Day Two - And you thought I forgot.

So day two is in the books. I'm leaving for Vegas tomorrow so The next week of posts may be more sporadic but no less comprehensive.

Financially I made a bit of a splurge and spent $25 on a garment bag and duffle bag for the trip to make sure there would be enough room in the car for everyone's stuff. Also, I spend $5 on fod for the day, but ate breakfast here and made a lunch to save money (by made lunch I mean packed a lean cuisine, which was surprisingly not awful).

I still haven't recovered enough to run, so I'm going to try and run in the morning before we head out tomorrow afternoon. It sounds like I'm slacking, but honestly the sudden fever Tuesday night wiped out all my reserves. I even packed running clothes for the trip, and plan on making one good run near the grand canyon. And yes, pictures will be involved.

I didn't really encounter any situations I could approach negatively, but I did have some opportunities to practice patience in my interactions with others, and I think I did pretty well. I didn't try to maneuver or manipulate anyone into getting my own way, at least not that I was aware of, and there are at least a couple of times I could probably have done so. I'm thinking tonight about the idea of putting others first vs. being a doormat.

I have been accused of being a doormat a lot in my lifetime, but I've always wondered how that was different from just being nice to others. I've realized recently that being a doormat and being kind are actually mutually exclusive. Demanding your own way and letting people walk all over you, on the other hand, involve similar emotions. In both cases you are angry that someone might get their way instead of you, but in the former, you are proactively a jerk about it, while with the latter, you're just quietly pissed and resentful about it, which is no less being a jerk because you are not being honest with people. Instead, you hold resentment towards someone but try to pretend you are a bigger person. That is not true.

When we put others ahead of ourselves, it should be because doing so gives us pleasure, or I daresay, some sense of joy. It is difficult at times, but I think that it is better to step away from a situation than to let someone walk all over you and then be upset about it. When I am at my "doormat best", neither the people around me or myself are actually very happy for very long. It creates tension in relationships and sooner or later than turns ugly.

So what should happen when dealing with my wants/needs and those of others. I think the "you can't be all things to all people" maxim is actually pretty true. To be able to serve others, I have to know when I can commit to the needs of others and seize the moment and know when I'm just giving in to someone else's whimsy. There is a difference between willingly giving yourself to another/others and just capitulating to demands to keep the peace. To paraphrase the late and brilliant Thomas Merton, acts of love done simply to keep the loyalty of others are not love, but selfishness. That is a haunting revelation but also a helpful one. It is not just what we do, but the attitude driving it that determines how well we deal with others. I'm not saying that waiting until you are a saint to be unselfish is a good idea, but I am suggesting that understanding that there may be no visible reward for good deeds is important.

So what have I learned today? As always, I am learning that this spiritual journey is also a practical one, and that it is not clearcut. I know where I want my heart and hands to be, but I'm working on getting there and learning to enjoy the journey there.

Peace and God Bless.

Day One - I got the Fever. Literally

So Lent has not gotten off to the most fantastic start. Last night I took a fever about the same time I went to bed and I'm still trying to break it, so there is that.

At least for today my financial goals were pretty easy to meet. Considering I never went outside I never got to spend any money. Fortunately I stocked up on groceries this weekend so cheerios have been my best friend today.

My running schedule is supposed to consist of Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, so we shall see how I feel tomorrow and hopefully I'll get to stick to my regular schedule. The last few times I'm stuck 3 miles in under 30 minutes, so hopefully this bug I caught won't put me back too much.

As for my dissertation, I regret that I didn't do a stinking thing today. In hindsight I probably could have read in bed for a while, but when you have the shakes and spend half the day wondering how all that mucus managed to come from your nose, working is probably the least of your concerns.

I did have a chance to reflect on how I am handling some uncertainty regarding this Las Vegas trip. The plans keep changing as we keep finding out that there are some things we simply didn't plan very well for. However, I'm considering this an opportunity to realize that there are times when being cooperative is all you can really do. I think this trip is going to be interesting especially since there will be three of us in one car for a grand total of 70 hours there and back. I'm thinking this is a good chance to work on a)not sweating the small stuff, and b)taking a deep breathe before reacting to people. 3 full days is a lot of time in a small hunk of metal together, and in similar situations past I've been known to be an irritable guy. I'm not saying that things won't get on my nerves, but I'm going to do my best to be aware of how I react to cabin fever and be cool.

