03-10-2019, 07:56 AM
I'm finding that the adjustment to my listening schedule seems to be working better for me.
During the old schedule:
I'll also say that the schedules' difference in execution seems to be less about my "personality type" (or about FRM being/doing X, Y, or Z) than about the manner in which my mind generally processes most tasks it performs (including, as one of many other relevant tasks in this context, the assimilation of information). I may, of course, be wrong, but, for the moment, that's my current assessment. If this theory doesn't continue to prove useful, then it's only my own time having been wasted, not anyone else's. But a handful of seemingly disparate observations do suddenly fit together if my thinking makes as much sense as I think that it does.
Having said that, I hadn't identified all of my signposts just yet. Found another important one that I serendipitously hit during last week due to circumstance and, unfortunately, overshot during this week due to vestigial direction-following habits. That should hopefully be the last of the big signposts. Apparently, missing a signpost devolves back into what I observed on the old schedule, albeit with a slower-growing snowball of irritation and with a slower replacement of thrilling triumphs with appalling backfires. I humbly admit to having felt like I've been missing the nose on the front of my face every time that I've spotted each signpost for what (I now think that) it is.
Even with the altered schedule, however, 3.3.1 has been a far more conducive soundtrack to areas like confidence, productivity, success, and health than to its titular goal. Sexual and social interest in me has seldomly been rooted in impressing people with my achievements, efficiency, blood panel, wallet, etc, so, while I fully appreciate these improvements on a personal level, my most attractive and appealing qualities have gone virtually silent. Throughout my social and sexual history, people have typically shown interest in who I am, how I am, and how they feel around me, not in my belongings, awards, or test scores, and, really, if a prospective partner's only interested in my on-paper self, I'm tempted to hand them a resume/CV, a condom, and a styptic pencil (or should that be an online bio, birth control pills, and an insulated phone-case?) and then go spend time with someone who wants to have sex with a human being, not with a stat sheet.
My accolades, descriptive statistics, and property are not me, and no one truly meaningful to me (socially, sexually, or romantically) has ever has seemed to value or treat me as if they are, nor have they been given much reason (by me) to do so. These are not the worms they're looking for (or the worms that I've ever needed). I'm quite happy and grateful for the improvements that I'm making while on 3.3.x, but, so far, I seem to have been neglecting many of my most attractive qualities (to those that I find most attractive) to make them. Still hoping that those areas will come back into focus eventually.
During the old schedule:
- Was highly irritable in a self-sustaining or snowballing manner, at least partly due to blind or unanchored focus of that irritation. Put simply: encounter a situation while blindly irritated, make it worse by being irritated at everything (instead of focused on the cause of the irritation), get more irritated at the worsened situation, make it worse by being more irritated, etc.
- Existing FWBs got sick, forgot me (and do I mean that literally), or chose others instead of me. Mostly on 3.3.1, but partly on 3.3 too.
- Started with sporadic-but-notable work productivity on 3.3 and became disruptive emergencies, make-work, and backfires on 3.3.1.
- Have been diffusing any current irritability with (what I believe to be) cogent rationale behind any irritable feelings, followed by addressing the concern.
- One FWB (who's never ever texted me to contact me before) did so at her I'm-drunk-and-need-to-party timing, not that I was awake for it.
- Another FWB is now merely awaiting my recovery from the last month of work exhaustion. Which would be great, if work didn't keep piling things on.
- Another (remote) FWB has been more actively (almost daily) pushing to schedule her next trip to see me. Also great, if work didn't keep piling things on.
- Work productivity, while exhausting, is back to being proactive, cross-inspirational, timely, and satisfying. And far more so than it had been on 3.3: I just released all of the technological advancements at work that I'd made while listening to 3.3, plus other ideas that I'd had since altering my 3.3.1 schedule, and I still have even more ideas for improvement. I'm getting what should be a week's worth of accomplishments created and completed within a day now.
- I'm meeting newly-proposed make-work with repeated debate over the mutually exclusive options of 1) monopolizing my time where the learning curve alone would take weeks to be even slightly useful or 2) spending that same time furthering the company's progress with long-pending, valuable, quick, and easy improvements and contributions that only I can perform. For me, when it comes to two equally important sets of tasks, there's no question that the most useful division of labor is in using me where I'm uniquely more helpful than anyone else, not where I'm arbitrarily less helpful than anyone else.
As far as the make-work situation goes, I'm not against expanding my existing horizons further and trying to become a master fiddler, but I see faulty reasoning in doing it while Rome's actively ablaze. (That is to say: To me, new challenges are more appropriate when the existing challenges aren't abundant, rampant, or neglected. They're also more appropriate when they're my challenges to overcome and not someone else's, as other people often seek help with -- or salvation from -- certain personal challenges where, for better or worse, they're still the best/only ones suited to overcoming them. I'll help others in their attempt to overcome their own challenges, if I have time and resources and if they request the help, but I'm not free to join -- or, worse, lead -- someone else's white whale hunt when I need to clean up the pile of dead fish rotting on my own doorstep first. Finding new challenges is easy, both optional and necessary ones; accepting the right optional challenges at the right moments is a bit trickier, as is remembering which challenges are optional, which are necessary, and whose challenges are whose.)
I'll also say that the schedules' difference in execution seems to be less about my "personality type" (or about FRM being/doing X, Y, or Z) than about the manner in which my mind generally processes most tasks it performs (including, as one of many other relevant tasks in this context, the assimilation of information). I may, of course, be wrong, but, for the moment, that's my current assessment. If this theory doesn't continue to prove useful, then it's only my own time having been wasted, not anyone else's. But a handful of seemingly disparate observations do suddenly fit together if my thinking makes as much sense as I think that it does.
Having said that, I hadn't identified all of my signposts just yet. Found another important one that I serendipitously hit during last week due to circumstance and, unfortunately, overshot during this week due to vestigial direction-following habits. That should hopefully be the last of the big signposts. Apparently, missing a signpost devolves back into what I observed on the old schedule, albeit with a slower-growing snowball of irritation and with a slower replacement of thrilling triumphs with appalling backfires. I humbly admit to having felt like I've been missing the nose on the front of my face every time that I've spotted each signpost for what (I now think that) it is.
Even with the altered schedule, however, 3.3.1 has been a far more conducive soundtrack to areas like confidence, productivity, success, and health than to its titular goal. Sexual and social interest in me has seldomly been rooted in impressing people with my achievements, efficiency, blood panel, wallet, etc, so, while I fully appreciate these improvements on a personal level, my most attractive and appealing qualities have gone virtually silent. Throughout my social and sexual history, people have typically shown interest in who I am, how I am, and how they feel around me, not in my belongings, awards, or test scores, and, really, if a prospective partner's only interested in my on-paper self, I'm tempted to hand them a resume/CV, a condom, and a styptic pencil (or should that be an online bio, birth control pills, and an insulated phone-case?) and then go spend time with someone who wants to have sex with a human being, not with a stat sheet.
My accolades, descriptive statistics, and property are not me, and no one truly meaningful to me (socially, sexually, or romantically) has ever has seemed to value or treat me as if they are, nor have they been given much reason (by me) to do so. These are not the worms they're looking for (or the worms that I've ever needed). I'm quite happy and grateful for the improvements that I'm making while on 3.3.x, but, so far, I seem to have been neglecting many of my most attractive qualities (to those that I find most attractive) to make them. Still hoping that those areas will come back into focus eventually.
