Transitions, Transformations and a Little Photography
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Doing Deep Work
I’ve been doing some reading (shocking I know) about a concept referred to as Deep Work. Cal Newport digs into this concept in his book of the same name and I found myself fascinated with exploring this further (there’s some irony in doing deep work on deep work, but I digress).
The idea of deep work is spending focused and significant time on substantial efforts of craftsmanship - and the idea of craftsmanship is not restricted to things that you make by hand - it refers to any endeavour. In our current culture there is so much emphasis on productivity and efficiency with praise going to “multitaskers” and those who can juggle multiple projects or concepts at the same time.
I have come to be quite skeptical of multitasking - I used to think that I was proficient at juggling and completing a variety of tasks simultaneously,
Agitation and Overwhelm
Those who have been reading this blog for a while will know that last year was a pretty stressful year for me - between buying and selling a house, packing up and moving which was then followed by 6 months of renovations of the lower level of the house to build a music space for Kory. It was a lot and there were a number of times throughout the summer that I felt overwhelmed which surprised me.
Before retirement I worked in a very stressful job and was continuously on call for international and domestic divisions. I am used to having to deal with overwhelming situations and stay calm and methodically work through things which made my reaction even more perplexing. Once things calmed down and we started to really live in the new space I decided to spend some time reflecting on my feelings of agitation and overwhelm during the renovations
Numbing
The definition of numbing is - depriving one of feeling or responsiveness which seems like a good thing when you’re visiting the dentist for a root canal, but not so good in other situations. Taken to an extreme, numbing can result in addiction to alcohol, drugs, gambling - any number of negative compulsive behaviours. Seeking professional help to address these behaviours is a healthy and loving gesture to oneself.
There are less extreme/less obvious or perhaps more accepted numbing behaviours such as mindless eating/snacking, binge watching tv, shopping, cleaning or reorganizing. To me, numbing is any behaviour we engage in so that we don’t have to face uncomfortable feelings/situations - mine is mindless snacking and compulsive cleaning or organizing. On the surface these may seem harmless behaviours, but when they interfere with processing emotions or problems then they can block you from resolving the underlying situations.
All or nothing mentality
I think of peoples’ personalities or traits as being part of a spectrum and it is a fluid spectrum (i.e., I don’t think people act in one manner exclusively as we often identify ourselves), however I do believe that we have preferred approaches or manners. Back in this blog post (
irritability, cabin fever and a breakthrough
) I wrote about viewing the way we react to things like we’re floating down a river between the banks of rigidity and chaos. Going to either extreme puts us in an undesirable state where we’re either digging in our heels over every little thing or feeling totally overwhelmed.