After the mixed success of day 1, the second day of my productivity reboot fared only slightly better in terms of raw hours worked. I got up early as I had the day before, and hit the polls at 6:15AM to cast my vote. Unfortunately, my late-night epiphany about the need for more mirth had tired me out, which led to an unplanned 2-hour nap in the middle of the day. The day, then, was lost to random socializing and following election result coverage late into the night. On Wednesday, I helped accomplish something critically important for my project that I hadn't planned. This was good, but it was irking that the rest of the day was not directed.
Disentangling what I want from what I must do
A big part of this productivity reboot is about finding my work groove so I can reliably jack into it. On the surface the "solution" is simple: hunker down and do the work. That's what my Dad would do! However, there is this nagging feeling that my "work" should be "my life's work". In other words, being productive isn't just about self-discipline, it's also about finding meaning in what I do. My assumption is that once I find the meaning, I can design my future so I can have the freedom to do that. So far, my best guess is that I want to create sustaining connections with people that I care about, and have this somehow be what I do for a living.
Thus far, my productivity reboot has failed to power up, and this is due to procrastination. Looking a little closer, however, I realize that what I'm doing to procrastinate mirrors my long-term goals:
GOAL: I say that I want to create sustaining connections with people I care about. By sustaining, I mean that I get something out of the relationship that gives me energy. By connection, I mean the means through which we interact: common interest, desire to share knowledge, and the other benefits of good friendship. I think this will be the foundation for productive happiness.
PROCRASTINATING MIRROR FORM: When someone that is already a good friend contacts me, talking to that person feels like the goal is already achieved. The connection immediate and visceral. Even when I'm surfing the web, I'm looking for tidbits and inspiration that I can apply to the next conversation I have with someone; in all likelihood, I'm surfing the web based on something someone said to me earlier.
This desire to immediately cash-in on existing personal relationship does NOT help me in my short term responsibilities. It's a short-circuit to immediate pleasure, just as addictive as indulging in ice cream to keep your mind from sinking into a funk. I tell myself that talking to friends and acquaintances on the Internet is actually a good thing, because it helps me see exciting new ideas and opportunities. In this case, however, it's a distraction; there is important work that must be done first, and there's no making it go away.
I think most "normal" people happily split their work and personal lives in two separate halves, but for some reason I've never been able to do it. Possibly, this is because I've never had a "normal" 9-5 job. I've worked primarily at startups and game companies, and now I freelance. My parents were also missionaries, and their work was their life. As a freelancer I am the single room in which all decisions ultimately get made, and I think it will be necessary to compartmentalize further. In other words: create unbending structure and forcing myself to adapt within its confines. The trick will be to create the right structure and maintaining my physical well-being so I can follow through with it.
Overcoming the mind's desires
The first takeaway is that I actually have to live in isolation for a while, or figure out some practical way to balance work with life. My ideal of balance is that it would be X hours of solid, uninterrupted work followed by Y hours of quality social time, something like an idealized 9-5 schedule. However, my personality tends to goes against this schedule. My mind likes to run and jump around from thought to thought, exulting in the interplay between incompatible ideas, crashing them together and challenging their underlying assumptions. I could attempt to squash that impulse, but am I fighting a losing battle against my nature? It would be far better to create a productive system that uses my "weaknesses" as strengths...but this is for the future. For right now, I do need to put aside my desire to have conversations and focus on doing some hardcore programming and website redevelopment.
The second takeaway is that I probably should remind myself constantly that I do have good friends. I know I say it a lot, but when I'm in my basement by myself it's hard to remember. While I was talking to my friend Jenn online about my depressed state, she mentioned it was difficult to imagine because my buddy icon is so positive looking. I joked I should probably print it out so it would remind me that I am happy. Hm. The buddy icon photo was taken at Barcamp Boston 3 and is probably the best photo I have of myself. I went and bought a whole bunch of frames and filled them with pictures of friends and family, everyone smiling, and hung them behind my monitor (see photo below). My house has nothing on the walls at all, so this was a good thing to do. I immediately felt a little less isolated.
