Fix-ating
I am rather proud of my wrench. And I’m encouraged by my many successes employing it. If I am not always the master of every difficulty, I am always the master of my toolbox.
I suppose enlightenment begins sometime after I realize that no wrench in my expansive toolbox fits the nut I’m convinced needs tightening, or when I begrudgingly accept that no nut exists for my wrenching to secure. Sure, I’ll try the vice grips and even that antique Model T spanner I found at a barn sale, but they won’t work, either. In frustration, then, wisdom might prevail.
Slip over here for more ...No Problem
Friends have published books over the last month featuring the ‘L’ word in the title, but most offered helpful follow-up advice in their subtitles. Read carefully! I’m learning to slow down and chew before I swallow, even when—especially when—that meaning was supposed to be pre-conscious.
Slip over here for more ...False Identity
After those full-immersion years of case studies, conferences, and cow-towing, I fancied myself some kind of leader. Other than getting myself chosen as the chapter head of a small student organization, I’d had little practical experience, and certainly no large-scale strategic involvement in anything. But I carried that attitude, that confident mindset that, given half a chance, my presence would improve any organization.
My first wife would ask what had happened to me, and I would respond absolutely baffled by her question. I felt on top of an expanding world, powerful in ways I had never before imagined. Sure, I worked long uncompensated hours as a management trainee, but I was working with the big dogs, ... digging, it would turn out, really big holes.
Slip over here for more ...Lost In Translating
So, my month-long challenge to catch myself translating whenever I encounter the ‘L’ word, what I’ve quite deliberately chosen to translate into ‘leaversmith,’ has rendered me a tiny bit more mindful. Of course, my newly-hatched mindfulness feels slightly crazy, like a more deliberate form of mindlessness, but I could claim the same effect from any habit-breaking practice.
Slip over here for more ...Greatness
Here, I feel obliged to start listing attributes: behaviors, habits, and actions intended to describe their greatness. Maybe I could throw in a model that cleverly summarizes the universal attributes of greatness, leader-wise. I could even subscribe to one or another theory of greatness and pontificate. My bookshelves groan under the weight of competing theories of greatness.
Slip over here for more ...Disappointment
Some of the leadership gurus explain that continuous improvement looks exactly like this, serial faceplants, slightly different every time. Maybe the same tune, but with key changes in between. Whatever, leadership slips beyond risky into certainty. Set ‘em up. knock ‘em down.
This sounds pessimistic, I know.
Slip over here for more ...Leadershiplessness
Of course I was engaging in what we introverts do so well: blurting. It’s our greatest gift and, sometimes, our very worst enemy. My moments of greatest inspiration have all come from blurting. My greatest humiliations, too. I’ve spent much of my life canned up trying to tame this wild beast. It’s usually better for me when I open my can of worms with little deliberation. Though I might appear insensitive then, at least I appear.
Slip over here for more ...The Leaversmith Challenge
No day passes without me receiving at least one exhortation to become a more effective, purposeful, confident, likable, service-oriented, or successful leader. My Twitter feed overfloweth with ‘em. Facebook apparently thrives by frequently faceplanting into ‘em. And I know I really should want to achieve all of those, if only I knew what any of them meant.
Slip over here for more ...The Burgeoning Self Deception Industry
Self-helplessness accounts for most of the activity within this industry. Slip over here for more ...
Gun Owner Control
I don’t like ‘em. I figure if Matt Dillon insisted that anyone entering Dodge check his gun at the city limits, I’m with him. I don’t mind people owning them, just that some of the owners insist upon shooting them in public.
Slip over here for more ...Grandma Love
try not to push and shove,
no pundit in this world understands
Grandma Love.
It’s the glue that sticks together
pretty much everything we see,
but rarely do we stop to think
what that glue might be. Slip over here for more ...
Peek-A-Boo
though I doubt I really do.
I certainly don’t see you the same way
you see you.
I look your way and even stop to say
some greeting as I pass,
and you return my acknowledgement,
maybe touching the brim of your hat.
We live our lives playing peek-a-boo,
believing all along the way
that we left behind our most childish games
in favor of grown-up play.
Then every blessed day we play,
unconscious of the game,
unspoken “Peek-a-boo” each time we greet,
with rituals much the same.
Reflection
a bright and shiny sphere
within which we seek to see our world
in a parabolic mirror.
The tip of the nose expands in size,
shrinking toward the ears,
and we universally call the nastiest weather
The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year.
The rear view comes into focus
while the future fades away,
we sing the songs that have driven us crazy
since nineteen fifty eight.
