Steinbeck Warmup

Hi Warmup,

Still in Peak Timer Period till June 14. This means all my work projects are not just ON, they're getting more complex by the day. Requiring more of my energy expressed through my creativity, attention to details, and time.

My nose is my main monitor for this: stuffy, runny means getting too close to exhausted. More stable is I'm handling matters well enough.

Keep making promises for breaks and rest to myself. Peak days ahead are Monday 5/6 with 3 meetings, Thur 5/16 with a report meeting with my biggest client, May 24, Fri, a grant is due for a client but I've no prior experience writing their grants; Monday June 10 I facilitate a board retreat.

Plus, the weather got involved: workshop canceled on the first snowy day in Feb is now booked not once, but twice (due to overflow interest) on May 7 and May 14, both Tuesdays. Though I know the material, these are my first workshops for others.

Ah, let's see. I have medical appointments. And of course, eating, sleeping, and doing the laundry.

So at times I want to sleep long, and pop awake after just 4.5 hours. Can't get back, so I get active. Today like that. This means a nap later: long or short? I'm finding I can't guess well about this.

I did work in extra naps and sleep last week. The goal was over 72 hours to get about 27 hours of sleep. Some article claimed this resets the body's "feel rested" gauge. I got about 18 over 48 hours. A start.

To the glorious day. I'm glad to be alive.
Revu2

Hi warmup,

Today feels transitional. About 8 months ago I opened an I Ching journal when I bemoaned all the stuck places in my life, condo project mired in broken communications and zero mutual deference, client project 1 skitting out of anyone's control, client project 2 seemingly impossible goal of wresting a deed from the cold grip of indifferent city politicians.

As of recently, within the past six weeks and picking up pace in the last two—new condo board with refreshed energy to move project through, client 1 convening a meeting with backers and this is gelling the group a bit;; client 2 is getting political "feelers" & comments that the city is closer to supporting us than we let on in the press (or that our supports express in their letters).

Now I have a grant to finish for client 2. Ay yi yi. But wait, technology might rescue me. (1) record client directly answering the grant questions. (2) transcribe file (3) continue to edit per usual.

Getting the raw text material is the bulkiest step of drafting formal writing like a grant. And moving from recording to text via transcription takes from 4 to 11 times the length of the recording. Thus 1 recorded hour may take 4 to 11 hours! I have an assistant and I have my own billing rates, and we're expensive.

Turns out that automatic transcription services have turned a corner on their accuracy. Several have free use for the first 1 or 2 hours of work. Others use humans, cost more, higher accuracy, and still can turn back work in less than a full day.

About 15% error rate is the industry average. One project worked with Mechanical Turk (Amazon gig marketplace) offering different rates to human transcribers, and no matter their offer the work averaged ± 15%.

So I'm going to do it. Pick two with free intro offers and compare! My own A/B testing.

Warmly,
Revu2

hi warmup,

Got past the intensive 100 days of steady effort and high-stakes (high-steady) work. Idea of symmetry crept in: will those 100 days be joined with 100 days of recovery?

New grant award getting started with a 2-day launch in late June. Intuition is this won't be that much work. So, open to new work not quite recovered enough to actively find it.

June was my highest income month from consulting, ever!? I need to test raising my rates so I earn the same with less drivenness. Lots of joy and pleasure at the successes, but also needed to complain every so often to my support peeps to keep going.

This got me thinking about the whispered comeback of "you chose it, so stop your complaining" That off on 3 levels. 1. when we chose it and when we complain are to distinct times. One is before, and the other is during or after. 2. We chose it for the romance of the joy, status, money, or freedom we imagined. Except for martyrs and masochists, we no choose for no pain. 3. Allow people their complaining, it helps them endure and carry on.

Yet, when I read about parents and their years of low & non-sleep due to the rigors of babychild care, I fall silent. I see from their view they ask, "What are you complaining about, exactly?" In this complaining tournament I cede and they move to the next round.

Yet, method matters. Reading Rachel Cusk's book on her pregnancy and child raising, I cringe when she gets to the chapter on nonsleep. Several times she calls in the word cruel when she hears her daughter crying and because of the culture or medical advice from a person or book, leaves her crying.

