Have you ever had a vision that symbolized greatness but lacked clarity? The idea of a finished product that lacked the details required to produce it? You sense that it's there, but have no idea how to coax it out. Like the statue trapped inside the unshaped granite, this is how my book feels.
It's a vision of beauty, but I can't outline the face; a pose of knowledge, yet no stance at all; a creation of greatness, existing only as clouds in my mind. Chasing those clouds may feel parallel to running after real shapes in the sky while confined to the ground.
Yet in many ways that's exactly what writing is. You chase an imaginary cloud, shaping and describing it through prose. Leveraging language to create imagery that may never have been reality. In this way writing is more like sculpting than chiseling from stone. You begin with wet, messy words, mashing and smearing them together in hopes of creating something more. The result beyond that of simply dried mud, or words splashed on a page.
May this be the last time I begin again. The sketch and form are ready, time to moisten the clay and get to work.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Friday, August 3, 2012
Reconnecting (Part 2)
Reconnecting with my writing has proven a little more challenging than my chance encounter with Larry last summer. By comparison it makes that re-connection look like it was effortless when in fact it required traveling all the way to Minnesota, happening upon the right soccer field and knowing the name of Larry's business. I've never claimed that writing was easy but this recent return has felt like my biggest challenge yet.
During the majority of my previously productive writing period I was meditating regularly, not drinking any alcohol and I even attended a 10-day silent meditation retreat. None of those things have been true since I took that contract work. Writing in-and-of itself implies a certain level of connection but what I'll call "spiritual writing" requires an even deeper level by comparison. Why not simply go back to doing all the things that led to some level of productivity? Trust me, that's a question I ask myself often. Anyone that's meditated (or tried to meditate) knows that there's some kind of natural resistance to it. Perhaps its best described as synonymous with "Why do we keep eating when we claim we want to lose weight?" The answer is our body has programming to strongly encourage us to eat. Similarly, there's some kind of programming that resists doing certain things... even if we know that they're good for us. Obviously, this type of programming is more mental than physical.
This once again brings me back to my mental resistance to completing this book. As with most anything, this resistance is based on fear. The fear in this case is knowing that there are two most-likely outcomes. Either this book will sell copies and gain attention or it won't. If it does gain any attention, it will likely draw some negative attention for its critique of commonly held religious beliefs. In that regard, it becomes a choice between the fear of failure and the fear of negative attention. Any resistance to completing it is a clear selection of the former. Better to fail at completion than expose yourself and your ideas to the world... or so the ego says.
Why take on such an endeavor if you have this kind of resistance to it? That's a great question and it's one I think requires an understanding that there exist multiple facets to our individual personalities. Each of us has numerous aspects to our being, various desires that are sometimes in direct conflict with one another. This doesn't seem to make sense at first, but it's an apt model for how we behave. In the example of dieting, there's the part of us that wants to lose weight and another part that enjoys eating and can't seem to resist too well when we're hungry. While the feeling of hunger may be more primal or base-level than a higher-level desire to lose weight, rest assured that fear is just as primal. Even if that fear is illogical in nature, which can be seen in so many of our psychoses.
Facing those fears is something that feels risky yet carries potentially great rewards. Most days we don't consciously choose to face any particular fear with intention. We go about our business, mostly following a routine that keeps us in our comfort zone. Getting up each day with the intention of taking those fears head-on requires both determination and endurance.
Therein lies the exact purpose of this blog. I consciously created this space as a way to expose both my plans and associated feelings for everyone to see. There can be no private failure for me this time. It will get done or I'll have to face everyone I know with an admission that I couldn't drive myself to gut it out. (Suddenly I'm considering whether or not I should take this blog down prior to publication!)
I've primarily written about positive things here or tried to present myself in a certain light. I'd venture that it's natural to prefer being liked as opposed to not, but we're all shaped by our life experience. Some may believe that it's better to be disliked or even despised as a form of personal protection. That's certainly not my belief and every day I get up to write is a commitment to the part of my personality that believes this: What I wish to share with the world is more important than what some people will think of it.
Today that commitment takes the shape of hitting "Post." Right... now. [smile]
During the majority of my previously productive writing period I was meditating regularly, not drinking any alcohol and I even attended a 10-day silent meditation retreat. None of those things have been true since I took that contract work. Writing in-and-of itself implies a certain level of connection but what I'll call "spiritual writing" requires an even deeper level by comparison. Why not simply go back to doing all the things that led to some level of productivity? Trust me, that's a question I ask myself often. Anyone that's meditated (or tried to meditate) knows that there's some kind of natural resistance to it. Perhaps its best described as synonymous with "Why do we keep eating when we claim we want to lose weight?" The answer is our body has programming to strongly encourage us to eat. Similarly, there's some kind of programming that resists doing certain things... even if we know that they're good for us. Obviously, this type of programming is more mental than physical.
