And on that note, here’s a quick post on how to get back on the wagon.

Guilt / Shame

It’s natural to feel guilty or shameful after having gotten off the wagon. You had hopes for yourself. You thought you could trust yourself. You disappointed yourself. You want to fix things, so you wallow in guilt because it seems like guilt should be a good motivator.

“I’m ashamed of myself” –> “I don’t want to feel ashamed of myself” –> “I do things to avoid this feeling in the future.”

The problem is it doesn’t work this way. It certainly hasn’t for me.

Here’s the thought progression I go through:

“I’m ashamed of myself” –> “I don’t want to feel ashamed of myself” –> “I really don’t want to do things because I’m shamed into them.” –> “I’m stuck.”

Sometimes I end up doing the things I’ve been shamed into, but it’s usually for reasons other than shame. Example: I have homework assigned on Monday that’s due on Friday. Monday – Thursday I feel guilty about not having done my homework yet since I’ve had plenty of time. Thursday evening I finally do my homework. I do it because I don’t want to fail. I don’t do it because of the guilt/shame.

Step 1: Notice When You’re Feeling Guilty. Ask yourself when guilt has been useful to you in the past. Guilt is used so often that it can be hard to wrap your mind around that idea that it doesn’t work. That’s why you need to take an honest look at how guilt and shame have affected your productivity in the past. I’ll bet that more often than not it’s paralyzed you rather than motivated you.

Also, really, do you want to use hating yourself as motivation to do good things? Do you want to do good things out of fear of self-punishment?

Why Did You Get On the Wagon?

You had some sort of motivation for getting on the wagon in the first place. What was it? Get in touch with that feeling… with the excitement.

Maybe the reason you started to work on your painting was because you had this beautiful image in your mind’s eye that you wanted to see on canvas. Maybe you stopped painting because you forgot how beautiful the end result will be. Reveling in the future beauty can be enough of a motivator to get you back to your easel and your paints.

Step 2: Figure out what your original, intrinsic motivation was. Feel the excitement. Start moving.

Given the choice between motivation by guilt and being motivated by the excitement that got me started…

Similarly, let’s say you were the recipient of volunteer work. Who would rather receive services from: Someone doing it because they were guilted into it or someone doing it because they genuinely wanted to?

Let go

Maybe the reason you want to do your homework early is because it’s what you’re “supposed” to do. You can hear your parents’ saying how they wished you’d work on your homework as soon as you got it, but the voice is always theirs, not yours. You got off the “doing your homework early” wagon because it wasn’t your wagon. It was your parents’. You had a not-very-compelling extrinsic motivation, not an intrinsic one.

Step 3: If you don’t have an intrinsic motivation, let go of your guilt. It’s not your problem. This step is harder than it sounds.

In the Middle

Many times the situation won’t be clear. You may realize you’re primarily motivated for extrinsic reasons, but you still feel compelled to keep trying. Or maybe you have good intrinsic motivations but you keep feeling stuck. In these cases, look deeper until you find a fear or an intrinsic motivation or both.

Going back to the school example. Maybe you look further and find that you do actually like learning. When you get into the homework, you don’t mind doing it, and most of the time you actually enjoy yourself. However, you’re afraid if you don’t take the time right after school to watch TV you won’t watch any TV by the time you go to sleep. So you procrastinate on the school work and it’s hard to muster up the energy to do homework after the fun of TV is over.

Some possible solutions might be to try limiting the time you spend on not-due-tomorrow homework. Maybe spend only an hour on it each day right after school, and promise to spend at least an hour each day doing something purely fun. Or something. The next time you get off the wagon, you can ask yourself if you’ve been getting enough time to yourself and you can remind yourself of how much you love and want to learn. You have a place to start.

Once you figure out what the underlying fear is and what the intrinsic motivation is, coming up with things to try is straightforward. Just think of a solution that might work, feels alright, and try it.

The homework example has both an intrinsic motivation and a fear, and I think most of the time we get off the wagon, it’s because of a combination of the two. There’s some reason we got started. There’s some fear that this change in behavior is aggravating.

Step 4: If you’re motivation isn’t compelling enough but you can’t let go, look for the fear that’s stopping you and the intrinsic motivation that’s keeping you from quitting.

If you’re really stuck ask a friend to help you out. They may be able to see what you’re afraid to admit.

A Bit More On Analyzing Failure

Analyzing failure has it’s place, but it shouldn’t be the default thing you do. Instead your default action should be to figure out what it is you’re trying to do.

If your goal is to get back on the wagon, then it’s much more fruitful to remember why you got on it in the first place.

If your goal is to prevent getting off the wagon in the future, then analyzing why you got off is useful.

It’s tempting to start analyzing first. It feels good to figure out why you failed. But knowing why you failed won’t help you get started again. Use the right tool for the job.

