of staying 20-30 more years at the level I am, doing what I am doing is a thought I shudder away from.

Love a Job?

What is like to have a job you truly love?

I was sent into a spin of thought-provoking despondency this week by overhearing the conversation of two individuals.  One was relating to a third party "When I saw Violet at the bar I gave her a hug and said 'How do you like your new job?' Her response was 'I love it!'  My response to her was 'I love my new job too!'"

This has provoked one of those nagging thoughts which has dogged my thinking for the rest of the weekend.

Have I done jobs I loved?  Sure.  The Firm was one - although financially fraught with peril (and consequences), I loved doing the research and crunching the numbers and presenting datq.  The Music Group was another - paid virtually nothing, but I covered costs and had an excuse to sing and play and learn the obscure languages I love.  Teaching perhaps - certainly the reading and the preparation of the lectures, if not so much the presentation of them.

If I look at the connecting factors in these, they 1)  Involved doing reading and researching; 2) Leveraged my interest in something I already liked; and 3) Paid terribly.  1 and 2 are alright; 3 becomes a bit difficult to swallow in a society that requires cash for a living.

I think the thing I remember most about all of those - the thing that  I miss now - is that I got out of bed excited to start to work.  Even in the case of teaching and music, where I had another job to support them, I still got up thinking "I get to do this today!  Great!".  

Was there a sense of doing good?  Possibly - maybe not in the more "direct" way I should be feeling it now, but there was at least a sense that somehow, somewhere I was contributing positively to the lives of others.

I understand that jobs which are loved are few and far between, and many have to endure that which they do not love simply because a job is, for most, a necessity.  But I equally understand that jobs that are endured inevitably eat their way into the fibers of being, replacing enthusiasm for anything or the zest to succeed with the dull retort of "I have to". 

And given long enough, "have to" becomes signature phrase of the intellectual and emotional walking dead.

Plans?

Does God move our plans forward, or do our plans move forward when they agree with His?

I've been struggling to make progress with this thought as I look through my life, especially now at the moment of putting down more roots in New Home.  Purchasing a house has brought this  thought to the fore as well, as reviewing the selling documents brings to mind the series of events that brought us here, which things brings up the series of events which brought us to that point.  So often, my life seems like a series of random accidents to which I responded, perhaps without always thinking as well as I should of.

But plans.  I had them. I have them.  I'm sure most people do.  We'd like to believe that God puts these plans into our heads and hearts so that we can execute them.  We read "Commit your work to the Lord, and He will establish your plans" in Proverbs 16:3 or 1 John 5:14  "Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us." (and yes, before you comment, I do realize this verse is not a promise to just receive every prayer we ask.). 

So we do it.  We pray and plan and study God's word and talk to people and gather data and try to move forward on these plans.  And, at least seemingly for me, they seem to go precisely nowhere.

Have plans that I made moved forward?  Sometimes.  Sometimes I think God let them move forward in spite of the fact they were silly or stupid or (occasionally) downright dangerous because He wanted to teach me the folly of thinking I knew it all.

But what about the good ones that go nowhere, the honorable and noble ones, the ones that (it seems like) really represent something God would approve of?  How do we reconcile that those don't go anywhere when our lives too often seemed trapped in things of little value and impact?

I suppose that comes down to the point of making the argument about what God's will is.  There's been plenty of ink spilled about it over the centuries.  And unless one is of the type who believe God still speaks (which He does to me occasionally, but never audibly and never in such direct terms) you'll find yourself trying to chase a will-o-the-wisp you can never catch.  Some things we can know, of course - He put them down in the Bible - but there are just as many things that we can't know.  I sometimes wonder if these are the things that He often makes those kinds of decisions on - yes, He states what He would like to us to do, but He keeps His own counsel on what is in His heart.  This perhaps we can only know by His blessing after the fact, or in Heaven itself.

Which probably gets back to the point I often find myself returning to:  is it that (once again) I've managed to ignore what He's really asking of me in order to find my justification for what I want? 

Changing Up

This morning I opened my blogging account only to discover that the website that hosts my blog (that would be Blogger.com, also known as Google) has helpfully changed the entire interface of the system.  It was one of those visual shocks where the screen portrays something that you haven't the least idea what it is, like watching a childhood movie you remember and suddenly seeing things you have absolutely no memory of.