This once again brings me back to my mental resistance to completing this book. As with most anything, this resistance is based on fear. The fear in this case is knowing that there are two most-likely outcomes. Either this book will sell copies and gain attention or it won't. If it does gain any attention, it will likely draw some negative attention for its critique of commonly held religious beliefs. In that regard, it becomes a choice between the fear of failure and the fear of negative attention. Any resistance to completing it is a clear selection of the former. Better to fail at completion than expose yourself and your ideas to the world... or so the ego says.
Why take on such an endeavor if you have this kind of resistance to it? That's a great question and it's one I think requires an understanding that there exist multiple facets to our individual personalities. Each of us has numerous aspects to our being, various desires that are sometimes in direct conflict with one another. This doesn't seem to make sense at first, but it's an apt model for how we behave. In the example of dieting, there's the part of us that wants to lose weight and another part that enjoys eating and can't seem to resist too well when we're hungry. While the feeling of hunger may be more primal or base-level than a higher-level desire to lose weight, rest assured that fear is just as primal. Even if that fear is illogical in nature, which can be seen in so many of our psychoses.
Facing those fears is something that feels risky yet carries potentially great rewards. Most days we don't consciously choose to face any particular fear with intention. We go about our business, mostly following a routine that keeps us in our comfort zone. Getting up each day with the intention of taking those fears head-on requires both determination and endurance.
Therein lies the exact purpose of this blog. I consciously created this space as a way to expose both my plans and associated feelings for everyone to see. There can be no private failure for me this time. It will get done or I'll have to face everyone I know with an admission that I couldn't drive myself to gut it out. (Suddenly I'm considering whether or not I should take this blog down prior to publication!)
I've primarily written about positive things here or tried to present myself in a certain light. I'd venture that it's natural to prefer being liked as opposed to not, but we're all shaped by our life experience. Some may believe that it's better to be disliked or even despised as a form of personal protection. That's certainly not my belief and every day I get up to write is a commitment to the part of my personality that believes this: What I wish to share with the world is more important than what some people will think of it.
Today that commitment takes the shape of hitting "Post." Right... now. [smile]
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Reconnecting (Part 1)
There’s little denying we live in the age of social media.
For better or worse, it’s never been easier to track down old classmates or
acquaintances, with that trend only likely to continue. Interestingly, I literally
joined Facebook at around 3:00am one morning after I had an epiphany regarding
the title of my book while lying awake in bed. I still don’t consider myself a
heavy Facebook user, but I do actually check in somewhere before or after I
check the daily news feeds.
Gradually, my friend base grew and as people that I needed a high school yearbook to remember “friended” me, I started to think of the people I’d actually like to find. The most prominent was a friend from high school named Larry. We had been on the yearbook staff together and we had become quick friends after we met. Working on the yearbook could have easily been classified as the limits of my creative ability, but Larry is a true artisan. He fashioned murals for the school walls that live on in infamy in the pages of our high school memorabilia. I lost touch with Larry right after high school when I relocated to New Hampshire and had heard nothing from or about him since.
I figured I start putting some of my high school contacts to good use and pinged any other members of the yearbook staff that I could find on Facebook. (Obviously, he didn’t turn up when I searched for him directly.) Turned out that someone had crossed paths with him in the prior year and knew where he had worked. They provided his work phone number and when I reached a voice-mail service it specifically gave an option for Larry’s mailbox. I left a message… and didn’t hear anything for probably four-to-six months.
Turns out Larry didn’t work there any longer, but after all that time his former boss checked the voice-mails one day and forwarded my contact information along to Larry. Out of the blue, he finally reached me and we enjoyed a few catch-up phone calls and emails. I was so happy to hear that Larry had continued to express his artistic abilities both in traditional and secondary employment avenues. (Ironically, Larry actually was on Facebook, but even though I had Minnesota ties, his profile didn’t come up in my search. I think they need to hire a few more people from Google.)
My next visit to Minnesota didn’t happen for many months after that. It was going to be a short trip, primarily to attend my nephew’s high school graduation party. I figured since we’d primarily be in the Minneapolis area, we’d try to connect with as many old friends as possible. Well, it was a whirlwind three days where we had lunch on Friday with Pam Hawley and Chris Herman, graduation party on Friday night and family on Saturday. The next high priority visit was with Brian Blashack, a friend I’ve had since we started school. Brian’s a great guy and he recently mentioned how some of his co-workers bust his chops about still having a friend from grade school. “Who does that?!” they ask in bewilderment. Well, apparently we do, so it was important that we saw him and his wife, but equally important their three kids. Since everything but Sunday morning and early afternoon was accounted for, it seemed like it wasn’t going to work out as his daughters had a big soccer match that day. I didn’t think about it for more than a second before realizing, “I don’t care where we get to see you, so we’ll come to the soccer match to hang out and chat.”
