cerebral stenosis

If you go to the doctors and they examine you and you overhear one talking to the other about you and they refer to your "cerebral stenosis" what they are talking about is that you are a jerk. Cerebral stenosis is a very fancy way of referring to a "narrowing of the brain."

It is interesting how language and communication serves more as a barrier to understanding then as a doorway to it.

I have been doing a million things and yes, still working on the new mobile site. Pages and pages but it is getting there. Plotting new radio shows and trying to bring into being some other projects while finishing old ones.

In all this I am having to research various topics and also look at various things I am involved in to the extent that they lay claim to my time. Particularly my emotional time. It is almost frightening how easy it is to achieve an imbalance in life simply because you are responding to things that have nothing to do with you but they grab a hold of you and act as if they are the most important things in your life.

I have started to look at things, especially online, with an eye towards integrity and balance. As a result, I have withdrawn from several things I had been involved with simply because what they had become was so...not...what they had promised to try to be. One of which, I won't say names, targeted a minority population that really needed a place, a social site that... went beyond the body (so to speak) and created a community in which people could look at and discuss ideas and relate to each other as more than a means-to-an-end or a piece of meat.

When I took the time to look at how the site had shaped up (I had been there for over a year or so) I realized that because the owners did not moderate or review the pages or membership that it had evolved into a pornographic repository and - not even a dating site - but a kind of one that attracted only a subset of the minority that was based in violence and demeaning others. So I withdrew the blog.

One of the things I have been struggling with over the past year was the concept of direction. When you have a goal or a purpose or a motivation you have a direction. Once you launch yourself in that direction it becomes easy to forget that the direction must be revisited and redefined in order to remain a living and effective thing.

But, the hard part of doing that is that such a review and definition means you have to make a commitment to the objective, the goal.

I have had (and have) 5 year plans, future goal lists, etc and so forth. I have not realized until recently, that while what I put together was good enough to bring me from where I was to where I am, the goals I had defined for myself were ambiguous and vague.

For instance. Say at a point in your life you write down that your goal is to become a better writer. That is a good goal, but a deeply ambiguous one.

So you break it down and say, "as part of that goal I am going to study my craft." Better, but still sort of misty. What exactly are you going to study? When?

WIthout answering those questions you haven't defined yourself any means of achieving the goal and given yourself something concrete to look at that will tell you how you are doing.

Fine, so you fix that. And write, " I will learn how to write a sonnet and create three of them by September."

Excellent. Much better. Now you have a specific goal relating to your desire to be a better writer and you gave yourself a specific task and a deadline so you can guage how realistic it is and the progress you make.

But, you haven't identified the most important thing of all.

Why do you write in the first place?

Do simply gain a skill without a purpose really isn't much use at all.

This is where most people run into problems. In identifying why you are setting a goal for yourself requires revelation and commitment. It not only requires that you be willing to lay claim to purpose and meaning that define your actions and the way you spend your time, but that you are also commiting yourself to the possibility that you could be wrong.

This proces is called "Management by Objective." It is a means of managing your life, being in control of it, through awareness and committment rather than mere organization. You can organize till the cows come home and get everything done and wind up feeling deeply unsatisfied. If your desire, in organizing, was to create change in your life, you will become bitterly disappointed when, despite your following "THE PLAN" the same things resurface. Situations repeat, habits reappear.

Once you begin to identify the objective of your goal you are now on a much different path. The goal becomes a tool to achieve and support your purpose and meaning. Desires become more than wishes, they become achievable things. And you will begin to look at everything in your life and everything that touches it as a part of this process and see what is contributing to your ability to support your meaning, and what does not. Sometimes are unsupportive, not because they are in conflict, but simply because they are a distraction.

So here I am. Going back to my plan and list and steadily working through it and rephrasing my goals so they become objectives. In the process, I am defining myself and what is important to me and where my purpose and meaning lies much more deeply.

And you know? After a year or so of feeling like I was spinning in circles. of recognizing that I was following other people's ideas about what I should be doing, I feel like I am rediscovering myself.

And suddenly, happieness is beginning to return. That feeling of deep settled contentment that doesn't mean everything is smooth sailing but that I have no doubt that whatever happens, it will be just fine.

ok...back to it all.

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