I'm not really sure why companies feel the need to do things like this.

Does it look like there are more features?  I think so, judging by the parts ribbon at the top of my post right now and the plethora of options which greeted me when I logged into my account.  Do these features make my life somehow better or help me in my quest to improve my writing and my ability to get my thoughts down on paper?  I don't think so.

(Note to self:  as you continue to type into the box of text and reach the size limit, the box helpfully expands on its own instead of you having to scroll up and down.  It's useful - but slightly disconcerting).

The thought that always leaps to mind when things like this happen is "why?"  Was there a crushing need to improve the interface by users?  Or (as I suspect) is it more of an issue that programmers, like inventors throughout the ages, always feel the need to tinker with creations to make them "better" in their eyes - regardless of whether or not anyone has asked for it.

It's certainly not the end of the world, and I'm sure I'll learn to drive my way around this eventually as well as I did the previous version (e.g. what't the bare minimum I have to know to make an entry).  It's just one of those slightly off kilter events that leaves one concentrating more on the medium and how to work it rather than the actual words themselves - which, really, is the point of any blog.

Now, if I can just figure out how to post this....

Holding Down the Fort

So the bad news: I seem to in the midst of another depressive mood. And the good news: it seems to be almost 6 weeks since the last depression that I have had.

This, as they say, is progress.

It feels like I'm banging off walls in every aspect of my life: professional, personal. Even physical: this chest thing I seem to have acquired somewhere is just annoying enough that it keeps me from really exercising (or really sleeping well) but is not severe enough to really be "sick" - thereby ensuring I neither exercise nor truly rest.

It's as if (to use Bilbo Baggin's terms) I'm too little butter being spread across too much toast, feeling thin and stretched.

The thing that seems to be nagging at me today is the sameness of everything. It's as if I keep looking for something to happen or change, yet nothing seems to be ready to do so - or even gives a hint that it ever will.

Has it always been this way? I think back to 20+ years ago, having gotten out of graduate school with no real idea of what I was doing to do. There was change; indeed, the first three years of my post-school life were full of it: marriage, moving, music, 3 different career types. Even when I fell into my current field, there still seemed to be changes: learning new things, learning new industries, moving from company to company to learn and grow, even a bevy of new activities on my off hours.

And now, none of that seems operative.

Brian Tracy, I suppose, would tell me to get a vision of my ideal life and start working on it. The problem is even if I really knew what that is, any change of that magnitude - indeed, any change at all - seems light years from where I am today.

It's almost the mentality of holding down the fort because that's your task in life. The problem is that holding down the fort means that the ability to do anything else, or even the hope of doing something else, is put on hold because you have to stay in one place.

In all military histories, garrison duty was considered the most boring and least likely to produce any promotion or change. Garrison duty in life seems no different.

Of All The Gin Joints in All the World...

As part of the ongoing Home Quest 2012, the mortgage broker keeps asking for a little information more. Gone are the days of wild figures and limited paperwork: now, everything is to be triple checked and cross referenced. Yesterday's request: the 2009 tax returns and documentation relating to the sale of our house in Old Home.

In digging through the documents and trying to find anything relating to the sale which accompanied our move to New Home, I suddenly found myself awash in a sea of depression and regret. Every bad memory around the house, every failure I ever managed to do - not only in regard to the house and The Firm but elsewhere in my life - came bubbling to top, reflecting the paperwork that was scattered across the bed as I continued to search for documents.

The past, it seems, never really goes away.

But upon later reflection (mostly at night, after a low day) I realized that saying is only partially right. While it is true that the past never goes away and is therefore available to rise up when we least expect it, it is not true to say that the past has power. The past, in fact, is powerless.

The past can do nothing to me without my acknowledgement and acceptance. It's like the video or DVD we keep next to the TV: I can replay it, but it is only a record of what has happened, not the event itself. Any power it has to harm, any strength it has to distress, comes only from my willingness to grant it, the same way I become concerned for actors of whom I know nothing and have no relation except through the power of acting.

But in one way the past does have power, if we choose to use it: the power to learn.