That didn’t leave any time for Larry, which of course I was bummed about. After having finally connected with him after all these years, it seemed a shame not to get a face-to-face meeting in while we were back in Minnesota. Alas, I figured it would have to wait as there just weren’t enough hours in our visit. So on that beautiful Sunday morning as Meghan and I chatted with Brian and his wife Jodie, something in the distance caught my eye. It was a booth, of which there were many as this was a big tournament, that had a banner, “Larry’s Rare Air.” I couldn’t believe my eyes as I walked up to see Larry sitting right there, in the booth, of all places at this soccer tournament. To say it felt like serendipity was an understatement. I probably wasn’t close enough to more than half of the booths to be able to read anything on them… but this one was one of the closest to where we were standing. So even though we probably only had 20 minutes to chat in-between his manning the booth and us needing to leave for the airport, it was infinitely more than I thought we were going to get. It was a truly great weekend that couldn’t have been planned to go as well as it did… even though most of it was planned!
It’s such a great story and it does have a tie into writing, but I’ll end this entry here with a promise to post part two within a week!
Gradually, my friend base grew and as people that I needed a high school yearbook to remember “friended” me, I started to think of the people I’d actually like to find. The most prominent was a friend from high school named Larry. We had been on the yearbook staff together and we had become quick friends after we met. Working on the yearbook could have easily been classified as the limits of my creative ability, but Larry is a true artisan. He fashioned murals for the school walls that live on in infamy in the pages of our high school memorabilia. I lost touch with Larry right after high school when I relocated to New Hampshire and had heard nothing from or about him since.
I figured I start putting some of my high school contacts to good use and pinged any other members of the yearbook staff that I could find on Facebook. (Obviously, he didn’t turn up when I searched for him directly.) Turned out that someone had crossed paths with him in the prior year and knew where he had worked. They provided his work phone number and when I reached a voice-mail service it specifically gave an option for Larry’s mailbox. I left a message… and didn’t hear anything for probably four-to-six months.
Turns out Larry didn’t work there any longer, but after all that time his former boss checked the voice-mails one day and forwarded my contact information along to Larry. Out of the blue, he finally reached me and we enjoyed a few catch-up phone calls and emails. I was so happy to hear that Larry had continued to express his artistic abilities both in traditional and secondary employment avenues. (Ironically, Larry actually was on Facebook, but even though I had Minnesota ties, his profile didn’t come up in my search. I think they need to hire a few more people from Google.)
My next visit to Minnesota didn’t happen for many months after that. It was going to be a short trip, primarily to attend my nephew’s high school graduation party. I figured since we’d primarily be in the Minneapolis area, we’d try to connect with as many old friends as possible. Well, it was a whirlwind three days where we had lunch on Friday with Pam Hawley and Chris Herman, graduation party on Friday night and family on Saturday. The next high priority visit was with Brian Blashack, a friend I’ve had since we started school. Brian’s a great guy and he recently mentioned how some of his co-workers bust his chops about still having a friend from grade school. “Who does that?!” they ask in bewilderment. Well, apparently we do, so it was important that we saw him and his wife, but equally important their three kids. Since everything but Sunday morning and early afternoon was accounted for, it seemed like it wasn’t going to work out as his daughters had a big soccer match that day. I didn’t think about it for more than a second before realizing, “I don’t care where we get to see you, so we’ll come to the soccer match to hang out and chat.”
That didn’t leave any time for Larry, which of course I was bummed about. After having finally connected with him after all these years, it seemed a shame not to get a face-to-face meeting in while we were back in Minnesota. Alas, I figured it would have to wait as there just weren’t enough hours in our visit. So on that beautiful Sunday morning as Meghan and I chatted with Brian and his wife Jodie, something in the distance caught my eye. It was a booth, of which there were many as this was a big tournament, that had a banner, “Larry’s Rare Air.” I couldn’t believe my eyes as I walked up to see Larry sitting right there, in the booth, of all places at this soccer tournament. To say it felt like serendipity was an understatement. I probably wasn’t close enough to more than half of the booths to be able to read anything on them… but this one was one of the closest to where we were standing. So even though we probably only had 20 minutes to chat in-between his manning the booth and us needing to leave for the airport, it was infinitely more than I thought we were going to get. It was a truly great weekend that couldn’t have been planned to go as well as it did… even though most of it was planned!
It’s such a great story and it does have a tie into writing, but I’ll end this entry here with a promise to post part two within a week!
