After a crazy-busy-long-distracting weekend of killing zombies, bashing darkspawn, eating space invaders, re-cooking dinners, ending running clinics, nursing a sick child, and wallowing in self pity, I’ve come to a handful of conclusions…

1) It is a time of transition. Transition can be frustrating. But transition can also be an opportunity for reinvention of self. Things that are changing include:

- my time as a running instructor has ended (for now) and I’ve now officially switched my mental goal state to a half marathon.

- I picked up my new glasses on Friday and have been adjusting to the half-baked state of progressive lenses.

- Charlene’s last day as my employee is tomorrow, and my capacity to do nothing at work will be diminished to half capacity.

- the first day of spring is marked by Karin’s week-long trip to Toronto where my parenting capacity will be cut in half.

- I’ve decided that in order to run the aforementioned half marathon I’ll need to cut my snacking by about half and loose a bunch of weight.

- I’m feeling only half satisfied with my life at the moment.

2) Reinvention in a curious thing, brought on by either the removal or addition of mental filters. One needs to either add a filter and interact with the world in a new way as a result, or one needs to remove an existing filter and allow a bit less inhibition between oneself and the world.

3) I have too many filters in some places, and too few in others. I blocked this blog as a means to add a filter. I make too much of one aspect of myself public. I need to find a filter to remove to compensate, re-balance, the equation of information input and output in my mind.

4) I’m too nice. And that might not seem like a flaw, but in many ways I let too many people walk over me. Niceness is a result of a filter that exists because we interact with the world from the perspective that everyone need like us. I need to be more of a jerk, but only to those who would reciprocate. In other words, rather than filter everything through the lens of “how can I mediate this conversation to make fewer people angry” I need to remove that filter and understand that I need to conduct my business in a way that doesn’t make me into the craziness recipient.

5) I need to do this now, as life transitions to a new state. Simple right. You’d think so.