It’s been about three months since my last status update. And what a very busy three months it was!
After a relatively quiet winter holiday season, the year kicked off really fast. There were two major international work trips (with all the associated prep work). And then as soon as I returned, I managed to get sick as can be. And this is where the importance of project flexibility comes into play.
If you’ve been following along with these status updates, you know that getting regular outdoor exercise was a major goal for my personal project. Now, admittedly our very icy winter weather did put a crimp in that, but overall I’d been making good progress… even through the work trips. See, traveling in international cities usually involves a LOT more walking than I usually get at home. So despite being outside of my normal routine I was walking a ton and feeling good.
You know what does interfere with outdoor exercise in rainy weather? A terrible, lingering upper respiratory illness that kept me out of work for close to a week and that would not go away. The week after I returned from Japan, I became ill and was just flattened for about four weeks. I’m still not 100%, despite doing all the right things from both the holistic and allopathic points of view (you know I’m sick when I go to our doctor — who typically suggests supplements and raw honey before anything else — and ask for drugs).
But the good news is that I’m running an agile project here. And one of the benefits of that kind of project is the ability to pivot and change course. So while I wasn’t getting a ton of exercise (still taking the dogs out, but not every energetically or for very long), I was making huge traction on some of my other goals.
When you take on a project like this, you often find the universe puts helpful items in your path. This was the case with me. Two of my other goals for this project were some regular ritual and mindfulness work and some meta magical work for the project itself. And Gordon’s RuneSoup Sigil class came along at just the right time to give me a new framework for these — his membership option is highly recommended by the way. So that was a nice way to stay focused and motivated even through the healing process.
So that’s the nature of real projects with multiple components. You push one along, making progress, and then you stall out. But far from a failure, it’s an opportunity to focus on another aspect, getting that one moving forward as well. Like plate spinning or the meme-tastic herding of cats.
One last note, I’d planned to republish some of my posts from like two years ago (time flies!). I’ve been thinking about what makes the most sense and I think I’m going to start a reboot of my risk and issue series. Each post will be reworked and enhanced with additional material and more magical suggestions (now with 20% more magic!). This is a really good time for us all to be thinking about risks and issues in our lives. We’re in a time of major change and fragility is not going to be what we need to get through it. So more anti-fragile and risk and black swan stuff ahead.
