Steinbeck Warmup

Lol good luck. I've had a day of someone asking me persistently where I park my car, when they know full well that I don't have a car. I'm not sure if it's a trick question, or if this person is so shut in her own world that she doesn't hear that I don't have a car because she has a car...

Yeah, some trap door in your brain will know how to do this better each time it hits you!

Ah, thanks Saidso. My I Ching Sage Coach said: stagnant (hex. 12), stay compact and ride it out.

I'm scraping the lowest levels of energy. Keeping myself out of too much, and even then I don't have it all together. Furinstance, took the batteries out of a giveaway flashlight so I could buy the replacement. Not only did three stores I visited not have that size, I can't for the life of me remember where I put the husk of the light!?

Now, normally, part of me that my dad's introject would take this mere loss as symbolic of much more ineptitude around me, or to come. I'm pushing back tonight, no dad, just stop it. It's a freebie, I have another just like it that's doing fine. As a mild punishment to fit the temporary loss, I won't shop for or buy the batteries until it turns up again.

And for the rest ... I'll rest and do even less that I'm doing now, and double check my steps.

So there! Dad, now step back so I can sleep.
Revu2

My partner offered that I should go to sleep and in the morning I'd go right to it. Sure, yeah.

Woke up, and walked straight to it! Eptitude regained.

Revu2

Hi Warmup,

The problem: I took a few days off from dealing with assembling my tax #s to focus on paid work. When I came back I could barely recall what'd I had done, where my best spreadsheet was, which other expenses I needed and which ones were on "record" already. Huh. My memory had "faded" over the course of five days. John Steinbeck suffered something like this when he took breaks from writing his epic novels, to rest, visit with friends, move his household, or have a bit of fun. When he came back to work on Monday he often complained how difficult it was to find the thread of where he'd left off.

So, tonite I called Jerry Seinfeld, E L Doctorow, Anne Lamott, Irene Maria Fornes, and Hermann Ebbinghaus to a meeting to help me understand.

From H. Ebbinghaus: Yes, you see, you and Herr Steinbeck are experience the forgetting curve. In just 24 hours we forget maybe 35% of what you were working on. In two days, it's close to 60%. Yes, it's s burden to get to your work everyday. But remember, Herr Lynx, its a burden to remember after the gap. One must choose.

From Seinfeld & Lamott: everyday do a minimum bit of work that moves things forward.

From E L Doctorow: “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” This means to me I only need to "see" out a couple of days, just keep it rolling so I can plan when I'll get to my forward moving bits of work.

From Fornes: There's a part of you that wants to do this daily thing because it's smart and will save time and effort, in theory, and a side of you that gets tired, busy, committed, needs a break, rebels, and makes excuses — that at heart doesn't want to do it. The worker must keep tricking the other one.

The test. This leaves me with: a new spreadsheet with the days of the month in the first column, and my best guess at what my minimum might be for the next two or three days (limits of my sight in the fog).

Some days that just noticeable advance may be indeed just noticeable.

So be it, and so it is.

Revu2

Hello Warmup,

Attended a Global Gathering of Liberating Structures players and learners woven with attending to some work meetings at the end of last week. Very tired by the end. Had my sense before registering that working commitments would clash, & yup, got that right.

Went an hour early every day to allow time to connect before I had to slip away. Strategy worked well.

One idea for myself suggested during an exercise—exchange all my time and energy fretting and dreading into something that I move forward.

Another was the David Rock SCARF model~

S tatus
C ertainty
A utonomy
R elatedness
F airness

Shared it with my life partner for 36 years and it helped us have a break through, at least for a morning, in a bug in our communication that's bedeviled us since the beginning. It had to with autonomy, my space to use it and hers to adjust.

There are few other ideas, too, too tender to tell.

Revu2

Sounds very positive, especially that you used it already and it worked for you!!! Wondered where you had got to - I'm off again. I realised that I hadn't understood the communication quest that you were on - I'm still at communication base-camp.

Nice to see you back again.

Saidso

Hi Warmup & Saidso,

Saidso, what's up with you of late?

Everything has sprints and seasons in my life. Yup, that framework started helping right away. I'm interested in getting his book because SCARF just deals with our capacity to monitor threat.

The other energy is our capacity to offer reward. Let's play:

For Status the offer might be Honor.
For Certainty offer Clarity.
For Autonomy offer Permission.
For Relatedness offer Welcome.
For Fairness offer Sharing.

HCPWS, this will take some time to work out as an acronym.

Today is mostly doing and outward focused. Paperwork and something to draft, something else to schedule, a board meeting, cleaning. Later, sitting with a panel tonight to talk about how art creates social change. Just remembered Uncle Tom's Cabin (which I tried to read and just couldn't do it) and the disturbingly influential Death of a Nation.

