Change your lens.  Like a camera, you can add different filters to how you are viewing a situation, a problem, a joy, a “whatever.”  When you change the lens or the filter you are seeing the issue differently.  You are allowing yourself the opportunity to pause, to reconsider, to see things from a different angle or perspective.  I say lens and filter, to stick the analogy, because you can put different lens on a camera and different filters.  You can get a long lens, fish-eye lens, a red filter, a blue filter, etc.  You can choose to say, “I can see this differently if I use lens “x”.  Yet, if I use lens “y” I’ll see from a different perspective.”

Instead of “how is this hurting me”, see it has “how does this help me.”  Instead of “this sucks”, how does it “not suck”?  What does the situation allow you to learn, or understand?  What’s the benefit of the information coming in?  

How can you substitute the “… yeah… but…” for the “… maybe this benefits…”.  It’s funny, but I almost wrote “… maybe this benefits me…”.  That’s exactly what thinking that I’m trying to adjust.  The focus on the “I, me, my”.  The “…yeah… but” that’s trying to be cured is the same focus as the “how me”.  

The focus on self creates a self-perpetuating cycle of “I, me, my”.  It’s the ego looking only through the lens and filter of self.  It feels like situation “x” hurts me, or doesn’t benefit me because of “x”.  Yet, what if it’s not about me?  If I change the lens, then I can learn from this, instead of wallowing in self ____ (pity, pain, hurt, focus, etc.).  “Maybe this benefits…” allows you to change the lens and look at it differently.  It expands the self and the ego to those around you, or nothing to do with you. Which, let’s be honest, like a nosey neighbor in an 80’s sitcom, most things only pertain to us if we let them / make them.

Keep in mind, the truth, the positive, the lesson, the learn, the whatever may not be known right away.  There’s always the chance it was just one of the many pains and hurts in life.  And sometimes there is no lesson.  There is no learn.  Sometimes it is just pain.  When changing the lens or the filter does not lead anywhere other than pain; the learn / realization through reading and growth work being done that at 45 I’m still here.  Sometimes kicking and screaming, sometime wallowing in self-pity, sometimes rolled in a ball, sometimes hurt and afraid.  Yet, through all the bad and the good, through all the lens and filters that did not help… still standing… still here.

See if the lens or filter change helps.  See if it does not allow a pause, or a moment to breath, think, reconsider.  See if you are able learn something about your situation you had not considered before.  

Not Perfect. Posted.

It is funny what holds us back.  What is even more funny, is when we have no idea what is holding us back, or how it is holding us back.  In this life, there is so much we just accept.  We accept because that is what we are taught and told to do.  From the earliest of ages, we are being directed, controlled, but in box, told what to do and what not to do.  We are told who our friends are, then scolded when we do not like someone, for whatever reason and told our thoughts, feelings, intuition, does not matter.

Parents do this because we believe it is the best and right thing to do.  We do this, so we do not look bad.  We have the good kid. We have the agreeable kid. We have the kid that listens.  We have the kid that follows directions.  We have the kid that does well in school.  We have the kid with high grades.  We.  We. We. 

We parent, not for our kids, but for the perception of other’s views/thoughts/belief on parenting.  On our parenting.

Then we grow.  We get older.  Now, we are being punished for not knowing “x” or doing “y”.  Why do you need to be told to do “x” over and over?  Just do it.  Yet, parents are the ones that created this behavior.

What does that have to do with me and this post?  Maybe nothing.  I am back after a bit.  After reading Seth Godin’s daily email it dawned on me that I was not writing because I was not writing enough.  I wanted to make a big, huge post.  I wanted to write and write and write. I wanted… I wanted… I wanted.

Yet, Seth sometimes writes just a couple of quick thoughts.  A sentence or two, or twenty, or.  He writes.  He posts.  Sometimes they are great emails.  Sometimes they are sales emails.  Sometimes they are not so great, or insightful, or whatever.

