A Slow Plunge

I have been following with a sort of sick interest - as I am sure many folks have - of the slowly unfolding saga of GemanWings Flight 4U 9525, in which 148 people died in a fiery crash in the French Alps.   The horrible nature of any flight crash is enough to boggle the imagination; the thought that (as is the thought at the moment) this was the result of a conscious decision is horrifying.

The picture that has been painted through the recorder - the initial knocking at the door, followed by a harder knocking and pounding, then by more and more determined attempts to break down the door in front of the passengers as the plane inevitably descends to a fiery doom - is the stuff of horror movies.  Were it a brilliantly done suspense movie, it would win awards.  The unfortunate truth is that it was all too real.

My thought in writing this is not on the where or whys - it is on the nature of someone making a decision to execute an action, something which impacts the lives of everyone bound up in the circumstances.

One man - so far as we know - made a decision that affected 147 other lives.  For whatever reason, 8 minutes of slow descent were decreed as a required action.  Did the co-pilot know the ramifications of his actions?  Based on what we know now, probably.  That makes the issue even worse.

The reality is that we find ourselves in such positions regularly

Not with the same horrible results, no.  And not (perhaps) with the same sense of sickening realization that we are being plunged towards a doom that we cannot escape.
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But the reality of the individual - or group or culture or religion or government or company or nation, take your pick - so intent on an action that the drag down many others with them is too real to ignore.

Any of these may see the consequences of their actions - indeed, we may see the results of such actions in our own lives.  yet we cling to the course of action long after it makes sense or even if we realize the ultimate outcome of it.

Why is this?  Stubbornness?  Pride?  A sense that our purpose, our mission, our goal exceeds all other considerations?

As this happens - as the slow sickening plunge continues, as the relationships crumble, as the money flies away, as the consensus that holds any sort of group together falls apart - do we ever question the validity of that which we are so set on achieving?  Or is the last second simply the culmination of what we have sought to achieve at any cost?

And as this happens, do we hear the tearing of the frail bonds of human relationships and emotions and polity around us as those we have brought with us fall too, or do we just count this as the cost that must be paid to advance our vision or goal or perceived need?

Have we become so self absorbed and self centered - as an individual or group or culture or religion or government or company or nation - that our universe is completely absorbed in us?

Wind and Prayer and Church

The wind was blowing heavily when I woke up this morning, raking through the trees and creating a rushing sound as it blows through the streets and over houses.  It reminded me to simply sit before God.

My prayer life is not what I want it to be or what it needs to be.  It staggers back and forth between a rote series of requests that I make or a semi-conscious attempt to stay awake as I stumble over the things that I think I should be praying about.

The wind this morning reminded me I should simply sit before God.

And so I sat.  I would love to report that the experience was such that I had a profound religious awakening, that the presence of God was deeply felt as I simply sat before Him and waited.   Alas, the opposite was true:  I struggle both to not pray rotely and to simply stay awake.

It did reveal one thing to me as I sat there though:  how truly distant I find myself to be from God.

I feel it in my soul. It haunts me as I go about my day.  I have seldom felt farther from God than I do on a daily basis right now.   Why?  Legitimate question.

I have felt for some time a growing disconnection with my church.  Part of it, I suppose, is simply that church is a greater struggle than it was in the past:  older children often mean more activities on the weekend.  But what I have found is that even when I go, I have no real sense of going to meet God or even being fed by His Word.

In a lot of ways this is the least I have been involved in a church life - I go on Sundays.  That is all.  I do not really do anything else with the church - part of this is due my schedule (I cannot do most meetings due to work and taxing Na Clan), and part of this - frankly - is tied up in an unfortunate incident where the involvement I was doing was terminated with no explanation.  This is a great change from where I - and indeed, my family - was six years ago when we moved where we were heavily involved not only in church on Sunday's but church throughout the week.

But that is what changed.  What needs to change?

A new church? Probably, for the sake of myself if no other.  This attendance because I have to and no other reason is making church a great deal like work, with all of the attendant issues of resentment and disconnection I have with my current career choice.  And that is certainly not the point of church - it is to become involved in a community and to worship God and live out the Gospel.

And my internal life, my prayer life?  Alas, no easy answer here.  A simple thought to "Prayer More and Harder"  does not change the facts.  There is something here, some impediement or block, that is keeping me from speaking to and hearing from God as I need to.

The wind is undoing all of the work I spent in the yard two days ago raking up leaves - this I know without sticking my head outside of the door.  Would that God's Spirit would do the same in my own life, stirring the dust that lies over my soul.

Worn

There are just moments that life seems to wear me down more than I can bear.
This is not so much depression - An Moddey Doo, The Black Dog - that is an old if somewhat unwelcome friend - as it is a bone-wearying sense of exhaustion with the matters of life itself.

Is it any one thing?  Not particularly that I can think of - sure, there are particular things that could be contributing to it - the issues with getting the Van fixed of course, or another week of trying to stem the leaking dam that I call work, or 10 other things that I could point to and say "That is it.  That is the thing that is bringing me down" - but that would simplifying the issue and even in a sense misrepresenting the issue.

It is that moment when one is over-run by the need for tears and one has no idea why, that the world seems incredibly sad although nothing sad has happened, that a certain hollowness about one's life and what one is doing - and there is no definable reason why this should be so.

Cause and effect.  I live and work in a world of cause and effect, of root cause and actions that correct and prevent the root cause.  Yet here there seems to be no readily defined cause or action that can be taken.  Just the sense that something is not right with one's world and there is no discerenable reason or answer for it.

Were I to look down deep enough I think I would find a cause for this feeling - but looking down deep enough almost entails a certain requirement to take action.  And I do not know if I have the spirit  for that this day.

The day is coming of course, so I will tuck my worn down feelings and sense of sadness into that convenient pocket where I store such things while I get through my day.  But even as I get ready to do this, there is that sad and somewhat wistful feeling that these are not going away, that no matter how I try to pretend they do not exist they are still waiting to be recognized and moved forward with.

We cannot always address such things, but neither can we pretend that they do not exist.

Van Saga II

So the Van Saga continues.
The cause of the problem, came the analysis, was a bad cell in the battery - a little surprising to me because that battery is less than a year old and would not take a jump when I tried on Sunday.  The suggestion was a new battery - I deferred initially because it was under warranty and I thought I would just get it replaced.

Then the next line of business.

The valve gasket was leaking pretty badly, they said.  Needed to be replaced.  I first had to ask what it was and, then with the answer, take it back for conference.  The conference essentially became a question of "Well, what do you think?"

I hate to be put on the spot like that - especially with automotive items, about which I know so little. I am not able to assess what is "not quite major" and what we can live without for a while.  In the end the decision was to replace it - which of course did not settle well with me (being as how I like to avoid decisions all together), but the alternative was to do nothing and we need the van for at least another year.

Stopped by and picked up the battery to take it back for the return.  Now the second item raises its head:  the battery is kicking out the required amps.  And if it is working properly, there is no way they will take it for a return.

So here is the current dilemma:  I have a battery which is claimed to be good and cannot be returned at the moment in my garage.  In order to get the replacement, I will need to have it put back into the van and run it until the battery fails (if it does) - which I am sure will happen at a most inconvenient time.  No idea what we will do at this point.

What this experience has taught me to date is three things:

1)  How utterly dependent we have become on two autos.  Trying to co-ordinate everybody's schedule based on one car has proven very difficult indeed.  I had no idea that our lives had become so complex - and so dependent - on the availability of two autos.

2)  The reality is that we need to begin the process of saving for a replacement automotive.  Planned obsolesence if you will.  I would love to pretend that the van will last forever but the reality is it is 15 years old and has 230,000 miles on it.  If we can get through this year with no major trips, that would be a blessing - but it will need to be replaced.

3)  I am not quite sure how one becomes a bit more familiar with autos and functionality but this is something I need to add to my list of learning. I need to have some level of assessing the true nature of issues rather than just relying on the opinions of professionals.

Frustration

The van died last night.

As one would expect, it came at a most inconvenient place and time:  7:30, at the grocery store, on the way home.  The call came - not the call I was expecting, something along the lines of "Can you start the oven" or something like that, but "The van will not start".

Muttering under my breath, I got into my car and headed over.  My mind was not in a particularly good place at the time - 6 months ago we had the alternator replaced.  One likes to believe that car problems are few and far between (and generally, they are) - but every time they happen it seems like they have just piled on top of one another like leaves on the lawn, growing in a pile more quickly than they can be raked up.

As I was driving over the list of the day started to bubble up in my soul:  frustration over future plans, frustration over everything I should have gotten done which I did not, frustration over last minute items that suddenly needed to be dealt with, frustration with elements of my life.  A cauldron and pool of frustration lurching towards someone who themselves was frustrated with a car that did not work.

