Reviewing My 2025 Goals

Posted on December 24, 2025 by admin

It’s time to review my goals for this year. Overall, I think I did pretty well, especially considering how tumultuous 2025 was and how many major changes occurred. Let’s check out my results and see if you agree.

  1. Have more important conversations. Though these are often difficult, I dislike calling them “difficult conversations.” That often sets them up for failure or prevents them from happening altogether. Despite all the communication skills I’ve learned and all the emotional pain I’ve released that’s made those skills easier to use, I still struggle to voice my concerns, needs, and requests with those close to me. Although I believe in disconnecting from abusive humans, I don’t want disconnection to be my go-to response whenever things get uncomfortable with humans who aren’t abusive. I fear that that is what is happening. This is still uncomfortable for me to do, so I believe it will be the hardest of my goals for next year. However, it’s worth dealing with the temporary discomfort to prevent the permanent loss of my important relationships. I plan to face a lot of that discomfort next year.

    I certainly faced a lot of discomfort this year regarding conversations. While there were some successes, there were also some failures. Even where there were successes, some of them came from a vastly different approach to the effective communication I’ve studied so much since 2018. That was most notable when I put a bully in his place after I got fed up with his consistent cruelty. Although that seemed to be effective as he pays me almost no attention at this point and is far less likely to bully me than he was before I stood up to him, I don’t want that approach to become my norm. I’ll save that for those like him who don’t respect any other approach and keep working on improving at using my civil approach for everybody else.


  2. Thrive financially. This year, I survived financially. Next year, I want to thrive. No more working almost every day only to have the small amount of money I make disappear much faster than it comes in. No more skating the line between staying afloat and sinking. And no more having to be absurdly strategic with how I handle my finances week to week. I want to get back to where my financial situation was years ago, when I could easily go on several multiday trips a year outside of work, handle unexpected expenses without issue, and consistently save money by making much more than I spent every month while still regularly enjoying things that cost money (eating out frequently, impulse purchases, group activities at the movie theater or bowling alley, and so on). If 2025 picks up where 2024 looks as if it will leave off, then I’ll be able to do all that and more. I feel excited for it.

    This was my most successful goal by far! Having a steady day job since April made it much easier to stay on top of my bills, save and invest money regularly, and have plenty of fun money to play with. Since I’ve done so well here and am still on an excellent path financially, I believe I can retire this goal and make room for another one next year. Even if this is no longer on my main goals list, I believe that my financial situation will continue to flourish due to the good habits I’ve developed and progress I’ve made this year, and I look forward to it getting to an even better place next year.


  3. Heal other pain. Over the last two years, I’ve been able to heal nearly all the pain around my dog Sawyer’s death. That’s remarkable to me as for over a year, I was in so much pain that I thought I would never feel any better. Since I feel much better now in that area, I want to go deeper into other painful areas, especially the original wounds that have been with me since I was a little kid. It was a pleasant surprise to find that healing the pain of Sawyer’s death also healed some other pain. Additionally, it showed me that even pain that seems unending can still be healed with enough attention over time. Now that the worst pain I’ve ever felt is mostly gone, I look forward to seeing what a year of focusing on older, deeper pain will do.

    Mixed results here. There were some breakthroughs and healings as well as recognition of how much I’ve healed in certain areas. I definitely noticed far less pain around Sawyer’s death and life without him. Unfortunately, there was also regression elsewhere, such as the increased anxiety I felt in many social situations as well as more sensitivity to how others treated me. This concerned me quite a bit since I have far less time for healing now due to work. It made me wonder how much I can continue to heal, if at all. Fortunately, there was some progress this month, especially during the holiday performances I did and after getting some good advice from George Vaill. I hope that continuing to heal pain, especially pain from my upbringing, will bring me greater progress and peace.
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My Goals for 2026

Posted on December 17, 2025 by admin

It’s time again to pick the top goals that I’d like to accomplish next year. As I have for the past few years, I’ll be keeping this list short so as not to overwhelm myself and give myself a better chance at accomplishing more of these. Without further ado, here are some things I hope to do in 2026.