Overcoming the body's desires
Two other problems are sleeping schedule and diet. I have a tendency to stay up late because my brain keeps racing until it is tired. My natural day seems to be about 27 hours long, so if I indulge my desire to stay up I quickly go out of sync with the rest of the world. With no morning commute, I can also sleep in. It's pretty draining, now that I think about it, to constantly be in and out of sync, so committing to the schedule means ignoring my impulse to stay up AND having a reason to get up at the same time. It might have to be some kind of early morning class at the gym or something.
As for diet, I have not been drinking enough water, which makes my head a little cloudy. Sugars, breads and starches also make me very sleepy, as does quantity, so I have to eat much more mindfully. I have a tendency to turn off my brain when I'm eating, and therefore the portions and type of food tend to be unregulated by common sense. Maybe I need to sacrifice yummy food for those meals in a can; if I know meals are going to be yucky, I'll just get them over with as soon as possible. Am I willing to trade off a few moments of foodie pleasure for 90 minutes of clear thinking, so I can get my productivity groove going? Probably.
Keeping the pace
Having a schedule might help. Maybe I need some version of Adult Kindergarten...THAT might be a fun Coworking experiment. My schedule is completely arbitrary and flexible, which is what I thought I wanted but it is starting to drive me crazy. It's very tiring to have to be responsible for all the decisions all the time, especially when you are completely by yourself.
The problem with keeping the schedule is that I have tasks that are difficult to predict. I tend to want closure and completion on my work, so I work until things are done. Invariably things take longer, and when they do other things fall off the to-do list. It may be necessary to apply a time limit to how long I am "allowed" to work on any single area, mercilessly switching to the next scheduled task. If they don't get done, so be it; I'll pick it up again tomorrow. It would be possible to schedule more precisely if the exact nature of the task is blueprinted, but that requires more up-front planning. The Task Progress Tracker is designed somewhat around this, but I don't believe I actually have a form that is designed to enforce time without the requirement of completion. It's an intriguing idea, with a different set of context and continuity management challenges.
A corollary to the "work strictly with the allocated time" approach is committing to feeling tired. I tend to sleep if I feel sleepy, reasoning to myself that if I'm tired I'm not going to be able to do the work anyway. Perhaps I should really just drink a Red Bull and keep moving instead of sleeping. That will tend to put me back into the schedule, maybe, though I don't like the idea of chemically sustaining my mental processes.
Re-re-re-rebooting
Thursday is another day, and I've already blown my "go to sleep" window, but I will apply the "just stay up" approach. That means waking up at 6AM and pushing through. Unfortunately my experiment will be interrupted by a trip out to San Jose this Sunday, where I'll be holed up for my project with the rest of the team.
There are decisions to be made at every step of the way, and I am feeling the desire to design some kind of tracking / process form that handles all these problems. It would be something like the ETT, except what it would track decisions made in the face of dizziness, tiredness, lack of motivation, etc. However, if you choose to use a "cheat" to get by, or you decide to bail, the form would be able to tell you what you need to do to get back into synchronization and suggest appropriate recovery techniques over the next 24 hours.
Anyway, that's how the reboot is going right now. I wasn't expecting this much angst when I started it, but it feels like I'm addressing some previously hidden resistances to my productivity.
I wasn't even going to write this, because I went to bed at 9PM so I could be at the polls by 6AM. By my official schedule, I should be sound asleep to establish an inspiring personal track record of productive discipline. What I didn't count on was a sudden blast of insight that jolted me wide awake about two hours ago. After I heard my Timex beep the hour twice, I gave up and decided to do some writing. The day started strong and ended haphazardly. However, failure has led to a series of epiphanies regarding productivity and mirthfulness.
