Heroes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Controlling Outcomes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Running and Walking

Today was a walking morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fear is Like Adrenaline

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Open Letter to Spammers

Dear Spammers:

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

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

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

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

Three reasons:

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

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

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

 Thank you.

- Toirdhealbheach Beucail

Glorifying God

How serious am I about glorifying God?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Blinding Brilliance of Others

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

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

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

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

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

Which is why enforced aloneness is a good thing.

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

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

Requiscat in Pace, Tink

Tink the Hamster died yesterday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Requiscat in Pace.

The Blinding Brilliance of Self

We are too often blinded bythe brilliance of self.

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

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

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

But self is often a poor guide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It Only Takes A Moment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lists

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let the formalizing begin.

Pride and Humility

Yesterday was a day of being reminded of humility

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In plain terms, I need to adjust my thinking.

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

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

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

It was never really about us in the first place.

One Thing At A Time

People can really only do one thing at a time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disappointment

The ongoing saga of HomeSearch 2012 continues.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not Forgotten II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turning Thoughts Off

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Turning Forty Five

Today is my 45th Birthday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Birthday to me.

Strategists and Tacticians

I am realizing I am not a strategist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Provision

Doves forage above:
Birdseed waterfall trickles
to squirrels below.

Key Performance Indicators

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

What are the Key Performance Indicators of our lives?

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

But what about the KPIs of our lives?

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

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

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

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

What is there can be measured about a life?