Snow Angels
on a fading, snowy day,
than some half-frozen youth
still innocent of truth
leaving angels along her way?
The snow might seem indifferent,
the weather threatening more,
the sun making sounds
like he’s ‘bout to go down,
still she tends to her chore.
Instancy
only intermittently rushed,
which renders me a throwback;
an alien on this bus.
I stalk the slowly-roasted,
I savor the leisurely-aged,
and I restrict my microwaving
to cell phoning, not my plates.
We live in The Age of Instancy,
with little time to spare,
just as hungry as we ever were,
and the holidays ’re drawing near.
We can order McTurkey for supper,
squirt whipped creme from a can,
and buy a brand new baby Jesus
on The Handy® payment plan.
Slip over here for more ...
Illusional
Much relies upon firm belief, no reindeer could fly on its own. Though few believe in Santa and such, still we decorate our homes. We share the stories and swap the yarns without really wondering much, and often some magic seems to appear, leaving a remarkable touch.
Slip over here for more ...I Know Why The Snow Bird Sings
not because she’s particularly happy waiting out the spring.
And not merely because she knows the music, having inherited the score,
and not because she’s stiffening her courage to face some unwanted chore.
And not because she’s so devout she just can’t help but comply
with some chirpy-beaked, avian conductor waving a winged baton,
and not because she’s trying to please some showy, plumed mate,
and not at all because she’s certain of her or anyone’s fate. Slip over here for more ...
Black and White
the future, silvery bold.
The present, translucent and slightly hazy,
though memories shimmered gold.
Each year snuggled into eternity,
next week was a foreign land.
Some say this world was simpler then,
though I doubted that out of hand. Slip over here for more ...
Holly
The waxy leaves, infernally sharp,
the berries, a poisonous pith.
The plant, itself, invasive,
its habit unrefined,
try to remove its tap root
to lose your mind.
Yet we bundle it into festive wreaths,
cursing all the way,
we staple it to our doortops
and wire it onto sleighs,
we send long-suffering spouses out
to snip a few more fronds,
administering mercurochrome
after they respond.
Homefull 2.7: Beginnings
All profound experiences appear trivial. Just another in a long stream of mornings, punctuated only by my slight surprise. We play peek-a-boo with the universe, sometimes almost scaring ourselves.
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 2.6: Endings
I’m not living like I’m dying. I don’t have a ‘bucket list,’ and I try not to carry baggage over-filled with regrets. If I knew the world would definitely end tomorrow, I wouldn’t go trying to satisfy long-denied urges or overwhelm my senses. I’d do exactly what I’m doing this morning, I’d live like I was living.
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 2.5: Winter Stock
This last week of Autumn provides plenty of ugly veg: odd outside cabbage leaves, parsnip peelings, rabe stalk butts, leek tops, and onions on the edge. Stock thrives on ugly veg. Four pounds of fine veal bones, roasted in a hot-hot oven for an hour before adding the rough-chopped veg, then roasted for another hot-hot hour before immersion into the stock pot. There, in the largest pot in the place, the whole mess simmers until long after the windows steam over.
The place seems wrapped in that kind of warmth only Winter brings,
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 2.4: Lectricity
The new place has florescent fixtures in the basement. The one over the laundry area works fine after I whap it on one end a couple of times. One over the workbench looks unused new, but was missing the tubes, so I headed back to the hardware store. I’m there two or three times every day since we moved in here. I’m getting to where I don’t get lost in there nearly as much.
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 2.3: Smells Like Christmas
My sense of smell usually seems irrelevant when compared with my aural and visual presence. I tend to prefer to take information in through my ears and eyes, like I suppose most of us do, but my nose knows a lot more than I usually give it credit for.
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 2.2: Found
I’d forgotten what I’d lost in the great dislocation. I’d packed up the old place with what passed for great care, but some precious possessions seemed to have simply evaporated. I missed them at first, spending idle hours searching through unlikely boxes hoping to find. I even found a few. But through recent years, several items were left aching to be found.
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 2.1: The Tricks
”There’s a trick to it,” Tony explained, without describing the trick. Why, I wonder, does every mechanical device come with some unexplainable trick attached?
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 2.0: Contained
Moving amounts to switching containers. If the contents of a life would pour from one space into another, the shift would barely rate as trivial. But life comes in an alarming variety of shapes, sizes, and fragilities, with heavy emphasis on irregular, odd, and brittle. We expect rectangles to hold ovoids. Every single thing initially seems poorly suited to its new space, so moving seems a multi-dimensional mediation.