Think of it from the baby's point of view: it's dark, I'm left alone with no human warmth or even the voice of my mother to comfort me. I miss that, I need that, I cry out. And nothing happens. Nothing? Am I forgotten? is the family/tribe/village forever gone away? I cry more, they need to hear me!

And in the other room, through doors and walls, Rachel counts down minutes as per the advice in the book. Once after three hours of enduring this the baby is at last silent. Is she asleep and "self-soothed" in the euphemism of some texts? No, she's fallen asleep, standing in her crib with her face on the rail looking at the door. Where in heck is that woman I call mom?

Cusk even cites the practices of less 'advanced' (how anyone can dare to use that term for cultures with practices like this is beyond me) cultures where the children are much closer at night to the parents in a variety of ways. So she knows, and yet ...

In this pattern we are forced to "get" as babies that we're alone and must somehow from this small and vulnerable place learn to:

fend for ourselves &
vend for ourselves

Cusk lives in England, which right at this moment has a national campaign by The Coop with the Red Cross to address isolation and loneliness.

No kidding, Sherlock!?

Revu2

Hi Warmup: Absent a while with my nose to the page and candles burning late into the night.
Moving one client onto the incomplete stack of my life. Regrettably and reluctantly.

Just that since September I've requested, pleaded for, hinted at, and did the work to finish our project. Or at the least the portion I was working on.
All's that required now are agreements to 'release' our report to sturdy participants. Put a "please do not distribute" or something similar on the cover page and in the running footing.

First he asked I stretch our due date for comments a couple of times. OK.

Then his project directors needed to review it (which I totally agree was necessary). OK

Nothing right after their meeting. Waited two weeks, sent another request for a decision. Waited again.

Silence.

When do I call off the wheedling? How do doctors sense when to stop life support? Or sheriffs to call off searches?

Well, I'm calling it. For a ritual end, I'm culling my accumulated papers for this work and boxing them and putting in my storage closet.
Revu2

I'm a fan of the free libraries that pop up all over town. As I'm often busy with my own thinking and imagining to bring project in on time, a novel I can manage but it's more a chore than a pleasure sometimes.

Therefore I delight when i find a story anthology. One such find was the Story Prize anthology of the winning authors for its first 15 years.

Larry Dark from the prize team introduced the collection and made a passing mention that for about the past dozen years the project has recorded the award event of readings and interviews with the 3 finalists. I was about to put the book back into a free library when I remember that comment and kept it. Happy I did. Dark asked Ottessa Moshfegh how she thought through her stories and her answer got me thinking in a new way myself.

Found this at 35:30 on the video:
LD: So where does the story begin for you with that kind of idea?
OM: I'm not really an idea person. I'm more of a musical person. And I, when I start stories I have, I maybe know what the first sentence sounds like or the end of the first paragraph or, or the or the last sentence before the first break. Something like, okay, the cadence is like dah dah dah, dah, dah, or whatever. And it might be the sound of the sentence or the after effect of the sentence.

I'm not sure what it is but when I have that sound in my head, I can attempt to write it in sort of in the way you compose music trying to be detached from the meaning, because I don't know the meaning yet, I haven't discovered the story so I'm just listening.

Once I have that phrase or even just a couple of words that becomes the DNA for the story. The way that like I could take like, you know, a hair out of my head. Is this true? like, like DNA from anywhere it will tell you, like all the instructions for creating the organism is exactly the way that I feel when I'm writing. If I have a sentence all I have to do is go back to that sentence over and over again and it will tell me what to do for the rest of the story.
LD: So, does that sometimes not work out?
OM: It's a 100% success rate strategy.
LD: That sounds like you really have to really immerse yourself and then to really hear.
OM: Oh yeah I mean it's it's nerve wracking but once you get it—it's ecstatic. You know, I mean it's like surfing, like when you catch the right wave. I mean anyone who's felt ecstasy. I mean that that's what it feels like. That's why I love writing so much, … I love writing because of that experience.
LD: So each story in the book to you as like a different music, a different feel.
OM: Yeah
LD: I noticed that the beginning of the second story Mr. Wu has a really long sentence. I think I counted 132 words in that sentence so, is that something that sets the tone for the whole story?
OM: I think it might be the only story in the collection written in third person. I think in effect of what it did was establish the narrator thing—are you're coming with me? It's very storybook. It differs from the other stories because it's not someone speaking to you. It's someone storytelling to you. And that really long sentence somehow cast the line for how the movement of that narrative was going to go.

