Tuesday, February 28, 2017

A thinking day

This is the one task that needs a certain ambience. I found the perfect situation for that in my travels today. Through a series of fortunate events, I had a few hours free and unstructured at the Naples Italy airport on a sunny warm afternoon.

I found a place to sit outside and enjoy a nice Honduran while contemplating the universe. Not really . . . the contemplating the universe part, but everything else was planets aligned! I worked on a number of high priority thorny situations and made a few notes, but this afternoon was 95% tech free. I can't focus on the thinking part if I have tech in my hands. It always seem that other work floats to the surface if I have tech in my hands, and this was a strictly amazing opportune moment to do the hardest work - thinking.

Now you can't wait to have such a perfect situation present itself (although I find that you can usually create a potential environment to do some hard thinking), because thinking is too important a task to relegate to pristine moments. Granted pristine moments can make them all the more powerful and productive, but this is a task that needs regular exercise. Like most things in life, if it is not scheduled and practiced it never gets accomplished.

So what were the results today? I resolved an apprentice/internship thorn that had been sticking me in the butt for almost a year. There is now a plan and steps to get to the goal. I made progress on the ongoing dilemma/opportunity (its both) that I have with my dad. After the two deaths in our family this past year, there is just me and him and I need to make more/new space in life for him and his needs and honestly just to enjoy these later years of his life with him and make some great memories.

That is it. But those were two huge buggers that have been gigantic weights on my plate for far too long. Reserve your thinking time for the most important matters. Oh, and I spent a good long wonderful half hour just mentally reviewing and cataloging all the people, relationships, structures and opportunities that I am grateful for, that make all this worth doing. After "the perils of travel" this was the best kind of chance and change. Go think!