Sleep is not the enemy

How do I get more sleep while continuing to do the things that matter to me?

I wrote this question to myself last week after once again failing on my promise to get more sleep. The end of the day comes and my good intentions to turn off the lights by 10:30 are abandoned as I play one more game of Tetris 99 or read a few more pages of my book (it's mostly been Tetris 99 over the last couple of months but reading a few pages before firing up the Switch certainly delays bed time). I jotted down a response to this question further down the same page.

View sleep as a component of these goals.

My original note has a question mark at the end, but after sitting with this idea for a week or so, I think it's the right answer. I've been viewing getting more sleep as a competing goal with all of my fitness/reading/general health endeavors. Sleep is a key contributor to success in those things rather than a conflicting obligation. I may lose some time by going to bed a bit earlier, but I will be much more effective with the fewer hours that I am awake. At least that's my current position on the matter.

My performance in my annual 10K relative to other years reinforced the role sleep plays in my efforts to live a richer and fuller life. I did not sleep well all week. My brain felt tired during the race. I went back and looked at what I was doing in the month before my best 10K back in 2017 (when I was about 3 minutes faster). I was getting up later a couple days a week, taking more naps on the weekend, and drinking less beer (partly because I was going to bed earlier on the weekends). My training over both of those years wasn't dramatically different, at least not divergent enough to account for those 3 minutes. Those differences in sleep between the two years aren't much, but it's enough for me to see how making getting sleep a component of my goals could be beneficial.

It's not necessarily the number of hours that I'm asleep that really matters. If I'm better rested, I can push myself harder on training runs. There are way too many times when I'm doing all I can to just get myself out the door. I get in the miles, but I'm not working on getting better. I'm happy to run at a moderate pace and be happy with the distance. That's the right approach for the workout sometimes, but I also need workouts where I am pushing my limits. That's a difficult challenge in the best of circumstances. Stretching myself like that when I'm barely awake is not a successful strategy.

More sleep is a good step to doing more hard things. I've been avoiding books that are challenging to read because I'm tired enough as it is when I do most of my reading. I don't know how much I get out of any book when I'm dozing off in the middle of a page. I definitely have no hope of making it through Proust or War and Peace when I'm just trying to keep my eyes open!

So I'm going to start working my way to earlier bedtimes. I'm shooting for 30 to 15 minutes earlier than normal this week. I will cut back again once that feels normal. If things feel better at that point, I will reassess my sleep requirements.

To and Fro

I should be playing Tetris 99 right now, but the Switch is having fun at a sleepover. I read for a bit before coming downstairs where I can mourn the absence of trying to get my 32nd, 33rd, 34th win. I quickly composed a nifty little post in my head while pouring a beer but as always happens the nice flowing thoughts stopped coming the second I tried to put them down where other people can read them. I guess coming out of the safety of my whirling mind was more than they could handle. I'm not surprised. Expressing myself in this way has become a rarity. I look back in wonder at how much I could get down more years ago than I like to really think about. This kind of thinking was a release. It made me feel better. It wasn't always easy to get started, but once I got on the trail of a good idea things usually feel together pretty easily. It's kind of sad to realize that the biggest drag on that momentum was a poor computer choice. I bought a new computer and everything just kind of ground to a halt. The pad of my thumb would hit the mouse pad and move the cursor. It was minor but annoying enough that it was a drag to get the computer up and running. The always dead battery didn't help.

I was searching for something through all of those words. Repeating a pattern set way back as a lonely teenager pouring myself out to a piece of notebook paper. The answers are out there if you look hard enough, work through enough of the hard stuff. Life was all around but I was pretty busy trying to get all of that action to fit into the way I thought it should come together. Eight years later I don't know if I'm wise or jaded. Maybe a little of both. I've seen the folly in some of my old ambitions, but I've also yielded some of my desire for better and different. I've softened and slide into the mold of the life offered. This has brought me peace with a small dose of complacency. I've taken what's been offered. That choice has made a difference.

