I know, I know, that was cursing. In earlier times, a common fellow like me might exclaim, "Odds Plut and her nails!" Odd's Plut was a corruption of the ancient oath "God's Blood" and the addition of and her nails was meant to confuse the notion the oath speaker was referring to Jesus's hands, nailed to the cross, surely one couldn't be referring to Jesu Christi, who was obviously a he. And thus it is by guile and subterfuge that we common sinners hope to slip unnoticed through the pearly gates of heaven.
But I digress. My other blog is www.johnklawitter'sblog@blogspot.com.
And, frankly, I haven't the foggiest idea why it's there. Or you here,
for that matter.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Okay, the chart, itself
You know, your weekly schedule, the one true way to slowly inch from where you are now to where you want to be in your life:
Take a sheet of 8.5x11 paper
Rule it across 25 times, one line for each of the hours in the day. Save a little space at the top.
Make the lines into blocks with vertical lines, building 8 squares for each line.
The 1st line of squares on the left is for the hours. On top of the other 7 squares, the day of the week.
Distressingly simple, isn't it? How could anything this elementary have any effect whatsoever on your complicated, sophisticated and cluttered life?
Come on now, don't be so impatient. Start filling in the blanks. Big block for
sleep. The morning rituals. Drive-time. Work. Lunch. Work. More drivetime.
Dinner. After dinner. Sleep again.
Wow, you don't have much time for yourself--for you, yourself, the person--do you?!
Aren't you supposed to love yourself? Not even a little bit? If that is true in any sense, why do you spend so little time on the things you really believe are important? Who sucked all the poetry out of your life? Had to be you, yourself, the person, didn't it?
Okay, sorry, I got to preaching there. Let's continue. Get your pastel squeekies out and let's color in the squares. Grey for sleep. Yellow for rituals. Orange for
commuting. Red for work. Green for obligations. Save blue for you.
Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to gradually steal time from every other area on your chart and slip it into the blue zone, the you zone, that place where you loving you can grow to where you openly and freely love somebody else.
Hint: For many, the easiest place to start is weekends. Good to do. But for real
growth, it's just as vital to analyze what you're doing with M-T-W-Th-F.
Take a sheet of 8.5x11 paper
Rule it across 25 times, one line for each of the hours in the day. Save a little space at the top.
Make the lines into blocks with vertical lines, building 8 squares for each line.
The 1st line of squares on the left is for the hours. On top of the other 7 squares, the day of the week.
Distressingly simple, isn't it? How could anything this elementary have any effect whatsoever on your complicated, sophisticated and cluttered life?
Come on now, don't be so impatient. Start filling in the blanks. Big block for
sleep. The morning rituals. Drive-time. Work. Lunch. Work. More drivetime.
Dinner. After dinner. Sleep again.
Wow, you don't have much time for yourself--for you, yourself, the person--do you?!
Aren't you supposed to love yourself? Not even a little bit? If that is true in any sense, why do you spend so little time on the things you really believe are important? Who sucked all the poetry out of your life? Had to be you, yourself, the person, didn't it?
Okay, sorry, I got to preaching there. Let's continue. Get your pastel squeekies out and let's color in the squares. Grey for sleep. Yellow for rituals. Orange for
commuting. Red for work. Green for obligations. Save blue for you.
Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to gradually steal time from every other area on your chart and slip it into the blue zone, the you zone, that place where you loving you can grow to where you openly and freely love somebody else.
Hint: For many, the easiest place to start is weekends. Good to do. But for real
growth, it's just as vital to analyze what you're doing with M-T-W-Th-F.
A Way To Get Better
If you want to become a better you, be aware of this moment, this hour, this day--but don't schedule it that way. And don't chart it monthly. There are those convinced the lunar cycle holds the key to their success or failure, but that just isn't so. Others look to New Years resolutions to chart their newer, better path. And long thinkers like to work out where and what they will be with five or ten year plans.
All of this is better than none of it, because it means you are shooting off questing arrows, albeit in every direction. But the real prime key to revolutionizing your life is to think of your weekly pattern. A day doesn't tell you all that much because tomorrow will be different, and a month is okay, but so much useless information that it throws you off the track.
Your week, on the other hand, is the map of your life. You can chart it, hour by hour, on a single notebook page. It takes a bit of valor, as you'll be horrified by how much time flies by without much happening. All that time you waste!
But with a little courage, you might take a closer look, and see where you might take back the life that is rightfully yours. Fifteen minutes less for lunch, spent in a brisk walk in the park while listening to Anne Tyler's Morgan's Passing on your iPod. Half a football game spent teaching your son to catch a fish. Even (gasp) an hour less sleep a day to do something momentous like write that book
you've always wanted to.
Yes, one simple but workable aid to being the you you've always imagined is to
outline your week, take a surprised look at what you're doing, and to make small, significant, but very hard choices.
All of this is better than none of it, because it means you are shooting off questing arrows, albeit in every direction. But the real prime key to revolutionizing your life is to think of your weekly pattern. A day doesn't tell you all that much because tomorrow will be different, and a month is okay, but so much useless information that it throws you off the track.
Your week, on the other hand, is the map of your life. You can chart it, hour by hour, on a single notebook page. It takes a bit of valor, as you'll be horrified by how much time flies by without much happening. All that time you waste!
But with a little courage, you might take a closer look, and see where you might take back the life that is rightfully yours. Fifteen minutes less for lunch, spent in a brisk walk in the park while listening to Anne Tyler's Morgan's Passing on your iPod. Half a football game spent teaching your son to catch a fish. Even (gasp) an hour less sleep a day to do something momentous like write that book
you've always wanted to.
Yes, one simple but workable aid to being the you you've always imagined is to
outline your week, take a surprised look at what you're doing, and to make small, significant, but very hard choices.
Defining Failure
N.Y. Senator Chuck Shumer was quoted recently as saying failure is not an option. Actually, he's right about that one. Failure is the natural result of poor planning and bad thinking.
Passing Fancy
Why are you here? Don't you have anything better to do? Go pick some nuts or berries. Hug a tree, save a whale. This isn't one of those soft-headed blogs, you know. I wrote and directed that short ecology film EXTINCTION, about human over-self-estimation, over-ego, over-population. When Robert Browning instructed us that "Man's reach should exceed his grasp*," this current path of ours clearly wasn't what he meant.
*Andrea del Sarto (1855), l. 97
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