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 1.9: Guilty
I caught myself having been a bit less than my ideal self as I ushered in this giant. We exchanged what felt like embarrassed pleasantries, as if we both realized that we’d met under less than ideal conditions and preferred to just move on. I went to the basement to shut off the water and left him to his kitchen work, only catching up when he headed to the basement to survey the work there.
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 1.8: Integrating
Renting the storage space never really qualified as integration. It represented a compromise, a somewhat shameful admission that we had accumulated more than we could hold. I’ve visited that space infrequently and always felt like a sneak thief there, as if engaged in illicit trade: Hoarding my past.
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 1.7: Plumbing
So, when the second night in this new place, the kitchen disposal choked on a cabbage core and defied my vigorous plunging, I emailed the landlord’s property agent. That message failed, rejected by the agent’s server, so I called the next morning, connecting with the agent’s repair agent, who explained that it wasn’t his fault my message failed. Great, I thought, he’s a blame fixer.
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 1.6: Leveling
Yesterday, we moved the hutch into its better position. Little lifting required. I nudged the monster up enough for The Muse to slip cardboard under each end, then it slid easily across the floor. Two more nudges and the cardboard slipped back out to reveal that highboy leaning a fair bit front-ways. This morning, a few minutes with a prybar and shims, and it looks dead level both ways. I’m hoping it won’t seem too square for its surroundings.
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 1.5: Moving Inward
Homefull 1.4: Weak-Hand Mindfulness
The difference felt stark because in the weeks since we moved, even the smallest acts have demanded my presence. No muscle memory could guide me through those transition times. I’ve lived the last month as an extended improvisation, one-time performances never intended for repetition. I’ve been feeling quite the clumsy performer, though I know I’m only experiencing mindfulness.
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 1.3: Transplanting
This transition has lasted over-long, this separation particularly difficult. We’ll know tomorrow if the new hole we’ve dug proves adequate to hold the life we’ve accumulated, but we won’t know until the end of the dormant winter period if new tendrils find this latest new soil hospitable.
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 2.8: Because and Affect
I was interested in what happened in those small hours, so I’d sometimes mosey in under the guise of offering my support. I suppose my presence hurt more than it helped achieve resolution because I was deeply interested in understanding why these problems happened. I learned that the most effective midnight debuggers didn’t really care about finding the root cause of these problems.
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 2.7: Tickling The Tickle Point
Anyone who’s ever wrestled a three year old out of a tantrum into a giggle fit understands the nature of The Tickle Point. It’s that point where the seemingly permanent frustration notices some brighter-shinier. True, nothing’s really changed at that point, except, perhaps, for focus. But once the focus changes, the previously impermeable barrier’s penetrated. Then, anything might happen. Even something really different.
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 2.6: Up To Something
I look for that look in their eye, that smirky stare that swears it’s not up to anything, ... honest. The poorly-concealed joke. The heart-lightening nod. Their affect emanates quiet authority because these people are up to something.
This matters. More than almost anything. More than higher purpose. More than lofty goals. More than that promotion, paycheck, or bonus. Being up to something salts and spices and sweetens every engagement, while cynicism stalks anyone unfortunate enough to not be up to something.
”Who stole your tricycle?”
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 1.2: High Touch
I sneezed my head off. My present seems like my past with dust. My treasures were dusty after three and a half years on the shelves. I found many old friends lurking; like touching my past.
I couldn’t feel anything but wealthy after a day perusing that past, recalling the times and places those titles first found me. That copy of Münchausen’s Pigtail, which, twenty-five years ago, fell to my feet off a shelf and changed my life. Sheldon Kopp’s remarkable parables which have inspired me so. The Saturday night dates spent rifling through the Powell’s Books sales stacks. The many titles that accompanied me on long, otherwise lonely night flights back home. Those remaining copies of David Pye’s The Nature & Aesthetics of Design, a book which undermined my faith in methodology and process. My future came into sharper focus while I immersed myself in this past.
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 2.5: Saying Something
Brief Consultants often work in pairs, one seeming to engage while the other looks to be just hanging around the edges there. The one who looks like they’re slacking, they’re in charge.
Even when I’m working solo, this Brief Consultant watches because most of my presence value comes from me noticing something. I engage briefly because it doesn’t take long for me to inherit the same blind spots as everyone else within that space. For a brief few hours, I can see more than anyone already immersed in that soup, and no context needs more than a day or two to weave its trance. Nobody feels anything as perception fades.
