Sorting through life's bricks

Stevie bought a load of assorted bricks for backyard landscaping last year. The bricks were a deal, to be sure: a local stonemason was downsizing after his recent retirement. Unloading it, we could clearly see a few different shades, colors, and sizes. Once we started trying to edge a path with some of them, we realized there was a lot more variation than we'd expected.

This is just the first load...

Now that it's warming up again, I've been trying to sort the bricks. My first inclination was to group them roughly by color and shade, since they mostly looked the same size. Hole count varied between 3 and 10.  Some holes were square, some round, some a combination. Different edge textures prompted more new stacks. At some point I noticed my sorted stacks weren't lining up. I clearly needed to organize them by height.

That insight made everything else click. The other factors mattered, but starting with height made the rest easier to see.

If you were to list human activities by complexity, stacking bricks on a pallet would likely be near the bottom. It's pretty straightforward when the bricks are all the same. They pack together tightly for easy storage and retrieval. You can even get creative with the patterns; as long as one layer is solid, you can add another on top. Aside from a few strategies for adding stability and a height limit, no special knowledge is needed. It's a life-sized Lego game. 

Growing up, I believed life was like that. Add bricks to the foundation, layer by layer, and watch your creation take shape. New understanding and experiences of science, virtue, and creativity could be added seamlessly to the existing layers, filling out some bespoke model of a life well lived.

But life doesn't come in prefabricated chunks. Sometimes parts don't fit where you thought they did, or don't match at all anymore. Or too much is coming in at once, so you throw pieces on top to sort through later. Life gets messy, and eventually whole layers need to be rearranged before a suitable order emerges. Sorting through it---or even knowing how to sort through it---becomes a multi-armed bandit problem.

My normal habit is to adjust as I go, so by the time I've rearranged it all, it already feels familiar. Life remains continuous, though events are discrete. The main advantage of this Ship of Theseus method is agility. Adapting to new situations is easier when you're always changing things around anyway. However, the approach is reactive. With no part of the whole ever safe from change, it's hard to envision and plan for specific goals. 

With adaptability as my primary survival instinct, I've spent adulthood embracing opportunism. My life choices are based on convenience rather than deliberation. I do what's easy in the short term, despite it frequently complicating my life. Worse yet, I'm stubborn. I end up stuck and sticking with the path of least decision. 

Unsurprisingly, that path is paved with a jumble of assorted bricks. It's functional, but ugly. And though it's gotten me this far, my improvisational engineering has reached a limit.

Recognizing this, I've been trying to step back and reassess my approach. What would I be doing absent outside suggestions? How can I arrange the bricks into something more complete? Music and writing would top the list; my brand of creativity seems to require long periods of alone time. Mundane things like reading, walking, and taking pictures bring me joy and peace. I enjoy solving problems and helping people. Intensive research energizes me.

Knowing the nature of these elements, how do I arrange them into a coherent life path? What should be the main organizing factor? 

Guess I'd better get sorting.