40.3.5 - Runnin' Down A Dream

One week down, and it's been an interesting week.

I've got a number of irons in the fire (not exactly an uncommon reality for me) and juggling those bits and pieces, or spinning the plates so they don't become bits and pieces... Let's just see how many metaphors we can slam into one sentence, shall we?

Beginning this plan for the third time back to back provides an interesting perspective since I don't really give myself time to slack off the basic process. As I have said before, there are some givens:

1) I have created, over the last 3 months, a basically solid platform from which to launch further efforts. This is something that I've never adequately done before and it's kind of startling what a difference it makes in my general mindset.

2) I have also gotten some of the detritus (emotional, relational, practical, and financial) of the last several years out of my way and like crawling on top of a hill to survey the landscape (I have been to the mountaintop! sorry... sorry), I am now able to see where I might go with significantly more clarity than at any time in my life. There's something to be said for getting rid of clutter... My grandmother used to say that if you've lost something, clean up the house. There's a line in one of my favorite films where Bill Bailey tells Bruce Dern, "Your mother always said that when you can't figure out your life... Clean up your nest."

I'm just sayin'.

In any case... the issue at this point in time is, as I have said before, where do I go from here?

One of the things that I'm relatively certain about is that I need to work with the goals and plans I have and set them up in some kind of order that distinguishes them into different aspects of my life.

What I'm saying here is that I have been self-employed in a multitude of activities (with varying degrees of success) for my entire adult life. While that has some serious lifestyle advantages, one of the more problematic issues in that arrangement is the fact that it's generally quite difficult to separate what I do from who I am. For a significant period of my life, that was okay... problematic, but okay. It seems to me that most people have an easier time with this because for them the distinction is already made... the "job" is the work and home is home. For me they almost always squish together.

What I have been learning of late is that there is great value in pulling them apart.

With this new process in which I have begun to figure out how to separate from my work... and separate my life from my work... I find that I need a clearer division, both for ME and for my WORK.

It's also clear that my DREAMS need this division.

There's a sense in which dreams (something everyone truly needs; they are the lifeblood of imagination) need attention and clarity to thrive. Dreams are the soft side... goals are where "the rubber meets the road" as they used to say.

So this is the next stage... the next connection. I am seeking in this phase to separate work and life. I'm not separating them completely (I really don't think I could), but I'm seeking to address them from separate areas of my brain. I am also seeking to set up clear goals with definite temporal targets... distinct objectives along the way... and ways to separate the different things I want to achieve so that they don't all glom together into one big tangled mess.

This is the trajectory for the next five weeks... Intentional and enthusiastic pursuit of the dream.