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 1.1: Winnowing
I haven’t accumulated much over the past four years. I stemmed my compulsive book buying with frequent visits to the library. The New Yorkers accumulate until I recycle them. I’m net negative clothes-wise. Kitchenware, about even, so what should I chuck?
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 2.4: Purpose Full
I hold purposeful pursuit as one of my Seven Ethical Responsibilities. As a Brief Consultant—heck, as a man—I’ve grown to understand that few diseases do more damage than purposelessness. And for the longest time, I misunderstood where that purpose had to come from, and what purposeful pursuit really meant. Maybe all that church-going in my youth convinced me that little old me couldn’t quite qualify as a high-enough purpose; that what I wanted didn’t really matter if only I could connect with some ’truly’ higher purpose, I’d be in deep cotton. Deep shit, more likely.
Slip over here for more ...Homefull 1.0: Gravity's Pull
The first part of this journey felt hindered by my attraction to my old status quo. Even though I knew we could not stay, I could barely stay away. I suppose some know this as denial, but I wasn’t denying anything except my apparent helplessness compared to gravity’s pull. Once we’d pulled far enough away, we felt adrift, weightless. We inhabited middle space, apparently attractive to no place and not yet attracted anywhere, either. This emptiness ruled for a month or two, and threatened to take over as the new status quo. What could we know? When could we know it?
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 2.3: Is-ness As Usual
Poison tell? I call ‘Is’ the poison tell because it tends to materially misrepresent experience while fully satisfying the ear. I can say, “It ‘is’ cold outside,” when I really mean, “It feels cold outside” or, “It looks cold outside.” Outside ‘isn’t’ cold. A dictionary might define cold as a class of temperature positioned somewhere South of cool and well North of ‘my ass just fell off.’ No dictionary defines cold as ‘outside.’ Yet language comfortably tolerates this indiscretion. Only two letters. One insidious word.
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 2.2: The Very Best
One client explained how, in the course of a week at age eighteen, she’d gone from being recognized as the smartest person in her county to realizing that at MIT, she was barely average, if that. She’d had a lot of tacit identity invested in her best and brightest persona, even though she’d never strived to be recognized. Once the gift evaporated in that lofty Cambridge atmosphere, she didn’t know who she was, or who she was supposed to become.
Life seems comprised of peaks and valleys, and the narrowest road always follows the ridge line. Stuck on top leaves few lateral possibilities, and it’s a long way down from up there to the valley floor.
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 2.1: ehT metsyS
This open-ended question often starts one of this Brief Consultant’s engagements. Rather than starting with the end in mind or dwelling on The (infernal) Problem, I’m curious about the person in front of me. I want to hear their story.
Many notice that nobody ever asked them this question before, and most have been inching for someone to tell their tale to. Might as well be me.
Within the first five minutes, this client will say something that seems to jangle a chain of understanding, and not usually my chain. Theirs. Something significant shifts when the focus changes from hopefully peering forward into casually reflecting backward.
Nobody gets to understand forward.
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 2.0: The System
The second stage entails trying to fix the system so it will work as I thought it was supposed to work. This seemingly reasonable response encourages ‘creeping featurism,’ as the system, originally—and unavoidably—naively designed morphs to accomplish ends unimagined by the original designers. Rarely does any system get discarded in favor of wholesale redesign after encountering difficulties, even after catastrophic failures. The original design sticks, and the fixes tend to accumulate until they ascend to the status of the latest problem with The System.
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 1.9: Generosity Too
Unspoken conspiracies amount to unconfirmed conclusions about another’s motives, purpose, character, or beliefs. These commonly emerge from a small violation of
the generous interpretation rule, and usually require only one to play, but may metastasize into into urban legend-quality stories, where a large group engages in something not unlike mind reading; usually, unusually inept mind reading.The pattern starts when someone decides what another’s behavior means, then responds as if their behavior meant that, creating a perfectly self-sealing situation.
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 1.8: Generosity
I’ve explained that Brief Consulting avoids interpreting behavior as pathology, transforming what might otherwise seem dysfunctional into merely differently or curiously functioning. This little flip demonstrates generous interpretation in action: Interpret difference as difference rather than pathology. If I couldn’t possibly know, I’m free to make up any meaning that works best for me. Heck, I could even get curious and ask.
See how this small shift might shorten the length of a consulting engagement? Sometimes mindreading or body-language interpreting seems like a shortcut, but it usually turns into the longer way around. If the client’s words and the music don’t seem to match, I could initiate a controversy by ascribing my ungenerous meaning or encourage understanding by simply pointing out what I see and asking what it might mean to my client.
