If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.

Andrew Carnegie

I wonder if one out of three ain’t bad.

I’m bound up, twisted, a Gordian knot of self-imposed burdens. I want to free myself, burst out and up in a delirious, unfettered, unselfconscious explosion of positive emotion, but I can’t. I want to jump on my horse and ride breathless through the long night, lantern in hand, yelling “The British are coming!” to one and all. I want to ride a barrel over Niagara Falls and emerge wet and laughing and yell “let’s do that AGAIN!”

I want to smile. Holding back my smile makes me sad.

Forgetfulness occasionally looks enticing. Take the blue pill; jump into the time machine; pay a visit to Lacuna. But that’s a dodge and I know it. And besides, there are silver linings all around if I were but to raise my gaze.  Tomorrow the stars could fall out of the sky, circle round my head, and bathe my soul in radiance.  I’m not feeling it, not now (ok, not at all), but it could happen.

You never know who or what will walk through that door.

Of course, it works both ways – stuff can happen that puts you at a further remove from your goals.  Soldier on? Double down?  Abandon hope?  So many things to consider.

One positive thing I’m doing is exercising.  I’ve been on a little mini-streak lately, and I’m going to explicitly go for 30 days in a row.  If that goes well, I may consider a repeat of last summer and go for 100.  Exercise – exhausting, angst-burning, mind-numbing exercise – is good for me, in so many ways.  Getting healthy and fit and trim doesn’t have a lot of downside, save for the time involved, which – let’s face it – can always be found.

So look for me on a road, running, looking up at the stars and wondering when they’ll descend and shine.

I have ten minutes but I’ve really been jonesing to write blog posts lately so I thought I’d crank out enough to scratch the itch while simultaneously serving up enough delightful information to keep you, my reader, coming back for more.

Random thought: does everyone have what it takes to be an analyst?  Technical, business, or otherwise?  I say no.  I say that analysis is a skill, a talent, just like ice skating or writing software or making cappuccinos, and not everyone has what it takes.  Can it be taught to anyone of quote-unquote reasonable intelligence?  Not sure.  I know, and have known, a couple great analysts, and I’ve also known some poor analysts.  My opinion is that the good analysts were smarter than the poor analysts, but I don’t know that there’s a strong correlation.  And in fact, I’ve known some brilliant programmers who were piss-poor analysts.  So I guess, in sum, within the confines of this poorly-researched and hastily-written blog post, I’d have to say that no, not everyone can become a good analyst.  Ergo, leave the analysis to the analysts.  In my humble opinion, of course.

As I wrote the word “humble” a hundred former coworkers gave an involuntary shudder, as if a ghost had crossed their path.

My stomach is feeling much better today.  Not perfect, but not enough to keep me from (a) going to the gym to lift weights and (b) playing in tonight’s company soccer match.  New location: Arena Sports Magnuson – we’re not in South Seattle tonight.  Maybe that means our luck will change and we’ll actually win one!  (one can hope).

What else?  Lots to say, not many ways to say it.  Therefore I’ll shut the hell up.  I’m doing relatively well at sticking to my resolutions, diet, exercise, and other, and have not much inclination to veer from the path, because it’s working OK for me.  And I’m still frustratingly coming to terms with how to deal with my slowness in getting past some recent comments that have wound their way around my ear canal like that super-bug from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  Still working on it.  Exercise + Work + Busy = Distraction.

My ass is feeling better.  That’s always a plus.  The biking thing really didn’t effect me in terms of soreness nearly as much as I thought.  I might commute one day this week to start to get back into that particular rhythm.  I need to bring my laptop most mornings, so we’ll see how the practical logistics work out.

My personal organization scheme I dreamed up a couple weeks ago is still paying dividends.  Hat tip to @marinamartin for the inspiration.  Every time I have to put a goddamned red sticky on the sheet I shake a fist at myself.  Good immediate feedback.  Sort of like the mouse with the buzzer that gets the cheese, except in reverse.

Gotta run!  Hope you’re having a good day.

I’m writing this as I sit at Serendipity, so it seemed like a good title for a blog post.  Sometimes I don’t put a title on a blog post until after I’ve written it; tonight, however, I just intend to ramble a little bit, so “Serendipity” seemed like a good jumping off point.