Revu2

Ah, warmup, living as a series of questions and answers. First upon awakening: what's urgent to do today? When will I get to it?

I get up... do I dress now or later? Etc. Poke about a little, look into the morning light at the view.

And so on. One key Q: when does this workday start? Today I set it for 9, some days it's way earlier, others later or not at all. Starting the workday means my personal meanderings stop and I attend to stuff involving clients or other people. I won't response or even read too deeply into email until after I've begun something meaningful for the workday stuff.

When working for clients I need to keep track of my time. The lawyer/novelist Scott Turow has an interesting piece on billable hours. He doesn't like them but also doesn't suggest what might replace them.

I got interested myself when considering the ethics of how much, or whether at all, to bill any of the hours a project haunts my life. A quarter hour of a walk mulling issues and possible next moves. Ten minutes sprinkled throughout a day as I do other stuff reflecting on the best way to make slides about the status and next steps in the work.

I'd used Clockify, a freemium time tracker until yesterday. To actually send an invoice on stationary required downloading its data in a spreadsheet and about 10 minutes of shifting columns, resorting the dates, and patching the result into my word doc as a table & changing date formats. I'm returning to directly putting my daily time totals in an open invoice. With two clients, 10 minutes a month each, I'm reclaiming 2 hours a year. Two days a month I can linger till 9:10 before ...

getting to work,
Revu2

Oh, I am house-hunting...
And while house-hunting, I went into a lefty bookshop, and read half of "No Logo" by Naomi Klein. She makes some interesting points about reduced contributions of corporation tax to national budgets and also about developments in marketing identity politics and marketing politicians - which can seem positive on the surface but sinister in the bigger context. Joined up thinking - stuff that itches but you can't scratch it.

What's with the capacity to monitor threat thing? Uh, ok, I you-tubed it.
Honor, Clarity, Permission, Welcome, Sharing.

Hum, I'm not sure about all this. Most people who I met on my travels during the past week seem to work off scripts - apart from groups of older women who work off nudges (smile). There was a large social group of older women in and out of the café that I used as a base who were fascinatingly responsive to each other's body language codes. But the rest was blah!

I sometimes wonder whether politicians deliberately create states of social alienation, so that people shut down into whatever individual script makes them feel better about themselves?

Howdy warmup & Saidso,
As with anything I play with, I gain if anything in it turns out useful to me. The SCARF piece are domains intuitively used to scope out safety and/or threat.

Once this idea moves to more distant people than oneself and their less nudge-able behavior, it's likely it still works but I sense the strength weakens. There are also other schema like Maslov's hierarchy of needs that can be mapped onto experience. Like all maps, they burnish part of the full context and hide or ignore others.

As the developer of SCARF is a neuro-scientist, the 'data' is constrained to one person. Being trained as a scientist he doubtless applied or 'discovered' these patterns from outside himself. I'm taking them up and applying/playing with them inside-out.

Speaking of inside out, I awoke reminded of Robin Norwood's book, Women who loved too much, when you keep wishing and hope he'll change. Disclosure: I'm a male/man. But I have license to read anything, so I read it in my 20s and it led to me changing me! The publication year was 1985, and I read it maybe in 86 or 87, so I was 23/24.

The last remaining takeaway in my mind: stop letting the feeling of "longing" define what "living" or "life" means! Living is not longing, however strong that longing feels. My shorthand is change longing to having (also from the book).

Now, with my ramped up work schedule, I let longing sneak back in. Wouldn't it be nice if they changed. Or I escaped. Or I didn't have to skip some cool art event. etc. etc.

So, this morning, Longing, you can't fool me, hiding behind that tree!

[This is a song covered by Ry Cooder but I can't seem to catch in on youtube.] No more time for longing,

To the day,
Revu2

Hi warmup & Saidso,

You're house hunting during the current stir around brexit. Oh boy, might be a buyer's market, my guess, as non-Brits seek exit in the winds of this ongoing confusions. Not going to be near a computer in 5 hours when the next rounds of votes begin which likely will ramp up the confusion factor.

Houses are weird things to buy. Location matters, spaciousness, layout, work needed, taxes, color, etc. so many, many factors, some quite tiny. Do you have a list of features/qualities you're seeking?

I'm away from daily writing, perhaps, because I'm off to a writing conference! Its the ever-jammed-packed Association for Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) in Portland, OR. There are endless panels (snore) and publisher booths with giveaway stuff, outsider readings, random connections, and general massive confusion. Great fun, but tiring and a time sucker. I'm going to practice sitting in the back when I can get a seat and closing my eyes to steal a little rests.

