whitespace.me

Blogging considered harmful

2011-05-07T18:25:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I posted an article here.

That's because I discovered I had changed from doing my personal work, and occasionally writing about it, to doing my personal work so that I could write about it. And I discovered that that sucked.

I found I was suddenly struggling with my writing. Was I working through my issues for my own benefit, and perhaps the benefit of others? Or was I trying to become an admired writer?

Fundamentally, the issue was whether I focused on me and my inner peace (and whether my sense of worth derived from myself), or whether I craved attention and affirmation from others.

This is a big deal for me. My whole life has been spent seeking the approval of others, at the total disregard for anything I wanted or felt. Looking back, I can see how crippling this has been in my life. It has been my total life. I never actually lived my life, only the life I thought others wanted me to. Not so much my parents, but my peers, and other authority figures (teachers, bosses, organizations, governments).

I found these issues were arising when considering: How frequently I write or post. What topics I cover. Whether I care whether someone else has already said the same thing. The number of readers or twitter followers. Whether I'm anonymous or recognized by people.

I found myself flipping between two minds, never with clear motivations.

The temptation is to write what I think is true, as if I'd experienced it, rather than writing what I have experienced and have known to be true for me.

But it's clear I have a totally different experience when my focus is on changing myself instead of changing others. Myself is a free feeling, interacting easily with the world, without any agenda towards them. Others is the opposite, in all regards.

So I stopped writing. I focused on my own practice again, for me. And things started to settle down and feel more authentic again. So that's where I've been, becoming silent but more authentic.

I still hope to write. But I expect there will be bigger gaps between posts. I've given myself permission, or perhaps orders, to make that true.

Because, really, it's all about me and not you.

Fame or self: Which matters more?

~ Lao Tsu

Mercy begins at home

2011-01-13T21:10:00.000-08:00

I've found that, as I've been trying to learn how to be merciful to others, what I've really been learning is how to be merciful to myself.

I've been a very judgmental person all my life. (Full disclosure: still am.) I have an over-active sense of justice and can't let go of a situation where I feel wrong is being done; even if, as they say in the law, I have no standing - i.e., the situation isn't about me at all. I'm not talking about times when innocent, real people are being severely harmed; anyone should feel outrage then, and action is appropriate. I'm talking about an "over-active" reaction: getting out-of-perspective hyped about trivial injustices.

And, of course, I hold myself to the same gonzo standard as I hold everyone else.

Or that's what I thought.

It turns out, I hold everyone else to the same gonzo standard as I hold myself. That subtle difference turns out to be the crux of the issue.

I found I began judging myself even harder as punishment for the merciless way I was viewing others. But the result was less mercy, not more.

I remained in this state until, in exhaustion, desperation, and shame, I gave up on myself. I concluded I must be incapable of acting in a fully mature, responsible fashion. Instead I would have to be treated like a child who just needed to be cut slack because they couldn't yet master themselves.

And then the crux of the issue pivoted.

Since I was unable to hold myself to a full standard, I felt it unworthy and inappropriate to hold others to a standard I could not fulfill. I started cutting everyone else slack.

As I began to give myself permission to behave the way I wanted, without any justification, I now also gave others that same permission. After awhile I realized (drumroll) that not only did they have permission to be whoever they wanted, but that I did not have permission to demand otherwise.

Not surprisingly, this totally changed my relationships. I became way more interested in people when I just explored who they were, and they became more interested in me when I stopped trying to change them. (I've discussed this experience in more depth here.)

Then another layer of the onion peeled. Just as I did not have permission to place my expectations on others, likewise they had no right to place their expectations on me. Knowing that made it suddenly reasonable to have cut myself slack in the first place. It turns out, acting as I choose is actually being responsible; acting as I "should" (based on others' expectations) is abdicating responsibility. (This is related to having permission to fail.)

Most profoundly, I found that, in order to be merciful and caring towards others, I needed to first be merciful and caring towards myself. What was previously impossible became natural.

Lao Tsu says:

Why are the people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.

Why are the people rebellious?
Because the rulers interfere too much.
Therefore they are rebellious.

Why do the people think so little of death?
Because the rulers demand too much of life.
Therefore the people take death lightly.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu.
Translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English.
Notes by Jacob Needleman.

In commenting on this passage, Jacob Needleman says:

"These chapters concern rulers who interfere too much, who impose their will upon the people. The true master of the people, and of the people in oneself, loves and cares for their life and they spontaneously return that love." (Italics mine.)

