Fun Friday: Existential Whirlpool... Fun? Perhaps...

I spent some time talking to other people this week which was wonderful. Of course, all of the interactions were via Zoom or Meet, but it was good to see faces and hear voices of different people. The first meeting was a focus group that I am part of - for therapist who work with people with I/DD diagnoses. We discussed ideas for sessions and behavior management tips. It was a good discussion that left me with several ideas to pursue. The second meeting was with friends from elementary, junior high, and senior high. We get together every so often to check in with each other. We were all band geeks and had that in common, so they are friends who have been through many of the same things I've been through. Three of us are "retired" but only one of us is actually retired and not thinking about the next steps in our professional life. (It is not me, by the by.)

It was good to meet with people who have known me for many decades. They have a way of grounding me which is something I am needing these days. I am kinda spiraling, and it is not all that good for me.

This is partially starting to get bored, partially needing something new to work on, and partially my summertime blues getting to me, but I am having some existential thoughts happening. Who am I in the professional world? Who am I wanting to be? How do I get from where I am to where I feel I need to be? What is out there for me to experience? How do I earn enough money to support my health insurance needs?

So many questions that I do not have answers to but that keep me dithering rather than actually doing things to move me forward. This is why talking to other people helps me out. I have ideas now to put together. I have things to think about and develop and make. I also know that I am not alone in my dithering. Lots of us are asking the same questions. That is helpful when existing in an existential whirlpool - knowing that others are in a similar state and are working to get out of their own whirlpools. I am not the only one who doesn't know what to do next.

So, it is time to find the fun with this state of being.

How do I do this? Well, it depends on why I am feeling this way. Right now, I am experiencing my usual summer SAD, so that is familiar, but the lack of working is new, so I may have to do some different things to get going again. For me, I tend to make lists and write thoughts down to help me figure out what I need to do next. Once I know what needs to be done, I can usually work on the next steps. I don't tend to go for ChatGPT or anything AI for help. I prefer to do things the old-fashioned way - Google or research through reading books.

I like the process of thinking things through, and I have a really old program called Inspiration that helps me put information together into a mind map. The program allows me to make maps of my thoughts and projects so I can see and manipulate the thoughts the way it makes sense to me. I can then print the map, make an outline of the map, and import it into other programs. 

Inspiration is something that I have used for many years for many different projects, so I tend to move there rather than to AI things. That's just me. I know that many other people use AI to generate ideas and to write songs and all that, but I am not one of those people. I want my brain to do the work - I think this will keep me going for longer than if I let an artificial intelligence tool do the thinking and planning for me.

There is no substitute for human ingenuity. [End of sermon on my soapbox. Let me just get down now.]

So, time to get out of the existential whirlpool so I do not get sucked into existential dread. I will sit down, and think about what I do not know and then figure out where to find the information that I need to take my next steps. Time to get going with this while still working on my other projects and plans. I think I will make use of my currently empty time to do some brain dumping and storming. I am going to work on books - I have seven in the works as I am thinking about things. It is time to start moving forward.

Thanks for being here through this ramble. See you tomorrow.

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