The past is a learning center of our lives where, like the aforementioned DVD, we can reflect and review the events of our lives - what worked, what didn't - without the risk of trying out something "new" in our current life state. In truth, most of what we face now we have faced in the past; we need only review our lives to see where it happened, what we did, and how it came out.

(A small plug here for the importance of History, both for our education system and as a personal source of learning. Just as we have probably done it before and failed to learn, so have other individuals and other civilizations).

So yes, of all the gin joints in all the world, my past wandered in yesterday. Fortunately, after freaking out about it and being a bit depressed, I invited him up to the bar for a drink. It seems, after asking, he has a few stories to share with me...

Not Forgotten

Nighean bhan has been asking to put fish in her tank for a few weeks now, and yesterday was finally the day to do it. We got into the Trusty White Protege and headed out.

To get to the next turnoff is merely the act of getting on and off by staying in the exit lane. I've missed that exit many times - and, New Home being New Home, if I miss it I have to go down another mile to turn around and get back. Therefore I was paying complete attention to what I was doing and where I needed to be.

As we came off the freeway (exiting at freeway speeds, of course) I looked up ahead. To my consternation, I saw a red Volkswagen turning out from a nearby store and into the road. As was watching out of my right vision, it seemed that they were not just turning and getting into the middle of three lanes but seemed intent on moving into the far left lane.

My lane.

It's at moments like these that I'm grateful I grew up at a time where Driver's Education was still real and in a small town where you learn to do things that you might not learn to do in a city. I hit the brakes hard and, as the VW continued to turn in and then (realizing I was there) moved back out (seemingly at sub-light speed), made a soft left and went up and over the small curb and into a median of native grasses and wild flowers.

I came to a stop and just sat there for a moment, nerves jangling. The traffic was not too bad (being Sunday and all), so I was able to get the car moving and over to a lane where the VW had pulled in.

A very nice young lady and her boyfriend got out as we checked on each other, then made conversation as I crawled around the bottom of the car to look. Tires looked low but good - they were probably low anyway - and there was no leaking that I could see. We exchanged information, then they drove away and we, trailing bits of grass and flower petals, headed on to buy a fish.

After we got back home, fish in hand (a blue betta, name undetermined at this time), I sat there shaken for a while. It's been a long time that I have had so near a miss moving so fast. I went back and forth about cause - should I have stayed on the surface road, should they have stayed in the center lane - but that's all in the past now and probably irrelevant. All were safe, the cars are okay. Carry on.

What it did make think about was the very real presence of God in my life.

I often feel - well, not forgotten, but maybe mostly out of mind - by God. The things that I have always thought were important (mostly to me, to be fair) never really seem to work out the way I hope for. The life I would like, doing the things I would like, seems to constantly evade my grasp like tadpoles in a spring pond. It's a fairly selfish view as I sit and think about it - judging the attention of God as if he were a genie and wish fulfillment was the Key Performance Indicator - but I suspect I'm far from the only one.

And then something like this happens, something that could have ended very badly instead (and hopefully) somewhat amusingly - I can imagine what the drivers whizzing by thought of my Trusty White Protege in a cloud of pollen and petals. One could make the argument that it was almost as a hand had gone between the two cars and guided mine up onto the median, making sure to give it a short lift on the way over the curb.

And there are so many other little things: the fact that the tires were not completely full and so did not burst; the fact that there were no handy sharp object in the grass to puncture my tires, the fact that no harm seems to have befallen the car; that I did not take The Ravishing Mrs. TB's car (which, being lower, surely would not have survived unscathed); the fact that it was Sunday and that incident any other day of the week would not have ended as well.

And the big one, of course: that no-one was injured.

It was an excellent - and for me, a very timely - reminder that just because we don't see God working on what we think is important doesn't mean that He has stopped working and caring for us. And, more importantly, that He has not - and will not - ever forget us.

Even in the simple act of getting into a car for a fish.

Starting The Day: A Lifelong Habit

Once upon a time I was not a morning person. Through my teenage and college years, I'd sleep in until I absolutely had to get out bed in the morning, then rush around as quickly as possible. This habit moved itself into the post-graduate years as working early and taking classes late meant morning was a time to get up and get ready and go.