Applying this passage to myself, I might restate it.

Why are the inner parts of me starving? Because I won't give them the kind of nourishment they need.

Why are the inner parts of me rebellious? Because I won't allow them the forms of expression they crave.

Why are the inner parts of me giving up and withering away? Because I make their life impossible.

Try, or try not. There is no do.

2010-12-26T17:59:00.000-08:00

Don't blame those who try and fail, blame those who never try.

~ unknown

It seems that, in every area of my life, I find myself struggling against the same things: the twin demons of perfectionism and fear of failure.

I'm not sure where I first got the idea that I needed to perfectly accomplish something for it to count at all. Or at what point I came to the conclusion that, without accomplishments, I was worthless. But I can't imagine more fundamentally wrong or fundamentally damaging beliefs than these.

How many attempts are perfectly accomplished? We can argue whether or not it's exactly zero, but it's pretty close.

Look at relationships with people you really value, or that really value you. How many of them are based on what you do rather than who you are?

The fallacy of these demons seem as obvious to me now as an adult as their certainty did to me growing up. So why am I still believing and acting as a child?

In everything I undertake, the hardest challenge is not anything to do with the task I face; it is myself. It is the power and life I give to these demons.

So I'm coming to believe the following.

There is only one, overwhelming struggle in my life that I am facing. It is with myself. It is to wrestle with these beliefs that block me from, and rob me of, my self-worth, peace, and happiness.

You are your only master. Who else?
Subdue yourself, and discover your master.

~ Buddha

This battle will be life-long. But it is the most important battle in my life to be engaged in.

All other, lesser challenges are merely skirmishes -- stages on which the epic battle is being waged. There will be gains and loses, but their individual outcomes are not of long-lived significance. So really, whether I succeed perfectly, or at all, is not ultimately relevant; what remains is whether, and how, I make the attempt. Yoda was wrong: do or do not is not important; try is the only thing that matters.

There are some interesting corollaries.

No one is my enemy. Victories are won only against myself.

Facing a circumstance well is a victory regardless of the circumstantial outcome. In fact, it is the only true victory.

Suffering

2010-12-10T16:00:00.000-08:00

I was sick recently. I had a routine surgery that developed complications. What was supposed to make me better, had the opposite effect. Regular bodily functions became so painful that my body stopped doing them. Which made it worse: not only more painful and more frequently painful, but more seriously medically threatening.

There is a good ending. Things have improved markedly and promise a full recovery. But during the couple weeks it lasted, I discovered some things about myself that scared, frustrated, and saddened me. And had me despairing about my whole inner growth process. Things that, though they now could be easily ignored again, are still there.

After a couple years of serious inner work, motivated by non-trivial suffering in my relationships and circumstances, and after most of a year of feeling real progress in gaining a handle on my feelings and reactions to things beyond my control, I felt it all disappear out from under me. Leaving me not only facing pain and fear, but without the strength, abilities, and hope necessary to face them. I felt abandoned by myself and lost confidence in the things I'd learned.

What happened to these insights and practices that were to be my comrades and strength in fighting the real battles of life? How could they so readily and quickly disappear? As I feel them now return, how can I ever trust them again? I guess I'm asking can I now ever trust myself? I have thoughts; I don't have answers.

My doctor was somewhat stumped. His theory was that my reaction to the pain and my fear was what was causing and exacerbating the situation, spiraling it into a more and more serious condition. At first I almost welcomed this diagnosis, seeing it as a perfect excuse for, and test of, the inner work I was doing. But the more I worked at letting go of my fear, and of my reaction to the pain, the less it seemed to work.

It appears that, through mindful meditation and compassion toward myself, I can gain perspective that can keep me from being overwhelmed by something, but only provided I have someplace else (an area of my life that is not overwhelming) from which to observe the unrest. But this time I did not have, or was not able to find, such a place. With the pain and (for me, worse) the fear always present, there was no perspective to be had.

Ultimately it took my doctor trying a different treatment approach, one that removed the pain and restored the functioning of one part of my body at the expense of causing pain to another part. Doing this for a time allowed my body to physically "reset" the problem part so that it could function normally. Thankfully, when my mind was unable to provide my body with the space it needed to heal, this physical intervention could.