I tune up my generous interpreter by engaging in what I call High Quality Consultant Humor.
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 1.7: Leadershit
Pity the poor devil perceived as the leader. Slave to Utopian notions, center stage, performing to a critical audience, certain to dissatisfy. The human response seems to be to try harder: to please, appease, ... Oh, pa-lese! The mythos surrounding leadership seems greater than the sum of its parts.
Leadershit has two parts. The first part lays undefinable expectations on some individual because they happen to occupy some position, often a position of presumed authority. The second part gives away personal authority, like peasants paying tribute to their king, to someone presumably more authorized to have it . It seems incongruous that a democratic society should rely so much on crypto-kings and pseudo-serfs, leaders and followers.
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 1.6: Presence
Staying present in this present when surround by clever planners constructing even cleverer plans might be the greatest challenge for anyone, consultant or client.
Slip over here for more ...Bare-assed Consulting 1.4: The Mess
The bare-assed consultant only rarely resorts to sorting through—physically re-ordering—any mess. He first sits with it instead, under the belief that until he’s sat with the chaos, he’s unlikely to understand its nature well enough to avoid making that mess even messier. I make a crucial distinction, though, between sitting with the mess and plopping myself down in the middle of it.
Slip over here for more ...Bare-assed Consulting 1.3: The Blindnesses
As a truly bare-assed consultant, I can’t hardly help but acknowledge how blind I must be. Blind because I’m here, not there; me, not you; wagging on the tail-end of a lifetime of experience which probably doesn’t qualify as representative, universal, or particularly enlightening. I’m blinded by this shred of enlightenment, almost certain I cannot see even half of what’s before my eyes.
Before, when I was still inflicted with the curse of unconscious blindness, I could muster certainty from scant evidence, and could even swagger with the sour scent of confidence.
Slip over here for more ...Bare-assed Consulting 1.2: Add Vice
The bare-assed consultant deeply appreciates that giving advice, cheapens it. Further, unbidden advice rarely produces intended results. Conveniently deflected and comfortably ignored, the very best advice might be to avoid giving any advice. Still, The Advice Vice seems as common to consultants as Brooks Brothers suits.
It took a very long time to wean myself off my advice-giving Jones.
Slip over here for more ...Bare-assed Consulting 1.1: The Normals
Maybe it just comes with the territory, but we seem awfully interested in fitting in, in following the trends, in adopting the most up-to-date. Perhaps we don’t want to be left behind. The ensemble’s performance, though, masks remarkable variety. Nobody lives like the population average, yet that average might be the most reliable reference to what’s normal and what’s not. The result can be an awful (with particular emphasis on ‘awful’) lot of theatrics: going along to get along, fitting in, passing as, mimicking, and the thousand other artifices, small and large, which seem to separate us from our preferences, from our selves. All perfectly normal.
If individuals are easy prey for such quagmires, organizations seem to encourage second-order versions, where individual adaptations tangle together, producing genuinely Gordian results. The popular term ‘dysfunctional’ might aptly describe every individual, every organization now, but I prefer the more normalizing term ‘differently functioning.’ Slip over here for more ...
Bare-assed Consulting 1.0: Sick's Sigma
And the timing of the consultant’s arrival won’t much influence the outcome. The tariff, as Peter Block once noted, on imported method inevitably exceeds the expected return.
These initiatives always start as bright ideas,”I know, we’ll just put on a show!”-quality fantasies, laden with invisible externalities. Whether a Senior VP read some article in an airline magazine or transferred in from a company that had fully integrated some scheme, the mandate comes from the top down. The suits arrive shortly after the announcement, mustering a committee of ... cough ... cough ... volunteers ... chartered to change the company’s culture from the bottom up.
Therein lies the disabling paradox Slip over here for more ...
BriefConsulting 1.5: Outing The Fix
I thought my challenge was a common one, especially for writers. I’m a hesitant joiner, though I’m absolutely convinced that community produces by far the best outcomes. So, when I’m invited to a writer’s retreat like this one, I spend at least the day before I leave trying to talk myself out of attending. I’m usually better at this than I was this time, so I’d shown up. Then, in this last session, I stood up.
Once en-grouped, I explained my experience in greater detail, then the inquisitors began. I noticed a twinge of thrill in my chest as we began, a sense that this session just might fix my life-long reluctance, and this possibility felt really, really good. Maybe I could fit in instead of force-fitting in. Slip over here for more ...
