I am constantly guilty of taking on too many projects. My wife hears about my latest project addition and shakes her head (in sorrow and disbelief, I think). Occassionally, my rational mind kicks in and points out the volume of work I have placed onto my plate. When that happens, there is often a reckoning within my own head. What have I done? Am I crazy or merely stupid? What was I thinking? These thoughts are often accompanied by worries that I will let someone else down. I won’t meet my deadlines. My work won’t be up to snuff. In my head, those are all legitimate concerns. Perhaps I focus too much on them, but they are important. For me, […]
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Way Outside the Comfort Zone
I wouldn’t call myself an extreme adventurer, but I do like to do activities that some would consider a little crazy. For example, last weekend, I took my older Scouts (Venturers: 15 – 17 years-old) on a weekend camp-out. We rode our bikes from the city to a campground approximately 20 kilometers away where we setup our tents and camp. Not too insane, right? Probably not, but it gave me a pretty good idea about traveling longer distances without a car (and wearing a pack). Then, the next day we went white water rafting. This is an activity I last did when I was in elementary school more years ago than I would like to consider. None of my Scouts […]
Read moreSubconscious – Friend or Foe?
I know my subconscious is always working in the background. It tends to show itself in the form of remembering obscure facts or names. I will try to think of something, draw a blank and an hour or so later it pops into my head. Either my internal data retrieval system is very slow or I have so much useless data in my head that the search algorithm takes some time to complete. It also is very good at helping me work through story ideas, plotting and story problems. I give some thought to whatever element is troubling me, set it process and go about my other daily tasks. Sometimes I go for a walk to really focus on the […]
Read moreResetting the Clock
In the movie Pacific Rim, after every Kaiju attack the Marshall resets the clock. The clock is counting the time until the next attack. Before you start to panic, this isn’t exactly that kind of clock reset. No, the Kaiju that afflict me are less the 500-foot monster variety and more the, holy cow I’ve got a lot of clutter. In my case, the clutter takes the form of partially thought out projects, mostly complete projects, story ideas and so on. Every once in a while it makes sense to take a step back, list everything that I’m working on and reprioritize it all. Some of it becomes my immediate priority, others further down the line and still others might […]
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