I’ve had a hard time being single-minded this morning, being focused. Truck day is a short day and one-half now away from our door. I am still carting much of my work materials from my room over to our new home, so I can “pick up from where I left off” without much of a delay, and I still have a heavy four drawer file to unload so the guys can carry the file out.
The computer age did not minimize paperwork for me. Why is that? Am I a compulsive hard-copy die-hard who won’t give in? I usually know how to catagorize hard copies in files or binders (and I have many) but I’m not so sure I can find what I want in my computer saved files. I think I will work on that next year.
Meanwhile, brain-wave and bodily cellular stimulation arrives in books mentioned by email I get from friends, and I have to explore, and get lost in “the next thing I want to know”.
I am in the midst of planning a January party for Tom’s 70th birthday, with invites yet to print out; I have scheduled a January Wondrous Women gathering and another workshop just confirmed for January where I will begin to build on my work. And messages concerning both of those are running along the neural pathways of my brain, chattering all the while they do. More paperwork!
At this moment, Tom is wrangling with our Network provider, by telephone, car trip downtown and back and now again on telephone, trying to get our service cancelled here to begin new at our home. And they gave him a choice — as in — Now, or comeback tomorrow to end it tomorrow, two trips! So this may bleep into cyberspace at any moment.
The CHOICE now is to quickly get my post on Choices on my Napkinwriter — then return to boxing and packing. Let’s see if I can stick with it!
NOTES taken in my 1994 Skidmore Writer’s Conference Notebook.
The class I was in was Dr. Benjy Brooks, a pediatric surgeon, and world emissary of good among the world’s children. She was talking about choices that day. Here are my notes:
“We are what we repeatedly do.”
“Excellence is not an Act but a Habit.” Aristotle
The Power of a Choice, using Victor Frankle’s example from Nazi-war-torn Europe and Auchwitz prison camp: “It is not what they do to you. It is what I think about what they do to me.”
Patterns of Success Choices.
1) Choices that build me up. Take absolute responsibility for self. Life is a series of opportunities.
2) Choices that pull me down. Complain. The risk I’m thinking about taking is not an opportunity.
…I create the rain that falls on self.
…I partake in negative self-talk.
…I am always “too something”, old, fat, young, dumb
3) Break Even Choices
….I don’t even recognize I have a choice.
….I never make a choice
….I utilize little of my potential
Steps to take:
A. Ask “What type am I? ” Do I know what pattern I am?
B. Ask “Is the present pattern working for me?”
C. Look at the pattern of people around me who make choices.
D. Ask “How can I improve my choices or pattern of how I make my choices?”
Followup by these suggestions: (you have a choice to do these or not!)
Listen within. Clarify my choices. Act on my choice. Don’t give into, “I’ll wait until…” Learn to recognize the old programs, the old programs that once worked for you but you know they do not work anymore. Stop majoring in minor things.”
Make a Choice.
Set a Goal.
Create an atmosphere around you that supports you.
Reward yourself!
Try those four choices pertaining to something (one thing) about the Christmas and holy day season for 21 days, the time it takes to form a habit. See what happens and enjoy the reward you CHOOSE.
Napkinwriter 