First off, little about my last week has been serendipitous, except (possibly) in deep retrospect.  I’ve been chugging along at work, on projects, and getting out a few evenings a week for meetups and other events, but mostly have been trying to put the brakes on a sort of submerged moodiness, a navel-gazing introspection that doesn’t do me any good.   Funny how life works sometimes.  There’s a big difference between being surprised about something we see in ourselves vs. recognizing something that was already there all along.

Having said that, it hasn’t been a bad week – far from it.  For example, I put in place an organizational/reminder system that is helping me stay focused on some specific short-term goals I have, and it’s worked wonders.  The system is tactile and visual and I see it every day at work and it keeps me on track when I’m tempted to run off the rails.

I’ve been very good with my exercise and diet program, after experiencing a road bump that started a few weeks ago and lasted a week or ten days.  I’m working out five or six days a week and being VERY good about what I eat, and it’s showing.  I hope to hit a huge milestone in the next week – a weight that I haven’t held since 1992.  I’m pretty sure I can do it without much in the way of superhuman effort.  However, if it takes a superhuman effort, I’m going to give it

As far as fitness goes, yesterday I ran the 6 mile loop around Lake Union, and am running a 5K on February 13th, so that means I need to get back on the hard intervals in the next couple weeks.  Tomorrow (I think – maybe Sunday) I’m going to do a 50-miler on the bike.  Not sure where I’m going, but part of the fun is the – well, serendipity – of not having a set destination when you start out and discovering fun things along the way.  The last 50+ I did, the weather was terrible, but I had tons of fun despite (or because of) that.  The weather tomorrow looks decent.

Funny story – I was almost done with my run yesterday when a group of four young runners passes me and the last guy yells “You have the biggest calves I’ve ever seen!” I laughed.  I do have big,muscular calves. What’s weird?  I went for a walk today with a friend from work and saw the EXACT SAME GUY running with the EXACT SAME GROUP.  Eerie.

This week I registered for the Big Climb for Leukemia and Lymphoma, which is like a 1,000,000 stair climb up the Columbia Center, and if you are feeling generous and care to donate to a worthy cause, you can do so at my donations page.  I’d better bust my ass in February up the Blaine Street staircase on Capitol Hill if I’m going to beat my age-group placing from last November’s climb at the WAMU tower.

I’ve been distracted from writing lately – at least anything more than simple coming-attraction posts – and that’s something I DO worry about.  In the past, I’ve sort of let it all hang out on the blog, but not only do I feel a little subconsciously constrained here, but I have what I might describe as writer’s block on a couple important pieces I have committed to write.  I’m convinced that the one feeds the other.  When you pull the reins on one horse, the other horses slow down.  I don’t like it.  I like to live life fully, freely, unconstrained, not too worried about convention or appearances or fashionableness or propriety.  It’s all just ME, and I’m a good, caring, authentic person and want to express myself as such.  So I’m a bit stumped, tending to glumness about this whole writing thing.  I have to break through and get back to where I was before, because writing and expressing myself is one of the things in this world that gives me pure joy and doesn’t depend on anybody else.

Now I look back and see the novel I’ve written tonight and think that perhaps this longish post is already a start in the right direction.

So I get to the gym tonight at 6:49, just in time to hear over the intercom: “Mieko’s will be closing in 10 minutes.  Thank you.”  WHAT?  I thought they stayed open until 8 PM on Saturdays.  My bad.  You’ve never seen a guy working out faster than me between 6:50 and 7:00 PM.  I did 9 total sets, very intense, but with good form,and actually felt like I got my money’s worth.

The good thing is I learned that I can work out faster and more intensely in my quote-unquote normal workouts.  This can only mean good things for my fitness.

Having said that, next time I’ll get there at 6:30

Last night I went to the gym and abused myself.  It may have been the most intense weight workout I’ve done in 15 years.  I really pummeled myself – endless intense sets with heavy weights, no rest, pushing myself to the max.

I worked out a lot of stress, anger, rage, disappointment, and frustration.  A good workout just grabs all of that out of you and throws it on the floor, for you to grind into the carpet with a 200-lb barbell across your shoulders.

Good news: I benched my bodyweight for 6 reps – a new (recent) PR for me, and worked my abs so hard that I’m really *really* sore (in a good way) this morning.  Sometimes abs are tough to target, but I was a  maniac last night.

Today?  Running after work.  I have a race in mind in a few weeks, another 5K, so I need to start the intervals.  The race is called the Valentines Day Dash and is held at Greenlake the morning of February 13th.  It’s nice to have a goal coming up to focus my training.  I want to hit 25:00 for this one.  I WILL hit 25:00 for this one.

