heathervescent

Bad Habits of the Technologic

Technology has generally improved my life. But there is one activity where it has definitely screwed me up. Since using communication technology (specifically mostly text and voice without video) I have seriously increased my interrupting. I've been watching it increase significantly over the past 6 months, floundering, not knowing what to do. I hate it when I am interrupted, and even more so, hate it when I catch myself doing it. Sometimes you have to on a conference call, since there are no non-verbal cues. But more recently... I am bulldozing into conversations and sentences without a concern for who is talking... and I blame it on (well besides myself) my significant use of text communication. 

Yes. Increased text communication has increased my interruption of people, even when I am face to face. The text communication has shifted the way I communicate on a core level. Here's how. (And why.)

Background: I spend a significant amount of time in text chats on Skype. I would say, at least 10-20 hours a week. (That's probably an under-estimate.) Since I am in a geographically dispersed team. I spend another 10+ hours communicating in extremely clear emails or email conversations. These are not dissimilar from the skype chats, except that the conversations take days.

In both these situations, I am in control of when and what I communicate. I do not have to wait my turn to write and send an email. There can be 3 people texting in the group chat at the same time. Sure, I have to wait to get my answer, but if someone asks a question, we are not limited to one response at a time. Two people can respond (or in the face to face world, would be speaking) at the same time. However in the speaking world, you generally notice your error and someone stops. One can't parse two voice streams at the same time. However one can parse two (or more) typed streams.... and we are doing this more and more.

Threaded, nested and parallel conversations are not out of the ordinary. Many of us have these all the time. On our cell phone, smart phone or mobile device, text, twitter, email, gchat, work email, facebook. We are all getting very good at parsing and following multi-level/threaded stories and conversations.

<Reminds me of the time I was having three conversations with two other people. I was in Brasil and my broth was visiting me. He did not speak any Portuguese. We were out with a friend who didn't speak any English. I was have a conversation in English with my brother, in Portuguese with my friend and translating the conversation between my brother and my friend into the appropriate Portuguese or English.>

Back to my interruptions. Being exposed, living and creating the environment where it's all text, there are no verbal cues, where there is never an interruption (or alternately, it's all an interruption) has completely fucked with my ability to wait to hear what other people say. 

It's not that I don't want to hear what they have to say. I'm just used to not having to wait to hear them. That, I can say what I want to say, while they are saying (typing) what they want to say. This breaks down in verbal words, where one must wait for another to finish speaking.

This is exacerbated by the soapbox. Once you get on a roll, and no one is interrupting you, well, it's hard to stop. It's like being stuck in a traffic jam and then suddenly all the traffic went away and you have the clear, wide open road.

I don't like interrupting people. But I don't know how to stop. I know how and why I got sucked back into interrupting. (The technology re-programmed parts of my communication methodologies), but.... how to get back. How to show the respect to those who are speaking, those who I _want_ to hear.

It's a problem of switching mediums. Of switching the accepted communication methods. The primary method become the default. And unfortunately for my verbal conversations, that has changed.

Atone

Burned Joshua Tree
Originally uploaded by heathervescent

On this day of Atonement, I bring you the Earth-inspiration for the Shrike.

I believe in an (actually multiple) intelligent (encoded with data) energy (ies) that flows through everything in the universe. Call it God if you like the old paradigm. Call it a force. What we name it, does not change it.

This year, I'm done with the tree. I'm coming down. No more suffering. If I'm as self-actualized as I say I am (and have been in the past), then I (as braided intelligent encoded energies) proclaim the next year to be prosperous.

It has been written.

Testing

Testing from the handheld collective consciousness.

Self-Responsibility / Responsibility for Self

My Twitter Friend TechnoShaman, pointed me to this brief post this morning, which I later had a fun conversation with CoCreatr: 

[W]illing to be wholeheartedly accountable for ourselves—for who we are and how we are. Heroically, we must be ready to accept unconditional responsibility for the seen and unseen consequences of everything that has ever happened to us.

What a wonderful sentiment, such easier said/typed than practiced. It's easy to take responsibility for all the great things you help happen, contribute to, motivate. But what about your shitty self? Even most aware people are not aware when they are acting like a jerk. (And yes, everyone acts like a jerk.) I had a wonderful learning opportunity in area recently. 

Most people have trouble taking responsibility for their crappy moves, behaviors, words.  I have trouble myself. I don't want to acknowledge that I wasn't acting at my highest, most enlightened level.  Part of this is because it's much easier for people to remember the bad experiences. One negative thought outweighs twice as many great ones. Taking responsibility for our crappy selves acknowledges that we are not always the picture perfect person we think we are. And while that is a great thing for us as individuals taking responsibility. However there is the response. 

What is your reaction, your response, when someone, who has acted less than enlightened for a moment, takes responsible for them-self and their actions? 

