Waiting it out

I realized that I've been waiting my life out for the last couple of years. I was a few miles into a long run, which is about 8 miles these days, when I realized that I've been getting through my runs, workouts, books, vacation, work days, you name it, for the last couple of years. I just want to get through whatever I'm in to get on to the next thing. Things will get back to normal eventually. I just need to keep going through the motions until that moment finally gets here. But will that moment ever actually arrive? I look back at my numerous records and see the disparity of where my life was in 2015 with where it is now. The numbers tell me things were clicking much better back then. Longer, faster runs, more reading, a better sex life. I try to think of what was different then to what I've been living through for the last couple of years. In retrospect, that period around 2015 looks like the perfect balance of the different parts of my life. My kids were old enough that they were more independent but not obnoxious teenagers. My work life presented the perfect balance of challenge and opportunity, with security and promising prospects. I was motivated to work out and had a nice injury free streak that gave me the fitness to really extend my running. 

What changed between now and that blissful period where all the pieces were falling into place? Professionally, I had a series of bad luck setbacks. My sense that I would always be able to resolve a situation had been shaken. A bad partner company, some bad communication, a couple of bad decisions. My reputation took a hit. That set me back big time. I had to fight to get back from that. I let it get to that point. I don't know how much of it was in my head and how much was real. Organizational change introduced its own chaos into the situation. Of course this was all going on in the context of the world losing its mind over a respiratory virus. Navigating a new world was an inflection point in life kind of challenge. It's not going away anytime soon. My life really did become just make it to the next day during the worst of it. And when I say the worst I'm talking about the response. What choice was there but to just wait for things to improve? Let's not forget that I was also in a new role with an incomptent manager and the worst employee that I have ever seen. That role was hard enough without trying to build a team while working remotely in a group that was new to my part of the organization. This is the opposite of what I was living professionally in 2015. 

My kids have grown up. They are teenagers with opinions and thoughts all their own now. They succeed and fail and I'm just a spectator. They take up more space. My wife twisted her ankle. I noted it in my I Done This record. September 26, 2015. That was the first in a series of physical challenges that fundamentally changed the nature of our relationship. She's never really recovered from that injury. She managed to run the ultra she was training for when she twisted her ankle, but she's hasn't regained the focus and commitment that she had before she twisted her ankle. She has had plenty of other challenges to contend with over the last 5 or 6 years too. Our lives were pretty simple in 2015. They got really complicated over the ensuing years. They were complicated before we had to deal with virus insanity, her parents passing away (and the struggle to figure out what to do in the few months prior to that terrible time), but things have only gotten worse since then. 

I was able to embrace the pain and discomfort of being in the middle of a long run rather than just waiting for it to end yesterday so there must be some hope that I'm emerging into a better space. I'm in the middle of one of the biggest challenges of my life, living away from my family, but I feel less encumbered by so much of the complexity that was suffocating me last year. Leaving the organizational stuff behind was part of it, but it's more complicated than that. I don't feel depressed anymore. I'm sure there are multiple factors for that change. I won't delve into them here. I feel more like myself. I want this separation from my family to end (like right now), but I know I can make it to the other side of this period. I have the emotional energy to deal with challenging situations. I was exhausted last week, but I managed to push through that barrier and engage with my work. I moved when I would have been idle last year. My professional challenges are just as big as last year, but they don't feel as unwieldy. I wanted to go into the difference between 6 years ago and now to get myself to acknowledge that I have not failed in some way because I don't work out as much or my life looks different. My life has evolved well beyond my 2015 life. I may have resisted that change, but it's happening. Everyday.

Projects

Things I need to make sure I do while I'm solo in Florida:

1. Get established in my new role. 

2. Be the best husband/dad I can be while being away from my family for weeks at a time

3. Find a house

4. Train for the Disney Marathon

5. Read books I own

That's a rough plan. I want to have a direction and a plan. Sitting around trying to figure out what to do every night is not going to be a successful way to live.  