Little-known fact about me: I like making up words.  “Postmortemistically” has a nice ring to it, don’tcha think?  I’m not sure what it means, but it combines elements of both bad (“mortem”) and good (“-istically”).  Yin and yang.  I found out that I was “the yang” the other day.  Yang is the “sunny place”, which fits my personality.  I’ll try to find something positive in the worst of situations.  The fun thing is, this happens both consciously and unconsciously.

This week? A mixed bag.  168 hours ago I was bemoaning my circumstances, but a week goes by and – despite the addition of a whole heap of new problems, it’s also been a very good week in other ways.  Obscure ways.  Subtle ways.  If I was less of an optimist, I might call it El Week-o of El Crap-o but I’m just not wired that way.  No, I do not speak Spanish.  Very well.

Two great things happened this week.  Both have to do with people, of course.  Yeah, I like people.  Tuesday I met with a couple very neat people from GlobalMojo and talked social entrepreneurship.  Today I met with a guy I’ve wanted to meet in person for a long time, Ray Page, who’s been a tweep of mine for a while.  Both were wonderful meetings spent talking with smart, positive, talented, and engaged human beings.  That’s where it’s at for me.  People.  A big shout-out to Wes Maldonado, by the way, who is perhaps the world’s greatest listener (beating even me, and I think I’m pretty good!)

Oh, and I also registered for the Agile Open Northwest conference held next month at the Seattle Center.  I went last year to Portland and brought back some great memories.  I’m looking forward to attending parts of this conference, but I’ll be splitting time with my team so I won’t be able to attend all the sessions.

Finally, had a couple great workouts this week.  Yesterday I ran six miles around Lake Union at lunchtime, at a decent clip.  This is the longest run I’ve done in six years.  My fitness quest continues.  I’ve had to work on my diet recently – emotional eating is taking its toll – but I’m getting strong and my endurance is increasing.

Bad news this week?  Haiti, of course.  Relative to just about everyone in Haiti, my life is a frosty lip-smacking cupcake.  I also found out that some specific fears and anxieties that I had were also felt (for different reasons) by somebody close to me – which gave me a lot of perspective and made me realize that this pretend box I sometimes imagine myself in really is just ephemeral, and that the connections I have with family, friends, and acquaintances all come into play at some level all the time and that there is no such thing as true isolation.

More later.  Hope you’re having a good night.

I had a good weekend on the fitness front – I ran 6 miles Friday night and followed that up with an intense weight workout today – and am hoping to get a couple more runs in before next weekend’s Jingle Bell Run.  Since I stopped working out every day, my weight has hit a plateau, but I continue to lose a little fat and gain a little muscle mass.  People continue to comment occasionally on how fit I’m getting, which keeps the virtuous cycle going.  I’m thinking seriously about doing another 100-day challenge, but with this frosty weather my determination quails a little.  It’s COLD out there.  Can I exercise every day when some days I’ll be forced to be indoors?  I don’t know.  I’ll continue to think about it.

Spent some time on Craigslist today, randomly, which I haven’t done in a while.  It continues to surprise me how popular Craigslist is despite (or because of?) their funky interface.  Posting is dead-simple.  Searching?  Eh, not so great.  It’s still a great service.

Went with the kids to church this morning, where we lit a candle on the Advent wreath in front of a few hundred parishioners.  St. Nicholas made an appearance at the end, giving away cookies and simple Christmas ornaments to the kids.  I’m really looking forward to Will’s baptism in January.  He’s jealous that Audrey gets the bread during communion, as she was baptized last month while Will was home with the flu.

Did a bit of work this weekend, but not too much – I’m still sleeping a TON and getting sort of frustrated at my inability to get out of bed in the mornings.  Have to wait it out, as I’m fighting off something or just need extra sleep for whatever reason.

Looking ahead to 2010 and unsure what the future holds.  Need to do some planning for Crowdify, as I really want to get some momentum behind that service, but I also have some other projects that may pan out as well.  It’s a Black Angus buffet of opportunity, but which ring(s) will I be able to grab as they swing by?  Preparation, plus opportunity, plus luck, makes the circumstance.

“All I want for Christmas is….” Fill in the blank.  What would you write there?

Lots of confusion out there over the exact meaning of the adjective “black” in the phrase “Black Friday” – some take it to mean dark, angry, depressing, as in the supposed mood of thousands of foul-tempered shoppers, fighting over the last Oakland Raiders XL fleece jacket at the Crenshaw Wal-Mart.  In  actuality it means “profitable”, as in the phrase “in the black”, so it’s intended to carry good connotations.

