Created: 2025-10-04 ### Instructions for Life I love [[Mary Oliver's Poem]] *Instructions for Life*. “Pay attention, be amazed, tell about it” have been the touchstone for every aspect of my life for at least the last half dozen years, and they will continue to be. Recently, I declared my primary desire in life as *feeling fully alive*, a phrase that calls for further exploration and nuance, but that is simultaneously and simply summed up by Oliver’s Instructions. Those three little terms cover it all. My Obsidian vaults, both personal and published, are built for Oliver’s Instructions. As a result, they’re clean, organized, incredibly easy to use. When I write a note, I know exactly where to put it and I can usually find it again just as easily. I’m an architect by nature, I love structure. A messy PKM would make me so anxious I wouldn’t be able to function. Yet here I am, intending to completely redo a vault that has been working beautifully. Why? ### Three Reasons to Redo My Vault 1. My vault has become a repository for thought, not the thinking partner I want and need it to be. I’m not making the spontaneous connections that lead to insights and new learning. Notes are siloed into one of Oliver’s three buckets, and I’m the vault custodian dumping them in there. One of the best compliments I’ve been given was being called a *learner on steroids*. I’m learning when I make the notes, but I’m not learning from new connections between the notes. That’s not good enough. 2. I’m very action-oriented, 100% in agreement with C.G. Jung who said, *You are what you do, not what you say you will do.* There are hundreds of actions in my vault notes, but I have to go looking for them and then, when I do them, they often feel random and rather pointless. That problem has been solved quite a bit with my seasonal focuses, but I’ve been looking for a more comprehensive solution for a while. 3. I’ve always wanted to write from soul — in-depth, vulnerable, real. There’s a fair bit of that in my personal vault, almost none in my published one. In my personal vault these gems can be difficult to retrieve, scattered as they are across free writes, in notes, and in my hearth (daily) notes. I want to be able to bring all of the various threads of my life together, see the patterns, make meaning, and write from that place of understanding. ### Solving for Each Problem 1. I remembered reading a few years ago of a DIY MFA, an online syllabus for meeting the requirements of a university MFA degree without the cost. I also remembered that one title in my [[Lynda Barry]] book collection is *Syllabus* where Barry was artist-in-residence at a university and designed a semester-long course around a big question she was keen to investigate. I’m going to redesign my vault as learning modules around big questions and bold statements related to experiencing a fully alive third act. This is going to keep me in learning mode, and I think will allow for more spontaneous connections. More about the framework for this below. 2. Actions are integrated into each module. I’m especially interested in a life of symbolic perception. See [[What Does it Mean to Live a Symbolic Life?]] so every module will have a variety of creative/symbolic perception processes to be used. This does *not* mean having to make art. The variety of processes is really extensive including a number of body-based ones, and lots of writing. 3. In this structure I’m going to be able to share a lot more than I have in the past. In each module there will be the bold statement pieces, selected examples of symbolic responses, plus first thought and last thought notes before and after doing the work of each module. For my personal vault, I’ll also be able to link relevant bits from hearth notes to the appropriate modules, giving me better access to those patterns I’m wanting to see. ### The Framework Jung said that the first half of life is for an external focus — career, relationship, children, achievement. The second half is internally focused — a search for deeper meaning, and moving increasingly toward the wholeness of our being. Some people are optimistic, using the age of 50 as their starting point for a second half. Some set the mark at 45. I use 55, which is the age I was when I retired, and I refer to this time as life’s third act. I won’t live to 110 and wouldn’t want to! The specific age doesn’t matter. It’s simply a signal of the themes I’m interested in and explore in my work. And, really, they are no different from what I already explore. I’ll just be going deeper, making more connections across disciplines, and writing more personally. I could make up the new framework, but I don’t need to. Eight years ago I bought a small book that had a very significant impact on me. I vowed that someday I was going to put more meat on its bones, really work with and elaborate on the ideas it presented. That someday has come. The book is *The Second Half of Life: Opening the eight gates of wisdom* by the late cultural anthropologist, [[Angeles Arrien]]. ### The Collage I made a collage to represent my new vault plan, thanks to the wonderfully creative suggestion of my friend, Malaika. I’m going to let it speak for itself. ![[Lasair Collage.webp]] Now to the work of it. I’m excited for this change!