Time to take action

Mere minutes from 2015, so it must be time to lay out the plan for the new year. Well, it's not really a plan for the new year, it's really more of a plan for life without a Big Project taking up all of my time. It's time to focus on the things I've been neglecting in order to pursue the Big One. Fitness and weight loss are on the top of the list. Reading lots of books, writing something, keeping my relationship with my wife moving forward. That's what this year is about.

It's about the process, with hope that results will emerge from being focused on getting things done a certain way. My play it by ear approach hasn't seemed to be too effective. It's time to make plans, plot a strategy, and see if I can finally make some progress towards reaching long held fitness goals (which are by extension relationship goals). I need to stay healthy to reach some of these goals, but even if injury does become and issue, there are things that I can do to keep making progress towards getting into better shape.

Consistent effort yields results. Small steps consistently taken add up to significant gains over the course of a year. Making time to squeeze in sets of push ups, a few ab exercises, a couple of trips to the gym every week. That's what gets things done. There are no short cuts. There's no way to just make it happen. Gains and changes occur over time. It takes awhile, and that's what makes it so frustrating. Motivation and focus need to be maintained for months to really make something happen.

That's why I've focused on meeting weekly goals. Two trips to the gym to lift every week. Cardio four times a week. I'd like that to be mostly running, but if that's not happening, there's the rowing machine and the stationary bike. Ab workouts four times a week. I will set push up and pull up targets too. A certain number of each a week. I will also make a plan for when I will do these exercises. I'm not just going to wait and see when it will happen. I'm going to pick a time and I'm going to make it happen on schedule. It's not the way I like to work, but I don't know what else I can do to make it happen.

I have to make it happen. I can't wait for things to just appear. So I'm not particularly motivated or energetic. It's up to me to make it happen no matter how I'm feeling. Excuses don't get things done. Change requires action. I'm the only one who can take the action that will lead to change. Change will happen, one rep at a time.

Proofs

Post-MBA time looked like this expanse of freedom to explore all kinds of opportunities and big projects when I was in the thick of finishing my class. No more of this obligation to fulfill some arbitrary class requirement. My time would be my own and I could do really important things that really meant something to me. Well, those big things require energy. I'm struggling to find the energy to do much. The drive to make something happen is the key to any personal project. Now that I have the time to try some different projects, I'm finding that I just don't have the interest.

I'm just worn out from the rigors of finishing my class, a busy couple of months at work, the drain of life in general, and finding my workout groove after spending the last month trying to heal up from nagging running injuries. I just need to give myself some time to recover, let my energy and drive built up slowly. Don't rush anything, don't force it. Just let my life unfold casually. What's the rush? What do I have to prove?

But that's the real fear. What happens to my drive when I don't have anything to prove? I've documented some of my struggles with figuring out who I am and what I'm about. Getting closer to those answers makes me more comfortable with who I am, less driven to show that amorphous "everybody" that I'm somehow superior. Energy was always there when I needed it for LSAT prep. The hardest part of my garage workouts was just getting in the garage in the first place. Once I was out there, I was able to get it done. I could push myself, I was willing to hurt a little to get stronger. With more strength would come better times on the rowing machine. I would be proving something.

So I was really trying to prove something to myself. I just wanted to feel like I was worth something. Achievement and accomplishment was how I fought against the emotional void of my family. Achievement and accomplishment gave me attention and recognition from others, the kind of attention that I didn't get at home. Maybe I was trying to earn the praises of my absent father. Or maybe I was just lost and alone. It only matters now as I struggle to work up the energy to do the things that I've always done.

So my energy crisis may be a consequence of burnout and fatigue. It may also be a consequence of an absence of meaning. If I manage to separate myself from the patterns of my youth, I may be undermining the effectiveness of the coping mechanisms I used to give my life some emotional substance. The experience of real emotions saps the power of those old routines. Those old routines were very, very central to my identity. I used accomplishments as a proxy for a self. I did things to prove my value to others because I didn't really know who I was or what I was about.

The scary thing is to think that things I've always thought were very much me are really just ways for me to feel better about myself. I did things not because they were particularly pleasant. I did things I was good at. I'm pretty good at school, I manage to do pretty well at my job. Most of my blog posts are about school and my job. Reading and working out are pretty regular features. As I think about it, many of the things I thought about doing were things that I've always done. They're stand by activities, stuff that is ready to to at a moments notice.

Where is the exploration? What have I've done that's new or different? If my energy levels continue to flag, I'll have to assume that it hasn't been fatigue or burnout at the core of my energy crisis. It's my motivation. If I don't have anything to prove to others, that means that I need to do what is meaningful to me. I'm sure what I've always done is meaningful to me, but I may need to make an adjustment or two to figure out how to make things matter to me rather than focusing on how I can prove my value to everybody else.

Necessities

My brother gave me a really lame Christmas present. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. Stupid me took the wrapping off of the box. I should have kept in on so I could try to return it and get something that I will actually read. It's not that the gift is bad, I can think of other things that would be worse (like socks, Mom. If you want to give me some socks, just give them to me, they don't need to be a Christmas present). What makes the gift lame is that I would have found it appealing when I was a teenager. I'm almost 40. I'm not the person that I was all those years ago, but in all too many ways my brother in particular and my family in general seems to have a thing with keeping me the person I was back then.

In their minds the young version of me is the true version of me. That's who I am supposed to be. My brother and I are supposed to be best friends. I'm supposed to like Stephen King (another recent Christmas present) and be a sloppy eater. My family expects me to play a certain role and for way too much of my life I've been all too happy to play along and fill that role. I made the decision not to do that earlier this month and it has been interesting to see how they reacted. It's been more interesting for me to see how I've reacted. Noticing the stress and tension, the desire to make things right, and recognizing that these feelings were rooted in family dynamics that go back to when I liked reading Calvin and Hobbes in the paper was a revelation. All those things I felt I "had" to do turn out to not really be all that necessary after all.

Derailers

I tripped over a very important consideration when it comes to my inability to really make much progress on my weight and fitness goals in that previous post. Pursuing a variety of goals invariably leads to compromises around how much time and energy I can give to any one goal. My pursuit of an MBA undermined my efforts to get in better shape. Reconciling the demands of my classes on the time that I had used to workout was one of the first things that I had to accept when I started taking classes. I couldn't workout and keep up with my classwork. The classes took priority. I eventually shifted my workouts to the morning, but late nights kept me from going out for some runs. Even more insidious was how my classes drained my willpower as the program wore on. My focus and desire waned as I got closer finishing. It took more energy to attend to the classwork. The energy I used to write posts and work on assignments wasn't there when I needed to work out.

So achieving one goal, getting an MBA, limited how much progress I could make on fitness goals. Injuries have also had a huge impact on my fitness. Problems with my feet a couple of years ago and the calf issues that plagued me for most of last year seriously limited my ability to get in running miles. The breaks that these injuries have forced on me have set me back considerably. Rather than slowly building my fitness, I go in cycles where I get in good shape and than have to rebuild as I recover from injury. I'm still in much better shape than I was a few years ago, but I have to wonder where I would be if I hadn't had these setbacks. Even with my classes, I'm pretty sure I would have attained my goal of a sub 50 minutes 10K by now if I had been able to consistently train over the last couple of years.

I haven't published some research I did at work a few years ago because my classes took away all the time, energy, and mental focus that I need to get my paper in shape for submission. It's 80% of the way there, but it's that last 20% that's really hard. There's lots of tedious work in this phase. The shift in my work day from one with big chunks to do lab work to a day broken into much smaller chunks with many more meetings thrown in makes it hard to find the time to do for this tedium while I'm at work. There is no way that it will get done at home when classes were pending. So achieving one goal, getting a promotion at work, cost me another goal, publishing a paper.