Tonight I apologize for the brevity of this update. Hopefully I'll be back at full speed in the morning with much more interesting insights to share and a day that does not involve me staying in bed coughing up a continent.

Fear/Hope

Appropriately, I was reading a piece by the classic social theorist Max Weber on politics when I came across a gem on an insight. In the middle of the lecture, Weber pointed out that people are motivated to act by either fear or hope. Fear of the consequences of disobedience, or hope in the possibilities of tomorrow. Weber was of course talking about politics, the state, and the ability to control people's behaviors, but I think the emotions of hope and fear are influential in any context.

As I've been thinking and preparing for the next forty days, I think it is important to meditate on the idea of fear and hope as powerful forces in daily life. I've been experiencing a little of both, though I think eagerness and anxiety would be the particular flavors I would pick to describe my own mix of emotions. I'm eager to find out what I'm really made of when I try to live every day as the kind of person I admire, but I am also anxious that if I fail, I will be deeply disappointed in myself and move towards cynical apathy. I am tempted to think that simply focusing on the hope of success and fulfillment is the one side of things I should focus on, but it seems that would be the same thing as putting blinders on and pretending some experiences aren't happening.

Perhaps fear should be the constant companion of hope, but not the debilitating kind. Being afraid to try something because you might fail can only lead to a metric ton of missed opportunities. Fear that you might miss out on life, that you will never know if you could be more, seems like a good companion for hope. I'd like to think that syncing the two towards a common goal of becoming a better person and genuinely engaging with the struggles of others can be a powerful weapon. I need to hope that what I do matters, that I can be about something greater than myself and my immediate concerns. With that comes a fear that this has no chance of coming true, but perhaps the more useful fear is that if I sit on my ass and accept that things never change, I will guarantee that they will never change.

Hope for joy, fear apathy. Perhaps that's the best way to begin living intentionally every day.

The Plan.

So Lent starts in two days, and I'm starting to realize just how disciplined I am going to have to be over the next month or so to meet the goals I set a few days ago. On one hand, I am excited about Lent because I deeply believe in the value of everything I have laid out to accomplish. These goals essentially represent five principles I want to work on.

1 - Productivity
2 - Care for Self
3 - Responsible stewardship
4 - Intentional Joy
5 - Care for others

These ideas sound great, right? They sound like things that anyone would benefit from. However, I am also going to be brutally honest about my feelings on what is about to happen. It scares the shit out of me. I have never done anything that requires this level of commitment before in my life. As I said last post, I've mostly been able to make it by on pure wit and improvisation, so this whole living every day with an intention to be the absolute best I can is pretty horrifying. Exhilarating, but also absolutely horrifying. I keep asking myself about what happens when I lose interest, get bored, or just get frustrated. I don't think I can do Lent by myself. I've tried going it alone before, and even when it works, it sucks. So I want have decided to put some measures in place to make this process more transparent. It's going to make things hard in the sense that I can't cheat and skip a day of work on this project, but i think I will be happy with it in the end.

I want you, the Internet community, to help me out by keeping up with my progress. I have committed to post a new blog every day to keep a public record of how things are going with my Lenten commitments. Every day starting Wednesday, you can expect to see the following-

1) A basic record of what I spent money during the day. I am not going to provide a line by line report on the Internet, but I will keep such records myself everyday, and give you the overview. Feel free to comment on the wisdom of some of my purchasing choices or make suggestions. The intent here is that if I know people are watching what I spend, I will be less likely to make poor financial decisions.

2) I will keep a record of my running schedule and results. This will be somewhat difficult since i don't have a fancy dancy device to keep track of this kind of stuff, but at the very least I will tell you how many minutes I ran, about how far I ran (in laps around a location if I can't estimate the actual mileage)

3) I will post what part of my dissertation I worked on, and in the case that I absolutely have nothing to do on the dissertation itself, I will report what I did instead.

