Happiness?

Happiness is deeper than we think it is.

In speaking with Snowflake last night, one thing I commented I was trying to work on was my state of mind - my happiness - when I come from work.  Frankly, it is far less than what I think it should be - and it seems to be affecting others.  No matter how much I try coming in the door with a hearty " I am home" has eluded me - for years.

But Snowflake made me think deeper about it.  "It is not just then"  she said, "it is always.  Is your mood in general happy?  And how are you in general when you are around people?"

Ouch.

The truth is that I am not a very happy person.  Oh sure, I can put on a grand show, be the jovial "Hail and Well Met" fellow that appears to have things well in control and moving forward, but in reality I am not very happy.  Not psychotically so mind you, and not to the point that it prevents me from being a functional human being.  But certainly not anywhere near what I often seem to portray.

Why?  Well, here is an even more difficult question:  What is happiness?

I wish I could answer that question conclusively.  It would resolve a host of other issues.  I could then confidently say "This is what I define happiness as" and "These things hardly make me happy".  Instead, I am left careening through the day and a listing of activities, some of which provide me joy but perhaps contribute little to my life, some of which provide me no joy but must be done, some which provide neither joy nor a sense of purpose, and a very few which make me happy but do not seem to lead anywhere.

What would a life of doing mostly activities one likes look like?  I certainly grasp that there are always things which must be done, but what if the bulk of my activities were things that I either enjoyed, added value to my life, or allowed me to live on purpose.  What would such a life look like?

I cannot imagine - I can only imagine the negative, which I seem to be living every day:  a dull sense of grinding activity in which I grit my teeth, trying to endure another day or week in order to make it through to the things I like to do.

And this one thing I can speak to definitively:  enduring is simply not the same as happiness.

Goals and Rewards

I have a problem with goals.

Oh, not the setting of them.  I have become quite good at that part of it.  I can whip up a set of goals for a day, a week, or a year within the course of an hour.  I can even come up with a tracking metric.  The problem is that I have a very difficult time maintaining the fire to accomplish those goals over a long period of time.

I guess the thing I always believed about goals was there was a linear progression: set goal, accomplish goal, get reward, move on.  What I have found is that the end points of goals, even if clearly defined, often hardly amount to a single actual output at all.  Work tasks completed simply mean there are other tasks to be completed, not that there are riches or rewards at the end of it.  And often personal accomplishments are the same:  the books I complete, while being a significant investment of time and energy, hardly result in the influencing of almost anyone or acting as a ticket out of what I do know.

Is it that I define the goal ineffectively?  Or is it that I do not tie it specifically to a reward?

This is the why and result question:  why am I doing what I am doing?  And what do I expect to get out of it - not just the finishing of another task, but the actual outcome:  an item?  A certificate?  A promotion?  Or something checked off on my list to my larger goals?

This is where a "visual inspiration" page in a planner would be useful with pictures of what one is actually working towards or what one wants to achieve?  If I want to live at The Ranch, why is there not a picture there?  If I want a new katana or naginata, where is that picture - and where is my commitment to buy it once I complete that goal?

Because I think this is the part I am missing.  If I could tie my successes to accomplishing my goals - not just the intellectual exercise but the actual physical or emotional accomplishments of those goals - I suspect my incentive to achieve would not be an issue.

In fact, I think I would be about goals and accomplishing things all the time.

The Inflection Point At Work

There is a point at every job I have been at when something turns.

It is not time based.  It is certainly nothing that you receive a shirt for - and quite likely, it may very well be something that is never spoken of.

It starts as a sense.  You suddenly get the sense that you are involved in more and more meetings.  And then you realize that almost every moment of your day is consumed with one task or another.  The work keeps stacking up, more and more items that need your attention but are getting pushed off because you have something else you need to be doing at the time.

It is always at this moment that the change occurs.

I have contemplated about this for a while.  The only thing I can come up with is the that when this point is reached it is a sign that actions which should have been taken - say, an advance in levels or additional resources - have no intention of being taken.  In other words, the company has no more investment in you as a future growing resource but only in a resource that is good for doing more until such time as you no longer become necessary.

There are two choices when this point is reached.  The first is simply to accept that this is the way things are and to hope that more effort will result in a final recognition of your effort and the need.  The second is to accept that your time where you are is over:  any chance of moving forward in level or resources will only occur somewhere else where you have not be pigeon holed into the role you currently role.

Let us simply say that the first choice seldom works out.

The Day of Trivialities

Yesterday was not a good day.

Oh, it was not a terrible day by any stretch of the imagination.  Nothing truly bad happened.  A crack did not open up in the earth and swallow me.  No flat tires.  I still have a job.  No one died.  But it was a very dispiriting day none the less.

Why?  Because it was a day of triviality.

It was a day like so many that I spent in the past in my career.  A day where I spent time doing things I have done for the past 14 years:  pushing documents through the system.  Preparing presentations for visitors.  Following up on required paperwork that no-one really seems to care about and feels perfectly okay to ignore.  In other words, a day realizing that my career has not progressed one iota in a very long time.

This is the most dispiriting of all - to realize that one's career has simply become a never ending cycle of small tasks that repeat themselves without the possibility of escaping them and moving forward, a sort of horrible career reincarnation where one never really moves beyond what one is doing.

The options are minimal and somewhat grim.  The concept of moving up where one currently works is simply a non-starter at this point - after all, why would anyone promote someone who is doing the items that need doing?  Trying to find a new position - a promotion ideally - at a new company is another option, although it creates its own set of issues in terms of family and moving.  A new career - as we have discussed before - brings with it its own set of issues, the first of which is merely starting over again at the bottom when one cannot really afford to do so.

The part that is frustrating - the part that is the most debilitating - is the horrible sense that nothing is going to change.  14 years of doing the same thing is enough to make that plain. And the realization that even in the doing of these things the inherent triviality that exists - that most of what is worked on will simply slip into the dustbin of history without a second thought, that the critical items of today are really nothing more than the failed and outmoded projects of yesterday - does nothing to promote a sense that somehow, somewhere, what I am doing is for the better.

But today is another day.  Another day that I will get up and head out and do my thing - and perhaps somewhere harbor the hope that today, somehow or somewhere, something about it will be different.  Different enough to make me believe that careers really do move forward instead of just remaining the same.

Rain

We had rain last night.

Large amounts of rain, pouring from the sky.  The sort of rain that one wishes we had all the time - not the immediate downpour which is here and then gone five minutes later but the longer rain that lasts all night (it will still spitting rain when I went outside at 0530 this morning.

We got the full show as well - wind, thunder, lightning, heavy rain and light rain - as we went through the evening.  And it was pretty consistently spread out as well - thunder was still passing through at 0400 this morning during one of my intermediate dozes through the night.

The final total was about 3.5 inches.  That is a stunning amount to me for rain that comes in an approximately 12 hour period.  Where I come from we measure it in inches over a day to two days, not in multiple inches in hours.  And it is badly needed where we are right now - the cracks have started to appear in my yard where grass is not covering them and we find ourselves already in watering restrictions (unheard of in May when we are supposedly coming out of one rainy season.

The most remarkable thing to me is that the rain here is not nearly as cold as it is where I come from (seeing as how the rain comes in summer) and so sitting out on the porch watching the rain can actually be an event.  I sat outside for a while last night as the rain poured down, watching the sheets pass along the street as the sky lit up with lightning and the trees danced.

This morning, of course, it is hard to tell we had that much rain:  the sidewalk is damp but not that damp with only receptacles able to demonstrate that a storm of such magnitude washed through last night.  And my memory, of course.

It is always good to take a moment to rejoice in the simple things that God provides through nature.

Monday Morning

There is little so disabling as a Monday morning.
For me it begins the night before as that general feeling of "Sigh" creeps over me.  The nights are not better - on Friday night I could sleep through a hurricane, on Sunday night I wake three or four times until at last I leave the bed to keep from waking others up and lie on the couch tossing and turning until it is close to the time that I think I should actually be up and about.

It is clear, is it not?  The disabling sensation, the tossing and turning is directly tied to what I have to do right after it: my job.

The lack of sleep does not help my perspective on things, to be sure.  It is easier to be enthusiastic about something when one is well rested but how does one become well rested when one's life keeps pushing into one's sleep patterns.

I will get through the thing of course - I have to.  I will suit up here in a few moments, drive to work, and submerge myself in the needs of what has become my career.  I will probably have a few good moments and a number of items I need to work on as I go through my day.

But there, in the back of my head, the countdown to Friday has already begun.  And with it, the ability to sleep through the night once again.

Bored

I am bored.

This thought suddenly crashed into my head at about 1430 yesterday as I was paging through something to review at work.  It is a type of document that I have been reviewing for almost five years at my current place of employment.  And in a flash I realized that I was bored with it.

And with most of what I do constantly.  Every day it has become the same round of tasks to do and arguments to have.  Documents which need my signature, items which need my review, things which I need to accomplish - all have become the same in my mind.  Literally, I have nothing to look forward to any more.

