Personal Evolution

I have an addiction. Well, several of them, truth be told. However, we all have addictions or guilty little pleasures. Coffee, pastries and chocolate of any form are among some my beloved addictions. Pursuing the book aisle is one of my everlasting favorites. Be it a physical or virtual bookstore, it matters not. I will spend countless hours in search of my next fix.

At best guestimate I would say I have read into the tens of thousands of books over the course of my life and have learned not all are created equal. Like the junkie I am, I discovered not every book published had the magic I was searching for. You know what it is I speak of. That high where the author had enraptured me and was able to take me away to the world they have created. Their paracosms.

Recently, I had ordered the first book of a popular trilogy from Amazon. The  consumer reviews were excellent, so much so there is a movie being made based upon the books. Curious to see what the fuss was all about, I dove right in, eager to feel the rush, the high. I felt the disappointment of the crash and could not finish the first book. A highly unusual occurrence leaving my addiction unfed and restless.

On the other end of the scale, I had come across an author, Sierra Dean. She so delighted me, capturing my imagination in the first paragraph. The effervescent excitement was so great, I had to reread it. Twice. I then was compelled to share my high with Frank, reading it aloud to him. From the first paragraph of the first book in the series, she had me hooked.

But, before there was Sierra Dean, Nora Roberts and Stephen King, I was introduced to one of the best storytellers of all time. When we were children, my brother, Dan, was given a set of Louis L’Amour books by our Grandpa Heinrich. I promptly borrowed them, (indefinitely, I believe) and that ignited my passion for the written word, my addiction was born.

Mr. L’Amour hooked me with his first book and I have greedily consumed nearly everything he had ever written. I wonder if I hadn’t felt the magic from Mr. L’Amour, would I still have a love of reading today? Would I have an appreciation for not just authors, but storytellers?

So, I have read a lot of books. And, if I am to be honest, I have a secret (perhaps not so secret now) dream of writing a couple myself–if only to exorcise stories I have locked inside my mind. But, more on that another time.

Are you, too, addicted to fiction?  Do you remember the first time you felt the magic of “that first hit”?  You can share your story with me; this is a safe place.

There is one personality trait above all others which I believe can be blamed most for lack of success among creative people.  I recognize this trait because it is a flaw I was afflicted with my entire life without even knowing it.

Creative people tend to be a fountain of imagination.  Whether they are entrepreneurs or artists, creative types produce inspiration by the truckload. A creative person is rarely lacking for new ideas.  It’s invigorating to be around people like that, and it’s wonderful to be that sort of person–but it’s not without its drawbacks.

When I was operating a web development business I founded in 1999, the World Wide Web was still in its early stages, only just recently gaining traction with the masses a few years prior.  As such, it was (and probably always will be) a field of endless opportunities for a creative professional.

I started by designing simple websites for local businesses, but before long, I had clients who wanted e-commerce features for their sites.  I later won contracts with government agencies which were mandated to create content that was accessible to vision impaired visitors using screen readers.  I had other clients who needed to share large files with customers and staff securely. Staff at nonprofits wanted to save money by updating pages of their websites themselves.  Search engine marketing was another hot commodity.  

When a client asked if I could program a sprawling custom server application I set to work learning how to make their dream a reality. Eventually, interactive 3D modeling and virtual world development became trendy and I traded even more time I may have otherwise spent sleeping or with family or with my (now ex) wife to become adept with the new medium.

My point here is that I never said “no” to a project.  

Every time a client even hinted at a new technology problem, I dove right into it.  I spent untold hours researching and learning so my company could remain a one-stop provider for my clients’ website needs.  

Over the years I learned a lot and I was decent at most of the development work I did.  I enjoy conquering new challenges, especially when the technology is new enough to still feel magical.  I like to think I provided good value to my clients.  But, what I thought was me being adaptable and evolving with a changing technology landscape was in fact a lack of focus on my part.

The one trait blocking most creative people from success is a lack of focus.

Instead of putting my limited time and energy into being the very best at something, I was in fact spreading myself thin with distractions.  I couldn’t be the best at everything, and instead I painted myself into a corner as being the best at, well, nothing.  

I was a generalist and not a specialist.  I was a classic case of that old saying: “jack of all trades, but master of none.”

Looking back on 14 years of consulting it is now clear:  while I was chasing each new trend, I was diluting my other service offerings.  While I was immersing myself with new technology, it was impossible for me to recognize what I was doing to myself (and to my clients, who I worked so hard to acquire).

This has been a painful lesson for me to learn, but a valuable one.  The pursuit of narrowing my focus now shapes my big-picture decisions.  

We have a finite number of productive hours per day, per year, and per lifetime.  It’s hard enough to succeed in business or to master a craft such as writing even with great focus.  Dividing attention to multiple interests means denying resources to all of your pursuits.

Certainly, there are benefits to being a well-rounded generalist.  However, if we wish to truly succeed as creative professionals, I think we need to specialize; we need to focus.  