But I feel humbled and let down by the whole experience. Right now I'm working on feeling compassion for myself. Every time I do that now, tears and sobbing easily appear. Though the worst is past, my body's reaction to the pain and fear has not spent itself; it still needs outlet, I still need holding.

I hope that in my disgrace I can be a better friend to myself than I was in my pride.

Afterword

I always review my writing after a couple days and typically revise it before posting. In this case there are things I might normally change or rewrite, but I wanted to leave it as is - as it was felt and written at the time. Instead I've added this afterword to bring out some additional thoughts.

Emotional pain and physical pain are different. A lot of my growth was spurred by some deep emotional pain a couple years back. But that work was tested in a wholly different way by this physical pain.

The duration of my suffering (2 weeks or so) is a drop in the bucket compared to many people's suffering. I don't mean to imply otherwise.

Referring to my experience as "disgrace" is not a very compassionate view of myself. A better, more correct term is "humbling" - painfully reaching a place of deeper humility. This is actually a healing thing, an important form of growth. But I left the word as written because it conveys the sting I feel from the newly empty void created when a portion of my pride was torn from me.

Hold beliefs lightly

2010-11-27T09:59:00.000-08:00

Do not think the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth.

Learn and practice nonattachment from views in order to be open to receive others' viewpoints.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Bethany: So you're saying that having beliefs is a bad thing?

Rufus: I just think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea; changing a belief is trickier. People die for it; people kill for it.

~ Dogma

I've held a lot of beliefs in my life that have turned out not to be true. Or at least not as fully, rigidly, importantly as I was holding them.

This includes both "positive" beliefs (I have a perfect understanding of who God is) and "negative" beliefs (I'm a total loser). It includes attitudes about helping others (I need to correct your incorrect thinking) and about helping myself (the only way I can look good is if I look better than you).

(The way I worded my examples above makes it obvious they Are Not Right. However, at the time, that was far from obvious to me. )

What I've come to realize in recent years is that my beliefs, all of them, are most likely wrong. Perhaps only a little, but perhaps a lot. And that I'm not the best judge of that. Of course, neither are others, although they may have a less biased view than I do of my beliefs. But just as I should always question and hold lightly the opinions of others, I should treat myself as no better an authority. I'm my worst critic and best fan, neither of whom provide reasonable evaluations.

Here are a couple examples from my life that helped me realize this.

I'm a total loser

As mentioned elsewhere, I grew up being consistently informed by my peers that I was a loser that no one liked or wanted to spend any time with, and that nothing I could say or do would ever change that. Every new peer immediately agreed, so this wasn't just the view of a particular group of people, seemingly everyone thought so. And I believed what they said.

As I then transitioned to high school and college, I found there was always a group of people who would provide this same, ready evaluation of me. But now there were other groups, too. Some who didn't care about me one way or another. (That was a step up.) And a precious few people who became friends.

As I entered my adult years, it became very rare that anyone would intentionally embarrass or denounce me. But for some reason, 40 years of reasonable treatment can't seem to overcome 10 years of hell. At least not without a lot of conscious effort, and never fully. Negative beliefs about myself are the hardest to hold lightly.

I know what's right

In my early adult life, I was firmly convinced that I knew the truth about God, and also firmly convinced that you should agree with me. Not that I should "force" you to agree. But I couldn't respect someone who wouldn't listen to "reason", and I certainly couldn't trust any other conclusions they might draw. I (somehow) believed that this outlook was a loving one.

One of the most fruitful things that happened to me was when I found myself in a place where I could no longer reconcile my beliefs about God with what was happening inside me. I wasn't sure whether the fault lay with God or me, but I was faced with accepting the fact that my beliefs were apparently not right.

This opened up gaping holes in my life: I no longer knew for sure what was right, and I no longer knew for sure that someone else was wrong. At the time, I felt I was losing my footing while teetering on the edge of a broad canyon. But it turned out I was stepping into a spaciousness that allowed room for not only me to be, but others as well.

I found that, when I became uncertain of my beliefs, I didn't try to control or dominate the conversation. In fact, it was initially hard for me to say anything at all. I became a better listener, especially since I no longer knew a priori that what someone else believed was wrong.

And I was surprised to find that what others had to say was always interesting to me, and frequently helpful. More surprising was that people actually wanted to hear what I had to say. And even though I felt what I had to say was most likely wrong, others often found it helpful.