Recognizing how my goals are related, and how my success in pursuing these goals depends on factors that aren't always under my control is something I have to consider as I think about what I want to do now that I don't have the MBA commitments. I get back a bunch of my time, but I also get back all the energy that I gave to that effort. This MBA experience has made me much more appreciative of how I use my energy. Physical energy is one thing, but my mental and emotional energy is also critical to succeeding in getting in shape, being a better husband, and getting the things I want from life. I can't just throw it all out there and hope it works out. I need to focus on what I want and ensure that I'm using my energy in way that gets me closer to that goal.

Some things change, some things stay the same

I was just playing Tetris and making plans. I'm sure I played Tetris and made plenty of plans when I was a teenager trying to figure out where I wanted to go in life. I'm not sure what it means that I'm still playing Tetris and making plans. If nothing else it just shows how things don't really change all that much as we go through life. We age, our weight fluctuates, hair falls out in some places and grows in others, but all the load bearing parts of our life don't really change all that much. At least if we don't make the effort. We're pretty much the same person at the core of it as we meander through life. The circumstances of our life change, but I'm not sure that we change all that much unless we are honest with ourselves and really focus on making things different.

So what were the plans that I was making while I was playing Tetris? Some work stuff, some life stuff, some recognition that work stuff and life stuff don't always have to be so different. There needs to be more appreciation in my life for the things that I already have. I spend way too much time planning for things that I don't have. That's counter-productive. I have plenty of great things in my life. Making those great things even better is what I need to focus on this year.

I reread a recap post from the end of my first year writing this blog, 2010, before I started writing this post. It was exactly the kind of recap post that I was mocking earlier this week. It was a little disheartening to see that some things haven't changed in the past four years. Weight and fitness are still an issue. Still trying to read a Dickens book. I have finished my MBA though. I guess that's progress. I've read way more books. Only 25 that year. I've read close to forty this year. I'm a better husband. A better dad. My work situation is much different. My marriage is different. I live in the same house. I'm typing on a different computer. I've had more sex this year. I still don't get to bed as early as I should.

I need to get to bed now. I hope I can stop making plans and actually do the things I want. Or maybe I should realize that I'm really close to having what I want and I should stop making plans to get more of what I want, or at least realize that it's more about tweaks and optimization rather than wholesale change. That would be progress.

It's been another great year!

I thought about writing a year in review after we got the always amusing newsletter from one of our college friends. The standard newsletter type stuff came to my mind when I first started entertaining the idea. Beach trips, all kinds of baseball games, a trip to Philadelphia, a wedding. But then I started thinking about the kinds of things that happened this year that you don't capture with a picture. Changes in relationships, insights into the whys and ways of my life, little backstage peeks of the production that is my life. New ways of seeing the world, recognizing why people do what they do, what matters to them, what makes them who they are. I don't know if anybody would want read a newsletter like that. That might be an even better reason to write it.

Before getting the annual holiday update, I thought about recapping my year in other ways. There's the metric focused approach. The number of books read, 40 something at the last count, miles run, miles lost to injury. Meters rowed, pounds lost (and gained). Looking at where I spent my time (classes, reading, writing stories for an anniversary gift (and copying those stories into a notebook)). Boring, boring, boring. That's a good way of looking at what I did, but there is nothing in that approach that gets at WHY I did those things. Or why I failed to do other things. What about the way all these things are related to one another and all the other parts of my life? Simply recounting what I did doesn't get at that. Did I make progress towards something? Am I any closer to the life that I really want or am I just marking time in the life that has sprung up around me?

I finish my MBA this week. Well, it's pretty much finished now but I don't consider myself finished until the last set of questions are posted in the final forum. Then I'll be done. It's an interesting experience finishing this degree. It's just the kind of thing you would put in your holiday newsletter. It's a notable accomplishment to include in some self-congratulatory list compiled to reassure me that I'm doing something worthwhile. Even as I finish the degree and people at work congratulate me and not what a great accomplishment it is, I'm left wondering if it was worth the time and effort. I always told myself that I did the work at night so it didn't really interfere with family time. But all that working at night kept me up late. My energy and focus was spent on papers and exams when it could have been spent on my relationships. My wife teases me about the subject of my next degree. She's wondering what will be more important to me than her next. What will be the next subject that I study to distract myself from the reality of my life. Classes, papers, discussions are ways to avoid dealing with the real world.

All the stuff that I would include in some kind of annual recap would just be a list of some of the ways that I shunted energy away from what really mattered into things that keep me from fully experiencing life. Focusing on my goals is an easy way to avoid dealing with the things in my immediate life that make me uncomfortable. Is it more important to read some arbitrary number of books or to recognize when my son needs me to listen to him and understand why he struggles? Is it better to have all of my patience and energy shunted into a meaningless paper about China or to be fully present and engaged when my wife tells me about a problem she's having at work?

The pursuit of some arbitrary goal selected because it makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something is more likely to be keeping me from really achieving something else. What would happen if I went all in on my career for one year? What if I really focused on my physical health and relationships? Would I accomplish more than a list of random and kind of hollow accomplishments that aren't really about making something happen?

There's really only one way to find out...

What's next?

I had all these plans for what I wanted to do when I was finished with my MBA. I'm still not finished with the class, but the big 20 page paper that I had to write (is it any wonder that I haven't posted here in months?) is finished. I thought my time would open up after than and I would start doing the things that I haven't been able to do with class commitments. I haven't finished a book, written anything of substance, or really done anything of note. Now that I really think about it, I'm not really sure that I SHOULD be doing those types of things.

Looking back over the last couple of years, I've given so much energy to some personal project, MBA or law school prep being the most obvious examples, that I haven't been giving my energy to the relationships and people in my life. I've failed to give my life the attention it deserves because I've been too busy thinking about some paper or how to do better on an utterly meaningless exam. That's not the best way for me to be living my life.

I thought about projects that I might do after I finished my MBA, but I really just need to stop trying so hard and just let things be for awhile. The best thing for me to do may just emerge after awhile. I may not have to push, push, push if I just let the important stuff bubble up to the surface.

Reading

The book buying just never stops. I'm over trying to fight it. It's just a part of who I am. I'm trying to do it a bit more thoughtfully by only getting things I REALLY want to read and acquiring books from rewards programs or other non-cash means, but I know that they're just going to keep coming in. Just because I've accepted my predilection, I haven't stopped forcing myself to justify the purpose of these purchases. It can't just be to enjoy the thrill of the purchase. That would be a waste. There needs to be more to it than that.

Sure, I get a little thrill every time I buy a book, but that's a small part of why I buy them. I buy books because I like to read them. I do read the books I buy, my books read list attests to that. There's more to it than the simple act of reading the book though. It's the constant reshaping of what I know, what I accept as possible, what makes me who I am. All this time spent reading informs who I am in my relationships, who I am at work, how I live my life. It's not so much the concrete fact or specific strategy that I pick up from this book or that, it's the constant refinement of what I do with the flood of information that we experience every second of every day. 

Reading books allows me to think bigger than I ever could on my own. They give me access to ways of thinking that deviate so strongly from my own thought habits that I'm forced to think differently. I may not even be aware of this change. It just happens. That's the real magic of engaging with ideas that somebody has taken the time to share with all of us. Those ideas become part of who we are. They connect with one another, with our experiences, in all kinds of wonderful and unexpected ways. 

Crisis of Confidence

I've been feeling a bit low and unmotivated recently. My wife expressed her concern by pointing out how touchy I've been with my kids recently. Stuff that normally wouldn't affect me has been making me very grouchy. I hadn't really thought much about it until she said something. As I've been reflecting on my mood and how I've been feeling, I can't help but notice a lack of positive ego events in the last couple of months. The things in my life that normally give me a little boost and make me feel good about myself just haven't been there recently.

