How to live forever and change the world

Here's inspiration from a young man who once portrayed my character's son in an indie film....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHNALcttrQo

Common-Sense Terminology to Describe Units of Work

A primary purpose of language is to enable us to name things with reasonable terms we can all agree on that make sense.

Units of time, for example, are:  supereoneon, eon, era, period, epoch, and age.  And from there more granularly, I believe we would agree on millennium, century, decade, year, month, day, hour, minute, second, etc.

So what’s useful terminology to express discreet units of work effort?  The terms and the order I propose are:  Project, component, module, process, method, task, step, and detail.  I believe this is a clear, consistent, and common-sense way to conceptually modularize and express the elements of work.*

So I have a project, and I have to consider the components of my project, which is made up of modules, modules which are in their turn made up of processes.  Each process has methods, each method has associated tasks, each task has steps, and each step has details.

I'm not promoting an idiosyncratic grammar merely to appear clever.  My intention is to suggest a habit of easily using one appropriate term or another relative to the work at hand.  Is the work to which I’m referring at the project level, or does it deal with the details of a step?  Am I dealing with the methods of a process, or the tasks associated with those methods?  I’d like to be able to be able to use consistent terminology to characterize work and be immediately understood simply because there’s a general consensus that a task, for example, is more than a step but less than a method. 

Just seems to me that in English we’ve done a better, more precise job providing generally agreed-upon terms for units of time, for example, than for units of work.

*Note:  There are a variety of components in a project, including material.  Materials are, I suggest, part and piece, that is, pieces which make up parts.  There must be other components as well, but in this post I focus on the work effort itself, what must be done.

A Successful Player

My window of time during which I might have become a commercial success as a working actor has closed. This is not a statement of fact, I’m stating what’s highly probable. The work, the fame and money, go to talent who have the credits. I've been a working actor all my life, but few if any of my credits are commercially substantial.

What works for me is a deep understanding of the choices I made when I was younger, why I made them, and what I wanted my career on stage to mean.

I am a man. In life, I inhabit many roles. My resume reads like an encyclopedia. I've played more roles than most men. I've lived to fullest extent possible, tried to. It was the right way, the honest way, for me to live. I lived in as many ways as I could, tempered only by my understanding of what was life-affirming. In biblical terms, I did not worship false gods.

I've always believed that civilization is marvelous but rather beside the point. Put another way, I wanted to observe and understand everything as best I could without prejudice, admitting my predispositions as I knew them. Understanding was my purpose in life. I might have taken more risks, but was never idle. I was busy gaining insight.

On my own terms, I’m a success. I have been the man I planned to be. My window remains wide open. The fresh air keeps me alive, the possibilities remain endless—at least until I end, perhaps even beyond if my legacy has any value.

I encourage my actor contemporaries to celebrate choices made, because they were made honestly. 

And those of you who are young? If you make the right choices, you may achieve commercial success. I know what I wanted, what drove me.

What do you want?

The Meta of Everything Is Experience

Those who sell products know that they must understand how the experience of a product affects potential customers, how that product not only satisfies some need the customer perceives, but also an experience the customer craves.

At the risk of expanding the scope of sales in a crass society which already seems to commercialize everything, I encourage you to consider how creating and appreciating experience is a prominent feature of all areas of our lives.

You want those you love to love you.  But no one can fully appreciate you, another person can only love the experience of you.  In fact, you only love the experience of others, not them, not fully.

You would still do anything for love, for those you love.  The fact that you are limited by your perception of others, limited to merely experiencing others, may seem a semantic distinction.  But it suggests things true and important: 

• We often don’t appreciate how we affect our experiences of each other, nor for that matter, our experience of places and things around us.

• Things which distract us from experience, or censor experience, things which impair our experience—drugs, alcohol, rage, sorrow—strike at the heart of living.

• Things which improve our experiences, and the experiences of those around us may improve life, or may give us false assurances until the nature of others and of things assert themselves and temper our experience:  The stock market rise was a fluke, the warm feelings we had were fueled by false advertising, or a lover’s lies.

