Collection of unrelated thoughts

 

• To penetrate one's own motivations to the depths. Alan Watts.  This is a fascination of mine.  Fully Complete understanding of how I operate.
• When I look back over this chunk of my life I want to remember all of the little details and tweaks that I did to this house and to the people and myself and my total environment to reshape it into a better place a better healthier place for me and my family.  
• A great was to start a day that is not already pre-occupied is to go through the day tweaking routines and pattens and removing obstacles that are in my way which can make things run more efficiently. Learning to take the time to fix those issues sooner rather than later has been key to my improvement.  If I see something not working, I try to fix it as soon as possible as there are cumulative benefits that will be retained by starting early.  This doesn't have to be big.  It can be as simple as putting clothes, furniture etc where it is easiest to obtain which maximizes efficiency. By creating a frictionless environment to start the day, this sets the right tone for the day  and increases the chances of success however you define it. 
• One of my biggest skillsets and strengths is my ability to be aware of how good I can do things and how efficient I can become and do things that some people take longer to figure out.   I can work more efficiently and work smarter rather than harder and I've always been able to dfo that.   This is part of the reason it was so discomforting for me when I was sick as I was out of my element and out of control.
• Somehow along the way I stopped Focusing on being academic.  When I was in university I was very interested in how the world worked and somehow I got off track by the rat race and into cyclical patterns to pay the bills and I find I'm now rediscovering my love of academia, the way things work and why we think the way we do as well as how we interact.  
• Could I write a book of short stories?  Should I?

December 11 - A day to remember

 

Andrew would have been 30 yesterday.  December 11, 1992.  What a crazy trip it has been since then.  We were so young.  So naive.  So scared.  So innocent.  So pure.  So unprepared.  So determined to prove we were adults and could take on the world.  And we did.

I struggle with the realization that no one gets to live a great 85 year life without bumps and bruises along the way, even though this is what we all seem to strive for.  Give me a good a long life, a happy, healthy family and a feeling of peace and love at the end of the day.  Should be simple, right?  I mean, we all want this, so why can't we give it to each other?  What gets in the way?  In the end, we settle for whatever is handed to us and rationalize why this was best anyway.  So since we settle anyway, do we settle for the world as it is or do we work toward the world as it should be?  Home is where you don't need to prove anything to anyone.

We're all like puzzle pieces that have developed a defined puzzle shape around us.  Those defined edges fit naturally together and are difficult to put back one they have come apart.  They now have sharper edges and don't fit properly where they used to.   New boundaries and pieces need to be added and removed to develop a new fulsome puzzle which better represents the current reality of the world around us.  

A dangerous combination of smooth and reasonable

• One of my favorite things is when I am able to catch Cheryl off guard.  She thinks so much in her head and has pre-thought out ideas, so it is always nice when I can catch her off guard and help out in a way that she was not expecting.  It is a good realization that we all need to realize that others have unique perspectives outside of our norms that might help.  It is also good to keep people guessing and not be predictable. I think that this really helps keep things fresh as part of the reason we're still together though all the good and bad over the years.
• It is amazing how old habits stay with you.   I ran into an old boss at around 3 o'clock in the afternoon and he commented that I must be taking a late lunch.  This is a boss that I had 25 years ago who has long since retired, but I still felt the need to rationalize to him why I was there.  Meanwhile, he was simply making conversation. 
• It doesn't have to be top of the charts just fucking write some shit already.
• People and nature level up all of the time.  Examples of this in nature are grass cgrowing through cracks and finding a way when it seems impossible; birds finding ways to break nuts on the street;  fish adapting to polluted waters.  The world is constantly in flux but it is so slow to move and we are are a mere tiny little shell of an existence here able to see such a tiny little piece of the full picture that it sometimes seems like it's standing still but the world is  constantly ever-changing and ever-evolving regardless of our will.  As humans we should enjoy the limited time that we're here
• I can admit now that I was driven not just by Logic but by some reflexive wish for other people's approval too when I was a kid I quietly basked in the warmth that floated my way anytime ~Michelle Obama
• This may be the fundamental problem with the caring a lot about what others think is it can put you on the established path an keep you there for a long time maybe it stops you from swerving from ever considering the swerve because what you risk losing in terms of other people's high regard feels too costly
• Quote about Barack Obama ~ he was breezy in his manner but he was powerful in his mind; he was a deadly combination of smooth and reasonable. These are vibes that resonate with me.

