What are you doing?

What are you up to? What are you doing? What are you helping to make happen in the world?

Each day, in a thousand little ways, we influence the lives and experiences of others. Our words influence. Our actions influence. Our very thoughts influence. And around us, the world responds to our input.

I'm not talking about anything particularly esoteric. Just basic logistics. Say there's a misunderstanding at work, and someone says or does something really bone-headed to someone. That someone goes into a funk and goes home at the end of the day in a rotten mood. Their kids irritate them, and they yell at the kids and their spouse. The kids and spouse in turn feel bad and "share the wealth" of discord with each other and the rest of their world, throughout the following days. And the one who was wronged carries a chip on their shoulder that colors much of what they hear and say and do -- not necessarily for the better.

Over the long run, you end up with problematic relationships all around, which -- as we are coming to realize -- create all sorts of other problems in the world. And not just at work. Of course, at work, there's the lost productivity (and possible impact to margin) thanks to frayed relationships. But in individual lives as well, there's a cost.

Once upon a time, it was thought to be enough to tell people to "suck it up" and "deal with it" and all that was wrong with the world would manage to make itself right. Now we know that the wrongs don't necessarily right themselves through sheer force of will (the quantum field notwithstanding), and sucking it up may only get you so far. Never mind the immune suppression, the susceptibility to illness and disorders, and the general havoc that unfolds in social ecosystems, thanks to unchecked drama.

It's all connected. There's no escaping it. We can pretend we're rugged individuals with no impact on others, but the facts indicate otherwise. We are connected.

Now, if you believe in the quantum field (as I do), you may be more inclined to consider your very thoughts and expectations to be powerful things. And if you believe in manifestation and the power of positive thinking, as many an individual does (I'm on the fence, I must admit) you may believe with ever fiber of your being that we all have the power to make our world according to our wishes.

But even if you don't believe in all that stuff, the fact remains that everything we do has consequence. The things we make, the connections we cultivate, the actions we take... it all has impact. But we often don't realize it. We're so invested in believing we are helpless victims who have been repeatedly wronged, who have no say over what happens in the world around us, who have no sway over our life circumstances. We get so caught up in thinking we are victims, we are targets, we are oppressed, we are at odds with all the world around us...

In a way, it's invigorating, especially if you're the kind of person who lives for the fight. But ultimately, it's draining, and if your fiestiness doesn't outlast your physical strength (how long till you cross paths with someone who's bigger, stronger, and a whole lot angrier than you?), eventually your autonomic nervous system is going to show the effects.

Adrenal depletion is remarkably resistant to sheer willpower, after all...

Anyway, this is the start of a little exploration I'm on -- the kind that never actually ends.

All I'm asking for now is, What are you doing? What are you making of your world? How are you being in your world?

Next time I'll ask, "And why?"

Ha -

I was talking to someone today about my blog, how it's been my intention to post my poetry regularly, but the process of weeding and culling and sorting just gets to be too much. Yah. Way too much.

Anyway, the year is drawing to an end, and here I am again, looking at the resolutions I came up with last year (or over the course of this year), and I'm thinking about how I can make good on them, still.

One of my big promises to myself was that I was going to post my poetry online. I've got these books of poems, all nicely formatted and looking ever so tidy in printed form.

I should promote them, you say? Honestly, who has the time for marketing it all? I just haven't got the urge. I'd much rather be writing, than promoting, anyway (and I know, Virginia, that today's writer must be their own promoter, too, but dangit, I jest don' feel like it!)

What ever happened to the honor in just being a writer...? What ever happened to the accomplishment of actually putting words together in a cogent form that folks can actually access? I mourn the days when it was enough to have a thorough grasp of the deep-and-wide-and-highly-textured English language, in order to write and read poetry. What's happened to us all, that we have to go through all those aesthetic contortions to be taken "seriously"? I just don't get it...

And I think back to one of my college buddies who was adopted as a literary protege by one of the English dept. profs. He was cultivated and sponsored and encouraged, and I seem to remember he was pretty good at the verse work. It looked like he was all set in his literary life... getting noticed by magazines... connecting with the right editors... Then my life took a sharp turn to the left-right-left, and off I went into the wild blue yonder.

I always assumed this guy had done well for himself, and I would occasionally check literary mags to see if he'd made it. No sign of him. And then while I was watching MTV, back in the summer of 1993, lo and behold, there he was on the roof of the MTV beach house, cigarette and beer bottle (still) in hand, looking way ragged, way dissipated, and eminently un-literary. Funny, how those things go. It was sad. But also wickedly sweet. More sad, though.

But wait, I think I've digressed... Back to the poetry...

I think it's time for a new strategy that lets me just get the work up there, without having to do all the editorial labor. I've got way too much material, to spend time figuring out what to post when. I'll just start at the beginning and work my way through. Or, even better, I'll just post the friggin' pdfs of the books I produced, and be done with it.

That's better. I hate getting bogged down in old stuff. I do want to honor the past, and give it its due after all it's done to make me the person I am. But it is old, and it is past, and I need to make room for What's Next.

Now... Back to the blogging business. I must more of it. Because my life has gotten a lot more interesting, all of a sudden, and I find that (as I clean out my study at home), I'm ditching a bunch of old crapola and finding areas in my life magically opened up for closer scrutiny.

It's wild, how life twists and turns the way it does. How tossing out three long filing cabinet drawers full of old papers (that used to mean something to me, but are no longer of use to me at all) can prompt me to think about one of the streets I grew up on, and the elementary schools I attended...

Anyway, I'm rambling. It's almost 8 p.m., and I've had a long day. My clothes dryer is broken and awaiting repairs (so sparks stop flying out the back -- how's that for excitement?), my laptop hard drive is making weird grinding noises that remind me to backup anything I care about, and this morning we had a gorgeous layer of frosty whiteness all over things that were very much alive during the summer.

There is much to celebrate. So I shall.