... "Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'"

[Scaly Freak]

On 1/14/2022 at 2:25 PM, Jean said:

I've got a good opportunity to pivot jobwise, I'm pondering chasing it.

 

What did you end up deciding? Are you chasing?

[Jean]

I'm giving myself until Monday to choose. It would be mainly a lateral move, so I know what I'd leave behind but not really what would be ahead, which would not really be career furthering though I have some vision of what I could do with it.

 

In the meantime, I'm doing all the wrong things that have made the current situation hard to bear once again, namely, letting myself get carried away by what "must" be done and letting it take over my real personal priorities at times when my own priorities should prevail. I really don't like it so I'm planing for some upping up of my game this year so that this kind of giving in doesn't apply going forward. The change of workplace could enter that picture.

 

All in all, I'm a bit lost in my head and hope focusing on myself for the weekend will bring me some measure of clarity.

[Scaly Freak]

31 minutes ago, Jean said:

 

All in all, I'm a bit lost in my head and hope focusing on myself for the weekend will bring me some measure of clarity.

 

I hope so too!

 

Thanks for checking in  

[Jean]

Thanks go to you for checking on me. I'll gather more information on the opportunity and go for it if it sounds attractive enough.

 

There's something I'm doing horribly wrong and I can't use my weekends to properly recover anymore. I haven't identified what that is yet. I'll try to score a good start of the week and work my way from there.

[Jean]

On 1/21/2022 at 6:48 AM, Scaly Freak said:

Are you chasing?

The game is on.

 

I shall now focus on making myself look attractive and getting my story straight. Fun times!

 

 

[Scaly Freak]

1 hour ago, Jean said:

The game is on.

 

[Jean]

I like writing my thoughts here when I am disturbed, I might as well do it also when I am more at peace.

 

This year spells discipline as the way forward, I'm not ready for that. What I am ready for is following my wisdom and acting on a human level. I haven't won all my battles, and I won't win all the ones ahead. I can't reach all the targets in front of me and, as much as I'm trying to select the ones that truly matter, it feels that there's always too many of them still and I have to trim them down always more. Calming and reassuring is the confidence that I am not the only one experiencing this and that preserving what matters while allowing unneeded targets/pressure to drop into irrelevancy may also take some stress off of the people around me. We'll get to an environment that makes sense yet.

 

Some things have changed in these last few years. I don't think I'm more efficient and I'm certainly not more muscular. I haven't gained much, if any, endurance either. The path ahead remains full, I want to live a healthy life, be attractive, and shine for the people around me. I am not there. What I have gained is sight and insight, of what matters, of the world around me, of what I want for me and for it and how it can be achieved. This is major. The path keeps going on and on and I'll keep relying on my core qualities: not giving up, keeping on, trusting myself, taking risks and being kind. We can be strong, we can be firm and we can be kind. We can move forward.

 

The path forward follows 3 ways:

• Personal availability:
  • I want to learn to rest so that I can have energy and availability when I am not resting.
  • I want to forge a habit of exercising and going outside so that I can enjoy the world and my own strength.
  • I want to eat good and sufficient food, starting by taking time for it in the morning.
  • I want to build a place to live in, for it to be spare but welcoming and available for my friends.

• Shaping the Valley:
  It is a strange place, where I work and live. The people are endearing but often stubborn and short-sighted. We have the resources we need to go forward and keep this place beautiful and thriving but we have to learn to plan ahead and work together. I want to act as a catalyst for that.
  • I want to pursue my application in that other position that would facilitate a pivot.
  • I want to leverage my current position and the potential one ahead to funnel inter-town relationships. This means accepting that I can shape things and taking leadership.
  • Regardless of the results of the application, I want to pursue establishing a climate of friendliness, caring and efficiency among my department and administration.