Focus your efforts on just one great interest and you increase your probability of succeeding.  

Do you agree or disagree with my thesis?  I appreciate your insight and welcome you to share in the comment form below.

A good friend of mine recently asked me, “What do you think is the most important trait of a successful relationship?”

I answered right away, without thinking (because I all-too-often do talk before thinking), “Honesty.”

Then I paused for a moment and corrected myself: “Showing appreciation for one another.”

I cannot think of any better feeling than knowing I am appreciated.

How many of us are just starving for a little appreciation in our lives? Craving appreciation does not mean that we are self-centered or suffer from low self-esteem.  For me, at least, I function better and I am more motivated when I know that someone actually cares about my actions, however mundane they may be.

It sure is nice to know that somebody gives a damn, isn’t it?

It’s all about showing appreciation.  

It doesn’t have to be expensive or fancy to be a remarkable gesture of appreciation.  For example, RaeLea and I leave little notes for one another as part of our regular routines.  Just short, simple “thinking of you” notes.

It probably takes us ten seconds to scrawl the words, but the positive effect lasts all day.

I really treasure these ordinary displays of appreciation.  I know she does, too.  In fact, I am going to go write a little note for her, right now.

What do you think is the most important trait of a successful relationship?

I’d love to read your response in the comments below.  I appreciate your feedback!

WARNING:  the following story should not be consumed by readers with strong gag reflexes.  As a matter of fact, this story should probably not be read by anybody.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I wish that I could tell you that this little tale is fiction.

I am just going to come right out and say it: the toilets installed in our skid shack at work are terrible.  They are classic failed designs in water conservation and they don’t flush worth a damn.  Usually, I flush two or three times when I use it, so it was not a surprise when I flushed this morning and the bowl refused to empty.  Allowing the prerequisite amount of time for the tank to refill so I could maximize the next attempt, I flushed a second time.

This time, the water rose, and then quickly began to cascade over the brim.

“Dammit!” I declared as my immediate analysis of the situation.

I grabbed for the plunger and submerged it, working the tool as though I was churning butter in a cesspool fountain.  No matter how aggressive I got with it, nothing was going down.

By this point, the bathroom became a shallow pool of filthy, raw sewage.  The off-level plane of the shack’s floor was a saving grace, since the putrid fluid gathered in a corner and did not seek out the bathroom door as escape.  That would have been bad, since it would have meant immersion in the bedroom carpet.

As the disgusting solution gurgled up the shower drain, it dawned on me that the blockage must be farther down the line, and I had a hunch as to its cause.

Trading my Crocs for rubber boots, I grabbed a flashlight and headed out into the predawn wind.  My suspicion was confirmed when I reached the exposed gravity-and-sump pump mechanism on the back side of our skid shack:  this blockage was no accident.

I believe that every job has dignity.  Anyone who is willing to sacrifice a bit of personal comfort to break a sweat en route to building a better life for themselves should be praised for their efforts.  Those who pump our sewer systems have an arguably shitty job (sorry, I could not help myself) but their duties are critical to maintaining a semblance of civilized life.

That said, I cannot help but observe that the operators of these septic pumping trucks are not always the most detail-oriented individuals.  They usually do their jobs well, most days.  Every once in a while though, these stewards of sewage leave little reminders of the power they wield by peeling back the veil between our world as creators of waste and their world as wizard-like removers of this material.

Illuminated by my flashlight, staring back at me was an example of how the septic crew reminds us of their reign from the top of the waste heap: a simple, foam plug inserted into the main sewer line, completely blocking the pipe.

I’m sure they have a valid reason for doing this; it’s not unreasonable to accept that they may not want the open sump pump to kick in while they are emptying the sewer tanks behind our shacks.  It’s not unreasonable, however, to expect that they would remove those plugs after their work was done.  At least a half dozen times in the past four years I have had the joy of sewer backups erupting (sometimes literally, such as today’s incident). All this delight because the septic pump worker forgot to remove the plug they placed in the sewer line before they left location.

The mess this creates can best be described as…epic sensory overload.

Mopping up the bathroom floor with my bath towels and dousing the surfaces with a bleach solution was not the most pleasant way to start the day.  Nothing quite says “Happy Monday!” before breakfast like getting down on hands and knees and wringing filth from the towels that–while of course will be washed thoroughly–I use to dry off after taking showers.  I am just neurotic enough to obsess about that the next time I pat-dry my face.  Lovely.

I have to tell myself that it could always be worse.  I could, for example, be pumping sewer tanks for a living.  I think if I had such a job as that, I probably would have to find creative ways of keeping myself amused. Maybe occasionally “forgetting” that I had blocked up someone’s sewer line would be an entertaining way to pass the time.

I talk to my Future Self almost every single day.  As a matter of fact, I have been talking to my Future Self regularly since early 2011.

It has been less of a conversation and more of a monologue, with my Present Self writing to my Future Self.  You might be doing the same thing, only you probably call it “journaling” or “keeping a diary.”  That is what a journal is, after all:  letters for Future You to read.

