Daily thoughts

So I opened to copy something I wrote to someone else to share with you, and I find some previous thoughts, so I share those, as well as another I had the other day but forgot to record. First the older one:

The Molly Cook Test

I already mentioned my estate sale takings. The other day, I was putting the motion detectors back up and needed a screw. I went downstairs where I keep such things, and ended up looking into a box from Ms. Cook, the one-time owner, one-time pilot/​equestrian/​nurse/​garden-club president. And she seemed to have such a full life, and I imagined she wouldn't have wasted her time, or more than was necessary, to find something adequate. If it did the job, that was enough. Now I've no idea of Ms. Cook's nature, but this is what I've presumed it to be, so the test is “If she wouldn't have wasted her time, should I?"

The Beauty of Things/Utility

This thought is about snow, but not really. We've had a lot of it recently.

So there we were looking out at it after the first few hours and I said to mom doesn't it just make you want to go out and take pictures? Should we? And I didn't really have the intent to, or not sufficiently that I would follow up, but Oma was like “You can shovel the driveway.” I don't know if that was with a first or instead, or prefaced with “If you want to go out,” but it pointed to a different way of viewing the world, and that's just what we do as humans, and all there is to do is get it, and adjust for those other views.

And there was a lot of snow, and it would have looked pretty on film, and I filmed precious little of it.

Peace

But there is somehow peace where I am. I read the begining of Perry Marshall's “Detox, Declutter, Dominate,” and that and the conversation with Katie (the New York Center Manager) just left a lot of quiet in my head.

I got to one of his action steps and just leaned back for a little reflection/nap and came out of that just not so tired, but also not so existentially tired, a little more in the now.

So this is what I had written to my that I wanted to share:

Things I need to address:

• I seem to resist actually doing my work. I suppose I could just schedule and do it, but I'm concerned I'm missing something fundamental in how I've constituted myself.
• Distractions: If it's important enough, I should make it a part of my routine instead of label it a distraction. And I get important is subjective. I like looking for manual transmission vehicles close to me on Craigslist. That enjoyment is important.
  But then I can also spend fifteen minutes trying to figure out which x is the best or the best value, and that could be anything from brakes to cars, to pencil sharpeners, to paper, to web hosting, to software, and I waste an inordinate amount of time usually to decide about what my gut instinct was in the first place. And that's how most of us work anyway. We decide something, then go justify. It's quite ridiculous.

So promises:

1. Get my assisting worked out (the third).
2. I'm doing Perry Marshall's “Detox, Declutter, Dominate” this week: I expect this will generate some new promises, both personally and around work.
3. I'll have my registration share down by Sunday.
4. I'll register someone this week.
5. Find someone to do it and get my car serviced this week.

That's going to be it for now.

Thanks for showing up for me.

And now I think about it, Sunday's conversation had an element, or the work I did anyway had, about not thinking and just getting it on the calendar, which I resist also, but am getting more used to as I have to.

Americans are all a certain form of crazy

And this was the last for now. It's a point of political analysis, that our crazy is maybe a part of our genius, and we mess with it at our own peril.