By the time I had reached the van - not more than a 10 minute drive - I was in full upset mode, looking for a place to affix all of my frustration and anger at things beyond my control.  The trouble, of course, is that this is simply impossible to do at things and situations beyond one's control.  It is like to trying to throw water into the wind:  it merely comes back on you immediately and you are simply wet.  You cannot be upset at people as mechanical issues are not their fault.

At moments like these I tend to spend a lot of time in silence, both because I have nothing useful to say and because I know that I am likely to say things which I will later regret.  So it was a quiet ride home followed by an evening completely thrown in chaos ( we did not eat before 9 PM last night) while I simmered and stewed and argued with myself.

So here is the funny thing:  to what purpose?

The van is not working any better before than it is now.  All the other issues of my life are no different for having been frustrated - because frustration not resulting in useful action merely burns energy and time instead of solving anything.

I am frustrated because I had an illusion about my life and my time and how I thought things were supposed to go.

John MacArthur has a philosophy about that:  We are disillusioned because we had illusions in the first place.

Makes sense to me.  We start with the illusions of something or another in our lives, some control we have or some fantasy of life we are clinging to.  When this fails - as it almost always eventually must - we are stripped of the illusion of the thing.  Our typical, human response is to become frustrated or angry.

But angry with what?  A situation we never controlled?  A thing that was never truly ours to begin with?  The Circumstances of Life that do not bend themselves to our will?  Ultimately, of course at God, because He did not work out circumstances to our pleasure or convenience or desires?

I would love to say there is a happy ending to this story.  There is not, however.  I am sitting here, gearing up for the day of co-ordinating school and work and car repair and figuring how all of this comes together.  The frustration is there in my soul, running in circles like a dog chasing its tail, trying to find something to attach itself to.

The disillusion is there; it is just that I still cling to it too tightly.

Purposeful

Based on my thoughts yesterday, I found this about a week ago (who knows, it may have started the whole thought process).  It is something I need to remind myself of more:

If I think about the people and friends who I admire most in my life with what they are doing in their lives - some of theme that post here like Preppy and Kymber and others - like Miss Moonlight and Nighean Ruadh - that seem to have found their way into removing the non-essentials and leaving the essentials, thereby ensuring everything they do will be purposeful.

I need to become better at this.

Need to Do, Have to Do, Want to Do

Need to do, Have to do, Want to do.  These are the three types of things in life.

Need to do are those things that, simply put, must happen.  They are things that are required for continuing to live and breathe and maintain us and ours, be they as simple as eating and breathing or as complex as a series of tasks that must be accomplished in order to keep the house standing up.

Have to do are those things that we feel we must do, even if they are not something we need to to or really want to do.  They are as  varied as going to work at a job we do not particularly care for because we have to pay bills to going to the event that we do not really want to but someone feel it is important to do so.

Want to do are those things that we love to do, that fill us with the joy or reward or have a benefit that is clearly defined and enjoyed by us.  This is anything from going to the job we enjoy to our artistic ventures to planting a garden.

Part of my own problem is I have these categories mixed up in my life.  My have to's are often my need to's in my mind:  I have to paint the trim, I have to train, I have to organize.  In reality most of these are need to's:  the house needs to be maintained, I need to exercise to maintain my health and get better, I need organize what I have and get rid of what I do not.

And I do not believe I am the only one that has this issue.

For many years I unconsciously split these categories into three equal pieces of a pie.  I am having an epiphany in realizing the fact that this is a mistake:  in fact, there are really only two pieces of the pie, Need to do and Want to do.

Have to do?  This is something we put on ourselves that we do from a dragging sense of obligation or responsibility with no joy or willingness to do it.  And these things, if we examine them closely, are not things that we really want to be about.  Is it something necessary?  Then it should go into the Need to column.  Is it not necessary?  Then it should be considered to see if either it can be modified into a want or eliminated as a required task.    Having thought about it, our lives should be really be divided (so much as is possible) into two categories:  Need to do and Want to do.

Let our lives not be held in the chains of the Have to do.  Let us seek to make them full of Need to do and Want to do.

Middle March Rain

The Middle of March:
The sky declares "Rain Coming".
This morning, rain drops.

Tempest in a Teapot

Rolling into work yesterday following what was arguably a wonderful weekend spent with friends and throwing was a stark contrast in the realities of my life.
I had fair warning from Fear Beag before I got in:  he texted me and let me now that something - an issue I had thought we had left in good shape on Friday - was simmering again.  Fair enough - I got my attitude together and headed in after a good night's sleep and leisurely breakfast.  And found exactly what I had anticipated -low level chaos.

As a course of action got sorted out and various people were negotiated with and all was set back in order, I suddenly realized that this was a great deal of my life - and has been for almost my whole time at my current employer:  a series of emergencies that needed to be dealt with or immediate needs that had to be completed because this was "The Next Big Thing" that was going to make the company great.

You will note I use the word "emergencies" and not "challenges".  Emergencies are things that need to be solved right now regardless of whether or not that they have any importance or benefit; challenges are things that need to be solved but ultimately result in something better coming in to our lives.

I realized that my life - at least my work life - has become a tempest in a teapot.

A tempest in a teapot.  A consuming storm of fearsome wrath that consumes all in its path - in the confines of a pot of tea, which one can put the lid on and pour out.  Maelstroms of wrath and import that really have no importance at all.

Which is seemingly what my life has become:  emergencies that need to be addressed now over things that mater not one year later, let alone five.  Personnel conflicts and struggles for power that all occur not on a national or world stage but rather in the confines of a small group of people.  Like lemmings on a small island in the Arctic, we struggle and fight for dominance over a tiny piece of rock, never realizing that the world is out there.

The realization certainly changed my attitude yesterday - I went from cringing and trying to please to a sort of non-nonsense swagger (let us be fair though - this weekend left me feeling fairly awesome).  It did not change the emergencies or the things that needed to be done - but it did change my attitude about them.

Perhaps this is the thing that I need to fix about my life:  dealing with things of substance and import and lasting value instead of fighting over that which has no great impact and struggling with many whom I will not see two years hence let alone five.

Perhaps it is time to simply pour the tea out of the pot, set it down, and walk out the door into the real world.

Off to Throw - Results

So how did I do in throwing this weekend?

A lot better than I expected.  I got two PRs - one in Heavy Weight for Distance (18' 6", previous record 18' 4") and a giant one in Light Weight for Distance (30' even, previous record 28' 3").  I also got three moral victories - a throw of 20' 6" on a Braemar with my record being 20' 7" on a much smaller Braemar, 2 picks and pulls on a 15' 9" caber for 20 degrees and 34 degrees which completely confounded me a month ago, and shooting for a 20' sheaf and getting close to 18' (my record is 16', so I was trying for 25% above what I have done before).  Open Stone was consistent, and Weight Above Bar - well, I got a mark but the less said about that the better.

All in all it was a wonderful weekend - got to see a ton of people that I like and be useful in helping.  I also got the privilege - once again - of actually being part of something much grander than myself.

The best moment for me occurred during throwing on Sunday, when, as I was making a trip to the bathroom, a young woman caught my eye and said "You guys are really cool".  I thanked her.

Be thanked for being a Heavy Athlete - good heavens, for being an athlete at all - and bringing joy to others.  I never thought I would see the day.

Off to Throw

Off to throw this weekend.

I am excited.  This is a games in memory of my friend Rocky, who passed away last November after a valiant battle with cancer. I only knew him in his latter stages for a little over a year, but he turned out to be one of the great influences - not just in throwing, but in life.

For me, this is actually a pretty big deal.  I leave today and drive about 6 hours to a part of the state that I have never been to.  I am going by myself and will be gone all weekend - and in an almost unheard of liberality, got myself a hotel room.

But the best - and most interesting part to me - is that I am simply going as myself.

I will be alone.  No Ravishing Mrs. TB.  No Na Clann.  No getting up early to drive all day and then driving the same amount of time back.  Just me, staying for the weekend, getting to visit with my friends and watch them, and getting to throw.

No roles as father, husband, caregiver, chore doer, employee manager.  Just me, hanging out with friends and throwing, enjoying their company, remembering our friend Rocky, throwing heavy things, and living in the moment.

I cannot wait.

The Day of Those Needing Answers

Yesterday was a day of those needing answers.

The entire day felt like one long stream of individuals in and out of my office and e-mail, everyone with questions:  What do we do about this?  How should we handle that?  Do you have this for me yet?  When do you thing you can finish that?

I find the whole thing exhausting.  By the time I left my head hurt and my anger level had risen through the roof (and I left almost 45 minutes after I had intended, which did not help my frame of mind when I went).  It took me almost the entire drive home to pull myself back to a level of equilibrium.

This is everything I hate about human interactions.

