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Fated to Portend

Practicing feeling and listening prayer as prescribed by John Mark Comer in his How to Unhurry Workbook. That practice gave rise yesterday to no man is an island, and today to the following thoughts: 

I have so much stimulus in a given day, it can lead to confusion about what to do next. In the lounge room I joked with a teacher that I was funneling a ton of information (I must have looked deep in my own world) and she said, "make sure something comes out the other side". In Tim's workspace at Henry there's a whiteboard with the following capture: 

Problems

Priorities

Preferences

I consider that more and more. I consider near term vs long term problems. Focusing on the near term is important for a sense of accomplishment and efficacy. But if the long term problems be neglected, fixing near term problems doesn't much matter. See the funneling consideration for priorities (ie. make sure something comes out the other side). What are preferences? :)

And my last thought was on checking out. Yesterday, as we prepare for sleep my wife asks what time we will be leaving on Saturday for family camping. 5 PM. "What, that's too late, I was hoping to get their in the afternoon!"

Me: "I can take you on Friday and you can camp 2 days."

Wife: "No, I don't want to do that."

I picked up my tablet, put in my headphones, and turned on Star Wars: Clone Wars and don't speak another word. I was upset that I can't get 24 hours and that she is not flexible. But looking at it another way: 24 hours is a luxury, and she only wants a solution that's going to work. 

Our main conversational style difference is that she wants to respond yes and no to propositions and I want to arrive at yes and no propositions through dialogue. We're doomed. 

:)

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