A Few Good Words

Ok, so there’s no story here; thank goodness. As I study acting and see the stories that are interesting enough to get published, to get the attention of an audience, I am more than a little thankful that mine is not, will not be, among them. My life continues to be interesting to me but not to anyone else except perhaps the polite one who asks me questions to be nice. Sometimes I return the favor and sometimes I don’t. Bottom-line, there aren’t many lives that are interesting enough to tell as a story.

It almost seems that our activities are either happening so fast in sequence that we aren’t able to appreciate what’s happening; or the clock ticks slowly as we wait to keep our next appointment. The key is to have a variety of items to be able to choose s.t. interesting to do while waiting. I’m in a cycle now that is comfortably slow; there is a lot going on but it seems to be spaced apart nicely and the frantic activity of other times isn’t happening. I have more than enough to do and plenty of time to do it.

There are those that precipitate activity when they are with others and those that are more passive and watch the action only getting involved occasionally. There are players and spectators and often the two are interchangeable depending on the circumstances. My take on it is to keep assessing the ratio of one to the other personally and take action to keep the higher percentage in the player category.

There are those who get swallowed up in being spectators and fool themselves into thinking that they are players. This is especially true in sports where people are fans of this team or that and get distracted into thinking their interest is somehow productive. A great portion of their lifetime is spent in vicarious participation to no productive end. The player, regardless of his level of proficiency, is living a fuller life.

From the vantage point of a cell-phone, Email, text messages, and twitter; it is hard to imagine life in previous times. Yet the communication was there and it was complete. Watching Victory at Sea one realizes that naval battles involving fleets of ships and hundreds of aircraft were fought with blinking lights that signaled orders among the fleet. The Civil War was dependent on the telegraph for communication across distances. For hundreds of years the postal service in Europe and then America was the main, and continues to be an important, means of communication. Messages had content even if they were terse and cryptic, much like our text messages of today.

The Pendennis Club, in downtown Louisville still has mahogany writing desks around the reading room where men, there were no women allowed at the time, would pen a short message to a business associate, be it a stockbroker, merchandise buyer, or whomever, and send it via messenger/courier to an office located somewhere else downtown; an earlier version of Email. Our need for rapid communication is not a new phenomenon.

People seem to get caught up in the technology and do it because they can and not because there is a need. This is true of this blog, it isn’t necessary for me to write, no one reads it; I do it because I want to express myself in writing and it is a better medium than a handwritten notebook. One can only wonder how many thousands of lines of writing exist out here in the world. And yet, when a strategy is understood, it doesn’t take long and involved messages to get appropriate action taken.

“Eat less, do more,” “Find, audition, learn lines, rehearse, perform,” “Find horses to ride,” “Call people to do with me,” are examples of the many strategies that I have articulated to pursue what I call my endeavors. These become top of mind when I am at a point of not having s.t. immediate to do, so there is never a time that I don’t have s.t. that I can do to push the envelope of my endeavors. They are also important considerations in my weekly plotting and scheming session on Sunday morning.

The first one has been a big surprise. It has taken more than a year but my weight has gradually gone down twenty pounds without being focused on a program for dieting or exercising. Not only have I lost the weight, I have lost the reflux symptoms, the discomfort at night, and have more energy due to being more physically fit.

The pattern seems to be to have a definite goal or state of being in mind, then an articulated strategy of just a few words, then stated objectives, and a list of tasks to accomplish that move one inexorably closer to the goal. I have found that it has to be easily updated or it becomes too much work. One can spend too much time on the process and not have time to get the desired results. I use an Excel workbook and step through it quickly on Sunday mornings. The basic plan has evolved over the years but it is refreshed annually, which takes much thought and several hours over about ten or so days of elapsed time; I use the time from December 21 to January 1.

So tomorrow morning I will put Beethoven on the CD player, sit down to this screen with a large cup of coffee and delve into the Excel notebook and be confident that I will uncover some more tasks for the week that will lead to the accomplishment of objectives which in turn bring me closer to the desired physical state of being. I am confident that this is consonant with my larger purpose because of the ease with which it is all happening. If it wasn’t moving toward purpose, it would be difficult. Master is mute but he has his way of influencing the events of this lifetime.