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
I Told Me So
So, I was back in the work force. Well, sort of. After a few days at my former-returned-current employer’s new digs, part of the agreement was I’d be able to work from home… on my own schedule. I actually do brag a lot, don’t I? Essentially it was a transition from writing for a book to writing ad hoc software material without a drastic change in venue. Although when I write for the book I prefer to go to a library or some other non-home location, while in contrast my home desktop computer is much better suited for development purposes.
If you’re an avid follower of this blog (and have an elephant’s memory) you’ll recall the details of how my former department sort of “evaporated” after I left in my entry Misfortune. This should trigger at least some confusion around how I’ve been asked to return to that same company as a contractor.
Short version, they had reduced their remaining staff to only essential day-to-day operations, of which most were displaced. This didn’t afford any flexibility when any necessary, out-of-the-norm tasks came about. Hence, my contract.
More importantly, I included in that same blog entry how I was “happy” that I had made the choice to leave and pursue the book instead of having that choice made for me. And now here I was making the choice to return, albeit on a temporary basis.
I never expected 10 weeks would be the duration of this agreement. There are always issues, setbacks and new requirements. I figured more likely it would be 16-20 weeks; using standard industry projections (always double the estimate.) That was all fine, I had expected it and quite frankly it was a good deal for me. The entire circumstance made me wonder if more of these opportunities might later appear. Enter the hand of fate.
In the first days of August, the same company that had assumed the operational and technological duties from my employer announced that they were acquiring what remained of the firm. My employer would be consumed entirely and become a part of the purchasing entity. While I do have relationships with former co-workers on both sides of this now merged equation, I felt that announcement signaled the end of this type of opportunity. Should something like this come up again, surely the joined resource pool would be able to find the necessary bodies to handle it.
This turn of events didn’t have the same impact as the original out-sourcing of my former department. That first domino was a surprise, but only because it happened much sooner than I predicted. A handful of us felt there was no way the company could continue in its previous structure, but felt it would take a few years before anything happened. That was the surprise. This last event however was far from a surprise and the only question remaining was “when?” The expediency didn’t shock me in this case.
On the more personal side, it did have the slightest of similar pangs to it when I thought about my involvement as the other shoe dropped. Nothing like the original announcement though. It was easier not to “blame myself” given I felt this outcome was inevitable. Perhaps that was still a little surprising, considering there I was back in their employment when the message seemed to be, “There’s no going back down this road.” For some reason, I didn't feel this was about me. (Wait, isn't everything?) It did however trigger some thoughts about interpretation.
Just as we decide what’s important to us in work and life, we assign the meaning to just about everything that happens to us in a given day. If a picture frame suddenly falls over on a table that no one is sitting at, it’s either a spooky ghost, a warm reminder from a lost loved one or just something you blame on someone else not standing the frame properly. Which one jumps to your mind first is more an indication of where your head is at than it may be of the “truth” of the situation. And that is the funniest part. We can have the same experience or be asked the same question, and as an individual person give different answers at different times. Perhaps something changed in us and now we see it differently. We went from one thing being the “truth” to something different being the “truth.” What’s funny is that we always “had the truth,” it just had a different form!
We feel that the truth always resides with us, but that obviously isn’t true if you step back to look. Even when we say, “Well, I was wrong about that before, but now I’m right,” how often do we truly consider that this context of “right and wrong” is also entirely in our head? Trying to step out of the realm of absolutes is the first step in realizing that this world is made up of billions of people making choices and assigning meaning. None of us do it the same… we don’t even do it the same from one day to the next. It should be our guiding principle when dealing with people we deem to be “wrong.” They have their own history and experience that led them to their choices and meaning. Even if we don’t agree with them, try to remember that you don’t even agree with some of your own choices of the past.
Then maybe it will be easier to cut them some slack the same way it is so easy to do towards our former selves.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
“Houston, We’ve Lost Contact.”
Happy New Year! And while I’m at it, Happy Easter, Happy Memorial, Independence and Labor Day, Happy Halloween and Thanksgiving, and Merry Christmas, Hanukah, etc. That covers most of the holidays that came and went since my last blog entry. I wish I could tell you that I’ve been feverishly writing this entire time… so absolutely absorbed in the task that I couldn’t be bothered with updating a blog. However the truth is just slightly less exciting.
I couldn’t possibly give a proper update on nine months of activity in a single blog entry, so my plan is to make several entries this month to both chronicle my experience as well as get back into writing mode. I closed my last entry with a quote about feeling hurried if you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do. Ironically that very much played into my 2011 experience. I may even delve into the unexpectedly deep end of “what you’re supposed to do.”