I just don't want to

I miss my workout volume goals, skip reading Dickens, avoid the hard books on my shelves, and make poor eating choices because I don't want to do things that are hard. Reading Dickens is hard. It requires effort and a bit of exertion. Dragging myself out of bed at 5 and getting out for a run when it's cold and dark sucks. Not just a little, it sucks big time. Sitting in the warm bathroom scrolling on my phone is pleasant. It's comfortable. It's easy. I want to realize the benefits of getting in my run, but overcoming easy inertia takes effort. Deciphering the convoluted sentences of The Golden Bowl takes focus. Mustering the mental energy to take on that challenge at the end of the day is a very non-trivial exertion. Lying in my bed and reading a thriller is a fun diversion. Why would I want to take on the effort (and occasional aggravation) of Henry James when I can just scroll through Twitter for a half hour? I would rather play Tetris then dig into a Jefferson bio. I just don't want to do the hard stuff.

Here is where I should reference some study on how immediate needs are prioritized over decisions that have long term benefits. My plight is just a specific example of a quirk in the human machine. Blah, I'm so over that genre of self-improvement. Just acknowledge that things suck and commit to getting it done anyway. I read a few pages of The Golden Bowl before taking on some more pleasant activities. I'm writing this before playing Tetris. I talked myself out of buying two books on the Kindle Daily Deal. There are not epic battles of will. They are just slight shifts in how I think about what I'm doing. Sure, I may not want to do it right now, but I can usually talk myself into doing what needs to get done after acknowledging that it may not be fun or exactly what I want to do in the moment. I will be open to small progress. Five pages of James are better than zero. Be patient. Those obnoxiously complex sentences will get easier to read as I find the flow and get into the groove of the language. It may be hard now, but it will get easier over time. 

No big plans or strategies are needed. Just acknowledge that I'm avoiding doing something that is hard, acknowledge the truth of this, and do it anyway.

New Year, new list of challenges to work on (and likely fail at most)

As has been a family tradition since 2002, the wife and I drafted our Resolutions for the new year. I should probably start using a template because I basically have the same list of goals every year. Read x books (I went with 35 after reading 31 this year), lose some weight (I set a goal weight of 215, that's losing about 10 pounds), try to reduce the number of books that I own but have not read (I took a new tactic this year, saying I want to get under 140, so I can buy books all I want as long as I am reading them as well, I'm at 158 right now so I have some progress to make), reading a Dickens work (it's been on there for years) and some kind of fitness goal around lifting, running, or rowing (or some of each, I did the 20 pullups again this year, I didn't want to add a running goal as staying healthy and keeping at it is likely my biggest priority).

Part of making new resolutions is reviewing progress against last year's goals. I did not fare very well. I set very ambitious goals last year and failed to achieve most of them. This is pretty much the standard outcome. I have years and years of resolutions with mostly x's next to the goal rather than a check. My approach is clearly not very effective. Just trying harder is probably not the best approach. What could I do differently? Well, let's take a look at a few of my 2020 resolutions and see where I feel short. 2020 is not the best year to find trends and patterns that can be applied in a general sense, but reviewing my year is a useful exercise. 

First failed goal, buy no new books. I realized this goal one year so I use it every now and then to force myself to read the books I have already bought. I was doing well on this one until May or June. I found Thriftbooks and needed something to look forward to after weeks and weeks of being trapped at home with my kids. I ended up buying 22 books. Given that I also read a bunch of books I borrowed from the library (16, or half the books I read this year), I had negative progress on my Bookshelf Zero project (I have more unread books sitting on my shelves, 158 of them, now than I did at this time last year, only 148). It would be easy to attribute my failure on this goal to COVID and try to find some trick to increase my resistance to buying new books, but that misses a bigger point. This is a bad goal. It only results in a big buying binge once my embargo ends. The question isn't why did I buy books (book shopping has been something that has brought me immense joy for pretty much my entire life), but why didn't I read more of the books I already have on my shelf? (Short answer, I buy too many hard books that I just don't have the mental energy to take on when I have so many other options easily available.)

So no books was a bad goal. Another goal that I missed, and not for the first time, was running a total of 1000 miles. I was very close to this target a couple of years so I thought it was something that I could manage with a consistent effort over an entire year. I was marathon training the two years I ran over 900 miles, but I figured a consistent effort around 20 miles a week was something I could manage even though I wasn't marathon training. The goal was still in range until my knee just gave out on me and I had to stop running. I was already behind after taking a couple of weeks to let my foot recover from some kind of strain. I am still working back from the injury. It's clear that I need to spend more time doing weight training. Rowing also seems to help. Time is the issue. If I spend an hour running, I don't really have another 20 minutes to stretch and roll. Well, I could probably find the time but I would rather sit around and read Twitter or engage in some other time wasting activity. Was this a good goal? It was consistent with my goal to increase my running volume. I have successfully run the volume necessary to meet this distance in previous years. Injury cost me the goal, but if I had not had to stop running I probably would have missed the goal. That miss would be the result of not giving myself enough time to run the distance needed to hit 20 miles a week. I tend to put off running until I have just enough time to get in a few miles and still be ready for work or whatever else is in my day. Getting up earlier pre-COVID or getting an earlier start to my run once I was working from home would have allowed me to get more miles. I usually wasted time on Doctor Mario or something else rather than getting out for my run. 