Yet another example of language that can suggest different things to different people, which I need to keep in mind for Crowdify.  I may have to write a blog post about this on my Crowdify blog, which would mean I would need to get that blog working again after many months of disuse.  Which would mean I’d need to dust off my Perl/MYSQL skills (shakes fist at WordPress).  Which would mean I’d need to find the motivation…endless backwards branching from the leaf, to the twig, to the branch, to the trunk, to the root, to the earth itself.  Is nothing easy anymore?

Tomorrow I race in my first 5K in many years.  To prepare, I slept 11 hours.  Well, let’s just say that was the excuse.   I had briefly considered going to the gym this morning for a light workout but, hm, felt disinclined to do so for a variety of reasons.  Instead I stayed in bed a while longer and let my mind race over everything I have coming up, which is a lot – and yet also a just a little, when you tilt your head and look at it in just the right way.  Which way to perceive it?  That, my friends, is the endless struggle.  How to look at our lives and decide how to interpret circumstances.

I’ve been reading Martin Heidegger recently, and on the one hand it’s nice to get lost in philosophy, but on the other hand he’s a real bear, syntactically speaking.  The book is “Poetry, Language, Thought” (he disdains the and that one might reasonably put in the title) and it has some gems about truth and beauty and origin and connectedness, so I’ll keep reading.  I may pick up an old book I have called “The Enlightenment Reader” next, which I first read years ago, but which is probably due for a re-read.

What else?  Saw a request put out for volunteers to do a stair-climb challenge next week and offered up my name.  That sounds fun, and I can climb stairs better than anyone else my size I know so we’ll see.  It may be too late – the team may be full – and it looks like I may not know until Monday, what with all the people taking the day off today.

Overtly and consciously preoccupied with keeping busy today.  Started early with some work from Herkimer Coffee in the U-District, followed by a coffee meetup with someone with whom I run in the same circles online, but who I had never met in person.  Hello William Carleton, Esq.!  Great to finally get to know you IRL and trade blogging tips and tricks.  If you are a startup junky like me, you’ll enjoy Bill’s stuff at http://www.wac6.com/, and he’s syndicated on Seattle 2.0 and BigStartups as well (and a couple other places too, I think).  Nice guy.  Good writer.  Good at his job.  All in all, a great guy to get to know.

Next: a phone call re: side project, which is in that last-minute get-some-stuff-out-the-door phase – a normal coordination/tension/communication funhouse, nothing unusual.  It’s actually sort of fun to work in a completely virtual environment now and then.

Keeping busy…

Appointments, the second of which was with my new eye doctor, who looks and acts sort of like a cross between John Goodman and … another actor whose face and voice I can totally envision, but whose name (and roles) escape me for the moment.  He tells me I have a scar on each cornea.  I’m thinking to myself as he tells me this, “In the grand scheme of things, given everything that’s going on right now, a scar on my cornea is really about as insignificant as a grain of sand in the desert.”  But I suppose I should take his advice and swap out my contacts more often.  I go back in a few weeks for a fitting.

Picked up a check, which is always nice, especially considering the source.  Deposited it.  Thought like a VC and wished it were for 10X.

Went to the gym and busted my ass on the treadmill.  This is my last hard workout before this weekend’s 5K, and I ran HARD.  I did intervals, and ran as fast on the treadmill as I think I ever have. To put this in context, though, consider I didn’t start running on treadmills until after college.  I think I could pull a 6:30 or 7-minute mile right now, but for the 5K I’m shooting for a 9 minute per mile pace.  If I get that, I’ll be happy.  It’s a baseline, and the point is to get a time under my belt that I can improve upon.  I’m already thinking about signing up for the Jingle Bell Run next month.

Got blown off for a conference call with a new business acquaintance, which almost never happens anymore.  I think this is because your reputation for things like reliability, promptness, follow-through are all so exposed in this new online era.  Perhaps this person got hit by a bus.  I don’t know.  For the record: I hope he didn’t get hit by a bus.  I’m just saying it was strange.

Back to Starbucks to work (keeping busy!) and to blog a bit, and consider an upcoming change of venue on Friday that is being imposed/offered/granted/thrust upon me.  It is what it is, and I am going to try to take the attitude of making lemonade out of it, despite all sorts of complicated feelings I have about the subject.  What can one do, but do one’s best?  Exactly.

