How we kill the swirl of overwhelmingness
We all go through the motions: shower, work, good morning co-workers, tick-tick tasks, drive, steer; too quickly the day is done. Even a day that seems to go by slowly is too fast, with another on its heels! Cleaned, list-relist: get groceries: scrub-scrub: laundry: cheer-cheer: kids: grind-grind: sports: oh! more drive-drive: accelerate… Now in the 21st century journey we aimlessly abide. The work-family-career cycle can seem endless and unclear while are immersed in it. The truth is that it is not never ending. At times it may be frustrating, but it is also important to reflect on the greatness of this type of overwhelming chaotic existence as great fortune.But we typically don’t see the great fortune through the thick of it. Only when I can look back into the loop, do I see the reflection that leads to the an understanding of the beauty of simplicity.
Yes, for Mosedale Integrated Solutions (MIS), taking a step back, thinking about any given situation, enjoying a cup of coffee in an effort to redirect from the hard problems with a brief chat, or perhaps a distraction in Mother Nature can lead us or our team to approach an issue from a clearer angle and find a solution. This does not always work. We can bang our heads against the wall, that’s overwhelming, so we enter the cycle again, try again, only to find the redirect option, and use it to pull out of confusion and begin anew with a fresh perspective to solve or minimize the pain of the problem.
Pulling it all apart
I am in the computer Internet Technology business. I work with systems and machines. These objects do not redirect, they do not look at the gray escape areas that lend us insight to the subtleties of a problem overlooked. They are ‘on or off’.I reason, so by nature, on occasion, I enter the grey area of distraction (cloud gaze, coffee stop). Recalibrating is the explanation of how and why I can successfully kill the binary outcome I want. Recently I made a presentation (a career explaination) to a group of 10th graders at a local high school. I understood that too much technology jargon could very easily be overwhelming, and information they did not need or even want to hear. Knowing this, I looked at it as a good exercise for me to sugar off an explanation and simplify the binary intricacies of my work in Internet Technology. I noticed these young adults were savvy, and aware, but also caught into the swirls of social, and cultural throws. How do I know? 1. I’ve been there; 2. My experience indicates it as an adult who’s experiences have built a certain character of understanding. What is the confused, giddy, sophomore’s redirect, for their overwhelming swirl? A digital escape? No, that is where they exist regularly. How about, sports, or family? Yes, a valid explanation. But let’s remember that growing young adults, however we treat them (mature or like a kid) are not in full rapid physical and emotion change. We think we have it bad when delayed on the way to take the kids to hockey, or that one work task that keeps morphing and changing as you try to complete it. Heck, these 10th graders see delays, disruptions, and change as if through a microscope, and on a minute-by-minute basis. Remember, though, they are our future workforce our future leaders. Go get ’em young adults!
I guess, at the end of the day, who cares about the small stuff: the work cycle, the day-to-day chores; it’s all good, it’s all there. Fuck it. I’m not trying to be selfish but the attitude I adopt is to ball it all up (the overwhelmingness, the ferris wheel detail cycle that seems to pull us in all directions). I cock my head and neck and redirect, diffuse and blurr, and peel the overwhelming issues apart. However big, the bottom line is to arrange issues in a easy fashion and knock them down, one at a time. If that does not work, grab a coffee, look at the clouds, or ceiling tile for a bit (clouds are recommended), find a friend and reach out. After a little break, dive back into fold to kill the overwhelming feelings.
Recently in a busy overwhelming state, I noticed that the friend’s outreach was key for me to move to success, and beyond productivity blocks. A great share and reflection recently by Jon Westenberg in Medium made me say out loud ‘Yes, Yes’, we ride in these cycles and Jon explains that so does everyone else in his piece, Last night, I panicked. I was scared I’d been wrong. This speaks to the entrepreneurs aloneness, the sacred expectations of failure, the unknown unseen outcomes of goals never met. He, shares, reflects, and I realize there are a lot of us in the same area. Along the same thread in my distracted reading and communication cycle I reached out to a good friend. He told me we were “on the same raft”. This was the undertone analogy of Westernberg’s blog piece. It is always great to connect with my good friend, Ross Thurber. We have a friendship that is defiance by going years without ever talking and suddenly if we were to reconnect it would be like no time had gone by. That is usually not the case but our understanding and relationship is strong and I’m proud of that. So reflection, redirect, the distraction for the overwhelming cycle brings reconnection and current work and personal connections and the celebration of sharing similarities.
This is what makes me, the human, Andy Mosedale, keep going. It makes Ross Thurber, and even the young wide sophomores keep going, human. all others we work with daily and cycle in and out of the fold of overwhelmingness with. So a smile and visual gazed into the clouds, even a thoughtful poem, is enough to rekindle a fire that keeps us burning through the cycle as best we can and knocking them all down. I thank all i’m involved with every day, I look at the reasons to keep going: my wife, and two teenagers reflect on the challenges and use all and any means to stay in the loop as I define it, not as it defines me. On that note I want to share with you a poem by Ross Thurber, farmer, friend, brother, the natural flesh of me that make us both who we are.
BELL FOUNDRY
Let winter sink into a soft spring night.
May valley fog rise to the foothills and the foothills be buried in a purple cloak.
I’m giving the torch up for a bell.
One founded from river current, sun stroked beech leaves and April’s stippled light.
I’m giving the torch up for a bell.
A mold cast in ashes of rose, heaving fieldstone, a frost seeded tone that will reach all the bare places.
I’m giving the torch up for a bell.
A morning toll that makes the dew lapped sounds of poems when you wake.
Here is the inverted vessel holding no weighty burden ringing with resonate airlessness, peeling with the shape that makes the sound of the fullness of time.
Ross Thurber
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