Experience is all we have, in the end.  Understanding our shared as well as our unique experiences is the key to understanding each other, and the universe itself.  

Experience is our reality check, as well as how we are misled.  Thus paradox resides in the foundation of human experience, which accounts for religious faith and nihilism, sarcasm and good humor, hope and despair.

Make your experiences count.

Silence is Golden

When there are no words, the silence speaks volumes.  Though silence is maddeningly taciturn....

Question Authority

We rarely consider the ways we lend authority to others, don’t always perceive we do.  

Certainly there are authorities, governments, churches, team leaders, chairpersons, parents, who command authority.  All derive it ultimately from the consent and acquiescence of the governed.  This is inherently neither good nor bad, but we should consider any authority’s validity.   

Often we grant authority without realizing we are, obey perceived requirements which are no more than someone else’s agenda, authorized only by our submission to it.

When we hesitate to do things on account of what others think, question their authority to prevent us.

“Creative Specialist”: An Oxymoron

Specialist credentials are acquired by repeated masterful performance in a specific area.  Specialists are by nature focused, driven, single-minded.

Creative persons are by nature distracted, craving the next novel experience.  They are by nature generalists, facilitators, able to make connections.  They may have specialized skills, but they’re always looking for new things to do, and however skilled they may be, they invariably aren’t more experienced in a given area than someone who’s devoted their career to that particular specialization.
Creatives thrive in the nether-world of crossover skills.

Typical job posting qualifications call for specialists.  The text of these qualifications will state that they want creative people, willing to turn on a dime with changing circumstances, who are not satisfied with routine assignments.

We live in an era of specialization.  Human Resource departments don't recognize crossover skills.  Regardless what they proclaim, they neither want nor believe they need creative types.

An Insight into Inaction

Beginnings

Today is a new beginning.  

Our yesterdays were new beginnings.  Tomorrow, another.  And each day after, new beginnings all.  In a minute, too, another new beginning.  

Each past moment, those old new beginnings?  Gone.  And each future moment is a matter for speculation only.    At this time, this new beginning—this "now"—is all we have.  

So many second chances, piling on, one after one another.  We lose them all, utterly, failing time and again.  I mean we fail, because we can't possibly succeed in any one moment.  Unless we're dodging a bullet... and how often do we walk away unscathed when we dodge bullets?

It's up to each of us to consider this moment as our best chance, to make the most of it, in spite of the odds.

Life Time

When you’re young, a year is a long time, too long to count on most of your plans working out—life will switch everything up. From one year to the next, you change in unexpected ways, lose interest in favorite pastimes, and lose yourself in new activities.

You feel like you'll live forever. You dream of your future, and make each day count.

When you’re old, a year is a long time, too long to count on most of your plans working out—life will switch everything up. From one year to the next, you change in unexpected ways, lose interest in favorite pastimes, and lose yourself in new activities.

You feel like you've lived forever. You dream of your past, and make each day count.

First, Do No Harm...

Working on a quick-response software support team, I posted "First, do no harm..." on my activity board.

I am responsible for every move I make. I must act or die — breathing is an act. I consider consequences, even if it's after the fact. Some consequences remain unforeseen. Some I'll never know.

Second Thoughts

I’ve written many letters (and emails) the sentiments of which I reconsidered and disavowed. Fortunately, I had already sent very few of these.

Soul Exercise

I like the odd self-improvement books that feature games, and games that feature self-improvement card decks, insight exercises. One of the oddest of all was recently returned to me by a friend who’d borrowed it too long. The book is Kokology, “The Game of Self-Discovery.”

I think we must sometimes trick ourselves into understanding ourselves. Surely the meta of self-understanding is of necessity a magical state. As Arthur C. Clarke put it, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Insight into one’s own insight—meta insight—is certainly a matter by definition beyond our understanding. (Though we try.)

The Meta of Self

Wise preachers say God loves you as if you were the only person on earth, the jewel in the crown of his creation, the superlative of your best notions of yourself.

You are magnificent. Behave as if God exists.