BriefConsulting 1.4: Too Small Shoes
Many organizational initiatives and personal adventures feature a similar decision point. However careful the planning, some otherwise insignificant element gains prominence and threatens the entire enterprise. Going forward means accepting quite different from expected terms. Slip over here for more ...
BriefConsulting 1.3: Not Supposed To Talk About
Sometimes my client responds, “Oh, nothing. We’re very open around here. We can talk about anything, anytime.”
”Fine,” I respond, then I watch and listen more carefully to hear what doesn’t get talked about. What dog isn’t barking? What birds never sing? Slip over here for more ...
My Muse
I forgive my muse her airs;
she’s simply pursuing her purpose,
pulling my head out of there.
How my head ended up inserted
down where the sun never shines
won’t help resolve the dilemma
every great writer must find.
When picking up a pen leaves me stupid,
or setting fingers to keys strikes me dumb,
I’m thankful my muse doesn’t need an excuse
to disabuse what could never become.
She’s gentle as a ton on a toenail,
thoughtful as pie in the sky,
she opens up space by gettin’ in my face,
My response, universally tongue-tied. Slip over here for more ...
BriefConsulting 1.2: Expertise
Every industry, every company believes they are unique, and presume specific knowledge of their particular operation essential for any consultant. Curiously, the most common difficulties are just that, common; universal. Stuck looks remarkably the same where ever it appears. Hire for industry expertise and you’ll get industry expertise when you might need someone with fresh eyes to look in on the situation.
Being an expert at not being an expert requires some rewiring inside the consultant first.
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 1.1: Bare Naked
My transition from Empty Suit to Bare Naked consulting will never end. Vestigial misgivings remain, tugging whenever I start a new engagement dance. I’d quite honestly rather hide behind the protective starched shirt chest plate armor, dabble in nice-nice banter, then ‘suggest’ some solution, but I don’t. Not anymore. I never once saw the formality accomplish what I’d quite foolishly promised. The problem I’d been asked to resolve was never once even half the problem that the formalities turned out to be. If we can’t do this naked, we won’t be doing anything at all.
Slip over here for more ...BriefConsulting 1.0: The Suits
Their advice seems equally disconnected. They share abstract models, distilled to wispy essence—ten easy, twelve step, top five best practices, and the most mysterious commodity of all, expertise.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 4.0: Need
We’re all stuck on something all the time. Not that we’re always supposed to be unstuck and flowing, but the impasses, like this infernal why question, sure can prevent progress. I’d intended to finish the book by August, but the question held me through July and August, and then September, too. Shame accumulated like ever-thickening mud on my boot soles until I could barely crawl. I was channeling what I was writing about.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.9: Compassionity
Of all the many forms of stuck, the muckiest emerge from my compassionate heart. Perhaps I’m playing out some pitiful sort of pity, simply showing myself I care, and I wouldn’t dare deign to demand that you change. True compassion’s never conditional until it must be. After that, it won’t be conditional without more personal change than I ever would have signed up for, had I only known.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.8: Situational
I eventually wonder where this specific context lies, for every context contains ten thousand situations; more. Which piece sticks me? I’m facing south, not north. Feet up, not down. Leaning back, not forward. Barefoot, not shod. In a rented room rather than home. Which specific rules this situation, and which shifted specific might unstick me this time?
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.7: Insufficiency
Curious how abundant insufficiency holds such power
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.6: Inconvenience
Modern life seems obsessed with the pursuit of convenience, when we might have noticed that the most important things seem to happen at the least convenient times. It doesn’t follow, though, that surrounding myself with inconvenience might somehow encourage important things to happen.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.5: Yet
”Oh, I haven’t spoken with him, and I won’t. I don’t do stuff like that.”
”Like what?” I wondered.
”I wouldn’t want to embarrass him by bringing it up.”
”But he doesn’t seem aware that he’s bugging you to distraction.”
”Well, he should be! It’s not my job to increase his self awareness,” she insisted.
Stuck, she’d explained her long escalating frustration, boxed in by her insistence that the simplest resolution was beyond her repertoire.
”Well,” she continued, “what are you gonna do about this. You’re the consultant.”
”Nothing.”
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.4: Faking It
Unstuck 3.3: Stuckticipation
Life’s probably best lived in fiery anticipation, hot on some trail against buffeting opposition, and worst lived behind any windbreak. The fire in my belly thrives on a steady injection of warm anticipation. Without the opposing force, I can become complacent, I might even stand haughtily tall or, heaven-forbid, lean back in phony repose. Nobody gets anywhere resting behind the laurel bush.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.2: Transcendence
I’m capable of choosing differently, but I’m also fully capable of forgetting that I always have other choices. I seem to shed options in the essential rush of life, and often miss the exits that might leave me transcending some damning ‘either’ and an equally damning ‘or.’
