Lots of changes over the past four weeks – job change, new ventures began, and plans coalescing.
I’ve been guilty of misusing my personal resources, and I’ve forgiven myself for that.
When the bulk of your decision making power is spent before you’ve started the real work, you’re wasting your potential. Minimize, reduce, and evaluate your value-adding activities.
I’ve filled out a lot of applications. Online mostly, though still some on paper. The online revolution and conversion was ushered in between the times that I was looking for work. In 2003 I fell into my first after high school job, which I don’t even recall if I filled out an application for. It was an office manager for a nonprofit, and until the office space we had was lost, I thought it was going okay. I learned a lot about business skills in that one-man shop, though maybe not enough.
After that, I started what could have been my first career I suppose you could say. Had I not resigned to pursue professional acting, maybe I’d still be there. It was a service organization affiliated with NASCAR, and while I have many problems with the way some of that went down, I can remember fondly my times at the track.
I think from there I learned that work should be fun. Could be fun, at the very least. I was a highly effective worker, and given increasing responsibility during my time there. (In five years, I received two promotions and was asked to handle several increasing complicated aspects of the job – mostly related to computer systems or point-of-sales.) And I had fun, mostly. When the crowds started slowing to the races, then concern gripped the corporatists – cut budgets, watch the bottom dollar, churn out the returns.
But we’re not robots. Not cogs that, if tightened, can produce two more widgets. (This theme has been coming up recently – the production of widgets.)
Long story short, when it was time to go, I knew it was time to go. The exact phrasing of my last meeting with my boss and my boss’s boss (Office Space anyone?) went like this:
My Boss: “It’s either you quit your outside activities and commit to this, or you should go somewhere else.”
Me: “I have my two weeks notice ready. Let me grab it for you.”
Now my outside activities were my first volunteer endeavors with community theatre, and I had requested a day off a week after the Daytona 500 to be involved with a professional production of an opera. Whether or not either of us were right or wrong is just a lot of conjecture, but we both did what we did.
I go by my gut a lot. Every job I’ve known it was time to leave, I went ahead and did it. Sometimes without a safety net. Thankfully, I’ve managed to land on my feet. (This time is a little harder, as I’m more keenly aware of the level of debt I’m carrying from my student loans.)
So when I go out and look for those jobs, and I come to a website where I am filling out over and over again the same information. Name. Number. Address. Work history. Education. Etc., etc.
Exactly why we have resumes. And, truth be told, nearly all of my jobs have come through people I knew, or people who knew those people. Not online applications. So what then is the point there?
When they ask you in their application (posted online, and responded to in the same way by every applicant) “what about this company makes you want to work here?” – the most likely honest answer is “if hired, you’ll give me a paycheck.”
Company culture isn’t bought into in an online application. And good companies will have trouble matching good applicants in that way.
Companies – if you want good workers (and to retain them), be different. Don’t be another online application for a hopeful paycheck.
Applicants – if you want to work for a good company (and do well), be different. Bring your talents to someone who will take those talents, and let you use them. Let you fail. And then help back up.
I wonder how many of us shape the life that we truly want. The sheer presence of choices in how we do our daily lives – jobs, housing, spouse or SO, children, etc. – a simpler time (maybe one or two-hundred years ago) was simpler to navigate.
Choice. I know I’ve written about choice before. But, it’s true that our brain can only handle a finite number of actual decisions per day. Higher weight decisions cost more of our choice capital than choosing between coffee and tea. But the more we can automate or days, the more capital we have to make the weightier decisions.
It’s not just work either. It’s health. It’s finances. It’s relationships.
I started watching the Marie Kondo series on Netflix. I had read the book some time ago, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I’m not sure if it was pre or post-shake up in my life. Surprisingly, that altered more than just my decision-making abilities. I digress.
The couple in the first episode have one minor relationship issues. Bickering. Picking at faults perceived in the other. The capital for choice is being used stressing about house, and poor decisions are made when addressing each other.
Limiting the mess, the clutter – freeing capital – allows more data to be processed from a framework of less stress. Less stress in itself frees capital, because the mind isn’t fighting the basic fight or flight choice impulse and hormone secretions. Freeing the mind from material restraints opens up your true potential.