Starting strong
The first day of any habit usually goes pretty well, because I'm motivated and ready to go. And indeed, my morning started out great. I woke up at 530AM, dressed in real clothes, and got over to Starbucks by 6:40AM to start planning on an Emergent Task Planner sheet (see photo). This being the first ETP sheet in some time, it's fairly choked with things to do. I had no illusion about getting them all done, however, so I just kept adding to it to rollover to tomorrow's sheet. By 700AM, I pretty confident about what I needed to do overall for the day, and wrote down first steps for the day's programming tasks in a separate notebook. By 715AM, I was ready to head to the gym for an hour, planning to follow-up with a quick trip to pick up a room divider screen plus adequate protein for the day.
I also decided on a day's personal challenge of sharing positive energy with strangers on the street. I found that I was unable to really muster the ability to power through other people's default mood, which was that of casual preoccupation and indifference. I had never noticed this before, probably because I'm in the same place. The best I could do was mirror people's mood in a reactive way. When people smiled, I could smile back. If they didn't smile, I just moved my gaze onward. This was a disturbing realization, as this indicated a lack of positive energy on my part. And that's a problem; if you want to be around positive people, you had better be positive yourself. Like attracts like, ya know.
Getting back to the gym in the morning was nice. It had been quite some time (3 months) since I'd done an early-morning gym routine, and it felt good to just work through the muscle groups and sweat. I didn't push myself too hard, as I wanted to be "clear headed" without the tiredness. Mission accomplished, I zooped back home to read my email. Several readers provided some very helpful comments regarding the productivity reboot, offering empathetic advice. "Clyde" noted that although cleaning up my space was one way to improve motivation, the real change has to happen in the mind. He suggested a particularly vivid mental trick, imagining that one is sucked into the task to create joy and openness. This would prove to be an important observation for later in the day...thanks Clyde! As much as I like to think myself the master of mind trickery, it's good to be reminded that others have their own master collection of insights.
Blowing my momentum
The day started to go awry when I made some poor choices about the use of my time. First, I decided to go buy the room divider screen I'd seen at a store last week. It was no where to be seen, so I went to another store, then another, then another. I spent the next couple hours going to six stores where I thought I'd seen screens like this, only to find that they seem to have been completely erased from the face of the Earth. I knew the entire time that I was being obsessive about it, and decided to end my trip by at least buying some low sodium soy sauce from Trader Joe's (my favorite for taste and cooking) to salvage the rest of the day. It being close to lunch time, I made my second mistake: I went to KFC and got a chicken breast meal with potato wedges. The combination of KFC plus the tiredness that had accumulated over the extended shopping after working out at the gym completely knocked me out. I would have slept longer if it wasn't for the incessant calling and doorbell ringing from Obama supporters throughout the day.
It being 2PM, the day wasn't completely screwed, but I knew that by 5PM I would not be able to maintain any work momentum. That is when I made several more erroneous judgment calls. Three good friends of mine happened to contact me one after the other, and I chose to spend time visiting with them rather than telling them that I wanted to work. The first friend, A, is going through a similar bout of motivational reconfiguring, so I rationalized that this might pay off in the long run. We talked for two hours, outlining possible issues and strategies regarding motivation, all the while acknowledging the irony that we were also procrastinating. At 5PM, I went to meet my best friend E at Starbucks to restock on general cheerfulness, which is important to have stocked in New England during the cold months. Finally, at 615PM I met friend number three at Lowe's to pick up some stuff, and offered to help him unload a new snowblower at home because it was a two-man job. And then, the day was gone. Poof!
Reflecting upon this massive failure to stick to the plan, I recognized two mechanisms in action:
Succumbing to the Easy Fix: I'd somehow had it in my mind that getting this room divider was really important to establish the right atmosphere to work. I really just wanted one. I think it will actually help the office for other reasons, but in terms of functional productivity it provided false positive feedback. Buying stuff feels like change. If you like what you got, and can rationalize the utility of your purchase, you feel like you've done something. It feels like you've added more potential to the system. Well, that's not true. When my attempt to purchase to screen failed, I went into a backup reward recovery mode and indulged in a greasy treat from KFC. I knew all the time that I probably shouldn't spend so much time looking for the screen, but there is always just one more store, and it's just a few minutes away. And I knew that the KFC would probably make me sleepy, but I convinced myself that maybe this time it wouldn't. But it did...my desire for immediate reward overrode the modicum of discipline I had mustered up for the day. Bah.
