Metamorphosis

I was laid off two weeks ago. The official story for my dismissal is cost savings. That objective truth didn't blunt the blow. I walked out of the building feeling angry, scared about the future, and relieved that big problems facing the business were no longer my problem. I wanted it to be personal. I thought about things that I said and what I could have done differently to maybe keep my job. I quickly realized that I was only going to make myself feel really bad if I thought about this situation in those terms. It happened. Rehashing every little detail was not going to improve my situation. I made the choice to focus on what is coming next. 

That's what I've been doing these two weeks. I went to Disney World with my son that Friday (I was laid off right after getting settled in my office on a Thursday). I spent the weekend with my family. We were getting ready to move my daughter into her dorm so we were busy preparing for that big move. My first day staying home rather than going to work started with a very hard session on my rowing machine and mowing my yard. I resisted the urge to look at job postings. I went to Target with my daughter. I finally looked at job postings a few days later, found something that looked like a good fit, and confronted my not very good resume. I intended to give myself a week or so to process being laid off, but I wasn't going to let a good opportunity pass. I have had a job for 27 years. I had to work on my resume and get an application under review to settle my nerves. 

We moved my daughter into her dorm on Sunday. My plan was to take a few days away from the job search. I managed to stick with that plan on Monday. I hit the gym, took a walk, ran a few errands. I was thinking about reaching out to my network during my run on Tuesday morning. This reminded me of a job at a prominent gummy company that my former manager posted. Is that still open? I checked it out after getting cleaned up and settled in my new office (a couch in our family room). Yes, it is! I spent the next 2 days drafting answers to some questions that were part of the application for this role. I thought I would have them done in a couple of hours. My primary motivation in applying was just to get on the company's radar and have a reason to reach out to my old boss with something other than hey I lost my job can you help me find a new one. I didn't expect to exert so much energy in submitting this application. Finishing that application was an important step in my recovery. That wasn't clear to me while I was struggling with those questions, but how I think about not having a job, being laid off, and my perspective on my 5 years with the company shifted during that process. 

My momentary unemployment is not a reflection of my inherent value. I did not choose to leave my job. Whether or not there was something more than business performance that motivated the decision to include me in the RIF doesn't diminish my skills and experience. While my job search needs to have some urgency, this employment gap provides the space for me to reflect on how I showed up at my old job and how I can show up better in my next role. My previous organization forced me into a way of thinking about how I contributed to the business that conflicts with my values. I need to reconnect with a way of working that resonates with what matters. I spent way too much time reacting to situations from a position of fear. The first couple years were shadowed by my PDI failure. I had been corrupted by the chaos of the organization in my last few years. I had compromised the way I wanted to get things done with conditions imposed by the nature of the organization. I was aware of the deep dysfunctions of the business from my first few days with the company. The more I struggled with some of my answers to those application questions, the more I realized that my performance had been proscribed by shortcomings in the processes and the limitations of other leaders. I didn't need to feel responsible for the way things had gone wrong. I regret some of the ways that I approached my projects, but those are lessons to learn not judgements to bear. 

I do not want carry this version of myself into my next role. My job during this employment gap is metamorphosis. I need to dissolve this broken version of myself and use all that I have learned and experienced over these last few years to construct my new form. I keep wanting to use reconnect when describing this transitional phase. I operated in a mode that was much better aligned with my values 7 or 8 years ago. My natural response matched the response expected by the organization. I want to show up like this version and reconnect with that mind set. My natural response was not the preferred reaction by the company that just discarded me, but rather than influencing the rest of the team to adopt my position, I just adapted myself to the expectations of everyone else. Going along felt like the right response, but it only led to more problems. I actually started resisting the organizational expectation towards the end of my time with the recent employer. I feel like that resistance contributed to my removal. 