It’s for this. Reason the Buddha taught that desire leads to suffering. Material possessions are as a rock in a bottle floating in the sea. After so many rocks, the bottle can no longer remain afloat. It is imperative that we mindfully cultivate our possessions, and use the choice capital we have in the most productive outputs possible.
I fail at meditation more often than I succeed. I do idle well. But doing nothing. That takes some practice.
For many months my meditation practice was an early morning activity. I would generally write my morning pages, then sit and focus on my breathing. Five minutes. Six. Ten. I think I made it to fifteen minutes daily.
The more outside concerns I let creep in to my day, the more difficult it was to focus on meditation. I began missing days. Both of breath work and stillness, as well as my morning pages. The past several months have been completely inconsistent – as evidenced by the frequency of my blog posts.
The outside world isn’t outside. It’s the world, and we are a part of it. It is the lotus blossom, and our job is to hold it in our hands. Each of us.
I’m reminded of a Saturday morning cartoon I used to watch: Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?” (now reimagined on Netflix).
Young detective Zack is sitting with a zen monk who is making tea. (This is from a memory of probably 20+ years ago, so it may be hazy). The monk is taking his time preparing tea, and Zack is being anxious. The monk tells Zack to meditate. He says there isn’t time. And the monk responds, “That is why you need it.”
Looking at my 2019 finances, I’m a bit less optimistic than I was mere weeks ago. One reason is that my healthcare deductible is increasing. Significantly. Like, from $60 to $350.
I set a goal in 2018 to discover what was wrong with me. Whether or not I actually had rheumatoid arthritis. All signs pointed to yes. I’m still off medication, which I’m thrilled about. Really, it’s been like two years.
When I was first put on medication I could barely walk. I used a cane to hobble around, and the time it took me to get out of bed was roughly an episode of The Price is Right. I hurt, and I was slow, and before the diagnosis, I thought I was dying.
The medication let me move comfortably again, but it had its own corresponding health issues. Fatigue (occasionally severe fatigue); responses to food that I used to enjoy – now they made me sick; lethargy; increased aggression for the first few months; and liver problems. They pinballed me through all different kinds of medication, trying to find the right cocktail.
So, not needing it and showing little signs of the initial RA diagnosis, I was certain that I had been misdiagnosed. But my bloodwork last year showed elevated inflammation levels conducive with RA, along with other markers. Long story short, better for me to keep my medical insurance.
Now, that’s one expense that increased dramatically. My work is mostly on a contract basis, so that expense comes out of pocket.
How does someone living in this day and age, balancing student loan debt, the rising costs of healthcare, and basic living expenses, make it? How does one become not only stable, but successful.
My first step is a budget. And with that cornerstone, I am hopeful that the bricks will fit securely.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge”
-Einstein
Intelligence is the ability to see things as they are. Imagination allows you to see things as they could be. Is it necessary to see things as they could be?
When the bird sees the twig, does it consider the look of its nest? Or, does it just know? Perhaps that is for the ornithologist.
A better question for me would be, is there a purpose inherent in imagining? And, are some more predisposed to it than others?
Recently I was speaking with someone about their daughter dating an engineer. He wasn’t much for the sense of humor, which the daughter valued highly. The engineer is a practical, oftentimes formulaic person. His no-nonsense approach to life and love could be considered a hindrance in the dating realm.
However, his imagination could rival even the greatest artists. Engineers exceed their limits by knowing precisely what those limits are. Consider the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, the skyscrapers of Balcom or Squire, or even the aqueducts of Rome. To see the lay of something so unique as to have never been invented before is the realm of imagination.
As Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka sang:
“If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it.
Anything you want to, do it.
Want to change the world?
There’s nothing to it.”
Quick note: Though this had started as a monthly posting, I’ve found the longer I waited the harder it got. My intention for the coming year is to post this monthly. So, good luck me!
Books Bought:
Books Read:
This will inevitably be a long, and somewhat frightening list. Admitting to the sheer numbers of books bought, attempted, settled into, or set down… It’s like the first step is admitting that there is a problem.