But after I married and began to work early mornings, I began to discover the power of the morning. It started simply enough - Study a Latin Lesson and read some Scripture as I hurried down breakfast before running out the door - but over time I found that I was actually making progress in something that I enjoyed while I worked as I had to.

Over the years with a series of long commutes and early risings, time became more and more precious. Suddenly getting it up a little earlier in the morning was not just something I did because I moved slowly, it was something that allowed me to extend my day into the areas that I wanted to do but couldn't because of work.

Scheduling is everything; you could make the argument it has taken me 22 years to get to the point that I am maximizing my time while maintaining some degree of flexibility in what I do. But with the scheduling comes the power to do the things that I like to do, to "squeeze out" the maximum amount of usefulness in the time I am granted.

Is my schedule subject to change? Sure it is. I'm always seeking to find ways to get a little more time in the morning as there are others things I'd like to do (maybe another language, time to garden in the cool of the morning, a regular morning time for writing, or even the beginning of a new activity) or even extend the time for things I do now (a longer workout or more time for reading). I could need to be to work later or change my commute to a far shorter one. Either way, I've got a structure build on now.

Starting the Day can either make or break the rest of the day. The odd thing is that much of Starting The Day remains in our power to control.

Starting The Day: Reading

What is the thing that can keep me on focus during the day, especially days when I feel completely off course? What can give me the power to visualize a possibility in the midst of day of drudgery? Reading.

Reading - specifically, reading for success - is for me the secret sauce that keeps me focused and going during the day. It is very hard for me to visualize moving forward in any aspect of my life without motivational reading, something to spur me on to success.

My reading is divided into two parts:

1) Spiritual: For me, the Scriptures. I've read "Through the Bible in a year" for many years now, where the Old Testament and New Testament is broken down into 366 segments. Mornings are my time for the New Testament, followed by a reading in Proverbs for the Date (31 days, 31 books). I also try to included a devotional reading as well: sometimes theology, sometimes biography, sometimes a true devotional reading.

The point? This keeps me grounded in what is actually important and what the purpose of life really is - and that no matter how much I flatter myself, I am not truly in control.

2) Motivational: For me, this varies tremendously. I've read The Art of War by Sun Tzu many times. I've read books by motivational writers: Brian Tracy, Jeffrey Gitomer, Orison Swett Marden. I've read books on success in writing and publishing. I've read books about businesses and business models that I admire, such as Raising the Bar by the founder of Clif Bars.

The point of this variety in book choices is that it helps to keep focused on things that my day to day existence tends to wipe clean. Things like self improvement, visions of things I want to do, stories of people who have done the things I want to do - all of these keep me looking towards the horizon of the future. I am very forgetful and easily distracted by life. I need these readings as a touchstone for what is possible.

I literally cannot imagine a morning without this kind of reading any more - to me, it would be as foreign as to start out the day without a cup of coffee. If I don't do this sort of reading for two or three days I can feel it: my world becomes shrunken and shuttered by the musts and have to's of my existence.

So read every morning. It's not just good for the mind, it's good for the soul.

Starting The Day: Have a Plan

So now I've gotten enough sleep. The reality is that even with the sleep, the day is still there and ready to have a crack at me. And the second reality is that unchecked, the day will overrun any good intentions I have to accomplish anything.

That's why I need a plan.

My morning is remarkably - almost frighteningly - planned out for me by me. Is it written down anywhere? No, of course not - even I'm not that OCD (yet, anyway). But it tends to always be the same, on the same schedule.

After rising, I pray and read my morning Scripture and the Proverbs chapter for the date (31 chapters, 31 days) and work on my memorization (currently working through Titus) and usually read a devotional text. Then I do my language portion: some Old Testament Greek, some Old English (I never anticipate becoming fluent, of course, but a reading knowledge would be nice). After this, lately I have been reading some motivational books (that will be in tomorrow's post).

After this, Physical Training and exercise. I've been trying - not always successfully to alternate running (MWF) and weight training (TTHS). The timing here is a bit off sometimes: if I'm on my game, I'm out the door to run or in to lift by 0535; if not, as late as 0550. A little flexibility in one's schedule is never a bad thing. The going is the important thing.

