November 2017

It's been 4 full months now since I've been back from China. I've decided to do this little blog post, maybe make a habit of doing it monthly from now on. Normally I'd just put this up on Facebook, but sometimes that feels a little bit too exposed. I think I'd prefer to put these sort of feelings somewhere just a step removed. I'll try to split this discussion into three chunks: Konmari and a year in review, ruminations on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and higher motivations.

Konmari and a Year in Review

Roughly this time a year ago I read a book called "The Life-Changing Art of Tidying Up." Written by a Japanese Woman named, Konmari. The book made true on it's claim of being life-changing, and I found myself more relaxed and put together. This helped immensely while I was in China and I still don't own a ton of things, but life has steadily bit by bit added unnecessary things to my life. For those unfamiliar with the process of Konmari, if I were to condense it as much as possible, it's this. "Ask yourself if this belonging brings you joy. If the answer is yes, keep it and organize it. If not, thank it for it's service and remove it from your life." You do that with different genre of household belongings until you only have what you intentionally decide to have.

Around this time I also developed a sort of "alter ego", really it was just myself idealized, the person I wanted to be. I just gave that role or concept a name. In this case his name was "Mordecai" A name I'm fond of and had used in a story I'd written a long time ago. So I want to take some notes on "What's worked" and "What's next".

Over the past year I have probably accomplished 70-80% of the traits that this idealized "Mordecai" me. I consider this an enormous success. I had a fantastic experience in China, learned how to live alone and take care of myself long-term without being over-dependent on my family, and became a much more competent and reliable person overall. I ran one of the hardest marathons on earth and a cute little half-marathon as well. I learned to own my past and not let it slow me down from realizing my own potential. I learned Chinese (Although that journey is long from "complete"). I've become financially responsible and have made leaps and bounds toward becoming Dave Ramsey solvent. I've learned how to focus on one thing at one time, and have seen incredible successes in terms of dedication and discipline.

What's next? Always a lot. Mordecai has become an outdated model of who I want to be. Over the past year I have learned more about what it means to be successful, what it means to be at peace, and how to be healthy. Mordecai was a great starting point, but I think I may be due for a new vision of myself. Maybe it's an actor thing that taking on another role works so well for me. I made a couple people mad at me over the past year, and normally that's not a huge deal (if you don't have some people mad at you, you're probably a pushover), but I think some of that was just due to poor management and communication rather than anything to do with morals. I have gained the weight I lost from China back in just a month as I stopped running and started a more sedentary job. Easy come easy go though, and I'm not panicked. It will only take a little bit of work to get rid of again. My Chinese study has also slowed down. Dave Ramsey road is long, and my habit of budgeting carefully fell off this month, but I'll get it back on track in December. My focus is a huge success, but I think the thing I need to learn next is consistency. I can be consistent with my own life focus, the main goal of my life at any given point, but things beyond that tend to be neglected pretty easily. I'm desperate to begin a prolific artistic life, but Maslow's will describe my situation there.

I'm excited, I've been is a strange lull the past two or three months, and I keep saying that I'll be pulling out soon and haven't successfully. I'll go more into that in the third section of this little blog.

Ruminations on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's Hierarchy of needs is built like a pyramid. The pieces of the pyramid from the group up are as follows: Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging, Esteem, Self-Actualization. I've been thinking a lot about this pyramid lately. As an "A"ish style personality, naturally my focus is on the Self-Actualization. I was to succeed, to kick some ass and take names, to be wealthy and so on and so forth. But that is built on attaining and maintaining the lower areas of the pyramid. I have spent most of my life, and still do, neglecting the lower needs to pursue Self-Actualization goals to the point that I enter into some variety of crisis and have to spend some time fixing it. This is not good, although it is very common. It's basically robbing Peter to pay Paul. Ultimately it's always going to be more effective to prioritize base needs and THEN goals beyond that. (If it's not clear Self-Actualization is any sort of goal that is beyond a base need.) Doing this is going to make my instrument more effective, myself more stable and consistent, and really just a more happy and pleasant person. Although I don't think the desperate pull for the top of the tower is ever going to really go away. That's just not my nature.

Higher Motivations

At the start of the past year, my motivation was pretty dark. Very intense, but dark. I had been emotionally hurt by someone I trusted and the experience had been very painful. Although I handled it relatively well, some part of me twisted around that experience. A huge part of my motivation, my vision became proving this person wrong. I wanted to wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and know without a shadow of a doubt that they were wrong about me, and that I was a fantastic person regardless of their opinions. And that happened maybe around last April or May, but the emotional drive of that lasted even beyond succeeding at that. I think that ultimately my reason for this plateau, this lull in accomplishment, is that that motivation has fully and completely died, probably even before I got back from China. 

I'm really grateful for that experience, it spurred one of the greatest periods of growth in my life so far, and I learned an immense amount. But now, I'm better than it. That motivation was so strong because of how intense my feelings were about it, but it was a shallow, petty motivation. Now that I'm more grown, and I hope more profound, it's not enough. It's not passionate enough, it doesn't have enough consistent pull, and when it comes down to it, I just don't care about it anymore. So, what now?

Well, I've been thinking a lot about it. Really I'm looking for a new vision, a new purpose, a new hook. The easy answer is spiritual fulfillment, family success, being the best I can be for my future wife - While these aren't bad, they're sort of generic. They don't have the bite that my last motivation had, the fire that ignites in the belly and drives you to the edge of what you can do. I don't know if there's a perfect answer, really it can be whatever suits me for now. I'll decide on something tonight as I do Konmari once more, and I'll hook it into my heart and let it light me on fire again.

So in conclusion: LETS GET KRUNK. I'm going to do Konmari tonight, get my life in order, and set myself up for success again by getting some good upkeep behaviors established and setting actual goals and measurements of those goals. And I'm going to light a fire under myself, a palpable one. One that I can envision and be tantalized by. One that is positive and intense, messy. If you've managed to read through my disjunct stream of consciousness, thank you! I look forward to making more posts in the future.

-Jacom Davis Clarkson 柯正豪