Tag Archives: Logic

confusion and clarity

Nearing the end of this year’s story and I’m wondering if I’m in a state of confusion or a state of clarity? I’m beginning to believe that the two states of being are more equal than separate. I feel that they can be one in the same depending on how I decide to present myself and react in any given moment.

In the past 11 months, I learned that I needed to be aware of but let go fully of who I thought I was in order to truly become the person that I am meant to be. This is a much harder task than I anticipated.

I learned that being lost was the first step in finding myself. I found that detaching possession from objects, people, and places helped me feel free fluid and alive. I also found creating and nourishing connections with people places and objects helped me feel free fluid and alive. I now know I love to be heard and read as much as I love to listen and read. I do dread aerobic exercise but can dance in bliss until I drop. I crave structure and routine but resist it vehemently when it is forced upon me. I thrive around and thirst for people’s company but insist on time alone. I have found answers in feeling more than thinking and yet have spent more time reflecting than doing. In a nutshell, I have learned that I am simply a walking contradiction.

I can see how this month’s chapter writer and confidant Elizabeth Brady would ask me to consider the tools of logic and/or order once again as I now ask, “What is next?” I have to confess, though that I am less concerned now with that question of “What is next?” then when I began the project a year ago. I am more concerned about the question of “What can I do, feel, and resonate now?” I am more interested in preparing now for a possible future rather than deciding and planning for it to happen accordingly.

Last July in chapter two I found the lessons of logic to be extremely helpful during a difficult time dealing with personal relationships, family and living challenges. The lessons of logic and order brought me a particular focus I needed to balance out the overly emotional environment and circumstances I encountered then. Eleven months and chapters later and I am once again dealing with life’s dose of difficult challenges.

I have been playing this game for 37 years now and admittedly, I have not mastered the rules of logic, maybe because I never found life to be logical? There are not always explanations for the events and occurrences we experience. There is no one equation that brings me quick fix answers or solutions, it’s a constant process of learning how to catch curve balls. In this chaotic day to day, with or without chapter writers or wild card guidance, there is no winning or losing. There is only the practice of learning the right balance for staying in the game. Statistically planning the outcome has never and will most likely never be my focus. Instead I have chosen to continue to better my playing tactics through preparation and mindful practice. I continue to hope for the best and strive to create learning opportunities in what may look like losing circumstances.

In last year’s reflections on logic I learned that I do possess a great deal of order in my life. It just has come from an internal guidance. I simply present in a vastly different way than some are used to seeing or experiencing in this externally logic based society. My order in things rolls out in more of a flow pattern rather than a linear time constrained path.

Can practicing Chapter writer Brady’s logical exercises and using her tools help me find the focus I need to balance out the external guidance, we are all given on how to live life, with the internal guidance I can not deny? If practicing tools of logic and order can help me feel more grounded and present in my day-to-day goals than I am all for trying this linear system out. Thanks for the challenge!

6/4/2014

The beautiful book photographs in this post are by Emily Wheat.

Just finding this blog today? Read the prologue for more details on what Living Chapters is all about. Check out the Chapter Summaries Page to get caught up to date.

Chapter 12

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Beth,

Over the past 12 months you have tested, trusted, learned, expanded and contracted your mind and tested your limitations.You have followed and bent rules, heard guidance, and created new paths for exploration within yourself.

You have listed reflections of your learnings from the past 12 months. You have found personal strengths and limitations you didn’t know you had. My challenge to you, for your 12th month, is this: stop looking back. Look and plan for your future. These plans may evolve and they may change, but consider this a starting point. You know more, trust more, are more prepared than you have ever been to make a plan. I want to encourage you to push yourself to make actionable decisions. Encourage means literally to “put courage into someone”. Take the courage your friends have literally put into you these 12 months. Take the influences they have put into you. Create your own action steps towards a future goal by examining these influences and who you are. Define your next 12 books, not just the next 12 chapters.

You have 4 weeks, and 4 major tasks.

Step 1, week 1. Reflect. In the form a child’s questionnaire, you will reflect on who you have been and who you are, not only on the past year, but in the past and far into the future. Doing this should be childlike, enjoyable, nostalgic, and non-intellectual. What were the literal items you wore, things you did, review your past self, and define your future self. Enjoy the nostalgia of it. When you were 5, these things were defined in many ways by others. How has that changed? How many of these answers are still defined by others? Should they be?
Step 2, week 2. Look Inward. Create a mind map of this past 12 months. Who you are in the present and what flows out of you. Think of this as a creative model of you – what you have taken in, what you have put out.
Step 3, week 3. Create life goals. Identify 12 things you would like to accomplish or become in the next 12 years. Maybe these are career goals, maybe these are life goals or improvements. Maybe these goals will change. Take the inputs that you received from your journey this year, into these goals.
Step 4, week 4. Check the logic. You will now create a logic model for your goals. What will you put into it? What will come out of it? What outcomes did you expect, what do you want to strive for?