Someday could be today

Just random thoughts as I'm trying to see what regular writing would feel like. I'm sure my themes will be the tried and true topics of goals for the new year, where I am in my various self-improvement projects. I may try to practice writing about bigger things outside of my life. I would like to eventually shift to writing more about things beyond my long held but little progressed against fitness and reading goals. The fitness and reading goal posts are easy to write as the topics require little actual thinking. I'm just reflecting on what I'm not doing to achieve something that I say that I want. Maybe writing about my thwarted efforts to develop certain areas of my life will get me to actually work on doing something in those areas. My biggest problem with achieving any substantial effort towards a stated goal is a lack of energy to pursue activities related to that goal. My wife and I both feel a difficult to capture friction on our effort to get in better shape and just use energy to improve our lives. It's just an energetic malaise. I just want to sit on the couch and do something passive. Reading takes too much effort. That's partially from the books I've been reading, but it's also a lack of motivation to engage in activities with a more subtle emotional return. I'm looking for a more obvious emotional energy hit. My lack of doing anything more than watching TV or scrolling on my phone has made reading or writing posts like this more effortful. It's not a pleasant experience. The flow state has become impossible elusive. 

Once deeply meaningful and rewarding tasks feel empty. The pleasure I used to take from reading a good book or working on something interesting (however disconnected from improving my life in some kind of tangible physical way) is a thin imitation of what it once was. I still get excited when I get to work on a deeply scientific problem at work. Making sense from various bits of data that don't look related remains a source of pleasure, but my current work place doesn't offer an appreciative audience for my work. I can get all geeked up about a solution to a problem, but there is no venue for me to share what I've learned. I know when an approach to a problem was clever or inaccessible, but the people I work with just want the problem solved. I spent years learning how to solve hard problems, but my coworkers just want the problem solved. I used to work in a place full of people like me. They knew when a problem was hard and the solution was a real accomplishment. Now, people are impressed with easy answers to obvious problems. What I can do is taken for granted because it's not understood. My wins don't really resonate while my loses resonate. 

My emotional energy used to get filled up by the opportunity to work on interesting things in an environment that valued the work and recognized the value I delivered. That fuel has been gone from my life for a long time, and I haven't done anything to find a different way to gratify that need to feel valued, needed, and competent. My initial thought on what to write when I pulled out the computer was some kind of plan to refresh my approach to doing more with my time than watch games and be amused by social media posts. Hopefully trying to reframe my long standing goals would help me see a way to get being better a key part of my life again. I've just been being for too many years (Covid is the most convenient marker for the shift). Sticking with the marathon plan isn't a big deal as long as I get out to run a few miles. Read a few books because reading is a central pillar of my identity but those big, ambitious books you bought all those years ago can wait another year. You will eventually drop the weight. All these things are out there for you to have someday. 

I've lived my life with being on the brink of something a good enough proxy for actually realizing the goal. Anticipation is enough. Realization is not necessary. Applying to and getting accepted to law school is fine. Actually going isn't necessary. Being in a position to become a director or some bigger job is just fine. I don't need the job. The recognition that I have the potential to do the job is fine. I don't need to read War and Peace or Middlemarch or any of my other numerous important literary books. The idea for a Substack is just fine. Writing posts that make that idea a thing other people can engage with is irrelevant. Wanting to lose weight is fine (just don't gain weight). Knowing I could achieve a better marathon or heavier lifts is just fine. I don't actually need to do it. I like the idea of doing these things. I like the idea of the person I would see myself as if I did those things, but the effort needed to actually achieve that goal isn't really necessary. At least that's the story.I seem to tell myself when I don't have the energy to take the steps needed to actually improve my life. 

I would really like to get off my high blood pressure medication. I assume I could do that if I lost 20 or 30 pounds. This would put me right at my long stated goal of weighing around 200 pounds. To lose weight I need to improve my diet. Improving my diet means finding something not processed for breakfast and taking my chicken and baked potato for lunch. I could eat whatever T cooks for dinner and limit dessert to once or twice a week. Increasing my running volume back to the point where 10 miles is a pretty easy run (there was a time in my life when that was true) would provide plenty of physical movement (along with staying consistent at the gym and evening walks). My weight would likely go down. Would it settle at 200? I don't know because I have never tried. 

There are so many books that I say I would like to read, but I never actually pick the book up and try to read it. War and Peace, The Count of Monte Cristo, Swann's Way. These are books I could read, but I don't want to exert the effort to get through them. I'm making a choice. What would it take to get through them? Fifteen minutes while watching TV in the evening? T has been reading at night. She's going to be back in classes next semester. The time is there. I just have to choice to use it. The days for me to ba able to say that are getting limited. I still have time to make these things happen, but someday needs to start being today.

