Writing

If you write, then you will have more writing.

It seems obvious, but the feedback loop for this is remarkable - the more I write, the more I want to write.  I've been combing through some of my old notes and thoughts, and have been rereading and refining the content.  I've also had some recent inspiration in the form of blogs by Seth Godin (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/), Bob Lewis (http://www.weblog.keepthejointrunning.com/) and Kevin Kelly (http://kk.org/).  Some posts are longer, some are shorter, but all tickle parts of my brain that need need it.  I'm still revising a few posts, looking for inconsistencies in language, but more importantly, in thought - are these cogent, well thought out arguments and observation?  Are they coherent?  Am I being too cynical?  Am I presenting this intentionally, whether it be humorous, cynical, confrontational or thoughtful?  I may or may not publish them - for now, they are a way for me to organize my thoughts, question my own thinking and ask myself, "Really, what do you believe, and does it hold up?"

Normal

Up before the alarms this morning.  Lisa is home, so the house is returning to its normal state (particularly for the animals).

Happy moment this morning when the CGT came up on Slacker (The Marsh).

Tying up a few loose ends on some work - I have two open projects that are effectively on hold, as other priorities have been identified.  I'm torn: we're very close to at least concluding this work, so a part of me is strongly pulling to get at least a few minimal items completed, which will effectively allow us to declare success.  Another part of me wants to stand firm: these are the new priorities, so we are not working on these old priorities.

Part of this is driven by a typical middle management issue: from the top, a (seemingly) clear plan and objective is communicated; we hear this at the bottom, and come to the conclusion that this is now what is important.  Somewhere in the middle, however, other agendas and priorities come in.  I don't question that the priorities of the middle are not important - in fact, they are a bridge to make sure all of the smaller details get filled in for the larger picture.  But if they take away from the top-level priorities, we have a problem.  Worse, is that we are measured for both, and if the middle priorities are not completed, we're a failure. 

So, do the work, or stand firm.  Either way, we at the bottom lose.

Puzzles

Wake just before the alarm from a mildly disturbing dream, though I believe I slept straight through the night for a change.  It took a couple of minutes to fight the "it" that wanted to stay on bed, stay home, stay asleep, but I won the battle today.  Up, and through the morning routine and off to work.

Watched a campy and mindlessly violent movie last night (that actually didn't factor into the dreams).  The movie had its moments, but I couldn't help but wonder what Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez would have done with the premise.

A relatively productive day, puzzling out a problem for one of my developers.  A challenge we have is that everyone we're dealing with is in constant motion - when you deal with investments and markets, there is an inevitable level of action required, from early in the morning before the markets open, until well after they close.  These teams are understaffed, and we're in a classic bind: the development work we're doing is to automate a number of the critical, but labor intensive, processes the business must do, but they spend so much time actually doing them that there is little time for them to spend with us to explain what they're doing.  My job of late, and it's personally rewarding, is to become a business expert (to a degree) and help quickly translate the business needs into something that a developer with little to no business experience can understand.

I'm finding that this type of work is really what interests me: finding the patterns, abstracting them, and getting someone unfamiliar with certain concepts to be able to apply them in code.  I've been struggling with staying engaged with my work, and if this isn't the door on, it might be the key.

Solitary progress

Back to work after a pretty good weekend.  Got a few things checked off the list:

- Tires on the Jeep
- Pots brought into the shed
- Rain barrels put away
- Road sand box put out
- General clean-up in the gardens in prep for clearing leaves
- Large bird bath put away
- Laundry and sundry

I began cleaning up two metal bird baths I found at the flea mearket this year.  I was disassembling one of them, and ended up breaking one of the metal parts.  Since it's a part of the support for the base, I can't use one of the metal weld pastes (at least I don't think I can) and may actually have to weld it.  We'll see.  In the meantime, everything is apart and ready for priming and painting.

So, good progress on the list I've made for myself - while I have some positive energy, I need to apply it.  I know that the energy will wane soon, but in the meantime things will get done.

Review

Through the magic of trying to discover where a 2 year-old request came from, I had to delve back into some older e-mail archives (how is it that I can remember or suss out a 3 year-old password?).  In this archive, I also have some older journal entries, some nearly 15 years old.  It's amid some of the mundane details and sometimes laughable commentary, there are some genuine observations. 

I do this periodically, if only to remind myself where I was, and to get a sense of what was important to me at the time.  It also gives me a sense of how far I have (or haven't) come in the intervening years.

Things that haven't changed: the exercises and repertoire I was working on (Eye of the Needle and Bloackhead in September of 2000, my seeming need to yank myself out of my chair by the shoulders (as evidenced by my first AT meeting with Sandra), my sensitivity to people entering late the sitting space at the beginning of a sitting. Oh, and I still can't count out loud while playing.

Things that haven't changed: the longer-term impact of my Level 1, and many of the people and things I was exposed to that week.  Reading my very limited notes (I'm not particularly adept at journaling during courses), I'm interested by what struck me enough to write down, and how much more my memory can fill in.  I must have had a few moments where I was present.

Doing some writing now, some of which might become public.  At this point, I'm getting inspiration from a couple of places (Seth Godin, Kevin Kelly) and will probably look at JGB's Witness and Transformation before putting anything out, but at the moment, there are a few interesting short-form ideas percolating.  I'm also pulling a numer of older ideas out of my archives to see if they are worth fleshing out.

I also feel a change is coming on, but it needs to be directed.  There's a bit of wild energy available to me, and I have to be careful.  Darker, dangerous things lurk, and while they can be valuable and useful, better that they have some direction before action.