Tuning Slide 4.32- Beyond the Plateau

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Plateaus are a manifestation of the law of diminishing returns, and when we reach one it simply means that it is time to adjust our methods.
― Chris Matakas, The Tao of Jiu Jitsu

Last week I talked some about the perennial problem of getting stuck in our movement forward as musicians- or in life, for that matter. I mentioned four of the main reasons that I have discovered for my “stuckness.” They were:

• Boredom
• Fear
• Exhaustion
• Lack of direction

Discovering some of these reasons behind my getting stuck may help find a way around them and into the next stage of growth. In order to do that I have to be willing and able to confront my plateaus and discover what to do next. Often what I am really facing is a decision point. In the musical world that question goes back to making a decision whether I am willing to settle for where I am. I have a hunch that any of us can always grow beyond where we are. Here is a famous quote from the great cellist Pablo Casals:

He was asked one day why he continued to practice four and five hours a day. Casals answered, “Because I think I am making progress.”
— Leonard Lyons

Who am I to disagree? So first I have to change my language to have a better, more positive way of describing the moment. Instead of being “stuck” I remind myself that I am at a “plateau.” I remember that in my past every musical or life-changing growth has been preceded by the plateau. A plateau is better than a stuck place- think flat land vs. a swamp or quicksand. Given a choice, I’ll take the flat plain. A plain or plateau tells me there is movement possible, even if for the moment it is at the same “level.” I am still moving, hopefully toward my goal.

My wife and I discussed this last week. She has been on an exercise development program following a period of medical concerns. At this point her goal was simply to walk a mile four times/week. Two days in a row she had some difficulties and I could sense she was on the edge of giving up. She was at a stuck point. I didn’t say anything specific, I just encouraged her to try it one more time. As it turns out the next time we went, she had made a step toward a better place. She was pleased and energized. She had been at the point I described last week as the “darkest before the dawn” point. She has continued to move forward.

I doing research on this topic, I found many websites that give thoughts and directions. One, the Every Day Power blog has five game-changing strategies for when you’re feeling stuck in life from Erika Boissiere. (https://everydaypowerblog.com/strategies-feeling-stuck-life/) They were:

◆ Challenge your assumptions- every last one of them!
She says that we may believe we have explored all the things that are happening. If we are still on the plateau of stuck, we probably haven’t. She suggests brainstorming more ideas, even crazy ideas. The goal is to come up with as many things as you can find. She adds, “Stop ruminating on the ideas you’ve already come up with!”

◆ Talk yourself through your worst-case scenario
Boissiere continues then to look at the worst-case options. What if this is as good as it gets? Could you continue? What might happen if you did continue? Could you survive? “If the answer is YES, you will un-tether yourself from fear of the worst case happening – and move forward.”

◆ Learn about courage
Sometimes it might take a bit of courage to move on. If fear is one of the main reasons behind this plateau, this one becomes especially important. Courage is the ability to do the next right thing, the next important thing, even if it is challenging or uncomfortable. Chances are that in my musical life, this will not kill me, that I can survive the next step and move forward anyway. For me that continues to be those solos that can trip me up. That I why I continue to play in the quintet and work on it. I am more exposed and my errors could be more devastating than playing fourth in a big band or being a section player in the concert band. Again from Boissiere, “Allow yourself to be scared. If you fall flat on your face, believe that you will pick yourself up again.”

◆ Use your village
Our individual “villages” are those people around us who we trust, who have our best interests in mind, and know something about what we are doing. So go ask them. Trust them. This what my wife did the other week when she was stuck. She trusted me and continued on her journey. It might mean finding a mentor or teacher and taking a lesson or two. Broissiere tells us to “[g]o to your strongest allies, and get their input.”

◆ Create your vision
At this point it usually comes back to what I talked about last week, make some goals, give myself some new direction. It might be learning a new piece, working on a specific technique, getting back to some basics and building on them. Broissiere remind us that “[y]ou must look beyond your short-term anxieties and create a vision for yourself.” It is, as she says, looking at the horizon instead of down at your feet. Where am I going?

I have been taking my winter season to work on these things. A few weeks ago I talked about my work on improving my precision and sound. As I said then it has been working, although there have been plateaus. That in and of itself is one of the best motivators to keep moving forward. I have also been working on my jazz language skills. I am building my vocabulary of jazz and learning how to be more free-flowing in improvising. While this may sound like it’s at odds with the “precision” goal, at this point they are beginning to merge, much to my surprise. Because I worked on my sound and attack, I feel more comfortable to working with chord changes and trusting the sound I am hearing in my mind. It all begins to meld into something new and different. My two goals are working together. They give me a direction.

