Closed Circuit

There was a restaurant across from the cafe in Oakland where I got my morning tea — my mom said we should go there for lunch sometime. I’d only gradually begun noticing it, wasn’t sure it was a restaurant, maybe an office or a design studio with all the black-dressed women going in at 9AM. Now I know and have in mind to try it.

but I don’t

My daughter asks me at night while I tuck her into bed to vacuum the dust and spiderwebs from her loft. There aren’t many — if I see a big one I brush it away. But each night I say, Remind me a different time than bedtime and we’ll take care of it.

but she doesn’t, and I don’t, and days go by

I‘ve said I want to create new iPhone apps, especially time management; improve how we leverage personal technology to make our lives run smoother. More than smoother, to focus better on things we care about. Particularly those of us who get caught up in the circuits of our lives, the closed circuits. We with aspirations unreached, maybe not even incrementally approached, as the days go by.

volcano with cerulean sky as I pass by complaining life passes me by

Drinking smooth green tea with almond milk wondering what the guy sitting at a table twelve feet away does for a living. Clean-shaven but did he recently have a beard? Too clean-shaven. Young, watching his phone from the sides of his eyes, attention more on the service counter and his pot of tea or…wait, on the hand hovering in the air between himself and his pot of tea, service counter in the background. Imagine the hand holding a cigarette as it gently waves above the table.

green tea with milk… smoker with no cigarette

Most often I have little thought of what others around me are up to. Thinking of thinking of others in cafes later while I sit alone in my house my thoughts jump to another house we offered on in Berkeley…and were outbid because we wouldn’t come up to the final price. Reflecting on my awareness of others reminds me how I strive to be separate. I found the house a prime choice with its big, landscaped yard overlooked by a tiny, private office space in which I thought I could be alone to make my hundreds of sales calls per week, and write.

my kids watch a circus (a circuit?) of failed offers over the years — close calls as they move inexorably closer to high school and college. Together we fly towards a time when we won’t need a big house or a big yard. And they’re happy in dusty lofts

Alone facing the suffering and joy of writing and sales. Sorrow and suffering when I’m distracted and fail to complete either, exhaustion when I complete both. Interacting with others to be alone (in a cottage outside the new house), with others yet feel alone (sales calls), and alone trying to connect (writing).

to lunch at Mockingbird Restaurant across from my cafe

At that cafe— not the one where I saw the non-smoker — many months ago I enjoyed a routine strategizing a daily division of time amongst writing and dreaming, travel, planning, and reflection, while making sales calls and developing a sales team…and of course starting new initiatives (such as making an iPhone app, at least pushing it along in some way).

Didn’t work. When writing the above I left out “starting new initiatives.” It takes the cake: for a time I can maintain the rest, but not simultaneously focus on product development and writing along with the everything else, including family support and travel. There isn’t enough energy for thinking about major new things much less making them happen. And in my experience a product is created and then plops out without fanfare (only that created by my own energy pushing it along) before it withers.

let’s not mention it (but I have) as I might be tempted to turn my back on product development and attempt to return to the past, to Florence, Italy, to being present and no more…

how would that be so bad

While trying to do everything, including product design, my days were mostly a diversion from sales calls, not a true division of time and effort. Had good lunches alone, yet the dream of traveling and writing (and creating new products) didn’t take off. Feels like whenever I commit time to a new direction I find something else I’m already doing to fill that time.

gaps filled by procrastinating on app design to fill gaps in time

Sitting with something similar. Tea gone. Work beckoning I’m tempted to check my email for tasks to help avoid real estate sales, itself avoidance of thinking too deeply of avoiding writing, through that avoiding developing personal technology apps — maybe the unattained goal itself is a means of avoiding facing something as-yet-hidden about myself and my life. Trying to make enough money to really get going while I fear taking the challenges head-on.

unknown hiding behind un-approached hiding behind incomplete hiding behind the obvious

I fear others won’t take me seriously until I prove my worth in an industry, or pay them. Given I avoid facing the problem up front, if I get enough money to pay people will the fear disappear — will money resolve that lack of self-esteem? Caught in a circuit of avoiding making apps because I’m not ready — the circuit closed because I refuse to see I’m not ready and thereby sustain it — every effort fails because I’m unready for the next step. I choose to go around and around.

what day is this

Before the sunset of my life I want to step forward. But how? The sun isn’t getting higher in the sky. As Wesley in The Princess Bride stands to oppose the petulant prince, raising his sword though it takes most of his remaining strength, so I say I’ll create personal apps although there are layers of obstacles between me and that goal. Yet stating a goal is not enough; one has to be ready to actually do it, and I fear I am not. I’d rather sail off into a fantasy vacation.

I’ve occasionally taken small steps such as meeting a friend with a growing company and a proven app — we’ve discussed how to succeed as a Real Estate Broker but we had not discussed becoming a maker of personal apps. A crucial step is talking about doing a thing — and taking on the title Maker of Personal Apps is, or would be, big. I recently met with my friend to get his ideas how to move forward on app design, paid for lunch…and we didn’t talk about it. Got him to have a second glass of wine instead of discussing app development.

my calling

Perusing a Cal professor’s fascinating architectural treatise, A Pattern Language, I see that building an iPhone app to help myself and others organize our lives, similar to building a house or a city, should be based on insights into how life can be organized. Or how it should be organized. And what do I know about organizing a life when my own seems haywire despite my efforts to control it?

controlling

I want a time management program to help me be more coherent and successful, more focused on highest values. But how can I produce the app I need to produce the app? I may know something, yet the application itself has to be a reflection of a healthy human life, not an imposition upon it.

healthful life

Something new. Watching America’s Got Talent and hearing Simon Cowell say he knows so much about the show because he produces it, I take another step forward. I want to be an app producer. What a difference in a word. Although I could imagine being an actor producing compelling lines I fear I have to be the boss, to produce the show. I think I’m not a great employee: it feels hard to get others to promote me to a role wherein I make a difference.

though I go the road alone, yet patterns I create mean little until I am changed by my interaction with others — as a computer program interfaces with its users, as rain inundates a city

As sunlight glows hot in the afternoon I put the pieces of my life together that were long ago assembled and then scattered. Producer…creator…organizer — how long I’ve been away — how much I’ve tried to bend my successes in real estate to the creator role. Looking at another house, offering on it…huge terraced yard…if we get it I’ll spend much energy on the house and the yard…wait, what is this a dream? The same we were already outbid on shrinks in the rear view mirror. Failures have been walking through a fire to no clear purpose but to remind me I inhabit a strange land, dusty and burning that I’d prefer to fly above, flee from, or conquer.

text floats away on the void, amidst unawareness, a sea of lightning between the stars

So it goes. Am I found in the clouds or more than lost in the merry details of life? Lost in fleeing, flying, dreaming and conquering life.

at Mockingbird restaurant across from my cafe