However, I have a love affair with books and would never admit that these purchases, nor the hours spent sitting, laying, or some manner of status in-between, with a book in my hands would be a problem. Mark Cuban is said to read three hours per day. Bill Gates plows through 50 books in a year. Though I don’t know off-hand how many I’ve read this year, I could look back through these posts and find out. (Looks to be 28. Okay, 2019 – Let’s aim for 30 books.)
Amid two productions that I was involved with (one a full-blown musical, the other a small, variety, Christmas cabaret); a week in Costa Rica; two bouts of illness (the first being a cold, and the second some sort of respiratory infection): work engagements, including two other productions, both running four weeks; a second job; a burgeoning Dungeons & Dragons campaign; and familial obligations for the holidays, I managed to put down a decent number of pages.
I’ve made a large chunk in RA Salvatore’s Drizzt saga – books 4-10 mostly in August and September. November, I read two of Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Saga books: Name of the Wind and Wise Man’s Fear. Wind was released in 2007, and I just purchased the Tenth Anniversary Edition from DAW Books, partly on the recommendation from a bookseller I’ve befriended through a work partnership, but also owing to the glowing review Lin Manuel Miranda gave the book, thoughtfully printed on the back face of the dust jacket.
“No one writes like Pat Rothfuss. Full stop. Read this book.”
It was only after buying the novel (some time later in face, perhaps a month or two) that I heard the first of several recommendations for ir through The Adventure Zone, the McElroy Brothers liveplay podcast on D&D, followed by several romps through other dice-controlled fantasy games.
His novella on Auri (a somewhat minor/important character from the first two books), The Slow Regard of Silent Things, is up next on my Rothfuss reading list.
I tend to bounce around when reading. I’ve fallen in love this year with the language of Sontag and Watts, as well as this past month with the essays of John Muir. I’ve got a shelf with them, also holding Emerson, Thurber, Whitman, Joseph Campbell, Karl One Knausgaard, Neil Gaiman, and Rilke. It’s the fluidity of language, and how words can be used to showcase more than just their definition.
“When I was a boy in Scotland I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I’ve been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures. Fortunately around my native town of Dunbar, by the stormy North Sea, there was no lack of wildness, though most of the land lay in smooth cultivation, With red-blooded playmates, wild as myself, I loved to wander in the fields to hear the birds sing, and along the seashore to gaze and wonder at the shells and seaweeds, eels and crabs in the pools among the rocks when the tide was low; and best of all to watch the waves in awful storms thundering on the black headlands and craggy ruins of the old Dunbar Castle when the sea and the sky, the waves and the clouds, were mingled together as one. We never thought of playing truant, but after I was five or six years old I ran away to the seashore or the fields most every Saturday, and every day in the school vacations except Sundays, though solemnly warned that I must play at home in the garden and back yard, lest I should learn to think bad thoughts and say bad words. All in vain. In spite of the sure sore punishments that followed like shadows, the natural inherited wildness in our blood ran true on its glorious course as invincible and unstoppable as stars.” John Muir, from The Story of My Boyhood and Youth.
They paint with words, and in the way that I can watch (and listen) to Bob Ross depict happy little trees, so too can I spend hours with these authors – absorbing their words in ways that just reading a sentence (or writing one) cannot accurately describe.
Then, there were the others… David Allen’s seminal work on time management and efficiency is a useful tool. But flowing from line to line it does not. I implemented a couple of his suggestions, but still find my workflow cumbersome. I’ll be resuming that endeavor and attempt to become more productive, now that we’re in 2019.
Sinek has a way of lighting a fire under your ass. “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. They don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Great advice. So, what is it you do, and why do you do it? (No, making money doesn’t count.) It’s been a process. I was introduced to Sinek’s work at a nonprofit conference and instantly felt its power. I don’t have a Mac because I think it’s a good computer (though I do). Dell makes a good computer, and I was on PC up until 2006. I buy Apple products because I believe in the image that they project. It’s a creative’s tool – and I learned Photoshop on it, oh, so many years ago.
This holds true for many things that I like to purchase – camping and hiking gear; automobiles; notebooks. Anything I use on a daily basis, or look forward to using in the future.
The books by Ferriss have similar effects, and I love deep diving into his work: books, blog; website; podcast. I don’t know that he has the life I would want, but he’s done a lot of the work that I would also like to do… if that makes sense.