Marathon training week 3 recap

Any week I get out and do all 3 runs is good. Making one of those a double digit run is even better. That was week 2. Two solid 4 mile runs during the week and a decent 10 miler on Saturday. I actually ran most of the 10 miler this week too! The weather was more agreeable to a long run this week, cloudy with a breeze and cooler terms than my 10 miler.a couple of weeks ago. I carried water for a couple of miles and had it stashed behind a bush for pickup towards the end of my run. These things all helped me get in a pretty good long run. My 8 mile run the week before was also decent. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with my training so far. My standard is pretty low, just staying consistent and getting in the miles, but I have no problem with this being the state of my running. I've been faster but I'm fine with where I am. 

I was looking through pictures I had taken on October11 through the years and saw that I had run 10 miles 8 years ago. My pace was a little under 9 minutes a mile. I finished the run in about an hour and a half. I would love to be able to run at that pace now, but I can't. I'm older. My commitment to running isn't what it was all those years ago. I'm about 15 pounds heavier. It's hotter in Florida. My life has changed in so many ways since that run. I'm still out putting in the miles. I could have stopped running years ago, but I'm still getting out a few mornings a week. I have no plans to stop any time soon. 

Marathon 7 week 1 training recap

My official training cycle for my 7th marathon kicked off this week. Not that all the training I've been doing for the last couple months wasn't so building up to this. The mileage was fine. I was a little over 17 miles for the week. This is much better than my kick off week last year so I will take this as a good first step. My weekday runs were decent enough. I cut my Thursday run short because I got out a little late and, knowing a 10 miler was my plan for Saturday, I didn't want to ramp up the mileage too fast. The 10 miler was miserable. I paced myself alright for the first half of the run. I've been doing kind of a run the first half of my long run distance and then walk / run as needed after that for the last couple of months. I figure staying on my feet and walking with an elevated heart rate beats limiting myself to what I can run with no breaks. I pushed this strategy to its bounds during my 10 miler. I pretty much walked the last 2.5 miles or so. I walk a ton during the marathon so I figure there is nothing saying I can't walk during the training too. I definitely need to carry water with me when I'm running for more than an hour or so. I also need to actually eat before heading out. One Pop-Tara isn't going to get the job done. I stopped at my gym and bought a Gatorade around mile 9. I needed something extra in my system to get me home. I tried running a bit after that but it was rough. Better to take it easy. This is only week 1 of the cycle. 

I did my non-running training as well. I rowed 5000 m Monday night. That was more challenging than it should have been. I went to the gym to lift twice (slow service at dinner Friday night kept me from meeting my 3 session goal) and did 15 minutes on the stairs today. I need to work the ab work back in. All in due time. 

This is a good start. Over 15 miles a week (it took me until late October to get over that mark last year) is the minimum I should be doing at this stage. Week 2 will be a bit of a departure from the normal workout schedule as I will be traveling towards the end of the week, but I built those plans into my workout schedule. I will get in 3 runs. The timing will just be a bit different. 

I can't run right now, but I can still prepare for the marathon

I wasn't exactly tearing up the streets with all my running miles prior to my injury, but getting out there three days a week is a constant cadence in my life. I'm continually surprised when I realize how central training for the WDW Marathon has become to my fitness life. I really shouldn't be. I've pretty much always had a race that defined my running effort. It was the Monument Avenue 10K up until the race stopped during Covid. It never resumed for me. It was some stupid virtual thing in 2021 (after all the monuments had been ripped out) and I moved away later that year. So my focus shifted to the WDW Marathon. I'm still marathon focused, but I added the half marathon to my weekend this year. I was planning on using this time post Springtime Surprise 10 Miler to start building up some distance in preparation for the many miles I need to run to have a solid Marathon weekend, but I'm limping around with plantar fasciitis or some other foot/heel ailment. I haven't run in almost 2 weeks. My foot definitely feels better, but I know I will just reaggravate the injury if I try to run. So I'm being patient and letting things heal up. I'm hoping that I can get back out there next weekend. I will be at WDW with my wife. Maybe I can try a short run on Sunday just to see how things feel. 