Life is not a bunch of disconnected boxes. Life and music are all the things that I am and all that I can learn. I have a hunch that it is still an endless and growing path in front of me.

3.31- The Tuning Slide: Time for the Important

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

… whenever our affairs seem to be in crisis, we are almost compelled to give our first attention to the urgent present rather than to the important future.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower

Okay, time to get going here. It is getting to be urgent. Here is the thought from last year’s Trumpet Workshop for this week:

✓ Have to schedule the not urgent/important or it gets lost

I am not joking when I say it is getting urgent. It is now Monday night as I am writing this and it has to be ready by Wednesday morning with other things happening in-between. Yes, these posts are important, but they don’t get urgent until the deadline nears. I have always been a person who works at deadline. That doesn’t mean I work better at deadline, I just tend to get sidetracked. That does not usually mean procrastinate, although sometimes it does. In general I just find too many things interesting. Once in a while the “urgent” do take over and push the other important things out of the way.

President and World War II commanding general Dwight D. Eisenhower is given credit for this whole idea picked up by many over the past 75 years including Stephen Covey who wrote the iconic book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The whole idea is often presented this way:

What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.

This can be illustrated with this 2 x 2 matrix, often called the Eisenhower Matrix.

It is easy to figure this out. Many of us, myself included, spend way too much time on the urgent, or what we think is urgent. As shown in this next illustration, things we often call urgent are truly just interruptions, things that get in the way and we can’t avoid them. How often do we truly have something urgent AND important? Sure they happen, but are they all that common? Probably not as much as we think.

Simple illustration that has happened over the years with the advent of cell phones and other personal media devices is the urgency of the phone call. It occurs every time that device buzzes. Even my Garmin Fitness Tracker had a buzz that would tell me when to move. I turned it off, not because I wasn’t going to move, but it became a serious distraction. The buzz said, in essence: “Urgent! Urgent! Urgent!” Think about the next time your phone buzzes with a text message, or your computer beeps with a friend’s Facebook post.

Think back on the past couple of days. How many of the things that happened were “urgent” but far from important? In reality, how many of those “urgent” things could probably be moved into the bottom right corner of neither important nor urgent? Most likely more than we care to admit.

The box that gets missed more often than not is the upper right, highlighted below.

 
Link

These things in this box are important, but they may not have a deadline attached to them, they don’t interrupt us and call out for our attention. In fact many of them easily get missed as we go through the day. We say things like “I’ll get to that later” or “Gee, I wish I had more time for that.” A few weeks or so ago someone posted on the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop Facebook page a remembrance of a conversation with Bill Bergren a number of years ago. In essence it was,

“I don’t have time to practice two hours a day.”
      “Oh really? Do you have 15 minutes from time to time?”
“Sure, but…”
      “Well, every time you have 15 minutes, use it to practice. By the end of the day you will have your two hours of practice.”

Is daily, significant practice important? You bet it is.
Is daily, significant practice urgent? No. If it’s urgent, it’s too late.

Goal setting, planning, scheduling, and active doing are important things that fall into that upper right quadrant. Exercise, vocation and planning are what’s in the box above as examples. Doing things for your health and growth, doing things for your meaning and direction, setting your goals and the ways to carry them out. This puts the important in a place where it is less likely to get interrupted as often. It becomes part of your schedule.

Another way of describing what you need to do with the items is in the next matrix.

First is always the “Urgent/Important.” Do those things. Do them as soon as you can. Make sure they are given proper attention and management. But be careful. I know people for whom every event or situation escalates into an immediate “Crisis!” which means “Emergency!” and therefore takes precedence over everything. These people are living in a perpetual crisis mode and never get to the long-term issues until they, too, become “urgent”.

At the bottom left are the interruptions and distractions. These are not important but seem urgent. These can be the leftovers of the crisis mode above, or they can just be the things that pop up with all too frequent regularity. Learn to avoid them, let others handle them, or put them in their proper place.

