Date Posted: May 28th, 2010
Things I’ve been thinking about this week:
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!
Tags:
Career, Character-Development, Leadership, Meta, Money, Self-Discipline.
Posted at
1:20 pm | 1 Comment »
Date Posted: April 2nd, 2010
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.
Tags:
Career, Money, Physical Health, Self-Discipline.
Posted at
7:00 am | No Comments »
