"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:

• 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)

Now I’m off to do what I ought to do.

Be well!

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.