This will be quite fun to experiment with for my various goals and projects. Crafting that Home Sentence or description that's musical. This suggests a theme song to find for it. That's the whole DNA of the effort. And go back to it, immerse with it, wrack nerves, work without meaning, allow the alignment, step away from cliffs and enjoy the ecstasy. ####

Had a deep session with my mens group last night. My seeming permanent striving to win my dad's or public approval got the spotlight. Some searches this morning and I found this blog:

Seeking Approval From A Critical Father - Financial Samurai

this is my placeholder to get back and explore this in depth. One suggestion was to reset myself towards a personally meaningful intention and soft-pedaling my striver self. More to come...

Collaborating well is a skill. Some master it in through the informal give and take of play while growing up. Others "get it" via sports, music, theater, community volunteering, or some other way.

And then, despite all the chances to learn, there are those who just fail to advance. I'm dealing with one such person now. I'll call him, Dirk.

Here's the deal: Yuck. I'll have to get free. We have a working commitment till the end of July. At some pt during the debrief I'll have my written withdrawal ready.

This is money vs soul. I have to cast my lot with soul.
Revu2

Read Gerry Spence's How to Win Every Argument. I put his ten points on 3x5 cards to flip through to get his essentials into my bones.

Found a speed bump: GS had a different context than I have. He's in court, I'm in mixed contexts. This is huge. In court, there's a process officer called a judge. Everyone needn't be persuaded, just the 12 on the jury. There are strict, ancient, rules that the judge enforces about decorum, civility, turn-taking, evidence, and so on.

In life, no judge, unclear norms and rules, not sure who needs to be persuaded, and no agreements on valid evidence, and what proves something right and true. I'm often dealing with identity issues, people claiming they feel hurt from another's behaviors (sometimes my behavior), and have vague or nonexistent measures for what makes for a "exit"—when they feel satisfied enough to allow other business to proceed.

Still, the general principles may apply. Right now, I'm focused on coming off as steadier, grounded, and confident. I feel that, but I have given myself permission for a greater display of my feelings that I notice practically anyone with an European American background displaying.

One idea that's I'm meditating on is: Logic helps reveal the truths. Stay calm and connect their dots. I'm an intuitive in the Myers-Briggs test, so my mind works in flashes. Not all can see where my connections connect. So, slow down, start slow, small steps, doublecheck people staying with me as I go, and connect their dots.

r

Began wordplay this morning while idling in bed with "surprise." Does it mean 'extra prize'? Ooo, it's more violent: "unexpected attack or capture."

Maybe a closer word to my inner sense is surplus: super + more. Running away with thoughts of super + pride around some recent achievements.

Why this running inner announcer boosting my self-pride. Growing feelings of pride, sur + pride, surpride, hubris. Greek, meaning presumption toward the gods.

Quote:

Some interesting notes from: Hubris: The Dangers of Excessive Pride and Confidence – Effectiviology … hubris occurs when a person displays excessive levels of pride, confidence, or self-importance in various ways, such as by wildly overestimating their abilities, or by refusing to believe that they can ever make a mistake. Note: in Greek mythology, the punishment for hubris often came from Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, and the term “nemesis” is sometimes used to refer to the punishment or destruction that one experiences as a result of their hubris. The main danger of hubris is that it clouds people’s judgment in various ways, which causes the hubristic individual to make decisions that are bad for them and for others who are affected by those decisions. For example, since hubris involves overconfidence in one’s knowledge and abilities, it can lead people to overestimate their ability to achieve positive outcomes in various domains, which causes them to take unnecessary risks. Similarly, hubris can lead people to overestimate the validity and reliability of their intuitions, and consequently to over-rely on those intuitions while avoiding a proper reasoning process, especially if it involves discussions with others. Furthermore, hubris is also associated with a range of additional issues, such as recklessness and impulsiveness, loss of contact with reality, unwillingness to consider undesirable outcomes, refusal to feel accountable to others, difficulties in facing changing realities, reliance on a simplistic formula for success, and impaired moral awareness, all of which can lead to adverse outcomes.