A third surprising thing: I'm sure you know our society tends to focus on the destination rather than the journey. We want the answer, so, once we discover it, we no longer consider important the process we used to get there. As an engineer I knew that, once the equation had been derived, I'd never need to look at the derivation again. There might even be several, radically different derivations for the same equation but that didn't matter, they were all effectively the same since they produced the same final result. Differing journeys are irrelevant once the common destination is reached. All my life I'd always wanted to cut to the bottom line, to get to the answer.

But suddenly I was no longer interested in hearing answers. I wanted only the stories that led people to their answers (or away from them, or in circles). What mattered to me was the experiences you had and how you responded to them and what happened then. I was interested in your conclusions, but only as waypoints on your journey, not as universal answers.

I now wanted to draw my own conclusions, after seeing whether and how your story meshed with mine. Although hearing your conclusions was helpful, I saw that, even if I could retrace your exact journey, I would arrive at a different place, since the destination depends on both the journey and the traveler.

There is yet another good reason to focus on experience rather than conclusions: people can argue with your conclusions but not your experience. ("No! You didn't experience that! That wasn't the way you felt!")

The conclusions I've drawn from these experiences are:

To love someone, I must first respect them.

Love without respect is not love, I'm selling something. Respect means according the other the dignity of deciding for themselves what to believe and what is best for them. I think respect means listening, and only talking when granted permission. (My guideline: I may ask honest questions. Or, when asked a question, I may answer, truthfully and without lecturing.)

People aren't broken, and don't need to be fixed.

The goal is to create a space where the other person can just be themselves, without any expectations, in the presence of another. (Sounds like relational white space.)

Hold beliefs lightly.

This is the only way to listen openly to others and to allow myself the possibility to grow.

Aside: Why pictures?

2010-11-20T17:06:00.000-08:00

A picture is worth a thousand words.
~ trite but true

My primary communication mechanism is my writing, appealing to your heart through your mind. It's your heart I'm after, but the most profound way I've found to reach the heart is through story.

Why pictures? Why pithy quotes?

Some have concluded that pictures are extra baggage that provide no significant additional value, and so, from a minimalist perspective, distract from the important stuff. I feel differently. While communicating through story (writing) may be the most profound way to reach the heart, it is not the easiest or most accessible.

A picture, sound, smell, touch, or taste can instantly connect with a deep, emotional part of us. While story works slowly to reach the heart, these other inputs can suddenly teleport us there. They cause us to recall other sensations and, most importantly, feelings associated with some prior experience. Their downside is that they can only connect to and resurface what is already established in the heart. While an image or a sound can re-establish important feelings and beliefs, it cannot extend them or create new ones; story is what does that. But they can help story to find a quicker, more direct path to a deeper part of the heart.

Poetry is something between a picture and a story. And certain quotes effect me like poetry - they're pithy statements that quickly evoke a feeling. It's like a picture, but formed with words. And, like a picture, it can quickly connect with the heart.

This is why I include pictures and quotes, and why I try to place them strategically in my story. They are present at the beginning to quickly find and grease a path to the right part of the heart through which I can pour story. They are present at the end to establish new, quick routes to the newly planted beliefs and feelings in the heart.

One thing I will admit, selecting an appropriate picture or quote can be more time consuming than writing the story. And without that effort, they do become a distraction - a quick path to the wrong place - rather than helping the story to explode into the heart.

Like a sudden sunrise.

Caveat: I am not a trained writer, poet, or photographer. (Hence my photos come from the talents of others.) My opinions are formed as a reader, seeing what affects me and how.

GTD considered harmful

2010-11-06T14:12:00.000-07:00

Always be busy, and life is beyond hope.
~ Lao Tsu

I needed to find a todo app to manage my work tasks. I also needed one for my personal tasks. So I started researching and asking friends. I started reading about Getting Things Done (GTD) and Most Important Task (MIT).

The more time I spent with this, the more I noticed myself getting disquiet and anxious. Terrified, actually. I felt this entire process was going against something very important in me. Not just at an intellectual level. Not even at a gut feeling level. But at a core, "I'm killing who I really am" level. I felt I was betraying myself and all I fundamentally believed in. Yes, it felt that bad. And I felt stupid that it felt that bad. WTF? It's just a todo app.