Apologize and Move On

It’s more important to move on than it is to apologize. If someone hasn’t updated their blog in months, and out of the blue starts again with no explanation for why they left and why they’re back again, it’s easy to forgive them if they just start updating regularly. On the other hand if they write a long apology including plans for the future and then the blog goes silent…. well. Empty apology, much?

The same goes for promises to yourself. If you exercises for 3 months straight and then stop for no reason, it’s way better to just start up again  without formally apologizing to yourself than it is to apologize, make more promises, and then not do anything. In fact not doing anything at all is better than an empty apology.

If you have a history of making empty apologies, try this instead. Try getting back on the wagon, and don’t explain yourself. Just do it. After some specified amount of time, allow yourself to go back and apologize for that gap. Use apologizing as an incentive to actually make the change.

Good Luck!

At the same time, I’ve been writing in TPLT for the past two years, my posts have on the whole been useful and interesting (I think), but I still only have a handful of readers and a trickle of traffic. Some would say that constitutes a ‘bad business idea’, and in any case, something ought to be written about why TPLT is still in the beginning stages two years after it got started. That’s this post.

If I could only use two words to describe why TPLT hasn’t seen success it’d be these: Mental Blocks.

The “Who Am I To Talk” Mental block.

A year or two ago, right around the time I was graduating from college, I got asked by one of the adults I know what I was planning to do when I graduated. The first thought that came to my head was “I should talk about my blog” but then I got this overwhelming sick feeling. How could I say, “I’m working on my blog about living consciously”? How presumptuous of me to think I have the authority to write about such a mature topic. I have no qualifications to write about that. I haven’t accomplished anything. Who was I to talk? So I told him I was going into web design…

It’s not too hard to see why this mental block–that I’m not mature/experienced/qualified/special/whatever enough to have my writing on living consciously taken seriously–kept me from growing TPLT. I didn’t feel comfortable talking to people about what I was doing, which meant no on knew about what I was doing, which meant word about my blog wasn’t being spread.

Two years later, I’ve realized that what I needed was a better angle. Writing about ‘Living Consciously’ was too big for me. That’s the kind of thing a ‘guru’ writes about, and I don’t feel comfortable with that role. (And from what I’ve read, neither do many modern day gurus.)

My angle today is this: I write about my experience building my small online sewing business and… other hopefully helpful stuff. Much more comfortable. Maybe one day it’ll feel natural to claim I do some lofty thing like, “help people live better lives”, but right now that’s not me… and that’s OK.

The “I Don’t Talk About This Stuff In Real Life” Mental Block

This one is related to the “Who Am I To Talk” mental block. I didn’t talk about this stuff in real life because I felt insecure about it. I felt insecure about it because I wasn’t used to letting this side of me talk in real life. Ah cycles.

This has slowly been changing.

As I’ve read more and more books on personal development, I’ve found myself naturally talking about the topics I write about here. Usually I have some expert I can quote, which makes me feel more comfortable stating my opinion. (Not that everyone cares about what some ‘expert’ says.)

Every once in a while I let people in real life know about the blog, and I’m finding out that more people I know from real life are reading it blog… and nothing bad has happened because of it…

I’ve been working on having my writing style match my speaking style (elipses, parentheses and all), meaning the person on the blog is more like the person I am in real life.

All of these things mean that TPLT is becoming easier and easier for me to promote. I’m not forcing anything. I’m not doing the “fake it ‘til you make it” thing. I’ve been working on making my underlying insecurities dissappear, and that has been paying off.

The “I Can’t Write When I’m Not Inspired” Mental Block

If you look at the archives you’ll notice I haven’t really kept a strict posting schedule. It’s gotten a lot better since I started the Weekly Check-ins, but before that… it was all over map. For some months I posted 10 posts. Others I missed entirely. On the whole my posting had been pretty infrequent until a couple months ago.

The explanation for this is… a bit involved, but one big part is that in the beginning I resisted the idea of scheduling time for writing. I’d found the few times I scheduled time to write, I’d go into my writing session with no inspiration whatsoever. I’d struggle to find a topic, then force myself to write something. Not fun.

Contrast that to when I wrote while I was inspired. Everything flowed. I knew exactly what I wanted to write. The content of what I was writing was better. Really everything was better. The only problem was that inspiration struck at inopportune times. Sometimes it was when I was doing something else pleasant like, say, spending time with friends or family. Other times it was while I was trying to get out of doing less fun things I had to do.

Then I read The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. It’s quoted a lot on personal development blogs, and while I have my problems with it (it’s a bit too violent for my taste) there’s a lot of good information in there. Particularly there’s a bit where he talks about an author’s experience with inspiration.

Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”
That’s a pro.
In terms of Resistance, Maugham was saying, “I despise Resistance; I will not let it faze me; I will sit down and do my work.”

Maugham reckoned another, deeper truth: that by performing the mundane physical act of sitting down and starting to work, he set in motion a mysterious but infallible sequence of events that would produce inspiration, as surely as if the goddess had synchronized her watch with his.
He knew if he built it, she would come.

