Realizations. Important math. The wisdom of sleep deprivation.

 OK, finally I'm caught up with this post.

Yesterday, in my sleep deprived state, I had couple important thoughts. First: I'm much happier and more effective when I've had a reasonable amount of sleep.

Though another important thing that I'd learned earlier also helped me: even if I haven't had a reasonable amount of sleep, I can still function and get done the basic necessities of life. This is important as I was raised with an odd kind of guilt around going to bed late and not getting enough sleep, so that there was a meta-emotional level of fear and dread around not having gotten enough sleep. Like it meant I'd just sinned and God was going to thunderbolt my evil non-sleeping ways. And I was going to end up making some horrible mistake because of my tiredness.

The truth is, it's bad, but livable, and worrying about it just makes the day worse. Though being cautious is still a good thing. Like, don't operate heavy machinery, or drive when you're really sleep deprived, it is dangerous.

But don't put yourself through a guilt trip either. Most people never even think to guilt trip themselves for not going to bed early, that's kinda specific to my oddball upbringing, but it just means they've got other things they guilt trip themselves for. Maybe it's a thing related to Christian traditions? I don't know.

Anyways, realizations I had:

# 2: I can't wait for things to be perfect to live my life the way I want to or do the things I think are important. Life is just going to keep happening. Maybe I will get another period in my life where I've got a lot of free time, but I can't wait for that time to come. I need to be prioritizing things well, and eliminating the unimportant things, starting now.

I've got, like, a completionist tendancy. If I've got 10 things on my todo list, I want to get all 10 of them done, even if 5 of them are really not that important. It's like I've grabbed onto something, and I can't get myself to let go, even when I should. It's that story/metaphor of the monkeys with their hands in the big jars of peanuts, unable to get their big, nut-filled fists out now because the openings of the jars are too small. Indian monkey traps. The people who set the traps can just pick up and relocate the defeated monkeys, who think that something has grabbed them inside the jar, which is too big and heavy for them to move.

If those monkeys just let go of their fistful of peanuts, they could easily escape, but they just don't think to let go. They don't realize that's what's got them trapped.

I relate to those monkeys in a big way. All these things that I want to do. Good things, worthwhile things, things that will add something valuable to my life.

But in the final analysis, things that I don't really need, and are not really important to me. And because I have limited time, they are things that I cannot do, without crowding out more important things, which I then don't get to at all.

I think to an extent I've got a list of things that I think are really important, that I've been waiting to do for the 'right time.' I've got a list of less important things, that I want to do so they are out of the way, out of my mental space, so I feel free to spend a really good amount of time on these bigger, more important things.

Also, these more important things are bigger, longer, and so I won't see results on them for a while. Vs. many of these less important things, I can do relatively quickly, and be done with them. I get the satisfaction of completing something. Unfortunately, I have to ask myself if it was really worth doing those things at all. And this is a much trickier question to answer than it at first appears, because they are worthwhile things to do, when considered on their own. It is only when you take into account what you are NOT doing, BECAUSE you are doing these things, that the true cost of doing them becomes apparent.

Let's take a concrete example. I'd like to read all of the assigned readings for my classes. Rather than just the textbook, and maybe skimming the rest, if that. Maybe I'll find some good stuff somewhere I wasn't expecting it, that I can use later. Also I would like to have my home clean and tidy. It doesn't have to be perfect, but generally orderly and clean.

Let's say I don't have time to do both. And maybe, ultimately, my life would be better if I kept things in a basic level of cleanliness, vs. my life being pretty much unchanged, if I read 200 pages of targeted readings, or the full 500 pages, per week. If I say, "I will do both" and start with the readings, I don't get to doing any cleaning. I have the low grade stress of living in a messy unclean environment, and the only benefit to doing all the readings is a sense of completion and being able to check all the readings off my todo list.

That feels good, in the moment, but I'm only getting that temporary pleasure of being a good student and crossing off my reading list, at the cost of a clean environment. that's like + 2 - 5. +2 for completion. -5 for unclean environment. If I don't take into account the cost of that +2, I think I've just made my life better. But it cost me -5, because I didn't spend my time doing that.

Hope that's clear enough.

Realization #3

This was less of an 'aha' and more of a 'that's it, I'm not doing this any more.' It may have been born of my surly, sleep deprived state of mind, and is related to realization #2. As I sat in my office, exhausted, facing a huge pile of things to do (and a messy office) I just had the thought, 'that's it, I'm tired of all this stuff.'

Tired of the huge list of stuff I'm trying to do, tired of all the little bits and bobs I hold onto and thus have to organize. Tired of the intricate organization systems I've tried to do, both physical and mental, to try and make my physical and mental space more pleasant to live in. It's not worth the time and energy it takes to upkeep it. I just wanted to throw out all the complexity, consolidate it into simple, fast systems, and not spend any more time fussing about it.

Of course, even that takes time. But, at least let it take less time. I wanted to stop any fussing about details, or trying to add new complexities, and just keep things simple and quick unless it was something that I actually cared about. Something actually worth the time.

