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Aug. 15th, 2009
I've lost count of the times over the past few months when I've told someone that it's as if the biggest obstacles to my goals are slick and invisible. It's as if I start out toward what I want, but get turned aside by things I hardly even notice. One day I'm making steady progress -- and the next I'm doing something entirely meaningless, not even thinking about my goals.
I've tried to counter this by creating detailed to-do lists, and that's helped for a while -- but the invisible obstacles keep cropping up. I'll run my eyes down the list, but it's as if my mind just slides over the items rather than actually seeing and engaging with them.
So I'm trying a new technique. I'm taking each item on my list, writing it by hand on a new piece of paper, and then writing down all the obstacles, resistance, and other previously-silent "No's" and freak-outs that have been silently drowning my good intentions. And then I address each obstacle in turn: facing it, engaging with it, dealing with it. The goal is to come up with a constructive response and/or solution to each obstacle, so I can go on and complete the task.
So far so good. I've worked through the first two items on my list this evening, completed one long-delayed item (getting a second domain name) and took constructive steps to enlist assistance with the other. Two down, two dozen to go. . . .
As I'm working on this, I'm also re-prioritizing the list, so I can do a better job on focusing on the high impact items before the This-Isn't-Scary items. I'm also taking a page from Franklin Covey by being more conscious about the values each task relates to, and the long-term goals they support.
I'm also doing spiritual work focused on some of the deeper issues relating to this pattern, but I'm not ready to write about that yet.
I am sick and tired of being ineffectual unless there is some kind of external structure reinforcing my goals. I feel as if this is my golden opportunity to make some deep changes in myself, and that if I let it slip through my fingers it could have some very long-term negative consequences. I won't say it's my last chance; but I suspect that the longer this goes on the harder it will be to change.
I've tried to counter this by creating detailed to-do lists, and that's helped for a while -- but the invisible obstacles keep cropping up. I'll run my eyes down the list, but it's as if my mind just slides over the items rather than actually seeing and engaging with them.
So I'm trying a new technique. I'm taking each item on my list, writing it by hand on a new piece of paper, and then writing down all the obstacles, resistance, and other previously-silent "No's" and freak-outs that have been silently drowning my good intentions. And then I address each obstacle in turn: facing it, engaging with it, dealing with it. The goal is to come up with a constructive response and/or solution to each obstacle, so I can go on and complete the task.
So far so good. I've worked through the first two items on my list this evening, completed one long-delayed item (getting a second domain name) and took constructive steps to enlist assistance with the other. Two down, two dozen to go. . . .
As I'm working on this, I'm also re-prioritizing the list, so I can do a better job on focusing on the high impact items before the This-Isn't-Scary items. I'm also taking a page from Franklin Covey by being more conscious about the values each task relates to, and the long-term goals they support.
I'm also doing spiritual work focused on some of the deeper issues relating to this pattern, but I'm not ready to write about that yet.
I am sick and tired of being ineffectual unless there is some kind of external structure reinforcing my goals. I feel as if this is my golden opportunity to make some deep changes in myself, and that if I let it slip through my fingers it could have some very long-term negative consequences. I won't say it's my last chance; but I suspect that the longer this goes on the harder it will be to change.
Brilliant Condom Commercial
Aug. 15th, 2009 10:09 pmThe sassiest, funniest, smartest, most empowering condom commercial I've seen.
GM / Shadow Question
Aug. 15th, 2009 11:00 pmI didn't run a lot of games during the decade-plus that I was a member of a regular group, probably a half-dozen or so.
One of the unexpected challenges I ran into when creating a scenario was how bad to be.
Our games were almost never fatal, so it wasn't an issue of how hard I was going to work to try to kill the characters, it was more an issue of how evil my main antagonist was going to be, and how much of that evil I was going to need to play out in character interaction. What would the NPC body count be? Would I do terrible things to the PC's if I had the chance? How far would I take it? I would have visions of possible encounters, then flinch back from them, certain I could never actually play them out, even across a tabletop.
You see, I was afraid of how much of my own shadow might come out. I was afraid that if I tapped into my own darkness, even for the sake of creating an adventure scenario, it would reveal too much of a part of myself I didn't usually admit was there at all, much less put on display for others.
I don't think I'm a particularly bad person, and I don't want to overstate this. . . but as I've been working on "old business" I started thinking of this.
It made me wonder if other GM's ever worried about this, or has it always been so much "just a game" and/or "just a story" that it was never an issue?
I think the issue was heightened for me because my old group was very self-conscious about the degree to which our characters expressed different aspects of ourselves, whether we planned it that way or not. Perhaps with a different group I would never have worried about just how much of my shadow I was letting out to play. I don't know. . .
One of the unexpected challenges I ran into when creating a scenario was how bad to be.
Our games were almost never fatal, so it wasn't an issue of how hard I was going to work to try to kill the characters, it was more an issue of how evil my main antagonist was going to be, and how much of that evil I was going to need to play out in character interaction. What would the NPC body count be? Would I do terrible things to the PC's if I had the chance? How far would I take it? I would have visions of possible encounters, then flinch back from them, certain I could never actually play them out, even across a tabletop.
You see, I was afraid of how much of my own shadow might come out. I was afraid that if I tapped into my own darkness, even for the sake of creating an adventure scenario, it would reveal too much of a part of myself I didn't usually admit was there at all, much less put on display for others.
I don't think I'm a particularly bad person, and I don't want to overstate this. . . but as I've been working on "old business" I started thinking of this.
It made me wonder if other GM's ever worried about this, or has it always been so much "just a game" and/or "just a story" that it was never an issue?
I think the issue was heightened for me because my old group was very self-conscious about the degree to which our characters expressed different aspects of ourselves, whether we planned it that way or not. Perhaps with a different group I would never have worried about just how much of my shadow I was letting out to play. I don't know. . .