Been awhile

The well-intentioned but oft-neglected blog; which is just one of the items on my 'list.'

I was doing some thinking this evening - you can get up off the floor now, I'm serious - about the mass of things facing me personally and professionally. It's the ever-growing 'list' of things that I need and/or want to accomplish. I use the term list quite loosely here because there really is no list (personally), it's all just thought and talk right now, but also weighing heavier and heavier on my soul - as I sit here and stare that the new computer I recently purchased that sorely needs my attention.

As I think about this, I try to look back at my life and can't help but wonder what happened. I don't think I used spend more time thinking and worrying about what needs to get done, than actually doing it. When I bought my first house, for example, it was a fixer-upper in every possible sense of the term. I pretty much gutted the main level of the house and redid everything from flooring to trim to paint, fixtures and appliances - all within 3-4 months of closing on the house then moving in. Today, I have a house. We did get the interior painted prior to moving in, but it's not changed otherwise one iota since we moved in - and believe me, there's a LOT that needs to be done.

For cars, I used to dive in and fix anything/everything I enjoyed the sense of accomplishment derived from taking a pile cast iron, aluminum and steel parts and having a running engine at the end. I used to actually love to balance the checkbook, maintain loans, do accounting - in fact I seriously considered accounting as a career path at one point because I aced every accounting and finance class I took. But now I have several nagging things to take care of, but can't seem to find the energy, motivation, drive - whatever that 'thing' is that makes us desire to get something done.

I'm left with a depressing question: What the hell happened?

Mike somewhat amusingly calls my state 'post (former employer) management disorder.' While my time at my last employer was indeed spent in a dysfunctional and oppressive management structure, I can't just let that excuse my disappointment in my ability to do things. Something has changed, and I'm pretty sure it's a whole lot deeper than the case-study-on-poor-management that was the place I worked for. In fact as I look back, I'm pretty sure this all existing prior to working there.

Cognitively, I know how to tackle these projects, and I think I'm intelligent enough to research, learn, and apply new methods. I have a degree in project management, for crying out loud. You'd think I'd have learned *something* about taking on a gelatinous mass of confusion and massaging it enough to coalesce things into manageable tasks. For that matter, I pursued the degree because at one point in my life I though it was something I was good at. I felt at one time that understanding how things fit together on a macro scale, knowing what needed to happen to get the pieces together, and communicating those tasks was something that came naturally. I was always the one that could take a project handed to a group and divide up the work among the team. Now, I'm not at all sure that's something I should be pursuing, or is even a strength at all.

There are plenty of tools and methods out there that I can apply. I've read about many, but the same thing that's in my way has affected me actually choosing something and starting to apply it. I have the GTD book, both in ebook and audio book format - but haven't read nor listened to it. I have several bits of software tools that I could use, but don't. There's something bigger, more sinister, that's wholly a part of my make-up going on here.

I'm missing something, some key ingredient for success. And that, more than anything right now, is beating me down.

Pain

"Life is pain. Anyone who says different is selling something." That quote from the movie The Princess Bride has always stuck with me as something profound. I think an important life-skill we all must learn is how to suffer. Chip Ingram in his book Effective Parenting in a Defective World says that one of the key things we parents ought to be teaching our kids is to suffer well. To know that our suffering is a process that God uses to teach, discipline and grow His children. M. Scott Peck in his book The Road Less Traveled speaks of looking forward to the painful times in life because those dark times are periods of growth and we exit the other side a more complete, or perhaps more sane person.

Why, then, do we think that down times or periods of depression mean there is something wrong with us? Certainly there bouts of depression that are related to medical problems, and others that are debilitating. I'm not talking about that, I'm referring to the periods in our lives where we experience pain and suffering, and need to work past it.

Experiencing loss is probably the most common. Losing a job or a friend, a divorce, death of a loved one are pretty obvious. Not so obvious is transitioning through the phases of life. Moving from childhood to young adulthood, leaving the home, marriage, adulthood, middle age, senior citizen. Those transitions involve a realization that life is changing for us. Sometimes we cognitively realize this, embrace the change, and move through it. More often, though, we look back years later and only then understand we were going through a life transition.

So does going through a life transition, a time of obvious loss, or another period of change constitute the medical condition of depression? Put another way, are these times of pain intended, or anomalies to be treated?

The Bible is full of examples of people experiencing pain and suffering as part of growth. I think, therefore, that times of struggle are normal, good, and intended. I think Chip Ingram's take that we need to learn to suffer well is the wise approach.

My boss once told me that we always have many choices we can make, most of them good - we have to be careful to choose the best one. I'd modify that somewhat: we have many choices we can make, we need to look for the wisest one.