It was like I was seeing the true cost of all the stuff I had, physical and mental. And, due to feeling low on psychological resources (because I was sleep deprived) it made me just want to let go of it all. Whether that meant actually getting rid of it, or just sticking it in a box out of the way.

I think keeping some of that mentality is a good thing, even when I've got more psychological resources, because it supports that same +2 - 5 math.

Final thought, since this is getting long, is me cautioning myself. Getting 'more efficient' or 'focusing on what's really important' can itself become unhealthy. Part of the spiritual teaching I like from my main spiritual teacher is that any act can and should be made into a spiritual act. In which case, what in particular you are doing is not the central issue. This contrasts with the 'figure out how much your hourly wage is, and if you can pay someone less to do it, then outsource it' philosophy of some modern productivity teachers. And I lean more towards the ancient wisdom side of things, when there are opposing viewpoints.

OK, that is all for now. I guess I will be curious to see how well I can implement these realizations into how I do things going forwards.

Frozen pipes and fallen trees.

 OK, this is post number two of my catch-up series. Week number one I didn't get to because school started and was hecktic. Week number two didn't happen because we had a winter blizzard, got like 18 inches of snow, my parents were in town so I was spending time with them, half of a massive tree fell from the weight of the snow, narrowly and thankfully missing our shed, and very thankfully missing our house. Tecnically it did kit our shed a little, some of the branches broke off as they hit the shed roof. good, wrist or arm sized branches, so I'm really hopping they didn't do serious damage to it. At least I hope it's not dripping melted snow in there. Hopefully there are no punctures, but there is no way to tell until it gets a bit warmer and we can chansaw up the tree and get to the shed door, which is currently behind a tree full of branches.

Then our pipes froze. Our house has some really weird, and I'd say dumb, design decisions. The kitchen sink pipes freeze when it gets really cold. And now the poorly placed water meter valve and water shutoff froze. It's a length of pipe that pops up in the unheated garage and then back down into the concrete. The previous owners said that it had never frozen previously, only the kitchen sink. However, we were worried, and so created a structure with insulation to cover the piping, with heat tape wrapped around it. Well, it got really cold, like negative 30's with wind chill, and it froze. It took days to get a plumber out to look at it, and when they did they saw that the pipes had burst, so they had to replace them, plus the water meter. They put on even more heat tape. A few days later, it dropped again to negative 20 or so, and it froze, again. We fiddled around and got a space heater blowing into the enclosed space, and now all the pipes seem to be melted, but it's STILL frozen, no water going into the house, so it must have frozen below ground or something. So we are out of water again, probably until it warms up for a few days.

It's frustrating, it's disheartening, and it was exhausting, as Suzannah woke me up at 4-somthing am in the morning, panicked that the pipes had frozen again and not sure what to do. That was yesterday. We had come back late-ish from a friends birthday party, so I was in a dour sleep deprived haze all day, but had so much to do that I couldn't nap or take it easy, I had to work all day. And of course, being so low on sleep, everything too 2-3 times as long, because I was trying to do it carefully. I doubt I retained much of what I read that day for classes, but I got the time sensitive stuff I needed to get done, done, and then got to sleep in today.

So, we are getting buckets of water from our kind neighbors (gratitude to them) to flush the toilets, and jugs of tap water to put at sinks so we can wash our hands, and taking showers at other places, though less often, because it's extra work and time to go over to someone else's house to shower, plus it's still in the negatives, so you don't want to go out unless you have to. All the normal day to day things of living are made more time consuming and harder, like washing dishes or making food or going to the bathroom.

Meanwhile, I've got my normal seriously heavy graduate school workload. Plus an event coming up next week for my volunteer activities that is a bunch more work.

I'm grateful that we still have heat, electricity, and internet (though the internet has been less reliable since the freeze, not sure what's going on with that.

And I suppose it's nice every so often, to have to make do without the modern amenities we are used to, to remind us how fortunate we are to have things like running water and non-burst pipes.

All this to say: this is why the last few posts have been late.

OK, on to the final post, the one that's actually due today.

uninspired. dissonant. undeterred.

 I've got 3 blogs to do, and I'm planning on doing them all in quick succession. Expect shorter posts, this blog will cover three weeks ago.

It's hard to remember that far back, I guess my last blog was before school started up again.

Bad news: the professor I signed up for, backed out of teaching my section. The teacher who I ended up with, I do not like. I think they are my least favorite professor thus far with the program, and I already had two professors I was feeling ambivalent about last semester. At least I had one professor I really liked. This semester I have one professor I actively dislike. Not that I dislike them as a person, they seem like a fine human being, it's just a mixture of subtle things that amounts to a nails on chalkboard dissonance being with them. Like the opposite of when you really resonate with someone, "vibe" with them. They feel a bit too intense, they present as a stickler for the rules, plus unforgiving, and they have a salesman like vibe to what they are saying, veering from the objective truth to make what they like seem better and what they don't like seem worse. Perhaps it is just me and some people would really resonate with them. In any case, I'm disappointed and feel powerless. I didn't choose this professor, the professor I chose (who, from talking to other students who still have them, would have been a great fit for me) was taken away from me with no say on my part, and I was foisted onto this one.