Just after my last entry, my wife Meghan and I embarked on a vacation to Australia. It was a fabulous two-week experience that we both had considered for many years. Finally our finances and available vacation time aligned in such a way that we could make it happen. I won’t detail much about the trip, but I will say a top memory was being in the ocean, not once but twice, in the very near presence of a whitetip reef shark. I couldn’t find any good pictures showing teeth, but I swear I saw them when the first one swam within about five feet of my shoulder while snorkeling. It’s also unfortunate that I didn’t know that they are rarely aggressive or that there are no recorded human deaths at the jaws of this particular type. It was basically a totally visceral, “Oh My God! That’s a Shark!” followed by rapid swimming in the opposite direction. Well, for the first five seconds at least. After I saw another snorkeler turn and give chase, I figured, “Hey, maybe it’s not hostile… or I can watch this guy get eaten!”
Upon returning from that trip, I only had a few weeks before I was scheduled to, well... take another holiday. This time it was the annual golf trip, which is usually around five days. This is starting to sound a little like bragging, but there’s a point to all this. During that two week non-vacation period while I was barely trying to get back to being an author, I was contacted by my former employer. They were looking for someone to do some contract work and my name came up. I can honestly say that my instinctive “no” response was only slightly less powerful than my reaction to meeting my first shark. They asked if I knew anyone and to get back to them. Of course, I could think about it too.
Now, having someone ask if you would like to earn some money, right in-between two tightly planned vacations, does make one start to think about what one “should” be doing. I shared the news with my wife before I really thought much about it and was still pretty convinced that there was no way I should go down that route. Meghan has been beyond amazing when it comes to supporting my efforts at writing and she’s never discouraged that pursuit. As it turned out, she was able to ask the most pragmatic of questions that hadn’t even entered the initial conversation with my work contact, “How much were they offering?” I indicated I didn’t know. “Don’t you even want to ask?”
And that’s how I accepted a 10-week contract offer that turned out to be closer to five months. It was literally an offer I couldn’t refuse. And while I don’t regret it in the slightest, it is nearly impossible for me to answer the question, “What should I have been doing?” On one level, if I believe this book is the most important thing I can be doing, how can that not be the answer? On another level, survival does require funding and securing more funds is sometimes necessary. Especially if you fly to the other side of the planet for sight-seeing. I guess I’m still too… unenlightened, to feel that I should skip those vacations to eliminate the need for additional income and thus stay on task.
Perhaps the best answer to what we should all be doing is, “We should always be living; Sometimes for ourselves, as often as we can for others.” Each of us decides how we meet those objectives and whether or not we succeed. Lest we forget that regardless of how we arrive at our determination of “What we should be doing,” we’re the ones that establish the answer. And we’re always free to reevaluate and rework those determinations.
See you here soon!
I couldn’t possibly give a proper update on nine months of activity in a single blog entry, so my plan is to make several entries this month to both chronicle my experience as well as get back into writing mode. I closed my last entry with a quote about feeling hurried if you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do. Ironically that very much played into my 2011 experience. I may even delve into the unexpectedly deep end of “what you’re supposed to do.”
Just after my last entry, my wife Meghan and I embarked on a vacation to Australia. It was a fabulous two-week experience that we both had considered for many years. Finally our finances and available vacation time aligned in such a way that we could make it happen. I won’t detail much about the trip, but I will say a top memory was being in the ocean, not once but twice, in the very near presence of a whitetip reef shark. I couldn’t find any good pictures showing teeth, but I swear I saw them when the first one swam within about five feet of my shoulder while snorkeling. It’s also unfortunate that I didn’t know that they are rarely aggressive or that there are no recorded human deaths at the jaws of this particular type. It was basically a totally visceral, “Oh My God! That’s a Shark!” followed by rapid swimming in the opposite direction. Well, for the first five seconds at least. After I saw another snorkeler turn and give chase, I figured, “Hey, maybe it’s not hostile… or I can watch this guy get eaten!”
Upon returning from that trip, I only had a few weeks before I was scheduled to, well... take another holiday. This time it was the annual golf trip, which is usually around five days. This is starting to sound a little like bragging, but there’s a point to all this. During that two week non-vacation period while I was barely trying to get back to being an author, I was contacted by my former employer. They were looking for someone to do some contract work and my name came up. I can honestly say that my instinctive “no” response was only slightly less powerful than my reaction to meeting my first shark. They asked if I knew anyone and to get back to them. Of course, I could think about it too.
Now, having someone ask if you would like to earn some money, right in-between two tightly planned vacations, does make one start to think about what one “should” be doing. I shared the news with my wife before I really thought much about it and was still pretty convinced that there was no way I should go down that route. Meghan has been beyond amazing when it comes to supporting my efforts at writing and she’s never discouraged that pursuit. As it turned out, she was able to ask the most pragmatic of questions that hadn’t even entered the initial conversation with my work contact, “How much were they offering?” I indicated I didn’t know. “Don’t you even want to ask?”