Perhaps I'm no longer at war with the truth. I railed against the truth about myself, my job, and where my career was taking me. I could see the light that everybody else was missing. It was so obvious, why can't they see it? Reality has slid between me and my view of the abstract that fired all my musings about the role of R&D in a business, my potential for change, and what I really needed in my life. Writing a bunch of stuff on the internet is easy. Changing what goes on in reality demands more. Nine years ago I spent most of my time running samples at the bench. Now I'm in charge of the people running samples at the bench (and making the stuff that gets tested at the bench). The answers aren't so clear from this view. People don't react the same way as molecules in a flask. Molecules will tell you their secrets if you ask nicely enough. People refuse to share their truth. You have to piece it together from hints and clues scattered in their wake. It's taken me decades to really understand my wife. How can I ever really know the people I work with? Have I really tried?

I used to come here to flee what I feared. Disintegration. Insignificance. Those were just shadows. My fears were real enough, but I was afraid of a pile of clothes. As I was just about to write that putting together these posts was the first step in rebuilding myself, I have to realize that in many ways these posts were preventing me from moving beyond my fears.This is where I reinforced my mistaken notions of how the world worked. I had to set this self-focused process aside and really engage with the reality of my life before I could realize the unreality of my fears. I came here to patch holes in the walls that I used to keep the bad feelings away. I faced the truth every now and then. Maybe that's where the growth finally started. It's all scattered in here. But that's just looking back. There is still plenty ahead. That's where I should focus. These little forays into my decision making record are marginally useful, but I can't let looking back replace moving forward, always forward.

Marathon #2, what went right and how to do it better next time

Never again. That's all I could think as I finished the 2018 Marine Corps Marathon. All that time and effort put into my training just to get a pretty good chunk into the race before everything really came off the rails didn't seem worth it. I've done this distance twice. I've proven that I can do it. Why do it to myself again? 

Well, I'm feeling a bit differently 5 days later. The marathon is starting to emerge as a challenge to be solved. It's pretty clear to me that I have a few changes to make in my approach to this distance if I'm ever going to hit the times those online predictors say I am capable of based on my 10K time.

Before going into what I need to do better, I would like to highlight some things that went well. The first, and most important, successful aspect of my training that was the fact that I completed the training. This is the second marathon that I've run in the last two years. That means I've spent the last two summers training for a marathon. I ran 420-430 miles in each of these 16 week training cycles. I can remember a long walk back to my car after a 10K several years ago where I was in so much discomfort I thought there was no way I could ever do much more than 6 or 7 miles. I've gone well beyond that, multiple times, while avoiding injuries. Avoiding injuries should not be dismissed. That's a big deal. Injuries popped up pretty regularly when I started running 3 or 4 times a week. Plantar faciitis took away a few months of summer running one year, I had calf issues that plagued me for most of 2014. I lost most of late 2016 to a knee injury. Injuries are part of running, but as I have gotten more experience, I have learned how to keep my body healthy and active. This is a significant accomplishment.

I made it much deeper into the Marine Corp than I did into Richmond before things were a real struggle. The wheels really starting falling off between miles 15 and 16 during Richmond. I was well above 20 when the same thing started happening last weekend. I crashed really hard in the last two miles of the Marine Corp, but that's just something that I need to work on.

Another success, I avoided significant chafing. I had a bit on my stomach, which is the first time I've ever had chafing in that spot. The combination of the tight shorts under my running shorts and liberal application of lube did the job perfectly. This is a significant advance as walking around all day with chafing after a long run is miserable. 

So what changes do I need to make with my approach to training for these long races? I need to improve my endurance. That means more longer runs. I've gotten very comfortable with distances up to 15 or 16 miles, but once I get above that I really start to struggle. Going past that point more often and making sure that I keep running a reasonable pace will make those last 10 miles of the marathon less of a struggle. A key point in overcoming this endurance gap is developing an appropriate fueling strategy. My body runs out of fuel after those first dozen or so miles. I need to find a way to keep a steady supply of calories coming in during these long runs. I may have to try gels despite my inherent aversion to them. I need something that I can carry in bulk. Regular food just takes up too much space. 

I need to really train during my runs and not do what I can to just get through them. I was too happy with just getting the distance in on some of the shorter runs while not worrying about pace or form. I know that I fall into the camp of doing my slow runs too fast and my fast runs too slow. I need to push it more on the intermediate distances and make easy runs really easy. I get too impatient to run slow and lose a chance to recover and develop more cardiovascular capacity. I'm also reluctant to really push myself on my 6-10 mile runs. The early mornings required to get these in are a big part of the equation here. It's hard to go into the painful part of running when I'm barely awake when I head out the door. My best results have come when I push myself to run in an uncomfortable space during training. I need to get back to this place if I'm going to grow as a runner. 

