Is Fear the Master?

Do I expect perfection? I know that I acknowledge the unattainability of perfection, but I seem to have a way of chiding myself for not doing things that I should have done but maybe just did not realize that I should have done. I don't envision failure. Is this a lack of imagination or the refusal to acknowledge that failure is a possibility. Is looking for ways that things might go wrong (and acting to prevent them) a refusal on my part to acknowledge the possibility of failure. I have lamented my fundamental passivity numerous times in these electronic pages, but is my passivity a desire to not act or a reluctance to confront and contend with failure? I tell myself I won't fail so I never really think about what could go wrong if things don't go just right. 

A whole series of professional failures have come from not seeing how things could turn out badly and take action to prevent that bad outcome. I have to kind of wonder if my entire mindset and orientation towards life isn't a reflection of my fear. Some people are angry. I'm just afraid. Fear of ridicule. Fear of failure. Fear of being exposed as something less than I've always thought of myself. Bad things happen at work and I get scared of what could happen next. I'm not mad that it happened. I'm not working through a way to recover from the situation. I'm scared of what could happen next. I avoid situations that might make me feel uncomfortable because I'm scared. 

Is that the summation of all the things I've written here (and all the other things that I've written but never published, all the notebooks that I filled when paper was the main way to do these kinds of things). I'm scared. Fear is the unmanliest of emotions. Fear is weakness. Well, the refusal to act when you're scared (or to acknowledge and confront the things that scare you). Is the undercurrent of uncertainty and anxiety that I"ve been feeling for the last three years unacknowledged fear? 

I started this by wondering if I expect perfection. I had to stop reading Tom Clancy books because I was getting annoyed by the excessive competency of the characters. They always know the right thing. They fully assess the situation and see exactly what is happening. Navigating ambiguity and uncertainty is a cinch. Hard decisions are made easy and every sign of something that isn't quite right is easily recognized. LIfe isn't that easy. I guess it can be pleasant to envelope yourself in that fantasy. Read the book and participate in that masterful execution of an impossible plan. It feels good to be the winner. 

This is probably all bullshit. I just have bad mindset habits. I fall into easy and familiar ways of handling problems. Those patterns could have been set by my desire to avoid fearful situations (and a strong reluctance to push beyond that fear to engage in activities that make me uncomfortable). Part of why I write things like this is an effort to figure out why I'm not more like the vision of myself that I have in my head. That vision is not afraid. That vision does what makes him uncomfortable rather than taking the easy way out and avoiding the situation. It's not a fear of my physical safety. It's emotional and identity threats that I fear. 

This is a theme to explore, but I really need to get some sleep. 

Marathon #4


I could pretty much cut and paste what I wrote after last year's WDW Marathon and have that be this post. Undertrained, not prepared, didn't put in the miles needed for the distance. All those points are still true. I'm not trying to run 1000 miles this year though. That could be a real difference maker. Let's explore.

I started 2022 focusing on distance. Miles were my primary target. Nothing about pace, form, effort level came with that goal. Just run 5 miles on Tuesday, 5 miles on Thursday, and 10 miles on Saturday and I will achieve that goal. I followed that pattern the third week of January. I had the marathon the first week and was recovering from the marathon effort the second week. I was in Richmond the fourth week of the month so no long run on Saturday. I managed one week with that pattern in February. Another Richmond trip and I started to cut the runs shorter. I got up too late one Tuesday which forced me to go longer on Thursday. I got up too late on Saturday so it was too hot for 10 miles by the time I got out the door. I was tired. Who knows why I started cutting the runs short. I just did.

This plan to get back to running faster (as laid out in my Marathon #3 post) overlooked a couple of very important factors. I essentially extended marathon training. I gave myself 1 week to recover physically, but I never really put down that obligation to go out and get in a bunch of miles. I had already felt like I failed in sticking to my marathon plan. Now I was pretty much failing on a new plan right from the outset. If I had just stopped to take a look at what I was going to be doing over the next several months, I would have seen that long weekend runs, the linchpin of this whole distance plan, weren't going to happen at least one weekend a month. The plan failed for oversight of some pretty obvious facts.