And that’s how I accepted a 10-week contract offer that turned out to be closer to five months. It was literally an offer I couldn’t refuse. And while I don’t regret it in the slightest, it is nearly impossible for me to answer the question, “What should I have been doing?” On one level, if I believe this book is the most important thing I can be doing, how can that not be the answer? On another level, survival does require funding and securing more funds is sometimes necessary. Especially if you fly to the other side of the planet for sight-seeing. I guess I’m still too… unenlightened, to feel that I should skip those vacations to eliminate the need for additional income and thus stay on task.
Perhaps the best answer to what we should all be doing is, “We should always be living; Sometimes for ourselves, as often as we can for others.” Each of us decides how we meet those objectives and whether or not we succeed. Lest we forget that regardless of how we arrive at our determination of “What we should be doing,” we’re the ones that establish the answer. And we’re always free to reevaluate and rework those determinations.
See you here soon!
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
"Aw $#~+!"
You know those moments when you say, “Aw, crap!” except you don’t exactly use the word “crap?” Well, my wife and I had one of those moments when she found my cell phone at the bottom of the washing machine after a full cycle. It was still powered on and the screen indicated it was in “repair mode,” clearly signifying something was wrong. I was amazed it still functioned at all. I immediately turned it off and removed the battery (as the repair screen suggested) and proceeded to bake the phone at 170 degrees for short periods. I probably could have left it in the oven for four hours or more, but I kept checking it to find that it exhibited different behavioral issues each time. After three attempts, each longer than the last, it was completely dry and only one telltale sign of its ordeal remained… one side of the keypad doesn’t light up. Please don’t try this at home (or use a microwave!) as I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and a magic washer, oven and phone. [smirk]
I know there’s an endless stream of jokes in that bit, my favorite being something to do with too many “dirty conversations,” but it got me thinking about how I manage information. While my wife was the one that put the pants with the cell phone in the washer, I was the one that put them in the hamper with my cell phone in them. Sure, checking the pockets is a reasonable safety measure… but so is removing your cell phone when you disrobe! It was clear to me that I wasn’t paying attention at that moment and voila, clean phone!
One of the struggles I’ve had with the book is how to manage the amount of information I’m trying to condense. I’ll be the first to admit that the style of book I’m attempting is above my grade level as a first-time author. I’ve also felt there might be a reason I don’t see too many books formatted the way I envision mine. At first I thought it was just a readability issue, with too much information being condensed the reader might get overwhelmed. Whether or not that’s true, it is certainly true that it’s also very difficult to arrange that much information and give it any kind of cohesion. Sure, I could make it sound like 15 book reports, all loosely related to each other, but that doesn’t make for very good reading does it? Well, not it my mind it doesn’t anyway.
My classical training in engineering and professional time in project management (and some inherent part of my personality) have always led me to break large problems into smaller parts. I have a book outline and chapter outlines and points of foreshadowing and reinforcement, but I struggle with keeping it all in my head. Without too much trouble I could tell you each chapter’s title and premise, but I can’t recall with accuracy what each subsection of each chapter is. It’s not that I’ve attempted to memorize these things, but I started to see the problem in not being able to maintain that level of recall when working in specific sections. If I can’t remember what’s been written earlier or is coming later, I’m liable to duplicate material that’s already there or intended for another location. Then if the flow gets disrupted by this and I have to omit or relocate something, there’s plenty of rework to fix it all.
I seem to be breaking down between the sub-outline and actual writing step. A lot of what I write (that's passable as writing anyway) comes with at least a little inspiration. It doesn’t necessarily come from looking at a sub-outline and realizing, “okay, here’s what I’m going to write in this exact planned location.” So sometimes I let it flow with no regard for what’s intended and the results are usually decent. Sometimes I can just modify the outline to match the output, but other times it’s clear that while what I wrote is interesting it often transitions too fast. Tying two ideas together quickly might work in a blog but perhaps not so well in a book (like jumping from washing cell phones to information management.) So in an effort to shrink my problem, I detailed each paragraph within a sub-outline to see how it flows without having to read multiple pages. This also made it easier to “keep it in my head” and may ultimately serve as the tool for me to actually memorize and visualize exactly how each chapter is going to flow. For as long as this is taking, I should have the entire thing committed to memory word-for-word when I’m done!
This all got me thinking about information in general. In our current age of information, we have access to more details than ever before. What seemed like science fiction when I was a child becomes reality with each passing year. Today you can literally hold access to more books in the palm of your hand than they have assembled in any single physical library… and I’m not talking about a fistful of library cards. I’m talking about e-readers that can access and download over 800,000 titles, with over a million on the horizon. While that may be driven by fictional writing, there’s an enormous amount of technical and scientific information available as well. While I can recall a lot of things I’ve learned about gathering and parsing details, I don’t remember classical training on disregarding information based on relevance. I’m sure there was some, but I still get the feeling that “learning to prioritize” is more a life lesson than something we bother to teach formally. And why is that?! I’m sure whatever it was that was bouncing around in my head when I left my phone in my pocket was less valuable than the cost of having to replace my cell phone. Call me crazy. It’s easy to say, “Focus on what you’re doing” but unless we’re really taught how and practice that learning, “Aw craps” are bound to happen.
