Miracle of miracles…

... I seem to actually be getting my shit together.

I pretty much completed the vision/mandate/goals exercise and discovered that I required an additional layer (I’ll call them directives) between mandate and goals. I just need to finish making the goals measurable and to such a degree that I can actually measure my productivity on a daily basis and hold myself to a sort of performance standard.

I’m still technically in migration mode into this new approach to living/prioritizing but the migration has been aggressive. I’d say I’m at 90% or more, daily, and have been for more than a month. I’ve been very productive since mid-May and consistently exercising and eating right since June 1^st and 3^rd respectively and feeling very confident about it. And feeling healthier, thinner and more limber. I have not weighed myself at all and I really don’t think I need to. For now I plan to trust how I feel in essence. I can hike farther without needing a rest and there is actually some clearance between my belly and the steering wheel again!

The vision-through-goals exercise was very revealing. The emergent goals look suspiciously much like what I was already doing in my own inconsistent way, which arouses the spectre of self-fulfilling prophecy but there is some new stuff, and more significantly, the procedure has revealed precisely how to prioritize everything.

Unfortunately it also demonstrated that giving up the reading/writing volunteer work in favor of the justice/rehabilitation work was very much the wrong decision. And I’m not sure yet how to handle that. I feel like I’ve made a pretty firm commitment to Grandpa Munster and the Circles community.

Image borrowed from University of Toronto Living Leadership blog - or whoever they borrowed it from.

abscond /əbˈskänd/

I hastened my exit strategy, disposing of my career prematurely and creating more financial dysfunction than originally planned, moving in with Biodad and the semi-separated wife, interpreting that I would assist them in restructuring their side-swiped lives.  Unbeknownst to me, they had been interpreting that I would be a great roomie to party with. They then spent my difficultly-acquired money on booze, cigarettes and party supplies while I hid in my room, surviving a soundtrack to madness and biding my time.

abridge /əˈbrij/

Oops. I accidently shortened the previous vacation summary piece by passing this one over:

Walking around all afternoon in the tiny village of L’Anse Fourmi, a gaggle of curious children following us around, waiting for the rental company to deliver a replacement vehicle after we were forced to cook a lovely chowder in the first vehicle’s radiator. Weird but true.

abroad /əˈbrôd/

Getting lost in Costa Rica in a remote village where no one spoke English or probably ever saw a tourist before.

Taking daily Spanish lessons from the liquor store proprietor while quaffing Cerveza Imperial.

Sneaking down to the beach in Cuba for a midnight dalliance with a cute young local and running smack into armed police.

Waiting in the car while my Trinidadian host hops a fence to poach limes for my vodka and tonics.

Receiving ice cold French fries right out of the fridge at a misguided chip truck operation in Tobago.

Climbing a Mayan pyramid externally and then again internally at Chichen Itza. They don’t allow that anymore.

Watching the brother score four goals in his first pro lacrosse appearance—at USAir Arena, Washington D.C. 

abrasive /əˈbrāsiv/

I love the feel of sand as it trickles from my clenched fist, held vertically. It funnels out as if from an hourglass. It is one of those intriguing sensations: ticklish, alive, impossible.

abrade /əˈbrād/

When I was very young, Alf was very old; a friend of my grandmother. “Alf has given you a gift,” she said to me one day. “You won’t appreciate it now. But you’ll have to take good care of it and you will appreciate it later when you’re older.”

It was a very old wooden music box. It played four old songs. I don’t know what songs they are. There was an image on its top. A girl, I think, and a Christmas tree. And possibly a cat. The image had paled, wearing away; a ghost of itself.

I am somewhat unnerved to realize that I don’t know the current whereabouts of my music box. I hope my mother has it. My grandmother was not often mistaken, I think, but she was wrong about the music box. I appreciated it immediately.

abracadabra /abrəkəˈdabrə/

Magician/entertainer Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller fame) tells a story of his meeting prestigious pick-pocket Apollo Robbins for the first time. He concedes that pick-pockets are considered low on the trickster totem pole, maybe a step up from ventriloquists but that Robbins is possibly the best ever.

At a magicians convention they were seated at the same table and Penn repeatedly tried to goad Robbins into performing a trick for them. Finally Robbins conceded and told Penn to sign his signature on a napkin. Penn pulled out his pen, put it to the napkin and immediately blurted, “Fuck you!” and slammed his pen on the table.

Robbins then pulled a small cylindrical object from his pocket and passed it over to Penn. It was, of course, his ink cartridge.

above /əˈbəv/

“What’s up?” they say to me. What’s up. I’ve never understood the point of this question. I think perhaps it means, “Hey there. I see you and feel the need to acknowledge you but I can’t think of an intelligent question, so… what’s up?”

I glance upward on this occasion. “Ceiling tiles,” I say. “and lighting tubes… wires and pipes. The third floor...”

“I see,” says the dull man.

“Clouds, helicopters, man-made satellites…”

“Okay, I get it.”

“The moon, asteroids, Pluto, the starship Enterprise, Chewbacca… Hey, where you going?”

about-face /əˌboutˈfās/

I was perhaps seven or eight years old; Eddie significantly older. He was our leader. The two of us left the stairwell on an arbitrary floor and immediately the posse appeared ahead of us coming around the corner at the end of the long hallway: the dark-skinned girl and her sister and her mother who held a page in her hands. It was Eddie’s note with the F-word scrawled in extra big letters. I didn’t know what all the small writing said. We spun 180 degrees and fled back to the stairwell to try another floor.

But the rouse was in vain. I had to go home and face the music. We had earlier spied our pursuers at my apartment door, speaking with my parents.

At my bedside, my parents had a talk with me. “No,” I said. “It wasn’t my writing. Eddie wrote it. I don’t know what it said.”

The next day I apologized to the Indian girl and her family. She remained fond of me, and I never played with Eddie again.

abound /əˈbound/

Cars and cows and cars and cows and cars and cows and cars and cows and cars and cows and cars and cows and cars and cows and cars and cows and cars and cows and cars and cows. Say it ten times quickly.

abort /əˈbôrt/

It’s largely accepted that the young people who concocted my creation were foolish enough to attempt marriage for the solitary reason that was me.

I have never asked what the runner-up option was. I’m not sure I want to know.

aboriginal /ˌabəˈrijənl/

Long long ago in a galaxy way too close for comfort, one of the douchiest douchebags in human history – I think his name was Christopher Columbus – paid a visit to the Americas, bringing its indigenous peoples the gifts of smallpox, patriarchal greed, the grooviest ever gender-ambiguous Spanish fashions and, last but not least, a new name: Indians.

Indians, he called them because he didn’t realize what hemisphere he was in. Nice try Chris.

More than 560 years later I still cannot say the word Indians without knowing if I've been understood. Have we still not figured out the difference between First Nations peoples (or Native Americans if you’re south of the 49^th parallel) and people from the nation of India? Do we need to sit down and get this sorted out once and for all?

I've got a job, I explore
I follow every little whiff
And I want my life to smell like this:
To find a place, an ancient race
The kind you'd like to gamble with
Where they'd stamp on burning bags of shit

-The Tragically Hip (song: Looking For a Place to Happen)