In lieu of being able to run, I should really be focusing on other things that I can do to get better prepared for the marathon. Resume ab work (I say that like I didn't stop doing ab work regularly back in 2020 and haven't even done my 5 days of 50 butterfly kicks in almost 3 years). That's just lazy. It takes a minute or two to do that work. Pick a time and just do it! I'm putting on weight, just like I do whenever I get injured and stop running regularly. Dropping 15 or 20 pounds would make a huge difference during my Goofy Challenge. Stop eating dessert. Stop snacking. Take a few easy steps to make your life and health a little better for crying out loud! Get back to the gym. I've realized I just really don't like lifting at the Y. I'm hoping to sign up for the new Crunch tomorrow (I'm off for Good Friday). All of these things will be good building blocks towards marathon success. 

The biggest obstacle to a sustained focus on my physical fitness has been my mental energy. I'm so defeated and drained by the end of the week, it's a struggle for me to really engage with my workouts. It's been a just doing it to get it done kind of thing since I moved to Florida. There has been a big change at my workplace that I'm hoping will reduce the amount of mental and emotional energy I dedicate to my job. This could be a huge development for my physical training. I'm so accustomed to dealing with the mental stress that I hadn't realized what it would feel like to have it go away. I'm starting to see that option, and I'm cautiously optimistic that I can regain a sense of calm and order that was so central to my ability to stay disciplined and focused on my workouts 5 or 6 years ago. I very much want to get back to that space. This change in work (same job, just a change in my organization leadership) could be huge to restoring a key aspect of my life.   

Infinite loops

The big news in my life today was seeing that Nintendo is bringing the NES version of Tetris to Switch Online. The teenage version of me is very excited to have the chance to play this version of the game again. I have an NES system and a Tetris cartridge, but it's a hassle to get it all set up and my controllers are not in the best shape. The change to revisit this staple of my young life is an exciting prospect. I play plenty of Teris 99, but the NES version has been the one that I have played the most (with the original GameBoy version a close second). I'm not sure if it's pathetic that this kind of news is exciting for me or if I should be more of an adult and not return to youthful things like this. I'm 48. Did I freeze as a person when I was a teenager? Did I just latch onto a few things I really enjoyed and just stick with it?

I'm sure I've discussed this elsewhere in these many posts, but the prominence of things from my youth in my adult life is something that I continue to find striking. I'm wearing a Cobra shirt as I type this for crying out loud! The details and decorations of my life have obviously changed over time, and I've experienced the big life events that mark our transition through key life stages. The core of my life, the supporting structure that holds up all this other stuff, still feels very similar to me. My approach to life, what I pursue and what I avoid, doesn't feel like it's shifted much over the decades. If I hadn't gotten married and had kids, it would probably look very similar. Replace school with a job, and you would still see me playing video games, reading books, and doing things like this (I've had many paper journals over the years). 

I don't know why I have an expectation that I would undergo some kind of personality/interest shift as I age. I certainly had a hope that I would get over the issues that caused me angst when I was younger. The fantasy of a superior future version of me was a constant source of reassurance. I could turn to a fantasy of a time when I was no longer awkward in social situations, comfortable with girls, and confident in my value, capability, and worth. My reading, video games, and unloading my feelings into things like this were how I coped with my issues. My continued reliance on these activities imply that I"m still in the pattern of sheltering myself from life by hiding in these fantasy spaces. I haven't made a concerted effort to work through the issues that prevent me from making my fantasy future a real future. Let's not pretend that this is a simple process. It's very difficult. There is a reason most people just kind of bump through life following the same pattern over and over again. 