Then, in the midst of this, I stumbled upon zenhabits for the first time. Google seemed to believe it was an excellent resource for understanding GTD and MIT and beating procrastination and ... all the things that were churning my insides. But the first zenhabits post I happened to view - the most recent one at that time - was titled "the best goal is no goal". Thankfully this post dove to the heart of my dilemma.

The author, Leo Babauta, was ... not exactly renouncing all his prior posts, but ... okay, it sounds like he's renouncing all his prior posts.

After years of living with goals as his focus, he's now living without goals and instead being guided by his passion. He described the effects goals cause: struggle, failure, discouragement, shame. (I was thinking: check, check, check, check.) And one I didn't expect: stifling discovery and growth. And he also described the effects "no goals" have: the opposite of all that. Leo's words:

"(It) means you stop letting yourself be limited by goals."

"You have to open your mind to going places you never expected to go. If you live without goals, you’ll explore new territory. You’ll learn some unexpected things. You’ll end up in surprising places."

"I usually end up achieving more than if I had goals, because I’m always doing something I’m excited about."

And the best effect: "I’m doing what I love, always."

I noticed I had finally relaxed for the first time since I started this GTD research process. And I think I knew why.

My entire life I've fallen into the trap of "If I think of it, I need to add it to a list. If it's on a list, I need to do it." That approach pretty much killed any white space in my life.

However, recently I'd been making some progress against it. (Thanks to the beginnings of my white space practice.) Which is why I was having such a strong negative reaction. I felt like adopting a formal todo app was creating a counter-attack to that progress. I feared losing the new source of Life I was now tasting.

I almost abandoned the thought of a task management system at that point. Perhaps I should have; the jury's still out. What I'm doing instead is practicing the struggle between ensuring I can prioritize and not forget the important todos, while still feeling that my white space and I, and not my todo app, control my life. Perhaps I'll report back later on how that's going.

Passion and stillness

2010-10-31T17:17:00.000-07:00

Practice not-doing and everything will fall into place.
~ Lao Tsu

What makes me feel alive is passion and stillness. Passion - about people, thoughts, or activities. Stillness - to reflect, center, and guide. The challenges for me are discovering my passion and providing the space to experience it and to experience stillness.

White space is how I meet these challenges.

First, discovering passion.

I'd been feeling passionless for years, and yearning to find some, but feeling totally clueless about how to do this since passion is not something you find, but something that finds you. Then I read about an approach which rang true.

"Discovering passion requires a dedication to unstructured exploration," says Cal Newport. "You have to leave large swathes of free time in your schedule (a technique I call underscheduling), and fill this time with the exploration of things that might be interesting. ... When you find something that catches your attention: follow-up [leveraging your free time]; see if it sticks."

Ah ... the answer was white space!

Second, stillness.

I'm a person who feels very uncomfortable doing nothing. Like even for a minute. Half a minute. I'm trying to multi-task all the time. The result is a seriously degraded attention span and an inability to focus (be present).

I can't read more than half a chapter in a book before I want to switch to a different book or magazine; I'm currently reading six books. While driving, I'm lost in thought about planning or solving something else. It's gotten to the point where, if I get bored for a moment in a meeting, I'm instantly thinking about other things for minutes before realizing I'm missing important stuff. Obviously this behavior is dangerous, not only to my continued employment but possibly life threatening.

The cure I'm persuing is white space, both physical and mental. Sadly, this is not easy; it's work.

By forcing myself to spend unscheduled time, I'm slowly extinguishing my mindless, knee-jerk anxiousness and replacing it with a calm, openness. (Notice the word slowly.)

But to rein in my wandering mind and fully quiet it (read: turn off the music playlist), I needed more. I'm finding a practice of meditation and mindfulness is slowly replacing my distraction and poor attention span with, not constant, perfect focus, but an increasing habit of quickly noticing the wandering and bringing my mind back to now. I'm happily discovering greater joy in my solitude, my relationships, and my work. And greater effectiveness. (That that!, multi-tasking bullshit.)

So, underscheduling is physical white space, meditation is mental white space. They jointly give rise to stillness.

Empowering change

2010-10-20T22:49:00.000-07:00

I freakin' hate change. I'm terrified of it. There be dragons there. Safety is found in the known.

I was bullied as a kid. I was at the same school, kindergarden through 8th grade; so, once pigeonholed as a target, I remained so for nine years. I remember the day, the incident, the friend who turned on me in order to be accepted by the group. And I remember almost all of the subsequent daily taunts, pranks, and shuns. Every new situation, where I didn't know what to expect and how to react, meant a new fount of opportunities for abuse and shame.