I suppose on one side it could be said that this is the logical outcome of the fact that I am in a position where I answer questions all day because 1)  It is my job to help make and execute policy and 2)  I encourage people to ask questions instead of just acting (and a larger problem occurs on the back side).  I should expect that people ask and need information because that is the nature of my job (actually, a much larger nature than most people think, given what I do).  And I guess, if I am honest, that this is not really the issue.

The thing that really brought me to a state of agitation was the sense of neediness that exuded from people.

It is not that they are conscious of this or even that they do it in a rude or demanding way.  But underlying all the interactions is the sense that the need presented is the most important thing that is going on right at the moment and it needs to be resolved right now, no matter what I am doing.

I am sympathetic, of course.  They have their own schedules and tasks to complete and I can provide some level of assistance in doing that.  It is just that it sometimes feels like it is precisely when I have the least amount of time to offer that such things are asked.

I do not know what to do about this, really.   People's questions are not going to go away and the pace of work is unlikely to slow down at all.  And the nature of what I do is not going to change in the least.    How then do I manage to manage the needs of others?

Finding Time to Read

A Nighean Ruadh has encouraged me to make time to start reading regularly again.
It came up innocently enough in a conversation:  when asked about my reading patterns, I commented on the fact that I had not been taking as much time to read as I had in times past because I was "too busy"  (whenever something is in quotes, you know it is going to go badly) with work or something else.  I simply had lost the time.

But in responding I suddenly realized that I was depriving myself of a great reservoir of my thinking and energy.

I like to read - not only for the gathering of knowledge but simply as an activity of relaxation.  Not only that, but reading is the basis for a great deal of my reading and thinking and learning.  I become deeper with the books I read (it depends on the books of course, but I have the area pretty well covered).  Given the correct amount of attention and time, they are a wellspring of ideas and inspiration.

And it turns out that I have been depriving myself of this.  Oh sure, I try to pack in reading where I can, especially when I have to travel by plane - I suppose I justify it by thinking that it is my alone time and there is little else that I can do.  But in point of fact if I am only limiting my intake to my infrequent trips, I am denying myself the full impact of reading.

So that needed to change.

I have made the commitment to read 30 minutes a day.  The condition that I have placed upon myself for this is that the books I read cannot be anything which is modern (not cutoff at the moment, but maybe mid-1800s).  The hope is that I can begin to reconnect with the great thinkers of the past and confront the great thoughts that have inspired and molded Western Civilization.

The first book?  The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.  It is a book that I love and is easily accessible and has any number of great lessons in it, lessons about war and peace and making decisions and unintended consequences.

I will start there. But I will certainly not end there.

All it took was someone suggesting that I really did have the time, I just was not using it correctly

Not Spending The Time on What I Love

I am not spending most of my time on that which I love the most.

This is a bit of a puzzle when I think about it for a minute - after all, it time is a resource and there is a limited amount of it, it would stand to reason that one should spend it in such a way as to maximize its value in my life.  In a sense it is like money - there is only a certain amount of it that (or most of us, honestly) will make so we should use it it the ways that benefit us the most.

But that is hardly the way it seems to work - really with money, either.  Instead, the bulk of it goes to the necessaries of getting by and the small fringes go to the things that I truly love.  The reality is that I often have no time for that which I love - or honestly, what truly helps me - and more time than I would like dedicated to things that at best keep me in the same place.

 I suppose that I have had some sense of this preciousness of time and the dichotomy of its use versus my preferences for many years now, having (at least since college) some sense of needing to be doing something important or useful with my life.  Even that has become a struggle as I look at the general shape of my life and question how the time spent is truly doing good.  Add to this the fact that most of my time is hardly spent doing the meaningful activities that contribute to my life and my problem becomes magnified.

The single biggest issue for me is that the time invested in my "daily work" is what I love and one does not become truly good at what one does not love.  It is just not possible.  One can become competent, one can become "good at", one can even become "skilled" at some level - but true mastery (and enjoyment) is derived when one puts in the time at something that contributes meaningfully to one's life, not just something that one has to do.

A puzzle, is it not?  How does one convert the time towards what will actually allow one to move one's life forward instead of treading water?

The only immediate fix I can imagine - because large changes usually do not go well - is simply that of starting to learn to manage the time I have better and stealing small chunks of it back.

Manage the time - If time is a resource, then treat it as such, not as some endless things I can spend and spend as if there was going to be an infinite supply.  Manage my time, especially at the things I like less, better. Do what I have to do - but be sure that I do not spend more time than I need to.

Stealing small chunks - Begin to take back small chunks of the day to reinvest in the things I do love to do.  There are small amounts - five minutes here, fifteen minutes there - that I can begin to take back and make my own.  Yes, maybe they will not be spent precisely on everything that I love, but I can begin to fill my life a bit more with the other things.

Ultimately there is only so much time.  My job - all of our jobs - is to use it in the best, most productive way possible.  We just need to accept the fact of its limited nature and act accordingly.

Plateaued

So I have plateaued in virtually every aspect of my life.

It is true in everything that I am doing, be it relational, professional, personal, artistic, athletic, intellectual.  It does not matter the activity or thing, the simple fact is that I no longer seem to be making progress in any of these areas.

Having realized this, it bothers me.  One of the underlying assumptions of life is that over time, we get better at things from doing them more.  This, apparently, is not always the case - which adds another splendid layer to my general malaise about the condition of my life.

What to do about this situation?  There is the rub, of course - it seems like just more effort doing the same things is not going to result in improvement becomes, at some point, a waste of time.  And books that tell you "how to" do not seem to address this particular impediment to further progress.  The assumption - and I have read a number of them - simply seems to be that you will continue to get better as time goes on.

Which means, of course, that I have to examine what and how I do things.

The main thrust of most such things is that you need to spend more time doing such things, or do such things "smarter".  I am not sure what "smarter"  really means other than do not repeat the things time after time hoping for a different result.  Which, of course, may be my problem as I tend to do things by rote time and time again, because that is what I was taught to do.

How do I shake free of this plateau?

If I am perfectly honest with myself, there is actually a two-fold path here.  The first step is to find a way to vary the things that I do in support of the activities.  This actually looks like two things - on the one hand, continue to do the work, spend the time. On the other, change up the activities that you are doing.  Be original, for goodness sake:  develop some drills for basic activities and just do those instead of grinding through the whole practice, or making up a novel way to keep my engagement and do things in a different way that entertains, or even (Heaven forfend)  just doing a part that you really like doing occasionally instead of "eating your broccoli" all the time.  The danger of plateaus are not just that we stop growing, but that we lose interest.

The other path?  This one will seem exceptional foolish:  sleep more and eat better.  Part of any loss of energy (at least for me) is specifically sleep and (to a lesser extent) diet related.  To get better one needs to keep their energy levels up.  Much as I hate to admit it, for me that means close to eight hours of sleep a night and probably a good deal more protein that I am currently eating.  Physical drives performance.

We will see if this strategy works.  All I can say at the moment with definition is that what I am currently doing is not getting the job done - and I need options.  I still have too far to go to be satisfied with how things are now.

How Long Does It Take You To Write A Post?

"How long does it take you to write a post?"

No, no one has asked that question, but it is kind of an interesting concept that folks might like to know - after all, I would assume that at least some of my readers do not blog on their own.

The answers, of course, is that it varies.

My writing time is usually around 0530 in the morning.  Sometimes when I sit down to write I have a very definitive idea of what I am going to write about, a thought or incident that my brain has already started working on for writing.  At other times I just sit there and watch the cursor blink as I wait for an idea to come, or maybe even just starting typing only to delete the sentence after I type it.

It is very exciting when a good idea comes to fruition.  The words seem to fly through my fingers onto the screen as the idea takes shape. These sorts of postings take the least amount of time - in some cases, I can be done in 10 minutes with a very full page.

It is less exciting - but more common- that the ideas take longer as I have to struggle a bit more to write.  The subject may not motivate me as much or the thoughts do not easily connect together.  Here writing can take a great deal longer as I have to search for the words and connections - perhaps 20 minutes, perhaps more.

Sometimes, of course, I simply have no idea what to type,  In times like these I may default to a haiku - which can actually take more time than one might think if an idea has not presented itself - of break down and type the "second-best" idea as no "first-best" idea can be found.

Example:  this post, a post about posts, has taken about 10 minutes.  This is one of the mornings where the idea did not leap out me.  

Do I mind that ideas do not always leap out at me?  Not so much as you might imagine.  Sometimes something will take fire the midst of a very ordinary article.  And having worked through 6 years of regular writing on all kinds of things has certainly given me the ability to be confident that when I sit down to the keyboard I can type something, even if it is not always world-class literature.

But arguably the best sensation is still that of the idea which is engaging and exciting, that flows (as Ray Bradbury would say)  "White Hot" from your brain through the fingers, the one where all you can hear is the steady stream of clicking keys like the chatter of sparrows in the morning.  Like the birds greetings the morning, it is the sign of a good idea taking form.

