Three things from DAH. Free every Friday!
You can subscribe and browse past issues HERE 

DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. "If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." (Catherine Aird)

First up this week, Organization …  
I've spent years seeking perfect organization. I never achieve it. My mind does have an organizational bent. It's easy for me to see paths to organizing everything, and the potential (perhaps just perceived) benefits of pursuing those paths. Alas, I also love love, laughter, and louche spontaneity. These three join with my appreciation for extreme ridiculousness to doom my larger organizing impulses. I can organize the little things, mostly. Organizing many big things, tightening the screws of containment, makes life seem small and silly. So I stop. A bit of organization gives me the illusion of control. Much more organization and I grow rebellious. 
Why Are We So Obsessed With Organizing? The Psychological Influences Behind Tidying Up

Second up this week, Omnicompetence …  
The ability to handle any situation. It's more than just competence. I'm a reasonably competent person, in areas with which I'm familiar. But, as with organization, a little competence goes far enough with me. The notion of omnicompetence might make me giggle, had I just enjoyed a glass of wine. Superman seems omnicompetent except for Kryptonite and loving Lois Lane. Those foibles mean he's only largely (rather than omni) competent. I genuinely prefer to work and play with competent people. Not omnicompetent people. I like competency complemented by delightful nooks and crannies, like Thomas's English Muffins. Omnicompetence has a smooth, unblemished surface, not in the least delicious, and terrible toasted. I favor a few flaws. 
When People Would Rather Work with Competent Jerks Than Likable Fools

Third up this week, Open-Heart …  
I can't live with an open heart if I'm fabulously organized and omnicompetent. I need a few kinks and unexpected corners, in myself and others. I seek discovery, acceptance, and appreciation in my relationships (human and otherwise). I don't always know that's what I'm seeking, but retrospect shows me it's so. "An open heart is a state of being where you feel open, accepting and expansive," writes Dr. Randy Kamen. Sometimes I'm too scared, or focused on organizing or competence. But most of the time I can appreciate the scales falling from my eyes. I can see you and things fresh and new, with an open heart. 
Cultivating Your Garden of Happiness

A Book That Shaped Me: Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis
I've read it at least a dozen times. It never fails to amuse and entertain. Even when the hero is horrible, I laugh … because the posers that plague him are yet more horrible. "Remarkable for its relentless skewering of artifice and pretension, Lucky Jim also contains some of the finest comic set pieces in the language. One of the more brilliant concerns a weekend at the home of a ghastly senior professor. After an afternoon of enforced madrigals, Jim becomes so horribly drunk that he inadvertently destroys his host's spare room. His attempts to make good the damage while labouring under a painfully accurately described hangover is so wildly funny as to make the book unsuitable for consumption on public transport." (Olivia Lang in The Guardian, 14 Aug 2010)

And a bit more:

A Note On Wyatt, by Kinglsey Amis

See her come bearing down, a tidy craft!
Gaily her topsails bulge, her sidelights burn!
There's jigging in her rigging fore and aft,
And beauty's self, not name, limned on her stern.

See at her head the Jolly Roger flutters!
"God, is she fully manned? If she's one short…"
Cadet, bargee, longshoreman, shellback mutters;
Drowned is reason that should me comfort.

But habit, like a cork, rides the dark flood,
And, like a cork, keeps her in walls of glass;
Faint legacies of brine tingle my blood,
The tide-wind's fading echoes, as I pass.

Now, jolly ship, sign on a jolly crew:
God bless you, dear, and all who sail in you.


And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver’s poem Sometimes …  

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.