It explains quite a bit if I stop and think about it.  No wonder I have found myself on the downward trend of enthusiasm and energy.  It is exceptionally hard when every day becomes like every other with no hope of anything changing or becoming different.  Are there new things coming on line?  Possibly.  Do I believe that they will in any way change the content of my work or the shape of my day?  Not at all.

What do I do with this thought?  I am not sure.  Certainly this is the first time - perhaps ever in my work life - that I have consciously realized that I am bored. In other areas of life, when one is bored one begins to find things to do to become not bored.  Not as easy in a job where change comes slowly and there are a certain level of expectation of the tasks that need to be accomplished.

But one thing is certain:  getting better at the mundane and boring does nothing to advance one's career or fulfill one's life.  It only ensures that one is better and skilled at doing boring things.

And that is no path to success.

Faux Rain

Clouds belie the rain,bringing only the faux rain
of humidity.

Out of Control

Feeling a little out of control of events this morning.

My life seems more and more caught up by events that are completely outside of my control.  I am caught in the vortex of decision which are beyond my ability to make - but which impact me a great deal.  It is in more than one area, which makes the whole thing a little more disconcerting to me.  Bottom line:  it feels like I control the fringes of my life.  I seemingly have no control over the center.

What bothers one, of course, is that one wants to actually take charge of the situation and make those direct changes which can make impact.  But it feels like one cannot, of course:  we are tied by a thousand tiny threads, any one of which we could break but a thousand of which tie us to the ground.

Is this it?  That is what the inner core of me cries out at moments like this.  I feel so trapped, so ineffective, so much a product of an industrial age to which I am merely a cog in several other wheels.

Dangerous, of course.  These are the moments where bad decisions are made, where disgust and anger rise up in a torrential wave leading one to say and do things which one will later regret - viscerally satisfying at the moment of course, but eventually leading nowhere.

But even as the blood cools (or perhaps just accepts that this is way things are) one is left with a single question:  is this all I can really expect from the rest of my life?

Planners

So I have been struggling with a planner format.

I like the concept of a daily planner.  I like the concept of writing down tasks so you do not lose track of them, of having your goals available to you every day, of having a single place to record ideas and quotes just random things that come into your head.  The problem, of course, is doing it in such a way that it is actual useful for you.

I have tried various versions of the "Non-Planner Planner" for the past 8 years or so - more of a large journal than a planner where I would write down some of the various sections noted above and include daily or weekly entries with tasks.  The problem was it worked really well for some things - like a place to keep goals and quotes and ideas - but it worked really badly for daily tasks.  I do not quite understand what it was, only that I found that the writing down and marking off of tasks became such a chore that in the end I would not do it at all and ended up with empty pages at the end of the year (empty pages make me sad).

This year I tried something different:  I got a simple notebook to write down things like quotes and goals and a simple calendar planner to write down tasks.  This too has proved disappointing:  my tasks do not get written into the calendar and I still end up with empty pages.  My compromise at this point is to start writing down some daily tasks in the notebook and write down events in the calendar.  I am still not happy with this compromise either, as I am carrying around two books where I need one and my ability to write down and execute tasks is still pretty minimal.

Or am I looking in the wrong place?  Is my ability to create and execute tasks that is the issue and not so much how I record them?  Surely I am not dependent on owning a particular type of book to record tasks but on the ability to write and execute them - for some people, post-it notes are enough.

But I like some kind of planner.  I like having them from years past, able to look back and see what I accomplished and wrote and (indirectly) what I was thinking for the year.  It is a unique historical perspective of years gone by.

So where do I come down?  We will see with trying to enter daily tasks - and executing.  Perhaps my failure is truly not the vehicle I have chosen but how I am driving it.

A Simple Phrase

We badly underestimate the power of a simple phrase.

It happened to me again the weekend at a Highland Games.  I turned in my usual performance i.e. relatively consistent for me but vastly behind the performance of everyone else.  I do not throw for competitiveness except against myself, but I am sure that to those watching it is something of a mystery why I am throwing with everyone else on the field.

Near the end of the day on of my fellow competitors - A guy whose athletic abilities are super good now and with practice will only get a lot better - says, kind of out of the blue, "You are one of my favorite competitors out here."

Boy, that will sure make a guy's day.  In fact, that will pretty much make a guy's week.

9 simple words.  They did not cost him anything to say - other than the sincerity that he had behind them when he said them.  But they were worth a million dollars to me - not just then, but all the way on the 3 hour drive home and then throughout the day yesterday as well.  And, I am pretty sure, throughout this week as well.

We badly underestimate the power of a simple phrase.  The more important question is, what are we going to do about it?

Book Number 5

I passed a milestone Monday that I failed to account for:  my fifth book is now published!

I am pretty excited, as much for the content as for other factors as well:
- This book was started on 01 November 2013 and published on 27 April 2014, a period of 6 months, which is almost a record for me (I conceivably could have done it in less time but I published another book in the mean time).
- It was by far one of the smoothest books I have written in terms of flow, although it hardly ended up where I expected it too.
- I already have sold some books! (Yay profit!)

It is the sort of thing that encourages one to write again.  All efforts should be like this.

And there are more efforts, of course.  One time I tried to explain to someone what it was like to write and have other ideas floating around in one's head:  "It is having a number of people in your head trying to talk to you as you say 'Wait, wait - I will get to you as soon as I can.'".  They are there in the back of my head, clamoring to get out.

And they seem to keep multiplying.  I have gone from the book I intended to write for Nanowrimo 2013 (which will go to Nanowrimo 2014 - but this time I will prepare) to that book plus a second one on Christianity to that one plus the one on Christianity to another one that popped into my head last week ("Hi, I am your new book that needs to be written.  You were not doing anything important, were you?").

I enjoy writing so much and find it an incredibly rewarding effort.  If only I could figure out a way to make a living at it.

Opportunity versus Motivation

I got one of those fairly rare offers in that comes only a few times in a career:  the chance to reinvent everything.

With Hammer Fall II, my manager (among others) has left.  His fingerprints - and that of his predecessor - are all over the system under which I have had to work for the last five years.  Two layers of excessive bureaucracy for the sake of an opinion of how things should be done does not lead to a highly effective system.  After a while of battling the opinions one simply becomes quietly numb and tries to figure out the best way to work within the confines of what one has.

But they are gone now, gone with the shifting winds of the industry which seem to engulf us all at some point, blowing us on to another destination or place of employment.

And so the suggestion came yesterday - or more of a question really, the question of "What is your vision?  How soon can you provide it?  What would you make the system?"  Heady questions - the sort of thing that can make or break a career.  And yet I find myself struggling.

Why?  Because I have been so long in a system where incompetence and overbearing authority seems to be rewarded and all things must have the imprimatur of the person above you that the thought of being able to actually effect change seems to have become quiescent within me - indeed not only quiescent, but almost a thing which cannot be resurrected.

This is remarkable if I sit and think about it for a moment.  My personal life over the last few years - indeed, over the last weekend - has definitively demonstrated that with effort and practice and dedication anything is possible.  I know this to be true.  I have seen it work now time and time again in my own life.  Yet presented with the same sort of opportunity, I merely sigh and try to generate some level of motivation.

It is belief, of course - belief that something like that can be definitively changed and that my efforts can actually pay off.  That is the core of my reluctance to attack the problem.

How does one overcome such a barrier?

Numbers

So I follow my views of this blog.
Seems kind of silly, does it not?  After all, there is no financial benefit for me from this blog and it is not as if as if the Meteor of Success has suddenly fallen on my head as a result of someone reading this and saying "Good Heavens, we need you writing right now!"  Still, it is a form of vanity that the purveyors make far too easy:  with the click of a button on the side, you can see daily, weekly, monthly, and forever listings.

As I wrote in December, I finally passed the 33,000 view mark.  Not too shabby, I thought to myself - after all, that was after 5 years of writing (more or less). And if I look today it is at 34,614, almost a 5% increase in 4 months.  April was my second highest month ever in terms of views.

And then I start getting visions of grandeur that I probably should not have:  what would happen if I got 2,000 views a month?  3,000?  What if got so focused on driving people to the site that I was getting as many views in a year as I got in the last 7? What if?

Except I know part of the reality.  Many of my "views" are really spammers just seeing that if they can find a way to post something in the comments section (surprisingly, I am popular in Russia.  No idea why). Another large chunk is actual a small group of people known to me (family and friends) that come here to see what my latest concerns or issues of the day are.  A third group (no idea who you are, but welcome!) are those new folks drifting around or through, either directed here by the kindness of people like PioneerPreppy or the faceless Google search because some word caught the search engine's fancy.

The worst part about becoming concerned about numbers?  It makes the writing all about the numbers, how many people can I drive to the site and how many can convert to do (fill in the blank).  That was never the point of this when I started it.  It was much more an exercise in writing what I wanted to write.  The people reading it were just the extra nice part.  

