One Little (Late) Victory

The genius in the concept of “one small victory” is it should be fairly easy for even pessimists to find one itty-bitty thing to claim victory over. It could start with being alive then move as far as having the mental capacity to be pessimistic (I’m reminded of the motto under the gate for Mars University in the show Futurama: “With Knowledge Comes Fear”). Yet, I have wracked my brain for a few days trying to find my one small — though decisive — victory, and I don’t even fall in for hard-core pessimism, choosing instead to linger around cynicism and smart-assery.

I associate the tiny victories with waypoints on the path to a goal; each waypoint being a smaller goal and building up to the Übergoal. The victories for pessimists I mentioned before are merely starting points (does that make me an optimist?) in my mind. The difficulty I was having with claiming my small victory, I think, lied in not knowing what the goal actually was; thereby, not having a meter with which to gauge progress. This problem I think I have solved. Today, my small victory is identifying the Übergoal in the process of evaluating the progress I’ve made in other, apparently unconnected, goals. I’ll start with the Übergoal and break it down from there.

The Übergoal of this heady PintofStout seems to be freedom. I know this term is bandied about all over the place, covering the entire spectrum from double-talking newspeak to nihilistic self-absorption and beyond. The freedom I am pursuing is most completely described as negative freedom — freedom from non-voluntary constraints. This may seem kind of generic now, but the realization of this underlying premise in many disparate endeavors hit me like a freight train. In many aspects of my life I felt caged and restricted by external circumstances or by internal mental bugaboos. It is freedom from these varying restrictions that the smaller goals aim to achieve without knowing it consciously.

The first small victory has been a long time coming. For the whole of my memory, I have been afraid of conflict. That meant not standing up for myself and others I love on many occasions. It also meant going along with the program, whatever that program was, in order to make things go smoothly. As our own B.W. has espoused so vehemently, I have learned to not be afraid. Consequently, this little achievement has instilled a hearty confidence in my demeanor. It has also freed me from so many mental constraints.

The last small victory I am going to declare is nothing more than a start. I have always had some inclination toward writing and telling stories (a small child pecking away on Grandma’s old typewriter in an effort to write a story about a helicopter with a giant robot arm underneath of it). I was led away by science and more technical pursuits, but eventually came back to writing. For the last three years or so I have been writing in earnest. I started out writing a journal, which served as an outlet for my thoughts and a means to write things with some definite direction and focus. After a year of journal-keeping, I decided to go public. The ultimate goal (or so I thought) was to be able to write for a living, assuming I would enjoy it more than my current profession.

This experiment has had its successes and disappointments. I’m disappointed that I’m not the writer I had hoped I’d be; to achieve that would take a dedication of time that I seem unwilling to cede to the cause. But, due to these disappointments paired with a dose of reality about the blog and writing markets, I have reexamined this goal and the results of my inquiry lead to the recognition of the Übergoal. I was looking at writing as a means of escape from the work/debt trap foisted upon nearly everyone by our culture. It was the feelings of being chained to these things that I was trying to be free from. Of course, these chains don’t disappear the moment I realize they’re there, but I do have a target now.

There were other small victories that pointed to the removal of barriers in my life that helped to lead to the deduction of the Übergoal. The combination of the constant desire for freedom from restrictive and extremely time-consuming employment, which helped to point out the restrictions to the Übergoal, and the inner strength born of controlling my fear makes me confident that many barriers are going to fall and the reigns of my existence will finally be in the proper hands. Victory is (or will eventually be) mine!

(Thanks to Sunni for posting this in my absence. I wish I could be here to celebrate this flood of positive thinking and offer my congratulations on all the smaller rivulets of the other contributors in person.)

