Opening the LOG JAM

Over the past year and a half or so, my life has been a fairly scary white water trip, sometimes even to the point of paralyzing me mentally and emotionally. As a woman of Faith, I have diligently sought the Faith and Love of God to dispel the fear. Sometimes, however, life has felt simply overwhelming and last night I was particularly paralyzed.

At the suggestion of a dear friend I had begun reading Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen . His techniques help people in the task of “unsticking their work flow”20. I certainly felt stuck. The heavy burden of life’s many tasks on top of my already overly stretched mental and emotional health left me paralyzed in my abilities to tackle any of them. I felt like a wild river overflowing its bank with a huge log jam. However, working on faith in Allen’s principles of productivity, I put up a wall of inactivity, a mental dam. The logs needed straightening so they could continue to flow. Putting up a wall would prevent the dangerous explosion down stream as the log jam began to straighten out.

Piece by piece I straightened out the jam. I addressed each project and other mental pieces that blocked my mental & emotional flow and my productivity. I assigned each item a »”next physical action” and a category on my Palm Pilot14. I also assessed my long term, short term goals and “my intended successful outcome” for each action14. Then I slowly raised the wall for the logs to flow smoothly downstream.

My river of life is still an incredibly crazy and stressful one. However, when I regularly review each »next physical action, my goals, and my intended outcomes, then I can keep my faith flowing rather than feeling paralyzed in fear, and love in my heart rather than dangerously exploding emotion.

Protecting Our Future

Today I saw a sign on a bumper (it wasn’t a sticker) that read:

“I’m a Mexican, pull me over”.

And, frankly, I got mad. I’m still mad. Really mad. Mad that people would see laws and the basic systems we have in place from our founding to protect Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness as a reason . . . well, darn it, as a reason to have a tantrum because someone might take something away that they thought they could just have without asking.

Currently the great State of Arizona has been under fire for passing a law giving local police the power to enforce existing federal laws that have not been enforced by the agencies empowered to do so. Many are claiming that this puts certain portions of the population in danger of being mal treated by Arizona law enforcement.

My understanding of what John Adams called the Divine art of politics is limited. And I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers or even understand all the facts involved. What I do know is that NO race or group of the population is safe from the effects of ANYONE choosing to break the law. Furthermore, from where I sit, the debate concerning the new Arizona law isn’t about any particular race or nationality, it’s about protecting citizenship. Consequently, my response to the sign today is:

“I’m a legal citizen, steal my identity. Better yet, steal my daughter’s.”

Oh yeah, that’s already happened. Thanks. We’ll be busy running errands to the police and the social security offices to protect the future while others are busy protesting those state and nation’s laws doing their best to protect the future of ALL of its citizens.