I'm happy to have my new manager role at work, but I'm not doing the kinds of things that gave me a sense of accomplishment. I'm not getting things done in the lab. I don't have a set of tasks that I can complete and feel good about getting them done. Then there's the challenge of getting through the uncertainty of whether or not I'm doing my new job right. I don't have much feedback about how people are responding to me being their leader. I used to know when I did something that would impact the organization. I'm not so sure any more.

My workouts are not going well this summer. We've taken many trips already and all that traveling messes up the time I have to workout. I need to get to bed soon so I'll be ready to get up and run tomorrow. After much deliberation, I registered for the Patrick Henry half-marathon last week. I've been running, but I've struggled with the long runs. Pacing is my big problem, but I just don't feel like I'm where I want to be when it comes to my fitness. My concerns started with my Monument Ave 10k time and things have just continued to deteriorate over the summer.

I'm not losing weight. If anything, I'm gaining weight. All those trips mean more eating out. Coupled with the reduced workouts, that's not a good combination. So I'm feeling bad about myself physically. I've never really felt bad about my body, and I'm not sure I would say that I feel bad about my body now. I guess I'm just disappointed in myself for not having a stronger commitment to my health.

I've had some project running in the background for the last several years. LSAT prep, MBA classes, there's been something that provided a steady stream of stuff to my ego fire. I don't have anything like that going on right now. I have a project, but it's not something that provides constant feedback. I'm the only one who's seen it since I started working on it. I haven't written an Amazon review or even done much writing here. These posts don't get many views, but I appreciate seeing that somebody has looked at something I've written.

Assuming that there is something to this idea that my confidence is a little shaky right now because I'm not getting my usual diet of ego reinforcement, that says something pretty significant about my self-image. That something is also undermining my confidence and contributing to my depression. The crisis of confidence is also a bit of identity crisis. Damn, this is tough.

This is what I want

My 20 year high school reunion is this year. I'm not going, but the invitation that came in the mail a couple of days ago made me think about that kid who set off for college with a very distorted view of the world. I can't help but wonder what he would think of my life. He probably wouldn't have much of an opinion. There are no grades or competitions to help him put it into perspective. I also can't help but wonder what I'll think of my life when I get to my 40 year reunion. At 18, I didn't really have any long term aspirations. Other than finally getting laid, I don't think I had any real goals in life. I just wanted to do things that other people would find impressive. I got lucky and that approach worked out well for me over the last 20 years, but I'm not certain that's the way I want to approach the next 20 years of my life. I know it's not. I will be the active agent in the next phase of my life. I will express my needs to the world, and take specific actions to make those wants, needs, and desires a reality.

I took the first step towards being the active agent in my life by starting a bucket list. I've never committed long term aspirations to paper before today. That's too aggressive. If I say it, other people will know what I want and I can be judged for it. It forces me to take a stand. This wasn't an exercise in daydreaming. This was an attempt to force myself to express what I want to accomplish. The kind of things that I might look back on in 20 years and say, man, I wish I had done that thing before I was 58. Here's my list (in no particular order):

Write a book
Vacation on a tropical island
Take my kids to Disney World
Run a sub-50 minute 10K
Read Ulysses and War & Peace
Go to an NFL game
Learn a swimming stroke and use it to swim at least 1 mile in the ocean
Visit New York City
Complete a marathon
Own a Porsche
Publish a paper in a chemistry journal as the principal investigator

These may not be as ambitious and exotic as some other people's aspirations, but to realize some of these desires I will need to definitive steps to making them happen. And that's the point. Sure, I could wait around and see if an opportunity to go to a football game presents itself, but why not take action to make that happen for myself? That's the rub of this list. It's not so much the difficultly of achieving these goals that's make them relevant. Other than writing a book, the basic infrastructure to achieve these goals is already in place. The relevance comes in expressing a desire to want something. The list may get more ambitious and exotic with time, but simply stating that I want to do these things is more than I ever did when I graduated high school. Sharing these desires with other people (I showed my wife the list earlier tonight) is yet another relevant step. It's not to get people to keep me on track to realizing these goals, but to share my desires and not fear people's judgement of those goals.

I've spent too much of my hiding. I've stayed where it's nice and safe. It's time to dare, to desire, to want. It's time to be me.

Give

The signs have been popping up all around me. This weekend forced them into enough of a critical mass that they fused into something that my closed, protective, and very hidebound brain could actually recognize. I've been telling myself that I need to dig deeper into my past, my likes, my tendencies to figure out who I am so I can pursue that rather than sticking to the patterns that were instilled in me before I could weigh in on just what was happening to me. That's wrong. That's just the route to more of the same. That route would likely lead to more of the same. More self-absorption, more failure to realize what the people around me need from me. The same old closed life will continue.

I need to give. Most of my life has been one of taking. I was finally able to articulate to myself how I approach social relationships earlier today. I want to be respected/appreciated/revered based on what I've accomplished (big reputation). I want people to like me, but I don't want to participate in the social exchange. I want to do my own thing, have people totally understand my need to do those things, see my actions totally in light of my own internal rationalization scheme, give me what I need from them, while they're happy to have me around and gladly take what I offer without actually wanting anything else. I want people to give me what I need without giving them anything.

At some level, I'm pretty sure that my pursuit of status objects, degrees, jobs, accomplishments of one sort or another, is my way of gaining social currency. I won't approach other people. I won't be open with them, do what I can to make them feel welcomed and comfortable, so I collect little tokens of what I can do and hope people will be happy with that. Impress them with my physical presence, let them know that I'm so good at this and that, and get them to appreciate that I'm special in some way.

It's very twisted. I can tell myself that it's how I managed to integrate myself into a new social structure every few years when I was a kid. By being the football player and the good student, that identity would get me to what I needed in my new surroundings. I could take what I needed, feel safe, and not worry much about anybody else. My dad is this way. His running streak, pathetic use of big words, military career, these are the things that he wants people to see. He can't offer himself to other people. He can't set aside his needs and do something for somebody else. He can't see what other people need. He built a shrine to himself in his head and assumes that it is his ticket to society. He sits around and waits for other people to come to him rather than going out to other people.

I only delve into possible origins on my own crazy thinking to remind myself that my tendencies came from outside of me. It's what I've been programmed to do. I'm not a victim of this programming. I can choose to fight against this natural tendency and put the needs of others before my own needs. At the core of it, my struggles are really about how to set aside my own needs. I'm happy to take what others are willing to offer. It's easy to passively sit around and enjoy other people's offerings. It's harder to be the one giving the gift. The gift of attention, the gift of time, the gift of myself. The route out of my sheltered life is not through a better appreciation of my needs. It's through a surrendering of what I want to make a gift of myself to others and giving them what they need.

My fitness level, taking a longer view

I found some of my 5K results from back in 2005 and 2007 on the web. This distance is relevant because I ran a 5K on Saturday morning. All 3 races were run on pretty much the same course (same starting point and some of the same stretches of road, but there have been a few modifications made over the years). Both of my earlier times were over 31 minutes. That's a 10 minute mile. I did the run in 24:29 on Saturday. If you had told the 29 year old me that I would be running a 5K in the just under 8 minutes a mile at 38, I would have been very excited. I'm pretty sure that time is a PR for me, at least in actual races, so I'm actually pretty excited about it now! 

Training is such a now thing, it's interesting to take a step back to see just how far I've come over the years! (And the irony is not lost on me that I'm looking at race times, the epitome of a quantifiable goal, while giving myself a hard time for focusing on quantified goals a few days ago.)

Shut up!