Shortcutting to the False End Goal: If it wasn't clear yesterday, I'm feeling the need to break out of my rut of isolation. However, I have to get my projects completed and out the door, and I need to build a support enterprise that gives me the freedom to operate the way I want. This freedom will allow me, theoretically, to travel more and work on interesting projects that are based around human interaction. I crave this. And because I crave it so much, it was easy to succumb to my desire to be around more people. I gained a lot of insight about myself and my current process, mind you, and I feel good for having spent the time with my friends...but I didn't get what I wanted done. It will take discipline to limit my social activities during normal working hours (and this includes shopping trips). This is one of the perks of freelancing in the first place, but for this productivity push I will need to maintain a firmer hand on my time.
Discovering mirth
Despite the drawbacks of the day, they did lead me to an important personal observation:
I'm silly and unrealistic.
Ok, I already knew this, but instead of depressing me, this made me laugh at myself. My propensity toward silliness was evident while talking to my motivationally-challenged perfectionist friend. I worked myself up to a comedic fervor, vividly guessing an over-the-top version of his probably dreams. My friend pointed out that this was a kind of vision, and this struck me. The truth is this: I like being silly, and I like making up stuff that is improbable but awesome. This is one of my passions.
For someone who likes silly things, I have nevertheless tended to chose to be serious about life. I've known that I needed to lighten up about life for a long time, and recently I've felt I need to project positive energy to have any hope of being productively happy in a self-sustaining manner.
In retrospect, the approach I took to address my squareness was to address these three areas of discomfort:
- To try not to care about details I can't influence or control, because that accomplishes nothing.
- To look on the bright side of everything, because life lessons are learned through hard knocks.
- To not feel judged by other people, because they are not experts about me and my world.
These are all good mental stances to have, but here's the drawback: they are all reactionary methodologies! After all:
- I do care about the details and get stressed out, and then I calm myself down.
- I acknowledge the dark sides before I extract the positive lesson.
- I do feel judged by people and feel uncomfortable, then I shrug it off.
These are coping mechanisms. And because they are reactionary methods, I am reactionary. My experiment earlier in the day to spread positive energy fizzled because I didn't have the energy to begin with; I only had the ability to reactively shape what is already was in the world. It would be far better to be able to create such energy from scratch.
Cultivating silliness and mirth may change the equation, because it unlocks my sense of joy, which I think is inherently creative. My particular brand of mirth recognizes that there are a lot of crazy, obsessive, unique, and off-kilter people in the world who are completely inspiring. Their uniqueness is a source of excitement and change, and I like to amplify and share it wherever I find it. I also believe the the world is inherently sorta improbable to being with, and we exist AT ALL is a cosmic wonder. In my search for greater meaning, I've forgotten this. Maybe finding my bliss is as easy as finding something to laugh with to see where that goes. Is there anything more positive and joyful to share than a good laugh? If I can cultivate my natural silliness as a source of demonstrable mirthfulness, that might give me what I need to make more changes in myself and the world around me.
Tomorrow's plan
Day 2 is usually harder, but armed with today's insights I am hopeful of maintaining discipline. The challenge is likely to be more physical: I'm going to be tired. I need to make sure I don't eat anything that makes me sleepy, which means avoiding sugar and carbohydrates. It is also Election Day here in the US, so it will be awfully tempting to spend the day watching the progress of the vote. We'll see how it goes. I need more data to see where my patterns are breaking down.
As I wind down to sleep, I'm struck by the Christian phrase, "God is Love". Perhaps God is Laughter too?
