The Game
I live on three levels, two of which are carefully tended.
First: the Immediate.
I tend the Immediate carefully, with a List. The List is about ten lines rewritten daily; if a List item I don't enjoy can be delegated somehow, I try to do just that. Items on the list can be tasks, objects, people, questions, anything.
I simply sort of fell into doing this as a matter of comfort. It manages stress. Not on the List? Then not a worry. Not on the top of the List? Not something to worry about *yet*.
Letting go of non-List items can be liberating. But I've occasionally left the impression of being calculating and/or ruthless. Perhaps that is the downside of maintaining a List - a fairly stressfree existence at the cost of vital, valuable, human connections.
Second: the Chapter.
My life runs in short chapters, which are tended carefully (in the areas that tending is possible). A week long to perhaps a couple months long, at most, usually dominated by a theme or overarching concern.
Chapters end with goals met and superceded, or unmet with new goals defined. Or I pause, take a deep breath, and redouble my efforts on the unmet goal in some new way. Often as a small swarm of List items. Over and over again.
Yes, I can be a really tenacious bastard when it comes to something I want.
Third: The General Direction of my life.
I do not manage this nor do I ever intend to. For risk of knowing my fate.
Late in high school I met with the Career Planner. It was a stuffy, tedious experience. Looking back, of course there were no career descriptions for half the things I've done. Most tech jobs simply weren't imagined yet, in 1982.
Clearly nobody had read Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock" in the career planning office.
Gee, if I *tried-really-hard*, I could adopt a script of a life as a doctor-lawyer-engineer, only to die in a demographically prescribed neighbourhood. Faugh, why bother then? I already knew the ending of every life story.
Closing my eyes, I envisioned the housing tracts in 1970's Orange County as pens. Farmed not for milk or oranges, but taxes, productivity, and the next brood of prospective employees...
...so I decided to "play" with my life. As if it were my own life, with ups and downs, real risks and real rewards.
I'm still playing, and like a mischievious four year old child, managing to get away with it, somehow.
...your Invisible Pal
First: the Immediate.
I tend the Immediate carefully, with a List. The List is about ten lines rewritten daily; if a List item I don't enjoy can be delegated somehow, I try to do just that. Items on the list can be tasks, objects, people, questions, anything.
I simply sort of fell into doing this as a matter of comfort. It manages stress. Not on the List? Then not a worry. Not on the top of the List? Not something to worry about *yet*.
Letting go of non-List items can be liberating. But I've occasionally left the impression of being calculating and/or ruthless. Perhaps that is the downside of maintaining a List - a fairly stressfree existence at the cost of vital, valuable, human connections.
Second: the Chapter.
My life runs in short chapters, which are tended carefully (in the areas that tending is possible). A week long to perhaps a couple months long, at most, usually dominated by a theme or overarching concern.
Chapters end with goals met and superceded, or unmet with new goals defined. Or I pause, take a deep breath, and redouble my efforts on the unmet goal in some new way. Often as a small swarm of List items. Over and over again.
Yes, I can be a really tenacious bastard when it comes to something I want.
Third: The General Direction of my life.
I do not manage this nor do I ever intend to. For risk of knowing my fate.
Late in high school I met with the Career Planner. It was a stuffy, tedious experience. Looking back, of course there were no career descriptions for half the things I've done. Most tech jobs simply weren't imagined yet, in 1982.
Clearly nobody had read Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock" in the career planning office.
Gee, if I *tried-really-hard*, I could adopt a script of a life as a doctor-lawyer-engineer, only to die in a demographically prescribed neighbourhood. Faugh, why bother then? I already knew the ending of every life story.
Closing my eyes, I envisioned the housing tracts in 1970's Orange County as pens. Farmed not for milk or oranges, but taxes, productivity, and the next brood of prospective employees...
...so I decided to "play" with my life. As if it were my own life, with ups and downs, real risks and real rewards.
I'm still playing, and like a mischievious four year old child, managing to get away with it, somehow.
...your Invisible Pal