  1. Make peace my normal state. When I was doing at least one sensory deprivation float a week, I typically felt good in daily life. I felt even better when I did some experiments involving floating every day for a week or more. That got me to some incredibly deep states of peace that stayed with me the whole time I did those experiments and lasted for days even after I resumed my normal one float per week. Once I learned how to let go and practiced it for hours a day, I felt similarly at peace, even at a few points after I stopped floating entirely. With the deaths of my dog Sawyer and my grandmother plus tons of other issues for almost four years in a row now, I’ve long since lost that state of peace. That’s why my main goal for 2026 is to make that peaceful state my natural, daily state. Even though letting go while sitting or lying down got me through a lot of challenging times, it seems like learning how to let go while walking, talking, driving, working, reading, writing, juggling, unicycling, and doing other things in life is what I need to get to a lasting place of peace. With that in mind, 2026 will be the year that I learn how to let go continuously and feel peaceful in my daily life.

  2. Stand up for myself without being a bully. Despite all the progress I’ve made in my healing journey, I still act like a doormat more often than I’d like, and sometimes the bulldozer comes out when someone has pushed me too far. I want to keep improving at voicing my concerns and setting and maintaining boundaries effectively without going overboard. I hope that the better I get at addressing concerns when they’re still small early on, the better I’ll get at setting and maintaining boundaries without becoming like one of the many bullies I’ve encountered.

  3. Get more sleep. After adjusting my sleep schedule a lot for work this year, I got pretty good at going to bed early enough to get sufficient sleep on both work nights and weekends. Unfortunately, that fell by the wayside after a few months. At this point, I tend to get enough quality sleep on my days off and not nearly enough quality sleep on work nights. Even when I go to bed at a good time on work nights, I often toss and turn, which makes me feel even more tired the next day. My sleep is even worse on the days when I have to wake up much earlier for work than usual. I suspect that going to bed much earlier will give me more time to settle into bed and fall asleep. I also believe that spending less time on my phone before bed will make it easier to drift off to sleep. I look forward to getting better sleep and more of it in 2026.
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Pressure in Conversation

Posted on December 10, 2025 by admin

For as long as I can remember, I have noticed an immense amount of pressure in interactions with others. This goes all the way back to when I was a little kid, and although I didn’t recognize it consciously as pressure at the time, I still felt uncomfortable whenever it appeared. Unfortunately, it has followed me into adulthood and seems to be becoming more common. Here’s what I’ve seen.

One of the most common examples is pressure to respond. This often comes in the form of someone asking the same question repeatedly without giving me any time to think of an answer. It’s also an example of the harder someone tries to get something, the less successful they are. The more they repeat the question, the more they prevent me from being able to think of a response, and the farther away they get from their goal of getting a response. It’s even worse when they start talking quickly in an anxious voice to add pressure for me to respond quicker than is comfortable for me. Sometimes I’m able to wait them out until they finally stop asking the question long enough for me to put together a response. Other times, I give half of an answer out of frustration while they’re still asking me the question. I’d like to get better at staying quiet until they quiet down, though some people seem like they’ll never quiet down and wait for an answer.

Similar to this is saying the same thing over and over again, regardless of what I say in response. One example occurred at a gig when someone kept saying “You can drink here” every time I said, “I’m good” until I finally said, “I don’t drink alcohol!” Since I don’t know that person’s intentions, all I can go by is how it came across to me, and it seemed as if the person was trying to pressure me into drinking. Another similar example is when I worked at a retirement home and a coworker said I could eat some of the leftover food. Even after I twice said that I’d rather eat the food I brought from home, she still kept saying, “You can eat this.” Rather than continue giving an explanation that seemed destined to fall on deaf ears, I left the room and ate the food I brought. I don’t know why some people believe that the proper thing to do when someone declines an offer is to keep making the offer repeatedly instead of respecting the boundary and moving on.