Over the past few months I've been playing hooky from personal productivity, for no other reason than I didn't feel like doing it. On the surface I figured that with my current work project, I actually didn't need to manage multiple tasks because it was a single all-consuming focus. I also suspended my blogging, using the extra time to participate more in local events.
As the weeks have gone by, however, I've felt increasingly uneasy. I'm not doing more to advance my own dreams and desires, and this has long-term disadvantages. More telling is my new awareness of that there is something missing from my life. Call it faith, mission, or love; I don't know exactly what it is, but I can taste it in the back of my mouth. Friday's post about love and the gut was my latest attempt to articulate it. As much as I hate to admit it, I am pretty bummed out about this. This makes me feel weak, lacking in self-sufficiency and independence, but I also know that people can't live without human connections and intimacy. There isn't anything I can immediately do about that, but I can at least acknowledge and accept it. Grumble.
I've said before that "personal productivity" is a state of mind; when we feel productive, we are productive. A lot of my productivity-related tools and insights were designed to help create that feeling by providing feedback over time. I also believe that real, useful artifacts should be created as part of the process, because this gives you tangible proof that you actually are being productive. My summer of free-wheeling workplay has left me feeling empty and unsettled because I violated these very rules, so, it's time to get back to work. I am rebooting my productivity habits this month. Also, I am admitting that I don't know where I am going, and it's time to stop being reactive. It's time for me to get serious about dreaming with purpose.
Identifying the unease
I am basically feeling lost and uninspired despite having dozens of potential opportunities and projects I could pursue. I also am not feeling that my day-to-day project work is as efficient as it could be, because I spend a lot of time "getting back into the groove". I attribute this to a lack of effective continuity and context management. And underlying it all is a sense that I am off-center, due to my house being a mess, friends leaving, and the resulting realization that I have to rebuild my sense of well-being by myself. It's a daunting, depressing mountain of tasks.
I'm going to follow some mantras I wrote down in 2005 that were important. I've amended them slightly for 2008:
- Focus on doing one thing at a time and do it
- Start anywhere
- Take small steps
- Maintain momentum
- Talk it out
- Just ask
My first step is to define what's bothering me. By putting a shape to my discontent, I'll be able to face it with an appropriate mental stance. It is tempting to make a comprehensive battle plan, as I like doing that kind of thing. However, this time I'm going to take this one day at a time. Otherwise, I will make my discontent appear disproportionately large to its actual challenge. You don't attack something like this all at once, after all. It makes more sense to divide and conquer.
The shape of discontent
My favorite "let's start thinking" tool is a portable whiteboard. I have two 8.5x14 inch whiteboards that I can scribble on as I think. There's something about the ease of erasing that Iike, and the fluid feel of the markers seems to help the words come out. When I need to keep a hardcopy, I just take a digital photo or use my scanner.
Anyway, it just took a few seconds to outline what was topmost on my mind: feeling more centered. When I am feeling off-balance, my energy is all messed up and I can't focus on anything. I need to get my footing again so I can think. Here's how it breaks down:
- I have no sense of "sanctuary in the home", because of the clutter and disorganization.
- I have no controlled planning space for maintaining continuity and momentum from day to day, which makes context switches expensive.
- I am without faith in anything, and I lack a sense of mission. I'm depressed about this.
- The amount of work and effort that fixing the above will take is unpredictably large, and therefore demotivating.
As I said, I'm aware that there are lot of things I could do. I have no lack for ideas. None of them, however, fill the void in my creative soul. Nothing I can think of seems like it will be lasting. For example, while I could be making very cool software applications, designing new forms, meeting new people, and through these activities I can be happy in the moment. However, I know the happiness will be fleeting without a larger mission, and I'll need another hit. I don't know where it is all going, and I wish I knew. This is what is bothering me, trying to know the unknowable.
So how do I address this?
I suspect I need to rediscover and/or realign my sense of values, and find enough energy and motivation to keep moving until I get out of the doldrums. I know from experience that when I'm feeling low, it's just temporary so long as I keep making things. One of my basic beliefs is that making things show them to people creates new synergies and possibilities. However, when you've been surfing life like this for so long, you start to wonder if you are just deluding yourself because you've done it so many times before. Where does it go? It hasn't gone anywhere yet.
