For once I’m speechless.  Am I?  If so it would be a first, as normally I can vomit all over the page with whatever inane bullshit winds its way stealthily past my limbic system.  But right now I’m deep in reflective thought.

I pose the question:  Mirror, mirror on the wall, what is important to me?

That’s a tough one.  It’s sort of related to the eternal über-question: why am I here?

On the one hand, it’s important to have some sense of the answer, in order to guide your actions, to live a purposeful life.  On the other hand, obsessing – especially in times of crisis, or transition, or uncertainty, or self-doubt – isn’t much help.  The theory there is to tread lightly, keep your wits about you, and the answers will begin to take shape.

So – this speechless thing.  Not sure, but I doubt it will last more than a couple hours and I’ll be back to my normal voluble self.   In the meantime, I’m enjoying the reflecting.

It’s funny how your life can tend to be defined as the accretion of decisions made over months and years.  I say “tend to” because I am thoughtfully considering whether or not this is actually the case, or whether it is just habit and expectation and norms that make us the sum of our past.

A friend writes on Twitter:

if you won the lottery, how would you spend $2 million vs. $10 million.

Interesting thought exercise, because it tells you what your true magnetic north might be.  Would you do more of the same – whatever it is you’re doing now?  Would you make radical changes?  Why?  If money defines freedom, what would you use that freedom for?

A famous quote:

You can’t change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.

What direction would you pick?  Would you head to the same place(s) you were heading for yesterday, last month, last year?

A new acquaintance asks me “What is your passion in life?” To which I respond:

Multiple things: innovation, creativity, true love, the pursuits of the intellect, my kids, Liverpool Football Club, positive thinking.

I could add a handful of things to that list if pressed, but another way to look at it is that life represents a series of choices, a series of decisions, a list of opportunity costs.  You can’t be passionate about everything – at some level you choose, every day, by how you spend you time, who and what you think about, what you produce, what you consume, what you share, what you hold back, and by the narrative you carry around in your head about how the world works.

I guess my thesis – if I get to choose – is that we have a lot more freedom to set our direction that one might originally suppose.  As they say about money, everything is fungible.

Is there a missing ingredient?  I would say “thought”.   Thinking.  Reflection.  Don’t assume that you’re destined, fated, preordained, or stuck if some little part of your brain is dissatisfied.  Think about what you can do TODAY to change your direction.   Sample thought exercise: think of one person that would give you the most uplifting, motivational, aligned, engaged, inspiring conversation that will lead to positive change in your life.  E-mail that person and offer to buy them a cup of coffee.

The classic – and metaphorical – advice is, when you get thrown from your horse, jump right back on again.  The moral is that you shouldn’t let temporary setbacks prevent you from continuing to try to get where you want to go and do what you want to do.

The Japanese saying is “fall down seven times, stand up eight.”

Sometimes, though, you have to jump on a different horse.  A horse of a different color, as it were.  You’ve been knocked you so irrevocably off your perch that you feel like you have no choice but to try a different direction.  Maybe you’ve been thrown so often that it just makes perfect, plain sense to try a different route to get somewhere.

You may feel forced to make this decision – to abandon one path, admit defeat, give up, accept failure – but in reality it’s your choice.  No one is whispering directives in your ear.  You can choose.  And failing is not always your fault, because you certainly can’t control everything, or everyone.

Sometimes when I get knocked down I lose perspective, especially when the place I get knocked down from is important – i.e. the place is (or was) part of my overall picture of who I am and what I want and where and where I see myself going.  But we all get knocked down.  And we all lose perspective.  The trick is to take a deep breath, look around, and see what other good things are going on that we can focus on to help us get back on our feet.

For example, just in the past few days:

• I’ve been reminded of how awesome some of my friends are.
• I’ve been told by someone I’m one of the most brilliant people that they know.
• I’ve been invited to several parties.
• I’ve had lots of good signs on the career/work front.
• Despite the holidays, I now weigh less than at any time since 1994.
• I’ve inspired someone to start their own 100-day exercise challenge.
• My kids are wonderful and beautiful and smart and happy.
• Someone else told me they were jealous of me.

So, what can I really complain about?  Not much. So one or two things haven’t worked out and won’t work out.  But I have a lot of good things going on, wonderful things, and I can’t let my happiness (a) depend solely on the outcome of one thing, no matter how important; and (b) depend on what others do, as opposed to what I can do for myself.