The secret, of course, is just to stop looking at the numbers at all.

So welcome if you are new here.  Feel free to kick the tires and try the car door locks. You will find we lead a pretty simple life here: No social trends.  No politics.   Some religion as it relates to my own struggles.  Lots of thoughts about how I deal with life as it comes and my struggles to become a better person.

We are happy to have you.  And please believe me when I say that you are never, ever  a number.

Remaining Goals

Time to pick up on the rest of my goals.

Of the eight I listed this year, three of them are now officially completed and one of them is either going to be completed this Saturday or will have to wait until Autumn (new PR for Braemar Stone).  That leaves four for the year, one of which - testing for a level in Japanese - happens in December.  So really I effectively only have three that need invention and action (the Japanese, of course, is pretty straightforward:  study, study, study).  What are the remaining ones?  Financial and career, of course. The ones it is always the most difficult to succeed at.

Why?  I suppose it is because at some level both of these are out of my control  - financial less so of course, but it is bounded by the fact that we live in a household of growing girls where expenses happen as well as the general living of life.  Career, as I have written about earlier, is ultimately out of my control - I can do a great many things but still not make any headway.

Yet these two areas have the greatest impact on my life right now.

Personal goals?  I have achieved them and then some this year.  That has never been a problem for me.  I am fortunate in that I have many and they stretch me in ways that keep my life interesting and entertaining.  No, it is these two areas that I struggle with so much.

But the struggle cannot be all bad.  Within each of these is the power to greatly enhance my day to day existence, if I can only master them.  Imagine a life with a job that I really love, not just a job I have to tolerate.  What would that do for my mood?  What would that do for my energy?  What would that do for my sleep (yes, we have reached the point that it is affecting that as well)?

Here is thing I need to fix on.  I have accomplished the other things. I  have made remarkable progress in personal areas of my life.  The question is this:  how do I translate these into the more difficult things that are not fully in my control?

Kesa no giri

Breathe in, commit, draw.The hamon slides out, flashing;
straw wara slides down

Passing Last Days

And so another round of transition comes to a close as the wave of Hammer Fall II prepares for their last day.

It is an odd thing, this unwilling but conscious leaving by some - and the fall out from that decision.  Within the week the composition of my workplace will be significantly altered.  Within a week, the group that I enjoy lunch with will be changed once again.

One would think I would get used to this - after all, we are rapidly approaching my five year anniversary here.  I have seen plenty of people come and go in my time, the composition of the workplace ebb and flow.  Individuals one works and eats and laughs with go from coworkers to acquaintances seen occasionally while in the workplace fewer and fewer who know them still work there; stories move to legends and individuals move into the workplace pantheon, forms and caricatures of the totality of their experience who would not be recognized as such if they were met in the street.

It saddens me because I see friends I have made over the years leaving, friends that have made the work environment a better place to be.  Others will come of course and there will be new legends and new stories but things always seem a little dimmer to me when those that I came in or have worked with for a long time depart.  It is not just a coworker that departs; it is part of a life and a lifestyle that is leaving as well.

Next week will come of course and the workplace will move on as it always has.  I will probably take a moment to walk by the cubes where my coworkers used to sit and look at the places that we had good conversations.  As I get coffee in the lunch room I will listen for the ghostly laughter shared over food.

And then, sighing and squaring my shoulders, I will take my memories and head back to my desk.

Finally Writing Goals

So this week I finally managed to put some 2014 goals to paper.

Yes, I know it is April.

What surprised me was my supreme reluctance to undertake this task. It is a little surprising - even to me.  It is not as if I did not spend time working on these at the end of the 2013 with my usual process of dividing and subdividing.  It is not as if I did not draft them and have the available for final approval.  I just could not bring myself to do them.

I came up with excuses of course.  At first my excuse was that I did not have a planner/book for 2014 (I changed formats this year).  But then I got one.  Then my excuse became "Well, I am not really sure that these are my goals" - but I made no forward movement in actually writing them down.  Then my excuse became "I am not sure that these are really the goals that I should be striving for - I need to have less, more focused goals."  And so on.  You get the idea.

But on Monday night I finally made myself write them down.

The odd thing to me was that as soon as I wrote them down I found that I could (or was close to) crossing almost half of them off already.  In April.  That has almost never happened.  That should have made me happy, correct?  It did not really - instead I sat looking at the ones that were remaining.

Of the eight listed, six of them are completely within my control to accomplish.  They are everything a goal should be:  specific, time bound, concise, clear.  The problem is the two that are neither of these yet are the most important: the most important of these is find a new job/career.

Why did I sigh?  Bogha Frois said it concisely to me more clearly than I could have said it to myself:  because it ultimately out of your control.  I could work and study and search and find, only to find myself at the point that this is not something I can achieve.

It bothers me even as I think about it now.  I have eight goals listed, four of which I am super close to having achieved.  Why is it I cannot look at those accomplishments and instead focus only on that which I have not done?

Nighean Gheal

Fifteen years are gone:
You  mature so beautifully,
I am quite humbled.

Reality

Our innermost souls,
suddenly pierced by events
seek that which matters.

Control

I have an issue with things I cannot control - more specifically, I have an issue with compensating for the things that I cannot control.

There are a great many things I feel that I have no control over in my life.  In fact, these things seem to fill my day every day.  Events I cannot control, things I cannot make happen, tasks that I cannot turn aside from - every day and every week, a life full of that which is not controllable.

My solution?  To find those things that I can control in my life - and do those.

The issue, of course is that generally such things are not good for one.  They run from the fairly benign (shredding my nails in frustration) to the not really good for me (binging).  They have consequences of course, consequences that I cannot avoid - but I do them anyway.

Why?  Because they are the things that I can control.  They are the things that I can choose or not choose to do (and generally they fall into the "choose category for me) because they are the things that I have power over.   I cannot turn away the task at work that is useless but no-one else will do it.  I can choose to eat or not eat a sugar laden snack.

I am not sure how to remedy this.  The easy answer is "find ways to take more control of more things in your life" - but that seems about as useful telling a penguin to fly:  without the ability to do so the thing becomes impossible.  Yet exerting control in these small things does not do anything for me either - the behaviors are at best not good for me and they do not really solve my underlying problem.

What I want to say the solution is is to find those things that I can control even in the uncontrollable situations and build on those.  I think that is the correct answer - but it does not feel like it resolves anything.  How do I find a sense of moving forward in the midst of small tasks in the midst of larger items?

A thought to ponder for the day:  Are all situations truly beyond my control?  Or is just some?  And if some, why or why not?

Burying The Dead

I need to bury the dead.

I realized it yesterday when I was having a conversation with some fellow coworkers about my former boss, who was caught in Hammer Fall II.  As we got to talking, we moved from the foibles that all boss (including myself) seem to have to a certain level of bitterness which was evident to the point that one of coworkers made the comment "I detect a note of satisfaction in your speech."  I thought for a moment and said that after getting the bus run over head enough times and being undercut it was difficult not to be too upset.

And then I realized I had to let him go.

I have conflicted feelings about him.  He was not a bad person, especially outside of work.  Certainly he only wanted to do what was right and best for the company.  And yet of all the managers I have had, his was the most fractious and least productive relationship I have had.  Of all my managers, his is the only example I can think of for what not to be like.  And even though I should not, I still let the bitterness from various incidents and comments in my review live in my brain:  Advancement may have been delayed, perhaps now  made unattainable, because of the fact that (at least from his perspective) he based as much of his response to me on the fact that I did not humbly acquiesce to his will without question.  I may never be able to resolve all of the issues that his decisions or lack of will have left behind.

But I need to let go.  For better or worse, he is gone never to return while I carry my anger and bitterness and rage with me as if he were still present and I had another staff meeting coming up.  Really I should be working on forgiveness - right now I would just settle for a tamping down of the virulence in my soul.

Why?  Because now I have tied myself to him - or rather, to his memory.  It is as if took the corpse to a grave and laid it there, buried it, and then continued to walk around as if I still had it on my back.  Once the dead are buried, it makes no sense to continue to act as if they are still alive, nor to carry their weight.  The stream of time has moved on; it is only I that continue to keep myself in that place.

"De mortuis nihil non est nisi bonum" - Speak nothing but good of the dead, said the Romans.

Or perhaps, better not to speak of some dead at all.

Job Change and Excuses III

So we have established that the thought of a job change is heavy on my mind.  We have also established the fact that the true reason I do not seem to want to do it is not for lesser reasons that can be resolved but that I have an image in my mind of how I view myself - a beggar pleading for a career rather than someone confidently making a career and being a valued resource.

How does one find this confidence?

It is not as if this is an unsolvable problem.  I have plenty of friends I know that have done this:  Miss C with her art or Himself with Real Estate or friends that have gone on to consulting jobs in companies they have founded.  People I know have done this - why cannot I visualize the much less difficult task of simply confidently looking for a new job?

