Designing my blog

After writing and publishing that last post, I felt great (awesome comments/discussion too!) but nowhere nearer to a satisfactory solution for structuring this blog.

It was a gift, then, that Designing Your Life showed up in my queue on Overdrive, because the concepts raised in the book addressed the questions that have been rising up in my soul.

Using the principles taught in the Design School at Stanford, Burnett and Evans talk about how to design your life. (I mentioned in a previous post on vocation that I once took a course with Dave Evans at Berkeley.)

I think the biggest takeaway so far is that there isn't one life waiting to be discovered and lived by me; in fact, there may be multiple lives that want to live through me.

It could appear a little haunting, but I'm trying to see it as freeing. I am totally the person who (as far as I can tell) was not made for a specific vocation. However, I am so used to thinking in terms of goals, teleology, and so this free-floating that is happening nowadays kind of freaks me out.

This blog is such a reflection of my life; I want to structure it, organize it, but that wouldn't be me. It won't let me rein it it. Simultaneously, I want to hide, and not show people my real self because I feel completely un-put together. But something keeps telling me to come back.

I am re-reading Big Magic, trying not to be freaked out by the question, "Do you have the courage to bring for this work [i.e., the creative life]? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes" (7).

I think I struggle more with faith than I do courage. It's not so much about bravery for me, I'm willing to do a lot of stupid things. But I do struggle to believe that there's a purpose for what I'm doing.

The hardest thing for me is to act on those still, tiny feelings when I don't have everything lined up in a row first.

Even with this blog, when I first re-launched it with my thirty day project, I had no idea where I was going, but when I completed it, I was pretty darn proud of what was unearthed.

Theo discovered a "treaded tractor" in the shadow of the couch plus some other random object that was there. 

In Designing Your Life, the authors explain how designers use prototypes, trying not to be too committed to one idea (and certainly not the first idea that comes up), and hoping that if it fails, that it fails fast so you can move to the next one.

I have been 99% consistent with once-weekly blog posts since the close of my thirty day project, and I think I'm ready to increase my output to two posts per week. Perhaps one of them will be the so-called scheduled type post that follows a more traditional pattern (e.g., kid updates, fun lists, photos, etc.) and the other will be open-ended (scary! wonderful!), as has been my wont.

(Does that just totally fit my personality or what? Rules and rule-breaking. Oh my gah I'm so predictable.)

The other random tidbit from the book is the difference between engineering and designing. The authors purport that when approaching your life from a design stance, you don't focus on the problems, but on the people. The best design is done with empathy and consideration for the people the designed thing will ultimately be for.

(Elizabeth, I'm totally all ears for your thoughts on design! :D)

So I'm trying to apply that to my life/blog. How can I design a life/blog that really serves me? What would that even look like?

I seriously have no idea.

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(Can I blog about how writing this blog post about blogging - and the previous one too - made me feel 5238947329427 times better about my angst? This is so bizarre, and I'm trying to pay attention to this pattern. When I sat down to write today I was like, "I hate writing. I hate this stupid commitment I made to blogging. I don't want to write. All my ideas are stupid. I am such a contradiction. Everything I thought I wanted to say is mush. No one is making me do this except myself. I want to die." And then after I do it, I feel lighter. So weird. Okay, just had to share that.)

12. Finding your vacation

My favorite non-conformists.

"It is fun to have fun but you have to know how." --The Cat in the Hat

When I was at Berkeley I took a deCal (extracurricular course) called "Finding Your Vocation," taught by a Dave Evans, whom I now see is at Stanford (almost typed something different but then thought better of it, Alex). We were provided a lot of interesting readings but the thing I have not forgotten is from the first day when everyone went around and shared why they signed up for the class. No joke, after half the group had shared, one girl said, "Oh my gosh. I thought this class was called 'Finding your vacation.'" The collective embarrassment felt in the room for her was visceral.

Today, however, I am starting to see the convergence between vocation/vacation.

Super convoluted but here goes: The process of decluttering our home ala KonMari precipitated a ruthless examination of my life/mind/spirit/psyche. Every segment we did was really dreadful but then at the end we could stand back and feel so happy. Now that we've completed a significant amount, I look at different sections of our house that have been Konmari'd, feel giddy, and think, "This is our vacation home." (David, I was tempted to insert a parenthetical "becoming." Lolz.)

The paradigm shift for me was "Why can't our home be our vacation home?" When I think about vacation, the aspect I love most about it is not sightseeing or going out and doing things, but lounging around with nothing to do and without many of my possessions around me, save for the things needed to cook a yummy meal, and maybe a book or two.

In The Art of Non-Conformity (I'm on the last hour of the audiobook now), Guillebeau also suggests the exercise of writing out what your ideal day would look like. I need to do that soon and figure out how to bring alignment between my current reality and my ideal reality. It is probably going to involve figuring out how I can go swimming more often. (Christine, why aren't we neighbors?)

I think I've been waiting for my vocation to drop in my lap from the sky; now I'm beginning to realize that perhaps I can take the bull by the horns and create/curate my life/home into my vocation/vacation.

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This recent joy of creativity has been a life saver for me. After a long season of feeling socially, mentally, and spiritually dry, I'm tucking "creativity" away as a tool I need to remember when I'm feeling stuck. I love the phrase "your childhood solutions become your adult problems" (HT: Carol Johnston of First Pres Berkeley Stephen Ministry fame). I think what it's saying to me now is that there's a good and valid reason why we may do things for a long spell or season. But when it stops working, you can move on and figure out something else. My old ways of seeing and knowing God and understanding the world, and the church, and so many other things? Just because they aren't working doesn't mean God isn't there. (Ohhhhhhhh I'm getting to that deep stuff. And I'm gonna stop here before I cry. #toolate What a friggin' long grieving process this is.)

If I remove the scaffolding of fears I have set up for myself, will faith be there to catch me?

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So tell me, what is your ideal vocation/vacation?