Bottom right issues are, for me, the biggest problem. I easily have way too many “Oh, look at the squirrel over there” moments. I stop typing here and think, “Oh, I’ll just go check my email. Might as well look at what’s happening in the news. Hmmm, maybe somebody on Facebook….” That happened a couple times this past weekend and it got in the way of me practicing my trumpet as much as I wanted to- and it pushed off writing this post until now.

Which brings me to what may be the most important quadrant for our growth and future, the top right. The word there to really catch is “Focus.” That’s the purpose of goals, and the reason we write down our goals, and why I keep a journal of my daily practice as well as the James Blackwell-inspired daily checklist. I can plan and decide; I can focus; I can adjust and make sure I am dealing with what’s important. It may be a small thing I discover, but chances are it will help me reach my goal. For example, I noticed on Saturday that I had not been working on the “interval” exercises. Nothing urgent about them, but they are important. I had been sidetracked by other important things, but I wasn’t finding a balance. When we work in that upper right quadrant we are finding ways to expand our horizons, accomplish our goals, and balancing our lives.

Here is one more matrix with other issues added:

Link

I love the titles given in this one.

#1 is necessity. It’s got to happen. (Do it now!)
#2 is quality. It makes life interesting and meaningful. (Schedule and do ASAP!)
#3 is deception. It looks bigger than it is. (Delegate or delete.)
#4 is waste. It eats up your time with little benefit. (Ignore.)

In the best of all possible worlds, the Eisenhower Matrix sized to time spent on these should look like this:

Link

Maybe take some time this week to work on that upper right quadrant. Take a look at your goals and how you are managing and planning. Then go for it.

A Political Tilt-A-Whirl

I have come to the conclusion that logic and facts, while interesting and even helpful, most of the time don’t do much to win arguments. In fact, for most of us our policy could very well be, “I know what I believe. Don’t confuse me with the facts.” We will sort through loads of facts until we find the one that agrees with us out of hundreds. Global climate change is one of the current examples. Out of every 100 scientific studies it appears that at least 90 or more support the idea of climate change occurring around us right now. But if you, for some ideological or political reason disagree, well, forget those 90 some. Just look at that one.

I have done the same thing with people’s comments after a sermon, performance, or Facebook post. I could get 25 “Good job! I loved it.” Comments. But there’s that one who didn’t like it, disagreed with me, said something unkind. That’s the one that will keep me awake at night and spoil my day. That is not about being thick- or thin-skinned. It’s about how we respond and how we make decisions.

At one point in time most believed that if you could separate emotions from decision-making, we would all be able to make better decisions. The paradigm for that was good old Sgt. Joe Friday on Dragnet! His quote, which entered the American lexicon, was “Just the facts, Ma’am. Just the facts.” No opinions, asides, or emotions. The facts will lead us to where we want to go.

Sadly, the real world has a different reality based on other facts discovered in research. There are examples of people who have through surgery or accident had their emotional response separated from their logical response. They make decisions based only on the facts. There is no emotional content to their process. It is entirely disconnected. It would seem, according to “logical” thinking that such a person would be able to make sane, rational decisions.

That assumption is wrong. If they make decisions they are not logical or sane. In many instances they have great difficulty making these decisions at all, feeling overwhelmed by choices. Through brain scans and other tools of modern neuroscience, we have discovered that an interaction between emotion and logic is what makes the better decisions. The emotional content, also including intuition and stored memories beneath consciousness, is as important as the logical content- the facts.

What we see is that those decisions based solely (or mainly) on either pure logic or pure emotion are both flawed. Whether it’s the person above with only logic or the active addict controlled by the pleasure (emotional) content, they do not make the better or best decisions.

What is more to the point is that unless we have some physical or emotional reason for a disconnect between reason and emotion, we all make our decisions on a combination of both. Most of the time our brains are downright lazy and make most decisions based on intuitive reactions. We don’t even think about it. (Just because it comes through and from our brain does NOT mean we have “thought” about it. Many pre-, sub-, and unconscious ideas and reactions occur without the action of thinking.) That of course is fortunate. It is part of our survival mechanism, allowing us to react to danger in less time than it takes to think about it.

The very serious game of politics is one of those places where we can see the impact of facts, logic, opinion, or emotion. For some reason there are many people who look at a picture of Barack Obama and have a strong negative reaction. Many of them will have all kinds of logical reasons for that reaction. They can cite “information” (whether true or false, logical or illogical) for why they believe that Obama is a threat, a Muslim, an idiot, the worst president, or whatever. He has ruined the country, the economy is in a shambles, crime is up, he hates police, and on and on. Don’t show me statistics that say it ain’t so. I know it’s true because I believe it.

