Fuzzy-Focused Time in the Sonoran Desert

The desert outside of Scottsdale while enjoying an ATV tour.

And so here I am. Sitting at an oasis in the Sonoran desert. I'm in Phoenix, AZ at the Arizona Grand Resort (& Spa), sitting on the patio just outside the resorts golf pro-shop. The coffee is tasty as I watch the upper middle class (does that still exist) play the high handicap version of golf that is probably still way better than my game. 

Along the patio are a good, but not overly crowded, mix of mom's with their kids, non-golfing dads and the occasional youth baseball player who looks like they just received gear from the bat armory and has their marching orders for the day's tournament. The speakers are playing some motown, funk and classic rock/folk classics. I'm finding myself frequented by birds, namely a precocious sparrow hoping to find some dropped crumbs. Sorry, I've only got coffee at the moment.

So, this is my spring break. It's a small escape from the stress good people in MN had to, undeservedly, endure in January and February. I didn't bring my clubs, which is just as well. I'm tagging along on this adventure with my girlfriend and her kids who seem to adjust to the two-hour time difference between here and home much easier than I do and likely still slumbering in the room. Good on them. I've reached a phase where I get restless easy in the morning and the coffee and work (and mild sciatica) serve as my alarm clocks. It's all just part of the aging process I suppose. 

Cacti in bloom.

I do enjoy quiet mornings though. Even in my ideal career space, I'd have a good hour or two to focus and get aligned for the day. That mode is a little tricky in the current job due to the high pace and need to communicate internationally. Mornings are the prime overlap time for status updates and such. It's not my favorite operating mode, but I've learned to live with it to the extent that I'm not itching to do something different. 

I think this current gig is helping to improve my personal efficiency so that I can have more quiet moments. As much as I resist structure, carving out specific times to, for example, go through and take action on my emails and (Microsoft) Teams chats leaves me with a sense of completeness. It also means I don't have to worry about things the instant they appear in my email (with the occasional "urgent" exception).

While doing things like carving out time for emails seems like something natural to do, the benefits aren't always intuitively obvious. Part of this is assigning structure can feel burdensome. I'm a bit of a putterer by nature. I feel as though I get into flow most naturally by exploring and keeping headspace open. However, not having a mechanism by which I can get the necessary things done leads to a stress buildup. This resulting buildup can lead to frustration and really screws with my puttering about. As annoying as setting structured work times can then feel, they do result in the benefit of minimizing the puttering paralysis. Nobody likes their happy times paralyzed.

At work we have things we do to keep the pace of business. As a manager I have an "management operating system" it includes a mix of meetings and reporting. These integrate with other groups across the organization to help call out challenges/problems and move things forward. In a similar fashion, I took a leadership training last fall (2025) and while it involved learning on elements of coaching, mentoring and defining goals, the development of a personal "leader operating system" was also included. 

Part of the cobbling away time came from this, but I also think it would be a useful extension into my home life. Not to say that things operate as some kind of militaristic system, but there are opportunities for where a little more structure could be helpful. Puttering could even be included in this. For instance, what could I putter on in the basement as opposed to the main floor. Would that help get some stuff done. Maybe the goal could be fuzzy, e.g. get some stuff piled up for donation. Then some hard goal, e.g. get the darn stuff donated, could be something different. I'm just thinking in digital ink right now but I don't hate the idea of fuzzy focused time. I mean it's what I'm having now with this chickenscratch.

End of Season

Here I am in Appleton, Wisconsin preparing to watch my son play in his final game of his sophomore year. This has been a challenging season for the Vikings, with an 0-9 record so far and no indication that today will spell victory for the team. In reality we knew that this season would be one of adversity and change. The offseason, late in the offseason, saw a head coach change. This was frustrating as organizations that make such changes usually do so right at the end, or just before the end of the season. I really think this was poor form for the university and is hopefully being taken as a learning experience. 

The change was sad as, despite the lack of success in the wins column, we really liked the outgoing coach. We felt that he took the effort to connect with the players and be supportive of their University experience. Fortunately, it appears that that coach landed a respectable assistant coaching position elsewhere. 

Coaching can really be a metaphorical meat grinder. Most positions pay a minimal amount and turnover can be high. You really do need to love it beyond trying to make it to the top tiers. Personally, I know at least one coach who tried their luck at the division 3 level and is now servicing mortgages (or doing something along those lines). At some point you need to find a way to provide for family and possibly retire to something better than a 19th century pensioners existence.