Is it the system?  Sure, the job search system as it currently exists does not help.  One becomes a faceless number submitting a form - and even if one is fortunate enough to land an interview, one finds more often that not that a follow up is never given - more often than not, unless you get the position you never know that you did not get the position.

And there is always a high sense of competition in the interview process - not just that you are trying to do well but that you are competing with others not just on experience, but on price and your location.  To me it really does feel like you are are in a competition.  And if an competition long enough without results, you begin to suffer doubt.

So how does one overcome this?  Some thoughts:

1)  Remember:  Remember what you have done in which you have been successful.  For me, I have that string of things in recent history - Iaijutsu, Heavy Athletics- things where I have succeeded in learn to do something and accomplishing something.  If I have done it once, I can repeat the experience.

2)  Support:  Part of any successful effort is the people that one surrounds themselves with.  I am fortunate in that I have found activities where such support is readily found - Highland Athletes are by far the most supportive group I have met in a long time and my iaijutsu training partners give me confidence in areas where I feel week.  But I realize now it is just not enough to surround yourself with them - you need to engage their active support as well.  The reality is that most people are willing to be quite supportive but they can only so when they know there is a need.  Do not be afraid to ask.

3)  Fix:  Fix those things you can control.  If there is a skill to learn, learn it - now more than any other time in history the knowledge is available and the concept of self taught is not something that puts people off.'

4)  Be confident:  This is the hardest thing of all for me - but the most important.  If I do not believe in myself, no one can really believe in me either.  There is an aura of one that is self confident that is hard to define but easy to recognize, a sense of "I can do this - and if I cannot do it here, I will do it somewhere else.   My value rests with me, not with your opinion of me."  Believing this turns the most cringing of individuals into the most confident of interviewees or one who can face an uncertain future with the confidence that they can make their way through it.

The reality is that what I feel is not forced on me by anyone else.  I am saddling myself with it.  But if I put it on myself, then I have the power to take it off again.

Job Change And Excuses II

Why do I make excuses for why I cannot - or will not - look for a new career?  This is the outcome of my pondering on yesterday's consideration and going through the process of living through my day at work.

What are my excuses?

- Money, of course.  As Pioneer Preppy pointed out so well yesterday, money is a huge consideration.  The thought of disrupting the money flow is a terrifying thought at the best of times, and as The Firm proved, making a bad decision about money can haunt you for years after the decision both financially and personally.

- Experience.  I argue with myself that I have "invested" 16 plus years in my current line of work and starting from the bottom again will just be an exercise in futility that I do not want to undertake for a second time.

- Difficulty.  Yes, it is hard to find a new career field.  Lots of searching, lots of applying, lots of rejections.

But in writing them out, those are pretty tame excuses considering my rising level of unhappiness.  Not enough money?  Find a way to make more.  Not enough experience?  Be creative - how does your current experience level translate into other areas - or simply learn new skills.  Difficulty?  Sure, it is difficult - but lots of things that I have done in my life are difficult.  What is my point?

The last is the most telling to me.  Difficult.  But I have done many difficult things - I have sung in front of people, performed on the harp, created and written four books, wrote 50,000 words in 30 days, learned a sword art form, and competed in Highland Athletics.  Any one of those things could be considered difficult - yet I have done them all.

It comes down to self belief.

I do not believe that I can do this thing.  That is what it is.  I do not have the internally energizing belief that I can find a new line of work - or even create one for myself.  Always in the back of my mind I see myself as the one with my hand out, begging for a job rather than being desired for one.

How did I end up with such an image in my head?  Years of the job process I suppose, always applying for multiple jobs while hoping against hope that someone will say yes, that someone will beneficently agree that you are the one.  But in every other example I listed there was no deus ex machina which made it happen. Yes, I have had more help in each of those things than I could have ever dreamed off.   But that help would not have made a difference - indeed, would not have been offered - unless I made the effort to do the activity, and believed that I could.

So there is the key - changing my image from a beggar pleading for a career to someone confidently making a career and being a valued resource.

How does one make this happen?

Job Change and Excuses

The thought of changing jobs keeps haunting my mind.

It occurred again last night when I was tying up the final edits of my next manuscript, waiting for it to upload to CreateSpace.  I reminded myself again how much I really enjoy writing (no idea if I am any good at it, but I sure do enjoy it). And then I started going through my list of things that I want to be about this year:  two more books, more Highland Games, more God, more Japanese, more Iaijutsu, more gardening and cheese making and mead making, more family.

You will notice what is missing from that list of course.  My current employment.

I keep trying to nudge myself that way subconsciously - and then I keep beating myself back, convincing myself that such a thing is impossible.  As if my most recent manuscript was not about self imposed limitations (which it is).  Just like I thought that Highland Athletics were impossible - until they were not.  And writing was - until it was not.

It comes down to that self confidence thing that has bedeviled me for year.  A man without self confidence will not do many things if even he can.  The man with self confidence will do many things even if he does not know how at the moment.

And a priority.  I need to make it priority. Yes, I know that I love to do these things and yes, I know that career changes are never much fun, but what I am finding is that I am subconsciously burying this desire to move on by not making any attempt to change anything.  "It's not the right time"  I tell myself, "I do not know where to begin."  Silly when I type it out of course, because there really is no better time than right now to start anything.

It comes down to this:  if you do not love what you do, why are you doing it?  Or more precisely, what excuses are you giving as to why you cannot change?

Running in Weather

Looking out the door to run this morning I had my usual second thoughts.  It was hot and humid, hardly the sort of weather that I enjoy running in - coming back soaked in a shirt is not something that I do not really enjoy.  Still, running is running, so I compromised, took off my shirt, and headed out.

The air was warm and a bit sticky but with an underlying hint of cold in it.  I rounded my first corner and then my second.  The wind was blowing briskly but nothing to significant. It was a pretty good day for a run.

Right until the cold front hit.

I have been inside when cold fronts hit.  The wind is amazing - in one case, it sounded like a freight train hit the house.

But being outside is something else.

Suddenly as I turned the corner and headed North I was hit by a huge blast of wind that just blew and blew and blew.  The humidity of earlier was blown away in an instant, replaced by sprinkles of rain.  It was significant enough that I thought about ending my run earlier and going home but thought "Hey, it is only another mile.  How bad can it be?"

The rain started about a quarter mile later.  And not "Oooh, I hear laughter in rain" rain.  Large, heavy, driving drops that spoke more of the cold weather behind than us in winter than the spring we are supposed to be in.  And it just kept coming and coming and coming, until when rounding the final corner it finally let up.

My time was not too bad for a 5K: 25:10.  The temperature dropped 11 degrees during the course of that run.  The most ironic thing, of course, is that I came home soaking wet - without a t-shirt.

Maybe, on the whole, the T-shirt really does not make the difference.

On The Cutting Of Anchors

One of the activities I do five days a week is post a quote on Facebook.  I do not know that one can say that posting a quote on something is a "calling", but I like to believe that I am improving the lives of my friends by giving them something to start the day with.  Sometimes (at least to me) thought provoking, sometimes humorous, it has actually become a game to find them and post them.  You get responses of course:  some funny, some with additional words of wisdom, some just "agree" or some such.

Yesterday something happened which has happened before:  I received a response from someone that was...sarcastic.  Political.  And not, in my way of thinking, all that funny.

I was conflicted.  Part of me wanted to respond with an equivalent drive-by remark.  Part of me did not want to respond at all, as I have learned that arguing on Facebook or in any electronic media leads nowhere.  And part of me simply wanted to delete the comment altogether without addressing it, a sort of passive-aggressive response.

I started thinking about it more and realized that the only time this individual seems to respond is with some sort of sarcastic or internally funny comment. Not that this is any indication of the individual, of course:  good human being, very caring, has lots going on and has done lots for others.  It is just that the interactions we seem to have via electronic media always end up in this sort of intellectual cul-de-sac where nothing can be discussed.

And then I realized:  why am I continuing to allow this incident and this person to bother me?

The reality is that,  especially since the move, my life is filled with tons of wonderful people.  Supportive people, goal oriented people, people who are focused on not only making themselves better but making everyone else around them better.  People that are moving forward, not people that seemingly snip at every turn.

And then the thought came:  Why are you letting them hold you back?

Is it habit?  Is it comfort?  Is it holding on to something that passed a long time ago because I am unwilling to realize that I am someone different than what I was and I have found people that fit into that new situation?  Or simply the potential regret of cutting back on long time relationships that no longer fill a gap?

I am not sure.  What I do know is after thinking about it for a while, I instead let my mind be filled with all of those people who are part of my life, who do enlarge my borders and my make days brighter.  There are so many of them in all different walks of my life.  And my heart was much happier.

I am still holding the rope to that particular anchor in my hand as I face another morning.  I am undecided about what I will eventually do - but I do know this:  without releasing the anchor, one cannot sail on.

On Deciding in Writing

I am almost through my backlog of books I am working on.