I do plenty of upper body weight training. Bench press, shoulder press, pull-ups, lat pull downs, I do these several times a week. I never do squats or dead lifts or anything else that strengthens my lower body. Building up strength in this area is vital to increasing my abilities as a runner. I already have the habit of going to the gym. Now I need to add some lower body into the mix. 

More rowing. I've been consistently getting in 5000 m or a week, but that's just doing an easy 10 minutes at the gym before I lift. Adding more rowing to my routine will result in better running. It's not hard to know why. I did 5000 m at a reasonable clip on Sunday. I could really feel it in my left butt cheek. Rowing works muscles that help me run but do not get worked out much when I run. It is not a coincidence that my 10K PR came a few months after I completed the holiday rowing challenge. I rowed over 100,000 m between Thanksgiving and Christmas. That requires consistently getting out and rowing 5000 m or so. All that rowing resulted in better training for the 10K. I did not complete the holiday rowing challenge last year. My 10K time was well off my PR pace. There are more factors at play than the absence of rowing a bunch in December (a super cold winter was a big part of that), but rowing builds a solid running foundation. 

Those are the main highlights and lowlights of my training cycle for the 2018 Marine Corps Marathon. I could eat better and get more sleep, but those are pretty much constant refrains that could be applied to numerous aspects of my life. When it comes to doing more marathons, I need to do more miles and find a way to keep myself fueled. Those are both pretty simple statements to make but they involve so much energy to execute. That's the point of putting myself through these marathon cycles. It's a way to get better and learn a bit about who I am at that moment. It sucks in the moment, but it's a highly rewarding experience.

Oh, and one more thing (that I will just add a couple of months later), I need to just flat out run more. I graphed my weekly distances from 2017 and 2018 in a single chart. I did not run enough in 2018, especially during marathon training. The 2018 line was shorter than the 2017 line pretty much every week. All those skipped Friday runs, shortened long runs on Saturday, and doing the short end of the recommended distance rather than the longer side on Monday and Thursday added up over the course of the training. Running a 16 miler this year that I missed last year closed the total distance, but that one run doesn't make up for all the shorter runs.

Now that I'm a couple of weeks into 2019, I can provide a way too early progress report on my efforts to implement some of these changes. Rowing more is definitely helping. Ramped up rowing in December has brought better running in January. I'm doing my shorter runs at under 8 min/mile pace. That's a nice step over last year's January efforts (following a December where I bailed on the Concept2 Holiday Challenge halfway through the month). That faster pace is also attributable to a conscious effort to push myself. Last year I was too satisfied with simply doing the workout. I'm digging deeper this year (both running and lifting).

There is no marathon for me in 2019. I may train up for a half, but I'm relieved to be taking a break from the crazy long runs all too integral a part of marathon training. I'm trying to reach 1000 miles in 2019 even with no runs longer than 13 or 14 miles over the course of the year. Steady effort will make the difference.

Energy distribution

My life should continually trend towards the realization of my ideals and aspirations. This is one of my never expressed, rarely explored, and totally taken for granted core beliefs. Every year I should be closer to my ideal weight or have read a few books that I've wanted to read for years. I should earn more money, be more capable, and just be a better me. I guess it's a consequence of my white male privilege. Whatever the origin, some parts of my life get closer to that arbitrary ideal with the passing years, but mostly things seem to stay on a pretty consistent equilibrium. My weight stays pretty constant despite an expressed desire to get down a few pounds. I keep running but my pace tends to stay in a pretty consistent range. I lift at the gym two or three days a week, but the weights that I use in a workout haven't really changed much over the last couple of years. My relationship with my wife stays strong, but it's not getting better. We keep talking about getting closer emotionally, but we end up drifting around one another in the same old patterns.