When I read that something clicked. I knew he was right. Having a specific time and place set aside for creative work invites inspiration. By writing even when I don’t feel like, more often than not I’ll end up feeling inspired. I just have to do it.

I read that passage over a year ago, and it’s only been in the past month or so that I’ve really gotten a handle on writing consistently. It took so long because I spent a lot of time struggling with scheduling a time for writing. Taking an hour or two in the morning before work was hard because my morning routine takes a while, and I end up resenting having to stop to go to work. In the evening I have a lot of activities and my creative energy is often zapped by then. Bleh. What I didn’t realize is that, while having a scheduled time and place is nice, it doesn’t matter where my long stretch of time is, as long as I have it. I’ve also found having some ritual to set the tone helps. My ritual is taking a few sips of hot tea before writing.

Today I trust myself to keep to a posting schedule, which has neutralized another mental block I had: I was afraid of disappointing readers by my low and irregular posting schedule and my inability to keep my posting promises. Now that I’ve proved to myself that I can sustain a regular schedule, I’m less worried about sending new readers packing.

The “My Blog’s Name is All Wrong” Mental Block

Also related to the “My Theme Sucks” Mental block.

ThePathLessTraveled was originally called “LaVieConsciente”, French for “The Conscious Life”. Picking a French name was a terrible idea. How could I expect readers to remember my blog’s name if they couldn’t pronounce it correctly? So I got into the “I won’t promote my blog until the name is changed” rut. Of course my name changed and I still didn’t really promote my blog. Part of the reason for that was all of the other mental blocks I’ve already talked about, but there was another reason too…

…I don’t like my theme. I think it looks amateurish, and I’m afraid it’ll turn people away. Working on the theme takes time, though, and I barely have enough of that for writing. So, I figured I’d wait until I had more time to fix the theme and then I’d promote my blog.

Of course, that’s just another excuse. I am still planning to change my theme and get a logo and all that jazz, but I’m not going to wait until then to promote the blog.

The “I Don’t Know Who My Target Audience Is” Mental Block

That’s not entirely true. I’d love to have people like my younger self reading this blog. But I don’t know where people like her are hiding. I don’t think they’re reading the blogs of other personal development people…

Again, this is just an excuse. If I post around the Internet enough, my people will self-select, other people will recommend my blog to my people, etc. I just have to get off my arse and do it.

The “My Writing Sucks” Mental Block

I never worried much about the content of my writing. I’ve felt pretty confident that my ideas are good enough compared to what else is being written. My writing is another story. I know with time it’ll improve, and people aren’t that picky about writing quality, but still. I want to be known as someone who expresses her thoughts well, and it’s frustrating to see my attempts and know they aren’t what they could be. So I played the “I don’t want to promote my blog until my writing quality is good enough” game. Excuses again.

The “I’m Uncomfortable With Becoming a Popular Blogger” Mental Block

When I first started thinking about maybe pursuing blogging, I was put off by blogs like ProBlogger because of their rhetoric, specifically how they talked about their readers. It’s hard to describe accurately (something like readers are more like numbers than people), but it was enough to know that it’d be something I’d have to deal with. Could I handle having thousands of readers? Would I start treating them as some amorphous blob too?

To be honest, I still don’t know how I’ll handle it, but I do know I’m a lot less scared by the idea than I was two years ago.

The Primary Technical Problem

You’ve probably noticed that the one thing I think TPLT has been missing is promotion. I haven’t been comfortable doing the necessary things to get the word out about my blog.

Next month I’ll be starting a different chapter of my life, and I’m planning to actively promote this blog and do what needs to be done to make TPLT a success. If after doing that I still only have a handful of readers, I’ll pay for a blog review… or something.

Was TPLT a “Bad Business Idea”? No, not really. It’s just taken a long time for me to work through my mental blocks, to align myself with success. That’s not atypical for worthwhile goals.

Next week’s post–the last post in the “Many Bad Business Ideas” series–will be about how I’d go about figuring out what career I wanted to pursue if I had to do it all over again.

The Hard

Exercise Please?

I didn’t bike to work on Wednesday or Thursday, and felt gross because of it. Brain fuzzy, can’t think straight, gross.

Nique needs to exercise consistently. Sewiously.

Not Enough Time

I want more time. I want energy to use said time. I don’t want to give up things I love doing. Can’t I have my cake and eat it too?

The Promise Breaking

I promised myself I’d get up with the kitty and either read (if the weather was nice) or use the exercise bike (if the weather was crummy). This didn’t happen. If the weather is nice I still bike to work, but getting up with the cat is hard. Especially when Rorschach decides that 4AM is a good time to start caterwauling. Rawr.

Maybe I need to face the fact that 8 hours of sleep is what I need. Getting up at 7 isn’t so bad…

Maybe I need to find some other time to exercise. Or something.