Yet.  He. Writes.  He writes and he puts it out.  My sidetrack about parenting above is because that is my filter now.  My filter used to be as a manger.  I would read a book and think about how I could use information “x” to be a better manager.  Now, I read and write and watch and filter through a different lens.  I literally cannot stop my brain from going in a parenting direction.

It is funny how often we hold ourselves back.  It is funny how we structure our days.  It is funny that no matter what we do, or how we do it or do not do it, the world continues.  This post was started about writing and posting.  Period. Five words.  Six words.  Twenty pages.  Then my brain went for that parenting thing.  I followed it.  It led to here.  What is your filter?  What guides and influences the path you walk, the thoughts that influence you?  What motivates you?  Where does your brain go when you read something, think about something, or someone?

Thank you for reading.

Not perfection, but posted. Or… Posted. Not Perfection.

Based on my current situation there are choices being presented to me daily.  Choices, like many others I’m sure, I don’t want to make or be presented with.  Yet, there they are.  How is one suppose to react in this situation?  What’s the outcome?

Wednesday a situation was presented.  One that could require a choice to be made, or left alone.  Now, taking the higher ground is a choice. Taking a backseat is a choice.  Even if it appears to be a non-choice, it’s a choice.  

My father has said to me these past few months something that lingers, mostly, in every choice being made:  If you think you can win this one, go for it.  If you don’t think you can, don’t.  Before you ask that, ask if it’s worth fighting for. What’s the outcome?  What’s the benefit?

Luckily, other than my father, I had outside counsel.  This was a misunderstanding on someone else’s part.  This was a moment that someone else was bullying me.  It does’t change the choices presented, but it does affect the thought process getting there.

At the end of the day, I stayed calm.  I sought counsel.  I reacted in the best interest of myself and my daughter.  Because there wasn’t an over reaction.  Because I thought through this.  And, because I stood up for myself, it doesn’t feel good, but it feels like it was right.  Now, if someone of a higher authority asks me “why”, I can answer logically and calming.

There’s an audience watching.  Are you paying attention?

p.s.

Another nugget of wisdom my father keeps telling me; you can only control your reaction.

In the early 2000’s I took a class at IPFW.  Sociology class to be specific.  This particular memory is about relationships and how we react to them.  There were two quotes that are remembered:

“Distance makes the heart grow fonder”.

“Out of site, out of mind.”

The breakdown was the mental affect those two quotes have on a person who’s significant other is out of town.  The first one makes you feel longingly towards the person.  In turn, it makes you believe they are thinking the same about you. Regretting having to be away, but ultimately just counting the hours and moments to be back in your arms.

The second brings on anxiety and hurt.  You sit around thinking of all the things they are doing without you, while you are sitting at home pining away.  It becomes hurtful and saddening.

Here’s the current struggle spawned from that thought flow: What to do and why?  Go to college and finish a twenty year old degree?  What’s the point?  Why do it? Why not do it?  Get a standard job and work 8-5 til I die?  Throw caution into the wind just try a job that makes no sense, isn’t practical, could fail and set me back even more from investing in my retirement?

Why do or do not do anything?

Part of the struggle has been looking outside for advice vs looking inside for advice.  Finding the path that sets us up for success short term and long term.  Talking about creating your own quotes, not posting someone else’s. 

Then this morning Seth Godin’s daily email came through.  It’s not always read, but this morning’s was:

“Our days are filled with the path to future skills, tasks and commitments that we believe we can’t possibly take on. We’ve seduced ourselves into believing that we’re not born with the talent, or that the obstacles to doing the work are just too great.

In fact, it’s more likely that we’ve simply decided that the work isn’t worth the effort.

Or the fear is too much to bear.

But it’s hardly impossible.

