Gettin' 'er done. One month, one week till blast off. Chiggers.

I would say things have been a little tumultuous emotionally lately.

But in terms of life situation, everything is great, wonderful even. It's awesome being in the new house. It's so nice having time to work on the things that seem important to me. I'm surrounded by loving friends and family, and beautiful nature (though the chiggers are vicious.) I'm making real progress on a lot of important projects, among them organizing the house and my office, and organizing my brain and how I work. I'm about to start on the counseling/therapy program that I'm looking forward to.

It's important to recognize, that life can externally be great, but if you're not doing well internally, it only makes a small difference. I think people forget that and fail to work on their internal state, undervaluing the skill of happiness, gratitude, focus, being the master of your mind (rather than the servant or slave.)

Not saying I've arrived or anything, but I consciously spend time working on that goal and it pays big dividends.

In any case, even emotionally, things are still good. But with hiccups. Perhaps you'd like to know more but I think it's a bit too personal for a blog, especially when others are involved. I may be ok divulging myself but other people have a right to their privacy.

Moving on, I'm feeling the approach of the masters program. August 23rd it starts with my orientation and classes start the week of August 28th. That is now less than a month away! And half of that time will be traveling. I am working hard to make sure my ducks are lined up in the various areas of my life before that time comes. I'm taking three classes this semester, which is the max they allow, and they say it can be up to 10 hours per class, including coursework. 30 hours per week is half-way between full-time and part-time work, so it's going to be significant. But now is my best chance to grind it out, while I have so few other obligations. Once kids come along that will probably not be as feasible.

Here's a list for you, because lists are fun.

House repairs:

-replace half-broken toilet seats

-replace broken A/C unit

-replace broken gutters

-fix kitchen pipe freezing problem (before winter comes)

-fix broken picture window frame

-put in fence so deer don't eat everything to nubs

-fix fireplace so it works (add energy efficient insert?)

There's probably more, but that's just off the top of my head. I'm not sure I'd call the house a fixer-upper, as it was move-in ready, but there sure were a lot of maintenance stuff that got deferred, along with some weird design decisions. The backyard patio is surrounded by not one but two a/c units, making it hard to talk when they're on, and there are three separate HVAC systems in the house. On the plus side, the redundancy is nice if one of them breaks. On the minus side, more things to break, and replace, and maintain, more A/C units outside, and more furnaces inside. I suspect it's not energy efficient either.

Is anyone else noticing that it's hard to get handyman/construction help these days? Even the people that other people recommend against are booked out, and many of the good people won't even pick up their phones. Maybe this is a small town problem? Thankfully Suzannah is a charming people person with deep connections from living here basically her whole life, so often she knows people personally who can help, and who are willing to because they know her.

OK, that's all for now. Let's see how much I can get done! 💪

Some simple details of life, July 2023

 This is the continuation of last post, though it stands alone just fine. I thought I should include some little specifics about my life, for your enjoyment and curiosity. 

Yesterday I went blueberry picking with Suzannah and a friend. Huge amounts of blueberries. Like two small buckets worth. I spent over an hour sorting through them, making sure the bugs had a chance to leave and pulling out the bad berries. 

Suzannah then went to our old house and picked bags of peaches, to keep the branches from breaking under their weight. Not ripe yet, but many had to be culled to protect those that remain. There's a life lesson in that I think. Hopefully they will ripen on their own. We will see.

One of our cats is licking her lower nipples so much that he has bald patches around them. Nobody knows why, but she's always been an odd one, so perhaps there isn't a good reason. The vet didn't seem to know either.

We saw an owl a few times last week during our evening walks, and heard it hooting once as well. very cool. It was absolutely silent when it flew away.

My computer was finally so slow that I took a good couple hours setting up a "read later" app and storing most of my unread open web pages in it so I could close them. That seemed to do the trick, and now my computer is running much faster.

This seems to be the solution to much of my clutter problem, especially digitally: I just store all the clutter somewhere simple and out of sight, but where I know I can access it when I need it. 

My computer is a good metaphor for me, in that my brain also runs more smoothly when this decluttering gets done. In terms of all the tasks I want to do, I've got a similar thing. I just stick them in a "someday/maybe" list, so I can fool myself into thinking they're taken care of, and then I don't have to think about or worry about them any more, but it's not as painful or difficult as having to decide I'm never going to do them.

Since it just amounts to a few slips of paper or digital documents, the cost of keeping it, as long as it's well contained and out of view, is close to zero.

I think it's a good idea for all the physical stuff in my life I don't know what to do with, but only as an interim step, since that actually does take up room and ends up being more work, any time I have to move, or fish something that I actually want out from among all the stuff I don't. Or when I don't have enough room for it all, and it ends up making my living spaces feel cluttered.

Oh, one more thing, Suzannah chopped off the tip of her thumb, and it was a little serious, so she's without the use of her left thumb for a while, and I'm doing the things that require two thumbs, or getting both hands wet, like dishes.

Gonna leave it at that. In fact, this was a long one, so I'll split it into two and be caught up with last week and this week.

Love, be well,

-Isaac

Systems. Experimentation. What's really important.

