Remedial Life Lessons 101

Well, I learned a lot during my little break. First and foremost, I'm not a machine. Part of the reason that I took a break from blogging was to focus on other areas, mostly my church responsibilities. The first week was great, I think I had something going on every night of the week. But, as a bona fide human being, I failed miserably in the subsequent weeks - a classic case of burnout. The lesson I must learn (actually, this is one of those "relearn" situations where I've been through these exact experiences a hundred times but I think that this time it will somehow be different) is that I'm not a machine, I'm not made to do just one thing all the time, nor can I keep up the intense pace I like for the entire duration of a project or calling. I shouldn't run faster than I am able (Mosiah 4:27), because I just end up crumpled on the ground doing nothing, just lying there feeling guilty about what I should be doing. Back in the day when I was young I could stay up all night and come swooping to the rescue of any situation at the drop of a hat and keep the kitchen clean at the same time. But I'm an old man now, I'm married and old and way slower than I used to be. This transformation happened faster than I expected and I'm still adjusting, which is part of my problem. The other part of the problem is that I think I'm a superhero who assumes that he has to do everything himself or else it won't be done right. Dốt quá! So now I'm trying to take those high-school disillusions of invincibility that somehow survived four years of college and dissolve them out of my mind for good. Then maybe I might be able to do things right. Maybe.


Another lesson I learned in the past month is that I need a hobby to balance out my responsibilities as an old married man. The work I take part in everyday (work, church, community orgs) doesn't count as my hobby anymore - it needs to be something that relaxes my mind and gives me time to refocus on life. So when I "went off" blogging (my predominant hobby at the time) it was pretty hilarious how crazy I went. I fell into a hobby-finding craze and just recently recovered. Trying to convert my sun-drenched west porch into a pleasant garden experience has been an ongoing project since last year, and I've found great joy in expanding it slowly over the past few spring months. Now I have a small forest garden on the east porch, too, along with my herb garden and homemade (aka jimmy-rigged) Japanese arch. But having so much time at home because I was done blogging and too burnt out to visit more people from my church allowed me to concoct crazy plans for making an open terrarium with desert plants, which turned into tropical plants, which turned into half-desert half-tropical, which turned into a lizard and frog and snake cage, which promptly turned into nothing after considerable "counsel" from my wife. Next I had several web projects surface in my head, which I beat down quickly (blogging vs web design - big difference). I won't bore with all the potential hobbies I've entertained in the last 3 weeks, but I will say this: I'm not a machine, and I definitely need a hobby to provide balance in my life. I return to blogging under new guidelines, mainly to moderate how much time I spend on this thing. It should be more enjoyable that way anyway.



Probably the coolest thing I did while on break was go to the Huntington, which has a very cool Japanese garden portion. Here's some pics:


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Also, I'm trying out remote blogging from an email account that allows me to send raw html emails. Unfortunately the email is tagged with an ad at the bottom, which I deleted here but I won't be deleting while in Vietnam.