Goal Assessment January 12, 2022

 Begin forwarded message:

From: Frederick Vogt <fvogt@me.com>

Subject: Re: goals; update after 15 Years

Date: January 12, 2022 at 11:59:34 AM EST

To: Harry Vogt <hevogt@gmail.com>, James Vogt <jvogt.cda@gmail.com>

Jim, and Harry

I don’t have an email showing I ever replied to you question below.  I hope I gave you a phone call instead.

My perspective has certainly changed in the last 4 years of my retirement.  I tend to get “addicted” to my goals, and neglect other parts of my life that are not part of a goal. I thought I would live “goal free” as Harry mentions below, but I found my body began to rebel.  I was getting physically out of shape, my belly was getting bigger.  I have found that a certain minimum structure for my days is valuable for keeping fit and healthy, and to keep moving toward my current interests.  As long as I stick to my daily routine, determined by my weekly/monthly plans, everything works well and I feel happy with my life.

My current interests, (but not goals) are:

• to have a better understanding why people behave the way they do, so many people are their own worst enemies and they don’t seem to know it.
• To learn the mathematics that I need to know to understand modern physics books, i.e. number theory, analytic geometry and n-dimensional vector calculus.  These are topics that I covered in college, but I have found it very rewarding to revisit them.  
• To understand the role of concepts in my thinking by watching how my mind works when I work math problems out imaginatively and then formalize them via concepts.  I am amazed to find out how large the role of imagination is in thinking and understanding.
• To read good stories and essays, learn to appreciate good drama on TV or in books and improve my senses of smell and taste.  Compared to Amanda I am almost blind when it comes to smell, taste, appreciating drama, or listening to music.  I am beginning to desire to enhance my experience in these artistic arenas. 

My biggest distraction is the local library system.  I am limiting the number of books I check out at a time, so that I can get more of my own studies and home projects done.  Home projects are to clean out old files, photographs, floppy disks, and email, (like this one).

My worst bad habit is not asserting myself in conversation with others.  I have an underlying fear I won’t be liked.

When I look back on my working life, I realize other things could have been accomplished if I had dedicated myself to those goals, but when I read my old files, and emails from those time periods of my life, I see that I made the best possible choices for who I was at the time.  So no regrets.  

Goals are given to us by the possibilities that we commit to.  We all have possibility via imagination, what is missing willingness commit. If I am not working toward my goals, I ask myself “what is stopping me?”  I write down the answers for clarity and post them on my bathroom mirror.

Frederick N. Vogt
410-746-1502 cell
fnvogt@gmail.com
fvogt@mac.com

On Dec 11, 2006, at 8:53 PM, Harry Vogt <hvogt@metrocast.net> wrote:

Brain Surgery September 4th

Started writing a reply to your email yesterday afternoon.  It turns out that I write “like a nut,” doing lengthy documents that are barely connected to the idea and carry crazy implications.  What I write in the afternoon tends to be worse that what I can write in the morning.

I can do it better by keeping it brief.  I had to have brain surgery September 4th due to microbial infection of my brain.  My surgery has worked out well (by the doctors standards, seems terrible to me).  We saw my doctor yesterday for a quick check on his part.  I didn’t know exactly who he was, (typical symptom of brain surgery), until he told me.  I thought he was a potential member of his staff.  I was surprised that the actual surgeon wanted to check with me.

Your complaints about visiting nurses and various types of therapy weakly matches my experience.  My visitors did speak English and were understandable.  Had one or two good visits, but the majority were poorly prepared nurses.  A couple of them were so bad that Amanda called the medical clinic and reported that we did not want to see xxx, yyy, ever again.

It sounds to me that you live in a wonderful place.  Evidently more summer oriented than annually functional.  I am sure that you a leading the trend and will see great progress in the next few years.

