What's The Story You're Trying To Tell?

Narratives occur in real life. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Social media makes it easier to share such stories to the world with tailored pictures and posts.

It can be fun being the main character in a story. I remember as a kid in school always pretending to be a superhero. Spider-Man. Wolverine. Batman (I was an adult at that point 😉).

Something more than I was.

We do it still as adults. Trying to live up to the stories we tell ourselves about us. It's a lot of pressure to be a star.

Are we slaves to our "fame"?  Maybe instead we are actors upon the world.

What's the story you're trying to tell?

New "Toy" To Play With

Introspectors gonna introspect.

That describes me perfectly. I've taken almost every self-assessment I come across. I know my personality type, how people see me, my enneagram numbers, my weight and measurements over the years. I understand where StrengthFinder puts me.

Even my ancestry and how we migrated to the US centuries ago.

I'm the world's leading expert on me...and I still don't know much.

Have you heard of "quantifying yourself"? It's also known as lifeblogging. Wikipedia says this about it.

Quantified self, also known as lifelogging, is a specific movement by Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly from Wired magazine, which began in 2007 and tries to incorporate technology into data acquisition on aspects of a person's daily life. People collect data in terms of food consumed, quality of surrounding air, mood, skin conductance as a proxy for arousal, pulse oximetry for blood oxygen level, and performance, whether mental or physical. Wolf has described quantified self as "self-knowledge through self-tracking with technology."

If you track any health markers, even just wearing a FitBit, you're 'lifeblogging.'

I stumbled across an app called Welltory that consolidates all the information to give you health measurements along with tracking HRV (Heart Rate Variability). The goal is to measure stress and energy so you can work to balance out and perform at optimal levels. They say 'energy management instead of time management.'

I'm really good at time management. Not that great at energy management. Most of the time I'm one

project away from burnout again.

So I'm giving it a shot to avoid flaming out again.

Reflections...

Last week a friend died. Unexpected. It hit on a lot of levels.

I met him before his son died. Then afterward, in GriefShare where I helped him walk through the grief journey.

To see the progression from grieving father who couldn't make it through the first cycle to someone who made it through the second. He came back.

Not only came back, he became one of us, and joined the team comforting as he'd been comforted.
Then he died right before the cycle began.

We looked at a new flock of wounded people while likewise wounded. Then the next day we went to his funeral. The videos we show have a new light to them even after seeing them at least 7 times now.

I have a slight fatalistic streak. It comes from so many dying at once.

One in an accident. Four the next year with two within days of each other. Two after that. Four more in 2016.

Accidents, sudden health issues, miscarriages...

It leads to odd thoughts. Like what are people going to say when I die? How many will be there? Will God let me watch my own funeral?

It's one of the painful parts of marriage when you think about it. When you say, "I Do" when the minister asks if you'll take your spouse until death do you part.

It's something that stays in the back of my mind. The eventuality that eventually I or my wife will die.

How will we deal with that?

Poorly I am sure. Sometimes I think about it, like an inoculation. When you consider the eventual death of a spouse it gives perspective.

Was that argument really that important?

Do you spend enough time with them?

Personally, I'm thinking we need to print off some pictures. We have tons of them. Time froze on paper.

Death makes you think...

Ignorantly Brilliant

We tend to think people with high IQs are smart, and they are. It takes more than that though. I have a higher than average IQ, and have been called "brilliant".

The thing is I still do some pretty dumb stuff. Common sense stuff.

IQ tests cover a variety of areas, we are wired to be stronger in some ways, and weaker in others.
I'm strongest with spelling, yet feel stupid when I play Scrabble. That hurts as a writer.

And no one will ever accuse me of being good at math.

A week and a half ago I was visiting a friend at work. He's a software engineer. I looked at his computer screen, made no sense to me.

He's trained. I'm not. Focused IQ.

That same day I got to fly a C-130 simulator. I "killed us on multiple occasions" even knowing how aerodynamics work. Countless switches.

Training again.

I go to an in-depth Bible class. Really smart people are there. I feel dumb and I love it.
Hang around people smarter than you. You have your areas of expertise, they have theirs. You can always learn.

Socrates allegedly said, "I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing."
That's a helpful way to get around the cognitive-bias called The Dunning-Krueger Effect. It's a bias where incompetent people don't realize they're incompetent.

Know anyone like that? Is it you?

Always be a student.

If you're the smartest person in the room, you're probably in the wrong room.

Why Am I Reading These Books?

I read a lot of books, and recently beat my record of 42 books in a year. All but one is nonfiction. Part

of those books are books I've read before, and it's an eclectic bunch.

A few I haven't read in five years. Like the personal defense books I bought and read five years back.

With reading, I generally follow the whims of my heart as to what to read next. Or I'm driven relentlessly by curiosity to learn more.

The interesting part is I've used and generally had to use what I learn in the near future.

As a Christian, I believe in the sovereignty of God, and His providential ordering of the universe.

Why am I interested in my defense books again?

Is it because I see them as practical psychology? Mental defense?
Am I keeping the sword sharp...so to speak?

Where will I need this?

Or is it part of the rebalancing I tend to notice within myself. Where I go to one extreme from another and then balance out. Questions. Questions. Yet I continue to read.

And Here We Go...

Why write another blog?

Just to get information out of my head that doesn't really fit anywhere else. I have the A Ronin's Journey blog but that has a particular Christian niche. This one is for ramblings and musings with no real set schedule.

Just whenever. So if you're interested in staying up to date with my somewhat eclectic train of thought then you should subscribe.

I think I have a subscribe widget...I'm used to WordPress over Blogger. Trying something different.