When I'm back, it's rabbit and hamster time. I try not to rush this more than I have to - the rabbits (and hamsters) appreciate the attention, and it really is one of the more important things I do during the day.

After finishing with the animals, it's usually off to the computer to check my e-mail and post my quotes on the locations where they exist on the Internet. I don't do my blogging at this point, but instead return to the couch to practice Japanese and eat breakfast.

Following breakfast, it's on to writing (just like today). The time it takes varies greatly - sometimes the words flow and I'm easily completed (I try to average 500-600 words a post), sometimes they drag and it takes a lot longer. However, usually by 0730 the work is done.

And then? Loose time before I shower. Make lunch, perhaps check a few websites I frequent, maybe practice Iaido for a few minutes. It's largely dependent on how long it has taken me to do everything else - and what I feel like.

Is my schedule cast in stone? Not at all. Sometimes I oversleep. Sometimes the weather outside is frightful and running sounds cold, or reading takes more time than I anticipated, or the bunnies want a bit more love. The important thing is that I get up every morning not having to start with a sense of "What do I need to do?" but rather a guided plan of what I should be doing. By the time I'm in the car on my way to work, I've accomplished many of the things that are important to me personally - which matters when your time is limited and you don't feel you are really doing that which you love to do.

Try it yourself. Pick five things to do in the morning. They don't have to be mine - you have your own interests. But plan your day from when you rise and find out if, by the time you're done, you don't have a sense of making something happen in your life before you walk out the door.

Starting The Day: Sleep

Starting the day correctly starts the night before. With Sleep.

I am not a sleep expert and have not significantly studied the science of physiology and sleep. All I can tell is that for myself - and for everyone else I know - sleep is a crucial aspect to the following day.

The amount of sleep required by individuals varies and I don't know why. I've known people who could subsist on 3 hours a night quite nicely. I've known people who absolutely require 8 hours of sleep a night at a minimum and are a wreck between.

Many of most (most of us, depending on what survey you see) are sleep deprived. I didn't really used to accept this - for years I lived on 4-5 hours a night because I had lengthy commutes and I wanted to have a life - but realized that I had all the classic symptoms: tired during the day, making up lots of sleep on the weekends.

Sleep matters because being rested matters, because starting the day rising up refreshed is far different than starting the day dragging yourself out of bed:

1) Find your sleep amount: I suspect most people need more than they think. A classic method is to start at 8 hours a night, then cycle back a half hour at a time until you find your limit. This becomes the minimum amount of sleep a night you need. It will be different for other people. Accept this.

2) Keep your sleep amount: Once you've determined the minimum amount you need, assiduously guard it. If your rising time is 0500 and you need 7 hours of sleep, you need - NEED - to be in bed, asleep, no later than 2200.

You'll find excuses of course - I always do: "I'm not tired yet" or "Just five minutes more to do this". The reality is that every excuse you make deprives you of the ability to start the day out right. Keep your sleep schedule the way you keep your important meetings: inviolate and on-time.

3) Sleep when you sleep: There is a multitude of sleep resources on the Internet so I'll not belabor the point. Just make sure that when you're asleep, you stay asleep. You'll find the things that cause you to be disturbed during the night. To the greatest extent possible, fix them. It's a matter of both quantity and quality.

The best guard against a bad start to the day is to insure that night before was one that allows you to rise fully rested and refreshed to meet the day. The day's struggles will be enough. Don't compound them by being run down yourself.

Starting The Day: Miasma

Sometimes the problem with trying to get positive minded and "successed up" is overcoming the morning.

I really wish I understood why things worked this way. There are days where I can spring out of bed ready to act and enthusiastic. There are other days (today, as you may have guessed, is one) where it is all I can do to acknowledge that today has come and I'll probably need to be about something.

The difficulty, of course, is that that moving forward is built on making progress every day - yes some days more, some days less - but still moving forward, something that a mind set such as mine this morning would seem to make impossible. A morning before anything else spent in the doldrums will lead to a day spent in the doldrums, which hardly moves anything anywhere.