So the 1000 miles in a year plan failed because I put pressure on myself for volume and failed to plan for important life events. If I wanted to get faster, why didn't I plan for some short runs that would allow me to work on speed? My previous marathon training cycle started with prepping for a 10K in the spring. I shifted away from long runs to shorter, faster runs. That set my level for easy runs at a faster pace when I started marathon training. Instead I just found ways to keep myself slow (relative to previous running paces). I always felt pressure to get in the miles.

Until looking just now, I did not realize how little I ran after April. I basically didn't run at all from May to August. It wasn't until I started ramping up my Saturday runs to 10 miles that I was regularly running on the weekend. Wow. I made the joke that I was finally in shape to do my marathon plan about three quarters of the way through it. That was the truth!

Moral of the story. Give myself the space to do shorter, faster runs early in the year. Stay consistent through the year, and actually be ready for marathon training in mid-September.

Complicated and Complex

The existential problem of Book Shelf Zero is that I think I'm setting up a series of wins, but all I'm really doing is frustrating myself by constantly failing to achieve my longer goals. I'm not sure the outcome is worth the stress. I mostly feel bad about not reading the books I own while buying new books. I may get a few small bursts of glee when I finish a book, but those minor moments get washed out by the constant thrum of failure. Not achieving what I really want is a big problem when it takes me 3 months to read one book. I expect that for something like War and Peace or something similarly gargantuan, but this was The Once and Future King. That book was dense in just about every way possible. The content required effort, the margins were very small, and there were long descriptive passages with very little dialogue. It was a 600 page book that felt like 1000. Definitely worth reading, but it was such a chore. I'm not sure I want to repeat this cycle 170 (at current count) more times.

It wasn't all the book's fault though. The reading timing was bad. I should have had a single New Year's Resolution, get the family settled in Florida. That's what really matters right now. The Once and Future King took 3 months to read because I started reading it right before the push to get my family down here. Weekend trips to Richmond, getting my daughter settled, having my family with me in the house again, these are all things that were far more important than reading. My reading/fitness system works best when my life is calm and predictable. I haven't had a calm and predictable life for two years. I'm gradually getting back to that space. I have to make an effort to get back into regular reading and working out. Sliding into passive living is so tempting. A few videos is so much easier than a handful of pages of whatever book I'm reading at the moment. Well, that kind of depends on the book. I'm reading The Promise at the moment. It's part of my Booker Prize project. Excellent book. This one is complex without being complicated (The Once and Future King was complicated without being complex). I was just going to read a few pages of a new chapter last night. I ended up forcing myself to put the book away so I could get to bed. That reading is fun. That's why I read. Reading to cross a book off a list is a real drag (I guess it's like reading a book for school).

The existential problem is that I set up these goals that just stress me out rather than making my life better. It's the same with my fitness goals and career. It's about wanting to be someplace that I'm not and feeling stress that I'm not there. It just throws a blanket of stress over everything. I end up always feeling like a failure. There must be a better way to live. 

Reading hasn't been a top priority for a few months

I've been reading the same book for 3 months. 3 months! I'd like to finish it tomorrow but I doubt that will happen with the morning walk, watching stuff with Maggie, football, and other stuff around the house. It will be done in the next few days. The Once and Future King will be crossed off a couple of lists. No regrets reading it. I'm not sure if the long reading time is more about me or the book. I'm not particularly enamored with the book, but it's well written with a legendary story and characters. The fault must be mine. I'm going to pass that blame off to the circumstances of my life. I started reading this book right before the family joined me down here in Florida. I was unpacking boxes, getting the house ready, and carrying on everything else that I've had going on. We got back together in July. It's been all kinds of work. COVID took a couple of weeks away too. Yeah, reading hasn't been a top priority for a few months. 

Add running to that list. And eating well. And lifting weights. Rowing. My various side quests that are really my main quests have been sidelined by responsible adult stuff. Work isn't the warm peaceful water that I swam in 10 years ago. I don't have all this extra energy to channel into side projects. Important life things are much more demanding. That's not to say I will abandon or neglect these other things. No, those other things are a key element of my mental health. I need them to operate and maintain a sense of myself. I just need to get more creative with fitting them into the space allowed by a more challenging job and other elements of my Florida life. 