This is hard, no question – some things seem so undeniably positive that you just can’t see yourself not being there.  But life is a series of ups and downs, and it’s valuable to understand that life has its hard moments.  Reflect, accept, learn, and be who you are meant to be, stronger and more resilient for having gone through the experience.

..what would you do?  My friend Jessica posted a link to a piece Ali Hale wrote a year ago at Dumb Little Man that asks you what you would do if you had three months free to do whatever you want.

A genie appears to you and explains that he’s going to take care of everything for you for three months. The bills will all be paid, your job will be done expertly, your dependents will be looked after, your house will be kept clean, your goldfish will be fed. For the next three months, you’re free. When the three months are up, you have the option of starting a new career, moving to a new city, or even leaving behind friends and family.
The genie has just two conditions:

• You have to try at least one thing you’ve never done before (but have perhaps always secretly wanted to do) during those three months
• You have to spend the three months doing things that you want to do, rather than things you feel you should do.

What would I do?

• My first thought would be to write.  I’ve been putting off writing – well, to be more exact, I’ve been putting off writing for publication. I spent quite a few hours last year journaling, which ended up being unfulfilling.  This was probably more due to personal circumstance than anything inherent in journaling itself, or in my need to write private journal entries.  But I would pick a short story competition and enter it.
• I would also try to push ahead aggressively in several areas of my life where I’ve felt stalled, or stuck, or stymied.  Move forward, move on, move SOMEWHERE – because the treadmill is fine if you’re trying to get in shape, but it sucks to spend your emotional life there.
• I’d exercise more.  Well, in a more directed fashion – I already exercise a lot.  I might sign up for a spring bike race, or my first 10K, or a triathlon.  I might start swimming again.  I’d set some sort of black-and-white goal like 2009’s 100-day challenge and go for it.
• Career-wise?  I’d put the new version of Crowdify I’ve been working on out there, and start Getting Fucking Aggressive in talking to brand managers and publishers about how they might use the technology.
• I’d work on my tendency to procrastinate.  I just recently read a great list of how to get past procrastination (sorry, hard copy, no link) and would put some of those ideas into action.
• I’d be a better friend.  I think I’m already a pretty darn good friend, but I could do better, especially with certain people.  I would do this while maintaining my independence and sense of self.
• I’d network more.  I really enjoy meeting new people, and there are a million opportunities in Seattle to meet people in my field at various tech/startup/entrepreneurship events.  Last month I didn’t go to three events I had planned because I felt morose, moribund, and sad.  That would change.

Ali finishes with this:

It’s easy to put off chasing our dreams because we become so busy with the things we think we should be doing, or worse, with the things we’ve just somehow ended up doing – without any conscious thought about it. Start taking control again today.

It’s a great article.  You should go read it.

Check out http://escaping-mediocrity.com for an excellent read.  I found Sarah’s blog via Twitter today and was immediately intrigued.  The title of her blog is somewhat analogous to “The Pursuit Of A Life” –  and she deals in some of the same themes: seeking, improving, sharing, bettering.

The first post I read, Burn The Ships, is a manifesto for letting it all hang out in 2010 and commit to a make-or-break year.  It’s daring, scary, and breathtaking in both its simplicity and implications.

Is it possible to metaphorically burn the ships?

Do you even want to?

Regular readers will know I’ve experienced a very up-and-down year in 2009.  Some good moments, and some not-so-good.  Some terrible, heartbreaking moments, the kind that make you want to vomit or cry or die, and yet there have been some rays of unexpected sunshine that have lit up the sky in orange and gold.  Bottom line – I can’t say that I would want to repeat 2009, so I’m planning for 2010 and Sarah’s post struck me right between the eyes: how much to commit to?  How much to let go of?  How can one face, nay, embrace fear, uncertainty, and doubt and not freeze up?

Sometimes change is forced upon us.  It’s during those times that we understand how resilient we really are, how capable.  We have vast reservoirs of strength (both internal, and via our networks of family and friends) that we can tap into. But forcing change – burning the ships – when we don’t have to; that takes guts and commitment and courage.

I applaud Sarah for challenging herself this way, and encourage you to go visit her blog and ask yourself some of the same hard questions.

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?

I did it!

One hundred days in a row, exercising every day.  Originally my goal was thirty, then sixty, then one hundred…and I did it.  I know that “pride goeth before the fall”, but I feel extremely proud of myself right now.  I’ve had a turbulent few months, but being able to commit to, and deliver on, this exercise goal has been a real positive experience for me.