Digressing, the new coach coming on so late in the season made a number of things a challenge. Namely, it can be difficult to find new coaches and teach a new system to the players. Recruiting is another vital area that becomes hampered as players are largely committed by the middle of the offseason and transfers can be scarce. Transfers have become a more vital part of team ecosystems in the NCAA in recent years due to reduced restrictions. There is now better potential for mature players to fill gaps. That requires knowing the team and figuring out where to look. Combined with freshman recruiting (most freshmen take 2ish years to develop and adapt to college strength and speed), this forms the engine that keeps college (and parochial high schools, but I have a rant about that later) teams moving in the winning direction. 

Emptying the nest, Taking Flight

 

Image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay

I have lived in three states in my adult life. Geographically physical parts of the United States, I’m sure I’ve lived in many more emotional/spiritual states (sometimes more than one at once) but that’s a different story for a different time. Most of my time away from Minnesota was in my mid-to-late 20’s; Northern California for graduate school and Maryland/DC for my postdoc. After 7.5 years away, and having had two kids, an opportunity to move home presented itself and we took it.

Now, 16 years after moving back to the land of 10 kilo-lakes (order of magnitude estimate), the wanderlust is re-emerging. I’m finding myself tied to my exact location less and less and am becoming more curious about living in the greater world. While tourist-type travel may satiate some of that, I’ve grown fond of the idea of spending extended time elsewhere. By that, I’m thinking of the order of three to six months; something on the order of a sabbatical.

This would be enough time for the newness of a place to wear off and experience day-to-day life. At the same time, I don’t think I’d be interested if it was essentially all “on holiday”. The master plan would be to find some manner of collaboration, probably in my native field of magnetics, and partake in a research project.  I do have a couple in mind and want to start reaching out to colleagues for opportunities.

This may also involve taking some sort of leave or going by the self-agreement that it would be part of a career pivot. Who knows where it might pivot to, who knows? I do like the idea of transitioning into more of a teaching/professorial role. Or maybe it could be coordinated as just an extended leave from my current place. Or maybe it marks the start of something entirely new, e.g. starting a business or a mix of things. I do tend to like having too many things on my proverbial plate. The trouble with work is you need to be able to really focus to be good at it. Diving into split roles may detract from being able to do my best and, in the worst case, result in no longer being gainfully employed.

The question is “Where to?”. My first thoughts are of western Europe. I have enjoyed my trips there, particularly to Spain. Bavaria and Austria have also warmed on me recently as I’ve had cause to visit for work. There are also many beautiful cities and quality research going on in eastern Europe. For right now though the main point of interest would be Spain. Still as I’d like to align the move with some research opportunity, I would be doing myself a disservice to not keep an open mind.

Asia might be another option. My only venture there was for a conference in Taiwan. Admittedly, the mix of jet lag, lack of readily available ice water and not always knowing what I was ordering made it a challenge. This makes it interesting as there is some enticement to the challenge of moving about a non-Westernized society. It would certainly be a mind-opening experience.

As one Mark Twain once wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

I need this, we need this. Get out and explore. Learn about how others live, love, eat and learn. In past experiences I have only concluded that we are alike in a lot of ways and our differences are fascinating but not so far removed that we can’t understand other perspectives.

It is in stogy sedentarianism that we lose the ability to empathize and truly connect. We are now in a, hopefully short-lived, era where not believing in the best in others is winning. Our “social” media is isolating us in bubbles where even the events covered in “the news” don’t overlap. We rely on spin and pundits, whose ultimate goal is to capture you as a market. They want to keep you clicking and swiping. Making pennies here and there every time you inadvertently click on an ad or anxiety and persistence pull you into making another buy. Decentralized narratives, devoid of fact and empathy, have become our beliefs and our faith.

Anything different or anyone who disagrees is an imminent threat. We venture out less and less. We don’t strike up conversations, we sit at the coffee shop, at the bar, at the bookstore, in our cars and at home staring at a screen looking for answers. While these “answers” feel good or scary or some form of non-centered emotion they are designed for one purpose: click, click, click and don’t ever ask, “is it really true?” And so, we are overwhelmed.

I certainly did not mean for these last couple of paragraphs, but they did just fall out of what I am really meaning to write about: reconnecting with the world in a meaningful way. Thus, in this desire to travel and experience life elsewhere is the desire to re-connect as I am now able to leave the nest.

If I find myself able to and really enjoy the adventure, I may seek to do it again and again. The hardest part may just be those first steps. Hopefully, beyond that it becomes natural to set the social media down and become social.

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”  - -Some old book about rings and Hobbits and meeting people in faraway lands.