Improving my relationship with my wife (or lifting more or running faster) requires giving that part of my life more energy and attention. More energy in one area means less energy in another. Less energy in another area will mean a lack of progress against some goal. My perpetual ascent towards the realization of my long held aspirations will suffer. That will hurt my ego too much so I just can't do that. When it comes right down to it, most of these activities are all about keeping my sense of self happy. If I can have that sense that all is well then I will feel safe and secure. Nothing can be wrong with me if I'm realizing my goals and dreams.

These ego salves change over the years, but they're always present. There were plenty of years that I didn't exercise at all, but I was preparing for graduate school or had some other project that kept me focused on some kind of long term improvement. I could escape the moment by shifting my discontent with my current status to some imagined future state. I escaped the drudgery of my miserable high school days by projecting myself into college. Grad school was my focus when I was prepping blood samples for the thousandth time. I escaped the anxiety of working for a company being purchased by a much larger entity by focusing on getting into law school. It was a costly therapy program.

Going to the gym satisfies the need to be engaged in a workout plan. It's not about actually getting stronger. It's maintaining the illusion that I'm working on getting stronger. I only exert enough energy to get in sets that feel like enough. I don't push it to the point of pain and discomfort. That would take energy from running or making me too tired to read at night. I have let getting to the gym be enough. It's more about actually doing work while I'm there. Sometimes just doing enough is enough, but most of the time it takes a little more to make a difference. Making a difference isn't always the point of going to the gym.

So I need to decide if I actually want to make a difference in these areas or if I'm content to just let them keep fulfilling their role as a way to cope with my bad emotions. Do I really want to be closer to my wife or I am alright with keeping things the way they are? Making a change means giving these things more energy and focus. It requires opening myself to feeling bad. As I do most of these things to avoid feeling bad, embracing the discomfort that comes with being more engaged and vulnerable would be a real challenge. Isn't that kind of the point?

On Failure

Embracing failure is not the point. Being willing to fail is the point. The moment will be there and then it will be gone. Don't let fear hold you back. Failure will come if you're doing things that don't have a highly controllable outcome. Putting all your energy into things that you know you can do yields success after success, but playing it safe is a great way to limit yourself. Success after success? Maybe if achieving some arbitrary goal is considered a success. Play video games and beat the final boss. Success? Sure, you achieved the objective of the game, but is that a success? What did you really achieve? You had fun. Maybe you solved a couple of puzzles. Fun is important, but it's not a success. It's not a success unless you're putting something at risk.

Putting your ego at risk doesn't count. Questioning your video game prowess as a consequence of failing to beat some game is not risk. Playing a game rather than engaging with life is a failure. Spend time with people not pixels. Be scared. Feeling uncomfortable and wanting to bail is a sign that you're in a place that will give you a chance to grow. I always bailed when I felt like that. My biggest regrets are bailing out when I should have dug in.

I volunteered to lead a project with an uncertain outcome at work. My boss suggested I stay in my lane and leave the project to somebody else. He wanted to play it safe. He had his spot. He wanted to hold it. I had my spot. I wanted to expand it. So I took on the project. It succeeded. I knew it would. I wouldn't have done it if I thought it would fail. I guess I didn't succeed based on my definition above. I guess graduate school was my biggest risk of failure. I left a nice job to spend a few years in a lab doing projects with no obvious success. If I hadn't gotten lucky with a porphyrin film or two, maybe things wouldn't have turned out so well. Impossible to say now. What's done is done.

What's done is done. Either you found a way to make it work or things fell off the rails. Take the chance when it's presented. If there is something you want, go after it. You want that relationship, pursue it. You want to get to some point in your career, go after it. You want to change something about yourself, acknowledge what's holding you back and grow. Hopefully the thing holding you back isn't rooted in something I did to you so many years ago. I'm not a great father, but I love you.

Know what you want. If you care enough, the risk of failure will look like nothing compared to missing out on a chance to get what matters to you. Seeing your chance pass you by will hurt more than things not working out the way you saw them in your head. Don't be reckless. Be smart. Keep your eyes open. Pay attention. Disengage with your ego.

Your mother and I had a huge fight when I went to Boston to interview for a job. Our relationship suffered from my choice. We got to a point where I wasn't sure if I could do what your mom deserved. I've had to dig into some serious shit to get to a point where I can be the man your mother deserves (and the father you deserve). It's taken me years to get to a point where I can start repairing the damage I inflicted. That interview was a failure. The entire event was all about fueling and protecting my ego. I did something that made me feel safe, pursuing some kind of external recognition of my abilities and promise, rather than growing beyond the limits I put on myself when I was young. I was fueling an outdated version of myself rather than stretching beyond that limited sense of my potential.

