Monday, August 08, 2005
Mike here. I thought I'd write a little bit from the heart for all you folks out there who care to read. If it's just pictures you want, come back soon.
I'm waxing a bit introspective tonight. I'm really starting to feel how fatherhood, marriage, the rapidly approaching "three oh", are all forcing me to adapt and thrive in new ways.
In general, there are two concepts which are completely new to me, without which I would be an unproductive, unsuccessful wreck by this point in my short career as a Dad/Husband. They are:
time management
mid to long-range planning
These both correlate to the fact that I am more interested than I ever have been in setting clear, attainable goals for myself. This may not seem like such a really big deal, but it runs contrary to the way I managed my life as a bachelor.
Until I was perhaps 25 years old, I'd always felt that:
I could probably take anyone in a fight if I had to
setting goals was "synthetic" and contradicted the way I wanted to live my life.
The latter perception probably had it's roots in the garden of liberal thought: graduate school. I had begun a process of self-exploration that led me to feel that the most natural way to perceive my life was most similar to the way water flows in the presence of gravity. I've always been fascinated with water, and the life that resides within it's drainage on this earth, so this philosophy really resonated with me.
Now, it doesn't take a Newton or a Feynman to notice that water doesn't flow uphill, against gravity. It just naturally finds the most efficient path towards the ocean and flows through it's course. With a hundred thousand networked digital computers to simulate liquid water, one could not plot a more effortless course accross a given landscape. Water is an analog computer of infinite processing power.
When I became a Husband, and then later a Dad, I found myself having to make more and more decisions. Not alone, of course, my wife Angela and I make decisions together. But still, these decisions had to get made, and that required effort and planning on mine, as well as her part. Planning is best done when related to specific goals, and setting goals felt like asking the "flow" in my life to reverse and head back up the hill.
At first, I felt like having to plan and make important decisions was contrary to my interest in a life which "flowed". But then I started to realize that the decisions you make can set up the initial conditions which permit or prevent the "flow" in the first place. It was as if the decisions were points in the stream where some added potential energy, combined with a direction, would help the water to start a new course: one that flowed even more beautifully than it's previous path. The equivalent in nature might be the way evaporation helps to lift the water back to the top of the mountain, where it can start to slither and slide through life's landscape. In my previous conceptualization of the flow of water, I was ignoring the source of energy for the flow in the first place. This was also before I started to hate paying income taxes.
So, I still believe strongly in the idea of a life that flows, but I understand that nothing flows without potential, and "flow" potential is directly related to the quality of your planning and the openness of your heart.
I am now drinking deeply of the Kool-aid of goals, planning, etc. Like anything I do, I tend to over-do the planning sometimes, and I lose sleep. I guess that's just part of who I am: obsessive. If I weren't obsessive (I like to call it "passionate" to dissuade those who would medicate my mania away), I wouldn't have made it through music school, I wouldn't have learned about technology, I wouldn't have learned how good it is to feel that you are really good at anything.
Incidentally, I started thinking about this whole "planning" thing for two reasons. Firstly, I was intrigued by a statistic. Secondly, Angela and I have begun to plan for our next big-headed poop machine.
The statistic is this: (supposedly) the 5% of people in this world that set, and work dilligently to attain, actual goals (goals which could be written down, for example, and managed like a project) are more productive than the other 95% of society combined. I guess studies have been done, and maybe someone has a link I can put up.
I now tend to despise little nuggets of pseudo-wisdom which people throw around at parties to encourage people to think they are cooler than they really are, but I am fascinated by that one.
Anyhow. I'm heading upstairs to bed now. I'll sleep better than I did last night. One of our goals is taking shape: Angela and I are looking ahead to our future and we like what we see. You'll just have to check back for more details in the future.
I'm waxing a bit introspective tonight. I'm really starting to feel how fatherhood, marriage, the rapidly approaching "three oh", are all forcing me to adapt and thrive in new ways.
In general, there are two concepts which are completely new to me, without which I would be an unproductive, unsuccessful wreck by this point in my short career as a Dad/Husband. They are:
These both correlate to the fact that I am more interested than I ever have been in setting clear, attainable goals for myself. This may not seem like such a really big deal, but it runs contrary to the way I managed my life as a bachelor.
Until I was perhaps 25 years old, I'd always felt that:
The latter perception probably had it's roots in the garden of liberal thought: graduate school. I had begun a process of self-exploration that led me to feel that the most natural way to perceive my life was most similar to the way water flows in the presence of gravity. I've always been fascinated with water, and the life that resides within it's drainage on this earth, so this philosophy really resonated with me.
Now, it doesn't take a Newton or a Feynman to notice that water doesn't flow uphill, against gravity. It just naturally finds the most efficient path towards the ocean and flows through it's course. With a hundred thousand networked digital computers to simulate liquid water, one could not plot a more effortless course accross a given landscape. Water is an analog computer of infinite processing power.
When I became a Husband, and then later a Dad, I found myself having to make more and more decisions. Not alone, of course, my wife Angela and I make decisions together. But still, these decisions had to get made, and that required effort and planning on mine, as well as her part. Planning is best done when related to specific goals, and setting goals felt like asking the "flow" in my life to reverse and head back up the hill.
At first, I felt like having to plan and make important decisions was contrary to my interest in a life which "flowed". But then I started to realize that the decisions you make can set up the initial conditions which permit or prevent the "flow" in the first place. It was as if the decisions were points in the stream where some added potential energy, combined with a direction, would help the water to start a new course: one that flowed even more beautifully than it's previous path. The equivalent in nature might be the way evaporation helps to lift the water back to the top of the mountain, where it can start to slither and slide through life's landscape. In my previous conceptualization of the flow of water, I was ignoring the source of energy for the flow in the first place. This was also before I started to hate paying income taxes.
So, I still believe strongly in the idea of a life that flows, but I understand that nothing flows without potential, and "flow" potential is directly related to the quality of your planning and the openness of your heart.
I am now drinking deeply of the Kool-aid of goals, planning, etc. Like anything I do, I tend to over-do the planning sometimes, and I lose sleep. I guess that's just part of who I am: obsessive. If I weren't obsessive (I like to call it "passionate" to dissuade those who would medicate my mania away), I wouldn't have made it through music school, I wouldn't have learned about technology, I wouldn't have learned how good it is to feel that you are really good at anything.
Incidentally, I started thinking about this whole "planning" thing for two reasons. Firstly, I was intrigued by a statistic. Secondly, Angela and I have begun to plan for our next big-headed poop machine.
The statistic is this: (supposedly) the 5% of people in this world that set, and work dilligently to attain, actual goals (goals which could be written down, for example, and managed like a project) are more productive than the other 95% of society combined. I guess studies have been done, and maybe someone has a link I can put up.
I now tend to despise little nuggets of pseudo-wisdom which people throw around at parties to encourage people to think they are cooler than they really are, but I am fascinated by that one.
Anyhow. I'm heading upstairs to bed now. I'll sleep better than I did last night. One of our goals is taking shape: Angela and I are looking ahead to our future and we like what we see. You'll just have to check back for more details in the future.
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