Making the space to think
Rather than try to solve this conundrum all at once, I'm going to work on creating sanctuary at home. That will give me the space to think and reflect.
First, I just spent a few hours reorganizing my workspace so there are ONLY work-related things within my line of sight. I am making sure I have a place to store my essential planning notebooks right next to my desk, so I get in the habit of using them consistently. I am establishing a place to keep my laptop and camera bags, so I don't have to hunt around for them. I'm going to buy one of those cheap white room-dividing screens from Christmas Tree Shops or Target to make my office area feel smaller and less cluttered. Ironically, I appear to be creating my own home cubicle to help contain all my work in a small area. I guess this reflects my desire to hole-up for a while and marshal my forces.
Next, I want to make is a meditation area. My living room and bedrooms are very cluttered, and the number of distractions (TV, books) makes these areas unsuitable for quiet reflection. I think I just need a corner of a room somewhere that is absolutely pristine and quiet, devoid of stuff of any kind, with a comfortable chair to reflect. I'm making an adult version of standing in the corner to reflect upon my years of non-productivity. Enlightenment, perhaps, will follow.
Creating momentum again
I've not been doing my morning coffee/gym routine for since June, and it's time to get back to it. The critical part of the routine was taking the 15 minutes to ease into the day, and scripting out the major tasks for the day gives me focus. When I do this early in the morning, I have the time to get things done. For a while I was coding late at night, but because of my expanded social commitments the evening has become unavailable. I don't want to give these up, because it is through making human connections that I believe I will find my sense of mission again.
I am a little concerned that I will not be able to maintain the momentum over time, as I am drawing on reserve energy, so I am calling on some personal beliefs to help keep me in (or rather, self-guilt myself into) the right state of mind:
- I have to keep the faith that there is a mission for me to find. I just need to keep moving.
- To believe that there isn't a mission is to admit defeat, and that it not the way I want my story to end.
So that's where I am at the moment. More news as events warrant!
Lately I've been working much more out of the office at various coffee shops, and when I'm working for extended periods of time I find that the low angle of my notebook's LCD screen causes neck strain after a couple of hours. I've tried carrying around my old Griffin iCurve and Logitech Alto Express, which are elegantly-shaped pieces of plastic, but they do not easily pack into a laptop bag. After a bit of hunting around, I came across the XT Stand, a compact folding laptop stand that stood out from the piles of plastic junk littered across the Internet. After reading this 2005 review, I took a chance on ordering one from the rather mysterious xtstand website. I've been carrying it around for about a month. The verdict: so far, I like it a lot.
The XT Stand is made of satisfyingly sturdy metal with rubberized caps, and I was impressed by the fit and finish. In the hand, it feels more like a piece of scientific gear, and it gets a few looks from people when I haul it out. While it comes with a solid plastic carrying case, I just carry the XT Stand loose in my bag next to my "scroll case" of 11x17 paper. Folded, the stand is about an inch longer than a ballpoint pen, and will tuck away into a wide pen-carrying pocket.
Unfolded, the XT Stand lies pretty low and stably. The base is stable and height adjustable. There are two adjustments possible: the length of the two rear extension supports (5 settings), and the height of the riser tubes (hi or low). While I would have liked the option of being able to raise my laptop screen more than two inches, it nevertheless works well enough to prevent some discomfort. With my external USB keyboard (a compact BTC 6100C) and my new-favorite mouse (a Logitech VX Nano), I have a pretty comfortable portable on-the-go setup. It all fits in a slim LeVertigo 17" vertical brief.