My new resolution is to ignore the voice in my head that tells me that my feelings/thoughts/opinions about a particular topic are wrong. Part of me thinks that sentence is wrong. It's too...obvious. There must be hundreds of self help books that contain a similar sentiment. Shouldn't I try to make that statement novel and MY OWN! Why should I do that? Doesn't the fact that the sentence reflects my thought at the moment be sufficient? Well yes, of course it does.

Why should I feel the need to put this sentence out on the internet where anybody can read it? Because I feel like it. It's just something that I want to do. I used to tell myself that I wrote things here so I could go back and read it later. These entries would be some kind of record of my thought process that I could go back and mine for insights or to see how I change with time. (It's important for me to see how I change with time because I'm in a constant struggle to keep getting better, a struggle that I'm struggling to understand. Maybe I should just accept it as part of me and be done with it...) The sad truth is I have a hard time rereading many of my entries. I get bored with them. I find myself a little boring and pedantic.

Perhaps those boring and pedantic entries, where I so earnestly wrestle with weighty career topics or offer myself pep talks for getting better, are the ones that appeal to the voice that tells me I'm wrong. Those entries reflect a topic with substance and significance. If that voice makes its impact here, it make its impact in other places as well. It's everywhere and unavoidable.

That doesn't mean I can't ignore it. That voice is the self-stealer. It makes we do what I think I should rather than what feels right. It aims to protect. It wants me to do what it feels is safe rather than letting me do what feels right in the moment. It wants me to fit in and do what is expected rather than to do what I want without really worrying too much about if it's the accepted thing to do.

I'm tuning that voice out, or at least recognizing it when it tries to put in its two cents. It's been drowning out the other parts of me for way too long.

It's all about the numbers

I've been struggling to prove something to somebody for most of my life. The motivation to do something, play football, completing a video game, applying for jobs I have no intention of actually taking, trying to beat my best time during a rowing or running workout, a considerable chunk of my motivation to do those things was driven by a need for a sense of accomplishment by achieving something that other people could see. Activities that should be about having fun, playing video games for example, became a contest. I immediately grasp onto the competitive aspect of any activity rather than focusing on what I find inherently appealing about it. 

A good portion of the entries in this blog are about getting better, pushing your limits, constantly striving for more and better. That endless striving for improvement, a constant seeking of some edge over an ambiguous other outsider, constantly hangs over me. There is nothing wrong with wanting to improve, but that drive to get better has skewed my priorities. Those things that I do to feel like I'm getting better have far too much importance in my life. I neglect the people I love to keep striving for more. 

Chasing after something to make me feel like I am winning, that I am better than everybody else, that I am adequate, has in many ways prevented me from really getting to understand what I enjoy. I never stopped to look at what appeals to me when I was looking at colleges. Even now, a key motivator for me in getting my workouts in is making progress towards a distance goal. I want 2 million lifetime meters in rowing by the end of the year. I've resolved to run 500 miles this year. This blog was started to track my progress towards a number of quantifiable goals. 

Until I started writing this post, I didn't realize how I've built achieving a numerical goal into so much of my life. That effort to achieve an arbitrary number goal, a certain time in a race, a certain number of books read, so many blog posts written in a week, is at the center of pretty much every "leisure" time activity that I pursue. Why do I deny myself the inherent pleasure of these activities?What do I really like to do? Am I missing out on something that I would really enjoy in the constant pursuit of tracking my progress?

Living in a fantasy world

My brother once told me he was a sex addict. I thought he was talking about compulsively having sex with loads of women, but he was really talking about being a porn addict. I'm not surprised that one of us ended up developing that habit. The more I look at my prototypical adults, my parents, the more I see the template of my inward orientation. Watching your parents either pull on head phones to read a book about Patton or sit and do cross stitch all night doesn't exactly set the stage for me to pour out my feelings at the first opportunity. A porn addiction is about as inward as it gets. You sit alone and satisfy yourself with fantasy images. There's no complexity or depth to the experience. It's stunting rather than expanding. 

Something like a porn addiction shrinks your world. You get so fixated on what's in you, you don't get a chance to really interact with the world. That's the inward orientation. The world gets filtered through whatever need you're trying to satisfy with your fantasy world. My brother turned to sexual images on the internet. I turned to the promise of jobs in Boston or the potential of pursing a law degree. My dad dreamed of being a powerful military leader. 

These were just fantasies. Fantasies are distractions. I can't rewind my life to see what would have happened if I hadn't spent pretty much one year applying to law school. Sure my employer was going through a bit of a transition at the time, but that was really just an excuse. Law school was something that I could pursue without having to worry about how things would actually turn out. There was little risk, but there was plenty of reward for somebody who puts a great deal of stock in what strangers think of him. It felt really good to get accepted into all those schools, but who knows what I would have done if I had been focused on something that would actually improve my life. I could have done something to improve my career prospects. I could have gotten a paper published with a comparable level of effort. I could have started digging into all the crap that I've been plowing through for the last couple of weeks. I could have worked out harder, read more books, or done something that would have had some kind of measurable benefit on to my life. Instead, I spent tons of energy on something that wasn't going to really going to change anything. 

But the fact that I spent so much energy on that project must say something about me. What drove me to spend all that effort for a few emails offering me a spot in their law school class? I wanted validation that I was better than all those other people who also applied. I wanted to win at something. I wanted a little badge that noted that I was able to do something that others couldn't accomplish. Maybe it was comparable to training for a marathon or an Ironman, to distinguish myself from those who were unable. That's overly generous. I just wanted something of little consequence to strive for. I didn't want to do the work to make my life better, but I wanted to do something that made me think I was doing something constructive. 

My Boston saga (I'm really going to need to add some links to this post) is another good illustration of how I've shuffled energy into something that doesn't really matter. I liked the idea of something different, a fresh start, because it saved me the trouble of confronting the real issues that I was facing. Rather than finding a way to improve my situation, I took comfort in finding the possibility of a way out, a route that I never would have taken. I can dig deep into my history to find where I used the allure of an unreal fantasy to help me deal with the struggles of my life. The alternative world of a video game was preferable to actually confronting high school or college life. I could have been out trying to experience something that college life had to offer, but instead I retreated to the comfort of Tetris. Predictable, safe, and risk free is always better than risking your ego to the whims of other people's fancy when you're entire orientation is inward.

Going out is too risky when all you do is look in. Every interaction with the outside is a challenge to who you are. I wanted the world to tell me that the image that I had of myself was real rather than interacting with other people and trying different things to find out who I really was. I avoided what was around me in order to make sure I didn't find out who I really was. I had to stay the same so the people who mattered in my life would keep loving me. They made me who I was to serve their needs. Becoming who I was meant to be would put an end to their fantasy. 

My father, the emotional blackhole

I've been struggling to write this post (and it's not only because my shift keys refuse to work consistently). A powerful insight hit me while I was reading Fear of Intimacy. My first impulse was to get my thinking down here before it left me. Maybe I could deepen it a bit in the process of just getting it out of my head. (I question why I feel compelled to write about these very personal insights in such a public, albeit not widely read, venue. I just need to get some of this stuff out of my head. If I write it here, I'll be able to find it later.) I avoided writing the post because I don't really know how to approach the subject. I keep avoiding the real subject matter. It's painful. I've certainly dug up an important piece of my self-perception.

A couple of years ago, I went to my mom's house over Memorial Day weekend. My aunt and uncle were there, my brother would be there, I knew that before I left my house that morning. When I was about 10 minutes from my mom's driveway, she called me to let my know my dad was there too. I hadn't seen him in years. I don't think I've seen him since. The visit was horrible. I felt nothing but disgust when I was around my dad. All I could see was how weak and ineffectual he was. He was intimidated by my kids, afraid to interact with them, to talk to them, to see that my mom's husband was their real grandfather. I was happy to see him go. He sucks the joy and pleasure out of everything he touches.