Step 1, week 1.

First. Reflect.

Starting at your 5-year-old self, fill in your blanks to the italicized sentences below.

BB (5 years old)

BB (10 years old)

BB (15 years old)

BB (20 years old)

BB (25 years old)

BB (30-40 years old, each year. Some of these will be forecasts)
I live:

My occupation is:

My 3 favorite hobbies are:

My favorite food is:

My favorite clothes are:

I consider my home to be:

The most interesting thing I have been invited to is:

3 things I like about myself are:

3 things I want to improve about myself are:

The single most interesting thing I have done this year is:

My friends helped me:

(add to this if you feel useful)

(Adapted/ Inspired by designer, Dana Tanamchi)

Step 2. week 2.

Look Inward at the past year. Mind Mapping. Creative chaos. What have you taken in, what have you put out, what questions has your Living Chapters journey raised. What is the visual representation of this journey?

This is about you and the past 12 months. A mind map is a diagram used to visually organise information. A mind map is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank landscape page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those.

Here is an example. This can be as simple or complex as you need it to be.

Step 3, week 3.
12 goals, 12 years

Step 4, week 4.

Develop a life goal logic model. In its simplest form, a logic model has four components: Inputs, Activities, Outputs, Impact or Outcome. Adapt this to work for you.

Create one for each of your 12 life goals. Ideally you have unlimited inputs, activities, outputs and potential outcomes for each goal.

After you complete these, reflect. Does this change your 12 goals? Adapt them if the logic doesn’t feel right. You do not need to share your logic models, but modify your 12 goals accordingly.

Inputs	Activities	Outputs	Outcomes/impacts
what do you have to put in to get to your end goal impact or outcome	what activities you need to undertake to get to your end goal impact or outcome	what is produced through those activities	the changes or benefits that result from the achievement of this goal
For example: Let’s say your goal is “Own a Boat” What inputs go into this, (e.g., money, research?)	For example: “Own a Boat” What activities need to happen, (e.g. sailing lessons, trip from Annapolis to St. Croix)	For example: “Own a Boat” (e.g. sailing culture becomes a part of your life, lifestyle changes, community changes)	For example: “Own a Boat” (e.g. increased skills/ knowledge/ confidence, leading to…new job, personal non-profit to help youth learn to sail, etc.)

6/1/2014

Just finding this blog today? Read the prologue for more details on what Living Chapters is all about. Check out the Chapter Summaries Page to get caught up to date.

protagonist parting words

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VOILA! Its done! (IT, being the online portfolio that I thought was an impossible task to accomplish 10 years and 30 days ago). It’s not entirely finished or polished – the site needs some major editing and design work – but I am never quite finished or polished myself so I would say that my online portfolio suits me well. At least now it lives and breathes in it’s own virtual space where anyone can scroll through and trace the path of my career if they so choose to. Go ahead – take a peak and see if you get as lost as I did while making it. www.bethbarbush.com

I had no idea that this month’s theme of “Logic and Order” would bring a literal tangible outcome along with so much heady self-reflection. I thought that somehow I would be asked to study up on the stock market, reading consumer reports or learning theoretical mathematics…. I have to say I am really relieved about escaping that this month.. but geez… staring through this microscope on my deepest and sincerest goals and ambitions past present and future is harder than any mathematical equation I’ve ever tried to figure out!

Diving in and dissecting my past, looking at what I’ve done, where I have been and who I have become was something I thought might happen with this project (but not so early on!). Just looking at my portfolio makes me a little tired, I’m not quite sure how I actually did all those things. It seems as if I have been running for a long time now – jumping from one project into another. Gabe was right – the most logical thing to do at this point was to stop, pause and reflect upon all of this.

Anita’s last unanswered wildcard question came to mind when resurfacing this flow of experiences and energy I had in my twenties,

“Knowing what you know now, what advice would you have given yourself ten years ago?”

As I said before, I really would not have changed anything or made different decisions, but I would have told myself two things. First – ambition really is overrated. And second – there are more than a few ways to lead a successful and happy life.

