Straight Forward and Useful

Progress and what it means. I sometimes look at my life and wonder at the progress I make. However, I have been evaluating the concept of progress and that was a revelation in itself. Up to this point in my life I had always just assumed that education, money and housing were all the indicators of progress that I needed but I have since realized that indicators depend upon time, place and other contextual factors too various to recount.

This is to say that, while useful, my sense of progress cannot always be based upon my preferred measures. Of course I won’t be able to accomplish certain things if I am homeless or uneducated; and of course we all want to live our lives free of financial constraints but that is mostly an inconceivable idea. So, yes my conception of progress is pretty straight forward and useful. However, these three things cannot necessarily be the center of how my life should move along.

For instance, I might be able to say that this blog can be considered an indicator of progress as I have been using it as an absolute measure. The fact that I am able to post anything at all indicates that I am able to get something done. Plus, it actually represents my three core indicators since my notebook, memories and blog posts all help me stay on track and up to date with my priorities.

In the interregnum I have focused on other measures that I may be able to use and have discovered especially valuable ones. Chief amongst these is the raw number of new personalities I may be exposed to in the course of my day. For example, I met a banjo player studying for an anatomy course today and yesterday I went to a party at a friend’s house to which I had never before been. In these instances I am often exposed to new personalities, cultures, ideas and perspectives that may not even differ much from my own.

I started writing this on 092212.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.