I’m going to gloss over the purchase list. I did buy most of the Drizzt books used from a shop I really like, and several books were digital online items during the Christmas season. Obi Kaufmann’s California Field Atlas is one I’ve wanted since seeing it first released, and I finally picked up a copy. It led me to the Law’s Nature Journaling. Now, I can’t draw. I doodle geometric patterns from time to time, a la Paul Klee. But anything that resembles an actual thing, it’s all wrong. That being said, I thought that I would give it a try. I’ve made a few hikes out through some parks nearby, and started taking photographs and labelling plants for future attempts at watercoloring. We’ll see what happens.
And that’s about it for this. I recommend Rothfuss, Ferriss, Sinek, Muir and Watts highly, if you’re interested in those topics (fantasy, business, nature, and buddhism). Really, nothing up there was something I had to just set down. I fully intend to complete all unfinished books on this list.
Also, gifts of books were made this Christmas, and friends received copies of 4-Hour Workweek, The Jaws Log, and You are doing a Freaking Great Job. I received the Dark Horse Comics book on Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Creating a Champion.
I’ll let you know what I read this month sometime in February. Here we go, 2019!
This year, closing out today, has been what I would used to call, “Meh.” There were some ups, some downs, and then the mostly flats.
To the year’s credit, I did have more time on stage; rejoined the nonprofit world; made considerable effort towards getting out of debt (given the state of my student loans, that didn’t look like much – but I made progress nonetheless); worked on relationships with family, friends, and other loved ones; decluttered; and started new endeavors.
On the other side of the ledger, there was an overwhelming feeling of not accomplishing enough. Many of the new endeavors sat unfinished, or abandoned. Some money-making ideas didn’t pan out as hoped, and were laid to the side. A few of my writing projects got pushed to the back burner, and nothing got even close to completion this year.
Som highlights:
So, fare thee well 2018. Greetings to a prosperous and healthy 2019.
Happy New Year!
Welcome Christmas, come this way…
Christmas, oh Christmas.
A cold and desolate season welcomes you
to bring light, cheer, warmth and hope.
The Christmas-season is a belief,
more than it is a holiday.
More than the celebration of the messiah,
or the de facto creation of a religion.
Christmas is the embodiment of all love,
and charity becoming manifest.
That the most can provide for the least
to express nothing more than care.
There can be giving without gain,
Hope without loss,
Peace without harm,
And love without the expectation of reward.
When the Christians appropriated the
customs around the Winter Solstice,
they honored the themes of light;
of fire, charity and feasting.
Bringing about the new days,
each with longer hours of sun.
“The old has passed away.
Behold, the new has come!”
So Christmas, today and all days,
Fill us with the passion to remember love.
To remember charity,
and to provide for those less fortunate.
It isn’t in celebrating a day,
the 25th of December,
but celebrating the season
throughout the whole year that is Christmas.
For starters, here’s the chestnut from back in May: “By 35, you should have twice your salary saved, according to retirement experts”
Huh… Click the link to read all the Twitter responses. I don’t even know what to say to that.
What I do know is that, no, I don’t have twice my annual salary saved. As a matter of fact, I’ve actually cashed out two retirement accounts in the last ten years. One was to help pay for my M.A., the other to fund my first international travel excursion. (And marriage, but that’s a whole different saga…)
I am rebuilding my retirement accounts, utilizing Acorns and Stash. Is it a lot? No. But do I set aside money each month for my future? Yes. And that’s an important distinction.
There are many issues with growing up, being an adult, and living life nowadays. I’m not saying that there haven’t always been challenges. I know there has been. Parents having to walk up hill, both ways, in the snow to get to school.
But seriously, we now have more access to just about everything. Health care, fresh produce, jobs, instructional videos, housing, distant friends and family, etc. We gave up degrees of privacy, downtime, upward mobility, living within our means, and community.
Being 35 in 2018 is almost science-fiction compared to being 35 in 1918. Imagine what a 35 year-old in 2118 will experience!
So I’m left with the question – what will I do? What will I do with the next 35 years of my life? What will I become? What do any of us do with the time we have?
“There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.”
– Martha Graham
Michael's Musings 