Thinking and living more in my circle of influence instead of my circle of concern, I have an arena which is full of concerns, many of which I am unable to directly address in a manner which alleviates these concerns. I also have an arena of influence where my efforts do yield some results. I have found that by expending more brain energy in an area in which tangible, positive results are realized, that I grow as a person and improve the quality of my life. Sure, I am concerned about many ills in this country and society, but how much direct influence do I have? I do realize more now than in the past that I can influence my personal circumstances to a large degree by my attitude. I can influence those whom I have personal relationships with (that can be a sobering thought). These realizations motivate me to step back and consider my investments of time and energy. I want my life to be full of genuine contentment. I want those around me to sense this and experience it also.

I know I’ll forget some of them, but here I go anyway.

In the fall of 2006, my very dear friend The Shadow persuaded me (after enduring a number of silly protests and feeble arguments) to sell and ship him some caramels. His doing so (along with his subsequent orders and praise for the candy) led me to the small candy business I have going now. Even though it’s small, it seems to be bringing a lot of happiness to myself and many others; and I am looking into ways to improve and/or expand it. I enormously enjoy the business, and hope to be able to do more of it.

Somewhat like Kirsten described, I have finally overcome two major bugaboos: an intolerance for my making mistakes; and an insistence that I understand something—or at least think that I understand it—before being comfortable with it. I have been using the latter as a means of keeping challenging and/or potentially helpful ideas at arm’s length for a long time.

After I realized I had been wrong (and hypocritical) in some ways regarding them, each of Lobo’s older children not only forgave me, they have chosen to re-establish a warm, positive relationship with me.

I am debt-free, and have a modest but steady income. I needed to sell the bus that I was wanting to convert into a mobile home to pay some bills, but I am back on the market for a DIY mobile home project. More on this will be forthcoming.

After too many years of vacillating priorities (and approaches), I understand that raising my children is my top priority. And it has become abundantly clear that it’s best for them that their parents not be separated by thousands of miles. Thus, come spring I (and MAL, I hope) will be moving west.

I have identified the source of my over-eating problems, and have successfully kept it at bay for over a month now. That, coupled with just a modest upward tick in my activity level, has resulted in a slow but steady decline in my weight. I will be adding more exercise in the coming weeks to help accelerate it.

This was alluded to in the other thread by a couple of people who read it on my blog a couple of days ago. but I'll link to it in this thread.

Long story short- I don't belong at my company or anywhere in corporate America probably. I don't belong in the police state of Arizona. And I'm tired of the suffocating feeling of trying to fit in where I don't belong. So for a while at least, I'm not going to do that.

As you requested, Sunni =). Here is my victory . When I begin to notice changes in my endurance and breathing, I think it's importance and triumph will hit me. The elimination of pain in my lower back has been a blessing!

Congratulations to you Sunni, and to everyone else who has victories to celebrate! Being debt-free is a huge, wonderful victory all by itself.

Indeed, that does look like Brophy.

I had a victory a few days ago. I reset the Microsoft Server Extensions on my Endervidualism site and no unexpected change occurred in any of the pages. It has taken me a while (several years), but I am essentially Microsoft free. (Though the house isn't yet, since Joe's gaming won't make the transition for a while.)

My old Crypto-Sony machine still has Windows on it, but I only power that up when I work on cleaning up the file and e-mail systems for transferring what I wish to keep across my local Ethernet to Kubuntu. (Eventually, probably in a few weeks, I'll put Ubuntu on the Crypto-Sony. I'll probably start playing with Samba then too.) My switch to Linux seems fairly complete to me, though I still have Windows users (Julie and Joe) on my local net.

Now I have plans to change many daily methods towards more databased operation as opposed to using mainly office applications. I may make a few small quick steps toward improving the "hacked together" arrangements I use today, but I anticipate eventually using Ruby on Rails (still playing with and learning that). However, first I must clean up the Endervidualism site some; merge my multiple sites to one hosting provider account; then upgrade Ender's Review (probably to Rails); and probably last in this early list: return to the movie schedule system - which should have many alterations other than a completely different foundation.

I have strayed from accomplishments (victories) to future plans, but that often seems the way of it. Victories lead to new challenges.