nine year mess

6:01am the last nine years have been a mess. I don’t feel like trying to categorize them. They are lost years. I am not sure what I accomplished. I don’t know what I was trying to achieve. I assumed I would find success. whatever that vague term means. I picked a line to ski down the mountain. Maybe when i look back it will all make sense. i am still on a journey.

The help of others

Part of what I am showing in this blog is that there is an ebb and flow. No one is 100% focused all the time. I have moments where I get lazy, where I have doubt, where my priorities shift underneath me, my objectives change. It is like an ocean crossing. I may know where I want to go but there are no guarantees what I am going to encounter on my journey or what variables experiences I will have.
High quality coaches are paid millions of dollars a year. The military uses drill sergeants. When military personnel complete boot camp family and friends see them for the first time at graduation. When they see them again they note they are a completely different person. They have changed. That complete change of personhood and priorities does not occur on an individual level. It is the proximity of fellow enlistees. It is the drill sergeant, the commanding officers, the branch of military, the country, the idea of God however you interpret. The entire system and team afford someone an opportunity to change their life. If you truly want to change you must trust a system that gives you the opportunity to grow.
People use personal trainers to achieve weight loss goals. Keeping people focused on a goal is difficult and time consuming. They have to be just as dedicated to helping you grow and you are to actually doing it.

Subjective lag measures

Overall satisfaction is subjective. We can continue to work on the money part and constantly assess the other. And you know what, often times when you stop and look back, even if you didn’t hit your goal it is then you appreciate the journey.
Graduation from high school is a goal, graduating from college. But those are made up goals because you are paying someone for the privilege of putting you through a system. It is a form of entertainment though it does have value. You can put that on a resume and apply for jobs that have more money. When I got my MBA I was instantly able to check a box on applications I hadn’t been able to check previously.

Maze

The first maze is easy. You might be able to see which route to go and quickly solve. The second maze you might have to stop and look but you can see which way to go. The third requires more ability than you possess. What do you do? Usually just pick a route if you hit a dead end back track and go different way. Trial and error.

That is good if we stick with our objective, to exit the maze. But in life we tend to get emotionally attached to our routes. Back tracking, retracing, staying focused on our objective get lost. We enjoy the journey then hit a dead end. We try to bargain, cajole, reach our objective while staying in our dead end.

Bifurcate the maze, color in the negative space, start from finish, left hand right hand trick.

In Defense of Growing

Yesterday I asked the question am I just futilely spinning my wheels or am I on a journey of growth.
Today I posit that I am growing. In the late 2000’s and early 2010’s I was working on creating representation for unaffiliated religious people. By the time I had put as much effort as possible into it I had put together a compilation book and self-published it on Amazon. The book itself is not very good and I think I only officially sold one copy (maybe two) but the effort was there and I had something to show for it.
The same is true of thirtydayjobcleanse.com. I put the effort fort and felt like I was really close. Again perhaps the material was not good but it was a valiant effort that I believe was on the cusp of producing revenue from my marketing efforts. I just couldn’t quite pull it all together. In fact this blog is morphing into the actual Thirty Day Job Cleanse so I am not even sure it is dead yet.
Whatever the case I believe I am growing and becoming. I need to keep walking even when it seems like it will never end.