I hate my dad. I don't think I've ever expressed it in quite that way until this moment, but that's how I feel. I hate him because he has never loved me. Not once, in my entire life, have I ever felt that my dad loved me for who I am. I've never been enough for him. No matter what I did, he couldn't find it in himself to show me any affection. I've just been there, an obligation and a burden. I have a constant sense that I'm not enough in my personal relationships. I can't help but think that I don't feel like I'm not enough because I was never enough for my father. If my own father couldn't love me, why would anybody else care about me? If I couldn't earn his affection, why would anybody else want to have anything to do with me?

This was my big insight tonight. That my life long sense of inadequacy is likely rooted in the fact that my dad rejected me over and over again throughout my youth. I rarely talk to him now. Tomorrow is my birthday. I may hear from him. He might send me a text. I'd be shocked if he called. Of course I want him to reach out to me tomorrow. As much as I dislike him, I still want his approval. I've been spending my life hoping that other people would give me their approval as some kind of replacement for the absence of my dad's acceptance of me for me. 

That way I described how I feel about my dad a few paragraphs ago, in many ways that's how I feel about myself. I know I'm not my father, but his imprint on my emotional being is very deep. How could a disinterested and neglectful father have any other impact on me? It pisses me off that somebody who I hold in such low regard has had such a profound impact on my life. My other parent has made her contribution, but my dad's disinterest set the stage. I was primed to think that I wasn't enough for other people by my father. I need to get out from under this burden. I have plenty of evidence that I'm not inadequate. That plenty of people accept me for me. I need to focus on that and get over this vestige of my childhood. That's the past. I don't need that armor anymore. It didn't really work all that well to begin with.

Relationship, with food

When I started this blog, I was trying to get my waist measurement to half my height. That seems to be the magic ratio for protecting your heart. Four years later, I'm no closer to getting to that measurement than I was when I wrote the first post in this blog. I'm wondering if I gained a great insight into why that is the case earlier tonight.

I'm currently enamored with this book about the way our psychological defenses prevent us from connecting with one another (a consequence of my effort to not fail as a husband). Like most psychotherapy books, there is frequent discussion about the role of the parents in shaping our emotional lives. I've been watching my mother for the last couple of months. I've seen that a few of my relationship patterns are her emotional legacy to me. Thanks Mom (in a tone dripping with sarcasm).

Given this awareness of my mother's impact on my emotional life, I've been looking for other patterns that may have their origins in the role that I was assigned very early in life. A role that I am currently under absolutely no obligation to keep playing. I noticed a pattern tonight that may account for why I haven't been able to shed my gut despite a stated desire to do just that. I was the good eater in the family. My mother provided food and it was my job to eat as much of that food as I could with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. Being a good eater is a critical part of my identity. Eating is a primary part of who I am.

I can find other evidence of the key role food had in determining my value to my mother by looking at the way she treats my kids. Almost every time she takes them for the weekend, I hear who ate a "good" lunch or dinner or whatever. Eating lots of food is somehow associated with a positive outcome. I'm sure I ate plenty of "good" meals because I wanted to be a good boy. I liked getting approval from important adults. (Being a "good" boy is another part of the identity that I was given rather than being a natural expression of who I am as an individual.) Eating lots of food is one way that I can be a good boy. I eat to feed that emotional need for acceptance. Eating a good meal, with good meaning lots of food, makes me feel content because I'm earning praise for the kid I was 30 some years ago. I've confused the voice telling me to eat more, a voice placed there by my mother, with my own voice.

How many other aspects of what I think is me is really just something put there by somebody else before I knew what was happening to me?

Turning outside

I've been dealing with a flood of insights from trying to figure out what is keeping me from feeding my wife's emotional hunger. I felt a need to unload some of these thoughts in a blog post. This is the first time that I've ever looked at how certain habits carry over from one part of my life to another. I wanted to write about the advantage to thinking about my problem holistically. How can my habits and approach to work, this blog, the way I thought about life in high school and college, the relationship I have with my birth family, and intellectual pursuits like this blog help me understand my relationship sabotaging behaviors? I thought about a blog post where I tried to figure out the most authentic experiences of my life. These were things that I felt were expressions of who I want to be rather than simply perpetuating the behavior patterns that were shaped by my childhood.

I considered plenty of other topics in this vein, but I obviously didn't write those posts (at least not yet). Those topics are interesting and relevant to solving my problem, but in a way they are also a perpetuation of my problem. Writing about those things direct my attention to my internal states. Inward directed thoughts are a huge part of my recurring pattern. I spend so much effort looking inside, I fail to offer Tiffy important parts of myself.

So rather than spend my evening focusing on me, I worked on putting together a new treadmill and writing Tiffy an email that told her about what I was feeling about something important in our life. I did some giving rather than keeping all my energy to myself. And I have to say that it felt pretty damn good.

How to fail as a husband

I am a seriously messed up motherfucker. I went to therapy once a week for most of last year. It helped me see that I'm a selfish prick, but that pile of shit was so high we never got to the really important stuff. All the talk of my behavior and little things that I should change in how I interact with my wife kept us away from getting to reason why I needed to change that stuff in the first place. My therapist thought I was a normal guy who just doesn't see that his wife needs to feel loved and appreciated. He thought that once I see how much small gestures matter to her that I would do everything imaginable to do them all the time.

Joke's on you doctor. Well, me really. Knowing what my wife needs doesn't seem to make it any easier for me to do those things. Just click on that link to Tiffy's one third life crisis and you can read for yourself some of the things she wants. She's making it pretty easy isn't she. She's been screaming at me, begging, pleading, pretty much doing everything short of writing me a damn script in an effort to get me to pay attention and notice her physically.

"Damn, you look hot in that dress!"
"You look really beautiful today."
"You're so sexy. I'm so happy that you're my wife."

These are simple things. Genuine appreciation for her physical beauty, an indication that she's what I want, that she turns me on, that I desire her in the most base way that we can imagine. That's all that she's been looking for. She wants to feel special and picked out from all the other sexy women. For three years this has been going on.

So what have I been doing for these three years. Working my ass off to figure out how I can let her know how amazing she is, how much I'm attracted to her, sharing how I notice all the little things that make her her and how much I like them; that's what I've been doing, you must be telling yourself, that's what any man with a wife as hot and smashing as mine would do. Wrong. That's not what I've been doing at all. I've pretty much been doing the opposite of that. I may have a few moments here and there, but by and large I have done very little to show her that I hear her, that I care about her, that I want her to be happy.

What the fuck is my problem? Things keep happening that tell my wonderful sexy wife that she's just a pedestrian, ho hum woman who doesn't really have anything all that great to offer. I've searched everywhere for something to blame, some explanation for my twisted behavior, but the pattern just keeps repeating. I always set out with the best of intentions, but I seem to have a knack for setting up situations that end up making things worse between us. I've never taken a deep look at the cause of this pattern. There were always excuses that helped me avoid looking too closely at what's motivating me to undermine the intimacy of my relationship. I didn't do these things with a conscious intent. I just pursued a course of action that would get me back to a place where things felt normal and comfortable.

Well, let's take the opposite road this time. I avoided a Big Conversation with my wife tonight. That's my standard tactic. I talk to her until we come to some kind of resolution and things get a little more comfortable. We slide back to our old ways, well, I slide back to my old ways, and go about doing things the way I've always done them until catastrophe strikes again. If this is the pattern, why haven't I searched for a way to break this cycle? What is my behavior telling me that I really want (or at least what does my behavior tell me about what my automatic, unconscious self is trying to achieve in my life)?

