On Saturday,
I wrote about the intense soul-searching that took place during my plane ride
back to Berkeley:

I pondered and prayed a lot on the plane -- because there was much to ponder
and pray about. In the months to come, I hope to share some of what I thought
about. As I become more and more into blogging, one of the filters I apply
in guiding my reflection is whether and how I might write about that matter.
Using such a filter may seem strange (especially to non-bloggers and non-writers)
-- but it's a handy filter for me. My mind is typically racing in too many
different directions, leading to diffuseness of thought and action. Writing
with enough clarity and background to make my thoughts and feelings comprehensible
to anyone who cannot read my mind limits me in a good way.

I'm purposefully trying to come back to the seven pages of notes I compiled
last weekend. Saturday wasn't the first time I brainstormed ideas, questions,
feelings one after the other. However, I rarely came back to what I wrote --
hence not focusing myself on some key matters. I want to change that behavior.

There was a lot of shorthand in the notes, phrases loaded with meaning waiting
to be unpacked and elucidated. So let me dive in today and see how far I get.
Expect for me to come back to this thread of blogging.

For the last six or seven years, since coming across Stephen Covey's First
Things First, I conceptualized my life in terms of about 7-10 "life
roles" that I play. (I'd like to dig up the book, find a rigorous reference
for the concept -- maybe in some other post). I won't attempt a definition here
but rather write specifically about the roles that I list for myself (as a way
of explaining myself but also to illustrate the concept). In some ways, the
notion of "life roles" should be obvious. However, it hadn't been
obvious to me and its introduction to me changed an important set of mental
boxes I used to organize my life. These days, I wonder a lot about the limitations
of this conceptual framework, the ways it might be holding me back. That's not
to deny the framework's usefulness, however.

Enough generalities for now. Here is my list of current roles:

1. follower of God/disciple of Jesus
2. son and brother (member of my family)
3. friend
4. member of the Lorina House community (my living arrangement)
5. technology architect for the Interactive University Project (work)
6. member and elder of the First Presbyterian Church Berkeley; member of the
   Justice Task Force at FPCB; board member of Radix and member of the New College
   Berkeley community; former Westminster House board member (Christian community
   life)
7. TeleCare volunteer
8. intellectual/writer/educator/artist/creative person/Bach lover/restless
   person/encyclopedist
9. "saw-sharpener"

So there....I feel a bit exposed laying out such a list. (There are plenty
of problems with this list, some of which I see but many I'm sure that are hidden
from me but obvious to my readers!) And this list certainly cries out for explanation
(probably lots of it for those of you who would care to hear it). But I think
that from how I've already blogged and from what I will want to write, you'll
start to see the connections between the various, seemingly random, pieces of
writing to the larger framework of how I order different parts of my life.