Stick to the plan

Maybe it's the fact that I was in the Army. Maybe it's the fact that I hate things going wrong. Whatever it is, I like plans. Just the basic idea of having some insight into what we are doing.

Now, I'm not a planning freak. I learned long ago that you really can't plan everything out perfectly. This is especially true when it comes to dating. Rarely will you pull off a perfectly planned date, without needing to adapt some things.

However, I do like the idea of having some starting and reference points. You know, "Meet here, at this time." At least then, when stuff falls apart, no one is swinging in the breeze.

Strangely, even this can be too much for some. Nothing like walking into a bar where you are supposed to meet, getting a beer, and 10 minutes later, right after you text that you are at the location, you get a text telling you that they decided to meet somewhere else.

Exploding Wardrobe

Before I started with my current employer, I moved all of my personal effects into storage while I went into training, taking with me only a handful of things that would be necessary.

When training was complete, I moved back to NYC, and began house hunting. The process took WAY longer than expected (almost a year and a half). During that time, I moved back home. However, due to space requirements, I was not able to access my personal effects, and had to make due with what was on hand, and/or build from scratch. This building included clothing to wear.

Now, after leaving the army, I had developed a pretty good wardrobe. I was picky about what I bought. While I was living back home, I developed a pretty good wardrobe. Again, picky.

Once I finally had my own place, and had my personal effects back, I ran into a dilemma. I have too many shirts. I mean way too many. I mean, I have redone my closet so that it had two shirt hanging bars (high and low) and both are full. Yet I still have more clothing. I mean, I could dump my t-shirts, but then I would only have polos and button downs. That leaves nothing to relax in.

I actually see this as a major issue should I ever have a live-in gf or get married. Where would she put her clothing. In fact, I'm almost sure that I have more clothing than many of my female friends. That saddens me.

I've donated 3 boxes of stuff to the Salvation Army. Still haven't made a dent.

Clothing is not the only place where this is becoming a problem. There are some other items that have overlapped over time. For example, for some reason, I have 4 peelers. It's not likely that I will snap one on a potato, so those need to go.

Wayback Wednesday: Circle concept

This post originally appeared on December 10, 2004. The main idea of the post revolves around how hard it is to take care of things if certain base needs aren't met.


--------------Original Post--------------

The circle concept

Imagine a series of concentric circles, each one pertaining to an aspect of your life. There is no limit to how many circles can exist in the example, as the possibilities for what can technically be tied to “you” are limitless. In theory, we could create one that had levels spanning out until you had a circle that stood for the universe. Unfortunately, for our purpose, doing this would be useless, as you cannot see your effect on the entire universe, nor does the universe technically need you.

The innermost circle represents you and everything that you have direct control of. This includes things like what clothing you wear, what you have for lunch, what color sheets you have for your bed, and so forth. The next circle out contains things that you do not have absolute control over, but have some direct effect on. This would include things like your workplace, your girlfriend’s or wife’s life, etc. The circles continue outward from there, and can be as specific or as general as you deem fit. Non-related items can share the same circle if need be, due to their similar level of control or importance. Another method of thinking would be to classify each circle by its effect on you. The inner circle holds what has the most effect on you, such as eating, and the outermost circle could be what has the least effect on you, such as the fact that Pluto’s orbit makes it the eight planet from the sun for part of its cycle.

For every individual, that inner circle is the most important, because what exists in that circle is what you control, and what affects you directly. Imagine that the inner circle can be directly related to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. You directly control if and when you eat (most of the time), and not satisfying that need directly affects you in the form of hunger. Effects in this circle will eventually reverberate outward, affecting the other circles. Hunger may cause you to be more easily irritated, causing you to become impatient with your girlfriend. Hunger will lower your productivity and ability to think, or the argument with your girlfriend will lead to you sleeping on the couch, which will move into the next outer circle, causing you to be tired at work, and so forth.

Every individual works to satisfy as much of their inner circle as they can. It would be impossible to satisfy everything in this circle, especially while there are other circles that need attendance. You have a job to do, and that circle steals time away from your innermost circle. However, this does not mean that it has no effect on that circle. If you don't do your job, you will not get paid, and you won't eat. See how easily things come back to that inner circle. So, when you're at your desk pumping out the end of the fiscal year financial reports, you can't deal with what you need to with your inner circle, such cleaning your house.