Don't limit yourself. Put yourself at risk. Go beyond. It might take a few tries, but you'll get there. It's alright to be scared. Just don't listen to the fear.

Goal Contradiction and Priorities

Many of the goals that I set for myself are really just advanced allocation of how I will be spending my time. When I decide to read 52 books in a year, I am setting aside a huge amount of time for reading. The number of books I choose to read is mostly a statement of how much time I plan on reading over the year as the number of books I read and the amount of time I spend reading is tightly correlated. The length and difficultly of whatever book I read has an impact on how much time I need to read it, but that impact is secondary to the volume of time I set aside for reading. 

Fitness goals have this property. Going to the gym three days a week requires me to set aside an hour or so three days a week for lifting. If I set a rowing distance goal or a running distance goal, that's just me saying that I will spend so much time on the rowing machine or on the roads running. Even performance goals like finishing a marathon or setting a new 10K PR require a prescribed amount of time for training. By making the goal I accept the training plan, or, to put it another way, I decide to set aside a particular period of time for training. 

The more of these time volume goals that I stack on myself, the more I have to negotiate goal conflict. I'm thinking of setting a sleep goal this year. Going to bed at a particular time each night means that I may have to cut my reading time short. That puts my reading goal at odds with my sleeping goal. I want to get more sleep so I feel more energetic when I run in the morning. The sleep goal is not in conflict with a running goal (run a marathon will be a goal, I kind of like setting a new 10K PR, that might make it in too). 

Some goals are clearly free from any kind of conflict. Avoiding goals rarely face goal conflict. Buying no books stands by itself. It takes no time and does not limit my reading choices considering that I own 175 books that I've yet to read. Losing weight (or whatever way I choice to state that goal) is kind of in a hybrid position. Working out contributes to weight loss, but healthy eating will drive more of my weight lose than exercise. 

Volume goals are definitely the challenge. More rowing would eat into my reading time, but it would help with losing weight and could improve my running. A goal priority could eliminate this conflict. If I decide that getting in my reading is more important than rowing, the reading goal would take priority. Fitness over reading, and the treadmill comes before the reading. Putting the sleep goal first would make everything secondary after 10:30 or whatever time I set for my bedtime. I gave myself a bed time a year or so ago and it actually worked pretty well. 

There is no doubt that reading has been my top goal this year. Finishing 52 books this year has become a near obsession. But even that goal has become secondary to completing the Concept 2 Holiday Challenge. I used several chunks of potential reading time to get in rowing machine meters today. I may miss that goal, I need to row 11,000 m Christmas Eve Eve and Christmas Eve, but I'm keeping the possibility alive by getting in over 9000 m today. 

The volume goals are all about time, but there is a certain amount of energy management involved in these as well. I was working out in the evenings when I first started writing this blog. I would drag myself downstairs at 10 or 10:30 to get in the garage and exercise. That doesn't work for me anymore. Getting up at 5 to run two days a week requires an entirely different energy management strategy. If I stay up too late the night before a run, that messes me up for days. I'll be extra tired that night. It's hard to read if you're falling asleep. 

Managing energy is really the key to meeting any goal. With that in mind, sleep will be a big goal for me this year. This is a key strategic decision as the shape of my other goals is profoundly affected by this one decision. I was already going to go conservative on the reading goal, 25 books. That's half of what I've read this year. More rest is also good for testosterone maintenance and will reinforce my physical training efforts by enhancing recovery. Sleep is good for testosterone health as well. So sleep will be my primary volume goal. I've tried this before and it didn't work so well. Maybe this year will be different.

I am my own man

I've hatched a plan to read every book that I own. I call this adventure Bookshelf Zero. This is a multi-year project. With 177 unread books on my shelves, it will be a little while until I've finished everything. The number of books is intimidating enough. Throw in the level of difficulty with some of these and the challenge gains a whole new level. I just read 13 pages of Swann's Way. That's the first book in his massive In Search of Lost Time. Books 2-7 are part of that 177. The Russian's, dense pieces of philosophy, a huge book on the history of the Whig party in the United States. These are all books that I will read if I'm to reach Bookshelf Zero.

