Humans as a species crave order. Everything needs to make sense to them. There is a perception of control that humans seem to desire. We want to exert control of our environment and produce desired results. A good example of this would be in humanity’s desire to create time and mark time.
Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. an alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.
It’s crazy when you think about it time is simply the “measurement” of persistence. For something so tenuous and amorphous it seems foolish to give it so much value.
Most founders of companies (yes including startups) are actually in their 40’s. You may get a little discouraged because you hear about the 20 year old starting a business or a family but do not get discouraged time is nothing but a weird made up number and you are doing great.
The only real time you have anyways is right now, so do the best you can with what you have, where and when you are.
When my wife and I started dating I was a huge fan of watches. I have all kinds of watches and time pieces different styles colors and brands. I went for two months once and never wore the same watch two days in a row. When Apple released the Apple watch I bought the first generation and last year for my anniversary my wife bought me the newest Apple watch (best anniversary gift ever). My wife has joked with me on more than one occasion about the watches, not about my obsessive nature but because I have never believed in time. I am not alone in this believe that time does not exist and it is not a crackpot theory like the flat earth one either. Think about time and try to define it…. Impossible right?
Time may not exist however we can run out of it and I am always wishing that I had more of it in my day.
Time is a created thing. To say “I don’t have time” is to say “I don’t want to”
Lao Tzu
I have a list of things I want to do and I often find that I have issues with getting everything done that I want to do. I know I am not alone in this predicament. Instead of time management I beleive I need to focus more on priority management. If I can place the correct priorities in the correct order chance are high that I will be able to reach my goals.
Saturday afternoon was spent with my wife the dog and my niece kayaking out to a light house and an island. We stopped on the island swam tried to get the dog into the water ( failed) and then got back into the kayaks. My wife took pictures and they were saved in her phone and marked as moments.
These are truly moments, last year we did the same thing with my daughter (we left the dog at home then). At the end of the day Saturday we were; wet, tired, a little sun burnt but I felt content. Just thinking back on the time spent Saturday and last year makes me smile.
Take time every day to have these moments with family and friends. You will experience all kinds of moments and how you live it out will make a huge difference on whether or not thinking about the moments make you smile or frown.
No matter what the moment is be kind (that is a tough one because in some moments friends and families are not always agreeable). No matter what the moment is realize it is that a moment so stay present.
Ok, Last week I mentioned that I was changing the day that I published my podcast. The change was going to be from Wednesdays to Fridays. Well if you are paying attention you will notice that the change did not happen. Friday came and went with no podcast. Why did this happen or happen? Obviously, I’m a liar, well that’s part of it. I became a liar on accident though.
Last week the change to Friday made sense all the way up until Friday then it didn’t. Sometimes that happens with plans.
If the plan doesn’t work change the plan but never the goal
My goal is and will be to create a weekly interview podcast about things that interest me when the podcast gets published seems to be in a fluid state right now. As I type Monday afternoons are looking good for various reason however I am going to see what happens before I lie again.
In life we make goals some are big ones like graduate, get promoted, write a novel, have kids, volunteer, see the world. The goals will only happen if we have a plan though.
My favorite movies are the Back to the Future movies
in 3 there is a model like 2 and 1 of Hill Valley the model has a book near a wind mill and it is marked NO RETURN
Risks are taken and we always feel like we can get back to before that risk was taken however very often we will find ourselves at points where we realize there is no return.
The phrase burn the boats comes from an apocryphal tale in which Hernan Cortes invades Mexico and orders his men to burn the boats they came in. The burning of the boats proved to the men that they where to be conquerors or nothing at all.
Usually when we take on new roles or tactics we have the luxury of easing into that role however there will come a time when we cannot return to the older role sadly many of us do not know when this happens.
I guess the lesson is to embrace the new and learn from the old. Know that tomorrow is over and you can really never go back. Everything changes even if we don’t want it to. If we lean into the changes we can adjust and like a great sailor or surfer we can ride the waves and move forward. If we try to look for a point of no return chances are we will never find it and we will not enjoy the now.
Learn from the past, live in the present and look forward to the future.
Today is January 4 2022 C.E. That is a fact. I started my work day with my daily list and on the opposite page of that list I wrote down 6 new year resolutions. I have a friend (yes only one (ha ha )), he does not seem to like resolutions. My friends reasons for the disdain of resolutions is the same as the others. Let’s see… no one keeps them, it is just an arbitrary thing, they are stupid, they set you up for failure and so on and so on. I have always liked resolutions and starting over. Ever since I was a child.
I was the kid who would build a city out of legos destroy it and rebuild it. I love the act of rebuilding doing something over and over again with just small changes and for me that is what a new years resolutions is like. I know, I know that we don’t get to reset our lives I realize that we do things that build over the years and time and the things can bring us good or bad results and that is why I try my best to make good new years resolutions and not bad ones. I choose resolutions like read 10 books instead of read 0 books (reading is so good for us!(it really is )).
My wife was speaking with my step daughter about doing something she was scared of and my wife told her that she has regretted things she did not try more than anything she has tried. I know that many of my new years resolutions may not get accomplished however I am a Cleveland Browns fan so I am totally ok with failure as long as I gave it my best shot.
I refuse to let the idea that I will not keep a resolution stop me from making and trying to keep one.
Time is an odd thing. When you think about time is about as abstract a concept as you can come up with and it is almost impossible to measure. Ask any scientist worth their weight and they will tell you the same. Many scientist will tell you that time doesn’t really exist at all. Every scientist will tell you that time is relative at best. I think that there have been some pretty famous papers written on the relativity of time and yet, you should never make it a practice to arrive late for appointments. Arriving late is a good way to upset friends family and get fired. Despite the wibbily wobbily nature of time (wink to all the Dr. Who fans), we all agree on time and try our best to arrive on time and mark time in our own ways. I refuse to let the nature of time to stop me from making a resolution.
Take some time today to create a list of things you want to get done this year and write this list down. 2022 is going to feel long and tiresome when it does look at your list and see where you are at. You may get to scratch something off the list. Oh man I get such an endorphin rush when I do this. I make a list every day of things I want to get done just so I can scratch them off. The year will feel long but it will be over before you know it when it ends and you are staring in the face of 2023 pull out the list and see all that you have done this will also feel amazing
I worked for a short time in the manufacturing industry. Within the manufacturing industry it is very important to safely produce a certain amount of products within an hour. When there is a safety violation or a dip in production for the hour an manager must note why.
A rule in manufacturing is that a person can never be the problem only material or quality. I love that rule however I think that there are something’s that happen that cannot be defined rarely of course but it happens.
It’s not a bad policy or procedure it’s a true unknown. We can do the same exact thing everyday the same exact way and get different results. I have heard people call this luck or chance.
A young girl asked Stan Lee what super power he would want the most and he said Luck. Stan Lee mentioned that luck was hard to define and that’s why he never made a super hero with luck as a super power but he said we need luck more than anything else.
Stan Lee was right. When I was a solider in the U.S. Army deployed to Egypt my commanding officer told me that Many Egyptians will be tardy and I should not be upset or offended because they believe that fate is more important than a time table.
This is pretty interesting to me since arguably the Egyptians invented time keeping with shadows and clocks. I myself try to be on time however I truly do not believe that there is such a a thing as time and humans attempt to measure or define time is kinda solipsistic. I do believe that we should do things and doing things together calls for appointments and time keeping helps keep appointments but when someone is early or late we need to cut them some slack for not being somewhere real at an imaginary moment.
I think life would be much more joyful if we embraced now instead of worrying about the imaginary thing we have named time and we’re grateful for the good luck we experience everyday.
The Corrigan Encore 