I missed my rowing target too. Realizing both the running and rowing goal would be a true accomplishment. Finding time for both on top of my other commitments would be an indication of true commitment on my part. I guess I thought I would find time to both run about 20 miles a week and row 2 or 3 times a week. Events actually conspired to make this goal realizable. I was home pretty much all year. I could have added some rowing meters here or there. I rarely found that level of commitment to my physical fitness. COVID definitely screwed with my mental state. I was borderline depressed for a good chunk of the year. I'm still struggling with all the bullshit implementations that are such a big part of life right now. I'm not going to be too hard on myself for missing this goal. I was thinking big when I gave myself two big workout volume goals, but I definitely could have found ways to get closer with the rowing goal. Consistently rowing 10,000 m on Sunday would be a huge step to meeting a rowing goal. Now, not staying up until 1 or 2 on Saturday nights would be a big step in finding the time to make this happen. 

I was not able to get 13 reps with 225 lbs on the bench. The gyms being closed for a big chunk of the year put this one in jeopardy. I did plenty of workouts in the garage with the dumbbells, but not having the heavy weights really makes developing this kind of strength difficult. This goal is very realizable. I just have to consistently workout 3 times a week. I was seeing myself going to the gym at lunch when I made this goal. I had half day Fridays. I just needed to get to the gym on Monday and Wednesday and I was there. This was not an unrealistic expectation given what I knew in January. I didn't know that I would be working from home with my kids at home.or be transitioning into a role that isn't conducive to the 45 to 60 minute (or longer) lunch breaks needed to get in a good workout. This was probably the fitness goal that I had the best chance of realizing if 2020 hadn't been 2020. Prioritizing workout time would have been required, but getting to the gym is much easier for me than getting out to run. 

A quick digression to remind myself of how these different goals compete with one another. I have forgotten what it feels like to get up a 5 to run. Going to the gym on Mondays after having gotten up at 5 after staying up late the night before was not always the easiest choice to make. The quality of my workout wasn't always the best on these days. Just getting in the lifting is better than nothing, but feeling like garbage while working out is not a recipe for success. Starting to see a pattern here...

I didn't read a Dickens work. They're hard books to get into. This is why I haven't read so many of the books I own. Little Dorritt is not a small book. Dickens always ends well, but you have to slog through a couple hundred pages to get that payoff. The last 200 pages of Bleak House are fantastic, but you have to make it through the many pages required to set up that payoff first. It's an effort. It also takes a long time. I could read two or three normal length books in the time it takes me to read one Dickens book. Realizing the Dickens goal will likely put me behind on a reading volume goal. All the time I spent reading about COVID (and playing Dr Mario) this year was time I was not spending on reading books. I got behind on my reading goal early after starting the year with two long books (Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky and the Wind Up Bird Chronicle) and I never caught back up. Well, I didn't realize that I set my resolution goal at 30 but my Goodreads goal at 40. I met the 30 goal but feel well short of the 40 book goal. I could have fit a Dickens book in, even with the COVID stuff. Dr Mario cost me this goal. Deleting that app from my phone was one of my best decisions of the year. 

I am giving myself credit for the Modern Library resolution. I wanted to read 4 of them. I'm an hour from finishing number 4. This is an interesting reading project as some of the books are big and difficult, looking at you Ulysses, but others are short reads that are actually very pleasant reading. Appointment at Samarra was fantastic. I'm very much enjoying Ragtime. I know that The Golden Bowl will be an effort. I want to read 5 of them this year. I have a few on my shelves so I can make progress on a couple of goals at once with this one. I need to keep that in mind as I make my reading selections this year. It's worth noting that I used the library to get Ragtime. The library is an interesting factor in my reading goals. It helps on volume as I can borrow titles that are fun, easy, and quick, but the time I spend reading library books is time that I'm not reading books I own. The time limit I have with library books also tends to give them priority. If I waited weeks for a book, I have to get after it regardless of where I am with some physical book I already own. The waiting list books always seem to show up right as I am just getting into a print book.

