Category: Pathfinding

Trying to try

by MAÔ, posted in Begin Again

Making a commitment (again) to more consistent posting. For this, I’m batching. A set time slot for my writing, most of the week’s blog posts, in an hour or two time slot.

We’re given 168 hours each week to do the work. Assuming 56 hours (ideally) is spent in sleep, 40 hours in a 9-5 (or some iteration thereof), that leaves 72 hours a week for growth, health, restoration, and/or housework.

Devoting several hours each week to one growth activity, doing it at one time to maximize impact, is the batch.

An honest look at 2018

by MAÔ, posted in Begin Again

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:

  • With my subscription to Movie Pass in 2016, I saw numerous films throughout the year. After changes to its subscription model prevented me from buying several tickets, it was time to cancel though, and I’ve reduced the number of films I see so that I wasn’t spending so much on tickets.
  • I started the year working in telecommunications, and studying basic electric circuit design. I’m ending the year with a primary focus in fundraising and development.
  • In April I purchased my new car, a Toyota RAV4 Adventure Series. There was a notion to buy a small camper, and do some traveling, living and working from wherever I ended up. I haven’t gotten that far yet. To date, I haven’t even had a tow hitch installed.
  • A few shows under my belt – Evita, Oklahoma, and Little Women. I’m enjoying the character work that I’ve been getting, and would like to try my hand on camera again. It’s been many years since doing television work in Ft. Lauderdale.
  • During November my girlfriend and I did make the trip to Costa Rica. This was a quick jaunt, and I would have loved to have seen more. In the summer of 2019 we’ll be heading to Alaska for ten days, so I’m excited for that as well.
  • The remainder of the year was just so-so. Nothing dramatic, nothing earth-shattering (all this being on the personal front). Just a development year. It’s 2019 that promises change. As I said, my focus words for 2019 are Success and Harmony. There are no limits to what those mean, and as the Universe receives my intention, I know it’ll bring it back to me in the auspicious, Universal way.

So, fare thee well 2018. Greetings to a prosperous and healthy 2019.

Happy New Year!

I’m 35… Now what?

by MAÔ, posted in Growing up

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

Halloween, post mortem

by MAÔ, posted in Growing up

As I’ve said before, October tends to be one of my busiest months of the year. I like October. I like Halloween, I like a bit of the season change. And I like keeping busy, finding things to do during that month.

Here around Orlando there’s always plenty to do, and I visited Halloween Horror Nights at Universal, as well as the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot. Halloween Horror Nights has been an annual tradition of mine for around 20 years – since my mom used to bring me as a child.

I’ve been fascinated by the macabre for as long as I can remember. That equates to reading selections, horror film-watching (everything except torture porn), and delving into mythologies surrounding the frightening mysteries of the world.

That is in part why I like October as much as I do.

Why it’s so busy, though – this year I was wrapping a show, working another, and trying to make my way to HHN (about weekly) to get as much value as I can from my pass. I make myself busy, I’ll admit.

Last year there was a show as well, at least rehearsals for it, and also I was working in Georgia for several weeks. Now, my work is focused mainly on taking meetings and making contacts – so, not as bad on the actual schedule.

This Halloween, I also took a stroll down memory lane, revisiting holiday programs I had watched as a child: Witch’s Night Out; The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t; Tiny Toons’ Night Ghoullery. Halloween is good for tradition. Making a tradition of decorating, watching scary movies or family frightening entertainment, and giving out candy. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are good holidays for tradition, and the October season starts it.

Thus I keep in the tradition of having a busy October. A slower November. This week I fly down to Costa Rica, so the next update will be from Central America.

Back to Form

by MAÔ, posted in Pathfinding

It was 2015, and I started doing The Artist’s Way. What I was expecting, I’m not sure. I just knew that something wasn’t working for me.

That New Year’s, on a white board at work, I wrote this:

BACK TO FORM – 2016

That’s it. I believed that it would take me somewhere creative. Somewhere in touch with what I wanted, as well as what I needed.

A relationship ended. Another started. Depression hit. I left my job, travelled to Europe, and moved out of my house.

That was in the first six months.

Whatever siren song back to form was, it shook up every aspect of my life. All the cobwebs that were creeping in.

Sometimes, when you’re not really certain what you’re asking for – you get just that.

Back to form.

What we know

by MAÔ, posted in Pathfinding

How many of us really know anything? Steven Pressfield, in his book, Do the Work, says, “I was thirty years old before I had an actual thought. Everything up till them was either what Buddhists call “monkey-mind” (chatter) or the reflective regurgitation of whatever my parents or teachers said, or whatever I saw on the news or read in a book, or heard somebody rap about, hanging around the street corner.”

Most of our so-called “thoughts” are simply the processing of someone else’s information. Some input that we took in. It stands to reason that the wider variety of input we take in, the “smarter” we get to be.

Wouldn’t we all aspire to be faithful citizens? Of the nation, of the world, of our family, and of our community.

Whatever your personal definition of faith is, doesn’t that sound like something we’d want to aspire to?

