Spiritual Stuff.

There has been decorating this evening. I’m feeling the holiday spirit a bit more than I was 24 hours ago.

The family time together was wonderful.

Sometimes, you just don’t have the bandwidth to read the woes of other folks as they share their life experiences on social media, especially folks you’ve never met in person. That’s OK. It’s good to be there for other people but it’s better to take care of your mental health.

You are strongest for others when you are strongest for yourself. Always take care of yourself.

On most nights I’ll go out on the roof over our garage to gather my thoughts for the day before calling it a night. This is not a “Love On A Rooftop” situation; our home has a flat roof that was originally designed to become a rooftop deck. The railings for this are in place and it’s perfectly safe to go out there, I just have to be sure I don’t put my foot through a skylight.

When I went outside I noticed we were just shy of the latest full moon. I found the lit up clouds to be absolutely mesmerizing. 

Mother Nature has such a wonderful way of being beautiful.

Last night I dreamed about a scene in the latest “Downton Abbey” movie. It was the scene where Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, passed with her family at her side. The role was famously played by Dame Maggie Smith.

This morning I learned that Dame Maggie Smith has passed.

A tremendous talent with a formidable presence in anything she was in, I found her fascinating. She kept much of her life private. In what I’ve seen in interviews and the like, she seemed like a delight.

She will be missed.

Here’s a clip from “The Carol Burnett Show”, with Maggie Smith as a teacher dealing with Carol’s famous “Eunice” character.

Since moving to Tucson I have received a couple of letters a year from neighbors I do not know. Their return address indicates they live in the general area; they’re not just around the block or anything. The letters are always enclosed with a pamphlet leading me to the website of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’m always amazed at the penmanship used in crafting the letter.

I used to get concerned about this sort of thing. As I get older I just figure someone out there is wishing me well in their own way. The scriptures and the like mentioned in the pamphlet and in the letters are an interesting read. I’m very solid in my own spirituality, so I tend to just accept this sort of thing in the spirit in which it was intended.

They didn’t write about damnation or any cross words at all for that matter. So I shall not wish them anything but positivity in their own spiritual paths. I’ll leave it at that.

So for the past week I have been playing life “undisciplined”. We are at that point in the newish year where resolutions start to fall off and folks that meant well come the 1st of January have either solidified their approach to the new year or are back in their old habits. I am not a stranger to this concept.

Work has been weird, in that the management team is still figuring out the organizational goals and objectives for the year. This bit of uncertainty makes it difficult for me to formulate goals for my team members and to formulate my personal goals of what I’d like to achieve at work in 2024. I don’t want to write a bunch of generic goals that I know I can achieve. I want to stretch my professional abilities just a tad, and as I outlined in the latest one on one with my boss, I’d like to move up the management food chain a little bit, losing the “Associate” from my current title of “Associate Director”. She was in complete agreement.

So what does an undisciplined week look like for this 55 year old middle aged man? Well, apparently it includes referring to myself in the third person. Here’s a few things I didn’t do.

• I didn’t shave daily like I usually do. I used the excuse that I was growing my beard again to see what it looked like but in reality I was sleeping in and flying through my morning routine right before work, and by not shaving I had a few extra minutes to sleep in
• I didn’t really pay attention to healthy eating habits. I tried to keep my calories in check and I didn’t go all crazy with sugar and stuff, but I didn’t hit my weight goal this week
• I didn’t do any of my personal growth studies in that I didn’t read a book, I didn’t pay particularly close attention to my goals and todo lists, and I didn’t work on a couple of organizational courses I’ve been working through since the beginning of the year.
• I let my mind wander while online in that I didn’t create more than I consume when using the computer. Generally, I try to create/write/make things more than just watch videos or read bombastic comments from those that think they know it all. I did too much of the bombastic consumption. Sidebar, society is really screwed up and it’s just getting worse
• I didn’t work on my aviation goals and I didn’t fly an airplane this week
• I didn’t really dress the part for work like I usually do.

At the end of the day today I felt rather “adrift”. It was not a feeling I enjoyed and feeling adrift like this did not lead to any sort of relaxation. In fact, quite the opposite, while I was just sort of making my way through life on autopilot this week, in the back of my head I was thinking of all the things I didn’t do or I kept thinking of the things I could have been doing if I could muster up the energy.

In reality, I was having a hard time mustering up the energy.

So, now that I’ve taken a shower and shaved and put on clean clothes, I’ve gone back to my personal journal (which I didn’t update nearly as much this week) and re-read my Arete. For those unfamiliar, Arete is the concept of living your best life, living to your fullest potential, and living to the qualities that make for good character.

For the past week, while I thought I was living simply, I wasn’t living the “simple life” in the way that I so desire. And because I recognized this after taking a break from it all for a week, I feel energized and ready to jump back into the things I wanted to accomplish in 2024.

The resolutions or goals for the year haven’t fallen away. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Taking a break from trying feeling my brain get a little more chaotic with each passing this day the past week has made me realize the importance of sticking to my goals, doing things that I find fulfilling, and using my tendencies for structure to move myself forward.

Life is short. We should never assume we will see another sunrise. It’s up to us to be the calm in an increasingly chaotic world, but more importantly, it’s up to us to live our best life. There’s not enough time left to squander what we have.