I did not get down to 215 pounds this year. Eating was a refuge amidst all the calamity of this year. I always set a weight loss goal and I rarely meet the goal. Losing weight requires not eating too much and avoiding junk food. That was a challenge this year. Eating lunch at home makes it easy to eat too much and not make good food choices. I tend not to gain weight. I just don't lose much either. Maybe this is the year I find a way to stay committed to healthy eating and consistent workouts. 

It looks like making good choices with how I use my time and prioritizing workouts and reading will be the secret to meeting my goals. Spend less time playing games, browsing social media, or other frivolous activities and focus on the things that really matter. A good way to make this happen will be to avoid getting too worn out. That requires getting to bed at a reasonable time on a consistent basis. And now we find the struggle that has been my life for pretty much the entire time that I've been living.  

Feelings, feelings, everywhere

The making of Frozen 2 docuseries on Disney+ has haunted me all week. The animators were so young. How did they get there? There are so many computer animation programs out there. Animation sounds cool but has to be extremely tedious. I was blown away by the size of the crew. The animators and other creatives seem so eager to please the directors. I never really thought of directors as big corporate bosses, but that's exactly what they are. What happens in the Disney Animation Studio has definite parallels to what I work on everyday, but people don't dress up like tubes of Chapstick or a bottle of Advil to meet me at a huge convention.

The centrality of emotions and relationships in crafting the movie was something I guess I knew but never really thought about. I didn't really think about this until I was trying to come up with ways to apply the emotional resonance of story to leading my team. Every person who touches Frozen 2 knows they are working on something that could become a critical part of their audience's life. Emotion is at the core of the story. Emotion gives people a way into Anna and Elsa's story. Every element of the movie is directed towards creating the emotional tone of the story. The colors, the performances, and the music. The movie is really built around the songs. (The big premiere of Hamilton on the same streaming service tomorrow is nothing but music creating a very deep emotional bond between the story and the audience.) The big soaring moments of Into the Unknown and Show Yourself meld with the stunning visuals and we feel it. We don't just watch it or hear it. It makes us feel. I guess that's why we go to the movies in the first place. We're just chasing that moment of feeling something bigger than what we get in our everyday life. (Probably why we listen to music too.) Emotions are the key component of the human operating system. Just look at the crazy things people have been willing to do because they are afraid of COVID 19! The emotion of the Nats run to the World Series was the heart of the thrill of that magical run. Some of the strongest emotions I've experienced are in big crowds simultaneously experiencing the high of intense musical moments (although the giant disco ball being lit up at the Pink Floyd concert undoubtedly had help from the contact high). 

That emotional resonance is missing from my professional life. Things would feel more meaningful and important if a few of those emotional moments could be found amidst all the details and endless bureaucracy. I really have no idea how to make that happen, but if I can find a few of those moments for my team and I, that would make life so much better for all of us. And it would help my family to clip into a few of those emotional moments as well. Definitely something to stay aware of...

14 weeks

14 weeks is 98 days. We're creeping up on 100 days of trying to keep COVID 19 under control. I find it strangely satisfying that the 100 day mark brings a bit of predictability to this situation. I've spent the last 14 weeks trying to guess what kind of decisions the various layers of government are going to make, when businesses are going to open, and when we might get back to some sense of normalcy (I refuse to accept this notion of the new normal). I've been frustrated when logic and reason were subsumed by what I thought was fear but soon realized was politics. I've watched the Virus Eradication religion grow and evangelize the sacrament of the mask. We're finished with rapidly evolving response to the virus. We've basically ended up where I thought we should be right from the beginning of this thing. We're going to try to live with it. 

Most businesses are open. Entertainment and diversions are still largely not happening. I've eaten in a restaurant again. I've been back to the gym (although it's much harder to get there when I'm working at home). We're using online grocery shopping more to avoid wearing a mask while shopping. There is still no baseball. Disney is planning on opening, but the magic will not be coming back when the gates reopen. I don't expect much to change for the rest of the year. People bemoan the spike in cases, but the numbers are still extremely small in context of the population. The numbers aren't telling, at least not yet. We're about to get into the really interesting part of this whole social experiment. 

