Today was mostly a reading sort of day, and a continuation of the slow shutting down of various internal processes that were allowed to run free during my sabbatical.
You see, as the sabbatical year reaches its end, and I start to get closer to when I begin work anew, a certain adjustment in my lifestyle is required once more. No more am I allowed by the conditions stipulated for work to wake up at nine or ten in the morning having slept at like two. There is also a need to change my mindset to rebalance it, from the more ``survival'' instinct that I was having during my sabbatical to one that is closer to being of a ``thriving'' instinct.
I wasn't kidding when I said that it would be a closing of a long chapter and the opening of a new one. Not sure if I said that some where among the 370+ posts this year over here, or in some conversation with someone.
Future is still bleak, don't get me wrong. There are still many things that can and will go wrong, and not all of them will be controllable by me. But among the bleakness that might extend for several years, there are still pockets of happiness that I can look forward to, and that's where I suppose my sabbatical has done the most in helping me remember and rediscover.
Like the voracious habit of reading without caring about the world.
Like the ability to just improvise tunes continuously on any flute (or instrument that I am competent in, really) for as long as I care to.
Like the silly retro-programming involving vintage technology.
Like playing those PC/video games that I used to play in years back via legally gray means that I can now (over the past decade, really) pay for official ports/versions to play.
Like catching up on a more active [unscripted] slice of life type entertainment that is Hololive, an extension and evolution of the slice of life comics that I loved (of which many have either stopped after fifteen years, or have evolved into more unbelievable contexts as the disconnect between the writer/artist and the characters increases) and the artist collective-type videos that I enjoy.
Like going for walks on my own, just taking in the sights of the world around, being an observer.
Like remembering who I am, what I stand for, and how I really don't have to put up with certain types of behaviour/people not because of my superiority, but because I am an adult and have the means to live through the consequences of my choices in a more robust way.
Like writing down the things that I observe and think about for no reason other than just wanting to write it down.
The future is still bleak though, but those little things I highlighted that I learnt from my sabbatical, they are the little bits of happiness that I can hold on to when I need them. Notice also that ``linking up with friends'' isn't on the list, for the simple reason that as I enter this particular age group (``middle age'' for those who are keeping score), we don't really have friends any more.
Or rather, we don't really have [many if any] close friends any more. The few we have are still close, but the reality is that everyone, on hitting ``middle age'', have their own [out-sized] demons to slay. And a large number of them will have significant others, either in the process of getting married or already married. And as they say, the heart of a lover is as jealous as the fragility of glass---they might be married, but they aren't some twenty-year old couple who really know each other inside out to not second-guess whether that old friend of theirs is truly just an old friend, or someone else altogether.
With that kind of a major life commitment, their life path just isn't going to be as parallel as mine, no matter how close we were before. It's never an outright rejection---everyone's just too polite to do that---but the drift will always happen.
Actually, it has already happened. Many times, in fact.
I feel a little bad about it, but it's just the way it is. Maybe ten years down the road, someone might remember and try to look me up again to talk about the old times, but that's not a bet I am willing to take.
As they say, out of sight, out of mind. And it happens both ways too---there are people that I end up just not wanting to reconnect again for whatever reasons, most of which is prosaic in nature. Or maybe they are just terrible people that I shouldn't reconnect because I'm just not strong enough to withstand their terribleness the way Jesus is strong against His critics.
No need to set up my own stumbling block, eh?
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I completed Robert's Rules of Order in Brief today. It's a nice little hand book that summarises the basic rules when it comes to running decision meetings.
``MT, a rule book on decision meetings? That sounds lame... and more importantly, it exists?''
Yes, it exists. This is just the summary though---there is a more authoritative tome that describes the basic rules (20%) and all the other exceptions (80%) that is called Robert's Rules of Order. I don't think I'm going to read it.
In general, the book (the brief one I mean), is an interesting read. It is a bit overkill for small decision meetings (small being less than five people), but it provides an excellent framework for handling massive deliberative meetings that involve tens of people.
Think ``parliament'', ``senate'', ``company annual general meeting'' and the like.
It's really a communications protocol book for humans. There's a mutex (``being recognised by the chairperson to have the floor''), a trusted central coordinator (``the chairperson of the meeting''), formal messages and associated syntaxes (the different ``motions'' available), all set up to ensure that the conveyance of the question that requires a decision will be understood by all, debated/deliberated fairly and timely, before being finally resolved (or postponed).
In my years working with people who make decisions in meetings, this is the first time that I am exposed to such a formalised rulebook. At no time was I ever told that such a protocol book even existed; much of how I conducted meetings was based on whatever I learnt from the meetings that I was a part of.
And somehow, I suspect that many of the meetings that I was a part of were run by people who probably also did not know about the existence of such a protocol book, and were just cobbling whatever they had observed before in imitation.
No wonder meetings are seen as the bane of the modern workplace.
In other readings, I have finally started on The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew by Lee Kuan Yew. Make what you will of it; I'll just say that it is interesting to see the context that had shaped his point of view and choice of style in ruling SIN city.
I think that's about it for today. Till the next update.
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