 I am 'working' my system, and it generally feels good. It feels great in fact, to have the time to work it. And often the working of it, itself, feels good, which is the whole point. Just feeling like I have a well-functioning system, that keeps track of all my commitments, is really nice. It's currently a very simple system, which was the point. One main list with all the stuff I've decided to do. I check that, decide what to do, and I'm good.

In reality, it's a little more complicated. Nearby to my one list are a few others that seemed useful. I've got one for email and one for shopping. I don't want to see those when I'm in work mode, since those things can be distracting to me. I prefer doing them in bursts, all together. eventually I will likely have a few others, but it's just a collection of some simple lists. And then a calendar that's got any upcoming specific date/time things, and reminders that I need to be reminded of at a specific date.

I was reminded yesterday though, as I was enjoying the beautiful sunrise outside during my morning sit spot, that what makes life worth living is that kind of thing: natural beauty, and the peace to enjoy it for a few minutes every day. Not having a super organized system and a clean room. Those things are very nice, and feel great, but it's not the same as the soul-deep satisfaction of reveling in God's creation and natural beauty, feeling deeply at peace and grateful. The habits and systems I'm developing are for the purpose of supporting more of those kind of moments, and if I lose track of that, the systems can become an end in themselves and end up getting overly complex. Like a governmental agency that's been given too much money and ends up wasting it on busy work, creating new categories of work and inefficiencies so that it "needs" even more money the next year, to manage all the additional complexities it created.

I can't spend my whole day at my sit-spot, at least not regularly, so I think I need a better idea of what kind of living constitutes that feeling, in my day-to-day life. Though I think in general the answer is simply true spiritual practice, making every act of mine a step on my spiritual path, in line with my deepest values and aspirations.

But a little more specifically, I'm thinking of my recreation. I can only focus intensely for so long each day. How do I rejuvenate myself in a way that feels soul-enriching, rather than just passing the time.

This is an important question I think, given the preciousness of time and life. Each hour, once spent, is gone forever. It should be spent well.

In other news, I have a few goals before graduate school starts: 

I want to get my systems up and running smoothly and strongly, so the extra workload doesn't throw them off, and to help me handle and keep up with the work, and basic life maintenance and life goals.

I want to get a hang of good note-taking skills, as I'll be using them a lot.

I want to do as much pre-work as I can, familiarizing myself with the website and systems, so I'm not trying to do that at the same time as the work, especially in the beginning as I figure things out.

Classes start August 28th, so that's only a bit over a month away. That's a fair bit of stuff to do in the interim, plus continuing to push-forward the general house readiness, getting everything tidy and put away. (I'm not even thinking about the kon-mari-ing getting rid of stuff part yet, that can be a slower, later project.

I also want to be doing continuing research and preparation for parenthood, since that's kinda likely some time in the next few years. (don't have control over when specifically.)

So, there's a lot to be done.

One of the main points I'm getting from the latest book I'm reading is, there isn't time to do everything, so in order to do some things well, and not be overwhelmed, I've got to be selective in what projects I choose to take on, and lot let it grow without end.

So far, so good, though I'm still in the experimental stage in terms of my systems. But it feels like a promising start.

I'll continue this in a seperate post, as it's going rather long.

to be continued...

Disorder -> Order

 This post is technically for last week. I've been working hard, and the house is looking nice, though still not totally done. It's in decent shape though, so I started working on my office. My desk looked like a recycling bin had been knocked over onto it, and it's now looking mostly crisp and clean. I'm loving it.

Also, I've taken the first steps towards spinning up my organization system again. I spent several hours over a few days, looking for helpful guidance, reflecting on what wasn't working with my previous system, and trying to design things better this time. My working hypothesis is that the organization system should be as lightweight as possible. If it takes too much time to maintain, then it won't happen when things get busy.

At the same time, part of my research gave me some interesting ideas for how to restart my system after it's gotten into disrepair without getting overwhelmed. I think the bottom line is there is no one perfect system, so you've got to have an understanding of the important fundamental principals, and then you can try out some good existing system, modifying it as necessary to fit how you work. And at least as important, modify the system after you start using it and get more information about what works for you and what doesn't.

I'm currently using one of the simplest systems I've come across that still seems useful. I'll try to add elements to it as necessary, but kind of like how I prefer to organize my office, it's nice to have the tools stored somewhere out of sight, and only put things in the drawers next to me when I find myself using them regularly. Then my organization develops organically, around what I actually need and do.

The simplicity allows me to focus, and the list allows me to prioritize and not let things slip through the cracks. And the regular reviews (which are still a work in progress) allow me to trust my system. Meaning, trust that when I write down something important for me to remember, I actually will see it when I need to be reminded of it.

Something I haven't done yet, but want to start (perhaps I'll do that next) is keep some kind of brief record of my attempts to do this. I feel like often people who talk about their wonderful productivity system, neglect to talk about the issues they had implementing it, how they overcame those issues, what it actually looks like after it's adjusted for the reality of day-to-day life, and what it took to go from disorganized to well-organized. I think it might be more useful to see some of the main points of someone's journey from not well organized to really well organized, rather than just the end result.

OK, that's gotta be all for today, though I'm planning on putting another one of these out ASAP so I don't get behind again on these. I don't know if my timeliness on these is a sign of good organization or poor prioritization, or cutting corners on quality :D

May all the beings in all the worlds be happy,

-Isaac