It all seems like too much to manage, right? Well, you can’t make this up. Here’s the quote I received this morning from my “Quote a Day” service:
Be well!
I know there’s an endless stream of jokes in that bit, my favorite being something to do with too many “dirty conversations,” but it got me thinking about how I manage information. While my wife was the one that put the pants with the cell phone in the washer, I was the one that put them in the hamper with my cell phone in them. Sure, checking the pockets is a reasonable safety measure… but so is removing your cell phone when you disrobe! It was clear to me that I wasn’t paying attention at that moment and voila, clean phone!
One of the struggles I’ve had with the book is how to manage the amount of information I’m trying to condense. I’ll be the first to admit that the style of book I’m attempting is above my grade level as a first-time author. I’ve also felt there might be a reason I don’t see too many books formatted the way I envision mine. At first I thought it was just a readability issue, with too much information being condensed the reader might get overwhelmed. Whether or not that’s true, it is certainly true that it’s also very difficult to arrange that much information and give it any kind of cohesion. Sure, I could make it sound like 15 book reports, all loosely related to each other, but that doesn’t make for very good reading does it? Well, not it my mind it doesn’t anyway.
My classical training in engineering and professional time in project management (and some inherent part of my personality) have always led me to break large problems into smaller parts. I have a book outline and chapter outlines and points of foreshadowing and reinforcement, but I struggle with keeping it all in my head. Without too much trouble I could tell you each chapter’s title and premise, but I can’t recall with accuracy what each subsection of each chapter is. It’s not that I’ve attempted to memorize these things, but I started to see the problem in not being able to maintain that level of recall when working in specific sections. If I can’t remember what’s been written earlier or is coming later, I’m liable to duplicate material that’s already there or intended for another location. Then if the flow gets disrupted by this and I have to omit or relocate something, there’s plenty of rework to fix it all.
I seem to be breaking down between the sub-outline and actual writing step. A lot of what I write (that's passable as writing anyway) comes with at least a little inspiration. It doesn’t necessarily come from looking at a sub-outline and realizing, “okay, here’s what I’m going to write in this exact planned location.” So sometimes I let it flow with no regard for what’s intended and the results are usually decent. Sometimes I can just modify the outline to match the output, but other times it’s clear that while what I wrote is interesting it often transitions too fast. Tying two ideas together quickly might work in a blog but perhaps not so well in a book (like jumping from washing cell phones to information management.) So in an effort to shrink my problem, I detailed each paragraph within a sub-outline to see how it flows without having to read multiple pages. This also made it easier to “keep it in my head” and may ultimately serve as the tool for me to actually memorize and visualize exactly how each chapter is going to flow. For as long as this is taking, I should have the entire thing committed to memory word-for-word when I’m done!
This all got me thinking about information in general. In our current age of information, we have access to more details than ever before. What seemed like science fiction when I was a child becomes reality with each passing year. Today you can literally hold access to more books in the palm of your hand than they have assembled in any single physical library… and I’m not talking about a fistful of library cards. I’m talking about e-readers that can access and download over 800,000 titles, with over a million on the horizon. While that may be driven by fictional writing, there’s an enormous amount of technical and scientific information available as well. While I can recall a lot of things I’ve learned about gathering and parsing details, I don’t remember classical training on disregarding information based on relevance. I’m sure there was some, but I still get the feeling that “learning to prioritize” is more a life lesson than something we bother to teach formally. And why is that?! I’m sure whatever it was that was bouncing around in my head when I left my phone in my pocket was less valuable than the cost of having to replace my cell phone. Call me crazy. It’s easy to say, “Focus on what you’re doing” but unless we’re really taught how and practice that learning, “Aw craps” are bound to happen.
It all seems like too much to manage, right? Well, you can’t make this up. Here’s the quote I received this morning from my “Quote a Day” service:
- The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else -- we are the busiest people in the world. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
Be well!
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Same Horse, Different Saddle
I’m pretty sure just about everyone is familiar with the phrase, “back in the saddle.” After traveling for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, squeezing a ten-day retreat in the middle and polishing it off with New Years, productivity had almost become a distant memory. Like so many, I leveraged the new beginning of our latest “January 1st” to climb back into my writing chair with renewed focus.