Also didn’t do as much writing as I would have liked to. (And I did want to do writing.)

Guilt Guilt Guilt

Not keeping promises to myself brings on the guilt.

Unfortunately while guilt will get me to sit on the bike or open the journal, it won’t make me want to exercise or want to write. Bleh.

The Good

Books!

Finished World Without End. Started Voluntary Simplicity. WWE was very good. I’m kinda sad it’s over. Voluntary Simplicity is looking like it’s going to be good too.

Finishing books is definitely a good thing. It makes me feel like I can accomplish something.

Meetings can be useful

I run a weekly progress meeting for one of my projects at work. Normally when I hear about meetings it’s about how long they are and how they take away from actual productive time. These meetings are different.

For one thing these meetings are short. This last one was 15 minutes? Maybe?

For another stuff gets done in the 10 – 20 minutes before the meeting. On both sides. No one likes to hear that they’re part isn’t done.

Happiness.

Crêpes at the Farmer’s Market

On Wednesday Aaron and I went to the Farmer’s Market on our way to work, and in one of the stalls was a crêpe stand. Very unexpected. Very tasty. I would have them again, though not every week.

It was nice to do something spontaneous and not feel guilty about it afterward.

Improving at Recorder

On Wednesday evenings I’ve been spending some time honing my music skills. Recorder has been my primary instrument for about 4 years now, so unsurprisingly I’ve been using some of that time to focus on it.

I’m happy to say that improvement is being made. I’m able to play more of the notes the recorder is capable of and I’ve discovered that the alto is better suited for many pieces I have until now usually played on the soprano.

I’m really glad I decided to block out one evening a week for practice.

The Learning

I feel terrible if I don’t exercise

*Writes note to self.*

Breathing is Good

Yep.

My Self-Worth is tied up in silly things

Like how productive I am and how well I keep promises to myself.

I need to remind myself that me not keeping promises to myself doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. It means something’s misaligned.

I need to remind myself to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The Hard

The Heat

The weather’s been in the 90s this week, so it’s been a bit unpleasant. On Monday, I had very little energy, and I’m pretty sure the heat was the main cause. Alas. A day off from work and I didn’t have the energy to use it productively. I even went for a walk to try to get more energy, but that didn’t work.

Also, Aaron and I have been snippy at each other because of the weather. Luckily neither of us takes it too seriously.

So much to do

And so little discipline. On Wednesday I came home from work and instead of doing the things I said I’d do (make food for the cat, calculate fabric amounts for Pennsic clothes, and do some cleaning) I read World Without End, practiced music, and read some more. It was fun, and I did get the music practiced, but I felt guilty about the time spent on the book.

Working 9 – 9.5 hour days.

We’re leaving early today for a wedding this weekend in Ohio, so I had to flex out those hours over the week. While I’m at work I don’t feel the extra hour. It’s when I come home and there’s not much time left that I start to feel resentful. Yeah I know people have it worse… that still doesn’t make me feel better.

The Good

Sno-cone Maker!

Last summer we bought a sno-cone maker and it’s turned out to be a great purchase. Yeah, we have an ice-crusher built into the fridge, but this thing does a much better job. Very refreshing.

Exercise!

Biked to work Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week. Took a walk on Monday. Friday we’ll be leaving for Ohio, so no biking. Yay!

Got writing done.

Just about finished a post for the future. Started a few more.

Singing

We’re singing and playing music at the wedding this weekend, so we did some practicing on Wednesday. A lot of the music I already knew, and it’s in a good range for my voice.

Enjoyed Reading about Underground Houses

A goal Aaron and I have is to one day build our own hobbit hole. I got a book from the library called $50 & Up Underground House Book on just that topic. It’s dated (published in 1978 dated), but the information is still good, and it’s very entertaining. Well, entertaining for me since the author’s a back-to-the-land hippie…

The Learning

Exercise makes me happy… but only up to a certain point.

Last Friday I biked to work and felt ecstatic for the first few hours of my workday. This week I’ve been biking daily and my mood hasn’t been lifted nearly as much. As I mentioned, on Monday I went for a walk in the hope that it would wake me up and it didn’t. I didn’t feel worse afterward, I just didn’t feel much better either.

I’ll keep on exercising regularly, but I’ll try not to be disappointed on the days I don’t get a euphoric boost.

Pleasant rituals are hard to break

I start my day reading my personal email and checking feeds. This feels good and comfy, but I know I’m not as productive when I do start my day this way. The obvious thing to do is to replace my morning “check email and feeds” ritual with some other pleasant ritual, but I haven’t come up with one that’s sufficiently pleasant and sufficiently motivating. Apparently going through my to-do list isn’t that motivating to me. I will think about it.