We moved to NH, the state where I grew up. My sister Jane, my brother Harry live close enough to drive over for dinner.  We picked a place to live that is close to the airport, a hospital, and has a nice view of the Merrimack river.  Amanda did several months of research via the internet before we left Maryland to physically inspect this place.  We rented for two years just incase we found something that we liked better. We didn’t.

Recently, a few days ago, I realized that fitness and health do not ensure freedom from disease or a long life.  This generated an early morning sense of urgency to do only what I really want to do and not waste any of my time watching or reading fiction.  (Perhaps this is what happened to me, or I have invented a fake explanation of who I am.)

I have been rereading a Kindle book on philosophy by Mortimer J. Adler.  The reason I know that I am rereading it is that it has notes that I left so long ago that I am a completely different thinker than I was 15 years ago, (Kindle hit the market in 2007.)  I read the book now and I have to read many pages and paragraphs at least three times to understand what Adler is writing.  I felt that this rereading was a symptom of my brain surgery, i.e. stupidity.  Then I found a note, by me years ago, in the book that cited exactly the same information about rereading pages three times.  I believed the repeated reading was related to the complexity of the document.  So I now confuse normal rereading as being a symptom of my stupidity.  I am confusing intelligence with stupidity.

Amanda has confronted me many times for blaming my thoughts and actions on my brain surgery.  She assures me that I am acting effectively and normally. I should stop complaining about the quality of my thoughts and actions.

My lesson is that just because my sense of thinking and feeling is different doesn’t mean that it is worse than it used to be.  It is only different, not worse (i.e. crazier).

Completion of my Life, History

Completion of my Life, History

Can I write essays using email drafts?
Steps:
Send essay to "fvogt@mac.com”
Start writing derived from steno pad notes.

Topic is “completion of my life.” Notes are on page 20231022 Sunday.

In 1990, a few months after separation from my wife Donna, I am taking the Landmark Forum during the month of March, forget the exact date, second week end etc?

I was 35 years old, and I realized that my life was complete. I had accomplished all I wanted, needed in life. I had two children, an ex-wife (soon to be) who would take care of them.
Now at age 68 I discover that there is much more to my life that I had ever imagined. I am still growing and expanding my self. Incredible, how does this happen? I continue to discover my “road to freedom.”


Key insights:
Discovering the ideas and habits that I unconsciously carry with me and use them to drive my behavior. Following discovery making decisions about following or changing them? Can this even done, can I recall them a few days later, can I honestly change my being, am I related to and helping the people that I know? Discovery that what I think is growth is finding out that this is not due to retirement or older age. I find younger people dealing with the same or more complicated issues.

Comments on Detachment and Caroline Myss

Why People Don't Heal and How They Can: A Practical Programme for Healing Body, Mind and Spirit by Caroline Myss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Carolyn Myss on “Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can.”

Miss Myss gets critical comments from some readers for lacking scientific evidence for her ideas. By scientific I image these folks mean randomized double blind trials with thousands of participants. Myss needs to be read in the manner of poetry or scripture, with spirit, not with mechanical reductionist formalism of the scientist. Psychology and theology are not scientific fields because their essence is dealing with human will.

A few of her words that are particular useful for me are:
Page 150, second paragraph, she says “In fact, reaching a detached state of mind for even five minutes a day is so valuable it can infuse your body with the equivalent energy of six months of living in genuine hope.” She suggests prayer or a mantra to attain detachment. [My preference is Meister Eckhart’s treatises “On Detachment.” A person does not need to believe in a god to learn from the arguments and tools of theology.]

Page 191 first paragraph, she provides a daily practice of paying attention to your energy that is facilitated by [and facilitates] detachment. [Preliminay exercises for feeling my energy are feeling, occupying my body, my feet, legs and so on up and out. Eventually, maybe months, years of practice, awareness of energy comes.]

My only criticism is that she does not discuss how truly difficult and challenging it is to hold onto detachment or energy awareness for more than a fleeting moment.

View all my reviews