elainegrey

My planning for my 43rd year (which began in March)

( probably posted in February )

It is interesting to contrast my "ten week" goal setting with its irregular blocks of time to SCRUM. One of the repeated pieces of advice is to keep the blocks of time consistent so the teams can develop a rhythm. My "ten week" year is broken into a rhythm that reflects the change of seasons and my summer high: 2 months, 2 months, 4 months, 2 months, 2 months. My time and my planning is wheel of the year sacred personal time compared to secular work time of scrum. It still supports the inspect and adapt function, though, and i think that's been part of the value.

May is here and it is a new start for me. I think the Spring season (which i start at my birthday, mid way between Candlemas and the spring equinox) was mainly focussed on Christine's surgery.

This season we're wrapping up that focus. I expect by the end of June we'll be transitioning into a new household rhythm where the new SCRUM rhythm at my office needs to mesh with Christine's new work rhythms. I think at the end of June we might be ready to begin thinking through a plan to "sell the Honda 900 and buy a very used Jeep." We'll want to get away to celebrate her successful recovery from the surgery.

I think i'm feeling the stress of developing new habits at the same time. The new SCRUM work habits reinforce and amplify the "Conditions of Enoughness." The Satisfaction Finder misses an explicit "inspect and adapt" loop, but the "conditions of enoughness" are a very similar practice of breaking things down into small conceivable chunks.

Adapting to new habits takes energy: getting exercise, changing diet, just as much as a discipline of recognizing a reasonable, possible set of things i could do in a realistic day and be satisfied with what i'd done.

I think this Beltane season needs to focus on Practice, Celebration, and Planning. Practice means instead of doing new things, i can just focus on the new way to enforce habits. Because i'm practicing with what i've got, and that seems Enough, i'm going to say "No" to out of the usual things. I won't go Quarterly or do Bike to Work day, and i won't ask myself to "Virtually Attend" the stack of events in my list of things to do. Practice means adding those events to next year's wheel of the year, though!

Clearly, a big part of my stress is that i'm changing, seeing change, and wanting to be changed. The little steps, i've made just wants me to have more done. For example, i bought little organization baskets/drawers for my desk. I am so delighted with my sense of improved workspace. It's magnificent! And that make me even more acutely aware of junk drawers and stacks of unprocessed letters and papers and so on. Yesterday during a call i cleaned up one of the supply drawers and my 3x5 card kit. There's a part of the urge that feels like procrastination, but i should allow myself this sense of "spring cleaning" that seems to be part of this sense of new process.

Yesterday, work took all my spoons. It was good work, but i do seem to resent it. I am frustrated because the work travel and Quaker travel sandwich my birthday time: i want to be involved in the larger Quaker community, but i also want to have reflection time around my birthday. The Quaker time is engagement time. The work is engagement. I have to recover from engagement in order to have good reflection.

Fiddlesticks. Want, want, want.

But maybe, maybe even the need for a grand year planning is evolving away. Maybe, maybe i'm growing to where the intentionality of day to day doesn't have to be planned and reflected upon, but it comes up out of the matrix of what is. It feels "wrong" in this culture of forecast planning and all the discourse of "successful people have goals" and so on: reflecting on the previous year and forecasting one's future seems like the responsible thing to do.

I suppose part of it, too, is the learning i did with the Satisfaction Finder and practicing counting spoons and practicing delight with my therapist: i want so very much -- but i need to "make friends" with my limitations: whether that's my depression, or the fact this week has early phone calls all the way through, or that my energy is depleted by engagement. If i spend less time and energy railing against not having my way (oh, hi, inner three year old!) i will have that energy to spare for joy.

So, as March-April are my first season of my Technetium* Y043** i will recognize that my goal is to support Christine through her surgery preparation and recovery, participate in fiscal year planning and SCRUM training (staffing planning) at work.

I've made my plans about vacation time: i am targeting an accrual of a month of vacation by July 1 as "savings," in case of some health issue that pulls me out or a job termination.

Here is my visioning for the year:

0. I wish to flow with all the cycles in time, both the external seasons, days, tides and my internal shifts and swings, so that i may be and do in right order.

1. I wish to be fully well when i am well, being in that moment. When i am not well, i wish to welcome and be with that state as well.

2. I wish to both open myself to others but also to welcome them into my openness.

3. I wish to be listening when i am called to connect with community.

4. I wish to ask questions and listen to the answers as i discern right work.

5. I wish to nurture myself with my enjoyment of creating.

6. I wish to live in a space that feels welcoming and comfortable.

* I amuse myself by naming my years after elements
** The Long Now and Y2K taught me to plan in advance, so i leave space for a long life time

--==∞==--

So, what do i do in the short run? Maybe play with copper when i get home or, if i can manage, go take a walk if i'm home early enough.

And not rail against the 6 am phone call about data loading on my birthday, tomorrow.

--==∞==--

This morning, i bestirred my mind by taking a move in the ever-running Lexulous game between Christine, her sister, and myself.

CALM, CLAM,... CULMINATE

I don't think i've ever had a bingo that cleared my rack, on a triple word score. It also was a perfect word to end the game.

I expect work today will take all my spoons. I hope that i don't have the additional issue of the facial and scalp pain that developed yesterday. It had been gone for so long -- i don't think i recall an incident in the past few years, since the diet experiment, for sure.