Fun is as important as other stuff

I have this ongoing fear that if I do the things that need to be done I won’t have time for fun. Take Thursday. After choir we packed for Ohio and made kitty food. By the time we were done with that it was 10:40pm. Our bed-time is 11pm. Instead of dropping everything and reading for the last 20 minutes I wanted to make an icy drink and turn off some of the lights upstairs. If I had done that it would have been 10:50pm and at that point I might as well go to bed, fulfilling the “I can’t do work and have time for fun” prophecy. Luckily Aaron insisted I just go and read.

I don’t want to binge on fun stuff and feel guilty about it later, so I’m going to start including fun stuff in my “things to get done” list. I’ll keep it at the end of the list so I don’t procrastinate on less fun stuff, but I’ll make time to do it. I have a feeling this will work. That’s it for this week.

No “Weekly Check-in” this week because it turned into this.

On Friday I finished the book, Mastery, by George Leonard. Very good book, especially considering how short it is. There’s a lot of stuff from it I could write about, but for this post I’m going to discuss only one thing: the mindsets people have when they learn a new skill. After reading about these mindsets I realized that I haven’t had the master’s mindset for several activities I’d like to master.

Hackers and Obsessers

A person with the hacker mindset gets to some level of proficiency in a skill and then stops doing the work to improve. As an example, someone who goes out dancing every week, but has only taken a beginner class and has no intention of increasing his skill beyond that has the hacker mindset. He’s developed a certain level of competence and is either content to stay at that level indefinitely or would like to improve but doesn’t feel compelled to do the work to get there.

A person with the obsessive mindset will try to force himself to improve faster than is naturally feasible. Let’s say our dancer finished taking the beginning dance class and jumped straight into an intermediate class. He’s struggling with intermediate stuff because he hasn’t mastered the beginner techniques. If his reaction is to force his way through it, he’s obsessive. He’s probably going to injure himself.

I alternated between the hacker mindset and the obsessive mindset in school. Most of the time I’d do the minimum amount of work to get the maximum grade… or if not maximum, at least a grade I could live with. I resented being asked to go above and beyond. I’d try to coast for as long as I could. What was the point in mastering anything when I’d get an A if I did less? If I minimized the amount of time I spent on school stuff I could spend more time doing fun things, right?

For exams I’d jump into obsessive mode in a valiant attempt to pass the tests. I’d pull all-nighters studying, or spend a week or two before the test attempting to learn everything I was supposed to learn until then. By senior year of college this often meant years of material I’d never figured out. Not fun. And not very effective. :/

I’ve, regrettably, been a bit of a hacker (and sometimes obsessive) with music too. When I had piano lessons I never got into the “regular daily practice” habit. With recorder I spent a few months learning what I needed to learn and then happily hacked my way along. I’ve gotten as good as I have just by showing up to dance practice and playing for dancers. Conscious practicing? What’s that? The thing is I’d like to master some instrument, so realizing I’ve been a hacker all these years was a bit of a shock. If I continue this I’ll never master anything.

Dabblers

A person with the dabbler mindset tries something, encounters some difficulty, and then quits. The dabbling dancer is one that takes the beginner lesson, and soon after quits because “it’s not his thing” or “it takes too long to get any good”. Often he’s too ashamed of looking like the inept beginner that he is. He doesn’t realize that in order to gain competence he has to go through the beginner phase.

I’ve dabbled in SO MANY things, but four things in particular come to mind because I keep dabbling, quitting, and going back a few years later. They are languages, stringed instruments, jazz, and drawing. With languages and drawing I quit because I’m afraid to look stupid and they take a really long time to master. With Jazz, I can’t see the path for getting where I want to go. With string instruments… they’re really hard? I’m actually making some progress on the second two right now. I’ve picked up the ukulele, and have made quite a bit of progress on it alright. The goal is to use it as a stepping stone to guitar and to jazz.

Masters

The master mindset is a lot of things, but most importantly it means that when you’re on a learning plateau (i.e. you working hard but aren’t making on progress) you keep practicing, keep trying to make progress. What’s more you enjoy the practicing. Goals aren’t your primary focus, although you do still have goals. If our obsessive dancer had the master mindset his reaction to not doing well in the intermediate class would be to quit the intermediate class and work on the foundation material he still needed to master. Maybe he’d repeat the beginner class or maybe he’d go to open dancing and practice with some of the more experienced dancers. He’d accept where he was and do what he had to do. He’d also enjoy dancing where he’s at now, or at least consider the end goal worth the temporary awkwardness he’s going through.

I’ve had the master’s mindset in a few things. Three that come to mind are swing dancing, sewing, and intimate relationships.

When I started swing dancing I had the master’s mindset. I loved every bit of it. I learned a lot in the classes. I went to open dancing and wasn’t afraid to practice with the advanced dancers even though I was an awkward beginner. I practiced a lot and I loved the practicing. I’d still be dancing now if Aaron had the same interest.*

I love the process of sewing. I love sewing a straight seam on the machine. I love sewing cuffs on by hand. I also enjoy completing ambitious projects. The combination of these two things, liking the process and being ambitious, are the reasons I keep sewing and keep improving at sewing. I suffer through the visualization and fitting and refitting and refitting and refitting of a sleeve because ultimately I like sewing and the end is worth it. If I only cared about the end garment and felt ambivalent the sewing part, I wouldn’t sew. I’d just buy all my reenactment garb or have someone make it for me.

