2021-11-24 — It’s An All-Day, Everyday Thing

Good morning, my peeps! 😊 As you’ve noticed, I’ve started beginning my post each day with a cluster of personal affirmations, and wow, have I realized just how important they are! They’re not just a morning thing. If I want to become the person I say I want to become, I need to be reminding myself of them over and over and over and over and over throughout the day–all day! I need to weld to my heart and mind that image of what I want the future me to be like. I need to see him everywhere, in everything.

There are so many distractions, so many present-day desires that it’s so easy to focus on what I want now over what I want most.

But the hard truth is, if I wanted it more, forgetting would be a rare thing. I’d be like, “Nope! This ain’t gonna get me there! Ain’t doin’ it. Ain’t goin’ there. Not a chance. Can’t afford it. Not worth it. Moving on, thanks!”

Why don’t I want it more? Enough to remember all day every day? I think part of it is that I haven’t really ever taken the time to create that vision in my mind of what it actually is that I’m working toward–what it looks like, what it feels like! I have little bits and pieces, concepts and words… flashes of what those words mean in practice, and I know I do want those things, but that’s all they are right now, flashes. I’ve never sat down as the architect of my mind and heart and designed the palace of the future Stephen! I’ve never done it!!! I’ve seen the castle on the hill at a distance, and I have a few glimpses of what a room here and there might look like, and I want what I’ve glimpsed; but I haven’t gone in as the architect and then as the interior decorator and fleshed it all out, from foundation to spire. Nope! Haven’t done it!

How do I expect my desires, the ones I want most to overcome what I want now when those ultimate desires are simple abstract flashes and not fleshed-out blueprints, overlain with mocked-up décor?!?!

This is quite the journey!

I keep learning new things to apply at a much faster rate than my ability to apply them–which, of course, is quite normal, but still… there’s so much to do that it’s mind boggling!

I’m grateful, though, to see progress in my personal growth in little bits and pieces much like I see the progress in the house, yard, etc., by virtue of the 5×5 that I’m doing.

But I look at what I’m doing, which is good progress, no illusions there, but I consider how much time I’m actually spending on that growth, which is comparatively little (mostly because a lack of true vision and a lack of focus that have me squirreling away into 1000 different distractions, even though, overall, my “distractions” are actually positive choices. The kicker is that they’re distractions because they’re supplanting the more important priorities on the list! Sure, they’re good things to do, but there’s good, there’s better, there’s best.

So! As the architect and interior designer of my own heart and mind, it’s time to get crackin’! It’s time to flesh it all out, footing to spire–the courtyards, the ballrooms, each wing, each room, each... everything!

How do I want it more? “Educate my desires,” as the saying goes. How do I educate my desires? I have to flesh out, in beautiful detail, what my desires actually look like–the end goal (at least, what I’m capable of imagining in the present. Over time, I’m sure it will be adjusted and refined).

This work as architect and interior designer has quickly risen to the top of the priority list. It might not seem like it has a lot to do with overcoming fear, but it’s actually an indispensable part of overcoming fear. And that feels like an understatement (probably only because we’re so conditioned for communicating with superlatives in modern speak that less absolute terms sound almost dull… but that’s… another topic and doesn’t make the priority list of discussion at the moment. 🙃 And I probably use superlatives too much myself!)

Anyway…

Uh… So! That’s the next challenge for me–draw up blue prints, in minute detail. Arrange and decorate the every space of my mansion, even the courtyard, the exterior walls–everything. Then decorate–all of it.

Folks, it’s time for me to get serious about becoming. I thought I’d been serious. I thought I’d been working hard. I thought I was progressing. And… I was… I am… but I… wow! I feel like see more clearly now, like a whole new vista has opened up, as if standing atop a higher peak looking upon the valley below and the path across the plain that stretches to the glowing horizon of the dawn.

I will not make the mistake of hamster in the parable of the opaque hamster ball. I will not say “now I understand! now I see!” No, I will say, “I see more. I’m grateful. I will make the most of the world I now see. No doubt there is more to see still. I will find that, too, and when I do, I will be grateful, and I will make the most of that world. And on and on I will go into infinity.

No excuses. Bring it on. I fear nothing. I am indomitable.

Boom.