Just getting to this point is always a struggle for me.  I tend to be one that likes to get to a certain point and then immediately move on to the next project, leaving this one almost finished.  I have had to set aside the manuscript I was working on to finish proofing the one that I had just finished (editing - not my favorite thing).    But that is almost done now and I can move to editing/proofing the manuscript in my possession (the goal is that I finish with that by the end of April).

And then what?

Well, I have one or two projects of course (I always seem to have more than I can do):  one more fable and one more theological book (comparing Highland Athletics and what the Church is supposed to be - I kind of like the concept). As with the rest of my writing, these could potentially be done by the end of the year depending on how quickly I write (I am trying to set aside some time on regular basis for that now to make sure that I start consistently doing it).

And then what?

A splendid question and one I do not know I fully have an answer to yet.  I have one or two conceptual ideas but at least one of them is something that I have never written before:  fiction.  Real fiction, not the sort of fable that I have written heretofore.  I find that a little daunting, actually - it feels like I would be writing something which is totally beyond my abilities (if you have read good fiction, you know how rare it is).  And yet I suppose I should not - 5 years ago I did not believe that I could write anything at all and I have self published 3 books with two more on the way.

So maybe the question is not so much what I will be writing next, but if I am willing to step things up to the next level to do so.  After all, I love writing - a great deal.  Why would I not try to get better at it?

A Change In Doing

I have been giving a great deal of consideration this week to what I should be doing next.

Oh, not the rest of my life.  That is going pretty swimmingly, thank you very much - I have more than enough activities that I enjoy to do, An Teaghlach is doing well, and there is really not a great deal to complain about, except that I never seem to have enough time to do things.

Which leads me back to my employment.

This week has been a little rough - not so much from the work side but from the personality side of work.  Add to that the fact that by staying late it actually means that the commute is less (but my time is more) and you begin to see the difficulty.  It is that sudden realization (or maybe gradually revealing realization) that things really are not going in the direction one would be hoping for and they are not likely to change any time soon.

But what next?  Therein lies the rub.

I have come up with a few items.  I do not really care to manage people again - I do not mind it, but I find my management style to be primus inter pares, not a hierarchy (which most places are).  I would prefer not to spend scads of time driving to and from somewhere - in fact, the less I am in the office facing people the more productive I seem to be.  And with the exception of a few particular experiences I have exceeded my limit on learning new things - instead I will be doing the same things over and over if I stay in my current line of work.

But what does that mean?  It means that the solution will not be easy because finding something that has those elements is not easy.  It probably means figuring out a way to do something outside of the box, something which I excel at in my personal life but not so much in my professional life.

But I can do it.  That is the thing.  My personal life is a series of events where I have figured out ways to string things together and make them work when there is no real reason to do so.  I have grown gardens in the worst of locations, made cheese and sometimes even recovered it, figured out how to recover initially bad batches of mead.

It is not that I cannot, it is merely that I have not applied the same sort of innovation to the other parts of my life.

But guess what?  I need to figure this out too.  Because coming home feeling defeated and small and trapped is no way to go through life.

Fire

I need to find fire.

No, not the fire as we typically know it, the sort that we warm our toes by or roast marshmallows by or young boys are incredibly drawn to try and make.  I am referring to the fire within the soul, the fire that drives us on.

I have found that I am lacking in the fire lately - and it shows.  It shows in the activities I do and how I do them - not that I am powerfully driven to do them, but rather that I just go through the motions.  This works itself out in the fact that my performance tends to level off and I am somewhat slow and sedate (or lazy, depending on what you want to call it) in execution.

Is it the competitive spirit?  Maybe - although I have never been a huge competitor.  I trace this mostly to the fact that I have never really been so good at a thing to be in a competitive mode. I am always "second best" - not bad in a world that needs second violins as much as first violins mind you, but hardly the sort of thing that will drive someone on to do better.

Perhaps it is finding that goal, to be driven on to achieve that goal.  But what does that goal look like?  Most of the things I do hardly result in the sort of thing that a man can handle or hold in his hands or put up on his wall.  They are the invisible markers of the soul that exist only in the mind.  But even if invisible, there is still that fire that needs to be there.

And is it finding or stoking?  Perhaps I am looking at the wrong factor.  The fire may certainly be there but what I am doing to make it hotter, brighter, more engulfing?  Is it that I cannot build up enthusiasm, or that I fear building up enthusiasm because I fear that I will inevitably fail and reveal my failure to others?

I need to know.  As Brian Tracy says, there's only one way to coast - and balloons will only rise with the hot air of fire, not the cooler air of settling expectations.

Caber

Rough under fingers,
rising up in grainy bliss,
breaker of spirits.

Gone

Ash drifts from my hands,
bearing the dreams that failed
into the night wind.

An Appearing Sadness

After yesterday's strong post today is a letdown:  I feel completely sad and defeated.

I have no idea where this feeling came from.  It was there when I woke up - in fact, I woke up feeling that way from a dream I had.  But then I got up and there it still was.  Prayed - could not shake it.  Read my morning Bible verses - could not shake it.  And so there I sat, my morning routine completely shattered by a feeling I did not understand and could not shake.

I hate it when this happens. 

Ideally I would like to be able to track this back to something - some event, some comment, some thing - that I can analyze, look at, and say "Okay, this is coming from that.  I just need to resolve this/let this go/do something different and shake the feeling."  But that is not happening apparently - instead, I am stewing in the juices of a sadness which I cannot remove from my soul.

The rest of day is looming before me of course and I have not choice but to engage in it.  Everyone else and everything else does not stop just because I am under a cloud.  I will need to pick myself up and carry on about the day.

But even within this I almost feel my eyes tearing up over the thought.   There seems to be something really, really unsettling in my life today.

And I do not seem to understand what it is

Wrong Place and Time

I am in the wrong time and place.

At heart I am a man of romance and heroism, a man of noble deeds and glorious causes (some of them lost).  I long for causes to lose myself in, evil to fight, great deeds of heroism and romance to accomplish. 

Instead I find myself in the role of a bureaucrat, a small man doing small things of little import and little lasting value beyond my stay at the particular place I happen to be.

Not surprisingly this creates a cognitive dissonance in my life.

I know, I know: make the problem statement and then resolve the problem.  Fine.  The problem statement is this:  I feel a calling to something that I simply cannot seem to live.  I want to live in a world of great deeds and heroes and romance.  I do not.

Okay, so how do I fix this?  Surely the world is not going to rearrange its time/space continuum to address my particular need, and my time travel/fabric of space bending powers are simply not what they used to be.  So that is not really going to work for me.

The next option,  I suppose, is to find a way to live in such a way that this is a possibility.  Again, this seems to be a little difficult.  Meetings cannot be resolved by whipping out my katana and battling my way to the door.  Evil bosses and opposing departments (not that they are really evil or opposing, I suppose) cannot be thrust aside against overwhelming odds, nor will throwing down my gauntlet get a document signed.

That leaves one option:  live as if you were this thing.

Live as if you were the thing you seek to be.  If I seek heroism and romance and glory, live as if this was the ordinary way life should be.  Be a hero in the smallest of things.  Be romantic in the largest of ways.  If something does not suggest itself as a quest, make it one. 

And never give up trying to find a way to make your life even more this way.  Because I firmly believe that even in this technologically advanced and seemingly socially disparate age, heroism as a way of life remains possible.  Great deeds of glory and romance are still possible - in fact, we still seem to crave them (look at the entertainment industry and tell me they do not understand this).  Most people just refuse to acknowledge this.

Be different.  Be a person of romance and glory and great deeds.

Be a hero.

The Heart Speaks

What is that, you say?
My heart wishes to speak?
Excellent, dear friend.  It been long
since we have heard from you.

What is that, you say?
Let me think about it:
No no, I think you must be wrong
in the matter.

You speak to me of clouds
and I live on the ground.
You speak to me of wisps
and I live in the rain.

Fine, fine;
I will take your considerations
under advisement.
All advice is welcome.

It just, sometimes,
I find myself troubled
by the suggestions
you give me.

Although I wonder:
Is it because of
expanded fear?
Or contracted vision.

Dancing With The Sword

Last night I did iaijutsu for fun.

I realized yesterday morning as I was trying to get in some practice before I had to go run to do something else that my entire iaijutsu life for the past year plus period has been completely consumed by my in dojo certification preparation.  For that period of time I have been focusing on a very specific group of kata, both sword and open hand.  It is important work of course - achieving my  certification is something which I need to do at this point - but the I realized something as I practiced in the morning:  all the fun had gone out of it.

That is a problem, of course.  If we are not doing something we supposedly enjoy for the fun at some level, it simply becomes another chore that we have to accomplish - in other words, the job that we do not really like but know that we need to do.  Our hobbies become our work, and then our life becomes all work with scarcely a moment of joy in it.

So in the evening I went out for fun.