We just don’t care enough.” (https://seths.blog/2019/08/impossible/)

Sometimes, we need that nudge to help sets us straight.  One of the things that’s been read and learned over and over through the years is you can have the best advice, the best outcome solution, the best encouragement to help someone (without getting into a hole of telling someone something, instead of helping them find it), but if they are not ready to hear it, then it will fall on deaf ears.  Not only that, it can cause problems, or hurt or anger from that person.  It can come off as an attack.  It can feel like you are trying to control, when you think you are trying to help.  

“If you she would…”.  “If only he’d listen to…”.  If. If. If.  “Why won’t he/she…”. 

“If only…”.  Two of the worst words to put together in any language.  

If a person isn’t ready to help themselves, all your advice, good intentions and frustration mean nothing.  Countless books have been consumed, each a little leaked into the mind, ultimately, all that advice sits dormant.  Until, the mind and body are ready to accept it.  Until the mind and body are ready to hear it.  To feel it.  To personalize it.

It’s easy to look back and see pain.  Or hurt.  The mistakes.  The breaks.  The pain.  The failure.  The why’s and why’s not’s.

The latest focus is on fear.  What fear does.  How it controls.  How it dictates. How it fosters insecurities.  How it keeps you awake at night.  How, it flows through you and controls your voice, your tone, your emotions.  Fear.  If only.

Fear.  I’m signed up for two classes.  Fear kept it from happening.  Fear was questioning the choice.  Fear of failure.  Fear of wasting money.  Fear of…

Then I read Seth’s email.  “But it’s hardly impossible.  We just don’t care enough”.  So, it is.

Care enough to find out. Care enough to try.

One fear overcome.  Bring on the next.

Paper Girls #30.  A comic by Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chang, Matt Wilson, and Jared K. Fletcher.  It’s the final issue.  All have been read and collected from issue #1.

There are so many stories, books, articles, whatever written medium you choose where I’ve wondered what it is that makes the story good.  What it is that draws one in?  Makes one care.  Makes the one turn the page.  Makes one check in, pay money, return month in and month out.

Issue #30 could have been read on its own. It’s that good.  The story is well crafted and told.  There are few words.  Cliff Chang has drawn a beautiful story.  Just like he did the previous 29 issues.  If you read them all you’ll get so much more.  It’s a testament to the creative team that you don’t need to.

Read this story.  Enjoy it.  Take it in and process it for what it is.  To lay it down.  To set it aside.  To think on it.  Then… it fades.  Pieces may stick, or hang around or ideally linger in the recesses of the mind.  Find a place to burrow in and holds for years.  If history holds, it won’t.  Even writing about it won’t be enough to make it sticky for long.  Writing that sentence just became a challenge.  My mind is already working to prove me wrong.  It wants to find away to say “HA!”. Confidence says it won’t.

So.  Why read it?  Why ingest it?  Why take time.  Money.  Effort.  Why set aside the moment to  bring another person’s words to life by reading them?  Why give them money?  Attention.  The investment of self.

Because they made the effort.  They sat down and created.  They took time from their life to develop the skill to make an issue #30 a great read.  There was a story read recently about Picasso that encapsulates this perfectly:

Picasso does a doodle on the napkin, signs it, hands it to the guy, and says, “That’ll be $30,000.”  The guy says, “$30,000? That took you five seconds.”  Picasso says, “No, that took me a lifetime.” (http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2017/04/picassos-insanely-valuable-doodles/)

There’s no proof of that story being true.  Even if it’s not, the point of it is.  It’s a great parable.  A great tale.  And, again, it holds.

It’s an early version of the 10,000 hour rule Malcolm Gladwell popularized.  Turns out it’s not really true, but feels true enough.  So, the concept holds.  It’s why I’m writing now.

The last page of Paper Girls #30 was read.  It caught my attention.  It made me ask how someone can write such a great, tight, concise story.  It makes me jealous.  It makes me wonder why he put in all the work and I didn’t.  That is making their story about me.  And it’s their story.  It’s a good story.  A well told story.

You should read it.