I avoided serious injury.  I avoided illness (except for a couple days of memorable stomach trouble, which didn’t keep me from exercising).  I avoided feeling sorry for myself and bagging it when I was tired, or stressed, or just feeling blah.  I went.  Every day.

I’m riding the crest of a wave of personal enthusiasm in that I feel like there’s not a lot I CAN’T do right now, if I put my mind to it and really commit to the goal. Besides the weight loss, the gains in fitness, and the health benefits, that’s a major benefit to making it to the end of a challenge like this.  I’m encouraged.  The sky is the limit, no matter what’s going on around me.

Am I TOO pleased?  Nah.  Your opportunities to be really unabashedly happy with yourself are few and far between, so you have to take your joy where you can.  Right now I’m joyful.  I’m going to ride it a while.

I’ll fill you in on my next goal – I’m not sure what form it will take, but it will be forthcoming before too long.  I’ve demonstrated once and for all to my satisfaction that I work best with clear goals in mind.  Maybe we all do.

Thanks to each and every one of you who has lent your support and encouragement over the last 12+ weeks.  I owe you each a big debt of gratitude.

More to come…Hope your day is going as well as mine has!

Yes, the title is a made-up word, but I like to make up words, and it’s my blog   What it refers to is the fact that I haven’t done any plyometrics as part of my current exercise regimen (79 days and counting), despite being a (formerly) huge fan of plyometrics.  I think I can attribute at least a good chunk of the luck I’ve had in remaining injury-free during this time to the fact that I’m not doing a lot of high-impact exercises like plyos.  My knees and ankles have remained pretty healthy.

(Knocks wood)

What do I like about plyometrics?  The intensity, and the sort of internal competition that accompanies every action – how high can I jump?  How far?  How quickly can I do this set of reps?  How athletic do I feel while I do it?  For a super competitive person like me, those are very rewarding intrinsic attributes.

I never really stated it as such, but a big goal for me when starting out a few months ago was to not get injured.  I’ve started up exercise programs in the past where I’ve gone gung-ho for a few weeks, and then got sidelined by a nagging injury, tweak, pull, strain, or overtired/burned-out feeling.  This time it’s different.  In addition to the low-impact exercise selection, the sheer variety of exercises I’m doing I think helps as well – I’m not working any one part of my body too much, too frequently. Further, the fact that I have a very black-and-white goal – exercise for 100 days in a row – doesn’t give me an “out”.  For example, I can’t say “oh, I feel sort of tired today, so I’m going to take the day off.”  Therefore, I don’t let myself even consider it.  Days past, I would have.  Not now.  I can’t.  I’ve really invested myself in reaching this goal, and I’m going to make it no matter what.

I’ll have to carefully monitor how I feel now that I’ve started two-a-days, because there’s only so much variety I can achieve in practice.  But I’m working HARD right now, very intensely, and still am healthy and without injury.  My key risk  is probably overtiredness – if my team at work starts avoiding me because I’m being cranky and bitchy, I’ll know to lay off the two-a-days and ratchet down the intensity a bit.   But I’m optimistic.

Speaking of optimistic, I’m staggeringly happy right now, relative to circumstances.  Circumstances dictate I should probably go jump off a bridge or something (kidding, but not by too much).  Yet I’m smiling, whistling, happy, cheerful – what the hell?  It could be any or all of the reasons listed below:

1. Hope
2. Denial
3. Appropriate Perspective
4. Friends/Support Network

There are other reasons, I suppose – for example, two different people today told me how thin I looked.  That’s a great feeling for me, especially knowing how much further I have yet to go with my diet and exercise program.  Also, work and side projects are both going well, all things considered.  Physically I feel outstanding.

Regarding #4 – I’ll repeat something that I think I’ve written about before.  It’s amazing to me how much of a people person I’ve found I am, after years of considering myself sort of happy to be (mostly) alone.  This is all just in the last 18 months or so.  I enjoy people.  I like their company, especially the company of good friends with whom one can have a free-ranging, honest conversation without worrying about image or perception or impressing anybody or holding back or having to phrase things very carefully.

Whatever the reasons, I hope that this feeling lasts.

Today, I made my goal of working out every day for sixty days in a row.   It started at oh-dark-thirty with a trip to the gym for weights and abs, continued with a bike commute in to work, and concluded with the bike ride home.  Coming home I really hammered it hard – I think I was trying to massacre myself.

What’s gone well in the last thirty days?