Winter Delay

Today's blog post is brought to you later due to storm delay.

School here has been completely canceled for the day.  Even my own work has been delayed by an hour or so.  I stuck my head outside to see what the weather was doing - fortunately no ice that I can see, but definitely not ideal weather for commuting - very breezy, 30 F.  Still a chance of freezing rain this morning.

I do not think I have ever been so cold before we moved here.

In one way I am fortunate:  I do not have to work outside. I cannot imagine having to face the weather outside with the idea that I was going to work meaningfully in it.

It does bring up two interesting points, however:

1)  How does one plan realistically for emergency situations in climates that have a spectacular switch in climates?  We can get down to below 30 but can pop up to over 100 in 3 months from now.  We do not have to manage for one climate but for two.

2)  This would point out some of the benefit of a home based business. I will still have to go out today, even if delayed.  Would it not be more wonderful if I was able to do something from home?

Not that I expect to resolve anything, mind you.  I am just going to drink my coffee and watch the e-mail and glory in the fact that I live somewhere that things like snow days still happen.

Face Smashed Against The Work Ceiling

The moment that your progress has stopped.
It hits you one day as you are sitting at your desk, maybe thinking, maybe working.  You get an itch to look up a friend or co-worker - given the Internet, it is not all that difficult these days.  You go to the social job-media site and look up one person, then you flip to another.  You keep looking at them and their careers and then it comes to you in a flash of light:  you are stuck.  Stopped.  Mired in your career at the place you are, perhaps never to move out.

You realize that those higher in the food chain have moved on almost unaffected by events - and in fact, may be doing better than ever.  Those that you knew have gone on in their own careers for the most part, slowly climbing the ladder of industry to your equivalent level or beyond.

And yet you have stayed where you are, frozen in time like a fossil.

I know, I know. I hear your comment already:  "It does not matter.  Everyone is different and besides, you can tell nothing about a person's life simply by looking on a website.  People talk themselves up all the time."  And that is true, of course.  People seldom post their actual selves in a forum that really reveals what is going on their lives and titles and companies are as fluid an interpreted as running water.

But herein lies my concern and my issue:  at some point a hard eyed look at the situation must be taken.  Just because not everything changes does not mean that change never occurs.  And if change in others occurs but it does not for you, notice must be taken.

For me, this is my reality:  I have held the same title for 12 years, half of those at my current employer.  While colleagues and friends have changed, moved, and been promoted I have been in place, a barnacle on the reef as the ocean goes in and out.  The calls I have had are seldom or never for steps up but rather lateral moves or even different positions.

In other words, I feel stuck.

And time is not one's friend at this point.  The longer one stays, the more one appears to have maxed out their limit - after all, if one was actually skilled one would have moved up long ago.  There must be something wrong with one, some reason that the move up has never happened.

And you are not precisely young enough to be just out of college either.

How does this end?  I am truly not sure.  But there is a sense that I am face-planted against a ceiling I cannot see but is definitively there, a ceiling that refuses to yield but I am continually compressed against.

Where is the hammer I need to break through?

Taking Things for Granted

A friend's dog died last night.
She was a Golden Retriever, a very sweet and well balanced dog.  She had come over a few times and had play dates with Syrah the Mighty and (for the most part) everything had gone well.  She was bred last year and had five super cute puppies.  They had taken her in to get spayed - a very common operation - and apparently there were complications.  She passed last night.

I know.  It is a dog.  These things happen.

But it points out to me today the fragility of life.  And how much we take it for granted.

Think about it.  A spaying is something which we virtually take for granted now as a common operation for animals, almost like getting a nail clipped or stitches done. I am sure the vet had done hundreds of them.  And yet for some reason, a very common (but not simple.  Never is any intrusive surgery considered simple) event did not go as planned.

I look at Syrah the Mighty.  We love her, of course, but she is a dog.  Sometimes she can be annoying with her insistent behavior.  Sometimes walking her feels like a chore instead of a privilege.  Sometimes the responsibility of another living creature is an inconvenience to what we think our lives should be.

And yet I was count on her being there when I wake up in the morning.

Perhaps we take things for granted too often.  We assume that things will always be as they have been and so we come to value them all the less for the seeming ordinariness of them.  And then, in the ordinary events of life, we suddenly find that they are unexpectedly gone.

Take time today to value the ordinary things of your life, the things or people that always seem to be there - because life is a great deal more unsettled than we like to believe.

The Power of a Simple Thank You

One of the things I did last year was to go find somewhere to volunteer.

I am not much of a volunteer - I will volunteer for occasional specific events or needs but have never been much of one to dedicate a regular portion of my time to somehow serving.  This is a flaw in my nature, and something that I have been seeking to correct.

Where I came down is a local animal shelter, specifically a rabbit shelter, that takes in and cares for surrendered and abandoned rabbits and finds them homes.

The work itself is not terribly demanding:  a couple of hours a week, I go and do what needs doing:    most of the time it is changing litter pans and throwing away the garbage, though at times I have packaged food, sanitized cages, fixed things, cut mats, or whatever else needed doing.  The work is never taxing and the bunnies always seem happy for the help.

What is gratifying and somewhat surprising is how often they say thank you.

They say it every week.  Every one.  I am surprised at how regular and often the thanks are.  It is not as if I am doing something particularly difficult, yet they are consistently thankful to have me come and work there.  It seems a little silly to me at times, since I feel like I should be the one thanking them for the privilege of coming and working there for people that are doing good things for rabbits.

The comparison between this and the rest of life often seems stark.  If I perform an immediate comparison to the large portions of my life - work, for example, or even home - I find that both the thanks I receive and (honestly) the thanks I give are not nearly so present.  We wander through the day, doing what we need to do and getting others to do what we need or expect them to do, too often without the vaguest hint of gratefulness about our persons.  We have become a society of exchange, a society that seems to believe (by its actions) that behavior and effort are just one more thing that we are paying for in the exchange of time for money, and that expressions of gratitude are at best quaint and at worst not given because we are paying for the actions anyway.

But we miss something, I think, when we approach human relations this way.  Surely pay in the pocket speaks, but the sincere thanking for a task or effort has the multiplying effect of expanding that effort into true service.  A simple actual of gratitude - even just saying "thank you"  and actually meaning it - gives the sense that the effort to do something is recognized, even if it cannot be rewarded any other way.  It surely makes people more willing to do more and bear burdens.

I will go in next week to the shelter, change my pans and hurl trash, and be back to help because I know I make a difference - and am told so.  Sad to think that for most of us that same feeling will not be propagated through the rest of our activities.

Too Much or Too Little

We are into ice this morning - ice that has caused the cancellation of some events and the delay of others.
I stuck my nose outside this morning and yes, yes it is cold.  According to the weather, it is 30 F outside right now.  It has been colder for sure, but it certainly feels much colder than it is.  We are, apparently, under a "Winter Storm Watch" until noon today with a mix of "Wintry Precipitation", whatever that means.

How remarkable for once this is a morning that I have little to do and  yet I am not anxious to be doing something. This is the opposite of problem of what I usually face:  having too much to do and too little time to do it in.

You think I would be reveling in this more.

I have these large swings in energy and activity, it seems, going from "I need to be about everything" to "I have the interest in doing very little even thought I have the time".  This makes it very difficult to accomplish anything of actual value, because one is sliding from one extreme to the other, making progress in spurts rather than a long steady drive in a direction.

Is it trying to do too much?  Possibly - this is always a potential consideration.  Or is it that I tend to substitute sleep for activity and tire myself out midweek?  Also a possibility.  Or can it be that simply will not decide on doing these things first and these things second because I do not want to lose the ability to do any of them?  That could be as well.  Or a combination of them all.

But the reality is this:  we are at the end of February and I am making very little process on anything at all.  And that is not a state of affairs that is either productive or can last.

Waiting For Spring

Our cold is back upon us in a big way.

It is beginning to annoy me a bit.  The combination of cold and early dark means that the chances of getting anything beyond minimal work outside done are minimal.  That is a bit of a problem as, where we currently live, the actually season called "Spring" is so short that handy things like planting a garden or doing other sorts of outdoor activities (even those less than exciting things such as mowing or raking leaves) are at best moved to the weekends to compete with other needs or at worst are completely put off.

As you may have guessed, we have had some remarkably good weather for a February - temperatures up into the 70's.  It is quite delightful to spend time in but, with the wild variations, hardly the sort of weather one can plant things in and hope that they will survive.  And even if the temperature climbs a bit (as it is supposed to do this weekend) we are still going to be caught in the midst of pretty steady cold rain, which makes working outside not pleasant at all.

It is not really a complete I suppose, more of an inconvenience.  Still, I am chafing a bit for either longer hours at night or better weather or probably both.  There is a lot to be done, and waiting for the weather to turn and the sun to hang around longer is not really getting me there.

