successes and failures

I probably tend to dwell more upon failures / than I remember succeeding ...

Just an observation / possibly to stimulate some (constructive) thinking ...

loneliness

What happens if you say to a psychologist: I think that the primary problem is not stress, it's loneliness. How can you be lonely in a room full of a hundred or more people?

Having Asperger's Syndrome (or something that in some respects looks like Asperger's Syndrome), my answer would be along the lines of: Communication! but it's more than that. I suspect that people generally find it difficult to relate to one hundred people at once. That the occasional unfriendliness I encounter is just overload. And that I, also, need to adapt. My first response was to live in a bubble. To shut out the noise.

Or to run away - but that isn't allowed. And I do have conversations. Good, interesting conversations.

Over lunch, generally, I read. Somehow, the books that have landed on my in-tray are challenging: The Street Bible (now called Word on the Street, I believe), by Rob Lacey; One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey (which I've paused, having reached the end of a chapter - it doesn't help that I've seen the film, which doesn't exactly have a happy ending); and, currently: unApologetic, by Francis Spufford ...

changing the script

of course, the script is there to be adhered to / I've just been handed a script for 'me and my girl', as I shall be playing the part of Sir Jasper in a production taking place in May / and no-one would thank me if I decided, instead, to improvise ...

when I started to work in what we then called computing support / we had to improvise / there wasn't a script / nowadays, still having to improvise / or to follow a script which has been cobbled together / and is not supported by the software supplier / or, to be honest, sometimes resenting having to follow a script which has been devised by somebody else / and which doesn't appear to me to be the most effective, appropriate, or efficient way to deal with the situation / I would welcome a clear, well-documented, official script / offering reassurance ...

but not every script is helpful / our brains, naturally, develop habits / ways of coping / and it can be difficult to develop new, better ways ...

mindfulness

have been advised by a psychologist to practise mindfulness / at the same time, my bible reading notes are focusing on contemplative prayer / are these two sides of the same coin ...

being mindful (as I understand it) / involves quietness / awareness (of breathing, particularly) ...

contemplation (for me) / is actually more difficult to grasp / it depends on God playing ball (as it were) / being there / showing up ...

are we thinking about readiness? respecting God's timing / his initiative ...