Getting out from under The Once and Future King will be a big step to reclaiming my reading life. I just don't relish picking up this book. It's not a book I crave getting back to once I'm done with my life stuff. The wife goes to sleep and I turn to my phone or the TV. I've been reading a few pages as much I can to just get through it. The next few books I read need to be books that I want to read. Nothing too heavy or demanding for the next few weeks. They don't have to be frivolous. They just have to be something that I want to read. My emotional and mental energy is too tapped in the evening to read something that takes effort. Short books won't hurt. Long books, no matter how pleasant, are their own challenge.

I've embraced walking during my marathon training runs. That's how I run a marathon anyway. I might as well train that way. Pounding away with my pulse up at 170 isn't going to get me ready for the long distances. Doing 10 miles of a 12 mile run isn't getting it done. Better to take small breaks and finish the entire distance than cut runs short. I will use my shorter runs to not walk. No issue including some walking periods while I'm out for 10 or 12 miles. The walk I added to the end of today's run is another nice touch. My heart rate was already elevated. Might as well take advantage of that work and stretch it out a bit. Extra time on my feet won't hurt either. 

Still impressive at 30 years?

Weird confluence of some random events put me in a very nostalgic frame of mind. I dug The Nineties out of my nightstand last night. I bought it back in March and kind of forgot about it. I started reading it last night. My entire high school and college experience are contained in The Nineties. Big things happened in that decade. My senior football season still resonates strongly almost 30 years later. One of my teammates posted an edited version of a playoff game against a rival to YouTube. I watched that tonight. We were good. I'm pretty sure that we would have won the region if the field hadn't been a muddy mess. Football highlights were a big part of the video yearbook that the same guy has on YouTube. I'm in that a couple of times. A random joke in a weight training class is the only time I show up without wearing football equipment. 

The game was played in November of 1993. I was 17. I turned 46 last week. I'm far enough away from that experience that I can appreciate how special those few months were without feeling too pathetic for harkening back to my high school glory days. The Washington Post story about that game notes that we were the only team to score against that other team. I had the chance to be part of something special. Plenty of people never have that chance. That season is certainly the highlight of my time in high school. I didn't have a girlfriend. All the excitement that comes from that experience came when I was in college. I had a mediocre social life. I was obsessed with getting to college. I wasn't very complex (not that many high schoolers are particularly complex). 

It's startling how quickly my mindset reverts when I reenter that time of my life. I wonder what all those people I went to school with would judge the life I've built. These are people that I brushed life with for a couple of years. I only went to that high school for two years. The opinion those people have of me have absolutely no bearing on my life, but I wonder how my achievements would stand up to the other people in my class. Wny is this where my thinking automatically goes when I mentally go back to that time of my life? We're all out here trying to do the best we can. I know the outcomes of a few people from that football team. One is a pilot for Southwest after being in the Navy. Another is a teacher and coach at a high school not far from my Virginia house. I was the right tackle. The left tackle passed away several years ago. The guy who played guard next to me recently retired from the Army. He was a green beret. Our quarterback was a coach for a while. I think he's an administrator now. He got divorced and has remarried. 

I guess that shift to the old comparison mindset is about the fantasies I had about my future back in those days. I just wanted to be impressive. I didn't think much of myself so I was looking to add ornaments to make myself look better. That's why I played football. Being on the football team carried a social load that I would have struggled with had I just been another face in the crowd. I was looking forward to other things that would have added to my prestige. I stepped out of the prestige game to live in a pleasant climate. That's assuming I was in the prestige game to begin with. The truth that a high school student fails to see is that most people don't give two shits about prestige games. Once you're out of the fish bowl of a 1990s era high school, prestigious accomplishments have limited meaning outside of a subset of people playing the same game. Tell another chemist that you have a paper is JACS, they may have an idea of what that means. Tell somebody about that at a high school reunion, you'll get a blank stare. 