• Habit. I can now say with confidence that exercise has become a habit, and not an afterthought or a chore.  I’m really looking forward to the daily workouts.
• Abs!  I have lost abdominal fat to a much greater degree than in the first thirty day iteration.  I can actually see those awesome ab muscles poking out here and there, if I dim the lights, cross my eyes and squint just right. My pants are all falling off (back off, ladies! ), my belts are all too long, and my shirts that fit snugly last summer are now hanging off of me.  Time to get a few new things for the wardrobe, but not too many (see below for why).
• Fitness. I think I’m repeating myself here, but I’m able to work out longer, at a greater intensity, and with less required recovery.  The bike gears are getting lower and lower for the same hills.  I’m able to go longer on the stair workouts.  I’m lifting heavier weights for more reps.
• Mornings. The last week or so I’ve been working out in the mornings before work and really think that has a positive impact on my metabolism and energy levels.  I’m going to try to continue that.

What hasn’t gone well?

• Injury. At the conclusion of thirty, my left knee was bugging me.  Now my right knee is bugging me, but it doesn’t get worse with exercise, so I keep at it.  I mentioned in some other post that I think my right knee problems stemmed from overdoing Good Mornings and the resulting stress on my hamstrings.  We’ll lay off the hammies for a while and see if the knee recovers.
• Addiction.  I can sense the first stirrings of exercise addiction, in that, when I’m feeling particularly raw or sensitive (like today), all I want to do is go work out until I’m exhausted.  In other words, I’m looking at exercise as a crutch when other areas of my life are causing me grief.  Strangely, it’s not about the exercise high – I haven’t exercised long enough in any one bout to experience that.  When I was younger, I’d get runner’s highs after about ten miles, but I’m not close to that yet.  It’s just all about wanting to kill myself (metaphorically!) during the workout so I don’t have any energy left to fret about X, Y, or Z.  That’s not good.

What’s next?

My next goal is to exercise 100 days in a row.  If I’m counting right, that puts the next milestone at October 27th.  Day 101 – October 28th – will be a rest day, no matter what.  I’m worried that if I don’t plan a rest day in advance, I’ll feel freaked out when I’m forced to take one.

During this next 40-day iteration, I’m going to pay very careful attention to my diet.  No more crap like Diet Pepsi.  No more “occasional” fatty or sweet treats.  I’m going to try to be as strict as possible and see where it gets me.  I’m hoping to lose even more fat and get even thinner.  I have a couple specific life goals in mind that first require me to get thin.  So – lots of exercise and a great diet and let’s see what awesome things I can make happen in the next forty days.

Wish me luck in the comments!

Today was the first day in a long time that I didn’t wake up wanting to exercise.  I didn’t sleep well – Will was up for a couple hours – and therefore didn’t feel all that great when morning came.   I spent my wide-awake middle-of-the-night time rapturously attending to every pain, real or imagined, that I could think of, and of course felt none the better for it.  There’s something to be said for trying to think only of positive thoughts.  Of course that’s impossible, but it’s an aspirational goal, not necessarily a realistic one.

Janet has been at her brother’s house all day, so I’ve had the kids since the early morning.  Owing to my general malaise, the first half of the day disappeared down the drain – numbness, sloth, and yesterday’s killer exercise all combined to keep my on my back on the couch.  That’s unusual for me, and I can’t say I enjoyed it one bit.  I’m normally active, up and about, doing this or that, getting things done – but not this morning.

After a tossing-and-turning, sleepless nap I walked with the kids down to the Village for a coffee and a couple hours at the park.  I like to people-watch when I’m at the park or out and about in general.  It’s interesting to see how people interact with each other and must satisfy some sense of personal curiosity about humanity.  And, despite the rain this morning, we caught the best weather of the day during the afternoon and I was able to watch the kids and the others with some small sense of peace and engagement.

After the park I ended up working out with the medicine ball – just 25 minutes of hard, vigorous exercise, enough to work up a good sweat and feel like I dug down to some places that needed a little shaking up.  The mirror is being kind to me recently.

One thing I wasn’t pleased with myself about today – well, it’s a family of things – I’ve been using my journal to write little notes to myself about things to do or not to do as I make my way through the recent weeks and months and months yet to come.  “Don’t do this: ____________”, I’ll write, and of course what do I do but THAT EXACT THING. Multiple times.  They say that crazy is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.  So I’m crazy.  Tell me something I didn’t already know.  But I’m crazy with a purpose – a definite goal in mind.  Like I wrote yesterday, it will take strength, cooperation, and luck to achieve what I want to achieve.  So, in the spirit of not beating myself up, let’s not call it crazy but call it “lessons that are taking longer than normal to learn.”

More later…off to study.