• Becoming a mountain leader:
  • I want to successfully organize and accomplish the internships that I have to take in order to register to my school's exams.
  • I want to successfully take part to the last training module, occurring this month, and take the occasion to strengthen my network.
  • I want to fill my profile on our association's website and build my own brand and website.
  • I want to take people mountaineering with me in order to train for the certification exams.
  • I want to keep becoming a better person, keep pushing on, keep on keeping on and explore all the facets of surviving, then thriving, in a modern environment so that I can share them.

 

These are the guidelines, I know I'll fall off track and won't be able to pursue them all. When that happens, I want to cultivate acceptance, the art of not giving up, the art of pivoting and the art of reaching out to people. None of the falls that are bound to occur has the real power to put any of those three goals in jeopardy.

 

Let's walk the walk. Let's be kind.

 

 

[Jean]

So, it seems I keep doing the same mistakes. This is still the same serie of events, so I shouldn't be surprised by it. I'm putting on my big boy shoes and am off to get the work done. "Tired" won't get me where I want to go.

 

 

[Jean]

Aaaand, it's official:

 

1) I'm on my way. Whatever I'm doing is working and though this is no time for complacency, the dawn is right around the corner. I may stumble but everything will be fine as long as I get up once more than I fall down.

2) I'm stupid and doing the same mistakes again and again, thinking I can overpower what I've not been able to for many months won't make me the person I want to be. Time to grow up and face the truth. Funny how looking reality in the eyes without blinking seems to often be the hardest part of growing up and moving forward.

 

 

[Scaly Freak]

4 hours ago, Jean said:

I'm stupid

 

No. Do not insult my friend like that. Just don't.

[Jean]

Well, first of all, thanks for keeping watch for me to be kind and fair to myself. It's appreciated.

 

That being said, I had thought about it before writing it this way and I'm afraid your friend is at least planning in a stupefied way. It's not so much going into the weekends expecting to perform a lot of always the same things -that he then always fail to actually commit to- by overpowering his tiredness, that is matching Einstein's definition of insanity, it is doing so knowing that he won't be able to overpower it and planning like he will anyway. I am making it one of my main life principles to, first and foremost, keep my eyes open to the truth. I can be hit by a truck but I want to look at the truck as it comes crashing toward me. That is my first rule of action: don't play blind, you may take hits and dodge your responsabilities but you have to acknowledge the hits and that fleeing is what you are doing. The pain keeps me honest and facing the consequences of my behavior gives me an incentive to change it for the best.

 

That's why I want to acknowledge that what I am doing is not a tactical fall-back in order to fight and win on another front. It is a battered giving in of "I don't want to fight anymore and we'll see if I'm still alive at the dawn". That is not tactically sound and that is not acceptable. Your friend is smarter than that, he can acknowledge that his resources are limited and he has to make the best of it. That he doesn't have mastery of his environment and that sometimes, there are only bad options on the table and he has to roll with one of them. That not being able to lead another fight is fine and acceptable, that he can welcome it with equanimity and that it doesn't make him any less worthy to not be able to withstand the unwithstandable, that it is just part of what being a kind human means. He doesn't have to densely keep jumping in front of the same headlights only to always stay frozen still as the truck hits him, always in the same fashion. Your friend can learn and I want him to because that is what it means being a grown up and taking charge of one's life. I don't need an excuse to be tired and take some time to rest but it really is stupid to deny myself that rejuvenating time by entertaining the fruitless guilt of "I should be doing that or that" whithout ever doing it.

 

I have deep respect for your friend and I know he can manage his time and expectations so that he doesn't get drained by Wednesday and yet still expect to compensate for it on Saturday and Sunday. So I call it like I see it: your friend is smart and resourceful and I have full confidence he is on the path to keep being even more awesome as each day passes but he is acting dumb and he ought to know better. He can throw his head at the wall as many times he wants, his skull will crack before the wall.

 

Edit: to contextualize things better: I think your friend is doing well and is on the path to fulfillment and happiness, overall, he's doing awesome even if it doesn't show just yet, but he is being blunt and that doesn't befit the man he, himself, aspires to be.