Revu2

Seems I'm a proposal delivery/acceptance away from adding another complicated client. That's does it—I'm fully booked. What this means in daily time is that somethings are dialed down to make time:

• reading for pleasure. This has already trailed off. I have five books on CD borrowed for a road trip and three books to return. Interestingly enough, my access to my main library ends at the end of April. I'll pay to renew ... at some point.
• casual entertainment time. I'll miss readings, openings, plays, music, etc. and simply have to look the other way when the announcements drop.
• walking/talking with friends.
• time idly watching videos/surfing the net.
• pampering myself. I'll still need to do this to stay sane, just not in as big a chunk of time each time.
• Dining out.

On the other hand, this is really going to be an interesting run for sure as I discover even more ways to streamline my work and drop into clear focused attention more or less at will. I'll also have to find ways to get myself more sleep, not less. This is counter-intuitive.
Say, last night, I intended to be asleep by 10:30. Reality: 11:30. That last hour really didn't add anything.
There's another scrubby part: I get very cranky under this much work pressure. I'll have to watch myself when interacting with anyone and pretend to have more patience that I'm likely to feel.
Oh, these warmup are likely to get shorter, too.
Revu2
PS—still learning this new look for PC. Can't seem to get my fonts tags to work right. Correction—found the list under the screen.

Hi Warmup,

Heard an interview with a prolific writer and one of the points he made—which paradoxically makes full sense—book in or plan for your distractions/procrastination, etc. A local playwright, given an overnight playwriting assignment, said she had to cram 4 weeks of procrastination into a few hours.

It's that back of the mind sorting out time. I'm using this post to distract myself from writing a contract/scope of work for my latest client. Yay! I think. I'll know after he sees my fees and if we can find a comfortable agreement.

I've gotten to thinking about billable hours again. I awoke knowing I needed to see the next 9 or 10 weeks at a continuous ribbon. This way I can protect critical days for other clients and count off days needed to process each step, etc. I began imagining the easiest way that could be done, while still barely awake.

I got up, stretched, thought about it some more. Still, nothing written or on any computer. Then I remembered I have set up an excel sheet that lists calendar dates in rows. This was the breakthrough. Took maybe 30 minutes to get it configured right with dates as column headers & another 10 or so to print out. So, if I were billing for this, would it be for 40 minutes or for 1 hr 40 min to account for the mental processing time? I barely thought of little else while mentally working out what to do.

Anyway, I'm pitching this project on a package-fee basis.

To the contract draft,
Revu2

Hi Warmup,
Today I'm dealing with my own crankiness when I'm super pressured. The pressure is the good kind, I guess. Many things are pinching in on me: onboarding a new client, daily steps drafting a report, politicking nuances to get my local Dear City government to act right by one of my clients, & keeping it together enough that I deceive my partner that I'm calmly handling all of this.

Truth is: I get cranky under mid-grade steady daily stress. Like now. The range of variance of anything that I expect to not pose a problem narrows a lot. Fur 'nstance — helping Sign. Other with her turbotax last night. It's late (twice she's asked for my help near one of my known time edges—the first time within a quarter hour of me needing to leave to go to a workshop, and last night right before I went to bed).

Alright, I put on a smile and we look at her questions. In the process she had papers scattered all over the place. One form she'd already entered, but on the paper 1099 she didn't make a note she had.

I said: take a pencil and make a note.
She: I'll do it later.
I: Please do it now, so you can know it's in & not have to remind yourself.
She: I'll do it later because you have only 15 minutes (a-hum ... & and why didn't you ask for help at 6:30, I thought).
I: Ten seconds to find a pencil & make a mark — ten … nine …
She: [looking about her desk] I can't find a pencil. And you only have 15 minutes.
I: Eight ... seven ... six ...
I: I'll extend it two minutes. Now you get 17 minutes. Five ...
She: [found a pencil] Found one. [marks the forms]
~
WTF? She asks for my help and then makes it hard on herself to accept it. It's get harder for me to keep offering it, now, and in the future. Notice she said "I had only 15 minutes" and didn't own up to at all to waiting to the boundary of my time. Geez!

I'm not 'doing' anything about this externally as in raising it with her. I did raise it the first time when she was asking for help and I'm on my way out the door. Never goes well as she has zero Mea Culpa genes. So now I wallow in my crankiness and wonder how to keep myself away from her on/off ask for help/refuse it pattern for the next 6 weeks.

Thanks for letting me rant. Feel refreshed.
Revu2

Hi Warmup—
Still holding to Seinfeld's method of never-miss-a-day. I call it now "Red-X, everyday." The start was fun. Now in the not nearly finished Middle.