There's another professor I have who seems kind of... not phoning it in, that's too strong of a description, but kind of in that direction. She is doing what is required of her, competently and conscientiously, but she doesn't seem enthusiastic about it. That's fine, I don't have any complaints about that, but neither am I inspired.

I considred if I could switch to the other program I looked at, but it is a cohort model, so I don't know if I could jump in part way through, and there's no guarantee that the professors would be better, though it seems likely, due to how they run the program. In this program I kind of feel like a second class citizen, getting the teachers who are left after the best teachers go to the in-person classes.

On the other hand, I don't think the program really makes good counselors, I think that happens after school, when you're in the field. Like with teaching and teachers. So really I just want to get through the program so I can get on to doing the real work required to get good at counseling. This is a whole rant about the ineffectiveness of schooling programs in general, not specific to my school. The bottom line is that to get good at most things, you gotta do a bunch of work on your own and have a good mentor. So I'm trying not to worry too much about my professors.

On the other hand again, I've had a few professors and teachers who have changed my life. Seeking those out is totally worthwhile. Though even so, to become truly excellent at something, it's all about you and the hard work you put in.

OK, post 1, done, 2 to go.

Vision Quest in the world. List of vacation things. All life as a spiritual practice.

 Other things I/we did on vacation: 

- completed a cool 1000 piece puzzle with a supprize ending. (Maybe I'll bring it to a family gathering)

- ate over-priced but decent food

- made food in our hotel room using only a microwave for heat source for more reasonably priced food

- washed dishes in our hotel room while trying not to gunk up the sink

- finished season 2 of Wheel of Time

- dictated holiday cards while feeling very sick

- filled about half a paper shopping bag with used tissues

- watched the sun rise and set on beautiful cliff faces outside our lodge room windows

During the first night of being really sick, I had an interesting experience, as I wasn't able to get comfortable enough to sleep, and didn't have any pills that could help. I was mostly focusing on a mantra and other spiritual focuses, and that was actually quite nice. I only slept an hour or two at the end of the night, but I rested ok, and was in good spirits the next day. It seems like a good sign. It's easy to be focused on spirituality when everything is supportive of it, but if you can continue to focus on it when things are less conductive, that's perhaps a sign that the habit of focus has started to go deeper. I think that is happening in my life. It is a conscious intention. I would like to spiritualize everything in my life.

There's a nice quote from Tom Brown Jr. talking about his Native American teacher he called Grandfather, that goes something like, 'each step he took was a prayer on the earth' and I feel like that is a good attitude to have with life. We have ordinary things we have to do, day to day, to upkeep our lives, our jobs, etc. But those things can be done as an act of devotion and spiritualized. Then one's entire day can eventually be a walking meditation or prayer, regardless of the mundane obligations one has. I'd like to get there.

When I was doing my vision quest... I guess it was two summers ago, at this point, I noticed how easy it was to connect into a deep spiritual awareness, and thought about how that just wasn't possible in the hubbub of everyday life, away from nature and busy with stuff to do. But one of the realizations I had was the namasmarana I do (Namasmarana means basically, remembrance of the name, and looks like repetition of a mantra/name of god, either silently or out loud) was for me the equivalent of a vision quest for the world. It's a way to take the forest with me. Maybe you've heard the term, 'head in the forest, feet in the world.' I think this is a way to do that for me. I've been trying to integrate that practice into my life so that it's automatic, but it hasn't stuck. I think I am making progress towards it though, as I reflect now.

Next blog, I'll be back in the academic game. I really hope I can take some of the lessons learned over the last semester, to work smarter, doing a bit less unnecessary work, and doing my work with a little less care/slowness. I still want to do a good job, but I also have other things than school that are important to me, that I want to give some of my time. Hopefully with some reflection and strategy, I can limit the amount of time I'm spending on school work without negatively affecting my grades or learning outcomes.

OK, the cat is meowing at me for dinner so that's my cue to go. Take care and walk in beauty,

-Isaac

Zion. Water, Fire.

 Alright, we're two weeks back, and some interesting stuff has happened, but I'm also now gearing up for the new semester to start. I'm going to try really hard to be ready this time, which means reading a lot before Tuesday comes around, which means some shorter posts.

Vacation was fun! We flew in to Las Vegas, which really does seem a bit like hell on earth. Right down to the preponderance of advertisements for lawyers on billboards as you drive along the main roads. We saw Mystere, a cirque du soleil performance that was very cool, though not as good as "O", if you're going to see one.

Then we drove to Zion, stopping at the Valley of Fire along the way for a hike. Lots of beauty and majesty. Unfortunately, the second day of hiking in Zion saw me falling into an ice cold river and then getting sick as a dog, and the next few days were mostly me inside, sleeping and then resting. It was still fun though, being cozy with Suzannah, catching up on some shows we hadn't had much time to watch, and enjoying the beautiful views outside our windows. We did some walking right around where we were staying, which was still beautiful. It was a shame we didn't get to take full advantage of Zion, and that I got sick, but a vacation is a vacation. I'm still feeling a bit groggy as my body recovers, sleeping extra, but generally up and running.

OK, I'll save the rest for a second post.