Reworded Tips:

• Always consider the dangers of hubris and the very high stakes and risks involved.
• Enter internal performance reviews through my “failure” doors.
• When I discover my hubristic thoughts, Stop!
• Any sudden success is not my ‘fault’ so accept it with good humor.
• Let people ground me.
• Listen.
• Care about others; care about the details.

[FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"][COLOR="Purple"][SIZE="3"]Test, operate, test, exit. Basically a recipe. Like with scrambling an egg:
Test - do I have the ingredients: eggs, oil, skillet, working stove, fork or spatula.
Operate - heat skillet, add oil, crack and stir egg, etc.
Test - is it done? No, keep cooking, Yes, ...
Exit - remove from heat, serve.

The pop song The Gambler has something like:

"If you're gonna play the game, boy
You gotta learn to play it right
You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done
Every gambler knows
That the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away
And knowin' what to keep
'Cause every hand's a winner
And every hand's a loser
And the best that you can hope for
Is to die in your sleep"

OK, looking at the lyrics, the gambler is broke! Bums a smoke, shares the narrator's booze. And, right after the first chorus, he must have died at the best he could hope for, in his sleep. Look:

Faded off to sleep
And somewhere in the darkness
The gambler he broke even
But in his final words
I found an ace that I could keep …

This reminds me to seek out Maria Konnikova's book on how she learned poker, The Biggest Bluff.

Here are some clippings from a interesting 1902 book: the Gambling Impulse. Thanks google for posting this. Uhho. Tried to get my png clippings converted to a pdf, then to text. Not happening. Therefore, over the next several visits I'll type them in.

Joining the Fray; Fraying the Join

Wrestling with this "join in" or "pass" back n forth. Felt an uprush of sensation in my chest which quiet reflection traced back to my childhood. It's an accidental feeling, some random bodily surprise which has connected itself to "motivation," "advocacy," and "making changes."

When this feeling escapes my controller, in public, I'm hot heated, "angry," loud, and amazingly fast on my feet. Combined with a sense of weights on my shoulders, the twin sensations have kept my chest literally compressed. My body has pushed back, and when I test for lung capacity I score around 98%. Once asked a nurse what it would take to fill in that last 2%? "Oh, training to become an Olympic swimmer or taking up mountain climbing." OK, I'll settle.

The shoulder-weight hunches me over to "get to work" and stay at it. The Uprise tinge takes me "out there" into "the world" to help make something happen. It's meaningful and MASSIVE. There exists no End Point, no final decisive WIN. I meet people, take part, and if I should want to stop, it partially feels to me and my compartisans like BETRAYAL.

And to feel Uprise and even hesitate to consider other motives feels COWARDLY and IRRESPONSIBLE. If I take my thumb out, the whole city will be flooded. I'll probably die. But I'm human, I'm getting weaker, plus I need a bath and change of clothes.

Western culture has been aflame with imposed violence, rape, greed, abuse of power, and injustice for 50 centuries.

Facing off is just one of many options: there's escape (drugs, entertainment, sex); these surrender (depression, bodily ills, craziness); and there's pretending now to notice (focus on personal happiness, money, fame, and ignore the misery all about).

Sigh, I wish every one was housed, well-fed, and happy so I could simply create something on a whim that carries zero meaning.

To be continued in the next installment.

To my fellow indifferents: I think I get you. You act like:

• personal life is the only life. Party hard before you die ... from partying hard.
• changing anything for the better is more than a waste of your time, it's worthless.
• If you don't raise your voice, raise your hand, raise your head, maybe the crushing forces of equally indifferent economic systems will pass over you.
• Everything is fixed in place as it is; and the fix is already in and nothing can change that.
• Just though you feel it inside, you never want to suffer hearing anyone say what you're doing collaborated with evil, & is equivalent to surrendering and selling out. Not that you have all that much to sell.
  

Polylectic & Sololectic

Somewhere in Antifragile Nassim Taleb says we have just half the words we need if we want to fully express experience. Some days I think its less than 1%.

