Four hands and a burning car speeding down the highway.

Quick post I think. 3 papers due this weekend (hopefully only two if I can get one of them moved to next week). Thus the shortness of this.

The end of this semester, April 21st, I have four papers/projects due. Given that I can do about 1.5 large papers per week, if working at max capacity, I need to begin working on this now, since I have papers due each weekend going forward, except next weekend. Except I will have one due next weekend, if my professor is kind.

I've been burning out. I've come to the conclusion that I need to reduce my course workload. I'm not the first one to come to this conclusion, but I'm the one that has to pull the trigger, so now it's going to happen. Though I'm not wasting the last 9 weeks of work by quitting in the middle, so it's gonna start either during the summer semester, or this coming fall. I'm looking forward to it.

In the meantime, I'm thinking about how to excuse myself from any responsibilities I can reasonably excuse myself from, such as some of the volunteer work I do. It makes me sad to do so, but future Isaac will be thanking me, I suspect.

My birthday is coming up. I think that makes 38? I feel like I'm getting kinda old to have kids. Seems like a young body is better suited to keeping up with them, but I guess the biblical Isaac was born to a much older father, so there's precedent. I notice the difference though. The declining energy, how it takes longer to heal injuries. In a sense I've been preparing for the aging process my whole life, as I've felt like a crotchety old man since I was like 7 years old. On the other hand, there is definitely some regret that it's taken me so long to get myself together enough to really enjoy life. On the third hand, at least I've kind of got it together now, that's not something guaranteed in life, it is a blessing at any age.

On the fourth hand, if I keep up this crazy young persons graduate school schedule, I'm still not getting to enjoy it. Thus realizing I need to chill out. I don't like that it will take longer to finally be working with people, but from the "you might croak in your sleep tomorrow" perspective, it really makes more sense to take it at a pace that I can enjoy. I had a dream last night that kind of drove home the point. I'm lucky enough to have the option to take longer with my degree, so it's kind of masochistic to keep going as hard as I can, just because it means I'll reach my goals sooner. My ultimate goal is not one I can reach faster by rushing, and in fact doing so could easily make it take longer. As my teacher says: start early, drive slowly, arrive safely.

OK, that's all for this week, back to work.

Leap-Year-Day

Suzannah and I created a fun little tradition, last leap year: we celebrated, ate good food, spent some quality time together, and wrote notes to our future selves, to be opened next leap year. It was really cool, hearing about where I was, 4 years ago. I wasn't even married yet! Some of my predictions for what life would be like now came true, or are in process. Some didn't at all. But 4 years is enough time for things to have changed quite a lot. I moved to Texas and then moved back, in that amount of time. I switched career paths.

And what about the next 4 years? If things go according to plan, I'll be working as a counselor by then, and have at least one kid. Maybe two! So much could happen, but the future is uncertain. What will be going on with AI? With climate change? Will I finally be doing work I love? How will I be handling being a father? Will things work out or will there be surprising twists and turns?

A lot of people I know are having a really rough time these days, and my heart goes out to them. Just as easily, it could be me. I think we all take turns, going through the rough patches. What I want to do now, when it's a relatively smooth patch, is work on myself and my systems, so that I have strength and good habits of thought and action, when the rough patches hit. Also, to support those in my life, who are going through those rough patches. I feel like that happens with Suzannah; we take turns having challenging times, so the other person can support the one going through the roughness. Perhaps it works like that in our close social networks as well.

Leap year day. It's special, having this one day that only comes every four years. An excuse to step outside the ordinary and reflect over a larger time period. Looking even further back, I feel so much gratitude for how far I've come, how much better I'm doing than many years ago. And yet, now I'm begining to feel the other side of things: I'm already almost 40, and it seems a shame, that it's taken me this long to get my life together. How many of those years in my physical prime, were wasted on me being unhappy? Youth should be for the old and the very young, or just in general, for people who know how to appreciate life.

But in any case, I can at least appreciate and savor life now. I feel deep gratitude for the setting yellow sunlight playing accross my office and shrine, for still sleeping tree's moving in the wind, for the birdsong in the morning, and for this moment of peace and beauty I get to share with you right now.

Be well, take care of each other, enjoy beauty and love where you can find it,

-Isaac

More than one sentence part 3

What does the previous blog post say about me? How about the fact that it was really hard not to add that first sentence on to it?

I'm writing a lot of papers, and reading a lot of textbooks, and I'm noticing this tendency I have, to try and do a really good, careful job, when I have the time to do so. I think this is a wonderful, caring tendency, except when I actually don't have the time to do it. Which is the case these days. However, it seems like I do have the time, in the same way that it seems like you have a lot of money when you've got a credit card with a high limit.

To explain that analogy: I have a lot of papers due, two weeks from now. That seems a long way away, and so it seems like I have plenty of time to work on my current paper, relax, get some housework done, have fun with Suzannah.