I bought myself Pompeii by Bastille, geared up, took my shinken,  and went outside to practice.  We had some kind of front blowing through so the wind was whistling around my hakama.  Drums and chorale arrangements around head, the sky completely dark without a hint of the moon, I danced with the sword.

I made certain that I did not of the kata which I am currently learning.  Instead I practiced other kata I had learned or made up my own, practicing cuts and putting them together in ways that are probably as impractical as they are fun.  Back and forth, blocks and cuts and footwork, music soaring me away with the wind.

I probably did not accomplish anything formally wonderful last night.  My certificate is probably no closer than it was before I started.  But for a time I practiced the sword for the joy of practicing the sword, at least in my imagination letting the music chords lift me in the cutting and thrusting to the swordsman I always see in my dreams.

It was wonderful.

Decisions

The Fork in the Road
looms faster than I wish it,
but it still is there.

Hammer Fall II

So it happened again, like it did here.  Hammer Fall.

Fortunately (and I use that word advisedly) I was spared as were many of my coworkers.  But if you work in any industry, you know the drill.  Some were not.  Some were friends.

The internal workings of the mind seem to be the same, interestingly enough.  First the curious thoughts of seeing certain individuals where they shouldn't be.  Then the rumors start:  maybe a call.  Maybe an e-mail.  Maybe actually seeing someone.  And the Fear starts.

What is going on?  Is it us?  Are there more?   Who are they?  Are they done?  Perhaps an e-mail comes out but that does not always relieve the stress - this was not really known before, who knows if this will truly be the end?

One finds out what one can of course and tries to at least communicate to calm a department.  Yes, this is happening.  No, I do not know who all is affected.  Yes, there will be a follow up meeting.  Yes, we will sort through it at that time.  No, I did not know.  Until then, just carry on.

And then the  meeting.  obviously emotional.  The most uncomfortable kind of meeting.  Silence.  Ironically it is in the same room as where most meetings happen, so in the midst of a very somber tone the faint echos of happier times rebound in the back of one's memory. 

Someone speaks, Someone else speaks, the same.  Rationale and reasons are given, new direction vaguely discussed (the fallout is not fully understood), and the inevitable "Are there any questions?" is asked.  Utter silence ensues.  Someone coughs.  Lots of looking around at the ceiling, the floor, each other - and maybe towards the individual who asked that question, even as the eyes are carefully shaded to avoid making contact.

The day is pretty much shot of course.  One tries to accomplish this or that but it always seems to come back to that single question:  What next?  And how does it impact me?

I cannot know the future and would not guess if I could.  The only thing I can accurately say is that having been through this before there will be a changed environment when I get back.  Like it or not, realize it consciously or not, everything will be underpinned by the slightest sense of what happened.  Holes in lunches will be noted.  A lack of names on e-mails will be a constant reminder.  Above it all, the uncomfortable reminder that  bad things can really happen to good people - and the unfortunate knowledge that we can do little to prevent it.

Animal Person

So I am an animal person.

I would love to have some land, something where I could have livestock (sheep - sheep have always attracted me for some reason - or maybe goats, but that would be for cheese) and poultry (chickens - I love chickens).  Alas, this is not my life at this point in my history.  So we make do.

Our current menagerie is one bird, one hamster, one dog (Syrah the Mighty), three rabbits, and two guinea pigs.  I have to admit that my routine with them in the morning has become one of the highlights of my day.

I have a circuit.  Start with the guinea pigs (they are new to us, but our previous guinea pig was the same):  carrot, check food, hay.  For these little guys I like to pick them up and hold them a minute to get them used to us.  Then on to Bella, the first rabbit, who already has her head stuck out of the cage.  Food, Cheerios, hay and the occasional carrot for her - although what she really wants is the attention, so we spend a few minutes getting pets.  Then to the hamster, who is gnawing at the bars of her cage.  She likes Cheerios one at a time:  pulling them out of my fingers, she gnaws them down delicately and stuffs them in her cheek.  Check on the bird, usually who just needs a little bird seed and water.  Bella wants another pet, so spend a few minutes petting her again.

Then to the other rabbits, Midnight and Snowball.  Snowball starts running around in his cage as soon as he sees me; he wants out.  I let him out and he immediately starts hopping around me, wanting to climb up on my leg.  Midnight is more sedate:  she wants her carrot.  I offer it to her and she immediately pulls in from my hand and starts eating.  Often I will hold it in my hand to prevent it from falling through the cage; she eats, an act of trust with my hand a few inches from her throat.  Snowball is still hopping around for attention.  I load up their food as well - food, hay, Cheerios, and another carrot for Snowball - then pick him up.  He is happy for the attention, gratefully sitting in my arms with his eyes closed.  Sometimes he will look up and me and sniff my nose, his whiskers and breath tickling my face.  Midnight will also occasionally come over as well and want pets as well so I sit crouched down and balanced, a white rabbit in my lap and a black rabbit at eye level who is grateful and licks either my hand or the edge of the cage, whatever is convenient (little known fact:  rabbits lick as a sign of affection).

The dog, of course, is always happy (black labs are).  She knows when to ignore me and when to follow me around in hopes of a small snack - and she certainly knows when it is time for a walk!

I like animals - in fact, I seem to like them a great deal more than people.  They are peaceful. They go about their lives.  They have small mannerisms and gestures I have come to know.  And each, in their own way, knows how to show affection.  They fill my life in a way no people seem to be able to.

Overwhelmed and Gritting

Yesterday as I drove into work I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of work that I knew was waiting for me as I exited the car.  Nor was I to be disappointed as I actually walked in the door:  96 e-mails; 1 major audit; and people running me down as I went from place to place asking if I had a moment or two to discuss something with them.  By the time the end of the day had come around I was completely drained, driving home almost in a stupor.

The more I seem to try to the more I seem to be completely overwhelmed by everything that has to be done.

For one brief moment I played with the idea of extending my hours just a bit in order to complete some stuff.  That is fine of course, except it violates two of my fundamental rules.  The first is that if companies regularly depend on employees to work overtime to complete regular tasks they have not appropriately resourced.  The second is that working that much is seldom if ever is recognized and really does not result in any actual improvement.

I really wish I knew what to do.  Gritting my teeth and carrying on seems to result in precisely nothing except more gritting of my teeth.  Yet I cannot seem to think myself outside of this career box that I am in - every time I think of another industry or even another career the answers return "Oh, that will take too much time"  or "You cannot really consider doing something else at this point" or some such thought of this nature.

Interestingly I have been down this road before.  I know the sense of being overwhelmed by work and feeling like the meetings and due items are overwhelming my ability to perform them or even live a life I am happy with.  It seems that every time this happens, something suddenly turns and I am on to something else.

So maybe that is the lesson to take from this:  if I am feeling this way and these things have happened in the past, they are likely to happen again in the future.  Maybe we really are reaching a turning point.

And maybe at some point that gritting of teeth will turn into a smile.

Separation From The World?

"In weighing this question he (George Muller) was impressed with seven reasons or motives, which lead him to these tours....6.  To promote separation from the world and deadness to it, and so to increase heavenly-mindedness in children of God; at the same time warning against fanatical extremes and extravagances, such as sinless perfection while in the flesh." A.T. Pierson, George Muller of Bristol:  His Life of Prayer and Faith

I have been increasingly aware of the fact that I am seemingly becoming more enamored of the world and engaged in it rather than less.

If I look at my life in the intervening 10 years - and it has been quite a 10  years stretch - I find myself increasingly enmeshed in the things of the world rather than the things of God.  Can I honestly say that my life increasingly a testimony to God, that I am growing in holiness and becoming dead to the things of the world?  Or, as seems more apparent, am I becoming increasingly more a part of this world rather than less of this?

Are my entertainments and interests more of God or of the world?  When I seek to spend time, is the first thought to improve myself or merely to entertain myself?  Am I leading my family more towards God or less?  Am I mistaken more for a follower of Christ or just another person that is working their way through the world, a sort of fellow traveler?

What I do not seek in any of this is that uncomfortable disapproving holiness that makes people self-conscious and too often is an impediment to the Gospel.  What I am seeking is fruit of a believer in Christ, fruit which I should be seeing.  Fruit which should be the outcome of a life of separating myself more from the world and worldly amusements rather than seeking them.

Am I willing to pay the cost?  Am I willing to cut off those things which do not edify - perhaps not that they are intrinsically bad but rather that the prevent the better, the life of Christ in me?  Or when Paul calls us to be in the world but not of, do I merely look at it, consider it another unattainable perfection, and simply carry on? 

Ultimately how serious am I about Christ and His mission?

Foregoing Facebook

So I'm thinking about taking a Facebook break.

I like Facebook.  I have been able to meet and catch up with a number of wonderful people.  I get to see pictures, I get to post pictures, I get to laugh and cry and support others - and get support.

But two things have come to my mind recently.

The first is that Facebook is becoming a crutch for me in the sense that if fills that need I have for approval.  How many times do I check on my phone or at home a day to see if any one has responded to my comments or mentioned me in a post?  Answer:  A lot.  A lot more than I should be.