Journalizing is important!

It’s my belief that journals should be not just about the events of your day, but rather a deeper analysis of the meaning behind those events and how they fit into the big picture.

When I was a kid, I was so impressed with my father for keeping a journal.  He would pull out the notebook (I seem to recall it was small and bound in red vinyl) and he would recite the goings-on around the farm from the past year or two.  He might have announced, “we branded calves on the same weekend last year.” or “the west alfalfa field yielded 120 bales three Summers ago.”  The sort of record keeping that a pragmatic farmer would find noteworthy.

I was inspired then to keep records of my own life:  books I read, or aspects of my chores I found interesting.  I habitually invented fictional worlds, populated by people who explored islands or formed countries and went to war with one another.  Naturally, records needed to be kept on those “important” events.

Though I found it fascinating and worthwhile to make observations about my world (including and especially the fictional worlds), I rarely maintained those journals for more than a few weeks.  My catbrain would find something more interesting to focus on, and the old “journal” became just another jumble of childhood notebook inscriptions to be ultimately tossed away.

Maintaining a journal is an exercise in discipline.  

It’s so easy to skip a day between journal entries.  Before you know it, a week has passed, and then a month.  That’s the frequency most of my journals consisted of, up until 2011.  So what changed?

Social Accountability.

That’s just a fancy way of saying that I share my journal, specifically with RaeLea.  She shares her journal with me as well.  We have found that knowing someone else will be reading our words means that we are much more likely not to let too many days pass between journal entries.

Even though we are sharing these “inner thoughts” with one another, we have a strict rule:  anything we write in our journals is sacred.  On the rare occasion we write about subject matter which is sensitive to one another, we make a point of being nonjudgmental and noncritical. That is not always easy to do, but we both understand that the alternative is self-censorship.

We use Google Drive to create a new journal document each year, and use the “Share” tool to grant access to one another (the documents are completely invisible and inaccessible to anyone else).  A nice bonus of using Google Drive is that we are able to insert comments in the other person’s journal. These comments appear on the side and can be responded to, kind of like the comments section following this blog article you’re reading.

Since Drive is cloud-based, we can access our journals anywhere, from any computer or smartphone using our personal login.  No more excuses not to write!

Using this method, it’s uncommon for us to go more than a few days without writing in our journals.  For each of the past three years, we exceeded 100,000 words per year, per person.  That’s a lot of journaling!

I maintain several different journals, but these are the three biggest ones:

Personal Journal.  This is my primary journal, where I detail the events of the day, new experiences I had, and what I learned from those experiences.  It’s motivating to read old journal entries and see where my predictions ended up being correct and what happened to make some of those outcomes turn out differently than I expected. This journal has become something of a chart for me in plotting my personal evolution (including recognition of weaknesses I still possess).

Writing Ideas Journal.  If you’re a creative person, you doubtless have fresh, new ideas spring from your mind regularly.  I distrust my memory, and so my Writing Ideas Journal was born. It is an improvement from its origin:  a dedicated notebook I kept by my bedside, where I often would awake from a dream with new story ideas.  Most of the story ideas are not exactly flashes of brilliance, but every once in a while a new gem is unearthed.

When I experience a dearth of story starter ideas, I have this treasure trove of story concepts I can dig into.  Usually that ol’ “writer’s block” gets kicked in the ass pretty quickly after a review of my Writing Ideas Journal.

Just as with my Personal Journal, I didn’t want to lose these insights if a notebook-bound journal was lost, so I transitioned into the digital cloud (Google Drive) as my format of choice.  I adore being able to add new ideas from my phone when I am out for a walk or sitting in the waiting room at the dentist’s office.

Random Ideas Journal.  For everything else, there’s the Random Ideas Journal. New business ideas, marketing experiments, productivity improvements, and so on, find themselves in this expansive document.

I credit my most recent wage raise at work as being at least partially a result of mining my Random Ideas Journal for nuggets which I found applicable. I shared those ideas with the owner of the company, as per my belief in the principle of abundance.  Fortunately, she found some of those ideas to be worth considering, and by extension the creator of those ideas to be worth keeping around!

How my Future Self benefits from my journal.

Each of us are evolving.  How we view the world now is vastly different from how we viewed the world ten years ago, and how we will observe the world ten years into the future.  That development happens gradually, over a long span of time.

If I was not keeping a journal, I would lose perspective on my rate of personal evolution.  I do get frustrated with myself, specifically my penchant for procrastination and the lack of discipline I exhibit.  When I am grumbling about my slow progress towards my goals in life, I take a moment to open up one of my older journals and begin reading.  It doesn’t take long for me to regain my perspective and to acknowledge that while I will never evolve as quickly as I wished I could, I am making progress towards my goals–even from just a few years ago.

This is a gift that my Present Self is able to give my Future Self.

I have not yet figured out a way to send messages back in time to my younger self.  I think if I could send just one, it might be: “Thank you for the gift. Keep journaling!”