I think we sometimes spend way too much time worrying about who or what we want to become rather than focusing on who we are and what we are doing and accomplishing in the present. This ambition I had about “being someone” or “being something” in retrospect is something I would have liked to let go of a bit sooner. I use to spend a little too much time worrying about not making traditional decisions. From a very early age, I would wonder, “Why do I seem to want very different things than those around me?” “Are my tastes, thoughts and dreams wrong? Should I be doing something else that would make more money? Be more stable?”

Trusting myself more than the external influences around me, I found my way from one experience to the next. It often felt like walking a tight rope though – constantly questioning myself and wondering if I would fall. If I could only have sent this portfolio to my younger self to show her what she could do if she trusted herself without fear!

Luckily, I do have a strong will and instinct and have had the great support of my only real mentors (my friends and my mother). I have never looked up to famous writers, artists, or public figures. I find public figures talented and interesting but have always been more inspired directly by the people in my immediate life. These mentors set extraordinary examples for me to follow. I grew up with a mother who raised two kids on her own, had her own craft shop, got her masters while working a full-time social service job and still budgeted time and money to take my brother and I on vacation. Gabe, my best friend of 17 years has been a successful screen writer, a movie accountant, Peace Corps volunteer, chocolate salesman, social worker, and now 3rd grader teacher. Take a peak at the Players page on this website to see what other amazing people I have been lucky enough to have in my life. They all have also been great mentors to me in some way.

So… last logic lessons of the month:

Trust yourself. You know what’s right for you.

(and if feel you need a second opinion…)

Ask your mentors! They can only help you learn more about yourself and who you want to be! The amazing people in my life have really helped me thus far and are continuing to do so by helping me live out some incredible chapters.

7/31/13

Just finding this blog today? Read the prologue for more details on what Living Chapters is all about.

Gabe’s parting words

logic and order

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Yesterday I opened up the July chapter sitting with my mother caught hostage in the emergency room of a hospital in Hershey PA. The emergency had passed the night before, but we had been there for hours and hours stuck between her actually being admitted to the hospital or being able to go home. As my mother noted many times, July 1 is the day when all new doctors start their residencies and the experienced ones have moved on, so there was nothing logical or orderly about our experience there. (Word of advice: if you’re going to end up in the emergency room, don’t do it on July 1^st) Anyway, To pass the time we read the new challenge and reminisced about all the crazy things I have done, and even laughed a bit about Gabe’s accurate descriptions of our old crappy apartments and weird roommates.

Logic and order was exactly what we were in need of yesterday and it is sometimes just the right remedy in an emergency or chaotic situation. Reading Gabe’s sobering prescription was a good thing for both of us to focus on in the midst of a very emotional and disorderly experience. Gabe, has always been able to successfully bring both humor and logic into any situation and scenario no matter how difficult it seems. I will definitely learn from him this month.

My life has never been void of both positive as well as negative emotional, dramatic, and spontaneous adventures but both logic and order have always been a bit more elusive for me. I have to admit, I was really kind of worried about what I would be thrown into this month and if I would be able to make it happen after operating my entire adult life more on instinct and feeling rather than logic or order.

“How practical!” My mom complimented Gabe’s chapter idea. Then she quickly followed with “But how the heck are you going to put 10+ years of experiences together in 4 weeks?”

Quickly his logical prescription was giving me a side effect of a mild panic attack. Hmmm… not sure, how am I going to take on one more technology challenge to my plate right now (with the Living Chapters blog and my new work project both vying for my Macbook’s attention). Can I somehow pull together and organize the last 10 years of my creative professional life in such a short period of time? I have always been too busy in the middle of one project to even think about the work or project that I just finished – and now look at me, I have put it off so long that it seems… overwhelming! It kind of amounts to looking at over 20 projects and through at least 10,000 images. I thought organizing the work in a text only resume alone was hard! Ok time to take my own advice…

…in case of emergency, first – be creative, second – simplify things and of course next – ask for help

Can you help? (please!)

1. As a former photographer, community artist, story collector, and visual junkie. I am looking for a professional portfolio-hosting site that offers something more visually and stylistically appealing than mahara.com. Oh! And maybe something that a non-tech savvy person as myself can handle? Do you have suggestions?

2. Do you have a personal portfolio that you would like to share that would inspire me? Something with unique design, layout, media etc.

3. If you know me, have worked with me, or know my work in the past 10 years – could you share a program, story or project that you feel I should highlight? (post here or on Facebook)

Please share your ideas by posting here to the blog, on the LIving Chapters Facebook page or sending me a comment.

Thank you for your ideas!

Just finding this blog today? Read the prologue for more details on what Living Chapters is all about.

Visit the June Gallery for images and videos from the first chapter.