Dancing Geek

So today has been all about passion and starting to have a conversation about in honestly, rather than where I would have previously either shied away from it, despaired at just not knowing it, or pretended it was something obvious without really giving it thought.  I can see the pattern now, that I was avoiding it and avoiding listening to my heart about it, but (as always) I can only see these things in hindsight.  If I’m feeling compassionate towards myself, and I am right now, then I’ll tell myself that this is because once I know something is wrong I do something about it.  But I’ve a feeling it’s more that once I’ve felt capable of dealing with it that I’ve admitted to myself something has been feeling wrong.

Either way, so long as I keep learning new skills for being with this stuff, and practicing my existing ones, then I should be able to make headway in clearing through some of the layers that I’ve put up to protect myself in the meantime.

My current list of passions

So having had a go at listening, and being honest with myself, and not judging myself, I now have a list of times when I believe I have felt truly happy.  The list to date:

• performing dance (but I’m not a dancer, no no no)
• talking about personal responsibility, healing, truth & love (but I’m not a life coach or healer, no no no)
• thinking about systems & planning (but I’m not an analyst, no no no)
• answering people’s questions (but I’m not a consultant, no no no)
• helping people understand each other (but I’m not a mediator, no no no)
• getting clarity through my writing (but I’m not a writer, no no no)

[The bit in brackets is to stop me freaking out.  I'll have to deal with each of those in turn - maybe I'll share that too.]

What I can see here though (ever with the pattern spotting) is two different threads:

1. Things I do for myself: dance & writing
2. Things I do to be a helper mouse: the rest of them

My heart just said a big ‘YES!’

I’m a helper mouse.  That’s my passion.  If I had one day to live, no money and no end of people asking for my time, I would help as many of them as I could before I died.  (Thanks, Dana for helping me notice this via twitter.)

Another friend said once that I should have an Ask James site.  I can not express the awesomeness of this idea.  And I avoided thinking about it for a long time because, well, see above re: not listening to my heart.  Of course, I have no idea how that would work, but the idea is awesome.

Urna by ·júbilo·haku·

Voting seems so pointless

Steve Pavlina recently wrote about the current financial situation in the US. More importantly, for me, he mentioned that he’s never registered to vote and that “Voting as an individual in the USA seems rather pointless to me at this time…I honestly don’t resonate with either Obama or McCain.”

I totally get this stance. In fact this stance was mine when I turned 18. I remember being in Edinburgh with an orchestra from University (they let anyone play – no really) the evening of the May 2001 General Election here in the UK and having long debates (you know the ones that turn into random mumbling at about 3am) about why I couldn’t be bothered to vote, with friends passionately trying to convince me (and failing miserably) that it was an important part of the democratic process (yawn).

I later changed my mind.

What convinced me to vote even when I don’t believe in any of the candidates?

So let’s be clear. I’m still disillusioned with politics. It seems irrelevant, boring, stuffy, nonsensical, unethical, pathetic, tired, depressing, frustrating, spurious and really very lame. But it isn’t inconsequential.

So what caused me to start voting? I had a shock the following year.

I was very lucky to get to spend a year as a Uni student in Strasbourg. A beautiful city in north-east France on the border with Germany. I love Strasbourg, and could wax lyrical about it for hours. I won’t. The point of this story is that I was in France in April 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen got through to the second round of the French Presidential Election.

[In case you're not up on French politics from 2002 here's what you need to know. 1) The French President is elected in two rounds, the first whittles the contenders down to two choices, the second picks who gets to play with the choo-choos for the next 5 years. 2) Jean-Marie Le Pen was running for Le Front National (National Front) a very right-wing party. Think de-legalising abortion, deporting non-european immigrants, citizenship only to those of French origin, no rights for gay marriage or adoption, return of the death penalty. Really nasty people by my standards.]

The response was huge

It was crazy watching the reaction from my friends and people who worked at the university. I had been told previously not to discuss the election with students (I was helping teach English) and then there were flyers and posters everywhere. It wasn’t that they were hypocritical. It was that they felt education itself was under attack and that meant the usual stance of neutrality was no longer viable. Protests were made (well, they are French) and people were talking about it everywhere.

It came down to the lesser of two evils. And I realised that although people didn’t support Chirac (the other guy in the election) they sure as hell were going to vote for him to make sure Le Pen didn’t get in. It sent a very strong message to Le Pen (who disturbingly still got 17% of the vote) but also to me.

What I learnt. Why I vote

In the second round of the elections a lot of people didn’t so much vote for Chirac as vote against Le Pen. To abstain would have meant saying it was ok for Le Pen to get into power, that you didn’t mind either way! So now I vote, even if it’s only to say that I dislike the other people more than the person I’m voting for. At least that way I can be sure to send a message that I don’t want some crazy fascist %#@*!$%* to get into power.

If you don’t vote for the best of a bad lot then someone else may well vote for the worst – and that can be very, very bad indeed.

So what do you think? Would this convince you to vote if you don’t already?

Two things I constantly find myself being frustrated in others for not having and/or showing are accountability and responsibility.

However, having read through a number of good blogs (see links on right) I’m reminded that often what we annoys us in others is what annoys us about ourselves (but we are not able to admit to).

So, here’s to making myself accountable and taking responsibility for myself.

Combining this with some other useful advice from Christine, I’ve started a book to record every day something I have done to move my objectives forward. I’m accountable to writing in it every day and I’m responsible for choosing something which genuinely moves my goals forwards.

To go with this I’ve a to do list that I carry with me everywhere and write every idea in and then pick out those that move me forward to be my ‘micro-goal of the day’.

There is one rule that I set myself however before this started. That if I ever got to the end of the day and had not managed to complete a task, that I would forgive myself and use the learning cycle to reflect, conclude and plan for how I would do better next time.

So far, so good.