[Scaly Freak]

21 minutes ago, Jean said:

he is acting dumb and he ought to know better.

 

See, that's still not optimal, but a considerably less bad way of phrasing things.  Everyone does stupid shit from time to time, including falling back into old patterns we know are not the best ones for us.  But that doesn't mean we are stupid. Sometimes, it just means we're tired and need a break from trying so hard for a while.

[Jean]

29 minutes ago, Scaly Freak said:

See, that's still not optimal, but a considerably less bad way of phrasing things.

You won't just accept a small indent in an otherwise very fine blade, eh? Fine, we'll hone this sword to perfection. I'll do my best to stand up and treat myself fairly and honestly. I will judge my actions but I won't let them make me think less of myself. I can act stupid but I am not stupid.

 

Better?

 

Edit: mandatory circumstancial music:

 

[Jean]

Speaking of forging this here blade into perfection:

 

Thanks for having shown up and cauterized the neck as the head fell down.

[Scaly Freak]

1 hour ago, Jean said:

You won't just accept a small indent in an otherwise very fine blade, eh? Fine, we'll hone this sword to perfection. I'll do my best to stand up and treat myself fairly and honestly. I will judge my actions but I won't let them make me think less of myself. I can act stupid but I am not stupid.

 

Much better.  

[Jean]

Well, I keep thinking I'm on my way to understand and befriend my environment and my employer keeps putting administrative people in charge of deploying new technology... Talk about steeling your mind by getting your hopes crushed time and time again. xD

 

Nothing to see here, carry on.

[Scaly Freak]

2 hours ago, Jean said:

my employer keeps putting administrative people in charge of deploying new technology

 

[Jean]

On the other hand, it's not that different from the user experience of buying some professional products dumped on the clients used as beta testers. My remark was "Dude, we've got huge vulnerabilities, shouldn't we quickly do that and that?" And the reply was "Oh, we know that, that's how we have designed it all along. Also the "feature" you've identified isn't the problem we're worried of under the exact current circumstances and we all know that circumstances never change so there's no need for proofing it."

 

I also love the consultant hired to train us telling us "Hey, we're going to do things one step at a time, here's how to put a profile picture! No, you shouldn't bother the admin to get the permissions you need to do actual work on those softwares, there's a way to do what you need to do differently without those permissions, do you want a tutorial?"

 

Dude, yes! Of course, I want all your damn documentation BEFORE the thing is deployed on our whole network so that I can understand the philosophy behind the product and build good habits while using it INSTEAD of guessing and reverse engineering everything and then having to undo and redo the whole way I've used it until then once I learn how it actually works. You know I'm an engineer and I will break it down before it even has a chance to work as you have intended it so skip the process and gimme the whole toolkit before I start making up for it by welding my own tools and unnecessarily bring disarray and future legacy pieces of handcrafted duct-taped modules that nobody after me will dare to touch into the system...

 

Alright, venting over. Back to shaping the world one bolt at a time, this should be a fun day.

[Jean]

Well, several things are not helping the situation: extra stress from the job and the mountain leader training require me to rest and recover but I deny myself this sleep on the ground that "I've got things to do". Far from doing said things, I just jump from the one thing I've remembered to the dozen others at the same priority level and the dozen more higher priority, then those at a lower priority.

 

Nothing gets done and I don't rest. Not being rested up, I loose the ability to perform what would allow me to break the circle and I keep denying myself sleep on the same grounds.

 

Points of contention are:

• Everything is Chaos at work. I don't know where to start. I should not care for whatever happens to the rest of the administration and focus on getting my department in order but the failings of everything around me weighs on my will to work decisively in that direction and not try to stabilize some of the bleeding around that does affect my department negatively too.
   
• My financial situation is still not fully stable. On top of that, I don't defend what is my own and use my own resources to patch things that are not mine to patch. Following the U.S. markets doesn't help, not because of the stress but because of the timezone involved that delays my sleep. I am devoting way too much time just waiting for the close, which is a fruitless endeavour. Taking a look at it in the morning would inform me just the same.
   
