Planner 2021

 For the procrastinating, anti-scheduler with lots of free-to-do-what-you-want time.

The kind of person that really doesn't go for goals but realizes they're probably a good thing for some things.

The kind of person that maybe lives a little too much in the present; and maybe gets lost in clicking on the next video a bit too often.

... and maybe leaves the dishes for a day or two but maybe can get something, anything done.

ALL TASKS = CHARMS:  just keep loading them on from this page to the next; then pick the ones for the day - prioritized or scheduled if you want - or NOT.

GOALS = QUESTS:  From just getting out of bed on some days to hard core regimented - it's all good - whatever works for you right now.

DAY and Date:  Circle the day, write in the year, month, and day.  When the day is over, check it off.

WEATHER:  Check out the weather on your phone/TV/radio and circle what the forecast is - or record what actually happened.  Can be helpful for planning outdoor activities some days.

BLANK LINE - to right of WEATHER: for whatever you want such as All-day events like birthdays, what you are grateful for that day, and affirmation perhaps, or an animal from Medicine Cards (David Carson).

DAILY MUSTS:  You've got your BASIC T C (Tidy and Clean), your EXTRA T C - if you get around to it, EXERCISE, a blank line for something else - you choose - but something that you do almost everyday, and planning for TOMORROW.  The check boxes to the right are wide so you can mark in how much you actually achieved - a quarter, a half, three quarters - all or whatever.

TODAY'S PRIORITIES:  Some days, there are things that really must get done.  You've got room for two things.  To the left of each you can put in a time, or maybe a "role" (see SEVEN ROLES below), or draw a face showing how much you are gonna like doing it.

TODAY'S TASKS:   Room for 5, check box for done, and again, blank space to the left for a time or face or role.

A blank square for doodles, notes, counting your blessings, and so forth.

PERSPECTIVE - PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE: jot down a few words that will help give you perspective, give you direction, keep you on track, remind you what it's all about.

WEEK PRIORITIES:  the seven days of the week with a little line for the date so you know where you are relative to the other days in this set of four days.  Jot down the important or scheduled things.

Room at the bottom to list your "Seven Roles" - which I developed for myself years ago from reading that Stephen R. Covey book about habits and it still seems quite a popular thing to do.  Things like:  learner or student, family member, citizen, job position, etc.  Two of my roles are a little philosophical, encompass multiple aspects of life: Personal - Outside (friends, family, citizen) Personal - Inside (self development, appreciation, mental health, learning).  You can note which role each task fulfills.

But again, I don't like schedules! I like spontaneity I guess,  but just to a certain degree.  It's HARD to maintain a balance!

Oh, and about procrastination.  Here is my latest list of how to bust it:

BUST PROCRASTINATION

• Schedule down time / treats
• Set good goals
• specific
• concrete
• doable
• meaningful
• Break down big projects
• Create routines
• time and place
• purge bad cues
• add good cues
• tidy workspace
• designate activity space
• Make good tasks frictionless

... which I got from a CBC interview with Piers Steele about his book "The Procrastination Equation" - which I haven't read but the interview was very good with details.  But, I really don't get around to doing goals much - maybe someday.

Also, I sometimes practice "The 20 Second Rule" - don't feel like doing anything?  Just pick something and tell yourself you only have to do it for 20 seconds.  If you go longer, good,  if not, that's fine (usually).  I must have heard about this Shawn Anchor trick via somewhere.  Sometimes it works.

And the part about TOMORROW - in the DAILY MUSTS section - that's from The Ivy Lee Method.  Yeah, planning something for tomorrow can be a good thing some days.  You can always change it - depending on the weather or whatever.

Anyway, print off, double sided, punch it with holes, and put the pages in a 3 ring binder.  Yes, it's too big to carry around probably - who wants to do that anyway?  I'm not the kind of person that carries around a little planner either.  I have my phone for when I'm not at home and can just transfer everything to the planner whenever.

Available as a pdf.

Dune thoughts

 - military is key to all political power

- western modern humans domesticated

- harsh physical conditions of arrakis and salusa secundus kept raw edge of human physical capabilities

- breeding program which produced Paul and Leto II was the equivalent in psychological and political harshness to those two planets

Waters of March

A favourite video.Águas de março", pot Eli's Regina by TV Cultura Digital

https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FxRqI5R6L7ow&data=02%7C01%7C%7C34f862da8cda4a431b2208d6b0673e02%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636890354792743954&sdata=oRLsryGLJd8JGHVS%2BC3mo3WjDOcVNRC74U26JOF1lrQ%3D&reserved=0

I believe the video is from a Brazilian TV show, maybe recorded after the release of Elis' album in 1972 which contained this song.  The singwriter, Jobim, is playing the piano. The music is a duet between Eli's and Jobim.

Is a song of AUTUMN, March being the end of summer is the Southern Hemisphere. It is a "stream of consciousness" poem about death / dying
Songwriter: Antonio Carlos Jobim, 1972

Originally written in Portuguese and the English lyrics also written by Jobim

Wikipedia says " The lyrics and the music have a constant downward progression much like the water torrent from those rains  flowing in the gutters which typically would carry sticks and stones bits of glass and almost everything and anything" and " The orchestration creates the illusion of the constant descending notes much like Shepard's tones."

The cascading waters of March give the impression of the passing of daily life and it's continual inevitable progression towards death

A bird in the hand as a result of a stone in a slingshot, before a bird in the sky, then a bird on the ground.  ... a bird being killed by a slingshot, falling from the sky, landing on the ground, then being collected.

