Dancing Geek

It’s 31 December 2008, the end of a year, and at this symbolic time I have not very much to say.

I’m excited to be looking forward to a year where I’m going to kick ass and take names, but right now, today, I don’t have any particular insights.  And that’s ok, so I’m going to practice just being ok with where I am right now and not be worried that I haven’t had another amazing epiphany today (because quite frankly you can have too much of a good thing when it comes to mind altering paradigm shifts!)

I’m starting to play with structures to see what helps and what doesn’t in order to get ready for my Alternative MA and I’m trying out timings of various activities to see how long they actually take and therefore how much time I really have in a day (as opposed to the theoretical 16 hours which gets eaten up by all sorts of activities, some necessary, some faff).

I’m breaking in my new diary and a new notebook too, which is always a nice feeling.

In search of lost time by bogenfreund

Sleep cycles

Having managed to get up after only a little sleep yesterday, I fell back an hour or two today, but I’m not too worried, because it was due to me getting excited about my new ideal day plan and working on it a little too late.  I’m aware of this pattern, I was able to stop myself before going nocturnal again last night, and I can work on this some more to get back to a more ‘traditional’ cycle (I’ll not be getting up at 6am, but even 10am would be an improvement).

I love my learning

I had a thought during my meditation about little grains of sand in a special egg timer, or people in an air lock.  The point being that I love learning, however when I learn something it is only really useful to other people (I can solve their problems but not my own).  It is only when something has become realised that it is useful to me (I can recognise it to help identify and adjust my own patterns).

Going from knowledge to realisation however is even harder, I think, than learning something in the first place.  This could be because I’m well practised at learning and not so much at realising, or it could be inately more difficult.  I don’t suppose it really matters which is true, except as a rule of general interest to the populous, but for me it means that I need to focus more time on realisation than on learning in order to balance things out.

I love my metaphors

So, to get my mental imagery back into play, if you keep filling an air lock (with really wide doors at the front) and don’t switch to opening the much smaller doors at the back for at least as much time then you’ll only be able to solve other people’s problems, but not your own (something I know all about).  With the egg timer the image is a bit more complicated, but it’s the same idea: the top section can be flipped so that it has a large hole at the top and a tiny hole at the base to feed into the bottom chamber, or it can be set so that it has an opening for one grain at a time at the top, but a much larger opening feeding through to the bottom chamber.  The idea behind that was that it is very satisfying filling the top chamber with sand (or filling the air lock with people).  You can see a real difference as it fills up.  You feel good at the difference you’ve made.  However, it is the slower progress of filling the second chamber which is really going to make a difference.  This is my realisation (oooh, a meta-realisation?)
So, I’m going to try and remind myself to let go of the urge to be constantly cramming new learning (about personal development) into my head and instead focus on making sure I am truly understanding the principles in my own life.

Warning! Warning!

Except that that feels false, and off.  So that’s not right either.

The airlock idea seems easier to understand and visualise, but I think the hour glass is closer with the idea that I can still be learning whilst also focussing more effort on realising.  Since actually, you can’t focus more effort on realising.  It’s not something you can ‘work at’.  It’s more about living consciously and noticing what comes up so that you can apply your learning to your own stuff then.

It’s two different processes: sand into hour glass & sand into lower chamber.  In theory then, playing around with this metaphor, I could have a large opening with which to fill the hour glass with sand (lots of time and effort spent on learning) and also a large opening with which to allow the sand to trickle into the lower chamber (lots of time and focus on being mindful).  But there’s definitely only so much time and focus that I have to give to anything, so it’ll be a balancing act.

And another metaphor

The idea therefore is that I need to remember to stay mindful whilst I’m on this journey, what I am now calling my ‘Alternative MA’.  I’m thinking mindful classes are going to stay on the syllabus, which is also known as meditating.

I love throwing metaphors around, I hope I’m not confusing you.

Getting my sleep cycle in order today, so whilst listening to the binaural beats today I dropped off to sleep!

Last night (read 8am this morning) however I finally got past a couple of blocks that I had been dancing around.  One was to do with sharing what I’m going through with people in my real-world life.  I’d been avoiding this as it started to make things real, and I hadn’t felt ready for that.  Well I do now!  The second was around a fear that because I didn’t want to create dance at the moment I would ‘need’ to drop being in the performance group.  After a bit of honest thought about what I was getting out of it however I was able to admit to myself that at the moment it’s more of a social arrangement for me, rather than a conduit to truly express my creative self (which it has been in the past, and possibly will be again in the future).  With that in mind, I can stop trying to force it to be something that I was feeling it should be and can let it be what it is, with the reduction in associated responsibility that comes with that (I’m not going to drop the group, but I am going to pass on some of the hygiene tasks that I’ve been looking after).

From that clearance I got a draft of my ideal day together, with renewed commitment to the process that I’m going through, leaving me feeling eager to share my new revelations with my bf and to start looking at how I can really support myself in what my bf has lovingly dubbed my ‘Alternative MA’ (like Seth Godin’s !MBA, only better, cause it doesn’t involve moving to New York).

I then woke up naturally after only 5 hours sleep, and began to readjust to a diurnal sleep cycle without any effort – that’s when I know something’s right.  Today was the first time in 3 days that I saw sunlight!  It was really nice after such a long break, but the break served its purpose.  I’ve no idea if it’s my subconscious that triggered this or what, but I’m grateful, whatever happened.  Hopefully I will get to sleep at a much more reasonable time tonight and be back among the daylight folk proper tomorrow.  I’m particularly looking forward to spending more time with my bf, who has been missing me a little – since xmas we’ve been a bit like ships passing in the night, catching just an odd hour at the start and end of each day.  Having a partner working nightshift must really suck.

This is also good since I need to get some work done by the end of the week, so getting my cycle back into the more productive, daylight phase will help me to get that done.

In fact, having got through the darkest night, I’m now feeling really prepared and ready to start moving forwards, even though the movement is still internal it involves creating the life I want as well in support of that; a more external feel without compromising my internal focus.  It’s wonderfully odd that this has happened in line with the cycles of nature around me – I wonder how much is coincidence.