I had only one boyfriend prior to Aaron. We dated for two years in high school. I took the relationship very seriously. I was willing to work through whatever problems we had (assuming they were workable**), and all in all tried to be the best partner I could be. Not surprisingly I wasn’t the one to end the relationship. With Aaron, I feel the same way. I enjoy the process of being in a relationship. I like having date nights, I’m willing to have awkward intimate conversations that need to happen, I’m willing to admit I need to work on my issues with housework, etc. I want us to thrive. I love the practice and I have goals. I’m on the master’s path.

There’s More to Say, but…

…this post is already pretty long. Even though I just finished the book yesterday, assigning names to the different mindsets has already been useful. I’ve realized that in some areas I don’t have the master’s mindset and I wish I did. *cough*Music*cough*

I can also see it being useful for interacting with other people. There are a lot of hackers and dabblers in the SCA, and having a name for them will make it easier for me to deal with them positively. It’s OK to be a hacker or a dabbler. I just need to not expect everyone to be on the master’s path.

So, yeah, really good book. Highly recommend it. May write more about it in the future.

* We met through swing dancing, so it’s not that Aaron doesn’t know how to dance, he’s just has more of a hacker attitude than I do. As in he’d go to workshops if I was interested, but wouldn’t be pro-active about it. It was really important to me to be able to share the same level of passion about dancing with my significant other, so rather than give up Aaron I gave up dancing and replaced it with music.

** I learned later that my first boyfriend is gay, and had just been figuring that out around the time he broke up with me. Gay is not a workable problem. I stopped talking to him for reasons independent of him being gay, but that’s another story…

After I read Pillars of the Earth last summer I decided to put off reading the next book, World Without End, because Pillars destroyed my week. In a good way, mind you, but still. I couldn’t afford that kind of thing two weeks in a row. Or even two weeks in as many months. Also I wanted something to look forward to.

Now that the wedding’s over and we don’t have any TV shows to compulsively watch, I decided last weekend that I was ready to have my life eaten by a good book again. World Without End has definitely been delivering. I’m still not done with it, and I’ve had to read the book summary and skip around to the sections I was really looking forward to in order to keep myself from going insane.

Life is a Lot Better When You Want to Improve at Your Job

You’ll make more money. You’ll be more effective. You’ll more easily be able to switch jobs. People will be more able to handle it when you make mistakes. Etc.

Conversely, if you don’t want to improve at your job you won’t maximize your earning potential, you won’t be very effective, you’ll have a hard time finding another job in your field, and you won’t be very happy. It’s not fun feeling like you could be making more of your life if you were doing something else.

8 Hours Is Not Enough

I like the feeling of not being busy. I like playing with the cat, chit-chatting with Aaron, watching favorite TV shows, and spending time with friends and family. (Although sometimes the last one can feel like a chore…) I like choosing what to do based on what I feel like doing rather than based on what’s on my list.

I also like making progress on projects. I like being able to say I’m one step closer to my goals. I like making things. I like working through my mental blocks. I like practicing musics. I like learning about new things.

The 8 hours when I’m not at work and I’m not sleeping often don’t feel like enough time to relax, produce things, and do dishes. I also tend to get resentful about not having enough time to pursue worthwhile projects or having to choose between a Project and playing with the kitty (or the husband). Saying no is hard when I really do want to say yes.

I think the solution is to accept where I am… that I don’t have all the time in the world. I also need to remind myself that this state is temporary, and eventually my time will be much better aligned with my aspirations.

Online Shareable Lists are Cool

One of the reasons I wanted an iPhone was to have shared lists with Aaron. When I finally got one last fall I didn’t end up putting any list sharing software on it because there didn’t seem to be any good ones.

This week I had another look and found Listingly, which does just about everything I want. Aaron and I now have simple, shareable lists available anywhere that has internet access. Easy to update using my phone too. If there’s anyone you’d like to share to-do lists with, you should take a look at this site.

Building a Backlog of Content

I’m working on writing a backlog of well written content for TPLT. Once I get enough posts in there I’ll start posting them on Wednesdays in addition to the weekly check-in.

That’s it for now. Have a good weekend!

Self-Consciousness

When it comes to this blog I’m incredibly self-conscious. I feel like a fraud. I have a hard time telling people what I write about and feel like I need to defend why I want to write what I write. I need to get over this. The best way to do that is write about stuff I know. So that is what I will do… after the wedding.

