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The Throughlines

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Last week I discussed how I took a long walk where I reflected on my life and choices I realized that, as I drifted back over the years, my choices led to more and more “alien” selves the further back I got in time. At some point the you of the past is unknown territory and you can’t learn anything or relate to them.

Now I’d like to discuss an insight from the same exercise that is not about not who I am, but instead very much who I am.

To recap, at one point in my life I took a walk for over an hour, viewing points of “divergence” in my life, asking where choices may have led down different paths. Sometimes I realized that choices would take me so far away that I’d be a complete different person. However throughout this exercise I saw something else, I saw what I call the “Throughlines,” common, consistent parts of my life.

Throughout the many mes there were consistent patterns in my life, weaving not just the life I had now, but most of the possible ones I could see. There was me now, the mes’ I could have been, and behind that were certain, nearly omnipresent elements. I vaguely call them “Throughlines” because they are consistent over time.

I have always been a writer, and rarely go longer than a year or two without some writing project. I never became the fiction writer I once half-heartedly comprehended as a teen, but I am a writer. My past “maybe selves” included technical writing, grant writing, and science writing. Writing is a Throughline, a deeper me.

I’m always an organizer, always having a plan, always having a project. I ran RPG groups and zines, planned software, and more – it’s no wonder I became a Project Manager. Whatever choices I made in my life, I know I’d have been the guy with a scheme. Planning is a Throughline, a deeper me.

I bring people together, it’s the organizer in me. I’m the guy behind the movie night and the writing club, the gaming group. I love to network people so they can come together, and it’s visible in my past from where I was nearly an administrator for an anthropology department, all the way to team building now. Networking is a Throughline, a deeper me.

There’s other Throughlines of course, from my love of theology to the fact I always return to doing art (even when I’m not good at it). You get the idea, somewhere among all the mes I could have been, probably even the ones so strange I couldn’t imagine them, there were these Throughlines. There’s a me under all the me’s.

In fact, I could see times where I could have ignored my Throughlines, tried to be someone I’m not. I can also see how I would have been miserable. For instance, for those who know me, try to imagine me as a humorous corporate IT ladder-climber – had I gone that direction I’d have hit midlife crises two decades early.

As I noted last time, I invite you to try this exercise. Give yourself at least an hour to walk somewhere pleasant and work backwards through your life, asking who you’d have been with different choices. It’s not just a way to ask about different yous, you might just find out more of who you are, even if you’d have been someone different.

There’s a you behind the yous. Go on, get to know them.

Steven Savage

The Divergence of Self

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

My friend Serdar was writing about the toxicity of nostalgia, choices, and the need to see what is in front of our nose. It’s easy to ask what could have been, to want to go back. It’s an urge I entirely understand, and one I think all humans has – as he notes, that’s just part of the planning section of our brain that’s taken us so far on Earth.

It will shock no one that the last few years I’ve wondered about what could have been – and still do. In fact, I probably do it too much, though perhaps that’s part of the human condition. Maybe that survival/planning part of our brain works best with a little unease, even moreso for a Project Manager like me. But I’d like to share an exercise I did once that puts some perspective on this desire to go back.

Once, years ago, while taking a walk, I thought about my desires to go back or start over, and turned it into an exercise – one that lengthened the walk to about an hour. I thought about the major choices in my life and asked “what if” about them and what would have happened. This was not an “if I knew then what I know now” exercise, such things are different and perhaps a little idealistic about our habits. This was “what if back then the me back them made a difference choice.”

Looking back a few years, I could easily see my decisions and likely outcomes. Many a decision in life is a knifes-edge change that could go one way or another, and the memories are fresh and merciless enough to evaluate with some level of accuracy. For instance, my current (and likely until-retirement) career in academia and medicine could have started years earlier but for some petty choices – a good reminder of my own flaws. The gap between “me” now and “me” a few years ago wasn’t so large I couldn’t relate.

As my mind traveled further back the results became colder, more distant, because the person then was not who I was now. What if I had started my consulting career earlier? What if I had not tried working at startups? What if I had moved to Seattle not California? As I rolled back the years in my head, the me of the past, even as he made different choices, became increasingly alien to the person I am now.

At some point in my replay, decades in my past when my IT career started, the me in the past diverged so much I didn’t know him. I could see the choices and possibilities in the past, but they led so far off the map in the present. At some point during this rewind I just stopped being anyone I could recognize or even guess.

Now this exercise was quite useful on many levels – perhaps I’ll write about it more in time. But also at some point you realize reliving the past and asking “what if” just doesn’t serve you. You’re different people than you were and are and could be, and at some point you have to return to what’s in front of your nose. If you’re mindful, such exercises on the past put you more in the present as you realize how you got here.

You can’t go back to who you were. Who you could have been is someone else, someone you wouldn’t recognize. But you can learn to a point about who you were to be better at who you are now.

I won’t lie – in these unsettled times the “if I could back and do it over knowing what I know now” is tempting. If such a magical opportunity arose, I’d like to think the current me is grounded enough in the present to make the right decision.

But for the people I was? I can’t speak for them. They’re not me. In some cases, they’re not anyone I even recognize.

Steven Savage

The Assurance of the Unknown

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

The last few weeks have been an exercise in admitting I don’t know things. There are futures I can’t predict. There are results I can’t estimate. There are times I’m not sure I can do something.

As you can guess, it’s been a hell of a few weeks.

Yet, we’re taught not to admit our ignorance, or our inability, or our exhaustion. People tell us to be strong, to double down, to forge ahead no matter what. We fear being seen as weak if we admit we don’t know something. Such pressure drives us to pretend, to deceive, or to make things up.

My recent experiences have reminded me this isn’t true. There is great power in saying “I don’t know” about something and moving on.

There are things I desperately want to predict right now that I cannot. By admitting I cannot accept that common truth, I also have come to appreciate my adaptability. The future may be unknown, but I see I can deal with that.

There are skills I wish I were better at, but I have to develop them. Now that I admit this, I can focus on developing those skills while working within my limits. It gives me a plan.

I’m doing projects with unpredictable ends – from my writing ambitions to new challenges at work. I admit I can’t calculate what will happen, which prod me to make an effort to get the ends I want. The unknown is a canvas to paint on.

Having confronted so much unsurety, I find myself more relaxed. I’m not trying to “know it all” because of social pressure. I’m not worried over my ignorance as I’ve come to see it simply is what it is. In admitting the unknown, there’s a lot of comfort.

I often challenge my reader to know and learn more – but what is it you don’t know?

Steven Savage