Round People and Social Strivers

The family and I went to a minor league baseball game tonight. The action on the field was decent, but I couldn't help noticing a common trait shared by many of the people at the park. Lots of people were round. I'm not slim by any stretch, but I'm not round either. We saw the other extreme as well. Some body builder type walked by. Of course, he's round too, just in a different way. His clothes were tight. Everybody who was round worn tight clothes. There's a certain statement in that. I'm just not sure if it's intentional (well, in the case of the body builder the statement is intentional) or just a consequence of limited clothing options.

A few people I enjoy judging were not at my daughter's soccer game this morning. There are three families that are clearly very good friends. I'm not a very social person. I don't crave social interactions, which I'm sure people judge me for just as much I as judge people who clearly need to be surrounded by friends all the time. This particular group of friends clearly think of themselves as the popular clique. There is an effort in their socialness that I've only even seen in high school. Everything about them is a social statement. Their clothes, their car, their music (that one of them was blasting in her car before practice on Thursday, it was Justin Timberlake. Maybe the fact that I recognized the song says something about me?!), the same brand of sun visor that they wear. They want to be at the apex of the social hierarchy and do all that they can to get there.

I like to pretend that I'm outside of this social fray. I would say that I don't participate, but the fact that I'm at these things and visible to other people makes me a participant. I'm not Round and I'm not a Social Striver. I don't cultivate a look that signals my social intentions. I don't really have any real appreciation for how I'm perceived in the social mix of a large group. I don't aspire to achieve a certain place, so I don't do things that will make me acceptable to particular crowd. I don't want to have my party chair in the circle around the blanket. What do I want? Honest answer. I don't know. I was going to say that I'm socially undefined. That's not true. My society, by which I mean those people who see me when I'm busy judging them, has defined me socially. I just don't know how they've defined me...

Always Forward?

My dad has read a bunch of books about Patton. I haven't read a single book about Patton, but I know that he had an affinity for the phrase Always Forward. I only know that because my dad has that on his license plate. Always Forward. It's easy to know which way is forward in war, at least the kind of wars that Patton fought. The difference between the good guy and the bad guy were clear. Victory was easy to differentiate from defeat. Patton always had a pretty good idea of whether he was progressing toward his objective or being defeated. 

The clarity of Always Forward is comforting. There's no waffling or doubt in a phrase like that. If you're not sure what to do, just keep moving forward. A step forward represents progress. It's a small victory that you can build on to find the courage and strength to take that next step. 

Always Forward also implies a yearning for something beyond where you are now. The allure of the now dims in the splendor of what may be. That next thing holds promises of praise and glory. You have to keep working towards that thing off in the distance because that's where you'll find the action. Don't stop to appreciate what you have now. Keep your eyes on that prize off in the distance.

I had a thing for taking walks at night when I was in high school. I don't remember thinking much about what was going on in my life at the moment. I was always thinking about what may be. Glory in football, the promise of college, I guess I was just looking to get beyond where I was at the moment. There was a dissatisfaction with where I was and those fantasies were my way of escaping. Those dreams never came to reality. I did a bit of the work to make some of those things a reality, but I was never fully committed to any one vision to pursue it with a focused intensity. Focused intensity is not really my thing. 

I'm not really an Always Forward kind of guy, but for whatever reason I've always had this sense that I should be doing more. Some part of me feels that there are other big things out there that I should be working on. But other parts of me just focus on what needs to get done. Which way is Forward isn't Always clear, but there are always clearly important things that need to get done. Those things are important because they matter to the people in my world. They have a huge impact on the people who are in my world. The whole big wide world may not take much notice, but the people I see everyday see the results of my effort.

My dad always yearned for more. That next big assignment, that next big job. He was always so focused on moving forward that he never really stopped and realized the value of what he already had. He's been chasing that next opportunity that will fix everything for his entire life. He still talks about that next job that will allow him to be all that he can be. He's in his sixties and he still feels like he doesn't have that missing piece in his life. He's always looked out there, trying to stay moving, Always Forward, but what he was missing was right there all along.

I don't want to repeat that life. I want to see what I have, appreciate what I have, and do all that I can to make my world that best that it can possibly be. 

A gauge of my fitness level

This morning was an annual 10K that's a fairly big deal around here. I ran it for the third time. I'm happy with my time, I kept pushing when I wanted to quit and feel like I ran the best time that I'm capable of at the moment, but it frustrates me that my time gets slower every year I run this thing. I've lost about a minute a year. I was thinking about this as I was walking through the rain back to my car. Other than getting older, what is the difference between this year and those other years?

That first year, I was going to the gym and running fairly regularly. I would go during my lunch and run at least one day a week. I may have gone twice some weeks. I would also run on the gym treadmills over the weekend. I had a trip for work that derailed my training right before the race, but I was pretty well prepared. I didn't run all that regularly before last year's race. I can no longer take a couple of hours to go to the gym during lunch, but I was trying to do the March rowing challenge last year. The challenge is to row at least 5000 m for 25 days of March. I missed it by a couple of days when I had to focus on getting some stuff finished for one of my MBA classes in the middle of the month, but all of those meters gave me enough fitness to get through the 10K. School messed up my training again this year. I was up late doing school work enough that I missed quite a few morning workouts. The cold weather kept me inside rather than getting out and running. An injury to my calf just as I was starting to pick up on my training also put me a month behind. I just wasn't as well prepared as I would have liked.

Some of that is circumstances, but I'm sure I could have done more to make sure I got my training in despite work, school, and other obligations. I saw a guy I work with in the starting corral. When I looked up his time, I saw that he beat me by about 5 minutes. We're comparable in size, and he's a few years younger than I am. So why did he get the better time. He runs at lunch almost every day. He's fanatical about it. Cold doesn't stop him. He goes out every day and gets in his miles. He pays a bigger price than I do to improve his fitness. A couple of neighbors beat me by an even bigger margin. Again, they're out there every day putting in the miles. Injury, school, and the weather are just excuses. I could have worked harder to get my body ready to run this year.

If I'm serious about getting in better shape, it's going to take more than one or two workouts a week. I need to be up and running every Monday and Thursday. On days I'm not up running, I need to be up and riding the bike. Saturday needs to be my longer run. Nothing crazy. Maybe an hour of running the neighborhood roads. The weather is turning. I won't be able to use the cold as an excuse for much longer. If I'm serious about wanting to get my 10K time under 50 minutes, I need to do the work to make that happen.

What gets me eager to get to work?

Problem solving and creating something. Or maybe it's problem solving as a creative process. Problem solving, at least the way that I go about doing it, requires knowing how all the various pieces are connected, what are they doing, why are things arranged in this way and not in a different order. Diving into a murky situation and figuring out what's really going on so I can see order where others see chaos. It's not knowing one thing really well, but knowing enough about a lot of things to see how they relate to one another and how to use those connections to fix a broken piece. 

That's my Big Project. That's the common thread that links all the activities that I find easy to pursue. This blog, my side projects at work, reading connect because they give me a chance to work on a problem and express my understanding in these blog entries, a presentation at a technical meeting, or some other entity that I can send out into the world. Even working on different aspects of the my personal life became much easier when I accepted the truth of the situation and started really digging into my behavior and what was driving me to do things that kept hurting my wife. It became a problem to be solved. 

My bouncing from topic to topic is essential for who I interact and deal with the world. I was fortunate to find a subject, chemistry, that allowed me to go deep while getting a graduate degree, but is relevant to so many different technical problems that I could pursue my penchant to flit from subject to subject as my interests jump from problem to problem. I can't pick some pick out there goal to work on because I'm motivated by solving problems. That's not entirely true. I want to figure out the best way to lead an R&D group and have that group interact effectively with the non-technical functions in the business. That's the problem that fuels my MBA studies. It's not career progression. It's figuring out how my R&D activities fit into the context of the company. 

What is your Big Project?

