Things I'm likely to blog about

I'm going to post about a lot of different things here.

The breadth of topics here is a reflection of my approach to living and to my role as a helping professional: eclectic in form but philosophically consistent.  I have a perspective on things, and by revealing this perspective in myraid forms, my hope is that I can clarify for my readers the way in which I see the world. 

In order for this to be of value, I commit to being open and honest in my communication here.  I don't want to try to be too clever or too impressive, or to present myself in an overly-polished manner.  This seems to be a significant pitfall in the world of blogs and social media, in which we are a curator of our own self-referential content. 

So I'll share my perspective and my knowledge.  I'll also try to share my vulnerabilities and foibles.  Because the last thing the world needs is a blog by some together know-it-all with all the answers, promising just THE thing that YOU need to make all of your obstacles and difficulties vanish into thin air.

The general overview, then, of the blog could be summarized as this: Things I love, the ways in which I keep myself separate from them, and how I (and you) can learn to better embrace the things in life worth embracing, even when my mind (and yours) get in our own way.

An incomplete list of likely topics:

Navigating change, psychological flexibility, behaviorism, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Relational Frame Theory, psychological science, the practice of coaching and/or psychotherapy.

Fatherhood, masculinity, relationships, commitment

Fly fishing, hiking, snowboarding, or any manner of outdoors activities, and the impact of nature on our own sense of well-being

Ecology and the Environment

Food and farming, the good food movement, health and wellness

Mindfulness, meditation, world wisdom traditions

Music

More as they strike me!

And I may start adding a regular photo feature at some point.

Jitters

One of the things I do for a living is to help people get unstuck. In other words, I help people change unworkable patterns of behavior.

Of great puzzlement to me is the remarkable ability I have to continuously fall into the same traps of thought and action that I demonstrate for others how to escape. It would be fascinating if it were't so damn painful.

Check that- it is fascinating, even if painful. And that is what I want to explore in this blog, broadly. Change and the things that make change so difficult. I know a lot about my own experience of change, and over the course of my career, I've had the opportunity to view the change process of many other people. It's fascinating, wonderful, and maddening.

Starting this blog has been a wonderful case in point. I've had a desire to start a blog for some time. In fact, I made a decent effort about a year and a half ago (is it poor form to link to your own defunct blog?). For the last week, I've donked around with blogger and wordpress, played with templates and design, and read various how-to's. What I haven't done, until today, is written anything.

Why? I've been afraid, felt a lack of confidence, doubted that I'll ever have readers and worried that I will. Of course, I've questioned why on earth I would even want to do such a thing. So, the next step has been to undertake strategies to try to build confidence, assuage doubts and develop a safe, secure plan for developing a grade-A blog with lots of readers and positive feedback.

Well, I've looked high and low, and no plan exists. I can't seem to find my confidence, largely because I haven't accrued much confidence by actually blogging. The worry is still present, as are the doubts that this will ever really amount to much.

Yet somehow words are appearing on the screen in front of me. My fingers are moving acrossed the keyboard, so I can feel certain that the words on the screen are being put there by me. I am closer to my goal of having an engaging, informative blog than I was this morning, much closer than I was after a week of tweaking with font color.

I think there are a number of things in life that follow this some sort of trajectory: relationships, fatherhood, sports, work... I suppose nearly anything of value involves this same type of process. Anytime we step into the unknown, we don't really know what is going to happen. So the temptation is to not step.