Lease On Life Data

I'm reading the Center's lease with the City of Syracuse. Riveting stuff, right? I need to compare it with the new lease we're receiving this week and identify any differences. The weird thing is I kind of enjoy reading it. I want to know everything about the place and this is an opportunity to study and learn.

This three-day-weekend I've been considering balance in my life. It's not a scale with two pans. It's more like an Alexander Calder's hanging mobile, the rods and colored plates balanced from a single point in the ceiling. The plates include learning the job; being a father, husband, son, brother, and friend; writing; reading; being physically, mentally, and emotionally well; and whatever I'm not balancing at the moment.

I've come to my basement nook to do some work prior to returning to the Center tomorrow but after only two pages I realized my back had stiffened and my right arm hurt. Weird. I've been fine all day. What's up?

One project I finished today was Barry Magid's Ending The Pursuit Of Happiness. Magid is a Zen teacher and psychoanalyist and his book encouraged me to be open to the present, to name my thoughts, and, though he didn't mention this, to inventory how my body feels in the moment.

And that's almost the end of that practice for me right now. There may be something important to glean from it, but tonight it's just this: "hey, maybe loosen up while you read the lease, Bri."

Ah, enlightenment.

Having finished Magid, I'm back to reading Jim Collins' [Good To Great](https://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/good-to-great.html. My guess is that leading an organization to greatness or maintaining greatness and building on it, will require attention to data. I can learn to be better at that.

Tonight, I gathered this data: I'm making myself sore reading the lease. I don't know yet what to do with that other than take deep breaths, stretch, and walk while I read. The data suggests that something is out of balance. I haven't identified what, but the Calder mobile hangs down on one side, the other side pushed against the ceiling. I'm unsure what correction to make.

But I have two data points and I'll collect more. If a pattern makes itself clear, I'll have something on which to act. For now, I'm gathering data and considering moving, adding, or removing a piece of the mobile.

Right now though, I'm going to finish reading the lease while walking in the yard. I'll stretch my back and arms, shake out my shoulders, and be sure to breathe deep. It won't do to become crippled right now. The lease goes for five more years and I expect to be there every day of that.

Alarms & Practice

Last night my body sounded alarms through a thumping headache and my twisted body. I felt absent, lost in myself. Looking down, I saw my belly, large and protruding. I looked and felt other than I want to be.

This led me to ask, isn't the first step to accept how I am and show myself kindness and understanding? A kind of answer came in remembering the Zen idea that we are all perfect exactly as we are, but that's no excuse not to do the dishes.

I'm doing well at work, learning and coping, developing systems, and coming to understand myself in the job, but this has come at the expense of my wellness. I've so far been unable to balance worrying about being good enough for the job and my health even though I'm better at work when I'm healthier.

Much as I want to snap my fingers and be better, that's not how things work. Instead I'm committing to small adjustments: drinking thoughtfully, returning to decaf, and realizing that sugar is a drug. I'm not giving up alcohol, caffeine, or sugar, but I want to be thoughtful about them. This is me doing the dishes.

Moving my body is essential and energizing, but I'm too tired. I just want to relax, maybe sleep. Instead, I put my feet flat on the floor, sit up straight, tuck in my chin, close my eyes, let my hands rest in my lap, and take three belly breaths. It doesn't release everything, but I felt where I'm tight and can be thoughtful about those things now. That's good practice.

Practice doesn't need to _do_ anything I can point to. Practicing without expectation, practicing in the moment without concern for what I may or may not do tomorrow is an act of balancing.

I have to breathe anyway. Why not make some of them into a practice? Just as with writing, just as when I took my wife's hand as we walked Syracuse's Regional Market this morning, the practice feels good as an end in itself.

Last night's alarms had been warning lights I ignored for weeks as I reacted to other things. I'd prefer responding to reacting. I don't have a solid plan or system in place yet. I just have these practices. I don't hear alarms right now, but I sense the soft tone of a bell, one calling me to close my eyes and breathe, calling me to practice, balance, and acceptance. I'll follow it.

Page Practice At The Office

At the office I've started reflecting at the end of the day by writing responses to these four questions:

1. What has gone well?
2. What was my part in that?
3. What would I have changed?
4. What three things will I do tomorrow?

I've committed to thirty days of this practice. Written reflection has long been a good tool for me. Today was the second day it.

I'm already up for a change.

Usually this would mean that things have gotten challenging and I am folding the tent, but this time I have an idea. I'll keep the questions in mind but follow simpler instructions:

1. Fill a small page (A5) with recollection of the workday and my role in what happened.
2. On a sticky note, list three things to do tomorrow.

Done. Boom.

I feel good about this because I'm used to using written reflection in Morning Pages and my Writer's Notebooks. I've done the one for six years, the other for three decades.

But what's the goal?

I don't care. Or rather, I'm putting that question aside for a couple reasons:

1. I hate goals and feel obligated to them which makes me hate them even more.
2. I want this to be a practice, the goal of which is _do_ the practice.

What comes of is almost none of my business and beyond my ability to predict. Doing the practice is goal, reward, plan, and everything else. It's also a reason to use more ink which, for me, is the answer to almost all my questions.

The Way Of Nothing

I've come to the pages this morning with nothing to write. I'm sluggish but have three pages to fill. I know I'll fill them, but part of me wonders how.

As always, it begins with the decision to just fill them. That's not a goal, though if it helps to think of it that way, go ahead. For me it's a plan or map, a boundary for the game I'm playing. I have exactly three pages to fill and there's no requirement for what goes in them so long as I put ink down.

That's the second part: putting ink down. For the thousandth time, I'm vaguely considering the volume of ink these three pages will absorb. That thinking keeps me from worrying much about what I'll write or what I shouldn't write. Thinking what not to say is a trap to avoid.

I am drafting this on pages with numbered lines. I'm on line twenty of page one with about two and a half pages remaining. I balance thoughts of how far I have left to go with appreciation for how far I have come. I hold that balance by keeping the pen moving and noticing how I'm moved forward by it. By the time I consider how far I've come, I'm even farther along.

Yeah, but you still have nothing to say, says a small voice.

That voice used to boom and echo and I know how dominant it is for others, but it has become a pitiful squeaking for me. I smile at the sound of it because I know that I started with nothing to write and have filled half my three pages with ideas to help other writers.

It reminds me of this Aaron Sorkin story:

This guy's walking down a street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can't get out. A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, "Hey you! Can you help me out?" The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole, and moves on. Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, "Father, I'm down in this hole; can you help me out?" The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. "Hey, Joe, it's me. Can you help me out?" And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, "Are you stupid? Now we're both down here." The friend says, "Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out."

I've been stuck down this hole more often than most people and I know the way out. I was down here two pages ago, yet we aren't stuck anymore.

How did that happen? This quote from Finding Forrester is a good answer:

"The first key to writing is to write, not to think."

The thinking writers do before they begin moving the pen is self-centered anxiety about what others will think. Not thinking is one way through that. I achieve that by writing only for my own amusement, expecting that no one else will read what I've written. That helps me be less anxious about what you (whoever you are) might think of me.

In practice this boils down to keeping the pen moving. It's tough to think while the pen is moving. It's tough to give into anxiety when the pen is moving. The way out of the hole reveals itself through the pen's movement.

The moving pen generates ideas. I've come to the pages this morning with nothing to write becomes three pages (revised to 700 words) through the simple act of deciding to write three pages just for me and keeping the pen moving. Ideas come out in blue ink as if by magic which is a pretty good name for this writing game.

I'm out of the hole now. Maybe you are too. I'll probably see you down there again. Or maybe not. You know a way out now and maybe your pen is already moving.