So I'm not the only person trying to figure out the best way to use my spare hours. Leo has chosen his Big Project. My last entry was my first effort to figure out what my Big Project should be. I don't know what prompted somebody else's decision to focus his energies on one project, but I can point to what got me thinking about a better way for me to focus my own efforts. If you take a look at my reading list, you'll see a book called Breaking BUD/S. That book offers all kinds of tips about making it into the Navy SEAL teams, but that's just one application of the strategy at the core of the book. If you want to make the teams, then you should make every effort to achieve that goal. Figure out why you want it, and do everything you can to make it real.

The book also has a not so subtle subtext that failure to make every preparation, to do the things that you know you need to do to succeed, is simply a sign that you didn't want it enough. Talk is worthless. Preparation is an indication of your desire to achieve a very difficult goal. If you didn't do the things that are necessary to make it happen, that means that you didn't want it enough. Simply saying that you want it isn't enough. Talk is easy. Making it happen is the hard part.

I looked back over my entries from the very beginning of this blog before I picked up Breaking BUD/S. I looked at where I was then and thought about where I am now. I've progressed in my career, I've read plenty of books, and I'm a better husband and father than I was four years ago. I still weight pretty much the same. My fitness is better, and I'm definitely stronger. But my gut persists. That's one thing that I was trying to take care of four years ago that I've made little progress against. That must mean that I don't really want to lose the weight. Or, probably more accurately, I value the pleasures of consumption more than I desire the effects of not consuming.

My progress against other professional and personal goals against my failure to lose weight (although I have to confess that I consider not gaining weight a win) as a sign that I may be doing what needs to get done to achieve my goals. I've managed to keep working on my MBA because I want the career opportunities that may come with improved management skills. It's easy to lose sight of my desire to lose the gut when I'm faced with delicious food. Keeping the goal in mind may be the best remedy to staying on track. And not forcing it. That's a lesson I'm trying to learn. Make the myriad of small things that you need to do to achieve a goal an integral part of your life. Make them automatic.

Perhaps that's my Big Project. Rebuilding my routines to get me where I want to be physically.

Career prey selection

My second to last class at Marist is finally over. The last class won't start until the fall semester. That leaves me with several months to do something other than write inane essays. I have regained the choice of how I use my time. What will I do with it? Well, that's really a question of what I want. There are lots of ways to address this question of what I want. I've pondered this in any number of ways, but I don't think I've ever just stopped and looked at the data. What have I done in the past couple of years and what do those activities say about my desires?

Structured learning has claimed quite a bit of my time. MBA classes have taken a huge chunk of my intellectual and emotional energy. I was having an email conversation with a classmate about the program last night. He felt like the class that I just finished was the only one that he really challenged him. I get the sense that he feels cheated by the lack of rigor in the program. I don't know what he hoped to get out of the program, but I'm not so sure that he got it. I have never really stopped to think about how much I've given to this program. It was something I did on a bit of a lark. I never really considered the opportunity costs. What could I have been doing rather than doing stuff for my classes? I stopped working out at night. That's the biggest thing that I gave up to do my MBA. Have I gotten what I wanted out of the program? I think I have. I just wanted to get a better sense of what people meant when they talked about running the company. I see things much differently than I did four years ago. But that still doesn't answer the question of what my commitment to this program says about what I want to achieve in my career and life.

I viewed this whole online MBA as a bit of experiment when I started the program. Unlike my friend, who needed it to become a professional engineer, I did not have a specific reason to purse a business degree. I've found a number of ways to apply it to my career since I've been working through the program, but there is still no specific reason why I'm doing it. I feel like I got what I wanted when I could analyze Pfizer's financial statements. That's wasn't always true though. That's just my post-course rationalization. My original plan didn't even include the class where I analyzed the financial statement. I was originally going for a leadership concentration. I'm dancing around the obvious here. I wanted the degree to advance my career. I can't help but notice that my interest in the program has slipped now that my career has advanced. Was this whole MBA just a subconscious ploy to get my management to think of me as something other than a lab rat? Maybe the classes did help in shifting my focus from the lab to the business. It's hard to say as I can't relive the last four years without pursuing the degree to see what would happen.

So I guess I've spent time doing something that I hoped would benefit my career. I have ambitions to do more. That's not a huge surprise. I've never questioned that I wanted to do more. I just don't have an ultimate position in mind. I've always been oriented up the career ladder, but I don't really know where I want that ladder to end. Not having that ultimate end in mind has made planning on how to spend my time more amorphous. The MBA was good in that it keep me busy working up the career ladder without requiring me to know just what I was aiming for. Now that I have greater say over how I spend my time, I need to pick a target. I don't like to drift. I may not be much of a pursuit hunter, but I am a hunter. I just ambush rather than pursue. I can't develop the skills I'll next to capture that next opportunity if I don't know what I'm working for. I guess it's time to pick a career objective. It doesn't have to be optimal. It just needs to be something for me to focus on.

Play the game

Reality has no interest in your ideals. Telling yourself that a situation fits some preconceived ideal all the while ignoring signs that it is actually something quite different is the shortcut to failure. Events are not contingent on your emotional well-being. Look at things as they are and react accordingly. React accordingly simply means to do something that reflects the reality that you face rather embarking on some kind of quixotic quest to right some perceived injustice. 

That's enough of writing in a general way that people can apply to their own situation. I need to exorcise stuff that's been happening to me, which will require me to write in a specific way that directly relates to my experience. If my issues only cast a faint light on whatever crisis you're dealing with at the moment, I hope my story offers enough light to help you see a solution.

I spent the first few weeks as a team leader trying to figure out a way to reshape my little piece of the organization into my preferred form. I struggled with how to balance my ideal situation with what the organization expected from me. I fixated on how to realize visions that I've been having for years as some distinct entity rather than recognizing the reality of my situation. A conversation with somebody who has already trod this path and is very aware how to exploit the reality of the organizational situation for his own ends snapped me out of my overemphasis on my ideal. I was primed for this reorientation. The 15-20 minutes of reading The Generals and listening to lectures about the British mistakes in the Revolutionary War made me aware of the dangers of choosing the image of reality that makes us comfortable over the recognition of reality as it is. Ignoring facts is not an effective leadership strategy.

Success requires working within the system. My wife always tells me to play the game. That's excellent advice. My leadership has no concern for my ideal reality. They only care about their reality. I can't ignore that. I can like a candidate and advocate for her, but I can also recognize that a particular role may not be the best fit for her skills and ambitions. I may want to get more people like her into the organization, but acknowledging that she may fit better in a different role is more effective than railing against what I may think of as poor decision making by other people on the team. I shouldn't try to get everybody to see things my way all the time. It's more about getting people to see that my way of looking at things is very well aligned with what they want to accomplish. That's how I need to play the game. 

Find the moment

The secret to moving forward is letting go. Granted, what exactly we need to let go of in order to move forward isn't always so clear, but making progress, getting closer to our limits, isn't about pushing harder or exerting our will. It's not so much about pushing against the external, but letting go of our need to control the external. Fighting against the pain of a long run is a lost cause. You can't make the pain go away (other than stopping of course). You can only accept the pain as part of your moment. It's what exists. Nothing more and nothing less. It's not good or bad, it's not a sign of your shortcoming or evidence of your weakness. It's not that kid who bullied you in school or that girl who you couldn't work up the nerve to talk to. It's not your failure. It's not pleasant, but it's not damaging your body. You can live with it. You just have to accept it.

Let go your conscious self. Drop your self image. Don't try to defend yourself from pain, especially the emotional kind of pain. Live it. Feel it. Let go what gives it control over you and move on. Get one step closer to what you want to become. To become something different than you are now, you have to let go of what you were when you were younger and what you are now. Change is a choice. Choose to let go.

