Although I have been writing professionally for most of my adult life, I have just been reminded by the last blog published by date that it has been a solid minute since I have formally submitted a blog post. One pandemic, two surgeries and three moves later, I am very happy to know we have settled into a lovely adobe-style compound in Las Vegas, Nevada, complete with desert rabbits, pipe organ cacti and a persistent thirst for hydration. I call it a compound because it is. I quite like it that way too. Most people can’t even find the entrance. I’m good with that.
Most of my unprofessional writing has been in the form of social media posts, written for somewhat rapid consumption on Facebook at Plannerology and now also on Minds at Plannerology. Somehow, Instagram still feels like a quiet place for me, and I managed to showcase the nicer points of the past few years with ambient imagery. However, every time I sat myself down to write-write, I had some inevitable emotional fire that needed squelching. My book chapters faded into the jet stream of good ideas and I began to despise “having to” maintain a sense of pulled togetherness which normally occurred naturally, and now, evaded in the midst of a health, family, emotional and world crisis- becoming a well-blended, silky smoothie of WTF-ness from 2018-2021.
None of my planning systems seemed to be working. I couldn’t keep up with what needed to happen from one event to the next. I got the basic fundamentals of planning and I knew what was needed to be done but I couldn’t follow through because I was just too busy hurting myself in the fires of life. I don’t like overarching themes when they point out my deficiencies. I do like them when I have outgrown my deficiencies and can use them as stepping stones to keep growing. However, in that moment of pain and sorrow, I despise being able to see my own faults and worse yet, calling myself out on them-‘cause it’s not like I can’t see them.
Now, things are different. I’ve committed to a Whole Foods Plant-Based diet, I’ve had my spinal fusion surgery, which has made being mobile an absolute joy and I am diving headfirst down the minimalist path of being able to let things go because they no longer serve me here. They served me when I was there. But they no longer serve me here. “There” is where my breakdowns lived. “There” is where I was. I am no longer there but I am here. “Here” is where there is no need to have or use the things I once used when I was there. I did use them there. But it didn’t work out for me there. So, I moved from there to here. Things were bad there. Things were bad when I moved here. But once I moved here, things got better, slowly. Now that I am here I can take my well-deserved breath of hot desert air and create an oasis of mindful, slow living. I can sit in shaded path of morning and evening routines while sipping on the mojito of simple actions and decision making.
I found a general sense of myself hidden in the spaces between my objects. I didn’t need to look very far. Push a few things to the right and suddenly I recognized myself in the created space. Remove the items altogether and the visual space created welcomed me. The visual noise ate up the visual space, so my commitment was to remove the noise; The side effect was creating space. Peter Gabriel has a song called “Signal To Noise” where he points out the ratio of turning up the signal, while turning down the noise, radio terminology used to indicate the clarity of the desired sound coming through versus the undesired background noise, aka Signal To Noise Ratio; SNR.
So the formula is simple really, but you have to be in a position where you can eliminate the noise. When I was there, the noise is all I heard and that’s because I was meant to deal with eliminating the noise. How can you eliminate something you can’t hear, see, feel, taste, or smell? The only way through is through. If you sidestep it, it’s still there and now you’ve cheated yourself on time having to start going through again. If you are in it, up to your eyeballs, keep going through, you are almost out.
Keeping a notebook of things you want once you get here is a great way to keep you motivated and solidify in your mind’s eye what you actually want. You may kind of, sort of know what you want but do you really know what you want? The only way it actually happens is if you write it down. You can put it on some digital list but if you don’t access that list daily, it doesn’t do it’s job of reminding you what you want, does it? Writing it down on paper, printing it, setting it up as your dashboard, tacking it to your mirror, and generally putting it in a place where it is access by your eyeballs at least 3 times a day is where the RAS starts getting activated. You remember the Reticular Activating System, right? The RAS? It’s what makes things happen when you think about making things happen. It works for good and bad so please be mindful of what you are thinking about. The RAS works when you don’t. Set up enough thoughts that are written down and your RAS will take it from there to here (see what I did there?).
How do you determine if there is too much noise versus signal? Easy. Are you able to do what you want, when you want and how you want? If yes, then your signal is coming in loud and clear. If not, you’ve got interference. The noise is getting in the way. Leave. It. Out.
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