So unless you're famous, most people won't be impressed by what you're doing unless they're in the same game. We don't have games under the lights on Friday nights where people can see you out there doing your thing. Even then they're probably just watching Damon Boone cut through the defense. Nobody gives a shit about what you're doing unless it helps them feel better about their life. Eventually it just becomes a question of who is still around to attend the reunion. Eventually, nobody can show up.

Get Serious

I've been wondering if it's time to get serious about my fitness and reading. Yes, this is something I've been saying for years, but pushing things into the future is less and less of an option for me. I have a birthday coming up next week. That's always a good time to reset some visions. So what does getting serious look like?

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Really prepare for a marathon. I've registered for the WDW Marathon in January. I was significantly undertrained for the same marathon this year. I'm not so worried about my time. The DIsney race isn't about time. I just want to do all the training runs and get the distance. I've tried adopting the run easier approach in my runs this week. I'd like to build up some aerobic capacity and be ready for the 15+ mile training runs that are part of the plan I've followed for my first 3 marathons. Longer runs take time. I will need to get up early, which will require going to bed on Friday night. If I'm going to run a marathon, I might as well go in all the way, right? Cross training (mostly rowing) and a better commitment to lower body and core strength would be part of this as well.

Finally read books I've been saying I'm going to read. My commitment to my Bookshelf Zero project is wavering, but there are plenty of books that I'm still looking to read. My wife left her copy of War and Peace here. I would be happy to give up all my volume goals to finally read that. There are plenty of other worthy selections. I haven't used my time alone to read much (my pace is pretty consistent with how much I read when I'm not living alone). Is it time to stop messing around with random books to read something really significant?

Safe Zone

I was all set to write a post about my crisis of confidence (like this is some kind of novel insight into my state of mind). Of course I've written a post with just that title. July 18,2014. Guess I've been dealing with some issues for longer than I realized. My 2014 crisis was rooted in my uncertainty in a new role (that sounds familiar) and a frustration with my commitment to fitness (where have I heard that before?). I speculated on the lack of ego fuel in 2014. No more classes, no more LSAT prep, no more lab experiments.These self selected rite of passages provided a sustained beat of achievements that I relied on for valuation and assurance that I was worthy. Look what I did! I did this too! Here's another one! 

I haven't found a replacement for those challenges. I could change a few details to match my current situation and that post would basically be what I planned on writing tonight. I'm almost 46 (yes, I have not updated my age in my little bio box for several years) and I'm still trying to move beyond the coping mechanisms that I developed when I was a teenager. Not that this is in any way an unusual state. I would guess the vast majority of people keep repeating the same pattern for their entire life. There is a strong pattern of doing very little to put myself at risk in all of my various ego boosting efforts. I'm not one to choose a course of action that would jeopardize my self-image. It's easy for me to look back on how certain girls treated me when I was a teenager and recognize that I was being invited to make a move. Making a move was way too big of a risk in that particular moment. Rejection was way too risky. The risks of failure greatly exceeded potential benefits from taking some chances. 

Rejection is always way too risky. Failure must be avoided at all costs. I repeat the pattern of taking on efforts with enough challenge that I can derive a sense of doing something worthy but with very little downside (as defined by my complicated mental scoreboard). I can take a pretty good measure of what is hard enough to take some work but is still well within my abilities (have to stay in that safe zone). The consequences of (highly unlikely) failure must also be fully assessed. Nothing really bad can happen if things don't turn out as expected. 

I'm struggling to describe the thought process (well, feeling process is more accurate) in the abstract. Let's look at various career choices I made in the five years or so after grad school. It is very clear that the path to positions on influence flowed through the formulation track. If I had been serious about getting into a more influential position I would have switched over as soon as possible. I would have worked harder to endear myself to my superiors and demonstrate that I shared their concerns and would protect their interests. I would have played the game. That's not what I did. I wasn't honest with myself and told myself I wanted more responsibility while doing all that I could to avoid it while trying to convince myself that I was doing what I could to get there. My ego wanted me to be important, but I didn't really want to be important. I wanted to be competent and respected, but I didn't want to give up what I liked or sacrifice my life for a company (well, other managers really but let's just say the company). I wanted what was safe, higher paying role, while failing to acknowledge that I really just wanted to make a contribution and learn something new and interesting.