1. I am grateful to have woken up with the headache gone and not feeling this morning like I was feeling last night. Very grateful.
2. I’m grateful to be learning, to be having my eyes opened!
3. I’m grateful to be pumped, excited, rearin’ to go with the new insights that I have.
4. I’m grateful to be recognizing the progress that I’m making–to see it in action during the day as I let go and accept what’s coming to me and see the gift that each experience is, gifts that have the potential to shape me so much!
5. I’m grateful for this blog, for the ability to write and share and have all these things recorded.
6. I’m grateful for the day I have today, for so. much. opportunity. 24 hours packed with opportunity to grow and become. So much more is going to happen by January 1st than simply overcoming fear. So. much. more! (not that overcoming fear is a small thing: It will be monumental. But… my sights are set even higher now! 😬😎😶🙃💪😁 (the mix of thoughts and emotions. 🙂)
7. I’m grateful to have this morning routine. I didn’t plan to be up at 3:30. I actually don’t even know if that’s when I’m getting up because my alarm is blacked out, and I’m just turning it on and off each day, not changing it, and i forgot what time I set it for, but I think it’s 3:30.
8. I’m grateful for all the conveniences that allow me to be so much more efficient with the daily activities, which gives me so much time to focus on things I want to focus on.
9. I’m grateful for the discipline that I’m slowly developing that is allowing me to take more advantage of the time that my efficient lifestyle is providing.
10. I’m grateful for Thanksgiving, for the reminder of the possibility of good relationships among people who could have easily been, and often were, enemies, but who came together in kindness and friendship. We can all do that.

Today’s priority. Just one. It’s tippy top, more important than everything else that I could put on my list of things to do today: Get to work as the architect and designer of my mansion, and create, create, create!

Create the vision of what I hunger for. Put it front and center–educating my desires, such that those desires expand exponentially and obliterate the present-day distractions, those circumstances or wants that, in the moment, so cloud the vision of what I want most that I see not beyond the fog. But the brilliant sun burns off the frail fog, and when I finish that vision, when I complete the castle of Stephen in my heart and mind, it will stoke the fire of unquenchable burning, a burning that I know lay active inside me but has been mostly on simmer.

No more.

Let the fire rage!

Let it consume the dross. Let it consume all but the highest potential I can achieve within myself.

Bring it on.

…

Gosh… how do I transition from that? 🙃 The daily grind feels so… ordinary, lacking the punch and power of the dream!

But… it is the way. It is the path. And… the ordinary path is the extraordinary journey. So… let it be as it is. 🙂

I got up again at my early hour, not letting myself stay in bed more than a minute or two after the alarm went off. Up and going. I realized, as I am this morning as well, how much my new routine is displaced by writing my journal in the morning. I allotted 30 minutes to journal time, but I’ve been writing this morning for… two hours already! And it was similar yesterday, perhaps an hour and a half? It’s pushed out other things–5x5s haven’t been as solid, cold shower and exercise have been missing altogether. Granted, what I’ve been doing is crucial and probably best, but I can’t let that squeeze out the other important things. Some things will drop out, and that’s okay. The cold morning shower is to help with self discipline and empathy. It may not need to be a daily activity if I’m solidly self disciplined, and if I’m able to retain the remembrance of the privileges I receive having been born into the circumstances I enjoy.

Anyway, my morning routine… is going to get swallowed up completely if I’m not careful. It has already this morning.

Moving on… Yesterday, I took my nephew Rafe with me again, but only a little ways into the trip down to Fayetteville, it was clear that he wasn’t feeling well and shouldn’t have come with me today. He started feeling worse and worse, and perhaps just an hour and a half into the trip, we called my hill sister to come and get him. Poor guy.

I did five cars yesterday. The first was a ticking engine diagnosis. When I got there, I couldn’t start the engine because he’d put in five quarts of oil after checking the dipstick and seeing it at the low line.

For those who might not know, the low line is generally about a quart low. If that’s where your dipstick reads, add a half a quart, wait a couple minutes, check again, and repeat. Don’t add five quarts. 🙃 I don’t carry an oil drain pan with me because I don’t do oil changes and normally don’t do jobs that require draining oil, as they’re often really large jobs that require draining oil to complete the repair, not to mention, I don’t have a good way of storing the oil, and it often spills in my work vehicles.

Anyway, so I had to improvise a drain pan and holding container. I went to the apartment complex’s dumpster, which fortunately was full of lovely smelly trash, and there were empty (well, nearly empty) five-gallon buckets of paint. And there was some kind of kids grocery cart toy or something like that. It had a couple of holes in it, but we put duct tape over the holes, and I used that toy as a drain pan. Then I transferred the oil into the 5 gallon bucket, tapped the lid on, and boom. Problem solved.

The tick sounded like a lifter tick, which is a bigger job than I do, so I sent them to a nearby shop to get that fixed.