• When my free time comes, I start thinking of the deadlines of my mountain leader training and am totally tired (because of lack of sleep) and out of spoons, so that I spend most of my weekends sleeping instead of being out and wandering in the mountains.

The real answer is to take at least a month off without any responsibilities and just let it all cool down, become a human being once again, learn to take care of myself and build myself back up from the ground. I don't see a path toward that.

 

Second best would be to put my full focus on the few things that matter and draw inflexible lines around what I am not willing to sacrifice. Sleep and spending time in nature should go there.

 

All in all, it feels like I've let myself get backed into a corner and it hurts because I've tried very specifically to avoid getting drawn there when taking on this job, knowing full well that it could lead here.

 

Time to sleep and let the focus build. Tomorrow is another day.

[Scaly Freak]

35 minutes ago, Jean said:

Second best would be to put my full focus on the few things that matter and draw inflexible lines around what I am not willing to sacrifice. Sleep and spending time in nature should go there.

 

This is something you have  done before, something you know that you can do. 

 

As for the stress caused by the financial factors, finances are like work stress in that they very easily take over every moment of waking time. It's possible that if you can find a way to minimize this effect, the benefits will carry over into other areas in life (for example sleeping more/better).

[Jean]

Thanks for helping me wrap my head around this.

 

12 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

This is something you have  done before, something you know that you can do. 

 

That I know.  I keep drifting away from it, though, because what needs to be done often isn't sexy and doesn't show. It will be some time before anything shows results on the surface and during that time, I'll have to keep fending off the queries about "where's this project at?" when that specific project is 403rd priority on the list and should take absolutely no second of my energy.

 

The problem is tied to the depletion of my tank of spoons: Monday is the day of accountability, at work, and by the end of it, there are almost no spoons left for doing actual work during the constructive part of the week. Going through these motions leaves me destroyed comes the weekend and I can't refill the tank for next Monday. I need to figure out a way to rebuild energy on Tuesday that won't make me appear like I'm doing no work (and this appareances of work vs actual useful work play is using up a good chunk of my energy too). Success there isn't a given at all as of yet.

 

 

12 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

As for the stress caused by the financial factors, finances are like work stress in that they very easily take over every moment of waking time. It's possible that if you can find a way to minimize this effect, the benefits will carry over into other areas in life (for example sleeping more/better).

 

The vicius circle is: my job is unsustainable and takes a huge toll on me. I've only known jobs like that up to now so I wouldn't know how to get in a more sustainable working position. My answer to that is to seek financial stability (financial independence is way too far down the road) in order to be able not to care if I get fired. Now to the funny part: for years, I've lacked that financial stability. I probably am very close to reach it now (or have reached it already) but I keep reacting with my old behaviors, which reinforce the work pressure circle. It's not a time to up my personal expenses just yet and I'm not really using my gains to sanitize my job situation. I think I would need to take some distance and a more empty spirit to adress this circle from a different angle and that's where the mountain leader training enters the play, taking up all my free time and preventing me from reaching that stage where I could finally sort the situation out. The funny thing being that I had taken the mountain leader training with the explicit purpose to make it low pressure and mandatory time off work: what I do to solve the situation and build myself back up ends up backing me into the corner even more.

 

All in all, I REALLY want to give up right now but I'm very close to the end of the moutain leader training and they're putting time pressure on me (exams are in October and I have to have made 2 days of winter internship by then - it's not much, but it's "always something more to do on my mind" that weighs on me emptying it and just getting some rest). As for my job, if I want to pivot, at this point in my career, having people to reference you is essential so the poorer a job I apparently do, the more I'm depleting my chances at pivoting. Building an efficient pivot requires energy so my current job and the building of alternatives are at odds regarding moving forward. This means I have to pick what domain I'll consolidate in my current position, perform well there, cultivate useful work relationships and not care about anything else.