TRANSLATION BY MTG How - in YouTube comment.

Itks a stick, a stone, it's the end of the way
It's the rest of a stump, it is a little alone!
It is a shard of glass, it is life, it is the sun
It's night, is death, it is a tie, is the hook
It's the field's "peroba" (a type of timber tree), is the wood knot
"Casings", candle, is the "Matita Pereira" (striped cuckoo)

It is wooden wind, fall from the bluff
It is the deep mystery, it is like it or not
It is the wind blowing, it's the end of the slope
It is the beam, is te will, party ridge
It's raining rain is river talk
The March waters, is the end of fatigue
It is her foot, and the ground is the "roadless" March
Bird in hand, stone on the slingshot

It is a bird in the sky, is a bird on the ground
It is a stream, is a source, is a piece of bread
It is the bottom,, it's the end of the road
In face of the heartbreak, it's a little alone

It is a crowfoot, is a nail, is an account, it is a tale
It is a point, is a dripping drop
It's a fish, it is a gesture, is the silver shining
It's the morning light, is the brick coming
It is the wood, is the day, it's the end of the trail
It is the bottle of cane, the shrapnel on the road
It is the design of the house, is the body in bed
It's the stalled car, it's the mud is mud

It is a step! It is a bridge, it's a paddock is a frog
It"s the rest of the bush, in the morning light
Are the waters of March closing the summer
It is the promise of life, in your heart

A snake is a stick, it is JOAO, is JOSE
it is a thorn in hand, it is a cut foot
It is a step, it is a bridge, it's a paddock is a frog
It is a "Belo Horizonte", is a tertiary fever
Are the waters of March closing the summer
It is the promise of life in your heart

Engineer's Cairn, University of British Columbia, March 9, 1978

Me and my two Faculty of Science (Biology) bff's did this to the University of British Columbia's (UBC) Engineer's Cairn for the first officially celebrated International Women's Day in Canada in March, 1978.

Having lived in Totem residence for the previous 3 years,  I passed the cairn every morning on my way to the Biology buildings.  In all that time I had never seen anything but another faculty's letter painted on it - F for Forestry, A for Agriculture, mostly.  I believe we were the first to put a non-faculty symbol on this iteration of the cairn.

I don't remember whose idea it was, mine, Karen K's or Karen M's, but someone bought the paint and the three of us went out in the early hours of 8 March and did it.  The next morning, I was very disappointed to find the Venus symbol burned off.  Sure didn't take the Geers long to do it - a matter of hours!  I think we hit a nerve. Yay!

We were undeterred and two of us returned the next night to do it again.  We ran out of paint and Karen K decided to leave before it was finished, so there I was, alone at 3 am.  In those two nights, we only ever saw one person: a male, who said he was a security guard.  He said not much more than a caution to take care of ourselves - women out very late - we were always cautious.

I read now that this cairn was destroyed by the faculty of Forestry in 1988 and the Geers built a new one.  Is that one still there?  Where is it, exactly?

Rambling:
I believe there was only something like 3 female students in Engineering then.  One of my later roommates went into Engineering.

As for the 3 of us Biology/Zoology students, we all got our Bachelor's degrees, one went into Forestry for a bit, then finished her working life as a Coast Guard communications operator, one went into Dance, and I, after a couple of years working for government environment and parks ministries, have been kicking around doing volunteer science for decades - always focused on biology.  FYI all of us eventually got married, divorced, widowed (a weird mix of verbs and adjectives, when you think about it, and they aren't really that relevant to who we are) and two of us became parents (birth and adoptive).

When - the situation in which I grew up - girls were not encouraged to be interested in science.  Sure, my early interest in birds and astronomy was noted and they gave me a telescope for Christmas one year, (which I promptly took apart to study); but that was not made out to be a possible direction for my life.  My life was to be family and children and taking care of them.  But I was considered a little weird because I was not that nurturing or aware of other people's feelings, prone to day-dreaming, reading science fiction, watching Star Trek first-run, thinking "too much".  I believe it was my high school science teacher that worked on my parents to get me to university - a dicey affair not decided until the week before the application was due.


We learn of famous people, both male and female, mostly the celebrity type of fame.  And most of those are extroverts; most of the world is extroverted, apparently, so that's who we hear about.  But the average life is a balance and most are not famous.  Most introverts, such as myself, seldom toot their own horn.  And that's OK!  It's OK to be perfectly happy to do your own thing - as long as it doesn't harming anyone else (generally speaking, at least not directly; disregarding the unintentional harm we do to each other and Gaia, the earth, because of the cultural system we find ourselves in).  Let's look on "famous" people more as "inspirational" rather than something we have to be.  That is their life.  They did those things and some of those things were good.  You too, do good things, in your own way.

The internet gives introverts a platform, for sure, which is nice.  But, it's OK to be "private", too!  You don't have to share everything, every thought, every event.  (PS private and secretive are different).  A life is not a single focus.  A life can be family and music and gardening and crafts, and studying nature.  And science can be used in everything.

The theme for IWD this year is #BalanceForBetter.  I went through my Outlook Contacts and counted all the scientist / volunteer scientist I know by gender.  It was 50/50 female/male.  Right on.

Sometimes I forget

I forgot what I was going to say.

Missing words

Many words are missing in the English language.  What does this tell us? Things we value? How we think?

• Antonym for “mistake” - what is a single word meaning the opposite of  “mistake”? If I want to remind myself to learn not only from my mistakes but also from what I did right, how do I say that? If I WANT to make the same (antonym of mistake), what do I say/do?

Banish brooding