It's certainly not achieved by dwelling on the bottom rung, the place that I seem to be trapped so much of the time. Nor is it achieved (as I can attest to by personal experience) by simply "willing" myself out of a mood - it always seems faked.

No, the times that I am most able to turn my "epic fail in life" mood around is when I am able to look to something else or someone else, that I turn my eyes from whatever is here to what is there, from what is to what is possible.

The morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. By learning to fix this, I think I can learn to make every day that much more successful, that much more of a progression, instead of a stand-in-place failure.

Dead Ends: How Do I Avoid Them?

The purpose of life can be many things and can include successes and how well we lived. While avoiding Dead Ends is not necessarily a guarantee to a better life, knowing when they occur and how to avoid them at the beginning generally means we waste less time on trying to get out them, thus giving time to spend on things of greater value. Once again, it seems an ounce of prevention prevents a pound of cure.

But how do we learn to avoid Dead Ends? Especially when we're young and perhaps lack knowledge (or wisdom), we enter into things and relationships that serve us ill in the long run yet we've not the ability to see it. Is there some sort of screen or filter we can use now - and teach to those who are younger - on what to look for in anything to try to verify, as much as possible, that it is not a Dead End?

1) Plan: Things go better in anything - vacations, getting ready in the morning, life- with a plan. Knowing where we're going and having it documented by a map, a list, or a life plan make it less likely we'll veer off track and end up some place that we didn't intend. Again, this is an activity that requires thinking and consideration on our part. Example: If you plan to become a veterinarian, there are certain things you have to do to prepare yourself to get accepted into Veterinarianary school. It is probable that doing poorly in school leading up to that point is not one of those activities that will support that ultimate goal. Knowing that, we can make the better choice for the ultimate destination.


2) Learn : In reality, many of us know through painful experience the outcome of choices leading to Dead Ends. We simply need to learn to leverage that knowledge from our past into other areas of our lives. This also requires effort on our part: we need to train ourselves to extract principles from the experience of our lives. An example might be that we know that other jobs in the same industry will have issues needing to be confronted, although perhaps not the same issues, so the idea that a simple job change will completely change a career that we consider a Dead End is probably not an accurate one.

3) Consider: This is a Stephen Covey concept which he so clearly elucidates in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as "Knowing the end from the beginning". Look a period of time down the road (Covey suggests the eulogies at your funeral). If you started with this choice - person, activity, career, lifestyle - where do you think it will lead in 20 years?

It's a careful needle we need to thread here - too often we veer to the extreme of "Blue Sky Thinking", where nothing bad will ever happen and we'll be massively successfully. Yes, we should look at that - but we should also look at the failures as well. What's the worst that could happen? It may take some research on our part - for example, what is the happiness of people in a chosen career field after 20 years, or do marriages with alcoholics tend to work out well - but for many things, we can at least gain the knowledge of potential outcomes.

4) Teach: We all - especially those of us that have racked up the "hash marks" of living known as birthdays - have our own tales of Dead Ends we have arrived at or chosen. It's not enough to try and find our own way out. We need to take that experience and share it with others - our children, our relatives, our coworkers, our friends - anyone who is in the place or process of making decisions. We need to share our past, help them to extract the principles of good and bad decision making in the short and long term, help them to understand and create a plan. Ask anyone who's suffered from a miserable Dead End brought on by bad choices and their fervent wish will be that no-one else has to undergo what they have undergone.

If time is the stuff of life, then the less time spent in Dead Ends, the more time we have to make effective choices that lead to desirable results and success. The ultimate difference: thinking before we act rather than acting before we think. Acting without thinking in driving in life leads us to Dead Ends. Acting without thinking in life is no different.

Dead Ends: How Do I Get Out?

We've admitted that we're in one (or many) dead ends in any number of areas in our lives. We've admitted that these do happen, and hopefully we've taken the time review the map of how eventually got to this dead end where we never intended to be in the first place.

Good news: Now it's time to get out!

But how do we get out, we may ask? The situation we are in seems to have gone for so long and the opportunities we have to get out, let alone change things, are so limited. We've made our list of how we got here and frankly, we don't think we could recreate the directions of how we arrived, let alone trace our steps to the fork in the road where we came from.