The Bunny Protocol

Yesterday was a little harder than most, so I invoked the Bunny Protocol.

The Bunny Protocol is invoked most often when I have had a hard day or am feeling a little saddened or alone.  It involves getting one or two rabbits (most often Snowball and/or Midnight), sitting in an a recliner, and pulling a large blanket up over us all, including my head.  The blanket helps both the keep the heat in as well as to cutoff any major exploring routes.

The rabbits like the attention, although it takes them a little while to get comfortable:  Midnight's most favored position is always right next to me on the side of the seat while Snowball is a little bit more squirmy, often wanting to move about or even be laying all over Midnight.  It is perhaps most successful with one rabbit of course, but then I always worry that I am giving enough attention to each.

What does this do for me?  Nothing terribly significant, I suppose.  I am not becoming a better person by doing this.  I am not really resolving any of my issues - in fact, this could be construed to be a form of hiding myself away from my problems instead of facing them.

But in that removal from the world and resulting focus, I find a certain peace.  The bunnies are furry and generally grateful for the attention.  They do not care what is going on or how or how much I have done or not done or expectations I have reached or not reached - all they care about is that there is somewhere warm and someone who loves them.

And they are happy to give love back.

A Slice of Others' Lives

After class last night I had to make a quick stop at our local large grocery retailer for a couple of items that would not wait.  I parked, hurried my way in through the cold, and entered the "Open until 12 AM" entrance.

Right in front of the door was a display set up for the coming summer, seemingly quite foolish given our current cold snap:  a carpet of artificial grass on which sat a patio table with an umbrella and a glass tabletop and four chairs around it with various spring related products to the sides.  In the chairs sat four people:  a man, a women, a girl about 14 and a young girl.

There were two sheets of paper on the table so I assumed it was some sort of homework problems, being done while someone was shopping.  Then I did a second take - the adults were the ones doing the paperwork while the older girl was sitting there looking bored and the younger girl busy at anything but that.

It was a child swap.

I realized at that moment that moment that paperwork had something to do with some kind of unhappiness:  a divorce, a child custody case, something.  The grocery store, with its display of summer fun at 9:30 on a cold February Night, had become neutral territory, the Casablanca of its time; these people, with the mother and father signing away paperwork that probably represented a reduction of an emotional and physical investment of great measure and passion as shown in the young girl, became two agents of opposing regimes, shuttling life between them.

I wandered off down the aisle to make my own purchases but caught up with them in the parking lot as I left - to be honest, I hurried to do so, caught in the conclusion of a small drama.  They were getting into a car, the woman and the older daughter already in as the father carried the younger daughter in his arms and put her in the car.  "I'll see tomorrow"  he said waving as the door shut and I skittered to my own car, the cold driving me faster than my interest in others.

We cannot always know the circumstances of the lives of others and it is dangerous to make assumptions, let alone conclusions, based on a two minute observation of a scene.  But I find it somewhat sad, if not a little tragic and ironic, that a display became a display of two kinds that night:  not only of the potential of enjoyment of family and friends but the display of a relationship that did not work and the fallout from it.

Daffodil Woes

Pale triathelete,
Bearing rain and cold and sun
all within a week.

Quiet Exhaustion

I am feeling a little empty this morning.

Chalk a lot of it up to exhaustion.  It was a long weekend - Highland Games (Did okay, nothing to really write home about) which included waking up at 0300, driving 3 hours, throwing all day, then driving 3 hours home and waiting until Nighean Gheal got home from her competition at 0030, and in bed by 0100.   Yesterday  was a very late rising, followed by helping the Bunnies then cleaning my mob out here and eating dinner at an Oscar party, then retreating to the house and waiting for everyone else to make it home safely (2300).

Needless to say, I am a little tired and a little mentally quiet this morning.

Secretly in my heart I am hoping for an ice day declaration which would allow me to simply finish my coffee and go back to bed, but I suspect that fate has decreed that this is not to be the case today.

Interestingly, at moments like these it feels like there is nothing that I can care about.  I do not want to call things exhaustion because I do not feel particularly exhausted; I just feel very very quiet inside.  The reservoir of thinking and feeling is either totally empty or at the point where there is simply nothing to be concerned about.

I am sure this will pass, of course:  the grind of ordinary living is about to return with a vengeance and by tomorrow there will be something I am aggravated about or concerned about or care about to the point that I have to write about it.  But I find it interesting in a period where I was incredibly busy yet spent large quantities of time alone that the only post-experience I can muster is simply that feeling that seemingly floats, still as a pond on a windless morning.

Bureaucracies and Hierarchies

Bureaucracies and hierarchies are equally terrible.
The failure of the bureaucracy is that  getting anything done becomes impeded and mired in the importance of doing it "correctly".  And trying to do anything which is not your particular pigeon hole at best creates offense and worst creates a turf war with infighting over perceived insults and the threat of punitive actions.  Initiative becomes stifled and opportunity leaves, seeking friendlier shores.

The failure of the hierarchy is that the structure becomes more important that what is trying to be accomplished.    Ability to act and ability to make decisions are removed from the individual, replaced by the need to ask for permission to act.  Often in hierarchies the dictum is pronounced to "Take Action", yet if that action is not sanctioned by someone higher up the chain the decision and the individual become questionable or rogue.   The form becomes more important that what the form is meant to accomplish.

In reality such things are needed in some fashion:  without a bureaucracy of some kind very little would get co-ordinated or tracked for groups and without a hierarchy of some kind groups becomes a seething mass of humanity surging back and forth in their decision making (for a fine example of an essentially flat hierarchy gone totally wrong, review the history of Athens during the Peloponnesian War).  The problem, whether it is in business or politics or even in our relationships, is that we forget that these things are meant for the purpose of getting things done and instead become more interested in the forms that are being used to accomplish them.  At this point the forms acquire a life of their own and the actions become subservient to them.  Ultimately (as history shows) such systems are doomed to fail as the centers of planning action move far from the bureaucracies and hierarchies, leaving them to bury themselves under their own weight.

They are tools to accomplish tasks, as any hammer or computer is.  We forget this to our peril.

Hope Takes A Break

There are times in every day when hope runs out.
Mine seems to be about 1:30 in the afternoon.  It is after lunch but usually before the onrush of afternoon meetings and usually finds me sitting in front of my computer, either scrolling through e-mails or reviewing and signing off documents (the bane of my existence).

It is an oncoming sense of lassitude that suddenly "thwacks" me over the head as I sit and look at the screen - the realization that in some way, shape or form, this is how I spent the great part of my current venture and that for all of my efforts or lack thereof, things never seem to be progressing forward.  The endless row of work that seems to need my attention stares back at me through the screen - and snickers.

There is always more work to do than one can accomplish.  Perhaps this has always been true of life; certainly it has been true of my own (and this, of course, does not include the work that needs doing outside of the the job itself, the many minor tasks and chores that make up daily life).  And yet somehow, I keep clinging to the notion that I can somehow catch up or even make progress towards truly completing things and moving on through them.

Yet I do not seem to be able to. And so, like a regular air leak in a tire that is never quite enough to justify a new tire but always needs to be filled, I feel hope sort of leak out and float away.

I will pick up, of course - just because hope seems to have left does not mean that my tasks have somehow floated away with it.  And certainly it is not a completely static condition - sometimes something happens that will engage me or someone says something just at the right moment to bring back from the brink.  Yet strikes as true and yet incredibly sad that somewhere out there, there a people who do things for a living for whom hope does not take an afternoon coffee break - and never return.

February Weather

Summer on Weekends
and winter during the week?
Convenient but odd.

The Perspective of a Teenager on One's Life

Having a child in their teenage years gives one a great deal to think about concerning one's own teenage years.

Teenagers, as I have come to discover, can be incredibly self-focused. I do not think they mean anything by this - it is not as if they are not capable of extreme acts of kindness and thoughtfulness - but the world as they see it has a great many things which they need to be about and so the world (often) should be about helping them do these things.

Initially this sort of thing bothered me a lot - after all, one of the hallmarks of an adult is supposed to be the ability to look into the future and concentrate on the humdrum things of life like food and laundry and paying the bill to keep the lights on.  But as I continued to consider it, I realized that I was probably just the same way.

I do not have any conscious thought or memory about how things got done when I was a teenager either.  I know they did, but I just cannot remember it.  I do remember having a great deal of schoolwork and the activities that I did (band rehearsal - oh, band rehearsal!) and friends and the job my senior year.  But the things about how life ran, the things that I think about every day - not a memory.

And maybe that is okay - after all, at some level teenage years are a transition period from childhood to adulthood.  It is like anything else - one assumes that this things are instinctively evident when in fact they need to be taught, just like any other life skill.  And if I am truly honest about it, I would do anything to have the ability to focus just on my own life instead of the lives of those in my care and the 101 things that one seems to have to track when one is an adult.