However, if I don't start working on those papers now, it's going to be deeply unpleasant trying to get them all done the week they are due. I think I need a visual chart, that maps out all the things I need to do in a day, and how long they actually take, so I can look at how much time I actually have. Once I see that, I can go, "uh-oh, I really don't have that much time to do all this work, I need to get started immediately and not mess around.." But without that clarity, there isn't a visceral urgency getting me working at the rate I need.

Even just putting all the papers and assignments that are due over the next semester, into my calendar, is very helpful for that. But I still find myself dragging and sidetracking, which I wouldn't do if it was all due next week.

In any case, I think I mentioned this earlier, but just taking moments to pause, in the middle of whatever I'm doing, and connect to silence, offer up whatever work I'm doing as a kind of mindful spiritual practice to the Higher Consciousness... It really helps me take a breather, and not get lost down rabbit holes, getting overy precous or perfectionistic about things that really don't deserve it. So, I'm doing that. I've got a little app on my phone that plays a pretty bell sound every 15 minutes, and then a note on my desk, reminding me to actually use those dings, to take a brief pause. It's quite nice.

OK, three down, one to go!

More than one sentence part 2

As I was writing the title to my previous blog post, I immediately realized the next post had to be a single sentence.

More than one sentence part 1

 I have been very neglectful of my poor blog. There there blog, you're a good boy, I love you even if I don't see you that much. Thank you for being a faithful friend.

I'm three weeks behind because I thought I was two weeks behind, and actually was three weeks behind the last time. Just like I was the time before that. Apologies to all you (three) readers, for the sporadic schedule. I've been working hard on a lot of things, doing a lot of new things, and it sometimes seems like there is a limited number of little habits I can do at once, before some of them start to get pushed out of consciousness.

So, let's do three really quick blog posts. Actually, let's do 4, since the weekend is tomorrow.

OK, this counts as one. I vaguely recall setting the rule for myself that a blog post could be as short as one sentence, so this is clearly over that minimum limit. That's a good way to maintain a habit streak, but you have to actually follow your rule and allow yourself to do that small amount. I often can't seem to stop myself at that one sentence. A common tendency I have. Maybe I'll talk about it in one of these blog posts.

Timeboxes, Peer-pressure, People pleasing, Snap!

 OK, I've got 3 minutes for this post.

Why? Timeboxing. What's timeboxing? You know how, if you have a week, your essay will take a week, but if you only have two hours, your essay only takes 2 hours? That's timeboxing. Set an artificial deadline for things, so that you work more efficiently. In actuality, if you only have 2 hours for your essay, it will probably still take 4 hours, and you'll have to pull a late night, but it's still significantly less than the week of work you'd put in if you gave yourself that much time.

There is my 3 minutes. 

Giving myself 5 more.

Jumping around a bit: the weather is nice now. It's sunny and "warm" which means gets up to 40 during the day here. Apparently the deep freeze didn't kill the bugs because the ground was covered in snow which insulated it, so now a bunch of bugs are hatching.

I mentioned a health emergency in the last post, but I don't want to go into great detail about that in a semi-public forum, since it's not my private info to give. The emergency was not huge, and was resolved. But there are some ongoing issues that are continuing to take time and energy. I think I have to leave it at that.

One more thing that takes time.

So back to that: I got kind of fed up with being constantly behind and felt like I 'snapped.' Not that I'm crazy now, just that I feel kind of done with always rushing and being behind, and am ready to take more drastic measures.

I think this is a little tied into my addictions class homework. The assignment is to give up a substance (I chose sugar) for 6 weeks. What I noticed was that, as long as it was out of sight, that wasn't a big deal for me. However, what made it really difficult, was the social pressure. This is not "hey man, wanna smoke?" kind of overt social pressure, my friends don't do that. It's more the very subtle, or situational pressure. you're over at a guests house, and they've made some beautiful homemade sweets. They're on the table, everyone else is eating and enjoying them. That's social pressure (plus visual cues.)

I guess I realized I needed to be ok, going against that social pressure. I think Suzannah would laugh if she read this, but I am in some ways, at some times, a people pleaser. I want people to be happy. I don't want to leave the party early to go to bed, because I think that will make other people leave, and I'll be the one to break up the party.

So, it's kind of me, being ok subtly disappointing people. I don't like it, but I don't see another way to my goal. To this end (having more time, getting more done more efficiently) I've been trying a number of things: tracking my time obsessively for a day, to see where there is wasted time I can cut out. trying to move faster (without moving so fast I hurt myself or break something) so I can get manual tasks done faster. Timeboxing my work. Prioritizing my tasks. Getting up earlier. Timeboxing. conceivably, I may try scheduling out my week in full, to see just how many actual work hours I have available, so I can stop overscheduling myself. This is important because what the time-tracking showed me was, when I was hustling, there was only about an hour of time I could reclaim easily. The rest of it was well allocated. That means, to get more done,... well, I couldn't, basically. Not without, I don't know, being constantly sleep deprived or something.

Therefore, I needed to prioritize what I did better. That would be the purpose of scheduling out my week: I'd have a realistic vision of how many hours I had to give, which I could then allot to things. There wouldn't be enough hours for everything. That would then force me to confront that fact, and make some hard decisions about what I chose to actually do.