Starting with the word dialectic, which evokes 2 voices getting exercised, I created polylectic, for many voices, and sololectic, for one voice.

From taking parting in a Liberating Structures "Cull of the Wild" workshop Thursday trickled down from about 20 scattered wild things to the last exercise and surprised myself with landing on isolation as something to cull by connecting more emotionally and spiritually with my friends. What didn't make the final cut was Polylectic, yet I know to find time for this connecting I would want to NOT engage in polylectic activities for the time being.

Culling Poly leaves me Solo. I could write. I could write about only stuff that interests me in essays, short pieces, reviews, whatever. I could write about my way of connecting, which is not my invention but needs people like me to cheerlead for it.

Writing Solo I might accidentally persuade someone. Or not. I may never know. Nor should I care a great deal. Or they might answer me, or try to argue (that Dia Thing) for which I paraphrase Neal Stephenson: I can preserve my mental and physical health by focusing on my Solo voice and inviting you to attempt the same, but let's not try to dialogue or correspond. And since I lack the interest and time to blast myself across social media, if random people now or later find meaning in what I say, it can't be helped. Thanks Emily Dickinson for saying "if I'm to be famous it can't be helped" while stashing away your great poems.

Is this settled now? I'll have to see.

Today I'm starting to comment on an article I return to often because it offers so much great advice. Originally posted on the Slow Leadership blog in 2020.

Time and effort-saving ideas for busy people

Quick Summary
However much you try to slow down and avoid activities that consume time and energy to no purpose, there will still be occasions when you are going to be busy and pressured. That’s a simple fact of modern organizational life. So how to deal with it?

Here are some ideas, taken from a wide range of sources (plus my own experience), that should help you to save time and trouble when things get hectic:

Always think ahead about the most likely consequences, not just the ones that you want to happen. The idea here is simple: to try to avoid causing yourself more problems and stress through a moment’s thoughtless action. One of the commonest consequences of being under pressure is a failure to look ahead. It seems so important to get a quick result. But cutting corners, taking risks without proper consideration, and rushing into precipitate action can all cost you far more time in cleaning up the mess afterwards than you saved at the time.

It’s always worth taking ample time to get a message across to others. It’s the same temptation: to rush through some phone call, message, or conversation because you can’t really spare the time and you have so much still waiting for you to do. Resist it! If people can see that you’re harassed, they’ll often try to be helpful by saying they understand when they don’t. Few situations are more maddening than discovering, too late, that someone you were relying on for a key element in a project misunderstood what you said that you wanted.

Consider every request to attend a meeting with the greatest skepticism. Your default position should be to stay away. Avoid any meeting with no clear agenda, no obvious ending time, and no purpose that makes sense to anyone except the organizer. Don’t assume you can go and quietly do work at the back. It’s more discourteous than staying away and it rarely works.

Practice at least a dozen firm but polite variations on “no” until you can say them in your sleep. Then use them whenever needed—which will be all the time. The best way to stop yourself becoming overloaded is to refuse to take an anything else. If the person giving you yet more work is your boss, ask for clear priorities, explaining that you need be sure what to drop to make way for the new piece of work. You’ll be surprised how often this will make a boss reconsider.

Learn the two key ways of reading: skimming for relevance and filleting for data. When you skim a document, your sole purpose should be to decide whether it contains anything worth reading. Let your gaze run down the page looking for key words and phrases. If you find any, put a small “x” in the margin and move on. Then glance over the number of “x” markings. Less than 5-6 means don’t mess with it further unless one of those is essential. Filleting is going back to the “x” marks and collecting the data you need. The best way is to make your own notes in a small book. Then toss the original.

Don’t accept what you’re told on trust, save from proven sources. When you’re rushed, the temptation will be to “save time” by accepting what you’ve been told. Always check. It’s well worth the time. You’ll look an idiot if the information isn’t true, and no one will accept the excuse that you were in a hurry.