I have to admit, though, that the main reason I like the XT Stand is because it just looks so cool. The slightly bronze-colored matte finish goes very nicely with my MacBook Pro, here encased in a Speck clear hardshell. The Griffin iCurve is probably a better ergonomic solution, as it is a little higher that the XT-Stand, but it loses on portability. I'm also intrigued also by the portability potential of the newer Griffin Elevator and the InclinePro, but I have to say I am drawn to the steampunk aesthetic of the XT-Stand better. I'd like to know who designed the XT Stand, because it doesn't seem to have the usual cost-cutting overseas design vibe that is the norm for gadgets in this category. Someone cared about the feel and build quality of this piece of gear, and it shows. It's elegantly fussy.
I paid about $40 for mine, which is a little pricey, but it's the same price as the Elevator. The InclinePro, by comparison, is around $80, and I can't quite justify that. I got mine from this website, which at first glance looks like it might not actually be in business from the 2004 copyright date on the bottom of the page, but I did receive product.
It's a weird little piece of gear, I admit, but that's also why I like it :-)
Although I was born in New Jersey, I spent a formative part of my youth was as a missionary kid overseas. As soon as I got back to The States for college, I stopped going to church because I didn't like the petty political aspects of organized religion. Over the past several years, however, I've been noticing that many of the "good" people I've been coming across are Christian, are not boring, and are not trying to recruit my soul so my body will pad the pews. A few nights ago I had a really excellent time chatting with a Christian friend of mine who is active in several churches, so I thought I'd brush up on my understanding of Christian fundamentals via Wikipedia. Serendipitously, I came across the mention of C.S. "Chronicles of Narnia" Lewis' book The Four Loves, which "explores the nature of love from a Christian perspective".
It wasn't Lewis' opinion that I found interesting; rather it was the Greek source material regarding the nature of love. In today's usage of the word, "love" is used as a kind of catch-all phrase. The Greek philosophers (modern Greek too, for that matter) have more words for it, describing a range of human emotional connections from the superficial to the sublime. Browsing through the concepts of agape, storge, philia and eros was very educational. And I saw answers to one of the current great conundrums of my life: the lack of a romantic partner:
what I believed
Like many single guys, I'm searching for "romantic love", but have of late been rather discouraged at the seeming impossibility of finding that magic combination of attraction, excitement, compatibility, and contentment. Part of this despair, I suspect, has been the worry that I don't really know what romantic love is. At some point I decided, like many people do, to have faith, create situations that I can enjoy and share, and above all trust my gut. However, while the gut may react strongly, it's still up to the brain to figure out what to do about it. On top of that, I think there are at least two components of my gut:
- The emotional gut, which I don't question--I'm either intrigued or I'm not.
- The thoughtful gut, which I think of as intuition. Intuition, however, is a kind of crap shoot based on what we've experienced before (finding patterns) and what our beliefs/expectations of how things "should work". Having browsed through these different love descriptions, I can see the nature of my own limiting beliefs about what "true love" is, and perhaps can now grow beyond them.
I tend to believe in authentic connections between people; a great deal of my design work and emphasis on story-based inquiry is my professional attempt to create them. Naturally, I want my partner and lover to also possess a "true connection" with me, and I very strongly identify such connections with the spirit of friendship. I have fantastic, amazing friends, and I wouldn't be a tenth of the person I am today if we didn't have that critical mutual inspiration, respect, and support. My exploration of the topic of love led me to Aristotle's deconstruction of friendship into three types: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure of company, and friendships of the good. The latter, which is described in English as "true friendship", is friendship that is based on the enjoyment of each other's character. This is really what I look for in people and in myself; everything else that is positive flows from that. As I have been blessed to have many true friends throughout my life, I expect my romantic partner to also be my true friend. Together we will create the story of our life as characters in a book of our own making, testing our mettle against negative forces and overcoming multitudinous obstacles together, secure in our love and affection for each other, and passionately living. This is the baseline of interaction I already have with my best friends; how can I settle for anything less? It seemed like a no-brainer to make friendship a precondition for romance. "It will just happen", I told myself, some 25 years ago, "if I continue to pursue my path. Whatever the hell that is."
