motivation – The Hermits' Rest

New Job New Motivation

This is an interesting point in my life. Having time for myself for three months was really pleasant, once I got used to being retired. But I’m just as glad to have gone back to work for a while, because it’s opened my eyes to a few things.

Granted, I haven’t been in the new organization a week yet, but I’m pleasantly surprised at how positive everyone is, how helpful they are to each other, and how they all like what they’re doing (mostly). People act interested in each other as people, even contract workers. And they’re generous with their time and expertise. I’m having a great time collaborating with others in roles similar to mine.

Cheerful as a yellow Kingbird on a wire.

The company has many goals and values that I agree with, like diversity and inclusion, carbon neutrality, and having fun (the larger team couldn’t stop talking about how much fun they had playing kickball).

Gee, I hope the “new job glow” doesn’t wear out too quickly! It’s refreshing to not be looking over your shoulder for HR to escort you out of the building or to have no idea where your team is going or what’s next. I spent too many years in my previous two Austin tech cultures, both of which had an atmosphere of negativity that I was always trying to make the best of because I needed money. And all those mergers and acquisitions!

I often felt like I was going down rabbit holes.

That’s no longer an issue. I’m working now because I want to be helpful and I’m in a place that values transparency and honesty with customers and staff. I may be tired from drinking information from a fire hose right now, but I’m doing things I enjoy (other than mandatory compliance training). I feel useful, helpful, and appreciated. That’s motivating!

Porch before tile was installed. It’s just dry fit here.

And very soon I’ll have a porch I can work from. The floor is going down, though my son is tired of having to vacuum up dog hair before laying each tile. Dang dogs.

The Motivation Inside

What motivates you?

I’m at an age where getting prestige at work or fame or fortune. My drive to achieve doesn’t motivate me. If it ever did, that probably wasn’t a good idea, in hindsight.

Enjoying a moment is better than striving for glory.

External achievements don’t motivate me, but internal ones do. As you’ve probably noticed by reading earlier blog entries, my drive is to learn more and more and improve my skill set. Doing this will help me become a better spouse, parent, relative, and friend. That’s what I want to be, the best me I can be.

I don’t know, but that’s probably the motivation of many of us, at least in some part. I don’t think I’m special or unique, just realistic about my internal drives.

Also I’m realistic about my limits. Like heights. Not my favorite.

How did I use my motivation today, you ask, hoping for photos of pretty scenery? Why I admit that I mostly worked today, but I did rest my brain a bit by just enjoying the beauty of a ski town in summer. Wow, flowers hold up well in this climate! Everywhere you look here you see flowers, dogs, water, and beautiful buildings.

I did stretch myself to improve my skills, though, with the encouragement of my local friend Cathy. She invited me to go on a bike ride, a long bike ride. Now, I used to ride a lot…over 20 years ago. But it’s hard/dangerous to ride a bicycle where I live now. So a long ride was a challenge for me.

Cathy convinced me that the whole ride from Vail to Frisco was downhill and I could do it. So, her husband Ken drove us to the trail head, and off we went.

Once I got my bike legs back, it was so much fun to zoom along the beautiful trail, which wound along Tenmile Creek, mostly in between lanes of Interstate 70. There were flowers, ponds, rocks, and forests to whiz by and enjoy. We only stopped a couple of times, so I couldn’t obsessively photograph everything.

We never hit any of the cute ground squirrels or tiny chipmunks we passed, and the moose I saw (yay) was far enough away that she posed no threat. But there she was! I saw beaver dams and some mallards in the ponds.

We stopped at an area where people make images in stones.

The best part was that I wasn’t hot and tired when we were done. I felt great! I highly recommend downhill cycling for the out of shape.

We had a nice dinner afterwards, too, even though I was dressed in exercise clothing (glad I brought some). Cathy said that’s how everyone in Summit County dresses, so it was fine. With a belly full of sushi, I enjoyed what was on television and can now crash again!

I’m all motivated for bright and early work again tomorrow.

Innate Direction

What gives you direction in life?

After the hiccups this week, I’m ready for a shift in direction, but I don’t really need one. Little challenges help keep me focused on the big picture, not the tiny dots that make up the totality.

It’s like the temperature blanket, which I need to look at like this every so often, to see the winter flowing into spring. Mostly I look at individual squares.

Today’s challenge was getting stung by a scorpion, even though I’d checked my boots before putting them inn(from now on they don’t stay outside, even if they got all muddy in the stuck-in-the-water challenge earlier in the week). And hey, the intense pain makes me forget the hurt of my big-ass hoof-shaped bruise from Tuesday’s challenge! And I feel the itching from the chigger bites I got in the woods yesterday celebrating May.

It rained a lot, and we kept seeing crawfish crossing the driveway. I almost stepped on the one trying to disguise itself as a leaf. I avoided a crawfish pinch!

It’s all pretty funny at this point, and it reminds me that my direction is shaped by my innate desire to learn how things work. Mostly I want to observe life around me and determine patterns. Today I carefully noted all the different vireos and warblers that have appeared in the last few days. There was even a rose-breasted grosbeak, not common here. I’m curious as to how long they’ll visit during migration.