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.1: The Sound of Silence
We met and thought we might have some work to do together. I followed up with an email later that same day, and you responded within an hour or two, inviting me to coffee or lunch. I replied right away, saying, “You choose the place and the time and I’ll be there.” Then silence ensued.
Now what do I do? The chatter in my head asks a thousand questions. Would another email leave me looking pesky? Should I wait another day before following up?
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.0: Stucktainty
My forebears crossed the continent by every conveyance then known, including boot leather. Their letters ‘back home’ exhibited not a hint of certainty, ending as they did with the graceful phrase “if I live.” Their present action was not predicated upon anything close to certainty, but faith, mostly the unsupportable kind, which might be the only kind there ever could be.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.9: S.I.N.S.
The great S.I.N.S. of stuckness arise from taking it too damned seriously. The venal sin of unwarranted seriousness can consume the most upstanding souls. Stuckness, like life, qualifies as just too damned serious be to taken too damned seriously.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.8: Paying Attention
At a meeting this week, the convener was noticing how inspired she felt in the group. “We should get together more often,” she commented, “so we can get out of our routines and inspire each other.”
On my better days, I seem to find inspiration everywhere. Other times, I could walk untouched through the US Marine Band blaring Sousa marches.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.7: The 8th Habit
The 8th Habit might be called the habit-breaking habit. The first time, I struggled to escape a habitual. The second time, I perhaps struggled a little bit less. The third time, the effort was still great, but my experience informed my escape. Now, with decades of experience, I have a bit of a clue about what to do.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.6: The Merry-Go-Round
Unstuck 2.5: In Deep
For me, lately, it’s come from not being able to figure out the too-cleverly designed user interface. Someone sends me a message via LinkedIn (What IS that for, anyway?) or some other overly-secure social networking site, and I just cannot get in to respond. I must have an account, or I would not have received the message. But I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to get past the largely unnecessary security. My password doesn’t grok or my username isn’t registered. I slink to my corner and sulk.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.4: Echo
1- Failure to re-educate my originally infantile desire to please others may result in my becoming someone whose opinions are indefinitely responsive to a pressure to conform to the opinions of certain types of others ... What I present is an unconscious need for approval.
2- Infantile resentment of my need to please others — a relentless pursuit of disagreement.
In both cases, I’m an echo, not a voice.
I might also distrust my reasoning by unconsciously selective attention to some features at the expense of others. Overcome by having reasoning put into question by others.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals
Unstuck 2.3: Fits and Starts
Make no mistake, no moment provides smoothing algorithms. Creativity might depend upon their absence. They’re incredibly useful after the fact for making sense of—making up a soothing story about—the past. In real time, going forward, experience seems more fit-and-starty.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.2: Radical Acceptance
”Probably because he’s a snake.”
”Wha ??”
As I consultant, I describe myself as an expert at not being an expert. I know little about what my clients do as a business, but their technical details don’t usually get in their way. Something right before their eyes more often seems to.
Organizational difficulties emerge within a context I could not have access to or knowledge about before I’m poking around within that space. I am not nor will I ever be a content or process expert. As an expert at not being an expert, I rely upon my perception much more than my knowledge because I couldn’t possibly know beforehand. My contribution most often distills into simple observation.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.1: Do Not Read This
Attach it as a .pdf.
Post it to FaceBook.
Have Amazon send them a copy of the book.
I know, you want to share the confirming/enlightening/moving/life-changing experience you had when you read it, but you won’t. If they read it —I said IF —, they’ll read it as them, not you. They’ll have their own experience, not yours.
If they’re a partisan, they might appreciate the reinforcement of the beliefs you already share. If not, their perspective’s at best unlikely to change. More likely, they’ll interpret it as propaganda, and you’ll end up reinforcing just what you didn’t want. You’ll probably make ‘em angry, too. At you.
So what’s a mutha to do?