I have some very concrete examples of how my old patterns repeating are keeping me from having a superior life experience. Let's bring the past version of myself into contract with my current life. I was not very successful with the ladies in high school. Now, looking back, I can see that was more from a failure to act more than any disinterest from the girls in my circle. I was certainly given hints and subtle invitations to pursue relationships and the kind of physical experiences that I so desperately wanted. And these weren't girls I was interested in. My first huge crush opened the door for me a few times. There were certainly suggestions and hints dropped when I was in college by girls I would have been happy to spend some time with doing interesting things (and some girls that were not quite as appealing). I've been married for 25 years and I'm still not responding to hints and suggestions about how I can spend more time naked in bed with my wife. She's told me what she needs, many times, but I haven't made a conscious and consistent effort to do what she needs. Telling her that she's beautiful is not exactly some terribly difficult task. Unfortunately, one of those support structures holding up the rest of my life is something about not sharing how I feel about other people. I've always suspected that there is an element of self-protection at the core of this pattern, but some deep seated protective strategy that is either just inherent to my personality or a strategy I adopted very early in my life has kept me from having experiences that I would really like to have had. But I'm still doing it! What am I protecting myself from? I'm expecting my wife to do what I need but not do what she needs? That was the pattern that kept me a loser loner in high school. I adopted this inaccurate self-perception when I was very, very young and I've never taken the effort to overcome that powerful pattern as I've matured and gained more control over how I live my life. 

I like to play it safe. It's better to take what I can for little to no risk than put a little something on the line to get more. The really sad part of that statement is that what I was afraid to put on the line, some sense of emotional security and safety, is only as real as I allow. Rejection (which, as noted above, was actually a low risk because I was getting signs that interest was mutual) is only a risk to my mental state. There is no physical risk. I just had to develop a mindset that would allow me to deal with that emotional state. It's the same thing that I'm dealing with in offering my wife compliments. The risk is only a perception in some irrational part of my psyche. I'm locked in a pattern. Am I strong enough to put in the work to break it?

We'll see. I need to go download the GameBoy version of Tetris on my Switch. 

Be Bold?

I've been reading a book about how different cultures define masculinity. David Gilmore, the guy who wrote the book (Manhood in the Making), not the guy from Pink Floyd, is circling around the idea that the definition of manhood is rooted in a need to get men to take on important economic tasks needed in a particular culture. It's an older book, it was written in the 80s, so there is more Freud than I find useful and he never really explores the simple idea that the masculine ideal in a society is rooted in the characteristics of the men who rose to positions of power and influence. Certain types of guys tend to rise to the top when resources are limited. The pushy assholes happy to exert themselves on the world to get whatever thing (status and sex mostly I would guess, mostly sex as status puts you in a position to get more sex) usually win these zero sum games. The template for success is established, and the next generation(s) just keep going after that same idea. Masculinity has a glint of a cultural success algorithm.

A long time half joke that is also a half (or more?) truth about me is that I have a feminine coded brain in a distinctly male body. I started making this joke when I read that males who write well may have had their brain exposed to higher levels of estrogen in the womb. I'll leave it to you to decide if what I'm putting down here qualifies as good writing, but I will say that my verbal abilities are well above the male average. Whatever the hormonal composition of my uterine environment, I have never really demonstrated the masculine ideal of boldly pursuing limited resources. It has always seemed like my body responded to testosterone, but my brain kind of sloughed it off and was content to lay low and take the passive path. I know I have touched on my ambush strategy to important life pursuits, but that preferred style frequently puts me at odds with the way a man is expected to behave.  

Years ago, I don't remember the exact date but I think it was maybe the early 2010s, I was questioning the value of my focus on my various side projects. I was wondering if they were anything more than distractions. Maybe I should take time to learn about Bitcoin or explore a business rather than writing Amazon reviews, applying to law school, or getting an MBA (to list the more potentially useful channels of my mental energy). Of course I didn't do those things. Would my life look much different if I had? I'm not a very big risk taker, kind of the point of this whole entry or maybe the blog itself, so it's unlikely I would have put more than a token amount of money into Bitcoin or any other investment that I may have identified. I've never felt compelled to take the big risk in any life domain. Drifting along has always just seemed so much easier. 

It's getting late so I don't want to start a whole new line of thought here, but my often pondered health and reading pursuits are not going all that well. As usual, there are many reasons for this, but a big one is me just not putting in the energy to make something happen. I have a vision, it's small and personal but it's a vision, but I'm not doing much to make that vision a reality. Lots of reasons why this isn't happening, but the choices I make are a big part of this issue. Getting up to run tomorrow before it gets too hot is a big part of marathon training success. That's why I need to stop now and go to bed.