It does not make the whole thing more palatable, of course, especially when one ends up waiting in the car for an extended period of time (time is one of those things which is fluid, I suppose) or is driven to distraction by random cups and glasses that never quite seem to make their way to the sink.
But perspective, I am coming to appreciate, is not simply the ability to look back at one's own life and learn:  it is equally the ability to look at the lives of others and draw out new lessons from old memories.

The Coming of The New Manager

Today is the first day of my new ultimate boss at work.

This thought makes me strangely nervous, nervous in ways that I cannot completely define. I find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to introduce someone to our company and how things are done with the apparent knowledge at some level this knowledge is going to be used (if not by this person, by the person whom they have determined to hire) to replace parts of my own functionality.

It is not a happy place to be.
,
Do I have any reason to be worried about what I have put together?  Certainly as with everything there will be small areas of disagreement as to interpretation (I suppose).  Still, I am confident that I have not left anything untouched or undone and I have not hidden any bodies which, when discovered, will give people significant pause.

That said, it is not very reassuring.

Change in the workplace is never very easy and never very comforting.  It holds an element which many other sorts of change do not:  if the change does not go well, one's livelihood is in danger.  The stress level rises when it involves significant change in management such as is happening today:  Priorities are moved, lines of communication are altered, plans change.  All of this is negotiated under the aegis of continuing to make a company function and ship product out the door.

What is the plan?  I do not really have one other than show up to work today and see where things go.   New managers can be quite quirky, especially when they just show up:  they have been brought in for a particular purpose and are trying to orienting themselves for that purpose and until one knows what that purpose is, one can either get in the way too much or even create a bad impression through the obsequiousness hanging around all the time.  Better to let them start their orienting and then find out what it is they are asking for.

But it concerns me in a general way that this is the second time in a year that a major shake-up has occurred: the first was last March, when my previous manager of five years was let go.  Now after wading through two (apparently) temporary bosses, a brand new one appears.

It does little to manage my longer term concerns.

No Caffeinated Coffee

We are out of caffeinated coffee this morning.

Interestingly enough, I was not a coffee person for a long time - well into my Master's degree, as I recall.  I was primarily a tea person - coffee held the same attraction to me as many other perceived adult items: something adults did which almost most seemed more as a marker of adult status than done for actual pleasure.  The times I had it was overly hot and tasted burnt.

And then, one day, the heavens opened and wonders of coffee were (apparently) revealed to me.

Now, coffee is a daily occurrence.  I have it a cup in the morning at home, and then I follow up with a cup or two at work (really, never more than three - I am done by 0930 or so).  There are few things more pleasurable than a hot cup of coffee that has just bee brewed.

I am somewhat choosy about my coffee - I do not, for example, care for the Large Green Mermaid's coffee all that much.  It seems (again) overly burnt and certainly overly expensive.  At the same time, I am not so much of a connoisseur that I will only drink one kind of coffee or need a particular coffee machine and grinder - we have a reliable "Mr. Coffee" that has worked for more years than I care to remember and a French Press if we are really feeling snooty.

The best kind of coffee, in my opinion, is the Cafe du Monde's Coffee And Chicory  which is a dark roast with ground chicory in it.  It is intensely strong - so strong in fact that The Ravishing Mrs. TB will scarcely drink it when I have it which means all the more for me, I suppose (and, it still comes in steel cans which are great for all kinds of uses and projects).  For years I was sad because it was a special order item; it is now available in lots of places, which just makes my life better overall.

All of this is moot, of course, because there is no caffeinated coffee right now.

We have some decaffeinated coffee.  It is actually what I am drinking right now.  It meets all the requirements, of course:  hot, brewed, not tasting burnt.  No caffeine, of course, but that is more of physiological problem rather than matter of taste or habit  (although I will say in passing that the availability of different kinds of caffeinated coffee well exceeds that of decaffeinated coffee).  It is just more a matter of concept, much like non-alcoholic beer:  if there is no particular reason (medical or dangerous habits) that I need to do it, why?

I have contemplated such things as the fact that caffeine falls into one of my "Bad Four" food habits (Sugar, Fat, Alcohol, Caffeine) - not that I am probably terrible on any one but these are the ones most likely to cause problems and therefore the most likely to be surrendered at some point.  Of all of them, caffeine would probably be the one most difficult to surrender.  A man can life without alcohol and even without most kinds of sugar. (yes, I know fat is required - but not nearly so much as most eat).  Caffeine - coffee - is the one thing on that list that represents a pleasure for which there can be limited bad health effects but provides a mental balance and tradition in starting my day.

None of which, of course, helps me at the moment.  Sigh.  Well, I foresee a stop at a store in my near future...

Superseded

So in some fashion, I am on my way to being superseded.

I found out yesterday.  A new position was posted, a position which incorporates a fair number of things that I have been doing over the last 5 years.  In other words, portions of my job - the visible portions, the portions that are outward facing or inward facing at higher levels, are being re-assigned to a new position.  I assume the mundane and the behind-the-scenes work will remain with me.

I am not really sure how to process this information.  On one hand, this has always been my secret fear, the thing that I dreaded happening.  We are taught - or at least the system teaches us - that effort and following commands leads us to higher levels of responsibility and reward.  In point of fact this does not seem to work this way all the time:  just as often, it seems, hard work and effort and following orders leads precisely to the same place we would have traveled all along had we done none of these things.

On the other hand...I do not know that there is an other hand in this case.  There is no really good outcome that springs to mind, at least immediately.  One can make the argument, I suppose, that this is a good sign, that the company is willing to bring in additional skill sets to help grow the organization and that this is fabulous opportunity to learn from someone and eventually advance one's career.  My conundrum is this, of course:  by removing opportunity and redefining expectations to a smaller scope, how does one advance?

I will need to train this new person, of course, as well as the person above them who is coming is as well.  They will arrive with no knowledge of the past years or what has occurred to keep things going and move them forward, will take this knowledge, and then move forward based on the work that has already been done.

My sense in all of this is slowly fading into the twilight, a form that loses coherence and shape as the night approaches.  I assume I will still be present but in a reduced role, like a Betta that moves from the larger space of a tank to the smaller confines of a cup to shake its fins and swim in a muted silence.

I am trying to look for good in all of this:  surely something beneficial will come out of it.  But all I can feel at this moment is a sort of vague sadness, the sense of hopelessness that no matter what one does or the efforts one makes they are pouring buckets of water into dry sand in hopes of making a lake.

On The Refereeing of Breakups

I have two friends that are in the process of breaking up.

This is kind of sad.  To anyone looking in from the outside it would seem as if they were made for each other - or at least, at one time they were made for each other, until the vagaries of life and the realities of their situations moved them apart.

Being a number of years beyond high school and beyond the typical rough-and-tumble of relationships it is a somewhat disorienting experience - after all, at my age most of the breakups I know of or am around are those that represent the ending of marriages, not the end of dating relationships.  In one sense these do not bear the same level (hopefully) as the ending of a commitment potentially involving others; on the other hand they are none the less obviously painful for all involved.

Most difficult of all, of course, is when both parties are reaching out to you.  The refereeing of such things involves the gentle art of listening to and being supportive of both sides.

On some levels both of these people are my friends - have been for years.  I have (occasionally) in the past made the error of taking sides in such things when I never should have done so because inevitably one or the other relationship goes away - and, of course, you get pulled in.  It become incumbent, therefore, to be both understanding and listening while keeping a certain amount of neutrality about the actual detail involved.

What do you do in such situations?  A lot of listening, by phone or by typing.  Interestingly, I found myself yesterday being a great deal different in some ways than I may have been in the past about such things - instead of merely commiserating or just listening I took the opportunity to push for some personal growth - not really engaging in the "Are you really sure?" or "You could work this out" or other sorts of looking backward but pushing them more towards the future - "What have you learned from this experience and what will you change moving forward?"  I do not know if either of them is actually willing to hear what is being said - perhaps it is too soon - but in this much I have changed from before:  I will be a sounding board and happily so, but I will not just sit and continue to allow you to remain in the same state that brought you to the point that got you here today.

Because at least in my own experience, sometimes referees can also be the greatest of coaches.

Sensei

I lead my martial arts class last night.  First time ever.

This was not a totally unexpected surprise.  When received an in-dojo teaching certificate, this allows one to serve as a potential sensei in the dojo.  I have always felt my knowledge to be moderate at best.  But our sensei was out of town this week and there were three of us with such certifications so we could split the duties.

Unfortunately due to circumstances, I was the only one able to attend.

It was a small class (Thank goodness!) but still, class leader is class leader.  Sensei had left us the course of study for the night - a single kata for the naginata.  It was one that I had done before and even had sufficient notes on to recreate.  We bowed in - very odd being the only one at the head of the class - and went to work.