It’s also common for others to try pressuring me into giving a particular answer or agree with what they’ve just said even if I disagree. They also try to pressure me into talking about something I’d rather avoid, or talk when I’d rather stay silent. If I resist long enough and strongly enough, some folks I know will talk in a much louder voice with much greater intensity and even hostility. I’m having some success at avoiding falling into their traps when they do that, though not as much success as I’d like.

There is also pressure to listen to what others have to say, no matter what. Some will drone on seemingly endlessly without giving me any room to add to the exchange or any space with which to process what they’ve said, and seemingly without noticing that I have no interest in or understanding of what they’re saying. A few folks have even wanted me to look directly at them the whole time, which only makes it harder for me to understand them since human faces are highly distracting to me. Even when it’s my turn to talk, most folks I’ve known will still act as if it’s their turn by interrupting me and then continuing to interrupt even when I keep talking through the interruption; some even continue to interrupt me after I request not to be interrupted. This is the strangest and most frustrating to me when someone who has just talked nonstop for minutes on end will then interrupt me when I finally get to speak again and am only a few seconds into my contribution. Did they not get enough time to speak during their longwinded monologue and so have to steal time from me to say even more while letting me say almost nothing?

One of the weirdest (and definitely most upsetting) parts of this is the difference between how everyone described above treats me versus how they treat others. While some treat everyone like this, others only treat me in that manner and treat others much better than they treat me. This always makes me feel upset (sometimes to the point of crying when I’m alone later on), and has caused me to back away a lot from the folks who’ve treated me so much worse than they treat others.

It still blows my mind how good my late dog Sawyer was at communication. Most of the times I talked to him, he got quiet and actually listened to what I was saying. He also seemed to understand most of it. I also did my best to listen to and understand him, though I believe he was more successful than I was. Sawyer definitely did a much better job of listening to and understanding me than most of the humans I’ve known have done, and without the pressure of so many human interactions I’ve had.

The few humans I’ve known who come close to matching Sawyer tend to be hard to access as they live far away and have quite busy lives. As such, I tend to mostly keep to myself in my own time and don’t talk to a lot of people in person. Text-based communication is much easier as I have plenty of time to think about what someone’s said before responding, can say as much as I like, and there are no interruptions. I don’t know if anything that I’ve said above will change. I’m not holding my breath for it. All I can do is continue healing, communicating in ways that are comfortable for me, and finding those who communicate similarly while setting boundaries against those who make effective communication impossible. Here’s hoping that gets easier over time.

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The Big One-Way Trip

Posted on December 3, 2025 by admin

Occasionally, I’ll think about how weird time is. One can move in any direction in space yet can only move forward in time. In some cases, that’s wonderful. Spending enough time to learn almost any activity will result in huge improvements over the years, and it’s nice that that progress can’t be easily undone by randomly going backward in time. However, being stuck moving constantly forward in time also has major downsides. I’ll talk about some of those in the remainder of this post.

As a kid, I remember thinking about how a moment in time, once it’s passed, is gone forever. That no two days are exactly the same and that a day that’s already happened will never come back again. I don’t know what exactly got me thinking about that since that was long before I read, watched, or otherwise consumed any major work about humanity’s one-way journey through time. As I’ve looked into more such works and had more experiences I wish would repeat, it’s been increasingly more on my mind. A particularly poignant and painful reminder is this clip from Fred Penner’s Place in which Ernie Coombs sings about every day passing away shortly after his wife died. I have no idea how he got through that song as well as he did in the midst of what must have been an unbelievably painful experience.