4) I will write a brief reflection on how I experienced the day, including insights and how I tried to approach the day as a whole. I will not keep records of specific conversations between others and myself, because I feel that while I am making my journey public, I have a responsibility to those in my social sphere to guard their privacy.

OK, so that's the plan in short. I do hope that a few people at the very least will take part in this process with me. I forewarn anyone who wants to keep up with me that for the week of spring break, I will be on a road trip to a sociology conference in Vegas. I am not sure how I am going to make daily updates during this time, but at the least I will keep a good record of every day's work and find a way to post it regularly during that time.

Well, here we go. I hope something good comes of this.

Lenten Commitments

I didn't really make any noticeable New Years resolutions in January. it's not that there aren't things I need to work on, I just wasn't focused on any of them. I've been thinking a lot this year though about focus. It has never been a strong suit of mine no matter what I do. Frankly, I've just always been good enough or lucky enough to get by, but that isn't satisfying anymore. I want to excel. I want to see just how good I can be at a few things and latch onto doing my absolute best at them. my friend Chris (and a few others) pointed out that I go through stretches of interest in things then just move on, which isn't a bad thing, but it does keep me from being really awesome at something. I want to make my mark, like a friend of mine from high school, Nathan.

Nathan is into turtles. Really, really into turtles. Since middle school, virtually all of his working effort has gone into getting where he is today, finishing graduate studies as a marine biologist to become the turtle expert. I heard an interview of him with NPR today, and I thought about how incredible it is that Nathan took a dream, as simple as it was, and has turned it into a way to make his mark in the world. It got me motivated, just a little bit. So I decided that starting in Lent, I'm going to pick five things and spend the rest of the year committing to them. The forty days is a test run, and I hope my friends will keep me encouraged and accountable to hold to them.

1) I will work on my dissertation topic every day, for at least thirty minutes, and for at least an hour once a week. I have an idea, but I need to hone it and develop some serious goals to get it started. I'm looking at social perceptions of self and other, specifically how we compare our own needs and value to that of others, and how this effects either healthy or destructive social behaviors. I need to make this idea clear and start becoming an expert on everything there is to know about the subject. Then I need to start working on making a real contribution that can help people. I think it's a good subject, I've always been interested in how we perceive ourselves and how it either helps or hurts ourselves and our communities/relationships. But I need to work on it hard and joyfully.

2) I will run three times a week. This has nothing to do with the task itself. The point is not to become an awesome runner or super fit. The point is to commit to doing something for the sake of self-improvement long term, and hold myself accountable to sticking to it even when I don't feel like it. The big reason I picked running in particular is because my Sunday School class are really into it, so I think I have a good support group built in to hold me to it.

3) I will spend less to entertain myself, and do more to find enjoyment in things that are free. This one is really hard for me. I love being lazy, and am easily distracted by anything. I also hate being bored, and usually fix that with blind, dumb, American entertainment. which usually costs money. Part of this I think involves doing things with people other than going out places. It's all well and good, but sometimes it just feels like I'm spending money to go out and see people. More hanging out, less buying stuff to do it.

4) I am going to practice positivity. This one sounds cliche, but I am well practiced in negativity, and it has never helped me. I can be really cynical in the name of healthy skepticism, but I have yet to encounter a situation where it has made my life better or been a benefit to the people around me. This one is going to be hard, because my main defense for doing something I don't feel like doing is to naysay it, but I've noticed that people who find the best in situations tend to get the best out of themselves and others.

5) I am going to love people actively. I do this sometimes, but a most of the time I just say whatever sounds clever without thinking about how it affects people. What I think is funny sarcasm is actually damaging to others and my relationship with them. This one is going to be really hard I think, but I am going to make the best effort I can to practice the art of encouraging others whenever I have the opportunity.

So that's it. I feel like these are all a tall order and just filling them could take up every waking hour of every day, but starting next Wednesday, this is my plan. To really specify them down, here are my simple goals.

1) Work on my academic career outside of what is required for the immediate future thirty minutes a day or more.

2) Run for thirty minutes three times a week

3) Spend less money this month on myself than I did last month

4) Find at least one positive thing in every situation I encounter, especially if I find something negative to say.

5) Be kind and encouraging to each person I talk to every day.