As it turns out, there is a love style called Storgic Love that actually describes how I thought I would fall in love. Storgic lovers are "friends first" and hey, THAT'S ME RIGHT?!
I read on with great interest, frowning slightly as I read the final paragraph:
Some advantages of storgic love can be the level of friendship, understanding, and intimacy in the partners, while disadvantages can include potential boredom and lack of passion in some couples.
That boredom part didn't quite fit...I don't want to settle down and live in a cottage for the rest of my life. I want to become something greater! However, because I value friendship so much, I had naturally settled into this pattern and ran into a massive internal conflict: because I value "true friendship"--that is, friendship based on character--I perceived other love styles as a failure of motive .
Let me explain myself: There are a lot of women who I find sexually enticing, cute, and so on, but to me character is everything. I am just not interested until I see the evidence of it. Once glimpsed, it takes time to draw out the subtleties across multiple interactions. Interests, behaviors, and physical appearance are somewhat secondary in importance; and it's the inner beauty and idiosyncrasies of a person's character, as I perceive it, that finally draws me close and captivates my heart. The giant insight is that my romantic interest tends to express itself as explorations of character, and I suppress the other "love styles" to "maintain the purity" of my quest. That tends to exclude such pleasantries such as flirting, winking, swooping in, sweeping away, and so forth. What most people would regard as the fun part of getting to know someone, but in my snobbery I thought EVERYBODY already does that...I'm looking for something more, and I'm doing things my own way! Or so I would tell myself, as I battled myself internally. My logic was that if I liked a girl because she was cute I wasn't living up to my own character values: true connections and good character above all else, because I believe everything is possible through this. It never occurred to me that I could think both. Yes, I'm dumb...blinded by principle, yet again. Maintaining such an attitude, however couched in idealism, is ultimately boring and dispassionate. This can lead to a good friendship, but not romance.
And so I come back to my two guts:
My "emotional gut" is 100% accurate at telling me when I like someone and find them attractive.
My "intuitive gut", however, did not have the breadth of experience and self-knowledge to see me playing out the same pattern over and over again, and instead assumed that "if I thought up the idea, and the idea affects only me, it must be right". Well, no, probably not. The idea in this case was: "true friendship is based on true character, therefore my romantic search will be strictly dictated by the parameters implicit in this directive."
the moral
I still feel kind of dumb right now, but at the same time I feel a sense of relief because I've identified a limited thought pattern. Now that I know it, I can break it and replace it with something less boring.
I know what my real romantic directive is: It's far better to live in character than to merely search for it. This follows naturally from my belief that when you put that energy out there, people can actually tell that you have it. After all, attraction of character needs to work both ways.
The role I want to play in the world is as a connector of true passions, to have the freedom to let allow random aspects of life catch my eye, and create the situations where passion and living can express themselves at a higher level. That's what great design is. That's what productivity is. That is what inspiration and empowerment mean to me. And next time I see these qualities embodied in a pretty girl, I will need to remember that although character is super sexy, it's just as awesome to tell a woman how beautiful she is in a meaningful, creative way. Even if she already knows it.
If you were paying attention, you might have noticed that I said there were TWO great conundrums in my life. The other one is the missing sense of mission, but I think I stumbled upon it while writing the previous paragraph. And I feel that I have to give Christianity some props for that; the entry for Holy Spirit, a concept I used to have difficulty accepting when I thought it meant a literal ghost flying around inhabiting people, had this tidbit (emphasis mine):
The first overt appearance of the Holy Spirit in Christian theology is in the words of Jesus, speaking to his disciples (John 14:15-18) shortly before his death. He characterizes the Holy Spirit to them as the 'Spirit of Truth'.
Further reading leads right back to the notion of agape, which is a kind of love that benefits the world we live in. It starts with you and me, and perhaps it can be expressed through the creation of more awesome design and the telling of each other's stories. Everyone, I believe, has a true way to express this kind of positivity and joy, if they can only find the means through which they can see just how possible it is. The trick is finding it authentically, but that will be a post for another day.