There is also the loss of particular skills over time. I’ve lost track of how many skills are either super rusty or nonexistent at this point simply because I don’t practice them anymore. Magic is an excellent example. Since I haven’t practiced magic in over a year, I can remember almost none of the tricks I learned. It’s been interesting to go from easily doing a variety of different tricks to not recalling how to do most of them. Even with skills I’ve kept up with, I’ve noticed changes in my abilities based on how much I practice, how well I practice, and how my body has changed over time. Everyone seems to lose some ability as they age and find it incredibly hard to do certain activities that they found much easier when they were younger. It’s disconcerting to see my skills at juggling decrease in some ways now compared to how they were at my peak. I hope that regular practice at least keeps them from declining any further.

I wish it were possible to move through time as easily and freely as I can move through space. I’d love to go back to places, events, buildings, areas, and activities that are now gone or not worth me going there anymore. Whether they’ve been destroyed or are far worse than they once were, I miss being able to make new memories there. I’m so glad for the memories, pictures, videos, and other mementos I have of those wonderful lost times with some wonderful animals and humans. Most of all, I’d love to revisit the precious moments I had with my dog Sawyer, a few other animal family members, and my grandparents. I miss all of them dearly and sometimes find myself physically aching over the fact that I won’t get to visit them again for the rest of my Earthly life. I so wish we’d had more time together, that I’d been more present with the time we had, and that I could check in with them once in a while. I hope to learn from my past mistakes in this area by making good use of my remaining time.

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The Value of Little Projects

Posted on November 26, 2025 by admin

Life can easily become overly complicated, big, and scary. Whenever that happens, I find myself focusing in on much smaller matters. That’s why I’d like to talk a bit about the value of little projects in this post.

I’m talking about low-stakes creative projects that I find fun, useful, and satisfying. They may pertain to something I already enjoy, or they could be something new to me. Unlike anything involving work, school, or some other obligation, I decide what projects I undertake, to what extent, in what ways, and for how long. That prevents me from feeling pressured to do them in a certain way or for anybody else’s approval; whatever happens, I’ve only got to please myself with the results, and that is tremendously freeing.

These are especially beneficial when I feel stressed about some bigger issues in my life and need something easy and lighthearted to reduce stress and give me a small victory. That seems to be when I take on more such projects than usual. Sometimes they occupy more of my time than the bigger issues hanging over my head as the smaller projects are much easier to handle. That feeling of accomplishment can lift my spirits and remind me what I can do enough to get me through the larger, more stressful issues at hand. Even doing the laundry can check all those boxes. Laundry is a particularly good example since the washer and dryer do most of the work, it’s easy and fairly quick, there’s less of a mess after doing laundry, and I then have more clean clothes to wear when the laundry is done.

I felt inspired to write about this after starting my current project of removing rust from parts of my giraffe unicycle and a few other things. Much to my delight, the Evapo-Rust I tried worked wonderfully! Beyond that, it’s been fun to look into this stuff that I had hardly any interest in until the last few weeks. While there’s still much more that I don’t know about it, I now know far more than I did before I started this journey.

Another example is the cardboard shirt folder I made last December based on this YouTube tutorial. I had a lot of fun making it, about as much fun using it, and love seeing the end results, which are much better than I can get when I fold shirts by hand. It was a nice little project to work on while still feeling upset over my grandmother’s death a few months earlier.

I’ve taken on lots of small projects since my dog Sawyer died. A recent realization is that the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly routines I’ve developed to keep Sawyer’s memory alive are small projects of sorts. I always feel better after completing them, I often look forward to doing them again, and my doing them has little to no impact on anybody else. Also, and along with the other small projects I’ve undertaken, they help ground me, give me something nice to focus on in a world that seems to relish obsessing over negativity, and make my life better overall. I love them and look forward to continuing them.

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The Importance of Quitting

Posted on November 19, 2025 by admin

Two concepts often talked about in the business world are continuous improvement and creative destruction. Continuous improvement looks to see where progress can be made with existing systems, routines, services, products, and so on. There has been a lot of work at making things increasingly more efficient over time. In contrast, creative destruction is about pivoting from one thing to another as needed. This could look like making a different product that seems to now be in demand even if doing so requires one to quit making an existing product that’s selling well. Someone I know once described continuous improvement as constantly working to make a better widget while creative destruction is knowing when to quit making a better widget and start making the doohickey. While I do find value in continuous improvement, creative destruction fits in better with this post, which is about the importance of quitting.