Friday I’m back to work at my normal job, and it should be a fairly relaxed day.  I know my team has kept things humming along during my absence this week.

This weekend will be a period of huge adjustment for me and I hope to get through it mostly whole and mostly unscathed and mostly happy.  Of course by Sunday I’ll have written six additional blog posts.  Speaking of blogging – someone close to me told me that my blog was “weird” and that if they were just getting to know me, they would think I was weird too.  I wonder, dear reader, if you feel the same way?  Or is that an opinion shared only by those who don’t spend a lot of time online?  Is the near-real-time, overly-exposed side of me that appears in this blog a refreshing bit of authenticity, or is it (to borrow a formerly trendy term) an overshare?  Curious to hear what others think.

A few weeks ago I successfully completed an exercise program in which I worked out every day for one hundred days.  Here are some things I learned that I hope  can help you if you are considering setting your own fitness goals.

1. Don’t give yourself an out.  Just tell yourself you’re going to exercise every day, and then do it.  It’s not that hard a principle to grasp.  The problem is if you let in a seed of doubt, it can quickly sprout into a tree of excuse.  Don’t just make it a priority – make it an unbreakable contract with yourself.
2. Diet is just as important as exercise.  Your diet is your fuel.  If you put turds in your gas tank, expect to feel shitty.  Eating only high-quality foods in moderate portions will let you lose weight, feel energized, and prepare your body for the rigor of an every-day exercise program.  Eating smaller amounts more often will be good for your body.  Along the way, you’ll learn what hunger – light hunger, not starvation – will feel like.  In time, you’ll come to recognize this feeling as a good thing.  You’ll eat when you need to, not when the clock tells you to.
3. Stretching is overrated.  I don’t think I stretched at all during the one hundred days, and didn’t feel like I missed anything.  I did some dynamic strength moves that stretched muscles gently and repetitively, and I think that this is all you need.  I’ve read studies that correlate strenuous before-exercise stretching programs with injury, and I would tend to agree.
4. Vary your exercises.  Why?  Two reasons: to maintain your interest and enthusiasm, and to prevent staleness/burnout/injury.  Both are important.  Try every machine in the gym.  Take a class.  Run.  Bike.  Swim.  Love the diversity.
5. Don’t go heavy.  By this I mean don’t try to max out your intensity – in either reps or volume – more than once or twice during your hundred days.  It’s more important to be consistent and light than run the risk of burnout by going heavy too often.  Personally, I’ve made the mistake of going too heavy too fast and got burned out more times than I can remember.  Start slow, be reasonable, and I guarantee after 100 days you’ll feel more fit than you have in years.
6. You can do it on your own.  You don’t need a trainer, a workout buddy, or even a supportive spouse or significant other.  YOU have the power in you to do it all on your own.  Acknowledge this power.  When you achieve your goal, you’ll feel independent, strong, and able to take on a lot of other challenges that you are facing.
7. Prefer to work out early in the morning.  Three reasons: you’ll feel energized throughout the day, you’ll avoid having to make a tough exercise-vs.-rest decision at the end of the day when you may be tired, and you won’t be taking away family/friend time.  The downside, obviously, is that if you’re not a morning person you’ll have to adjust.  Try it.  I think you’ll find it’s worth it.
8. Stairs are God’s gift to the fitness freak.  They simultaneously train your endurance, your stamina, your cardiovascular system, and your muscles.  They have built-in goals on each rep.  They are easy on the joints.  I credit endless staircase-climbing to a lot of my gains in fitness.
9. Don’t step on the scale.  Too many people are obsessed with the scale.  Since you will be building muscle as well as losing fat the scale can be misleading, especially day-to-day.  Better to check your body in the mirror, check the fit of your clothes, and listen to the admiring comments of friends, coworkers, and family.
10. Appreciate and cherish your body.  Once you start exercising regularly, you’ll get in touch with the physical self you may have forgotten about.  All sorts of physical sensations will be yours to rediscover.  We are physical beings and feel so much better when we are friends with our bodies, instead of treating our bodies as waste dumps or forgotten toys.  Your libido will increase.  Your stamina while doing everyday tasks will increase.  Your ability to ward off sickness will increase.  I’d put in a comment about bowels here but this is a family journal (ha ha!).  Bottom line: love your body.  It’s the only one you have.

Have you completed a lengthy exercise program?  What else would you add to this list?