Happily, there are multiple options:

1) Retrace the path: This certainly doesn't work in all situations - we can't for example, go back twenty years in the past and knowing what we know now, take a pass on a relationship - but it does work in some. Example: In debt? How did we get here? By spending too much. Why did we spend to much? We wanted x and y, so we got a credit card. Solution: retrace to the problem (credit card, spending) and change that.

2) Preposition our way out: Another piece of good news (two in one post!) is that our Dead Ends are not necessarily the same as real, physical Dead Ends like cul-de-sacs. For those, there is only one entrance and exit. Other Dead Ends are not (usual) spatial in nature, and so the linear path of retracing our steps may not be the only way to go.

Preposition our way out? Think of the common prepositions we use daily: over, under, around, through, across, beneath, up down (here's a longer list). Take those prepositions and apply them to our Dead End: Is the Dead End something we can go around or under (Like a difficult person or situation)? Is the Dead End something we can go across (like a similar career field or staying with our music but learning to play a different instrument)? Is our Dead End something we can simply go through (a change which, if executed, will move us through the issue)?

We've been trained in a world that moves in a linear, one dimensional fashion. It's time to be spatially expansive in how we address our lives.

3) Plan the Change, and Execute: Sometimes Dead Ends are simply that: Dead Ends that, no matter how hard we try, we're not going to be able to back, around, through or over. In those cases, there's really nothing to do except plan to make a significant change, one that does not follow this Dead End in any way, and execute it. The important point here is that, once the situation has been recognized as irredeemable, to intellectually accept that a change needs to be made, plan the change, and do it.

There is only one Dead End (in this life, anyway) which cannot be changed: Death, the sort of ultimate Dead End. All others are lesser than this immutable fact and thus, something can be done. We just need to find the will and (often) the creative thought and iron will to do it.

Bang the Drum Slowly

Unfortunate news: Maeve of Connaught is leaving.

She's going on to do that which she has done before and done well and will do well again. I cheer for her, and weep for myself.

Weep? Yes. Of all that confronts me in my business, she was the only thing or person there from which I could learned something new. My opportunities to learn and grow where I am have become vastly curtailed.

She was someone who had done this before multiple times successfully. There never was a foolish question, and she was always ready to give feedback and share her experience - and having been successful, it was experience that counted. Hers was the first attitude I have seen in a long time - maybe ever - of "What do you need, let's fix it" - and then backing it up with actually fixing it instead of delegating all the responsibility to you, the suggestor of the problem, to repair.

She was the first leader I've had in many years - and certainly the best - of being part of the individuals she was leading as well as leading. She was the one that sat with folks at lunch or laughed (loudly) at jokes or went out to discuss things after work. She was the one whose coming into your office did not immediately invoke a sense of dread or the tuning out of the higher brain functions as one prepared for lecturing or another layer of work. She led, yes - but she led beside you, not five steps in front of you.

The best analogy I can think of is trench warfare in World War I where, after the shelling, the Captain blows the whistle and shouts "Up and Over, boys." There are two thoughts at that point: the one that if The Captain says go you're sure that somehow all will work out well and you'll come back to the trench, or the one that says if The Captain says go there is little to no hope that you'll return.

Maeve is, obviously, the former.

There were other issues of course: home in one state, working in another; her beloved dogs and her horse that were "in exile" while she was among us; the care and feeding of us in a situation that was undoubtedly less than optimal. The fact that she gave so freely, for so long, continues to amaze me.

It's amazing the impact that one person, properly trained and experienced and a true leader, can have on any organization. The sense of purpose and enthusiasm while they are there present and active is only seemingly eclipsed by the emptiness and void left by their going. They are truly those who bring joy by their coming and sadness by their going.

The fact that those feelings are seldom felt is probably a reflection of the fact that there are truly few exceptional leaders that one encounters in one's life. I've had the privilege to know a handful - now, I can add one more to the ranks.

Ave atque Vale, Maeve. May you continue to do your good work - not just your job, but the process of molding and inspiring others - in a environment where it is so desperately needed.

Dead Ends: How Did I Get Here?

