Welcome Back

Tuesday 8/3 I posted Day #1 but my actual 1st day was Monday. I’ve corrected my
numbering and from now on new posts come Tuesday & Thursday.

Link to Day 1 of this season, Link to Last Post in Last Season

I’m excited to jump right into some details of what I’m committing to do in and for the next 60 days. I’ll include a recap of my 1st somewhat successful attempt to blog my life journeys toward the end, or you can follow the link above for more explanation of what’s going on in this blog.

The New Season:

The Transition Season: On the Topic of July. When I got to the end of May and still hadn’t completed the renovation, I started getting depressed. It felt like it would never end. I pushed hard, but there was always another 3 days of solid work no matter how long or fast I worked. After a few arguments with my wife I went to God and he said that I was in a transition season. I needed to take my foot off the striving pedal and rest/recover/recreate for awhile. So that’s exactly what I did for June and July. Now I sense it’s time to start getting back to work.

Goals for 2021 Transition Season

To start, it’s worth a quick note that I build my journey plans around four quadrants that reflect my values/priorities b/c part of the goal of doing these is to not neglect important areas of my life. One goal is to avoid overwhelm another is to avoid chronic survival mode syndrome. My quadrants change and clarify over the years but right now they’re Relationship (God/Family/Friends), Health, Wealth, Wisdom (Organization).

My goals/priorities last season–addressed in one project (One Big Thing), include
* Losing weight (Using Optivia to kick start things – more info to come).
* Bed by 9:30 PM & getting up at 5:30 AM weekdays, time with God (which includes writing this blog).
* Launching the coaching arm of my writing/coaching business.
* Finish work on new home without losing my peace.

I’m adding two more goals, which is dangerous and tough but I believe if I stagger the start of these I can do it, because the work on our new home is at a place where I can do a little here and there.

My new goals are…
* Write book two of my science fiction book, Saber and Science.
* Complete two elements of my Organization System (ORGSys)

The reason I need to complete my ORGSys is…
it will speed up everything else I’m trying to do,
I’ve been wanting to work on it for ages,
I believe it’s foundational to elements of the business I’m launching.

The reason I’m committing to write a sequel to my scifi is that I haven’t written fiction since I’ve become a father. It’s time to get back to it and that particular book ends too incomplete for me. (Also, I’ve had a couple of readers ask for it.)

So let’s talk schedule for a moment.

I call this a 63 day season because some goals (diet & sleep schedule) I’m doing for that long in the hopes of burning them into my lifestyle. Other goals (book drafting & house reno) are shorter, and if I do them in series, I can reallocate the time from one to the next as they’re completed.

Long projects and medium projects have different ways they go wrong. My long term projects require self control. My medium projects will often take more time or get rescheduled because of other peoples availability. So the plans are a little fluid.

I’ve already started both long projects. The diet is going well–not counting that I’m grumpy from hunger. (I’ve lost 3 lbs so far.) I’m still trying to retrain myself to get up at 5:30.

I’ve already had to shift and pivot some on my medium projects, which is just how it goes. God is good and working things out. My plan was to transfer my cell phone notes to the program Workflowy, and finish the shed this week. Then go on a camping with the guys this weekend. Instead I finished unpacking my office restarted this blog, my contractor had a medical emergency delaying the shed and the guys camp out was postponed to next week. Which reminds me, I probably won’t have a post next Tuesday.

I may still get to my workflowy project (which is one of the elements of my ORGSys I mentioned before) this week. All things considered, my week has gone well.

Note: There is more details to come on each of these projects in the coming weeks.

How Last Season Ended:

So How did Spring 2021 Cleric Journey Go?

…I abandoned updating you about day…34. I feel bad about that. I intended to blog my way through what I knew would be a tough season. I meant for the blog to help me remember that my life is bigger than the giant, difficult, “thing” that looms at me. I stopped blogging because I got way too busy and as I thought might happen, my life quickly became all about the big thing.

Spring 2021 Cleric Journey had a lot of success. I notice most seasons are a mix of wins and losses. Either way I glean more wisdom from them now that I track them better, which is the short version of why started blogging them last Spring. My hope is that you could learn from my experiences and get inspired to have you’re own. Quite selfishly, I also hoped that by publicly committing to it I’d follow through more. Did it work, enough to try it again.

What is a Journey? When I see big changes coming, or a big project, I like to create a focused plan for it that combines the less tangible things I find important–so they don’t get lost. The main reason is I can’t live a prolonged season under the tyranny of the urgent.

I’m a writer (fiction/non-fiction/copy). It takes a certain amount of focus and time to write a book, or say…renovating a house my wife and I bought with my mom. So the challenge, and I do enjoy the process, is to discern a plan that allocates resources more evenly.

Another link that might help if you’re new is this one which I wrote before starting the last season I tried to blog through. It explains what I was trying to do in blogging out my seasons: Christian Influence Peddling.

Last Season Goals Recap:

A major inspiration for “Spring 2021 Cleric Journey” was turning 50. You’ll be glad to know that I did in fact turn 50. My wife through a huge party–I really felt loved the whole month. I knew I had some head junk to work on, so I started blogging the journey. I also created a “Fit by 50” plan which was a good plan. With a few tweaks it forms the basis of many of my plans in my new season. I even took a grief recovery class to officially mourn the things that didn’t go as planned in the first half of my life, which I strongly encourage everyone mourning a loss or facing a change to do.

I thought I was prepared. I was NOT. I know it’s just a number, but this one pounded me. I’m glad I prepared as much as I did. Combined with letting the house renovation really take over my focus I felt in a tale spin the last half of April to the end of June. Praise God, July I got my footing back.