The second job was a no start that turned out to be a problem with the security system, the car recognizing that the key fob was present but not recognizing it as the right key, so it wouldn’t let the car start. I tried another fob as well, but neither worked, which means that it’s probably either a software issue that needs to be reprogrammed, or there’s an issue with the module itself, which would probably need to be reprogrammed after being replaced, so… the second job was also something I don’t really do–funny. That doesn’t happen much.

Third job was… oh, what was it… Let me go look… Ah, yes! Front pads and rotors on a 2007 Honda Odyssey, as well as a new battery.

Fourth job was kind of funny. I showed up to diagnose a 2007 Chevrolet Trailblazer. When I got there, the SUV looked like one I used to own a couple of years ago. Then the customer said his name, and I was like, that sounds familiar. I started diagnosing the car and realized they’d simply ran it out of gas. It was parked nose down on a steep driveway, and so all the leftover gas, which was already low, was in the front of the tank, and the pump was either in the middle of the tank or more to the rear, I believe.

I mentioned to the gentleman that I used to own a Trailblazer of the exact same year and color, and I told him I sold it a couple of years ago, and that’s when we realized that this was my old Trailblazer, and he was the guy I’d sold it to!! 🙃 Funny.

Anyway, I had him put it in neutral, and I pushed the vehicle to where it’s nose was slightly uphill, and then we primed the fuel system, fired her up, and I followed him to the nearest gas station.

Fun.

Last car was a 2008 Honda Civic starter job, a car that was stuck in a Walmart Go gas station in Bentonville right over by the AutoZone. I should have said “no” to the job, honestly, as yesterday was my southern route and today is my northern route. But I said, yes. The job went decently well. The hardest part of the whole job is getting the power cable nut onto the new starter because they designed it in such a way that the stiff power cable curves up and over the place the nut goes, such that it covers it up, and not only that, there’s a rubber boot that fits snugly over the tightened nut. It’s… not a design I’d choose were I in charge, but hey, props to the people who even design these amazing machines in the first place. Talk about genius to create something like a car.

Anyway, just getting that nut on probably took… 15-20 minutes? Just a guess… having to hold it in tight quarters with two hands in awkward ways, trying to hold the starter still, because the nut isn’t accessible in the installed position, so you have to tighten it down first. So you hold it still with one hand. Then with the other hand, you have to pull that rubber boot out of the way (stretching it fairly firmly), while at the same time trying to get the washer on without the cable popping it off and then getting the nut on, all that in the little tiny space left with that cable blocking access.

For future reference to myself, the best way to do it is to use a socket to start the nut (contrary to conventional and normally correct procedure).

By that time, I was feeling rather ill myself. A headache that started felt like it was making the migraine turn, and I was starting to get nauseous. It was good practice to remind myself, the obstacle is the way. The struggle is the path. It’s the most effective way to become who I want to beceome.

Anyway, got all that done. Home just a little before 8, where I ate a small dinner, took a migraine pill and some Ester-C, took a hot shower, failing to get all the oil off, even with intense scrubbing, made my brief video, and then it was time for bed.

I played my guitar for a couple minutes, inspired by having played it the day before.

So… that was the day! I made progress. I noticed during my brake job that I was able to pull myself back into positive, pull the seeds of frustration back out of the soil and to choose gratitude and growth. I feel like I wrote about that already… but whatever. I saw growth. I saw progress, and I’m grateful!

Daily Accountability

• Bed last night at 8:30: I think I was close!
• Up at 3:30: 😎
• 5x5s: I got some stuff done, I think.
• Exercise: Nope. Nada.
• Cold shower: Nope. Nada.
• Meditation: Yes, in a different way. 😎
• Breakfast: 😎
• NP Work: Yes! I bought a new domain name: TheOneHeartProject.org. Thoughts? Please do comment!!! There’s already a “OneHeartProject.org,” but it looks defunct? Nothing new since 2019 on their site, and there’s another organization called “The One Heart Project, I just realized, but they… are based in Texas? I need to learn how it all works!
• Tax Work: 😎
• Lunch: 😎
• Work done by 6: Not quite. Late yesterday. Like 7:25 when I finished, I think it was.
• Dinner: 😎
• Only truly healthy foods: 😎
• No Wasted Life: 😎
• No Distracted Driving: 😬🤦‍♂️
• Faced a Fear: Uh… I can’t even remember?
• Tamed the tongue: 😎
• Bag of veggies: Veggie-laden dinner.

Overall, it was a really positive day. Progress is being made, more and more, and I’m grateful!

My love and thanks to all of you for lifting me in my journey. I continue to hope that the benefit is mutual! 🙂

Lift the World

~ stephen