The Good Life - 08/10/2023 - Following the wagons
Damn it. Today is the last day of the last big project of my career. Well, we do have a closure meeting next week, and a celebration party a few weeks after that, but today is our last day with the vendor. We wrap things up today. It’s time to say goodbye. Normally, at this stage in a multi-year project, my mind begins switching gears as I prepare to turn my attention to my next big assignment. I lose no momentum, and just glide from the project ending to the project starting without missing a single beat. But damn it. Someone told my inner man that I’ll never have a giant project like this again, and that’s changed something inside me, and instead of focusing on the new project—which I do have—my heart is a little bit somewhere else. It’s not like I won’t work hard. I will work very hard. I am incapable of being lazy. But something has changed that ain’t coming back. It’s my professional vision of a journey of three-thousand miles. The sense that there’s still a thousand miles to go, and the need to move forward without relent. That sense out on the trail that my family are counting on me. That I can’t slow down or give up or even rest for very long. But with this big project ending I can now sense the last horizon ahead, and it’s only a fifty miles or so away—just over that last range of low, coastal mountains. I can even smell the ocean now. We’re getting close to the end.
If this career were a journey across America, then I’ve just now got faint whiff of the sea. I’ll be at the Pacific Ocean soon, with no professional place further to go. And damn it, my body and inner man knows this, and something about me has changed as a result. I think it’s time for the man sitting beside me on this wagon crossing America to take the reigns and drive. After all, he’s going back across the country without me when the wagons turn around to return east. He’ll then need to drive this wagon alone. It’s not me being lazy that wants him to drive. It’s me being practical, I think. As this younger man needs and deserves the practice navigating and steering before I go, leading the wagons in our little train. I’ll give him the reigns now and watch him drive. And then I think I’ll get off and walk behind for a spell, let the new guy drive for a bit all alone and on his own. I’ll walk back here behind the wagons, keeping up, ready to come forward if I’m called. I’ll just walk here alone in the quiet and the peace, and savor that freshening smell of an approaching sea.
The Good Life Meditation is my daily recitation and reminder of personal objectives and principles used in pursuit of a purposeful life in spite of a universe of seeming indifference. Learn more about The Good Life at my website GoingAlone.org or by reading my book Going Alone. And visit our Discord at: https://lnkd.in/gFgfGmY6
OBJECTIVES: 1. Be Always Ready to Die 2. Make Good Use of Time and Resources 3. Develop Good and Sound Life Principles 4. Cultivate Good Emotional Reactions 5. Perform Good Actions 6. Recognize True Limits and Opportunity 7. One Thing Slowly
PRINCIPLES: 1. Principle of War 2. Principle of Reason 3. Homunculus 4. Anchorhold 5. Home of Good and Evil 6. Principle of Purpose 7. Atomic Principle 8. Principle of Nature 9. The Pirate Ride 10. Principle of Maturity 11. Social Principle
12. Principle of Family 13. Public Speaking 14. Temperance 15. Life Will Not Go Well 16. The Horror Show 17. That Which Must Be Borne 18. The Feast of Offal 19. Distraction 20. Agency and The Great Indifference 21. The Best Seat in the House 22. The Restless Man 23. The Path of Wildness 24. The Great Life Adventure 25. The Risk of Avoiding Risk 26. Sin and Damnation 27. Complete Oblivion 28. The Season of Philosophy
29. Scriptwriting 30. Bullseye Aim 31. The Uphill Climb 32. Arena and Utility 33. Nothing IS enough 34. The Principle of Fun
#Stoic #Stoicism #StoicPhilosophy
My name is Kurt Bell.
You can learn more about The Good Life in my book Going Alone.
Be safe... But not too safe.