Some folks say that quitting is one of the worst, if not the worst, things you can do. They have tons of motivational pep talks about never giving up, continuing to move forward, and persevering through anything and everything. Nope. By focusing so much on diving headfirst through obstacles, they neglect to see if there are easier ways to get around those obstacles, or if there are other ways to get where they want to go that have few, if any, obstacles. Sometimes, they might even choose a needlessly difficult path so they can satisfy their pride by bragging about intentionally going the hard way.

Beyond that, there are countless stories of people having great success and even totally transforming their lives after they quit one or more things. So many have improved their health by quitting eating junk food and living sedentary lives. Others have made things much better for themselves and their loved ones by quitting one or more toxic relationships. Rather than figure out how to manage their counterproductive habits, they quit them and then prospered. The sooner you quit something bad and start doing something good, the better. Habits can take a long time to change, so the longer you go down the wrong path, the longer it’ll take and the harder it’ll be to get onto a good path.

Some of the things I’ve quit include suppressing my emotions, letting others walk all over me (mostly), bad jobs, toxic relationships, and letting the negative opinions of others stop me from doing what’s good for me. That last point is easiest to see with my healing journey after my dog Sawyer’s death. Some might think I’m wallowing in misery or find it insane that I still talk and sing to Sawyer by his grave. They can think that all they want. I know that those and other activities and routines I’ve developed since losing Sawyer have reduced the overwhelming pain that was drowning me for over a year to nearly nothing. What I’m doing is helping me heal, and I’ll keep it up regardless of whether or not anyone else understands or approves of it.

Over time, I’ve gotten better at sticking with the things that work well for me and quitting those that work badly. In many cases, I’ve benefited more from stopping quitting something bad than starting two or more good things. Getting rid of that which does more harm than good makes room for more of the good in relationships, business, and life overall. That’s why I’m glad to have quit so much in my life and why I’ll never quit quitting.

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Tribute to Pal

Posted on November 12, 2025 by admin

When I first got you over a decade ago

I couldn’t have guessed how close we’d grow

Though some see you as just a car

I see you for what you truly are

You are a bridge to fine folks and things that I’ve found

Many of them, sadly, no longer around

Remembering how you drove around Sawyer and me

Always cheers me up and fills me with glee

We’ve journeyed together on countless road trips

And you’ve kept in confidence the words from my lips

As well as the moisture from my many tears

That fell due to so many pains through the years

I named you Pal because you’ve always been one

And you’ll continue until our days together are done

It’s always so hard to drive another car

When you’re in the shop, so near and yet so far

Fixing you up always reminds me of how

I’ve lost oh so much over many years now

There are so many folks I’ve lost whom I miss

And I don’t want to add your name to that list

I’ll do what I can to keep you around

With the help of the best car mechanics in town

And if someday we must finally part

I’ll always hold onto you deep in my heart

I hope this poem will let everyone see

How special and valuable you are to me

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Go Easy on Easygoing Folks

Posted on November 5, 2025 by admin

There is a disturbing tendency to treat laidback folks badly because they won’t make a scene or act upset. It’s common to pressure them to give up something they want, always put others before themselves, or make last minute changes to plans they made long ago. Here’s my take on this.

While some folks who appear easygoing truly are, other times it’s one or more trauma responses in play. In my case, the fawn trauma response has often prevented me from sticking up for myself, doing what’s best for me, and putting my needs above the wants of others. As a result, I’ve agreed to many things that I didn’t want to do, backed away from many things that I wanted to do, said things that others wanted to hear, and avoided saying things that I wanted to say. All out of fear of what others might do to me if I sufficiently displeased them (a fear that was based on what many DID do to me as a little kid when I said or did something they disliked).