The second is a lot more prosaic.  I once again veered closely towards engaging in a politico/religious/ethical commentary.  I have learned long ago that such things never truly go well.  One never convinces another on Facebook of the rightness or wrongness of a position.  All one does is create arguments, raise one's blood pressure, and alienate others.

And so, a foregoing.  Perhaps not a total foregoing - I find that people have been uplifted by my posting of inspirational quotes. And certainly the picture function is useful for family and friends who are not here.  But beyond that, time to take a break.  Make my entries and leave.

It is a little crazy to me that I am having the conversation with myself at all.  5 years ago I had barely heard of Facebook - now, I find myself having to tear myself away from it.

But it is so much about me and my - what do people think about my posting, my picture, my thoughts.  Are they paying attention to me?  At this time of the Christian calendar called Lent, is this not another way that we can somehow deny ourselves?

It seems - to pick up on yesterday's posting - that I have a problem.  Time to deal with it now.

Resolving Problems

I do not like to deal with problems..

Oh, I know we have discussed aspects of this before.  How I like to keep my options open.  How I like to think that I have multiple choices and do not want to fence myself in with any one.  But this week - literally yesterday - I came to another conclusion:  I do not like to resolve my problems.

I do not.  I would rather let things ride, hoping that they will work themselves out.  In fact, I will go to great lengths to avoid having do to something in the expectation that events will work themselves out.

This is occasionally true, of course.  Sometimes things get better.  Sometimes the rattle goes away or the calcium deposits dislodge themselves from the water valve or the cut heals.

Sometimes.  But not often enough.

The reality is that most of the times problems do not work themselves.  They simply become worse.  Because nature of problems is that they expand, not contract.  Why?  Because typically they represent an aberration in the functionality of a system or process which have been caused by factors that are resulting in the problem.  Without eliminating the factors that caused the problem the condition will only worsen, not get better.

So why do I refuse to deal with such things?  Why do I turn my face away, hoping in hope - often the most vain of any exercises - that something will get better?

Because (if I think about it) dealing with a problem actual has costs and consequences. It can mean time.  It can mean money.  It can most certainly mean that you were wrong about the way you were addressing the situation and that you need to change.  Most importantly, it means that you are actually taking responsibility for the problem, that you will become the point person for resolving the issue.  It is far easier to merely sit back and hope that the situation resolves itself - or hope that someone else will see the issue and try to resolve it themselves.

But no more.

My problems - all of them - are not going away by me hoping that they will.  They will only get resolved by making a decision and taking action - indeed, taking responsibility - towards their resolution.  In some real sense, it means growing up and realizing that you are the one that has to resolve them, not somebody else.

Problems happen.  But resolutions will not necessarily do so - unless I make it so.

The Weight of Sin

Most of the time we are very comfortable with our sin.

Sin becomes something that we come accept as do the weight of clothing on our bodies, a thing that we wear every day and so it no longer becomes something remarkable.  Certainly there are times when it may wear a little uncomfortably, as with a shirt that has something which is scratching us, but we either cut out the offending item or just adjust it to a different location.  In fact, we become so comfortable with it that sometimes we even seem to forget that it exists.

Oh we know that it does.  Sometimes we do something or see something and realize "Hey, this is a sin" - but most of the time we find a way to shift it around until it no longer bothers us or merely accept it as part of our human condition, say a short prayer for forgiveness, and carry on.

But occasionally we are brought face to face with it.

This usually happens when there are consequences to an event which we had not anticipated or not foreseen - the real outcome of the actions of course, but something which we never believed would happen.  Suddenly the rawness and evil of sin is revealed to us in all of its horrible glory. 

The worst part, of course, is that sin cannot be undone.  The actions are complete, the outcomes now transparent to ourselves and anyone in the know.  The thing we believed was a light weight to be flicked off suddenly becomes the stone we cannot move; the thing that we thought "everyone will understand" is demonstrated to be excuses of our own making for our weakness or inability to face reality.

It is then we realize that what we believed to be light or of little importance was only so because we thought it so in our minds.

Is there a remedy for this?  Forgiveness exists, of course, but forgiveness does not eliminate the outcome of the actions that we have taken. Unlike clothing, merely removing it will not undo the consequences of it.  We can work to make things better - fill the gaps of our lives, seek to reveal and strengthen the weaknesses we have found, ask for even more grace - but perhaps the greatest thing we can do is simply this: recall the feeling that we had the moment that the sin went from something we thought was weightless to something that found had the weight of a thousand suns, and resolve to never go there again.

Powerful?

I was out throwing sheaf with The Viking last night.

Monday nights are for heavy sheaf, whereby one takes a fork (a modified pitchfork with either two or three tines), inserts it into a 20 lb burlap bag of twine (mimicking a bag of grain) and tosses it for height.  In our class we use 16 lb bags in competition; 20 lb bags are for practice with the heavier bag to get our form right.

Coming from nothing and working with a great sheaf thrower (who has world class in him to my belief) he has helped me make incredible process.  He has helped me correct my form, fixed my grip and worked on my timing. 

But my sheaves still do not fly.

Oh sure, they can get 14 or 15 feet, but that is it.  Hardly the sort of thing I will need to be a better competitor.

Night after night we try.  Night after night I fly to the height I fly to. He has even commented that my 20 lb bag flies as high as my 16 lb bag..  Night after night we toss.  Night after night it flies low.

Last night, watching me after I had done something to my timing, he said "I know you are powerful than you think you are.  I have to find a way to drag it out of you."

That thought triggered a cascade of words and feelings as I let them roll over in my mind.

I do not typically think of myself as powerful.  I think of myself as, well, me.  Sort of in the background.  Competent in a sort of general way, but certainly not to the level of the A class of any activity or sport. 

But how much of that is self limiting. How much of that is as much the fact that I do not believe it, that I may hold myself back (consciously or unconsciously) as it is the fact that I do not have the ability?  How much of it is me seeing the problem or opportunity, thinking that " I cannot", and then just turning aside to the lesser course?

I believe that within me are abilities and energies of a far greater capacity than what I can drag out and use on a daily basis.  I know that they are there.  I know that, somewhere down deep inside of me, I am powerful, even though it often feels like the world and those around me do not see it - or do not believe it is possible.

The question is how do I get this power out?

Reqiscat in Pace Gilligan

Gilligan the Red
is gone; May he find fields
of hay and carrots.

Overload?

Trying to do much,
I wonder if I fail to
do a little well.

Moving Slow

Moving slow this week.

This is the Spring Break in our neck of the woods (The Holiday formerly known as Easter Break), where na Clann have the week off.  One of the unlooked for benefits of such a week is that my commute is drastically reduced as apparently over half of the people commuting in New Home are not trying to get to work this week.

The practical outcome of all of this?  My mornings have been getting later.  I write this to you know have rising less than an hour ago instead of the typical two hours that I would already have been up before writing this.

It means I am not getting as much done in the mornings as I typically would like; for example, my reading and other writing input has really taken a productivity plunge this week.  And I do not know that my postings have been up to the usual "standards" I have (whatever those actually are).

Still, it has been kind of nice this week to not have the usual rush of "I need to get out the door" immediately followed by "I am sitting in traffic moving nowhere"  feeling.  There is a certain relaxed sense to the morning which exists even though I still know that work is waiting at the end of my drive.

One can only dream of what such a morning would be like - every morning.

Cold Front

Cold fronts in New Home are something I had never experienced heretofore.

In Old Home, cold fronts were not so much events as they were seasonal.  Everyone knew that around the end of October it slowly grew colder until it was Winter.  Cold fronts were pretty much simply there - at least it felt cold - until March or so when Spring returned.

Here it is a completely  different experience.

Cold fronts come blowing in from the North as if driving by a supernatural fury.  The wind begins blowing until it is raging through the trees, around houses, and through every crack in a fence or gate it can find.  And the wind does not seem to let up:  it just blows and blows as it brings the cold air rushing through and around. 

Even as I write this morning the cold front - it was 80 F yesterday! - continues to blow as it has since I went to bed last night, almost 7 hours of constant wind moving past the windows and past the house.  It makes for a miserable night's sleep of course and woe betide you if you have failed to fully close a gate the night before; it creaks and shakes until, grumbling, someone gets up at 0300 to close it.

Interestingly enough the warm fronts do not arrive with the same sense of zest and power:  things simply begin warming up until all of a sudden it is hot.  It is only the cold fronts that spit their power and rage in the form of wind for hours on end.


I wonder - in my more lonely moments - what such fronts would have seemed like in the 1800's when there was no electricity and few cities, just small isolated settlements or little towns with the wind howling in the trees and the darkness. It would, I imagine, make for long nights and a great deal of introspection.

I will get up from there and prepare for the drive to work this morning, watching and listening to the wind sing outside my car with songs of the frozen north and mountains I cannot see from here and snow laden plains.  I will listen, and I will be glad.