I've already resolved to buy zero books in 2017. I managed to go a whole year without buying a book a few years ago. I went on a bit of a book buying binge right before that year started. I'm doing the same thing now. Part of it was buying skinny books to help me reach 52 for the year (a goal that gets more and more difficult to realize with every passing day), but part of it is getting my fill of book buying before the year is out. I'm still trying to decide if I really like to read or if I just read so I can justify buying more books.

What the hell was I thinking is a question I have asked myself more than a few times as I've looked over my list of unread books. Why do I have this need to pull every "hard" book that has ever been written into my life? What am I trying to prove? Then I look at my desire to pick up Capital in the Twentieth Century or a Brief History of Time (I can probably pick them up cheap at one of the two recently opened used book stores...) and realize I'm just doing more of the same. Buying these super hard books gives me some kind of boost. Reading them doesn't really seem to be the point.

Bookshelf Zero is about actually reading books that I have bought, but a big part of it is actually reading these complex, dense, and less than riveting tomes that I bought way back when to feel better about myself. I really like reading Proust, but I can't help but feel that part of my motivation to read this kind of challenging literature is rooted in my desire to prove my worth. Just who I'm trying to impress is a trickier question.

Reading is the one thread that runs through every stage of my life. I have always read. Always. I read fewer books when I was a graduate student, but I was reading papers relevant to my research almost every day. I always manage to find time to read. I aspire to read some of the hardest books around. Why bother? What does this drive to read Proust or Tolstoy say about me? I can't help but think that getting to the root of my drive to read, and what I want to read, will help me figure out just who I am and what I'm about.

I have this urge to write about my reading exploits. I like to think that this compulsion is related to this need to figure out just who I am. It's seems silly to be talking about self-discovery when I'm 40 years old. But if it's a choice between self-discovery and becoming my father, I'll take delayed self-discovery every time.

The effort to establish some kind of relationship with my father via email is over. I tried. There's nothing more I can do. My dad was here on Saturday. It's the first time he's been to my house in 9 years. I will be surprised if he ever comes back. My father has no interest in building a relationship with me. He's an emotional void. He said almost nothing to me when he was here. He didn't make an effort to talk to either of my kids. He's a waste. He's a liar. He's not worth my time and effort. He's not the kind of person that I want in my life.

I have a very strong fear of becoming my father. I was well on my way, at least in certain respects. My dad seeks to impress others by his acquired knowledge. I have often thought that my book thing may be my version of his WWII obsession. My desire to delve into this reading experience is partially to get to the bottom of my reading motivations. I want to prove to myself that I'm not doing it to impress people. I want to prove to myself that I'm not my father.

I'm not cheating on my wife so that's a good way to not be my father. I'm not a compulsive liar. My Dad's entire life is a lie. It's all a big effort to convince himself that he's not a big loser. He's trying to tell himself that he's a man, that he's important, that he matters. I wanted to build a relationship with him because I wanted to know why he feels that way. He's never going to tell me. He doesn't know himself. He's just a weakling who does all he can to tell himself that he's strong. I intimidate the hell out of him. He's afraid of me. He's afraid of everything.

My dad is afraid that people will see his weakness. He slinks around thinking that people won't notice that's he's constantly afraid of being found out as a terrified little man. He uses women to tell himself that he's a big bad man. He's so pathetic. I kind of think that I want him to acknowledge my superiority. I want to hear him say that I have what he wants. I just want to be better than him. I know that I am. He knows that I am. I want to hear him say it. I want to hear him say that he's happy about it, that he's proud of me. But he had nothing to do with who I am. I am who I am in spite of his presence in my life. I defeated his efforts to hold me back. I'm a constant reminder of his failure. I'm proof of his weakness. He wants to run away and start his life over in Alabama.

He doesn't deserve my love. He deserves my scorn.

And I'm going to read all my books because reading is and always has been central to my life and identity. I'm not trying to prove anything to anybody. I just want to read the books that have endured and defy the passage of time. Books have always been my connection to the world that exists outside of me. I've slowly been able to open myself to that world in other ways. Books will always be part of that connection.