I have taught before - U. S. History, U.S. politics, Asian History, even classes at work on what it is that we do - so I am no stranger to having to be in front of people lecturing.  This is different though:  one is not just transmitting information via words but with physical motion as well. One is expected to be the expert, even if (as was true in my case) there are more experienced members in the classroom.

I would like to say that I persevered but that makes it sound like I did much more than I did.  My students for the night were very patient and fortunately I am well aware of my shortcomings with the naginata, which at least gives me something to recommend for others to work on.  I also found it strangely difficult to watch multiple students at a single time:  I tended to watch on or the other when really I needed to watch all of them.

But we all survived.  We finished our practice with no injuries (the most significant accomplishment), bowed out, disrobed into our street clothes, and left the dojo.  My first immediate response was to e-mail sensei and let him know all was okay - more for the solace of trying to find a voice to tell me I did okay than any great need to communicate results.

It strikes me as odd.  Of all the activities I do, this is the one where I find myself least confident in my ability to teach others.  I could talk to people about Highland Athletics and demonstrate to them how to do it all day even though my own technique is okay at best.  I can speak to cheese making or mead making or gardening even though I do not always get the best results.  But Iaijutsu, this one activity that I love as much as any of the others, makes me nervous when the subject of teaching comes up.

Perhaps it is expectation.  The head of the our sword school is alive and I have trained with him as part of Seminars.  He has high expectations - he is, after all, the living embodiment of the teachings of the art.  And my sensei as well is an excellent teacher, quite knowledgeable and patient - the very essence of what a teacher should be.  And students come to class expecting the one leading the class to be expert, or at least knowledgeable of what the they lead.

All of this, I suppose, is simply a way of saying that leading my first class was a very humbling experience.  Not just that others look to you as the one to understand the art and pass it on.  It is humbling because others have entrusted you with their learning and their time and the leaders - of your dojo, of your school - expect you to lead in a manner worthy of the traditions which you are trained and training in.

A Dream About Christ

Last night I had a dream about Christ.
I do not often have these dreams. Certainly they are not the sort of thing that I talk about regularly when I do - it strikes me that dreams (on the whole) are a badly misused medium by a great number of Christians today.  In a way I compare it to what passes for a great deal of prophecy right now:  a statement which may be heavy on biblical language but lacks the core of an actual revelation from God and is replaced with the speaker's own opinion. So I am careful to say that I did not have a dream from God - at least I can say it involved His Son.

In this dream it was right after the end of the world.  I cannot tell you what it was like because apparently that was considered completely secondary to the dream. It was just a sort of "lights out" moment and that was that.  The thing that came immediately out of it was - maybe for the first time in my life - I was actually excited about seeing Him instead of afraid.

I remember running up to Him and asking Him what I should do and He sent me off to do some looking into something.  I found it and ran back and just started babbling away excitedly at what I had discovered, with Him just sitting there smiling and nodding.  There was no sense of fear or concern about what I had done or not done, just a genuine feeling of excitement and happiness.

I want to emphasize again:  I am not stating and I do not believe this to be some kind of direct vision from God.  Certainly there is nothing to be drawn here about the end of the world or the closeness or distance of it (in all fairness, I tend to dwell on the end of civilization a great deal).   The thing I do want to focus on was that this was the dream I needed right now.

Not that this is news to anyone, but life is becoming...a bit pinched together for a lot of reasons.  Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the feeling that I am not doing enough of what I should be doing, or that I doing it badly.  Something like this - arguably based on Christ's acceptance of us through His death and resurrection (that is biblical enough) - can make the things that we face a little less overwhelming, if we can experience - even vicariously through something like a dream - who and what is waiting for us at the end.

I do not know that the dream was directly from God - but I do know that God controls all, and that includes what goes on in my dreams.  And in that, I think, lies the greatest comfort.

Fear of Strangers

Buried underneath I have a rather unusual fear of strangers.
I am not sure precisely where such a fear comes from.  It is not as if I had some sort of horrible event when I was growing up (I did not) or was mistreated by a random person (never happened) or some other sort of thing that would result in this sort of behavior - good heavens, I probably had more accidental bites and scratches from pets.  But the fear is there, and it manifests itself in strange ways.

I always hang back when I am put in new or social situations, sometimes to the point that they may wonder why the heck I am there anyway.  I find it taxing to actually introduce myself to people and even when I do, I tend to rush through my name.  Engaging in conversation is difficult as well:  partially (I am sure) because I am in many ways unlearned in what most people talk about  socially and partially because I am self conscious about my lack of fitting in.  And part of it, I suppose, is just the issue of wanting to be noticed by others but instinctively, not by making a spectacle of one's self.

Part of it too - if I am honest - is the fear of rejection and hatred of criticism.

I hate rejection.  I hate being rejected.  It has always been an issue, to the point that I will not try things rather than try them and be rejected.  Some people - I suppose many successful people - have learned how to deal with this and move on with their lives.  For whatever reason (and perhaps this is worthy of additional thought) I struggle deeply with this.

Criticism is an extension of rejection.  Criticism I fear because what is criticized is usual what one has poured their lives into - a project, a work, an extension of one's self.  To have something criticized feels like all has been ignored except for what is right.

I have to be fair - maybe I have been on the wrong end of these before.  Like many other things, criticism and rejection and joining groups can be a useful and helpful activities if the way it is handled is appropriate - for example, I have never (that I can recall) been hurt or put to shame by any constructive criticism offered by anyone watching me throw in Highland Events - partially, I suppose, because the intent there was never to wound but only to improve.

I am getting better.  I am more likely to talk to people when I go new places and sometimes will even talk to people before they have talked to me.  The criticism is still an issue - I try not to take it personally but it still hovers in the back of my mind and chews at me if I do not take it in hand.  But every now and again I completely freeze, tormented by the thought of the unknown and what might happen as represented in the form of someone I do not know.

Heater on the Fritz

Our heater is on the fritz - again.
This is not a particularly new problem.  This is the fourth time this year that we have had it almost or completely go into dysfunctional status.  We are fortunate (perhaps the only fortunate part of this) in the fact that climate we live in does not get bitterly cold, but nights close to freezing do not make for a pleasant wake up call in the morning (for those of you that are interested, there is about a 25 F degree differential between outside and inside so insulation and bricks can make a difference).

Interestingly the heater is not completely defunct.  It now works - once - until it suddenly ceases to work and then will not fire back up until a period of time has passed - perhaps five or six hours but who knows as no-one is home.  If we are lucky it gets the home up to our set point of 69 F- if not...well, we do not hit that number.

The one "good" thing we did when we purchase Taigh yn Rollage Unnane is we purchased a Home Warranty - so a visit from our local service provide is not time plus materials but a flat fee.  That means, other than having to co-ordinate a time of arrival, we are generally covered.

My concern, of course, is that the house is almost 20 years old and at some point we are going to need a new furnace (I do not have an idea if a new furnace is covered by the home warranty, although as with most warranties, I suspect it does not cover the really expensive things).

Could I learn to repair it?  I suppose - although messing with Natural Gas related items always leaves me feeling a little queasy.  It is kind of the same theory I have with doing my own brakes - I have no idea how much confidence I actually have in my work on something like that and question if I am willing to bet my life on it.

Other forms of heating?  I looked into a wood stove earlier this year.  They run $700-$900 for a unit that would fit our hose and, if I we lived in Old Home, I would probably jump at the chance - I could have had all the wood I could use.  Here, it is a little more difficult in that I would have to purchase all the wood I would use which cuts back on the economics a bit.  On the bright side, I think the house layout is such that a wood stove might actually be useful for heating (you would have the odd  one or two rooms, but I do not consider that a huge lose - and, after all, they are not getting heated right now either).

We will see.  The heating guy will show up today and hopefully we will get heat again - but it does not resolve the longer term problem.

Management in the Time of Utility

I was struck yesterday at the tone-deaf nature of so many of our human relationships in the workplace.
My belief in management and leadership is informed by a philosophy I heard attributed to the 19th Century British Army many years ago:  An officer does not eat before his men eat, drink before his men drink, sleep before his men sleep.  While I am certainly not an officer (and never have been) I try to adhere to this philosophy as much as I can.  If you are a leader or manager (true of families or other organizations as well as work), it is your job to put the people you lead ahead of you as much as you possibly can because you are asking them to do a great deal of things for you.

This is not always convenient.  It require, interestingly enough, the same thing that raising children effectively requires:  time.  Time to respond to their questions.  Time to walk through not just a resolution but the reasons for the resolution.  Time to just listen to their lives.  Times to build bonds, be they food or song or  general silliness.