The media analysis of case counts starts and ends with the number. The bigger the number, the more dramatic the headline. All kinds of guesses and opinions from people who have credentials that make them an acceptable expert usually follow the dramatic headline. The state was opened too soon. There isn't enough testing. The hospitals are going to get overrun soon. The worst is yet to come. When do they really dig into the numbers? The details of the cases that make up that big number matter far more than the number itself. Bad outcomes are not randomly distributed over the people who get infected. Unhealthy people suffer while the stronger survive. What will be the outcome of these spikes in cases? Hospitalizations are creeping up. Does that mean a wave of deaths is coming? We'll see soon. 

A wave of deaths or a flood of recoveries won't change how governments are going to respond to the virus. Lockdowns are no longer a viable option. This is why things will be stable. We are getting a sustainable level of economic activity amidst just enough preventative measures that the people in charge can claim to be doing something. The opening of Disney World illustrates this effort to balance making money with appearing to be doing something about the virus. Masks, distancing, reduced capacity, lots and lots of cleaning is being used to show just how much Disney cares about guests and cast members. Attendance is going to be terrible. People aren't going to be happy. That's not what matters. They can generate some revenue and point to all the ways they care (even if those efforts are not exactly effective at mitigating the spread of the virus). We'll continue inching through this terrible state until a treatment or vaccine gives them (and everybody else) cover to finally open and run the business in a way that will actually earn a profit. 

Nobody is happy with this arrangement. The deadly virus crowd feels like we aren't doing enough to stop the virus while the what's the big deal crowd complains that all these measures are just for show and don't need to be applied so widely. I would love to be fine with the masks so i could go about my life with a mild inconvenience on my face, but I just can't get on board with the mask. They are unnecessary. It's ironic that I'm going out less now that things are more open. I was fine going about my business, but now that I have to wear a mask to go into stores I would rather just stay home. I've accepted that things are going to be wonky for awhile. I don't like it, but I'm relieved to see that we're finally starting to let the virus run its course so we can just get on with our life. 

Data illiteracy

I never read the news reports about what the virus is doing in my home state. I just look at the data that is posted online and form my own conclusions. I occasionally see something about how the cases are still rising and that there is some kind of spike, but I just dismiss that as yet another attempt to manipulate people to have the desire response. The levels of infection are basically sitting at a pretty consistent level while testing goes up and hospitalizations and death are in a steady decline. 

It's ultimately the hospitalizations and deaths that really matter. The virus will continue to spread. This is something people just need to accept. It's not going to stop spreading anytime soon. We're not talking about huge numbers of people here. A thousand cases a day sounds like a lot, but it's not that many when you're talking about a population of millions. 

Sure there are places where the virus never really gained a foothold and kind of petered out. New Zealand is an example. The prime minister is getting all the praise, but she got a huge boost from the fact that she leads a sparsely populated island nation. The population of New Zealand is very close to Colorado's. The largest city only has a bit of a million people. Iceland gets praised for beating the virus. It's also a sparsely populated island with very little population density. Other places that haven't had much of the virus were probably more lucky than effective managers of pandemics. And most of them will not be able to let people from outside their geographically isolated lands visit without having to pass through quarantine first. It's hard to take a vacation in Hawaii when you have to spend two weeks in quarantine before you can actually visit the island.

The people who claim to have all the answers and know the right answer to all the questions really know nothing. You can't do some math and have all the answers. You have to take reality and what's actually happening into account. Sure, stopping your little bits from interacting will stop the virus from spreading, but real people don't perfectly adhere to the instructions of computer code. We don't know if we're early in the cycle or late. We don't know if there will be a second wave. The way talk of the second wave has shifted shows that people just don't know. The early talk was that the second wave would be even deadlier than the first wave. We know which people are most vulnerable to this virus. We could have a huge second wave of infections with virtually no mortality if we just did a better job of protecting the nursing homes. The riots may trigger a spread of the virus, but it's not likely to trigger a wave of deaths (as long as the protesters stay away from their grandparents). 

There is so much effort on keeping the public in line, there aren't many people talking about ways we could mitigate the effects of the virus without treating everybody like their sick. That may be the best way to prevent the spread of the virus, but doing out best to stop the spread of the virus is not the best tactic at this point. The only way out is through.