2018.06.30 - Day 108

Day 108!!

I'm knocked out by your list, Storm. These days can truly be rewarding, although as I write, I think about a few who started off with explorations that perhaps continued without updates, and want to say *thank you*, too. Even small or incomplete gestures often prove to be seeds. :) Btw, I'm still looking forward to reading Homo Ludens, and still interested in play/theater/court connections.

Some good news today. My vacillating on the course has earned me a 10% discount, providing that last nudge needed. I begin classes the week of July 10th, giving up free Saturdays, but for a while at least, spending them in an environment I've loved since my grandfather would take me bicycling through the university as a child. Oh, and when I dated a student there, who would bring me to his band performances. Attending school there myself was so out of the question as to not even be a dream, but now I will have my little fragment. That's the 'fantasy' part of the equation, and pretty silly/embarrassing in some ways, but I don't care. :)

The other thing is, unless there is some huge change in the direction of my country, I've wanted to be able to offer some kind of 'skilled' resistance. Today, people are gathering and marching, and I am not, having at first felt that it would be too much in the intense Florida sunshine, not wishing to risk health. But now it is storming. I have wanted to be sure not to be making this decision for that seemingly noble of a reason, though; these days have helped me to re-tune back in to the voice of intuition.

A 'sign' in that regard was (another) Paul McCartney singing dream last night, although I think he was singing a Stevie Wonder song I don't even care for that much. ;-) We were sitting on a bench gazing up through a lake on a hill where Aphrodite was erecting a grand structure for a big party. edited 19:12, 30 Jun 2018

Glad that worked out for yttou Eliza and hope you have fun on the course :)

Choices, choices…so difficult to choose,
I sometimes wish I was single-minded,
Could focus on one thing instead of peruse.
To really excel, not a mere dilettante,
Stopping and starting and never arriving,
At anything but the superficial. 

I think choices are often a kind of left-brain rational vs right-brain playful competition. The left-brainers seem to be winning as well. Education has become more and more a grim matter of exam-passing in ‘practical’ subjects in order to gain a good livelihood, I think anyway. Many universities are shutting down arts and humanities departments.

Of course, it’s easy for me to criticize education systems, now, when I am retired and have no financial worries, I did my share of education in grim (to me) topics like Engineering Mechanics. Alan Watts and Tolle talk about life as being like dancing, we should just enjoy the moment. But we still need all those capable goal minded people around to perform tasks reliably for us, don’t we?

Choices are made for us anyway I think. I sometimes see a pattern as I look back. I want to compose music, write, paint, but have hardly the energy to do one of them well. If I could just get lucid in a dream `I would demand of my subconscious or whatever it is you ask ‘what shall I do with the rest of my Life?’

I tend to just do things like posting on this forum for enjoyment and to see where it leads and it has led me in unexpected and enjoyable places. To starting a poetry writing course and getting interested in Eckhart Tolle again, for example. Thanks for that!

Thank you Zen! I have loved reading your excerpts every day, especially since you've often been the first one posting. It was like a Zen Arado devotional. ;-)

Such good news about your course, Eliza! Now please tell me: how can we help? Do we need to take some of the load off you in parts of PaB? Would it help to have willing ears to chat to some times, scheduled or unscheduled? Something else I'm not imagining right now? Please let us know! :))

I also appreciate your thoughts on 'resistance'. I feel thrust into the middle of all that. (And it's easy to find clusters of people on Mastodon who are trying to be active in one way or another.)

And I must thank you, once again Eliza, for inviting others (and therefore me) onto this 99 project at day 31. I'm not sure I would have experienced the growth and change in the last few months without this driving me.

Oh, and I re-took the Bartle quiz and posted my results next to yours (in blue). I've done this quiz several times over time, and I'm always pretty much the same, with only small variations (rather like when re-taking Myers Briggs).

Zen thank you so much for your presence too! I've so often found your polymathic talents and experience an inspiration and help. And I completely sympathize. Being quite good at so many things is enviable except when it comes to choosing!

And everyone else who has been here. :))

I'm at the end of the second week of the poetry course with once week to go. I'm drafting out a new poem, probably the one they want me to work on. (Some things are not quite clear about this assignment, and this is the disadvantage of a slow or non-existent feedback loop on this kind of free course with a large student body and only a few tutors.) But I'm quite excited by the subject that I've chosen.

Very thoughtful of you to ask that, Storm.

The truth is I have no way of knowing whether it will be easy or hard for me to fit this into my life. There are so many variables, and the biggest ones are outside of PaB. :)

I'm thankful for your watching and updating the calendar now, since that is one area I may make errors in due to multi-tasking! Otherwise, the dream sessions are not a burden but a joy, so I hope to keep those! And Working Group/Guardian Session meetings are seldom, outside of pressing matters, so hopefully those will not be too much of an issue. :) I just won't take on anything new. ^.^

Interesting balances on your gaming profile. I had a big change in Myers Briggs about a year ago, really surprised me. Most of the time I'm almost even across the board for these 5 category type things. edited 14:35, 1 Jul 2018