Drinking from the Same Font

I wrote about influence earlier. Drinking from the same font sometimes looks like influence, but is decidedly not.

Several years ago, when I first began blogging, I was constantly compared to a certain well-known blogger. It was uncanny how similar our topic focuses were. It irked me to no end that I was so often compared to her, because part of my core identity is authentic uniqueness. I am not happy being one in a million. I want to be one for all time. I want there to be no one remotely like me now, in the past, or the future. A pattern unrepeatable. So, you can see that, even though those people were just trying understand me, they pissed me off.

The comparison caused me to go more underground. If I had joined forces, I could have become one in my own right (and I did some secret collaboration).

In retrospect, I realize we were drinking from the same font. There was no cross-pollination. No cross-influencing. We each arrived at the same font from different paths.

Enlightenment Hierarchy

We were joking around a few weeks ago, my colleagues and teachers. I was jesting that I was really getting in tune with my asshole self (after a series of completely fucked up non and mis-communications that painted me in the biggest asshole picture possible.) Instead of blaming someone else's lack of communication or understanding on the mis-hap, I just owned my assholeness. Someone quipped that you could see my teacher's discipline for exact body placement as bitchiness, which she duly owned and played up. If your foot is off 1 millimeter, believe me, you will hear about it. (Used to drive me crazy!)

After our conversation I got thinking. About a messed up hierarchy of enlightenment. Whereas after certain years of diligence you reach the asshole level. Then if you continue to work hard, you can reach the bitch level. And then if you dedicate your life and work really hard, you can finally reach the top level: Self-Righteousness.

I like to think of it as the backward walk to enlightenment. Hell, I've been enlightened for almost a decade or more and where has it gotten me? I still have to deal with all the same shitty people in the world. And now, I get to see with such clarity when I am a shitty individual myself. Whoo-wee! I'm an enlightened self-righteous bitchy asshole!

You'd better get out of my way and drive!

ps. Enlightenment is not something that is attained once and for all, but practiced and revealed.

Influence

Have you ever been in the presence of someone who changed you? When you were around them, you had awesome ideas, things just clicked, you had an epiphany, something made sense, you felt extra creative, motivated, felt like you could do anything? Just understood things? Everything fell into place? Or maybe you were motivated to follow some idea? Or maybe an idea just popped into your head and your life changed! You now have a reason to live. You're suddenly fascinated in something that you never gave a second thought.

You're under the influence.

Those things in your head. They are not you. They did not come from you.

Yes, you were receptive. (Or maybe the ideas were just flying off someone else). But they are not your ideas.

Ideas can not be owned. They can only be executed. Ideas flow into this world, asking to be made real. Anyone who is a true conduit of ideas, knows they do not come from them-self. They come from somewhere else. Nebulous. Undefined. Possible. Conduits to the ideas that flow, like water.

Flow.

Until they are captured. Pooled up. Executed. Realized.

Before realization though, there is definition. There is crystallization. There is plucking the possibility and pulling it into the probable and then finally all the challenges of execution and real-ization. Manifest-ation.

Usually the person who (successfully) executes an idea gets the credit for the idea. This makes me sick. And, while yes, execution is a difficult task, often not-successful. The messy, nebulous, focusing, defining, initial steps are CRITICAL, pre-requisites before one can even step to the starting line in the race to execution. To realize the idea.

That's what some people do. They influence.  

The mere fact of them being present changes you. Causes you to think differently. Causes you to see things. To find meaning. To be motivated. You snap up the idea. You run with it. You execute on it. You think it's your idea. You _make_ it your idea. You don't see the influence.

On ReFinding Passion

I'm a passionate individual. I get really excited about things I should probably not be so excited. But lately, I've felt sucked dry. I've got this list of items in my life to change and as I was reviewing them, it occurred to me they were all external changes. A shifting of my environment to affect my mood, motivation, perception of reality. 

Jeeze, what a lot of work! And then, who knows how much an impact those things will have. So better to self-motivate internally. It's time to refill my flask from the font of heathervescent. To tap into the part of me that positively energizes and inspires me.

Solid Ground

I use metaphors to motivate myself and make sense of my life. This year I have been in an active identity change cycle, although having trouble shedding some of the previous successes and baggage. I kept thinking that I want to get on solid ground, to be grounded. So I did a thought experiment. I started thinking about the universe. How is the universe grounded? Then I thought about the moon. How is it grounded? Then I thought about the earth. How is it grounded? I saw the universe full of these spinning spheres. It's not laying on a tabletop somewhere - and the earth is certainly not sitting on the back of some elephant dancing on a turtle through the stars of the universe. The planet is grounded in its core. At the center of the spinning somewhat organized elements is the center. The ground.

That's a good metaphor. You can't look to something else to ground you. Something for you to stand on. We're each all spinning in the universe. There is nothing above, nothing below. But there is something inside, and that's where you can find your strength. And I guess, that's where I have to look to find my solid footing.