Become familiar with the notions of estimates and orders of magnitude. You can often spot an error or problem almost instantly, without any calculation, by realizing that it is impossible. That’s especially true with numbers. If you know the answer has to be less than 10, and if what is on the page is 14.7, it has to be wrong. No more analysis is needed than that. One of the most useful skills I ever taught myself was the ability to estimate the order of magnitude of the right answer. I rarely needed to know any more to save myself huge amounts of time on analysis.

Know when to stop. The more you’re under pressure, the more you will be tempted to press on working well beyond the point where your attention and effectiveness begin to fail. Don’t do it. It seems as if it will help, but you’ll most likely either have to do all that work again or waste time clearing up the mess you made for yourself. And you’ll have denied yourself the rest needed even to do that properly.

Coping with turbulence
Imagine someone in a kayak, negotiating a river full of rapids. That’s you, facing all the turbulence and unexpected pressures of your work.

An inexperienced and foolish kayaker is totally occupied with trying to deal with every twist and surge of the current. His or her attention is fixed on what is happening right now. The ride is a nightmare of hidden rocks, violent eddies, and constant threats of being overturned and drowned. Time flashes by in a blur of near-panic. Any patches of calm water are used up in exhausted collapse, desperately trying to catch a breath before the next horror.

The more experienced kayaker faces the same perils. But that person has learned to look always a little way ahead, sensing the flow of the river and avoiding some at least of the hidden rocks and shallows. By doing so, he or she has more scope to find areas of slightly calmer water, where rest is possible and there’s a moment to look around and enjoy the view.

Although both kayakers may pass the same time in the rapids, as measured by the clock, the experienced one feels as if he or she has much more time. Time is always as much subjective as objective and when we’re in a turmoil of short-term fire-fighting, it passes with such speed that it causes stress by itself.

If I had to sum all of this up as simply as possible, I would say that the key to coping with stress and pressure is to do just about the opposite of what feels most called for: slow down as much as you can, look ahead as much as possible, drop everything non-essential, and do the rest as carefully and thoughtfully as possible so you only have to do any of it once. And always, always, try to avoid making yet more work for yourself by rushing, cutting corners, and making needless mistakes.

I will let myself be reminded and practice as I can, or must, one ¶ per day.

There must be a day when this will subside. Alas, not today.

Awoke thinking about the phrase "carry myself" re cast as "Care Re: Myself." This swirled around my getting my eyes checked. Next step: getting new lenses. Distance minor changes, daily glasses: no change! Celebrate: it's been 5 years.

I'm commenting on the Measly Steps a Day Thread about poor customer service. When I'm the poor customer being poorly served, I'm enraged. Writing this to calm myself to prepare my notes for getting into their heads what they should have understood and done all along. Someone had the gall to try to upsell me during my call get things worked through! I said I would maybe think about it after this is worked out. But their care for customers doesn't seem that strong as I'm still deal with a service around week 17 that they said would take 1 week. Grrr. Angrrr and my discontent.

This book reviewed well on goodreads. To quote.

Quote:

There are three stages of transitions: the long goodbye, the messy middle, and the new beginning. The author gives seven tools for navigating them. Accept it. Identify your emotions. Mark it. Ritualize the change. Shed it. Give up old mindsets. Create it. Try new things. Share it. Seek wisdom from others. Launch it. Unveil your new self. Tell it. Compose a fresh story.

It's messy and loopy and lively. Life.

Nearly 180°, getting there. Taking a 2 part workshop on "Living your Question" at the Theosophical Society Library. It's intentionally in 2 parts to allow time to sit with the question for a few days.

My original question was "Where do I find my tribe?" But the question that's finding me began as, "How to craft an at ease life meaningful enough to live a long, healthy time?

This touches on the dramatic shift in 'meaning', meaning to both me and others, at this time of my retiring from my career. There's also the internal "meaning" that I've relied on to strive to make my life what I wanted, rather than falling into the culture's default, defeatism, depression, or drift. Managed that. Popped out the working side, so now how to motivate myself?

Related to this—I had a tendency to get manic, and part of that is continually fielding Big Hairy Audacious Goals for myself. Epic Goals. I'm the hero of a rare achievement goals. Did that, done that. Suffered from my unchecked manic surprise when they worked out! A lot.

So, with that backdrop, I'll try to get to an 8-word question:
A calm, long, healthy life? For me? 7 w