Fellow travelers

I came across another interesting entry in the vast do what you want and screw the corporate gig, it's just making you a miserable, consumerist clone genre of self-help books tonight. This is the book. I've never heard of this guy, but I guess he's yet another blogger turned author trying to turn his life experience into a lucrative gig. This type of writing (which I have to confess that I consume on an all too regular basis) is plentiful and popular. I can't help but associate this combination with workout and diet books. All of this writing and reading (well, buying anyway), is an attempt to fool ourselves that we're making progress against some long standing goal while we're really just standing around doing the same old thing.

Sure, I can read this guy's book (it's short, I'll finish it tomorrow), but what impact will that have on my life? So maybe I can tell myself a slightly different version of the story that I've been telling myself for the last handful of years. How will yet another book urging me to turn my back on society's expectations alter my current course? Is that really the point of reading the book in the first place? Is it about changing my course or just finding reinforcement that what I've been doing all along is not crazy and destined for failure?

I'm not this miserable sap who's floating around waiting for life to hand me that perfect thing that I've always wanted. I know you have to go out there and get what you want. You need to get a sense for what you need and figure out the best way to go get it. You need to look at what holds you back and do what you can to fight against those tendencies. I just bought a jacket. I've been saying for years that I wanted a jacket that would keep me warm when it got really cold. Instead of going out and finding that jacket, I just kept using the same jackets that I've been using year after year. I think they were both Christmas presents from my mom. Rather than going out and getting what I wanted, I've been making due with what I already had. That's not really taking action. It's drifting. So I bought a jacket tonight. And rather than getting the same old safe black and gray one, I bought the blue and gray one. Yes, I know that's crazy, but you know how I like to live on The Edge.

So maybe the point of reading yet another book about following your inner voice is not so much about changing my path. For somebody who struggled with listening to his own wants and needs for far too long, it's good to have a voice reassuring me that doing what I want is the right thing. There is no reason why I should mold my life to satisfy everybody else's needs. I really only need to do what is best for me and the people that I love. So I'm not a social person who needs to have people over all the time. That's just me. I'm not inferior to others because I'm different. I'm simply being me. The pressures to conform are so strong. It's hard to fight against them. I had to come up with some story about being like Radiohead to get myself to follow my judgement as a new manager. The pull of doing things the way they've always been done were so strong. That well worn path looked so comforting. But that's not me. I need to find my own path. It still doesn't hurt to come across somebody seeking their own path every now and then.

Do I have "projects"?

This question was prompted by the launch of a new feature in idonethis.com. As a perk for paying $5 a month to use the service (a calendar where I note everything that I've done in a particular day, in the short term it's moderately useful, but after a couple of years it's great to have that record of what you've done, even if you don't always leverage that information to maximal benefit), I can add a tag to "make progress on projects." My first response was that I don't really have projects. I'm not writing a book or trying to develop a new product. But then I started to think about it a little more and realize that I do have projects, even if I don't really think about them in that way.

So what are my projects? I would say my MBA is a project. Maybe a better way to think about is that every class I take towards my MBA is a project. By narrowing the project down to just taking classes, that collects some of my other activities, like listening to lectures about the Revolutionary War or trying out Coursera by taking a class about dinosaurs.

Strange things start to happen when you start mixing classes like this together. While listening to a lecture about the progress of the war, I realized that my business studies have given me a much greater appreciation for the context of my work activities. (This insight came about while hearing about the flawed assumptions the British used in their execution of the war.) Even a class about dinosaurs gives me a fresh look at what I do every day. Paleontologists use every shred of data they can find to draw conclusions about animals that lived millions of years ago. That maximization of available data is something I strive for in my projects at work.

So I guess this is really a project about breaking my thinking patterns. When I think about what I may have done if I hadn't started taking classes at Marist, I assume that I would have spent more time working on getting a research paper published or some other activity that was very much in line with my graduate school training. I would have deepened the grooves that I was already treading rather than exploring new ground. My classes have revealed bodies of knowledge that I never would have sought out if not for my introduction to management and leadership theories in a formal class setting.

So I do things to #breaknewground (a tag that I will use in iDoneThis) in my thinking. Why bother? Well, most of the people I work with have academic training that is similar to what I went through. We're mostly PhDs in chemistry or pharmaceutics, something based in the physical sciences. With that shared background, we all tend to look at problems in the same way. That groupthink results in people seeing the same opportunities. Similar thought patterns produces similar pattern seeking behaviors that result in everybody seeing pretty much the same thing when it comes to where we should go as an organization. By breaking my thought patterns, I open myself to new possibilities. I might see something that others do not see. One of the biggest feathers in my professional cap came about because I see things differently that the people I sit with in meetings everyday.

So I break new ground in my thinking so I can see things differently. I'm also #pushing_it_toTheEdge in my workouts. A kind of off-hand description of what I'm trying to achieve physically that I write a couple of posts ago captures what I'm trying to do with my workouts. I want to be healthier, sexier, and primed for peak performance. That's a project without end. Well, most of my projects don't really have a set end point now that I think about it.

I read. I read books, blogs, magazines, lots of different things, but I only keep track of books. Why I read is too complex to try to capture in one paragraph of a blog post. Not that I really feel the need to express why I read. It's just self-evident that it's a worthwhile activity. Some of my reading is kind of project like. Reading an epic fantasy series is a project. (Reading fantasy, yet another way to challenge your assumptions.) Sometimes a particular book could feel like a project. Maybe there is no need for an overly clever tag when it comes to reading. Maybe #reading will do for now.

I have other projects in mind, but these will do for now.

The usefulness of personal metrics

I weigh myself every morning. I have an app that I use to track this daily measurement. My desire to enter my weight into the app is very strongly dependent on whether my weight went down (let's get it in now!) or up (it can wait until I've showered...and brushed my teeth...and gotten dressed...). This morning I just looked at it as a number. Nothing more, nothing less. Just a number that provides some feedback on whether my actions are consistent with my expressed desires. (To get healthier, sexier, and primed for peak performance).

It does me no good to give that number any more meaning than a simple data point. I track all kinds of things about my life. That list of books over to the right is just one source of data that I've been collecting about my life for the past couple of years. I don't really do anything with that information. I collect the data, but I'm not really using it to find ways to improve or modify my behavior. I use it mark progress towards some goal, how many books have I read this year?, but I don't use it to help direct my actions and modify my behavior.

I don't use it that way because keeping track of my weight or what books I've read isn't about directing my actions. It's just a measure of what I've done (or the consequences choices I've made). There is value in tracking what you've done, it shows you what you're willing to do. If I'm willing to spend four years of my evenings to pursue an MBA, there must be something about that activity that has real meaning for me. I'm doing it for some reason. My choices of reading material tell me something about what I enjoy. I too frequently look at those titles as a commentary on my character (what exactly that commentary may be has not been delved into too deeply), but it's also data on what I find interesting. If I can stop looking at it as a definition of my value and as a way to find what really motivates me and what I enjoy, I can use that list to stop flitting from one thing to the next in an endless pursuit of the interesting and direct my readings toward achieving something more than mere entertainment.

We have to look at the information at our disposal in every way possible to discover something new. Using that information to reinforce some valued idea about who we are only blinds us to these potentials.

Feeling safe? Beware!

Safety is a short step from irrelevance.

The Edge is about stepping away from safety. Progress only comes when we're willing to stop sticking with what we're familiar with to try something new. The routine reassures us with its familiarity. It feels safe because it feels we know it so well. That sense of security is dangerous. It lulls us into complacency.

A few months ago my wife told me she could tell that I was feeling safe in our relationship again (this would be after a cycle of conflict) because I would regress to my previous behavior. That security was a very real threat to our relationship. Too many people feel safe at work when they're working on the thing that they've always done the same way they were taught to do it. Change implies risk and risk is scary, even when change is needed to stay relevant.