 

Well, one step at a time, let's focus on actual sleep. But first, to destroy my energy this Sunday, trying to prepare for the mountain leader module of next week, then to enjoy it.

 

 

Edit: Thinking of it, the 3 jobs I've had were poorly organized, the mountain leader formation is awfully so, I guess I'm still on my quest to find something on Earth that would finally give me appropriate means and information for me to perform the tasks I'm meant to perform. I'm just a bit in despair that such a thing doesn't exist and I will always have to compensate for the poor organization around me, passing the buck forward by not doing my job properly while spending time fixing the other things around... it's the very basics that are messed up, too. I mean, a 40 minutes video as a preparation document for a training session? Has work from home killed the very basic of setting down a 2 pages document with the date, place, equipment, what to expect and tasks to have done before coming?

[Jean]

Alright, a few more observations:

• I had actually received a short presentation document for my training next week. My current state of distress prevented me from noticing it until I set my mind to it.
   
• When I set my mind to it, things are easy because I actually am prepared on an ongoing basis. I AM the man I want to be. Who I am is the result of what I've gone through and some of the consequences of that must still be addressed. This is nothing new.
   
• Things may be easy to achieve for me when in the right mindset but there are tons of them. The sheer numbers prevent my concentration and renders me unable to achieve even very simple things. Developing some kind of ward against these disruptions is a priority.
   
• I am NOT in the right mindset right now and need to build myself back to there. This is nothing new either, hence why the sleeping goal is THAT important.

So, nothing new, just reinforcing what I knew and keep moving on the path. I'll reach there, I'm just tired. That too will pass.

[Jean]

"If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone..."

 

I need to reconcile with "Enough".

 

I'm settled fitnesswise with NF Coaching, I'm following the plan "well enough".

 

I need a space for journaling and getting to the bottom of my psychological gears, though, so here I am once again.

 

Case in point:

 

I do tend to procrastinate. HOWEVER, it also happens that sometimes, things just pile up with short delays through no responsibility of mine. It's not so much that there is no time to do all the things, there could be if I prioritized excellently, focused on the absolute critical parts at the exclusion of everything else and were able to muster all of my energy. However, more often than not, I run out of spoons before the final task is done and I need to lay it off in order to recover.

 

The feeling I am feeling then is guilt, because I theoretically had the time to do it (there were still normal working hours in my day, the first ones had just been so intense they counted tripple) but I couldn't realistically (because I was spent). That feeling of guilt then prevents recovery, since I fail to allow myself full rest until that last needed effort is done (often a matter of a few hours max with appropriate energy levels). The end result is I don't recover, I can't get the energy back that I need, the thing keeps haunting me, rinse and repeat.

 

I want to become better at this, that is, anticipate when I'll drop out of energy and use my last few drops to order things so that I can get back to it easily without having to search through several paper sheets and versions of the same document. Then let it rest. Drop it, go for a walk, go for a nap, do whatever freely and focus on recovery but from a place of love and understanding instead of a place of need and pressure. Then, once I have truly recovered, get back at it.

 

Easier said than done.

 

 

[Jean]

Posted here as a reminder:

 

I want to nurture the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

To muster the courage to change the things I can.

And to pay heed to the wisdom to know the difference.

 

I want to listen to the perception that things that once could be changed are turning into the world of those that can't.

And act then, while I can, to drop them and preserve my energy.

In order to muster its full strength to the tasks that matter.

 

I hereby decide to do so with the full strength of my powerful mind.

And to get back at it whenever I stray.

Because that is true strength and true power.

 

Posers can't handle intense hardcore introspection: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1151.html

[Tobbe]

Seeing a notification email with a post in this thread was a pleasant surprise! Nice to have you posting updates here Jean!

 

> I'm settled fitnesswise with NF Coaching, I'm following the plan "well enough".

 

You're doing NF Coaching?! How long have you done that for? How do you like it?