Efficiency Abounds

I finally got frustrated with my fat fingers and uncooperative keyboard on my phone and downloaded a text-to-voice app so I can dictate my thoughts and send them to myself.  Re-examine them and then post some of the better ones here to remember down the road.  Here are a few of my thoughts over the past week or so.  

• I had to deal with all of the obstacles in my way before I could move forward in my growth
• I spent a lot of time in my youth trying to prove that I was as good as everyone else.  Now that I'm older I realize it's better to check in with everybody else both to see what they're doing ok.  I am on par if not better than most of my peers and in the end it doesn't matter anyway as I am on my own journey. 
• I should make sure to check in to ensure others are doing ok as well as sharing information that I have learned on my journey.  
• Interesting idea that we follow patterns and once we start fresh all over again and we,  without realizing how or why, we end up making the same choices,  same decisions and ending up in the same place.  This could be transformed into a story idea or song,  could be partly my own life experience now through after my health scare I feel like.  It is also a universal experience that others can related to. 
• When I was young, I spent a lot of time figure out who I was.  I knew I was different and I liked thinking outside of the box.  It made me feel special.  I remember writing down a lot of lists and notes and thoughts and I am glad I did because now I can look back over some of these old memories.  Then I got out of the habit of doing that I got out of the habit of self-discovery as I locked into raising a family and didn't really think about me very much.
• So now I'm really in self-discovery mode and have been for the last couple years real refreshing to be back on track to remember who I was and excitement about where I will go now that I have rediscovered my journey.
• In the process of letting go of everything that was not helpful to me, Catholicism was one of the first things to go.
• Human Nature - Man's desire for permanence is a cause to a lot of human suffering and misery.  We are only here for a short time and it is arrogant of humanity to think we understand what's going on in the tiny blip that we've been here.
• Michelle Obama's book - Becoming - "Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result.  It is vulnerability that breeds with self doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear."
• Any good feelings or good work that I do is compounded when it starts early in the morning as it gives it more of a chance to percolate all day long and it spirals into better and better and more exponential value so it is best to start the day as good as you can because that maximizes the potential for the rest of the day
• It isteresting to Look Backwards on our decisions particularly those decisions that didn't go the way we expected them to understand if it was obvious it would not turn out well or whether there was something we could have done differently.  
• In life you have to control what you can
• Over the years I think I skipped some kinds of coping mechanisms and coping strategies so when bad things happened I wasn't fully able to process them.  Now I've been filling in those gaps and I appear to be in a place where regardless of what's going to happen I have strategies in place to deal with them;
• Worry is better against yourself and I want to "Bet On Yourself" - BOY.  Also believe in yourself, be yourself, betting on yourself bedding against yourself.  I am really trying to lock in on the idea that when I worry (particularly at night) I re-focus on knowing that I can handle whatever situation comes my way so there is no need to worry about it.  I will handle it when the time comes.  I am betting on myself. 
• TV quote - "After my injury I learned that I needed to make stress my friend and understand it better."
• You never learn what you're capable of love if you avoid all risk 
• Who cares what the process is as long as the result is what you want it to be. In other words in other words don't question how you got there just appreciate that you did get there.
• I need to start putting some of these words into action rather than just writing them down take the top few and really build on them.
• A Friend once told me that the bad was good and the good was Grand.   how he knew I'll never know and I'll never completely understand? Poem response
• I have followed the rules of the game until the rules changed, and then there were no more rules, then there was no game there was only you
• If you sit back and passively go through life, you will not end up where you want to go. You have to actively make decisions about your interactions with this world, your relationships, your working environment and how we live on this Earth.
• Great line about life. I look back at all the times I wasted having good times.