Keep On Trucking

Long haul truckers have a special place in my heart.

My grandparents were, for as best as I can remember, long haul truckers my whole life till they started winding down to retire. They bustled all over the US trucking around hooking up loads, hauling them to who knows where, dropping them off, and grabbing a new load locally and doing it all over again.

They were pretty good at what they did and it meant a couple times a summer they would visit us for a weekend or a couple days or a weekend when they had a load that needed to come our direction.

I loved seeing my grandparents.

I so appreciate the many long hours and millions, maybe even a billion, miles they put on their truck bouncing all over the US. Mile after mile, load after load, they dutifully delivered their haul.

Much like any project, they started the load with a full tank of gas and a clear destination. And just the same, the more they worked the gas ran down. They had to stop and refill their tanks. It was not sexy or awesome, but they had to do it to keep going.

They paid attention to the maintenance their trucks needed. Kept food in the truck’s fridge. They kept going and took care of whatever it was that needed done as they went.

They did not get the load on the road and then walk away when the trip was longer than they expected because of bad weather.

They did not give up because they hit traffic and were slowed to a crawl because...rush hour.

They kept going despite being rerouted due to construction.

How are you doing with your life’s goals? Are you still moving forward despite the bad weather you have run into? What about the part of life that is incredibly slow? Are you sticking with it, knowing that it will pick up soon? How are you doing with the parts of life being unexpectedly rerouted? Are you keeping to the new course, knowing it eventually leads back to the road you were on?

Love the post? Please share it on Facebook or support me on Patreon

Blank Canvas

When you do something, do you look at it and ask how it should look or do you dig in and get started?

It is so hard to stop and make sure it is going to look the way it should. The way it should look does not have to be the way everyone else makes it look. But do you know what a success will look like when you get there?

Do you know what a failure will look like when you get there?

Developing a picture of where you are headed can decide how the process should go and how the process will look through the development of your ideas and projects.

Having a clear picture of the end result will keep you from being over run by the structure overseeing you.

Changing the picture of your final product based on new information is natural.

What is the picture of success for what you are working on? When was the last time you updated your picture of success? What new information have you gained to help you succeed?

Love the post? Please share it on Facebook or support me on Patreon

Unprepared

Fridays come every week. You look forward to them as the last day of the week but you also run into Thursday evening like a freight train. It runs you over!

Thursday evening is the night where you do not feel like cooking. You still have to go to work the next day and it has almost nothing to look forward to doing. Thursday is the day you have to survive to get to Friday. Wednesday is the middle of the week and you can celebrate the halfness of the week being over but all you do on Thursday is throwback to the days that were not Thursday.

What if you started doing Thursdays differently? What if you started putting something to look forward to on Thursdays? How about start planning a fun lunch date on Thursdays? You can Thursdays so much better, reward yourself with a dessert on Thursday nights. Thursday does not have to be a drag. And the best part is, you know Thursday is coming every week, you can plan on it.

What else in your life are you treating like Thursday? What else in your life drags like Thursday drags? Are you plagued by the 2PM blues? Do you plan to reward yourself for the hard meeting you are about to lead? Are you prepared for your car to break down, again?

Life throws you curveballs, but not knowing when they are coming does not mean you cannot prepare for them. I promise you your car will break down again. Your roof will spring a leak. A bag of groceries will fall apart. A friend will let you down. A safe bet will go awry.

Are you ready for it? How are you preparing for the curveballs?

Love the post? Please share it on Facebook or support me on Patreon

Enough

I like to bounce around with new ideas. I have quite a bit of fun sprouting ideas no matter how real or unreal they are. I like iterating and innovating on existing structures and blending together tools and resources to see something new come to fruition.

One space I am creative in far too often is my relationships with other people. I create stories for people. I create reasons for people. I invent ideas for people. Motivations for others. I fill in the gaps.

When I fill the gaps, my materials range from the biographical to the fictional.

Far too often I fill in the gaps for other people. Sometimes, I literally fill in the gaps by finishing someone’s sentence for them. Most often, I fill in the gaps with a story. Usually the story assumes a positive light or at least a neutral motivation. Only in a few cases do I frequently assume a negative motivation.

Ultimately, they are all wrong. They all fill in holes I am not meant to have. In short, I must fill in the gaps with the truth. If I truly care about the story or motivation I need to investigate the source and use the source material to explain the reasons behind happening. The more I invent, the farther from reality I land.

Truly, my creative curse is knowing when to stop. When to stop creating stories and ideas. When to wait for the truth.

Where do you make up stories? Where do you create when you should wait? When do you work when you should be resting?

Waiting,

–JT

Love the post? Please share it on Facebook or support me on Patreon

Historical Precedence

There are many things in my life I have done over the years. I have quite the list of things I do and do not do quite simply because at some point in my life I decided this is how I do what I do. Lately, I have grown tired of doing things a certain way because I have always done them this way. I have also grown incredibly impatient with change for the sake of change.

I find myself standing at a crossroads of analyzing how and what I do in order to improve at being who I am. For some of what I do, after a while, I have to start explaining what I do or why I do what I do the way I do it. Most situations in life do not require me to do what I do a certain way. Most situations in life have a normalized way of doing things and those methods work for most people and I do not need to specialize how I do things.

Specializing how I do things can be good when necessary, but if I find myself having to explain myself more and more, then maybe I need to reevaluate how I do what I do.

The most important part is to do what I do the way I do it for a reason.

What do you do in a crazy way? When was the last time you assessed how you do what you do? Do you have reasons for doing what you do the way you do it? Who can help you figure out a better way to do what you do?

Purposefully,

–JT

What Is Next

I’m not the sort of person to make lots of huge grandiose plans. I don’t generally go all out or blow the top off of anything to make something happen. I am rather easy going and I go into most of my larger plans with a general idea that will be fleshed out when I get to the end. This is great if I don’t have any ambitions or plans for the future. However, it is not great if I do. 

Let’s be real, I do have plans for the future. They may not seem terribly ambitious. However, they are reasonable enough. I want to be a better husband, friend, coworker, and leader. This is ambiguous I agree. But the reason it is ambiguous is because I do not do a great job at planning what that looks like. I just set the goal. I am never disappointed that I do not achieve the goals I have set. I just never reflect on whether I set goals in the first place. 

Looking forward, I have a few plans set out, achievable plans. First, I will continue to write. I will write here, two or three times a week. Continue to process my feelings, thoughts, and generally my issues that I may or may not realize exist. I look to continue to be authentic and real. I will continue to write about my counseling, process my baggage, and anything else relevant to the conversation at hand.

Second, I am going to start reading. I do not read much. A better way to say this might be, ‘I don’t really read books.’ I will read my twitter feed, articles I find interesting on the internet, and I read the news every so often. However, I don’t sit down and read books very often, whether it be a physical book or an ebook. I don’t read much and I don’t read enough. So this year will be a year of reading and writing for me. 

You might now point out reading and writing do not accomplish my goal of being a better friend, husband, coworker, and leader. Ah, great point indeed. I would argue, these two thing do make me better at all of those. I will be reading insights in who I am and who other people are so that I might have new tools to use as I am trying to improve on these aspects of my life. Also, writing will help me process these portions of my life. 

Ambitiously,

–JT