I’m not religious, but I believe in angels.  I like the idea of them.  These majestic creatures existing in the ether.  No job.  No purpose.  Another accident of the universe’s evolution.  We can’t see them with our eyes.  We can draw them, though, as if standing in front of us.  Artists have imagined them, created them whole cloth, in paintings and art.  

If you close your eyes, you’ll imagine one.  One very similar to the one I see, though slightly different.  Just as we see the world.  Each person sees a tree, but I’ll never see the tree you see.

You can run.  The same as me.  Yet, we’ll never run the same.  Our bodies will never feel the same.  Nothing about the way we run will be the same.  Yet, we can both run and enjoy it, or not, as we are free to be, exactly, whatever, however we choose, or our bodies choose to be.

We won’t be able to say why we don’t like one thing over another.  Science can help give explanations for the why, but honestly we’ll never exactly know.  Reasons are changing, just as the seasons change.  Coming in cycles, nearly predictable, but never the same as the year both.  No December 12th is the same as the one previously, or the one next year.

We exist with an understanding of the world as we see it.  Never really being able to say why we see it a certain way, or how we see it a certain way.  Often, we just accept this as truth, because it’s what we know.  Even though, the person next to us sees their truth in a whole different way.

As I think about this my cat looks up at me and gives a loud meow.  I have no idea what’s she’s trying to communicate.  I realize, that’s not much different than any other person I talk to daily.  It’s just easier to accept that you don’t understand a cat.  We fool ourselves into trying to understand one another.

Some mornings give me a moment to reflect and think about something other than myself.

I look outside and see the potential for reflection and play.  For what could come from this day.  Then I try to write and relax into the words, while my daughter plays.  But the cat climbs into my lap and lets me know she wants to have her morning pets.

I start to think about what would be noticed or seen if the time was taken to observe more and distract less.  Not just with technology, but the noises in my head.  The chatter, the worries the fear, the self-doubt and worrying about the day and days to come.  

There remains a row of tall grass against the fence in the backyard.  You can see where how tall the grass grew from the stains of green.  It’s shorter now, but still longer than it’s suppose to be.  Even typing those words make me think about how tall it’s suppose to be is based off of what is perceived to be other people’s expectations of how “my yard” should look.  We don’t get to make that choice, because other people have decided dandelions are bad, no matter how much my daughter loves them and knows them to be flowers.

There was a bunny in the backyard this morning.  It was driving the cat mad chasing from one one to the next.  She action movie styled a race upstairs for some reason.  Guess she thought she could see better from that perspective.  Sitting at this tables, seeing drops of rain hang on to blades of grass left uncut, a mini wall of grass against the back fence, and knowing there’s a world of things happening in one house, what could possible be happening with people in all these other houses.

I’ll see a runner shortly run by the house.  It’ll help motivate me to run today, just as it did yesterday.  On my run, I’ll hope someone sees me running and think “yup, I need to get out there to”.  Not for me, for them.

Sometimes I wonder what I’m missing being inside these four walls.  Other times, I wonder what I’ll miss when I’m not.

Quote from my daughter this morning: Why wouldn’t mommy let me learn division when i was younger, i’m really smart.

There was a science experiment today happening in my kitchen. My daughter knew the reason water floated on top of corn syrup was that the corn syrup was heavier. I thought that was cool.

I have a hardcover 3 book, slipcase collection of Calvin and Hobbes books. Yesterday, my daughter separated one of those books from its hardcover. She looked up at me as if i would be upset. i looked at the book in pieces, i looked at my daughter and said: I would rather you destroy a book loving it, than have a perfect book never read. She smiled at me, then began flipping through the book and reading it. Then, she continued to read it. Then, she acted out skits from stories in the book. Then, she began making up stories of her own (Spacegirl spiff. Spaceman spiff’s sidekick). Then, she made a book with the characters from Calvin & Hobbes. Then, she talked about multiple volumes of it, if the first one was successful. I don’t always make the right choice. I don’t always say the right thing. I don’t always act how i should. But, every once in awhile, i get it right.