Yes, this is my best warbler photo. No idea which one it is.

Where I hope I’m headed is to even more internal peace and calm. Watching the seasons repeat yearly with variations but an overall consistency grounds me more and more. I think I’ll need that in the coming months.

I’m driven to try to understand people, as well. Like many of us, some of the things groups of people are saying and doing confuse me, but I’m doing better at seeing how much of it stems from humans needing to belong. Tribalism is not pretty when one feels threatened. I like it much better when it’s about football teams.

Did someone say threat? I better get hopping!

I’m wandering, so blame the Benadryl I took. But I want to recommend a television show we’ve been watching that has been very good for my soul. It’s A Brief History of the Future, which is streaming on PBS. The show looks into where humanity is headed in positive as well as negative ways. I’ve learned a lot about ideas that can heal the planet and make life better for all people. It celebrates differences and commonalities. Worth watching!

Like floods, it all passes. The green in the pond is the usual shore, and the shiny area in back is water pouring in.

I hope you’re enjoying the direction in which you’re headed. I love the daily surprises, both fun and painful. My hope is that they balance out so there’s never a dull moment unless we want one.

Celebrating All Wins

Along with Lee and two other business partners, I used to be a part of a real estate organization called FortuneBuilders. While it was an investment, the classes and networking ended up being well worth it. The leaders were a very positive bunch of human beings, and they brought in good motivational speakers and topics (I am a HARSH judge of motivational speakers, so when I say they were good, I’m not kidding).

Sometimes we had fun at those conferences

Anyhow, one of the things the FortuneBuilder folks stressed was that it takes a lot of small successes among even more setbacks and challenges to get ahead in whatever you’re trying to do. They encouraged us to “Celebrate All Wins” no matter how big or small (if you got a response to one of your annoying postcards offering to buy someone’s home, for example). They even gave out shirts emblazoned with CAW to people who shared their wins at conferences (ah, I remember live conferences).

They are also nice and comfy shirts. By the way, my closet is STILL organized and in good shape.

This morning, I was telling Lee about something that was challenging at work that I did a good job handling, and he said we need to make a bigger deal out of these things, like back in the good old CAW days. The idea works for home health agencies, software companies, horsemanship endeavors, fitness goals, and even interpersonal relationships. In other words, it works in all areas of our own lives!

Here’s Russell interacting with one of those motivational speakers

I’m going to take Lee up on it and celebrate my wins for the past day or two!

I started my bullet journal
I participated in that Bioblitz
I figured out a helpful process for working on our documentation at work
I reassigned two team members and they each like their new assignment better
The friend for whom I knitted the striped shawl received it and loved it
I got all but one chicken to sleep in the coop last night, rather than the garage (more on that in another post)
I made progress on my stepping off a cliff project. One step closer to flying.

I feel better already, just for writing all those things down! No wonder I have felt perky and chipper all day, even on day 5 of 8 AM meetings!

Just bullet journaling away for two whole days.

A Challenge

Here’s today’s challenge: Share your wins! Celebrate them! I want to know!

Do We NEED to Be Goal Oriented?

Ooh, this is a controversial topic in my family right now. When I first started this blog, I wrote that my main goal was to live in the moment. I’m basically sticking with that one, along with:

Keep learning
Be kind
Like myself just as I am

There. I’m done. My yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily goals are right there.

On the other hand…

My Cameron housemates, Lee and Kathleen, are very big on goals. They have fancy goal-monitoring journals that take a long time to set up. The journals help them set their goals for every period of time, and encourage them to evaluate how they are going, whether they are reasonable or not, and whether they need to be changed, due to life or whatever.

Monday Motivation

What a nice greeting I got today when I arrived at my Austin office (after driving 1.5 hours, dropping the dog off at the Bobcat Lair, and driving back to the office). There was the Little Orchid That Could, blooming to welcome me.

Even my monitor stand is happy to see the little orchid blooming.

I’ve never had one of these little ones re-bloom, so that made me happy. The slightly larger one behind it is also budding. Plus, there’s another one at the house, white with purple slpotches. That one was a real surprise, because it is the newest one I have, and it immediately put out new flower stalks after it finished.

The tiny succulents in the white planter used to be a much larger plant, but it got knocked over. These came from the roots. When I got to work today, one of the little plants had gotten knocked over, too. But I stuck it back in! (The main plant is still growing, too, at my house.)

I guess I better get motivated to work as hard as my plants do to provide beauty and meaning in the world. Last week, I came to the conclusion that I’d either need to quit or take on the hardest task on the list of possible things I could do. I chose to give the hard thing a try, with great hopes that I’ll have support from my colleagues.

The little Suna who could

I’m like those orhids. Given the right environment, I can continue to grow and rebloom, no matter how old I’m getting to be. And like the little succulent, I’ve been knocked over and had to start over, repeatedly (just ask my friends in La Leche League, who will probably be quite surprised to learn I’ve agreed to edit the online publication for the Friends of LLL).