Don’t we want to have faith in our community? To believe that we’re safe? That we’re free? That we belong…

I wish the real world would just stop bothering me

by MAÔ, posted in Ego, Pathfinding

Getting out into the world is a lot different now then it used to be. I think.

I didn’t really get out into the world much, until I reached adulthood. Sure, my family took me on vacation. I ran screaming from a log cabin (with no bathroom – it was housed in a communal facility down in a common area); went on cruises to the Caribbean and Mexico (and when I was a teenager, drank way too much); saw Niagara Falls (Canada side); and went fishing, clamming and crabbing in Long Island. I did some great family and travel stuff, but it didn’t prepare me for… well, adulthood.

There it is again. Adulting. Something that I think about now, in mid-thirties, much more than I did in my twenties. Life was going along swimmingly, at least until the year I turned 27.

That was the year of two car crashes, one causing anxiety attics that prevented me from driving for a time, and one taking a loved one and leaving me emotionally traumatized for many years. Six months after the second collision, a mysterious illness came on, and over four months I gradually lost mobility at an alarming rate.

January, the following year, it was diagnosed as RA. I drove my ex-girlfriend (very recently broken up) to Boston to live with family, and I returned to be laid off from my job.

I’d call that a low point in my life.

Picking myself up by the bootstraps (or, writing a couple of essays and going heavily into student loan debt), I enrolled in a Master’s program. The Doc put me on all kinds of meds, with some odd side-effects. (Drinking while on the medication resulted in extreme cases of aggression, where I thought it would be good to fight bars full of people. I also had liver enzyme issues, and was often pulled off and placed on new prescriptions.)

I’ve since forgotten what it was to feel in sound body, but at least I’ve not taken medications for over a year and still feel alright enough to move around. I travel now, not just the week-long vacations but month or more-long immersion. I love camping. And that moving around is bringing me to the question of what I should say no to.

Finding this bit of text in Tim Ferriss’s Tribe of Mentors led to this post, and I think I’ll be adapting it for my use:

“…the more clear I am about what my goals are, the more easily I can say no. I have a notebook into which I’ve recorded all sorts of goals, both big and small, over the last ten or so years. When I take the time to articulate what it is that I hope to achieve, it’s simple to refer to the list and see whether saying yes to an opportunity will take me toward or away from achieving that goal.”

-Samin Nosrat

Said another way, “Will this get me closer to my mountain?”

Adulting 101

by MAÔ, posted in Growing up

Had drinks with my friends following a birthday dinner the other night. I think there are things that you talk with lifelong friends about that you don’t talk to anyone else about. At least, not to the fullest extent.

  • I shared some issues I was having in my personal life, both emotionally and with a relationship.
  • We spoke about issues relating to money, and homeownership.
  • We talked about working, and having a business.

There are classes in school that teach so many facts and stats, but where are the principles of adulthood? Where do you learn how to file taxes, or make a budget? Where do they get off saying that student debt is okay, when really it’s the largest portion of debt now in the United States, and it places American students with outstanding debt on uneven footing.

Out of our discussion, we came to the conclusion that schools should have an actual class, and that life lessons in those classes become progressively more challenging each year. Budgeting, taxes, investing, business ownership vs. being employed, college vs. trade school.

No tests would be necessary, but each student must annually present on what they’ve learned, what they hope to accomplish, and a career path that interests them. Not an elective, like home economics or shop, but an actual dedicated curriculum spot for every student.

That is Adulting 101.

Credit where credit is due

by MAÔ, posted in Pathfinding

We beat ourselves up when we do something stupid. Make a mistake, or fail.

We forget that we are miraculous creatures. Able to think, design, build and imagine.

In the animal kingdom, failure means death. Starvation, or becoming a predator’s meal. Unable to find food. Not being able to mate.

Humanity has an amazing propensity for failure, for everything we think of can have a corollary error. Miss your goal? Failure. Not a passing grade? Screw up. Under target for sales? Blew it.

But we get to come back at it. We get to take those failures, and incorporate them into the knowledge of who we are and what we do. Failure is not death, not for us.

Failure is just one step on the path to success.

Sipping on gin and…

by MAÔ, posted in Pathfinding

I was clearing out some old files last night. I hard drive used for backups, old documents, scrambled writings, a ton of music, and pictures.

Some pictures made me happy. Some nostalgic. Others brought tears to my eyes.

Pictures are snapshots of a moment. Pictures may tell a thousand words, but they hide ten times as many. Because those snapshots of moments aren’t the moment themselves. They are representations. The moment was ephemeral, the snapshot a forgery.

In You Are A Badass, Jennifer Sincero says something like, “Focusing on the past is depression. Focusing on the future is anxiety. Focusing on the present is peace.” (Looking it up, she was quoting Lao Tzu.)

Though wonderful reminders, photos are the past. Even the ones your friends (and occasionally I) post on Facebook and Instagram. Lingering on them will only cause depression.

(The title comes from The Botanist Gin that I was drinking while clearing out folders. If you like gin, I recommend it.)