Doing Better – February 12, 2022 (43/365) – JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter

End of the week, but I have thoughts on what I need to do starting as far as next month in mind.

Then again, I think to myself, should I really be waiting for next month to execute these plans?

See, that’s always been an issue with me. More like a preference, I guess. Let me explain.

It all started when I was in the serious weight-loss program last 2018. See, you had to stay accountable by way of telling people how you worked out and what you ate in a day. Some people came clean by saying that they weren’t able to workout, or that they ate something from the ‘Avoid’ list of foods. It’s from here that most of the mentors and coaches responded with a line that I pretty much adopted for myself since then: “Do better tomorrow”

This helped me, as I imagine it helped the rest of us in the program, because it has us moving from crying over spilled milk to legitimately getting excited for actually doing better tomorrow. So even when I was out of the program, and I knew I was eating junk and/or slacking off with my workouts, I would tell myself to do better tomorrow – it does give that boost to intentionally being more aware of food intake, and more importantly, it makes me angrier with every rep the next day.

There would be times when I would have, say, a ‘bad’ (i.e. dull/no workout, questionable food intake in terms of quality/quantity) day, followed by a day I’d be legitimately busy, and though I would still try as much as I could to do better the next day, I would tell myself to do better next week.

In this case, considering that I started February off sick, part of me was considering to plan to do better next month.

And now that I’m writing all this down, it looks like February can still be salvaged.

The family car is approaching 20 years of service for our house, and it is seeing its share of pain. We’ve been having issues of the starter in the recent past and because of this I’ve been having slight fears every time I’ve had to switch the ignition off (because it probably won’t start) and on (again, because it probably won’t start).

Of course, we’ve been fortunate to rely on the good ol’ rolling start (which I believe is English for the vernacular ‘kadyot’) to get the car up and running when the starter failed. But today was different. I was pretty confident. We’d roll the car out of the garage, and I’d try to get it started with a little push. Problem was it started, sure, but it didn’t stay on. And this was after 2-3 tries.

When I reached the bottom of the hill I was blessed with someone who helped me, not according to my perspective (I wanted him to help me push the car to a safer side) but by way of actually bringing his truck close to mine to do a jump start. It didn’t start right away. My own battery needed time to gather enough juice so I could start on my own, and when it did, I hightailed it over to where I am now, the electrician’s place. We’re waiting for the engine to cool down, his words. Probably an excuse for him to grab lunch but it’s all good.

Now I really wasn’t hightailing it as I mentioned. Now that I mention it I was driving pretty slow and defensive. God forbid that the engine dies again, within the central business district. In the words of Jordan Peterson, that would be bad.

And while driving with a heightened sense of safety, I thought to myself, if I followed through with the mentality of waiting until next month to ‘do better’, then I probably would have been commuting until then. No, just as some tools (a car, for instance) need to be up and ready to go at any given moment, so systems and routines need to be reinstated as soon as possible.

I mean, I’m probably being too hard on myself, but come on, JB. Sure, starting a month good is ideal, but in anticipation for the said start, I am reminded that ending the current month is just as important.

So with that said I say I start March today, the way I insist next year starts last quarter of this year. Granted, there will be some things that would only start next month, but I certainly will not wait until then to do what I could do this month, this week, today.

Our systems are tools that constantly need maintenance – assessment, adjustment, improvement, repair, or downright replacement. We avoid replacement as much as possible because I’ve observed that changing one tool for a better one almost always has you changing other tools to work with the new. That’s not a complaint. That’s how progression is.

Electrician’s assessment – Alternator has seen better days. It may be sturdier than the starter but even it has its limits. Rotor and another component need replacement, and we both agreed that the thing needed some long-overdue cleaning. We held off on replacing the entire part because, his words, alternators like those for my car are pretty tough to find.

So it isn’t a full-on replacement, only a repair. And we repair, not necessarily to bring things back the way they were when things were good, but primarily to extend the life of the whole. I mean, let’s at least have the Colonel (my unofficial name for the car) reach his 20 years, huh?

I’ve found a fatal flaw in my approach for this quarter. Or, at least from one point of view.

I kept pushing for practical love. I found it ironic that the way I pushed for practical love is to talk about it. And – I’m not sure if this boils over, but if I was to say that the finite cannot stand to contain the infinite, would this also mean that the finite could not fully systematize the infinite? And, following that train of thought, are we to say that the infinite could not be contained to be made fully practical by way of application, according to the perspectives of the finite?

I guess the approach certainly isn’t to place the infinite into systems or practical application according to finite standards – no, I’m reminded that we construct our finite systems and transform the theoretical into the practical FROM awe of the infinite.

With that in mind a proposed theme for next month still stands – only we say we have Systems of Love because they are Systems FROM Love.

That one Mike Francis song is playing in my mind right now, and I just have to associate it to our approach for last month and this February – we have been enjoying the Features Of Love. I leave the exploration of how said features impact or introduce new features – Features From Love – to my team, my congregation, and, well, myself.

As for this system of writing, well, look at that. As always, a lot has been unloaded, a lot has been recorded, and a lot has been clarified. Lord knows how my writing would continue to move and improve, but I’m certainly enjoying it now.