“How to start a blog? www.blogger.com/start "I wrote this in my good ideas notebook last year. And what a journey it has been since I started with my first posting on 16 May 2006. I mostly focused on living day by day, and it’s rewarding to look back over a longer period and see the progress made in the journey.
This morning I skipped all my routines and went straight from bed to work. I felt the urge to finish the article I am writing for my research. I had been hoping for that to happen, and it made me think of Paulo Coelho’s words somewhere in The Zahir, where he talks about his long periods of procrastination followed by bursts of frantic rush in which his writing took precedence over everything else. I felt like that this morning.
So my morning was focused, and nicely frantic. In the afternoon my activities were mixed, interesting, both postitive and negative. I made progress in many activities, and encountered frustration in another. Like often, the energy of the frustration lingered longer, overshadowing the nice experiences.
What was my cause of frustration? One I am learning from. I could not get my new PDA phone to communicate with my computer in ActiveSync. So all my phone numbers, tasks, and other info are still in my PC and could not be synced into the PDA. Most likely it had to do with the firewall settings of my PC, although it still didn’t work after I changed those. ActiveSync worked fine with my old PDA phone on the same computer, and still does.
Of course I know that in today’s connected world it’s no longer enough for people to communicate, but our gadgets have to communicate also. When they don’t, it’s a pain, frankly. After many hours of getting the connection to work – and a feeling of having wasted far too much time on it - I stepped back, and allowed myself to enjoy doing other things. I will take it to the IT expert in my office tomorrow for treatment!
So my day had a mix of positive and negative energies. And also of different speeds. I was working at top speed this morning, and experienced slow downs and even procrastination later on. A mixed bag. It’s fun to obsvere that I could kick myself into the fast lane somtimes, while at other moments I let myself slow down to the pace of life and being more generous with myself and my high expectations.
This evening, I encountered another mix. I was checking out websites of life coaching institutions around the world, and I was amazed at the variety on offer. Some well-established centers like Coach U offer distance learning programs that are interactive through tele-classes and also require 250 or more practice hours before certification. At the other extreme, some institutions claim to turn students into coaches within 3 days at about five times the cost. And there are many options in between.
So what happened with all these mixed bags of experiences I had today? Did the different qualities mix and turn into a neutral blend? Did I end up feeling either positive or negative, or flatly ok? Going slow or fast, or with the flow? Seeing benefit in long or short courses, or opting for the middle? Focus more on communication between people or gadgets, or on what?
I found that the extremes didn’t blend today, but kept existing side by side. Positive and negative. Fast and slow. All types of communication. Like waves of different frequencies that exist at the same time. With awareness, I could choose which ones to tune into, and which ones to disconnect myself from.
Why not enjoy the extremes, and not expect them to blend? Each day is long enough to practice selective engagement, and a frequent change of gear.
Photograph: Different picks for different tunes.
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