Another issue this caused me was being made to support others emotionally when my own emotions were a mess. In some cases, this was done by people who only ever reached out to me when they wanted me to support them. When things were going well for them, I never heard from them. Yet whenever they wanted a shoulder to cry on or an ear to talk off, they contacted me. Of course, when I needed support, they were either absent or just talked more about their own problems instead of hearing me out and giving me the same kind of support I had so often given them. It’s no exaggeration to say that drowning in misery and still being expected to rescue someone else, especially when that person was in a lifeboat while I was barely treading water, were some of the worst experiences I’ve ever had. It blows my mind that anybody can be that selfish.

Despite the personal development progress I’ve made, I still find it difficult to deal with those who think that my seemingly easygoing personality makes it ok to always put me last. On the rare occasions in which I have strongly stood up for myself, I’ve received one of two responses. The more common response is for one or more folks to double down and try (often successfully) to intimidate me into backing down and going along with whatever they want. The much rarer and much nicer response is for everyone to back off and respect my wishes. Fortunately, since I put a bully in his place last month, I have far less fear of standing up for myself. Even if that doesn’t work out, I am much quicker at this point to avoid those who try to push me around and won’t take no for an answer.

Sometimes it helps to remember my dog Sawyer’s approach to boundaries. Similarly to other dogs, Sawyer was quite docile and friendly in everyday life while still letting everyone know where he drew the line. He primarily set his boundaries through light growls or moving away from an activity he didn’t want to do and only escalated if those approaches failed. Among the many wonderful things Sawyer taught me, being kind while still setting and maintaining boundaries is one of his most valuable lessons.

Still, I wish that everyone would go easy on easygoing folks. It wears me out to push back against those who think my concerns, interests, and plans don’t matter. Given how many people have done this to me and continue to do so unless I stick up for myself, that’s one of the biggest reasons that I prefer being by myself more often than not. Even if nobody else does, I will respect my own wishes, give myself what I need, and avoid treating myself as disposable. To end this, I’ll say thank you to anyone who is kind to the easygoing folks they know. For anyone who pushes them around and acts as if their interests don’t matter, do better.

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Recent Successes and Struggles

Posted on October 29, 2025 by admin

October has been a weird month for me. Among other things, I dealt with some more car trouble. Oddly, while that would normally stress me out more than anything else, it was actually the least stressful thing for me this month. The remainder of this post will talk a bit about the car issues and will mostly focus on other, more stressful things October has brought me thus far.

I got my car’s interior cleaned, disinfected, and detailed last month after a dead mouse created a huge mess on the front passenger floor. Earlier this month, I noticed a bad smell when I drove, especially on hot days. That turned out to be algae blocking the ac drain hose. Shortly after getting that sorted out, I had the thermostat, coolant, hoses, and a few other things replaced. Fortunately, all of that was easily affordable for me, and my car runs well now. While it was stressful to go through all that, I’m glad it all got worked out fairly quickly and for far less money than I feared it would cost.

The most stressful part of October for me was standing up to a bully early last week. Unfortunately, we don’t currently have the option to not be around each other. I hope that will happen someday, and sooner rather than later. Fortunately, despite fears that standing up to him would end badly, it actually turned out wonderfully. To my surprise, the exchanges we had stayed at the level of words without escalating to violence, I had the support of everybody else around us, we’ve hardly interacted at all since that day, and he’s stopped bullying me! That has never happened to me before, so I feel relieved and excited that it went as well as it did, both that day and all the days since.

However, I’ve been wondering if the increased confidence I’ve had since standing up for myself will turn out badly. While those with true confidence don’t need to put others down to make themselves feel better by comparison, pride can easily masquerade as confidence and result in those with lots of pride behaving badly. To paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, I hope that my newfound ability to stand up to bullies won’t turn me into a bully.