On the other side there are many who have the same response to Donald Trump. I saw on the web a supposed quote from the ghostwriter of his The Art of the Deal who expresses a fear for Trump’s finger on the nuclear arms button. Others say variations on this fear- all the way from his taking away American freedoms of religion and the press to an economic policy from the late 1800s that will bankrupt the world economy. Are these facts? No. Can they be supported with some sense of information? Sure. It’s all in the emotional responses.

Both sides will say that their opinion is based on “facts.” Maybe. But facts and statistics are only as good as the way we explain them. Correlation does not mean causation and in many cases truly means coincidence.

Could any of the fears about Trump come true? Yes, of course. But the likelihood is about the same as Obama having taken all your guns away in the past 7 years. And he didn’t even try.

Let’s be honest, that little fact is what helps me get through the insanity of politics today. It reminds me that all of us are caught in the same emotional Tilt-A-Whirl. Which is why I keep begging, pleading, exhorting, and praying for more dialogue. We need to talk about our feelings and examine our fears in the light of reality. We need to be open to the wonders that life is still presenting to us. We need to work together in that exceptional way we have often done in the past.

I am not optimistic but I am not as fatalistic as I could be, either. I will continue to do what I can do to make that work better.

Tuning Slide: Logic vs Emotions

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

― Leo Tolstoy

Yeah, but what did Tolstoy know? The music that is arguably the most amazing in western history is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach- and it is some of the most logical music ever written. Mathematically precise; ordered in almost uncanny exactness. No wonder that when Wendy Carlos (under her birth name of Walter Carlos) wanted to show the amazing use of the Moog Synthesizer, she used the music of Bach. (Switched on Bach. 1968.) There should be no emotion in a computer-generated song; no human input to play it other than the 1s and 0s of computer/digital coding.

Yet it was an amazing album that touched people deeply, and not just because of the newness and uniqueness of it. For many of us who first heard it in 1968, the album, for example, captured the emotion of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring with amazing clarity.

Logic will get you from A to B.
Imagination will take you everywhere.
- Albert Einstein

As much as mathematical precision, Bach also used imagination that allowed him to place layer upon layer of things never before seen or heard. The imagination of Wendy Carlos added another layer which grabbed us like nothing ever seen or heard before. Yet it was all there in Bach's logic combined with his musical imagination.

Then we have Miles Davis on Kind of Blue or John Coltrane on A Love Supreme. At one moment their solos can sound as precise as Bach's mathematical journeys. The next moment, then, is filled with an emotion that sweeps in and takes over, surrounding us with things that are like nothing ever seen or heard before. All of us who work with music from the rank amateur to the amazing heights of Davis or Coltrane know that everything they do is based on all the logical manipulations of music theory. They may twist those theories and make up a few new ones of their own, but they are acutely aware of the logic behind what they are doing.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade.

It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

- Rabindranath Tagore

It is no doubt obvious where I am going with this. We are not dealing with an either/or situation when we deal with logic and emotion. It must be a both/and for it to go beyond just the notes on the page or in our heads. In human thinking it used to be that we believed that if only we humans would be "logical," then we would always make the right decisions. When faced with choices, we should be able to use the coolness and precision of logic to make the good choices.

Without going into all the details, science, medicine, and psychology were all shocked when this proved to be an incorrect theory. There were examples where a person, through an injury or surgery, lost the ability to connect emotions to decision making. All their decisions were based on good old-fashioned rational thinking. "Just the facts!" The old theory would say that their decisions post-trauma should have been better decisions- emotions weren't in the picture.

That is not what happened. In essence, they actually lost some of the critical ability to make any decisions in the first place. Neuroscience had to be rewritten. Cold, impersonal logic does not make good decisions alone. To disconnect emotion is to take away what makes us human- and what makes human decision-making human in the first place.

Which is why I think music has played such an essential and foundational role in human culture and development. Daniel Levitan, neuroscientist, session musician, sound engineer, and record producer, captured this idea in his two seminal works, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession and The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature. Somewhere in our brain, music, I think, brings together emotion and logic in ways very few things do.