Plans

After the wedding this blog will be my top priority. (After usual things like keeping up my current job, keeping my relationships afloat, not letting the house deteriorate too much… etc.) Basically Wedding Crapé will be replaced by Blogging Crapé.

Second to this will be music stuff. Specifically recording an album of Italian Renaissance dance music with Aaron and various other musicians from around these parts.

Third is artsy stuff like sewing myself a new Medieval dress or two for Pennsic. (I’m tired of all the unflattering cotton stuff I have, and my new Tudor Wedding Garb is too nice for camping.) Also I’d like to experiment with making period jewelry and kids clothes to sell. And maybe putting pockets in my skirts.

I will keep this order of precedence in mind.

Letting Go

Methinks I need to let go of some commitments that are weighing me down right now and will weigh me down even more if I try to pursue my already mentioned plans. At the moment, I’m holding on… doing the minimum… but I’m not growing as a leader and the people I’m supposed to be leading are suffering for it. Also I see people who would do a much better job in my place. I shouldn’t stop them from shining.

But it’s hard. I feel guilty for not wanting to grow into these positions. I had dreams for myself and they no longer fit. At the same time I know that feeling guilty about not fulfilling past dreams is silly. It doesn’t make me do what I need to do to be the right person for the job. It just makes me feel bad.

Also, it’s not like I can’t go back to these positions later. I could definitely see myself doing that at some point.

Spending to Earn

I’m thinking about spending money on this Blogging project of mine. I want a better design for the site and I have someone in mind to do it. But that will cost $$. I’ve also been looking for a community to help me get over my business/blogging related mental-blocks. I think I’ve found one that would be a good fit for me, but it costs $$. My hyper-sensitive instinct says paying money for such “help” is a scam or something, but if I view it through the lens of “it’s a class” it’s not so bad.

The trick is I need to block out the time to actually make use of it. It’s not going to be something where I just show up and have everything done for me. I’m going to have to pay money and work. But I think in the end it’ll be worth the effort. I’ll about it for another few weeks before I make any serious commitments. Plus there’s a wait list so I may not even get in.

At this point I trust myself to keep going with this blogging thing. I’ve been doing it for over a year and a half. I’d still really like doing it and want to improve at it. It’s worth throwing money at. Also throwing money at anything not related to music is a big mental block of mine so… yeah.

That’s about it for now. A week from Sunday is The Wedding. You can expect a Weekly Check-in next Friday. After that I’ll be on my honeymoon in Colorado. I’ll try to have some post ready for that Friday. It won’t be a check-in because… I won’t be there for the checking in. But it’ll be something.

Whee!

If you live like no one else, later you can live like no one else. ~ Dave Ramsey

Life is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the Journey. ~ Anonymous

Sacrifice now; Enjoy later.

Life’s too short to not enjoy every moment.

These ideas are puzzling. How can you enjoy the journey if you’re in the sacrificing phase? Isn’t the first quote all about focusing on the destination? Is it possible to live both ideas simultaneously? Are they mutually exclusive paths?

To the last question, I think the answer is no, they aren’t mutually exclusive. The contradiction only occurs on the extreme ends of each idea.

If you’re sacrificing to the point where your life no longer has any joy, you by definition aren’t enjoying the journey. If you’re focusing so intently on the future goal that you’ve lost sight of where you are right now, you’re seeing life as a destination, not a journey.

If you over focus on the journey and have no goals, you’ll be happy–maybe–but you won’t amount to much. And if you over focus on the present moment you may develop a tendency toward reckless behavior: spending beyond your means, jumping impulsively into and out of relationships, living dangerously. It’s all about now, right?

Neither idea in the extreme is good. Ideally you want both. You want to enjoy the journey to achieving great things. You want to live in the moment AND look forward to the future. Let’s look at some examples of how to do that.

Example: Getting Out of Debt

The sacrifice here is money. If you want to get out of debt you have to spend less than you earn. You have to give up buying stuff. You have to sacrifice.

You could do this the hard way by focusing on the end goal of no more debt, trim everything away, have no life, no friends, no joy. Your life is all about getting rid of debt. If you manage to keep this up, yes, you’ll get out of debt, but it’ll be at a cost higher than the money you paid to the credit card company. You’ll probably have accumulated quite a bit of resentment for the months (years?) you spend over-sacrificing. With resentment you run the risk of overspending again because “you deserve to have fun now”. You could also go the other extreme and become a scrooge-like miser. You have no friends and no fun, but you’ve got money…

You could also do this the better way by learning to enjoy being frugal. Get the most out of every dollar you spend. Fully enjoy a single orange instead of eating 5 while watching TV. Enjoy cutting out the stuff that makes you feel guilty. Eventually you’ll get out of debt, and when you do you won’t have any resentment. The time you spent trimming your spending improved your quality of life. Why would you go back to your wanton ways?

Example: Getting to a Healthy Weight

The sacrifice here is tasty unhealthy food and a sedentary lifestyle. You have to eat healthier. You have to eat less. You have to exercise.

