Waffling without a breeze

There's an old Bedouin proverb that came to mind recently:

Me against my brother
Me and my brother against my cousin
Me, my brother, and my cousin against our neighbors
Me, my brother, my cousin, and my neighbors against the stranger.

But what do you do when your biggest conflict is inside of yourself?

I'm not going split-personality here, trust me, but the most significant battle I have is with myself lately.  It's the struggle between who I want to be, and who I actually am in those quiet moments of decision.  The me that says I should exercise more, and eat less, and be more social, and the other me who is just fine not doing those things, and wasting time on the internet, or with TV, or just doing nothing - filling up my time with things that don't matter.

In large part, it's the challenge of laying down the foundation of who I want to be tomorrow, working against the reality of who I want to be right now, and what I find worth doing today.  I'm not normally like this, but the last few months, I've seen myself making short-term decisions rather than long-term investments.  I'm even seeing the negative effects of my recent 'not-as-good' decisions, and don't seem to care enough about them to change my approach, at least not yet.

There's a concept in business called an emergent strategy - it's the strategy that you actually pursue, not the one you plan. I've always been a planner, and lined up my days and weeks toward a future goal, but suddenly that doesn't seem as important.  My personal strategy is giving way to a very different emergent strategy that feels like living day-to-day.   I know a lot of people who do that already, and are very happy just dealing with the 'today's, but that's never been me.

Maybe I'm just a bit rudderless right now.  I've achieved a lot of what I planned to do in the last several years, and I haven't seen sights clearly on a new set of goals.  If I spend a little time on vacation this week thinking about where I want to go, perhaps that will provide the guiding star to help direct me.  Then I can trim my sails and head off in the right way.  Until then, I'm going to founder a bit more in the doldrums.

But not for too long.