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.0: Copeless
Cope
does qualify as a strategy, especially when hope refuses to spring. Copelessness might be the worse outcome, much worse than hopelessness ever could be. Hope seems so pull-myself-up-by-my-bootstraps-ish, so notional. The logic doesn’t work; not even Archimedes could find any leverage point there. Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.9: Stucked
I’m stucked.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.8: Professional Crastination
On my better days, their derisions breeze over me like warm wind. On worse days, they wound like arrows through my heart. For I am a professional crastinator. I’ve rarely found advantage taking the early lead. I need and benefit from an essential milling around period first.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.7: Dread Not
Do angels trade in paradox? This particular Angel of the Lord passed, like a window-rattling fart in very quiet church, a particularly knotty one: The Not Knot.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.6: In-Smart
I claim that I’ll know it when I see it, but I probably won’t. Worse, I’m prone to concluding that I know simply because I see something. Where matters of the heart are concerned, I’m naturally in-smart. If I out-source when I’m in-smart, I consistently out-smart myself.
Almost any choice will do. Where would you like to go to dinner? Gosh, I don’t know, where would you like to go? Lemme check the Going Out Guide to see what the restaurant reviewer who’s opinions I don’t respect advises. He suggests a place that ends up serving small plates at astronomically high prices in deafening surroundings. We out-sourced what we might have more satisfyingly resolved with our in-smarts. We successfully out-smarted ourselves.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.5: Coming True
I was fortunately born in the most modern of times. I felt uncommonly lucky to be living where the future had over-taken all of prior human history, on the prow of time. Later, I learned to focus ever further into the future, and my present started walking backwards.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.4: Complitition
One of the dominant metaphors in this society equates our very existence to competition. This small projection encourages much stuckness. I find it almost impossible to accept that Darwin never did conclude that competition determines the survival of the fittest. But he didn’t.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.3: Unthinkable
What does it mean? It means ‘something I could never see myself doing.’ In this guise, the unthinkable binds stuckness. I can watch that guy over there getting away with what ‘I could never see myself doing,’ and just sit. Firm in my belief of what ‘I could never see myself doing,’ I’ll choose to do anything, anything but THAT!
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.2: The 1% Resolution
Part of their magic must be linguistic. They label what we call problems ‘difficulties.’ Problems, they’ll explain with hardly any encouragement, have solutions. Not all difficulties qualify as problems because some of them couldn’t possibly have solutions, or we’ve never once seen them solved. It’s futility incarnate to force-fit some solution onto something that never qualified as a problem in the first place.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.1: That Damned Box
Stuck’s tenacity thrives on ‘all ya gotta dos;’ the more uplifting, the more encumbering. ‘All ya gotta do’ easily transforms into ‘you really shoulda already,’ and the stuckness hugs even harder.
You might more productively peek outside the box than think outside it.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.0: The Prague Paradox
The streets of Prague cannot be accurately represented on a map. This map, therefore, is not correct. Following it, you might find yourself lost from time to time. Fortunately, getting lost is the best way to discover Prague. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-71: Homefull
Homeless 0-72: Hard Reset
I’ve read enough detective novels to appreciate a plot twist. I might see one coming and still feel whip-lashed by the experience.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-28: Caretaking
Others come resplendent with history, so bright and present I wonder if there’ll be room enough for me to make any new history there.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-29: Paperwork
As the search narrows, paper appears: applications, tenancy forms, hazardous building materials warnings, credit checks, recommendation letters. Most of this blessedly occurs electronically now, but the crinkle and clutter persists. So much to specify, so very little to actually state.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-30: Third Thoughts
These days fill up with notions, first thoughts. These usually swarm around me, most prominently when I’m taking my quick, cold morning shower. Many of these turn into some piece of writing, a poem or short piece like this one. They simply appear, a few of them catch, carrying some clever twist or pleasing sound. Later, I’ll add an extra room, perhaps landscape their exterior a bit, and call them done, but I rarely second-guess those first thoughts.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-31: Thunk!
Any search means you don’t know yet, until, suddenly, you do. Or you finally think you do. Then every complication shrinks, barricades evaporate, and self esteem, whether fairly earned or not, soars. Inside the bull’s eye, feeling clever becomes the same as actually being clever.
We might have hit the lotto yesterday. In the grand game of chance, sometimes I find myself holding the right number in the right place at the right time. I can, as a result, recommend no strategy beyond sychronicity, which can’t be rigged, outsmarted, or cleverly planned for.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-32: Creaking Floorboards
A car came zooming down the alley then, and the landlord emerged, apologizing, reaching to shake my hand. The actual walk through didn’t take more than five minutes. Moving detritus everywhere. A kitchen crudely made-over, designed to look great in a photograph, laid out like a galley, a frozen encumbrance to navigation in practice. What might have once been a dining room transformed into a nook. What must have once been a living room, cut up into a way too small dining room and an equally too small living room.
A twisting stairway, two turns bottom to top, every stair screaming with every footfall.
Slip over here for more ...