I did this in a more simple way, with my papers. I've got some weeks coming up where I've got three or four big papers due on the same week. That's impossible, so instead I've got to do some of them now, when I've only got one paper per week due.

In addition to all of that, I've got numerous other approaches I'm using. Just one more I'll mention, is the balance for this hard work. I acknowledge that if I'm going to go hard, I need to rest deeply. That's important for my happiness, and for my sustainability, and for my efficiency. one mnemonic I'm using for this, physically, is the idea of a leopard. The way, like a house cat, they are so relaxed and loose, but can spring into action like coiled steel. That mixture of loose/relaxed and strong, is what I'm thinking about.

Alright, as I think I said, in the true tradition of timeboxing, though I set myself a half hour, it ended up taking 50 minutes, but it didn't take an 80 minutes. Perhaps I'll get better at timeboxing as well, and get closer to the actual time I set for myself. Or perhaps I'll just get better at estimating how long something will take me.

Love and light,

-I Out

Hole in the Shed. Time mania. Trip to Des Moines.

 Hello.

We are two weeks behind.

Why?

Well, to be honest, it's been kind of a blur, so I don't know exactly how or why I've been so busy. There was frozen pipes, a tree fell on our shed, I drove up to Des Moines and back to listen to a presentation for my social cultural diversity class that was actually pretty awesome (we'll see if I get time to describe it).

The snow melted and it got warm, I discovered the tree only mostly missed the shed, I cleaned up the dirt and water that got into the rather large hole that a rather large branch has punched through the roof, Suzannah and I spent most of a day trying to figure out how to keep a tarp on the roof during an intensely windy day. We had a health emergency with a relative. And amidst that all, I've been trying to keep up with classwork. And more recently I've gotten fed up with always being behind and have been going a bit crazy trying to figure out how to be more efficient and balanced with my time and responsibilities. Getting done everything that needs to be done, for school, for life admin, for the house, for the relationship.

So it's been pretty busy.

As is, I still have a lot to do, so I've set a 30 minute timer (one of the things I'm trying to do to give myself more time: timeboxing. Perhaps I'll talk about that a bit) for these two blog posts so I don't spend too much time on them.

Alright, that's why this is two and a half weeks late. Let's talk about some of the details I mentioned.

The tree hit the shed:

Yup, when I was finally able to get up to the shed, I saw a branch had punched clean through the roof. Looking more closely and further, there were several dents and a few smaller holes as well. Thankfully it hadn't rained, and not too much of the snowmelt. had gotten in, and where it had dripped wasn't anything important. Looks like it's going to be fine, and more recently Suzannah put in the insurance claim and so we're going to get reimbursed for it, we just have to get someone to actually come out and do the work. Which is hard in general in Fairfield (our gutters people took...5 months? to come out? And then did a poor job, because it was still leaking, and then said they were charging us more to fix the leak, and then never showed up (despite weekly calls) to fix it. I'm contemplating leaving a scathing review about them, but a) it's a small town and b) I seem to always decide it was a bad idea to leave scathing reviews, after I do it, as of late. On the other hand, people should be warned, if someone is unreliable. I wish we had known. Maybe a neutral but accurate review, which is damming enough. On the third hand, ain't nobody got time for that.

Let's see, what else did I mention. Ah, the Des Moines trip. For my social cultural diversity class, we each have to choose a marginalized group to learn more about and do some advocacy action related to. I chose Blacks in Iowa. I grew up and lived in a fairly monocultural background, and don't have a lot of experience with that culture. And I suspect they are underserved in Iowa, as there are very few on them. I could imagine feeling pretty isolated being from that culture, or even just having that skin color, in Iowa.

In any case, I was supposed to do some cultural immersion activities for part of the assignment, and found out the African American Museaum of Iowa was hosting a presentation on the Black Panther's of Des Moines, and doing it in Des Moines. I thought that was cool and would hopefully give me an opportunity to meet some people from that community. Well, the presenter was nice, but white, as were most of the people there. The info was interesting and useful, but then what was really cool was that one of the actual original members of that group (the Black Panthers of Des Moines) was in the audience, and filled in some of the missing or incorrect information from the presentation, as well as told some pretty great first hand stories. They seemed really nice and grounded, and it was pretty awesome to get some history from someone who was a part of that history. 

By the way, I know one of the few things I thought I knew about the Black Panthers was they they were more agressive than MLK's approach. I think that is kind of inaccurate and reductionist, from what I now know. They were advocating for using violence only in self-defense, when they were being subjected to police brutality. And it does seem like there was some gnarly, unfair violence going on against them.

I'm not saying I agree with their specific approach, I definitely fall more on the Gandhi non-violence side of things, but I do think people have a right to defend themselves when being attacked. And I think most people's perceptions about them come from very limited information filtered through a negative media spin. I'm always a fan of truth, even when it's more nuanced and harder to fit into a media sound bite, so just FYI.

Anyhoo, I'm just about at the end of my 30 minutes, which was supposed to be for both posts, so I'm going to end this one now and post the next.