Every individual will spend a lot of time unknowingly moving between circles, never truly separating the tasks, and grouping them under the catch-all category of “Life.” The job and their personal life are not separate in their mind. It’s just one large series of tasks. Other will begin the categorization of tasks, and separate them depending on importance, and what circle it reside in. When they are at work, their effort is exerted in the “Work” circle, but as soon as work is done, their mind drifts to some circle that is closer to their center. Still, it may not be the most inner circle. Maybe it’s the girlfriend circle, or the house circle. This becomes more complicated depending on the individual, and how they decide to separate their circles, and what they place the most importance on. In the diagram on the right, we have a rather general example. A diagram that would be more specialized may break “Things in your life” into such categories as the house, the girlfriend, the car, and place those depending of what that person feels is more important. Does he love his car or his girlfriend more? If he fails to take care of the car, will that eventually hurt his ability to deal with his girlfriend (placing the car in closer than the girlfriend)? If the car blows up, would that have absolutely no effect on his relationship (allowing the girlfriend to reside on a circle closer to his center than the circle in which his car resides).

Flashback Friday

This was originally posted on November 14, 2004. For some reason, I decided to tackle dating and profession at the same time. Efficiency of blogging? Who knows. My original blog at blog.com has disappeared, so don't bother trying to go to it. The digital war links still work, but I have no idea what was at the Benning site. Might have been for the Roy P. Benavidez MOH citation.

---------------------
So in my infinite reading and web surfing, I stumbled across this comic: http://www.digitalwar.co.uk/d/20040423.html. The series is actually pretty good. Unless you're a Lord of the Rings fan. In that case, you will find that this is a parody that has gone on way too long and should be a fan site to www.bobandgeorge.com.

Anyway, I find this particular comic interesting because it tackles a subject that has long sat in my brain, mostly because I have this weird way of running across the situation over and over and over.... well, you get the idea.

The last girl that I dated was someone that I hadn't known and become friends with first. Things just kind of developed into a relationship over time. It went from "someone I could talk to" and was "hanging out with" to "dating" over the course of 3 months. Then you back date the whole thing to when you met, and call that your dating period. So that relationship lasted a total of 7 months (it also ended 7 months ago). Strangely enough, when the relationship ended as abruptly as it did (refer to the first entry at http://black6.blog.com) there were few "lost friend" repercussions.

You then need to contrast this with the fact that I tend to keep few female friends. It's not really by choice. I just happen to be in a section of professions where there are not very many women (Army Infantryman), and the fact that my previous environments were West Point (14% female) and an all boys high school. I think in that High School part, I had maybe between 1 and 3 (I can only guarantee 1) women that I talked to regularly that were my age and not part of my martial arts training.

So a lot of the women that I end up friends with fall into the category of "I'd date you, but I'd rather not screw up this friendship, because then I'd only have the guys at work, and I can only take so much grunting on a daily basis" or "I was trying to date you, but then I took a wrong turn somewhere, or some reason of higher morality stopped me." Once they leave that second category (i.e. they become available), the are almost immediately shuttled into the first category, mostly because I'm an ass, and you'd really have to put up with constant joking sarcasm (which a lot of women are attracted to, surprisingly enough). and an extreme amount of logic based thinking that overrides emotion (which some think is me just playing hard to get). In any case, I wouldn't be a good friend if I put a friend through that while we were dating. So, if anyone knows any aggressive women, direct them my way. It'll make both our lives a lot less painful.

The next comic in the series is this one: http://www.digitalwar.co.uk/d/20040425.html. Ignore the first half, and go down to the part about saving someone. I've actually put as much thought into this subject as I have the other one over the past couple of years. In my line of work, and just about every line of work that I've ever considered, from police officer, to volunteer firefighter, to government agent, to SWAT, you come to grips with the reality of your own probable death, and the lives of other being in danger. At some point in my mind, I began to realize that it was best to suppress the thoughts of saving someone, because in doing so, you're at the same time hoping that someone else's life is in so much danger that YOU must step in. Essentially in wishing for your own heroic moment, you're wishing for someone else's tragedy.

There is actually a slight difference in this when it comes to certain professions. Such as being a firefighter. You generally KNOW the job you are walking into. Force of nature, threatens the lives of people. Even if it's an empty building, the spread of the fire could endanger others, and compound, should a gas main be hit or something. If you're only aspiration is to pull beautiful women from burning buildings with your huge arms, you've got some thinking to do.

Strangely, in my profession, there is little room for "heroics" because that usually means that something has gone horribly wrong, and your "heroics" are necessary to save the lives of those around you. Such heroics can by found by reading through Medal of Honor citations and seeing things such as "jumped on a grenade" or by reading this one http://www.benning.army.mil/whinsec/NCOA.asp?id=211. There is no way someone could have wished for a situation like this. One can only hope to be this brave should something like this happen. But first, one should hope that this never happens to begin with.

---------------------