It also means you have to listen.  A lot.  Not just to what they are saying but, as Peter Drucker said, to the things that they are not saying.  You have to answer the question they may not be answering but they actually want the answer to to respond to the concern they are not voicing but want to have answered.

Perhaps I make this sound like a chore.  I do not mean to - I find that leading the small teams I have lead (that sounds a lot more noble and romantic than my life actually is) is (usually) one of the great joys of my life - not from the "power" that I get from having control over the lives of others but from the relationships that accrue from it.

The thing that surprises me is not all leaders are like this.

Too many seem regard the people that work under them as servants or tools to be used.  It may not be intentional on their part - they may just have problems relating to people or feel that they themselves are too busy to "visit" with others.  The problem - the thing that they do not often understand - is that the impression that it gives to those underneath them is exactly that:  you are a tool to accomplish a tasks, a servant to execute my will, a cog to turn in the machine.  Whether you are happy or unhappy, satisfied or unsatisfied, engaged or not, you are here to serve.

They often miss the subtle undercurrents of what is actually going on in an organization because they are so focused on execution that they miss the reactions of their personnel.  Certainly most people will go along with what they are asked - after all, it is their job - but a grudging acceptance of direction is not the sort of thing that builds world class organizations of any stature or lasting value that accomplishes anything worthwhile, nor is it that sort of thing that individuals stay to invest their lives into.  They will eventually turn away and seek other opportunities - opportunities of advancement, opportunities of their heart - leaving gaps in the institutional knowledge which, if not remedied, will eventually consume any organization.

I worry.  It seems we have come so far in our pursuit and realization of productivity and efficiency that we have lost the art of relationship that makes not only productivity and efficiency possible but things  like helping others to be the best they can be (which may not always be what they are doing for us) or simply being their at a critical point in their lives when they need assistance.  We miss all of this - this subtle melange of relationship and emotions, of helping and being helped, of listening and laughing and doing and growing - when we seek to reduce others to merely tools on a rack, to be used at our discretion and then replaced on the wall.

We will go back one day, I fear, and find that all our tools have left our industrial workshop for the loving hands of craftsmen.

Humility

I am not a very humble person.

This is something I am trying to work on - indeed, this is something that I am commanded to work on.  But somehow I seem to constantly coming back to the most basic of lessons.

Humility, in case you have forgotten, is "The quality or state of being humble".  Which leads us to Humble:   "Not proud; not thinking, speaking, or acting  as better than other people."

Which are fine definitions and of course most people would say that they suffer from neither of this - certainly most people do not consider themselves proud and the person who acknowledges how wonderfully better they are than others in public is often ostracized.

But in point of fact, I often operate in a very different way.

Take my average day at work.  My job function is such that I spend most of my time doing something in support of something or someone else.  Do I simply do this without complaint or do I grumble and think that I should be just as recognized as the other person or in fact this task is beneath me?  Or am I willing to do it only when it is for an important person and not everyone - or worse, for someone who I think I should be past and yet seems to have surpassed me?

Or at home.  Same problem, different group of people:  do I demand that I be recognized for my contributions?  Do I sigh when there are certain tasks to do or do I just do them?  Or do I consider my needs to be the overriding ones of the household that should trump all others?

You probably see where this is going.  And it is not pretty.

Beyond just the fact that I am generally a sinner, I think humility is especially hard for me because I have the grand sense that I should be doing something important with my life and that my current tasks and circumstances are such that this is not the case.  The reality is that most of my day is filled with tasks and things to do that never enter the consciousness of most of the people impacted by them - as I have likened before, my job area is what most people consider to be a form of automatic transmission:  best if it is working, better if I do not have to think about it at all.  This makes it hard, especially if one thinks that one should be of greater importance.

The problem - or perhaps better state the reality - is that none of us is called to importance.  We are specifically called to humility.  And so humility literally becomes a day by day activity, every day reminding myself for this day, this time, to be humble.  Not to think of myself as better than others or act in a way that is better than others or to treat myself or my interactions with others as if I am better than them.

I need to be humble.  It is just a shame I am sometimes so terrible at it.

Three Dreams (or One Dream with Three Acts)

(Editor's note:  Sometimes (if I am lucky)  I remember my dreams and post them.  This is  one of those times.)

Crazy dreams last night - helped along by the fact that it felt like I was awake all night.  I do not think that I was, but I had the distinct sensation of dreaming while I could completely sense the environment around me - it was not like last week where I was consciously awake all night.

Dream  #1:  In this portion of the dream I had (apparently) finally gone to Japan but for some reason was on the island of Shikoku rather than the Honshu, the main island.  I was trying to find something - a restaurant or store, I think - and so I was driving around the neighborhood looking for a place a to park.  Driving and driving to the point that there was a line of cars behind me and I could not stop to find a place.  And then when I did and went in, it was not at all what I expected - dark and dirty and dingy and with someone there - an American - who was essentially mocking me because I would not be able to speak Japanese well enough (I have toyed with Japanese for years and one of my actual goals this year is to pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (Level 5, the lowest level)  the year.  As I left I remember speaking back to him in Japanese in such a way that he was surprised.

Dream #2:  I was up after a rest. I walked out and saw the scenic beauty of Shikoku and started thinking I should take pictures to post.  As I was walking I found a dead animal - I cannot remember what it was but it was small and furry and recently dead.  I picked it up for no reason I can discern except to bury it somewhere and walked on.  Soon I found another, then two dead ducks (I specifically remember them being white ducks) - all recently dead.  Suddenly, as I am walking across a meadow or parklike field with pine trees around it, I was attacked by brown and white geese (I had a geese attack incident when I was 4 years old.  I have never trusted geese since then) who kept nipping and biting at me until I had thrown all the bodies of the animals at them and run off.

Dream #3:  My sensei and class were in Japan as well (no idea why, although for myself my goal is to go to training at Katsuura next year).  We were getting ready and sensei said we would have a guest tonight.  It turned out to be my new boss from work.

He was wearing a gi and  hakama  with embroidery on them, which means that he had some passed some level of testing.  After we introduced ourselves to him (I seem to remember my introduction being very quick and half done)  we proceeded to bow in, following his example.  But he was doing it all wrong- grabbing his obi (the wide fabric belt) and wadding it up in the front to put his sword in instead of sliding the sword between the second and third layers of the wrap. I wanted to say he was doing it wrong but my sensei and everyone else was following along (rule of thumb in martial arts: do what the sensei is doing).

And then suddenly we changed location again to a manufacturing plant in my industry that was outside, almost along a park path.  My sensei had left and now and old and respected boss ("Himself") was here with me.  Again, we were walking the new boss from work.  As we were walking, Himself was watching him and listening to what he was saying - as he did, I realized that he was saying things that I had been saying as well.  We came to a very steep spiral staircase going down (still outside, mind you - made of limestone) and I told Himself "Watch your step" - and no sooner than I had said that than he fell.  By the time I had reached him, the new boss was already there, lifting him up to a sitting position.

And then I woke up to my alarm.

Of Dropping A Burden

I had an epiphany of sorts this weekend as I was shuttling back and forth.
My thoughts, for better or worse, have been focused on work and the upcoming instability there (If you have never gone through a management transition, trust me - the best of them is unstable) - the unknowns of a new manager's foibles and preferences and the very real fact that this current place I work has politics and expectations in place that I am trying to get under and move in my favor.

As I sat and thought about this at length, I became more and more frustrated.  The manager is not one of my choosing, the politics are always something I have having to respond to instead of get out in front of, and the expectation held of me and the ones I am trying to move forward are always the difference between what I am constantly expected to to and what I actually have to do.

And then it suddenly hit me:  I am trying to lift and carry a burden that is not mine to carry.

I just work where I work. I  am not the owner.  I am not a senior executive.  If the company succeeds I may recognize something but not some great reward; if it fails it is not as if I have lost a project I have nurtured from inception.  

Can I change business politics? No, of course not - I am one man in a fairly obscure position.  Nor can I change business practices and procedures except in my one area of responsibility. And surely I cannot change the incoming ways and opinions of someone I have never met and is in fact being hired for their experience and expertise.

It is simply impossible.

So what do I do then?  I simply have to drop the weight and let go.

Let go, not of my need to do well or work hard, but rather of my constant concern and care for what is going on and how it impacts me.  Let go of my constant irritation of decisions and actions and personalities that impact my life but over which I have no control.  In a way, let go of my hopes that  a great deal more effort on my part will bring about significant change.

What to do instead?  This is part that I have not figured out, but I have at least come up with one useful realization:  planting and caring for new things can take just as much time as try to lift up the burden of the established and heavy.

And seeds weigh a great deal less.

Chicken Train

I found a reference to this on Blessed Little Homestead Life.  It is a song from 1976 called "Chicken Train"  by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.  It is simply delightful, completely silly and has provoked a great deal of laughter in our household.  I am pretty sure it will end up on someone's I-tunes before we are through.