Tag: growth

Always seek to grow

Carl Setzer

Always seeking growth

And to manage all my fears

Become what I want 

It’s frightening, at times, to always seek growth. It requires constant reminders to watch for fear, the temptation to be comfortable. As a writer and artist, I see how critical it is to push boundaries. Mine as well as others. Perhaps mine are the most important boundaries to smash through. Destroying that which holds me back, which robs me of joy. 

A Haiku About Change 

Carl Setzer

Out of darkness: light 

Our souls evolving forwards 

Dawn coming out of night 

Change, changes: babies become children, children grow tall, dawns become days, winter becomes spring. As we learn, we grow. Experiences grant us wisdom and insight. Often hard won wisdom. Every day we’re different. 

I’m exploring new ideas as a blogger. What interests me right now? Positivity. 

I’ve been thinking for some time that our culture focuses too much on outrage, anger and despair. Everything from our news foci to our political selections get made based upon such. We’ve become deeply divided, deeply distrustful of each other. We’ve come to a point of gridlock. Which is blamed upon the other side’s idiocy (at best) or evil intent. 

I want to focus on a different path. The current mindset has no way forward. At best, one side will temporarily gain enough if an advantage to steamroll through an agenda, fueling outrage on the opposite side. I believe there’s a better way. 

I believe we can seek out inspiration instead of outrage. That we can be motivated by this inspiration to move in a common direction. That we don’t need to gorge at the trough of outrage. 

We can embrace the power of the individual, of our ability to adapt and grow. Yet we can do so without a Pollyannaish disconnect from reality. Nor do we need to divorce the reality of societal systems dysfunctionality. 

I believe there’s a path where we can embrace humility and accept our incomplete understandings. That we can learn to love those different. 
I haven’t developed a clear vision of what that works looks like, for its quite alien from mine. We can explore it together. Shall we?

The Lies of Impostor Syndrome

Carl Setzer

I love this one by Jorge Cham of PhD comics.

Reminds me of all the times that I’ve had anxiety attacks when asked to push outside of my boundaries. So, a few things to remember:

  • Prof. Jones has plenty invested in the success of his students/team. And a good leader will see things in you that you can’t see. And such a leader won’t let you sit mired in fear and insecurity, but push you past your self-imposed boundaries.
  • Mentors like the above are one of the most crucial elements to pushing past mediocrity into greatness.
  • Impostor Syndrome = LIES!!!

Alrighty, back to your regularly scheduled Thursday.

A week of challenge, growth and development 

Carl Setzer

An interesting week. Much excitement, accompanied, as that often is, by aggravation. My team is moving at a frantic pace. In such circumstances, things get lost in the blizzard. Which frustrates me more than anything. I can deal with most annoyances with grace and patience. Except when the causality is mine. My tolerance is slim towards myself. Strange phenomena, that. I’ve read how compassion towards oneself is the critical first step in developing compassion towards. I seem to be in reverse. As I’m want to do. 

Next month I’ll be taking classes again, bringing my autocad skills into the 21st century. I took autocad back in the mid-90s (DOS based, I should add), used it on a handful of projects, with the last of those ending in the late 90s. From that point forward I used Visio for that sort of work. Mostly just laying out office space, mapping outlets and network jacks, that sort of fun. 

I’m actually quite delighted to get this update, build this knowledge. Construction has been great fun, even with the challenges. Looking forward to continuing onwards. 

There’s a great alignment of my interests within this industry. My time at Starbucks working on environmental issues, as well as accessibility, plenty of opportunity for that here. Studying Seattle and the region’s culture has a place, too. Plus the things I liked most about real estate have a place. Very pleasing, indeed. 

It is interesting that, at 50, I feel like I’m new, freshly learning. I’m blending refreshing old skills and knowledge with the new. Part of what drives that feeling of newness: the mistakes. Fortunately, I’m in a place where real risk taking is encouraged. “If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not pushing yourself enough.” As I embrace that, let it pull me forward, there’s positive changes coming forth. I like the way things are moving, the direction I’m growing. 

I can’t think of a better life than that.