So I have a life-long, very, very, core defense mechanism that seeks out and carefully maps the known, and runs and hides from the new. "Risk averse" they call it.

But life is all about change and risk, and not really about safety at all. I think children inherently know and embrace that. We lose that, becoming adults. Some a little; some a lot. Some slow; some fast.

This is one of the core issues of my struggle, and hence one of the core reasons I need white space. White space forces me to consciously, actively remove the known from my life, in order to replace it with the unpredictable. To swap safety for fear. My brain and body are trained to believe that is crazy and life-threatening. (That is not hyperbole.)

It's taken way too many decades of hiding from change, to realize what I've sacrificed to do that.

I've sacrificed my Life.

I've sacrificed depth - of relationships, experiences, growth. And, ironically, I've sacrificed my safety.

It turns out (surprise) that you can't keep yourself from the pains of life. You cannot control circumstances; you cannot control others. All you can do is to work with (I do not say control) your reaction to such pain, to come to peace with its companionship on your journey. And, as with all your friends, to respect it but not give it control over you.

I'll leave a complete summary of my life to another time. Right now I want to mention that the most helpful things to me in recent years have been individual therapy, a group of men (run by a therapist) who have challenged me to emotionally explore and express, and meditation. These are tools that help me do the work. But another essential tool is the space - the time needed to carefully and unhurriedly apply these tools to do the work. Without that, the tools sit on the shelf, unused. And I remain unchanged, trapped.

That is why white space is so important to me. I assume you have a different story, and so probably have different reasons to need white space. Exploring what those reasons are is a good use of white space.

White space

2010-10-20T07:10:00.000-07:00

I know the value of non-action.
~ Lao Tsu

I've started to reorganize my life around the concept of creating room - spaciousness - in my life. My goal is to create an open area that provides the opportunity for life to happen.

Pragmatically, this means increasing my unscheduled time. (Notice I did not say finding more time into which I can plug more things.)

This idea is not new. Victoria Vargas refers to this as the pauses between activity. Cal Newport calls it underscheduling. Leo Babauta uses the term white space. I prefer the latter because it evokes a visual metaphor.

When I picture my life, I used to see only the activities, the things that take up space. These were the things that added meaning to my life. The emptiness between these activities was viewed as dead space: accomplishing nothing, time wasted, lost forever. My goal was to minimize this wasted time, this white space. The ideal was to seamlessly flow from one activity to another, wasting no time, thus maximizing my achievement, meaning, and happiness.

I now realize that's bullshit.

Now I see white space as my highest priority focus: creating an abundance of it, using it both extravagantly and wisely.

White space provides the creativity and the intelligent focus from which everything else is created and guided. But much more importantly, it is white space that is the reason for doing all the rest; it is the goal.

White space is the part of your life where you're being rather than doing. In that sense, white space is your life, and the rest of the stuff is in service of that. (But, like everything about life and you, it's not quite that simple or disconnected.)

So white space is both the means and the end.

Inaugural

2010-10-17T13:46:00.000-07:00

For years I've been feeling overwhelmed with stuff to do, and disinterested in doing most of it. I can't find any free time but, if I do find some, I haven't a clue what to do with it besides pulling the next thing off my todo list. I dream of spending time exploring new directions and becoming passionate about things, about finding inner peace, but I can't find the time or (to be honest) the courage. My busyness is the problem, and the excuse I hide behind.

However, through a long process I've arrived at a place where I feel some hope and some direction. This process seemed aimless most of the time (as I now suspect all deeply fruitful processes will feel until nearing their goal). But my feelings of longing for a goal that I did not know, by a path that I could not find, are slowly melting into walking a path of growing confidence towards a goal I can now dimly see in the distance.

Reasonably, this result is a mixture of my insights and the the insights of others.

This journal is about this path, and the process of walking it.

Disclaimer:

I'm writing this journal for me, as a way to help me flesh out my thinking and give it more depth. I'm posting it publicly as a way to focus and motivate me, and because I never really understand something until I can clearly explain it to someone else. (Even if that someone else never reads it. :-) )

I expect my writings will repeat and refer to the writings of others, as I work out which of these I like and how I incorporate them into myself. Hopefully something original emerges: the experience and perspective, not of a great original thinker, but of someone trying to sort through and apply the wisdom of others.