My most dreaded part of the work. This is where Mz Miss gathers her strength and urges, cajoles, coos, etc. to get me to miss a day.

I'm tempted cuz I'm tired. It's been a good run. I can always pick it up tomorrow. Or even, take two days, who's watching? Not like this is an external deadline.

Now the inward summoning. The eyes on Mz Miss. Who are you? Leave me be. I have work to do. Daily. If you can't be disMissed, Well, step out of my studio.

Devil you cant fool me,
hiding behind that tree.
Devil you cant fool me,
trying to get the jump on me.

So, I remain, pressed to the chair, tired, yet working yet,

To the page,
Revu2

Hi warmup,

A friend sent an email that shared this thought from a chat she had with her friends:

Her friend remarked "men in a group are still always on an unconscious level pissing to mark their territory." She added: "And of course women are still often unconsciously at the level of attracting a mate and gathering fruits and seeds."

Not just territory, but also status/rank hierarchy.

Yet, & also to consider, what's going on when none of the males or females "mark a territory" as when no one steps forward to volunteer to do work or lead an effort?

And what's happening out of consciousness when folks take turns, defer to another, cooperate, share anything, offer help, or listen?

Revu2

Hi warmup,
Just landed another client. This makes 3 intense clients and I’m fully maXXed out! What this means is that I’m going to be crankier than my typical cranky self. Part of the cranky is not being able to project when I’ll have the time and energy to do the distracting fun things which paradoxically are part of the success of the work.

For the past several days I’ve tried to sleep at least 9 hours. More or less did it, but this morning I’m up at 4:30 after 4.5 hrs of sleep. Going to require a nap later.

There are a bunch more things I don’t like about being this jammed with work. Funny, as an independent I like the flexibility, but there’s no extra peers to shift new work on.

I do have an assistant. Talked with her in person yesterday and she’s onboard. Not sure just where she’s going to fit with this one client she will be helping with. Confident it will emerge as we get into things.

Keeping attention now on getting to all projects on a daily basis at some minimum level. Keeping my attention on the next critical step one each. Dropping out from fresh social commitments but honoring those already in play.

Sleeping, reading short essays & poems. And a surprise I thought up this morning: use tidying up as meditation. A dual gain!

Revu2

30 minutes gentle exercise every night before sleep. EVERY NIGHT, no excuses. Only 30 minutes if repeated often enough will get your body into the habit of slowing down your nervous system and your mind. Chinese friend also always washes her feet before going to bed - gets some of the energy down from the mind. We both worked in 10 hour a day 5 days a week work.

70% rule when overwhelmed with work: if everything is 70% ready it doesn't take much energy to deal with sudden changes of plan or emergencies.

Note to own self: stop panicking (biscuits, coffee and computer games are not a helpful habitual reaction to stress!)

Dance - oh yes, I remember you posting about dancing. DANCE!

You love this, I can read between the lines that it's exciting to have several different clients rather than just one set of stuck problems .

My worst attribute when busy is keeping on top of the paperwork. Deserves another urgent note to self this afternoon: do the freaking paperwork! Paperwork is so easy when I've worked in offices that had well-structured filing systems. I know this, but I detest everything about paper records. What I really hyper-detest is the new young professional who sends stuff to me electronically "so as to save paper" then asks me to print out and sign it!!!! Rant and procrastination trigger!

Sending you some tasty fresh tangerines for snacking, and a garden to sit and breathe in!

Hi Saidso,

Wonderful suggestions. I wind down with either reading, a couple of music videos, a podcast, or staring into space.

Rant on! There's sometimes a digital signature trick, but I don't know it.

Yes, I like that I'm loved. Were it entirely up to me I'd have more certainty, smaller scopes, more helpers, and stretched out time.

Today, awoke tired, ate, worked a bit, ate again, napped, awoke a second time with more pep so got to my next chapter to edit. Worked on it 2 hours so far. This doesn't include maybe half a hour off the clock as I read around a bit for research and to feel the mood for this section.

Taking a break. Letting eggs get to room temperature (how long is that?) before making cornbread muffins for a morning meeting.

Still working with Red x, everyday. Or is it Red X is working me?

Revu2

There are day-planners folks who go all in: they have fancy custom printed spiral bound planners, they buy the multi-color pen sets and describe what each color means and how they use them on lengthy youtube videos.

I find it amusing. Me? I keep my schedule in gray - pencil - and have an eraser handy. Just this morning I checked my energy level (still sniffles, so not the highest) and decided to not do something tonight. Grab eraser, find calendar, rub-rub-rub, and gone! Ain't happening. Nothing doing, literally.

What a relief. I can now plan to come back from a single meeting and take a nap! More sleep!

So, when does subtraction serve us?
Revu2