Truthfully though, there are tangible differences in how I feel about my writing and my life that can’t be attributed to the new calendar complete with picturesque waterfalls that now graces our ‘fridge. The effects of my retreat experience still linger in the form of having new priorities and wider viewing angles. While I’ve avoided the details of that experience to the point of almost complete abstraction, there is one thing that permeates how I approach almost everything now. “How does this really matter?” is something I ask myself repeatedly each day. I’ve also come to understand that each of us will answer that question differently with each situation… sometimes based on our present mood! When we sit back and truly witness the thoughts we entertain and what we worry about, these things often don’t hold up well to intense scrutiny. They start to break down under the pressure of “is this really important?”
Invariably however we come across the deeply ceded memories that rage against the idea of being insignificant. This one is just “too big” or that one had “such a negative impact on me” that we’re not willing to write them off as “unimportant.” I understand this as I've seen it in myself. For those things, I’ve taken the tact that what is most important is finding my way past them. There are loads of books on how to deal with painful memories and forgiveness; I’ve even read some of them. Whichever technique we use is almost insignificant compared to the necessity of working at it. For me, the retreat gave me an appreciation that we all experience pain and unfortunately those same experiences shape who we become… if we allow them to. I’ve taken on the opinion that whomever we find disagreeable or unloving possesses their individual set of issues which have yet to be exorcised. Or the reason we find them disagreeable is they touch a nerve associated with one of our own unresolved pains! In either case, I find the work resides with me. Either I’m not addressing my issues or I’m not seeing how they’re simply responding to their own issues. Seeing it this way shifts the focus away from forgiveness and more towards compassion. The final hurdle (for me) presented itself as a resistance to being compassionate toward certain individuals or circumstances.
How does this all relate to writing and saddles? (I always seem to be pushing the envelope as to what qualifies for a “blog about writing.” [smile]) I’ve taken a less rigid approach when considering what to say and even what needs to get done. I’m aware now of my objectives to both write and take the necessary steps to let go of my past. They happen to be interrelated in my case, especially given how authentic I feel you must be to write about true spirituality. So if I feel there’s something I need to do to unravel my past, I plan and execute the steps to achieve that. If I’m meditating and all I can think about is writing I step away and start writing. The meditation chair will be there when the writing is done, and vice versa. So my writing saddle is quite a bit softer than it was before, yet it’s still guiding me through the miles I need to scribe.
By way of learning to be compassionate towards others, it’s rubbed off a little bit when dealing with myself.
Truthfully though, there are tangible differences in how I feel about my writing and my life that can’t be attributed to the new calendar complete with picturesque waterfalls that now graces our ‘fridge. The effects of my retreat experience still linger in the form of having new priorities and wider viewing angles. While I’ve avoided the details of that experience to the point of almost complete abstraction, there is one thing that permeates how I approach almost everything now. “How does this really matter?” is something I ask myself repeatedly each day. I’ve also come to understand that each of us will answer that question differently with each situation… sometimes based on our present mood! When we sit back and truly witness the thoughts we entertain and what we worry about, these things often don’t hold up well to intense scrutiny. They start to break down under the pressure of “is this really important?”
Invariably however we come across the deeply ceded memories that rage against the idea of being insignificant. This one is just “too big” or that one had “such a negative impact on me” that we’re not willing to write them off as “unimportant.” I understand this as I've seen it in myself. For those things, I’ve taken the tact that what is most important is finding my way past them. There are loads of books on how to deal with painful memories and forgiveness; I’ve even read some of them. Whichever technique we use is almost insignificant compared to the necessity of working at it. For me, the retreat gave me an appreciation that we all experience pain and unfortunately those same experiences shape who we become… if we allow them to. I’ve taken on the opinion that whomever we find disagreeable or unloving possesses their individual set of issues which have yet to be exorcised. Or the reason we find them disagreeable is they touch a nerve associated with one of our own unresolved pains! In either case, I find the work resides with me. Either I’m not addressing my issues or I’m not seeing how they’re simply responding to their own issues. Seeing it this way shifts the focus away from forgiveness and more towards compassion. The final hurdle (for me) presented itself as a resistance to being compassionate toward certain individuals or circumstances.
How does this all relate to writing and saddles? (I always seem to be pushing the envelope as to what qualifies for a “blog about writing.” [smile]) I’ve taken a less rigid approach when considering what to say and even what needs to get done. I’m aware now of my objectives to both write and take the necessary steps to let go of my past. They happen to be interrelated in my case, especially given how authentic I feel you must be to write about true spirituality. So if I feel there’s something I need to do to unravel my past, I plan and execute the steps to achieve that. If I’m meditating and all I can think about is writing I step away and start writing. The meditation chair will be there when the writing is done, and vice versa. So my writing saddle is quite a bit softer than it was before, yet it’s still guiding me through the miles I need to scribe.
By way of learning to be compassionate towards others, it’s rubbed off a little bit when dealing with myself.
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