Putting that bully in his place and some kind words from a dear friend have got me rethinking a few of my ideas, some of which I talked about in this post last year. I don’t believe as much as I used to in the approach of having no enemies by turning them all into friends. While that is certainly ideal, and I tip my hat to anyone who can do it, it either doesn’t always seem possible or at least desirable to me. Hence my current focus on doing my best to communicate well and be kind while still setting and maintaining boundaries. Since I’ve gotten better at working through my emotions, I suppose I could work through the guilt of standing up for myself and not using the top communication tools I know all the time, especially when a boundary would work better.

I hope that this recent increase in courage and confidence won’t turn into pride, egotism, and bullying on my part. The fact that I even have that concern in the first place makes me think that it won’t. That’d be wonderful as I’ve struggled my whole life with either walking all over others or letting them walk all over me rather than finding that higher middle way of having boundaries without being a jerk. Since I no longer have my dog Sawyer to help me recover from the tough times and remind me of the importance of love in a world in which humans have steadily gotten meaner, the fear of becoming like those I can’t stand has grown larger since his death. I hope that the animal and human loved ones I still have will celebrate my successes, gently get me back on track if I lose my way, and help me become all I can be.

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Concern vs Control

Posted on October 22, 2025 by admin

Former hostage negotiator Chris Voss says to never accept advice from somebody you wouldn’t trade places with. That has made me reconsider who to accept advice from and also stop paying attention to what most other folks want me to do, whether I know them in person or have heard their advice through various self-help platforms. There are countless people trying to fix the whole world when they can’t even fix their own lives. They have huge personal problems that they can’t seem to solve and yet they think they have the solutions to nearly every problem under the sun. Along with this, they spend so much time talking about their ideas and so little time actually doing anything with them. Most of what they do is to ask or demand that those in positions of power solve problems rather than seeing what they can directly do to help themselves, those close to them, and maybe even those far away from them. As a result, nothing gets done, their frustration mounts, and they have a lot less energy and other resources to spend fixing the problems in their own backyards.

The odd thing is that if more people would focus on the things in their own lives that they can actually control, they would quickly see improvements for themselves and their families. Over time, the improvements would spread throughout their neighborhoods, cities, countries, and, ultimately, the world. By ignoring what they can control and focusing so much on what they can’t control, their lives either stay the same or, more likely, get worse. Just as planting a garden and letting butterflies arrive on their own is much more likely to succeed than chasing butterflies, this is a case of getting what you want by going for something else and not getting it if you go straight at it.

Realizing how much trouble I have with keeping my own life in check has made me back way away from giving advice. Some exceptions to this are when someone asks me for help with something I know well (such as juggling and related activities or personal struggles I’ve overcome) and sharing what’s worked well for me through this blog. Outside of that, I almost never give advice at this point. Even when I do, I’ll wait until someone asks me rather than give my unsolicited opinions, and I’ll always add a caveat when I’m unsure or have trouble explaining what’s helped me.

Instead of giving advice, I’m much more focused now on using practical tools to improve my own life. Whether I’ve found a particular tool myself or learned it from someone else, the stuff that’s worked has really worked. At least when I’ve applied it to problems that are within my control. I’d rather solve one small problem this way than fail to solve ten big problems that are beyond my control. So far, so good.

This is exactly what Stephen Covey talks about in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People with regard to focusing on one’s circles of influence and control rather than spending all of one’s time in the circle of concern. Focusing just on what I can control has greatly reduced my stress, allowed me to recover almost completely from my dog Sawyer’s death, and kept me out of a lot of trouble by preventing me from getting mixed up with individuals or organizations that claim to want to do good things while their actions actually end up making the world worse. Deep down, I wish everyone would do this so that we could all benefit from the much better world that would follow and stop being hurt by the awful things that happen when people try to influence things over which they have no control. Since I have no control over that, though, I’ve given up trying to make it happen. As long as things keep moving in good directions for me and those close to me, I’ll feel satisfied.

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