You could do this the hard way by going on an extreme diet. You will lose weight that way if you stick to it. But it’s not sustainable. You might get to your goal weight, but do you really want to live that way? Probably not. Do you want to spend your life doing exercise you don’t enjoy? Probably not. Not surprisingly when most of try such a lifestyle change we usually give up after a few weeks days.

The better way is to pick healthy foods you like. Slowly change your diet. Slowly change your lifestyle. Do the kind of exercise you like to do. Over time you’ll get to where you want to be. You’re still sacrificing. You still have a goal. But it’s not suffering. There’s no resentment.

Example: Starting a Side Business

The sacrifice here is time. Time for friends and family. Time for hobbies. Time for sitting around. It’s really easy to fall into the “focus too much on the destination” trap here.

There are several components to doing this while enjoying the journey.

First, love what you’re doing. If you love your work, you’ll almost automatically enjoy the journey.

Second, remind yourself that it’s temporary and enjoy the imbalance. Imbalance can be fun! Ask anyone who’s gone to a convention.

Third, figure out what’s essential to your life and keep doing those things. For me that’s family and friends, music, and deep thinking. Focus on maximizing the value you get out of the time you put in. As in, skip the chit chat about the weather when talking to your Significant Other. Don’t zone out when playing music. Don’t read feeds while attempting to write a blog post.

So yeah, you can definitely do both if you want to. And when you do try to do both, you get the benefit of sustainability (i.e. you’ll be able to maintain your destination state when you get there) and avoiding resentment. Is it easy? Not usually. Most of the time it’s a lot easier to think of the extreme way to get something done or to not do anything at all. Is it worth the soul searching to try? Absolutely. Don’t we all want to make and keep our goals and enjoy life the whole way? That’s why enjoying sacrifice is on the path less traveled.

First Megatokyo comic

Have you ever looked through the archives of great web-comics and marveled at how much the art has improved over the years? One of my favorite comics is Megatokyo and if you look at the first strips compared to the latest ones you can see an incredible improvement in the quality of the artwork. The stuff at the beginning, any competent inexperienced artist could draw. The stuff being published now… not so much.

Recent Megatokyo comic

Blogs are the same way. Look at the first few posts of a popular blog and more often than not you’ll find awkwardness. The posts then don’t flow as well as they do now. They aren’t as useful. The voice isn’t the same.

When we start a new activity it’s tempting to get frustrated at our lack of aptitude. Our first drawings are terrible. Our first song makes us cringe when we listen to it a few weeks later. Our first story has cardboard characters and stilted dialogue. We think we have no talent. We think we’ll never amount to anything.

Or maybe we don’t get as far as actually doing something. We don’t try to draw or compose or write. We don’t ask people to dance because we only know the basic. We don’t talk to our French cousins because we don’t want them to hear our terrible accent and lack of vocabulary.

Before you write yourself off think of the beginning work of your favorite artist, author, or composer. Think of your favorite speaker when she was a stuttering child. The sucking phase is normal. Few people are born with innate talent, and most of what looks like innate talent isn’t what it appears to be.

If you want to get good at something new you have to be OK with the awkward beginning phase. There’s more to mastery than that, of course, but if you can’t accept your initial mediocre output, your attempts at mastery will be dead in the water.

Kitty reads book to avoid trying new foods...

We all know escapism is bad. When you’re reading a novel so you can avoid doing your taxes, that’s bad. When you’re reading blogs instead of writing for your own blog that’s bad. When you’re giving your spouse attention to avoid doing housework that’s bad. When you’re doing housework to avoid your homework, that’s bad. Anything you do so you don’t have to think about what you ought to be doing is escapism, and escapism of that sort is bad. Avoiding the things you have to do in your life does not lead to good things.

What’s interesting is that under different circumstances these activities wouldn’t be escapism. Most people don’t think giving their spouse attention is ever a bad thing. Scheduling time to catch up on your favorite blogs isn’t always a time waster. Watching TV can be a good form of recreation.

Virtually no activity is inherently escapist, and just about any activity can be escapist. Family can be an escape from work. Work can be an escape from family. Housework can be both something to avoid and something to help you avoid something else.

You’ll read on lots of blogs that you should “stop reading and go DO your thing“. It can be a bit disconcerting. Is it bad to read and plan? Is action the only good thing?

Methinks these experts are addressing people who are using “good” activities to escape from the stuff they have to do. This is a bad practice because it demeans the activity. You aren’t doing the activity because of it’s worthwhile-ness. You’re doing to avoid something. The worthwhile-ness of the activity just makes you able to rationalize your doing it instead of what you don’t want to do.

Your spouse won’t like it if you’re giving him/her attention so that you don’t have to fold laundry.

Look at how you spend your time. What worthwhile activities are you doing to escape from some part of your life? What “not so worthwhile” activities are you doing because you love doing them?