Cowardly and Cold

We are too often a people too cowardly and too cold.

We cry out for change but we consistently remain the same.

We want bravery and honor in the world but reward cowardice and dishonor.

We say our ideals are more important than any money we can earn and then happily sell our ideals out for money.

We desire understanding but never take the opportunity to understand.

We say we believe in equality and discussion and representation but exercise raw power to enforce our will in our way.

We desire others to look out for interests but seek the interests of ourselves above others.

We wish for love but pursue our lusts.

We are nothing that we claim that we wish to be, yet are shocked that things do not turn out as we believe that we should.

We believe that we are destined for great things, yet will not recognize that that which we choose not to do is what will move us towards those great things.

Appalled

As you probably know, I typically do not comment on politics on this blog.  This was a decision I made almost as soon as I started writing regularly as I found that politics tended to fog people's ability to actual discuss and listen to certain issues.  (I found other outlets to put those comments into).  As a result, for at least seven years the fate of political world has gone virtually unnoticed if you just scanned the contents of what I write about.

That is not about to change with this post either; instead, I want to comment on the reactions to a particular political situation and the impact I have seen in the social media.

The situation:  The ongoing soft invasion (I do not see how you can define it any other way) of Ukraine.  The Social Media:  Facebook. 

I admit that am an international relations junkie - so much so that sometimes I find it difficult to disengage my regular life to not follow events.  And I admit that I am perhaps more conscious of such things that the bulk of many people I know.  But it is with a great deal of sadness and shame I conclude that we as a group have become almost completely narcissistic and perhaps useless.

Facebook, as you may know, trends things.  They have also "helpfully" put little news blurbs on the main page now.  The listings?  Social updates:  Bieber meets Selena in Starbucks, death of such and such, someone wins an Oscar.  Not once since the situation started in the Ukraine would anyone have an idea that something was going on somewhere else in the world.

And the postings?  From an otherwise highly interactive and vocal group about this group's rights or that party's failings, nothing.  It's as if the whole situation never happened.

It depresses me deeply.

Why?  Because it is indicative of a malaise that runs through the body social and the body politic.  We have become so trivialized and so focused on us and our little part of the world and what we believe should be going on that we have lost the ability to look at the larger world around us and realize changes there affect us as well.  Oh, many people will argue that we need to be globally active for something like climate change, but we miss the fact that political systems and regimes can have as much impact on our here and now as anything climate based.

Not one person I know has posted anything.  Not one person I know has posted anything indicating solidarity with the Ukrainian republic, the same group that will fall over themselves to post graphics for their own chosen political or social cause.

It saddens me.  It depresses me.  I admit that I am an anachronism, someone that holds that people should living under governments they themselves choose and should be free from inconveniences such as the fear of invasion or economic blackmail.

I admit I am an anachronism.  I am just a little shocked that I should find myself to be so alone in my beliefs.

10 Years Ago

10 years ago I was at the Shepherd's Conference in Southern California.

10 years ago I had just quit my job and was going into business myself at The Firm and was never, ever going back to my last industry.

10 years ago I had decided that we would be moving to a different house.

10 years ago I only had two clann.

10 years ago I lived in Old Home and had no intention of leaving (ever).

10 years ago I was sure I understand God's plan for my life.

BUT...

10 years ago I did not have Nighean Dhonn.

10 years ago I did not throw cabers or stones.

10 years ago I did not practice iaijutsu.

10 years ago I had not written a book (or even a blog post!).

10 years ago I did not know half of the people I know now and my life was not the richer for it.

10 years ago I did not have a dog, rabbits, a guinea pig, a hamster, and a bird.

10 years ago I had not been married to The Ravishing Mrs. TB for 10 more years.

10 years ago I did not realize that I could do almost anything that I put my mind to.


It is funny the difference 10 years can make.

Crazy Weather

Summer and Winter
are wonderful as seasons,
not two days apart.

Lent 2014

Another season of Lent is upon us.

The workings of Lent are always a mystery to me.  I feel as if I should be getting more out the experience than I ever do.  Sure, I give up something and take in something else and perhaps add a little bit of extra Scripture and prayer to my daily rounds, but it scarcely feels like something which is impacting my life as radically as I think that it should be.

I know that there are those - especially among the evangelical community - that consider Lent in particular, and the concept of a church calendar in general, as something that is constructed by man instead of inspired by God and therefore a hindrance.  I personally disagree with this:  we have a normal calendar that follows the seasons of the year.  It should be no different for our religious life as well.

And Lent is a good thing.  A time of subduing, of consideration of our sin, of denial of pleasures and luxuries is something that the church often claims we need to do more of.  Lent, that commemoration of the great denial of Christ in the desert 40 days without food or water, gives many a vehicle to do that in a way that is regular, planned, and helpful.

But that still does not help me with the fact that I do not get everything out of it I should.

Should I deny myself more?  Should I seek longer hours in prayer and more time in Scripture?  Certainly none of things are bad in and of themselves, but do they really get to essence of what Lent should be? Or do this just (as seems likely) add another set of traditions and works where they do no good?

If Lent is about repentance and meditation on our sin and unworthiness and Christ's great suffering, what can I do that actually makes this more meaningful?  The answer, at least for me, is as staggeringly simple as it is difficult:  be more like Christ.

Be more like Christ.  Seek to root out the sin in my heart.  Look at the Beatitudes and truly ask "Is this my desire?"  Look around me and say "Am I loving my neighbor as myself?"

Am I denying myself, taking up my cross, and following Christ?

Because here, it seems to me, is the unusual part:  If I would simply do this, I would find that focus is truly on Christ and becoming less of a sinner and more like Him. 

And that, really, is the point of Lent in the first place.

Not Feeling It

Not feeling it today.

We had the potential of a "wintry mix", which could mean that the roads would be iced over.  Na Clann's schools are all delayed two hours.  And so, hoping against hope, I looked at the computer and phone.  Nothing. Work is on as usual.

I feel completely demotivated.

It is like I am in school again, hoping against hope that something intervenes to keep me from going to work today.  Because I really do not want to go.

I have to, of course - meetings are scheduled, deadlines exist, and of course there is that minor thing about salary that needs to be dealt with - in other words, the realities of life do not yield to my minor kvetching about things.

But there is something here, something that I need to latch on to. Something that my brain is trying to tell me - or maybe heart.  Because this feeling is becoming more and more common as I rise up in the morning, knowing that on the other side of the door lies a day which has come to be like almost every other day. 

Ah well.  Delay or no delay, the phone calls and documents await.

Sigh

Job Search 2014

So I am in the market.  This is about as public a declaration I make about such things.

The fact that I state this is not really the point however.  The point - really more of a tip - is how I am going about it.

The idea actually originated in a discussion with Bogha Frois as we were talking about different ways to job search and how it never really felt like one was making any progress.  We always found ourselves nagged by a sense of guilt that somehow we were not "doing enough", even if we could not find anything at all when we looked.

"Why do we not schedule it?"  I suggested.

The core of my idea is this:  there are only a finite number of jobs in any one industry and those are only ever listed in certain amounts - for example, in my industry most jobs tend to get published on Sundays (probably true for a lot of jobs).  There is not really any point in looking every day for the one or two that will get published in that time; instead, better to conserve one's efforts.

But the world is changing as well.  Depending on the state of the industry (and mine is a little shaky, to be honest), one should be expanding into other areas as well.  And what about those independent areas, those part time interests or hobbies that we would like to see pay for themselves rather than cost us money?  Where do those fit in?

And so I came up with the idea of the schedule, a fixed time where I would look or support different areas.  Mine currently looks something like this:

Sunday:  Current Industry
Monday:  Other Industries
Tuesday:  Hobbies/Self Developed Business
Wednesday:  Other Industries
Thursday:  Current Industry
Friday:   Hobbies/Self Developed Business
Saturday:  Hobbies/Self Developed Business

I have left my hobbies/self developed business to coincide with both my Iaijutsu on Tuesday nights (learning to someday possibly, maybe teach), Fridays (when my energy tends to be lowest and thus doing something interesting to me is helpful) and Saturdays (when I can carve out several hours of free time).

What will I do?  For my current industry it is pretty easy:  search the appropriate sites.  This will perhaps take an hour on Sunday, much less on Thursday.  Other industries are more difficult initially as I have to put together a revised resume and start seeing what is out there.  Hobbies/Self Developed Business is the true undiscovered country at this point - when I understand it, I will let you know.

The thing I like about this is that it is a schedule.  Every day I am taking action.  I can now never allow myself to point at myself and say "I did not do a job search today.  I did not not do enough."  Did I do what I was supposed to do that day?  If so, I can happily tell myself to shut up.  I am making progress.

I cannot rely on simple events or the help of those above or around me to make my current situation better - as I have to remind myself almost daily, No One Is Coming.  If there is to be change in my life, I will have to go to it - and go after it with regular, practiced action.  It will not come to me.