I wrote a couple of months ago that the TOA newsletter grew out of my tendency to go weeks at a time without updating anyone about my life. In hindsight, I see that this is only partly true. The better way to put it would have been to say that proper admin grew out of my tendency to go weeks at a time without updating anyone about my life. Proper admin and its focus on the what, when, and where of my days seems to be what most people are talking about when they talk about life updates. In my face-to-face interactions, I feel I’m responsive enough when asked about these things so I don't worry much about it. (And if I sense I’m not going to be asked, I try to sprinkle in the relevant missives into my small talk to help fill in the gaps.)
I don’t have a surefire approach for delivering these updates in my writing and therefore I’ve found great value in the proper admin concept. I find that writing about the what, when, and where just doesn’t come naturally to me. I think this is because I don’t process my experiences in those terms. The terms I use to understand my experiences are how and why. As I look over some of my more recent newsletters, I see these themes forming the structure of those posts.
The problem with those posts was that although the how and why are structurally relevant, the approach I took to introduce the ideas kept me from addressing the very question posed by those words on their simplest terms – how was I doing, and why? The answers were not well and not sure, respectively, but in the process of detailing the what, when, and where I suspect the clarity of those answers was lost in the retelling.
I started this post by looking at those same questions and came up with the same answers – not well and not sure. I know I’ve been here before, or at least somewhere in the same neighborhood, but the difference this time is my uncertainty regarding the manner of my return. The process of working out my confusion led me to an initial insight that will do for today – I think my uncertainty about why I’m not feeling well explains a lot about why I’m not feeling well. The reason I'm stopping there is that (as it happens sometimes on TOA) my thoughts ran on a bit. I prefer to keep these newsletters relatively short so I’ll follow up soon with a more comprehensive post that incorporates some of that thinking.
The future of the newsletter is a little more clear. Although I recognize the value of directly addressing the how and why questions, I think I have little choice but to continue weaving those considerations into how I interpret the what, when, and where. It’s not that I’m trying to avoid the questions or that I don’t think I can do it every month, it’s more that I see the value of taking an isolated experience from the present and reshaping it into the next chapter of my life’s ongoing narrative. It takes more effort for me than just lining experiences up against the facts of what I’ve done before or might do later – I need to understand how I feel, and why, so that I can connect today to yesterday’s larger meaning and have the confidence to face the unknown of tomorrow knowing that I can always tie it back to that ever-present thread of purpose.