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words
and that which cannot remain silent.
― Victor Hugo

So, let's get back to you and me and how this is important to us. Actually, in some ways it is another way of reminding us of things already discussed and beginning to put them into a "logical", effective, and helpful place.For example, we have talked about being able to be aware of, and able to share, "your story" in your music. How do you know your story? By your feelings, among other things, and then applying logic and thinking to it. We discussed the importance of the "groove" in music. Well, first we have to have the "logical" ability to play the notes correctly. Then we add the feeling, the emotion we are sensing in the notes. That becomes the groove.

That's why we practice. First to find the notes- the specifics of this song in this place. Then we find the groove- the story, the emotions, the nuances. These are built on the logic of knowing the fundamentals as well as how we are feeling. We may be able to play a piece with clockwork precision, but does it "feel?" It is in the feeling that we connect with the music.

Am I just repeating the same thing over and over, driving it into the ground until you say, "Enough already! We get it."? Perhaps, but I have found over the past year that I forget these things on a regular basis. I get bogged down in the notes on the page or the dynamic markings. I forget to listen to the music as I am playing it in my practice room. I rush through the notes instead of listening to them; I try to get the piece down cold in one or two attempts; I don't savor the world found in each note. Or, in performance, I can ignore the other musicians I am playing with. Sometimes I get so emotionally involved in a song that, without me realizing it I get sloppy and the technique can get lost.

I have to be constantly reminded of the interaction of logic and emotion- unless the emotion I want to drag out of the horn, myself, or the listener is disgust. It is in the balance of our logic and emotion that practice turns into performance, that we discover how a particular song can express our own story.

We will look a little more at this in another post in a few weeks on some ways to work with the Inner Game in new ways. For now, don't let your logic close out your emotions- or your feelings dismiss logic. Together they make quite a duet.

You're Right... Too.

Listening to the re-broadcast on Prairie Home Companion last evening made me think of an old Yiddish story.

Two men come to their Rabbi to have him solve an argument they've been having. The first man told his side of the story, explaining it well.

"You're right," said the Rabbi. "Let me hear the other side."

The second man then explained his side of the story, also explained clearly and well.

"Hmmm," said the Rabbi thoughtfully. "You're right."

At that the Rabbi's right hand man leaned over and whispered in his master's ear. "Rabbi. They can't both be right."

The Rabbi took but a moment and looked at his assistant. "You're right."

Garrison told a story from Lake Wobegon about the local town council arguing who was to pay for the capture and relocation of a bear that had been wandering town. One side, the interventionists, he called them, felt it was essential to spend the money to protect the children of the community. "If even one child's life is saved," they argued, "it will be worth more than we have to pay."

The laissez-faire side, argued however, that it far more important to teach the children to watch out for bears and how to avoid them. After all, there will be other bears in life.

He thought it was a wonderful argument and discussion. Why? Because it was an argument in which both sides were right!

Which reminded me of many of our current political discussions in which one side must, absolutely MUST be wrong and the other side MUST be right. The facts or nuances be damned.

But sometimes, perhaps more often than we are willing to admit, both sides are right. That is the truth as I have often seen it, because each side does have a piece of the truth. No one usually has all the truth, but isn't that how we make honest, informed decisions? Isn't it when people are willing to look at both sides as having truth in them that we can find the ground of agreement instead of always and forever finding the grounds of disagreement?

It is the only way to truly run a democracy since, by definition, bot sides of the argument are often made up of people whose opinion is important to bring to the debate. Both sides are right and deserve to be heard and respected.

Perhaps I'm just a dreamer, but we have 37 days until the mid-term elections. Do you think we might have some of this willingness to listen and discuss happen?

Setting Standards

Came across an interesting discussion in the book, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'N' Roll by Elijah Wald. It is a history of popular music in the 20th Century and it's many different sides and impact. In this particular section he is talking about how differing opinions can happen. (Okay, that's oversimplified, but I want to talk about the quote.) Many of the complaints of "trained" musicians about the "untrained" musicians coming along into pop music in the 50s was based simply on the fact that these newer musicians were not "classically trained."

Wald starts by saying "different standards will produce widely divergent opinions." It's hard to hear a performer one loves "get slammed for not meeting standards one considers unfair or inappropriate." He goes on:

But to understand any group of artists or any audience, one has to understand its standards- which means accepting that although one's own critical criteria may be more rigorous, more heartfelt, more fair, or more intelligent, they are not the only ones possible.

That is the money quote for me that ties back to the post I had yesterday about civil discourse. In order to have some sense of civil discourse, I believe we have to understand the standards that the other person or the other side is using to judge the situation.