"How did I get to a Dead End?" we may have asked ourselves in the past? "I did my homework on this career" or "Person X and I really examined ourselves before we moved into the next phase of our relationship. It just seems like it happened out of nowhere."

The truth is that Dead Ends, like virtually everything else in life, do not simply appear out of nowhere. The analogy of a physical dead end is applicable: we don't just show up in a cul-de-sac or cove, we somehow get there - either purposefully or by accident.

Now, arriving at a cul-de-sac to visit a friend or a cove to enjoy a lovely afternoon on the lake is one thing; to arrive there when we fully expected to be somewhere else is far more depressing, especially when we fully expected to be somewhere else.

But just like determining that we need to reverse our direction to get to where we need to go, we also need to figure out how to do this in our personal Dead Ends. And, just like driving, we need to take a crucial first step before going: How did I get here?

The reality is that if we are truly honest with ourselves, most of the Dead Ends we find ourselves in do not truly arise out of nowhere. Somewhere, in the back of our minds, we had inklings or expectations that this might be the case. Oft times it results from a decision hastily made; other times it stems from a decision made thoughtlessly or with less than fully consideration or even consciously ignoring ourselves or others. Either way, much like passing streets we don't recognize and aren't expecting yet continuing on, there are almost always indicators before we arrive that the road we are on is leading to a Dead End.

Of course we acknowledge that in order to leave a Dead End, we need to get back to where we got lost. But before we do, we need to take a moment to orient ourselves and figure out what we need to do. It's instructive to ask these questions:

1) What is the Dead End I am in?: Define the Dead End. What specifically is it: Is the the job, or is it the career? Is it the specific thing I am doing, or does this activity overall really not suit me? Is it specifically this time in our relationship, or is it the relationship in general? Without specifically defining the Dead End, it is difficult to figure out what we will need to do.

2) How did I get here?: This requires a bit more thought - and a lot of honesty. Look back over the history of the Dead End. Why did you choose it? What were your thoughts when you made this choice (if you're a journaler, this can be a useful tool in recreating your thought processes)? What did you hope to get out of it? Were there any signs at the time of choosing, or any time after, that gave you pause in your decision? If so, why did you choose to ignore them?

Turning around and navigating out of a Dead End is not difficult - but if we don't know where we are and how we got here, we'll simply succeed in arriving at another Dead End.

Dead Ends

Dead End (n): An end (as with a street) without an exit; a position, situation, or course of action that leads to nothing further.

Dead ends come to us in many forms: relationships, jobs, careers, hobbies, even the literal dead ends of a wrong turn and no where else to go. Yet surprisingly, as I think about it, there is little (if anything) that I have read about how to deal with one.

Why is this? What is it about dead ends that (apparently) cause them to sink below our consciousness and ability to deal with? Otherwise competent and skilled people seem to sink into morasses of inability when faced with one. There are the typical solutions, of course - suck it up and deal with it or get out - but I wonder if those options are so common that we use them without thinking.

Or is it possible that the dead end is so common to the human experience and so painful that we would rather not give a great deal of thought to the matter?

The situations that we often find dead ends in are often painful in deep ways: the job or career that is not fulfilling but there seem to be no options; the relationship that will not advance beyond a level of intimacy yet has had so much time and energy invested into it; the hobby or activity at which we have reached a level and cannot seem to go beyond it. Each of these bears similar characteristics: something of importance to us which we have a great deal of time and energy invested in, that a sense of not being able to move forward creates feelings of depression, hopelessness, and powerlessness.

But what if there is another option?

Think of Star Wars where on the Death Star Han Solo, faced with the sudden arrival of a squad of stormtroopers, does the unthinkable: screaming wildly, he starts shooting and charges them, forcing them to flee. Or the Heike Monogatari where, when told that the cliffs around Ichi-no-tani were too steep for a horse, said "If a deer can do it, a horse can do it", charged down with 50 of his men, and took the field.

The odd contrast is that while we are so often depressed and hopeless about the situation, the greatest stories and greatest achievements are done in the face of seeming dead ends - or maybe not real dead ends, as there was a way out.

The dead ends we face in our lives may seem like they represent the end of trails with no hope, but in reality they may represent the greatest opportunity for personal achievement - if only we will look for it.