One of the biggest standards disagreements in our society, for example, is individual freedom vs. community needs. Another is an understanding of how economics works (or doesn't work.) The standards of a corporation that needs to make more profit this year to please its shareholders is far different from the standards of the person working their assembly line.

When we believe that OUR standards are "more rigorous, more heartfelt, more fair, or more intelligent" we can forget that the other side believes THEIR standards are "more rigorous, more heartfelt, more fair, or more intelligent." Both can't be true. Neither can be the only right answer when we both feel that ours is absolute.

Hence debate, and discussion, and discourse is needed.

I have never liked opera, in spite of my intense love of all kinds of music. I have never liked hip-hop, either. Therefore, by my standards, neither of those types of music are worth listening to. Don't waste your time. Neither strike ME, but that doesn't make them wrong or inferior.

Anyway, on the overall subject of civil discourse, maybe we need more opportunities to listen to the other sides "standards" and why they make their decisions instead of shouting each other down, making continually snide and nasty remarks, or sticking our fingers in our ears and singing nonsense syllables.

Can we talk instead?

Sunday Thought

This quote from G. K. Chesterton seems appropriate after some of what I was listening to on radio. It may be more important to consider as one nears retirement age than at first glance. It may also give many answers to many problems our world faces.

There are two ways to get enough: One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

In the living responses to this quote may be a living response to our spiritual lives as well.

I Always Knew There Were Many

Jonah Lehrer on his blog The Frontal Cortex says:

I believe our head holds a raucous parliament of cells that endlessly debate what sensations and feelings should become conscious. These neurons are distributed all across the brain, and their firing unfolds over time. This means that we are not a place: we are a process. As the influential philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote, our mind is made up "of multiple channels in which specialist circuits try, in parallel pandemoniums, to do their various things, creating Multiple Drafts as they go." What we call reality is merely the final draft. (Of course, the very next moment requires a whole new manuscript.)

Sitting around 12-Step or recovery meetings you will often hear people refer to "the committees" in their head. All those voices that pull you one way or another. Or you may hear others refer to "Slick" sitting there on one shoulder trying to get you to go back to your addictive ways with the wise and recovering voice on the other shoulder.

Perhaps there is truth in the metaphor. Everything we feel and know is electro-chemical with all those neurons and synapses firing all over the brain. Is there some kind of unheard background noise that these firings do? Are there combinations of those firings that lead us one way then another, imitating voices, urges, discussions?

It's too bad logic is actually so "illogical" and fleeting in its power. Or maybe not. If logic were truly so powerful and controlling we would probably end up as robots or automatons. I may not have the committee meetings in my head, but I might not be able to enjoy life either.

Making Decisions 3

The third major decision in moving to a new job in a new city has been where to live. Should we buy or rent. Having been pastors for most of our married life we didn't live in our own home until 8 years ago when we moved to the Twin Cities. It has been great to call our own place "home." But what do we do now? After all we are both AARP-aged Baby Boomers; empty-nesters. Maybe this is the time to make that first big downsizing move.

So we looked at both apartments (larger ones, of course) and houses. We were fairly sure that at least for the moment we were going to rent. Three weeks is not enough time to truly find a place to buy, especially in this buyer's market. But what about the size question?

Well, we looked at a house about 15 miles from town. And we looked at a nice 3-bedroom "luxury" apartment minutes from work (with a shuttle van.) As we drove to the house I realized that I don't like commuting. I have never enjoyed commuting because I never had to do it until I took my current job a little over two years ago. Even my first job outside the church was a couple minute drive to three of the local schools.

I think if the house had been in town we would have taken it. It was not a significant downsize and we would have had time to decide what to get rid of and what not to- which is dangerous considering the number of boxes currently stored in our basement that have not been opened in the 8 years we have lived there.

The apartment had the local convenience and, as we described it, the ability to "unburden" ourselves from some of the physical baggage we have been toting around. It actually feels good to think in those terms. It is time to help make life a little less cluttered. Why do we keep all those papers from seminary or college? What about those books that have some sentimental value but I know I will never read them again? (Jack Newfield's biography of Robert Kennedy for example. How old is that book anyway?)

This has been an interesting process, far beyond the decision process. The aging and moving and downsizing has been a significant element of it which I still need some time to reflect on. But for now we have made the decision for the apartment. We lose about 1000 square feet of living space, but it is all on one floor. The rooms are roomy and comfortable. The location and services are truly unbeatable. Only time will tell whether we can go back to living in such small quarters 33 years after we left an apartment for a parsonage.

But hey, it's an adventure.

Making Decisions 2

The second thing that a major decision like taking a new job brings up comes after they make you the offer. Do you accept it or not. At first, that sounds like a no-brainer but there are a number of factors involved. One of course is whether the offer is what you would have expected. Salary is the big issue, of course. But there's more.

One of the biggest is whether, after the interview, you feel as if this is a place you would want to work. Now that is not always an easy thing to know from an interview, but over the years I have discovered that there is that something that is intangible yet real. I was fortunate in the recent interview to be interviewed by a number of people who I will be working with. There wasn't an HR person in sight.

What I saw was a really positive camaraderie among them. They were comfortable with each other and, beyond my qualifications, they were very clearly looking to see if they could be comfortable with me as one of them. Every place you work- churches included- has its own unique environment. Some people fit; some don't. Churches don't like to hear this, of course, since they're supposed to be open to all people. But that doesn't work. We have to be comfortable together to work with each other. We may not always agree on everything but we have to be able to respect each other's opinions as long as they don't end up way out in left field.

As I said I was fortunate. I could tell that from the interview. Going through this took me back to a previous interview a number of years ago at a non-churched institution. I hadn't consciously sensed it at the time- and I wasn't offered the position- but there was a tension in the room among the interviewers. Was it about me? Was it that they didn't think I would "fit" the culture and environment? Well, I will never know, but I have only now realized that it probably was a good thing that I didn't get the job.

The other part of accepting a job is whether I was ready to leave the job I was in. Just because one is looking doesn't necessarily mean is leaving. To take a new job is to decide to leave an old one. That is not necessarily easy. I had made friends that I enjoyed working with. But it my particular case moving was to allow my wife to stop a long commute and to be away from home three nights a week. It also meant new opportunities for me.

One of the things I know about myself is that I have to be "busy." I guard my vacations and time off zealously! But I like to be busy. I like different things each day; I like new people; I like a variety. This new job offered that in many ways.

So I put all of these together and it became a go. I had not expected that. But in the pleasant surprise that was the interview and the opportunities offered by the job it would have been difficult not to take it. So I did.

Making Decisions 1

As I mentioned last week I will be moving to a new job in a new city at the start of December. For reasons of not having this connected to them in any way, shape, or form, I am not saying where I will be working. Suffice it to say it is still in Minnesota and means a move from the Twin Cities. And it is not back into the ministry of the church.

The past three weeks have therefore been interesting as the process moved forward. I thought I would reflect on the decision-making that went into it. I feel it has a general applicability to making these kind of decisions whether they are this "big" or not.

Today I will look at the first part of the process and that is
making the decision to apply and then go for the interview.
Some people say that it is good to go for an interview once a year. It keeps you on your toes. I haven't followed that advice since leaving the parish ministry, but it has been close. One thing I was always doing was seeing what else was out there. What were the job options in my field? What was the field doing? Is there movement or stagnation or is there something going on that may be seen in the numbers.

One particular place for a while seemed to have a lot of turnover. Then I noticed that it slowed down. Another place seemed to take its time filling openings. Did this mean that I was unhappy where I was? No, not as such. I discovered as I followed the goings on in the field that there is a large variety of types of positions and what is expected of you. Some looked more challenging and therefore more exciting. Others seemed like the same old- same old.

In the end the decision to apply in the first place was simply to see what that place might be like. It offered the possibility that after over 2 years of my wife commuting 130 miles one way to her church, staying there for three nights, and then 130 miles back, we would be able to get live 7 days a week in the same place. That was significant. But so was the intuitive sense that there might be something interesting in this new position.

I was called back within three days of posting my application online. Then they were willing to wait 10 days for the interview when their schedule and mine managed to mesh. That meant they weren't in a panic, but were certainly willing to exercise all their options. That meant that this was something worth considering.

I still wasn't sure that it was what I wanted, but why not at least interview. Sometimes it is too easy to be complacent and decide to just rest where you are. But an interview is simple and, with nothing to lose why not?

Thus the first part of the decision-making for me was simply to be curious and open and willing to think outside of the box I was comfortable in. It can be precipitated by many events- or none- but you have to be curious. Then you have to just be willing to see what happens.