Author: Davey

If you’re anything like me, the you have a bit of a morning practice that sets you off in the right direction every morning (let’s say most mornings, anyway). My morning practice includes some mantra-style affirmations, some writing, and meditation.

I would be the first to tell you that I’m not good at meditation, and then conclude with some quip to the tune of ‘that’s why they call it a practice‘ but the truth is that; as I was hit with some heavy knowledge by an author I pay some attention to, I have been meditating with a preconceived notion of what meditating is.

We’ve seen the images of robe laden monks sitting cross-legged and not speaking for hours, if not days, forever focused on a monosyllabic mantra, tuning themselves to the frequency that harmonizes all of creation – and we all want that kind of peace, right? – so all over the world, people sit on their living room floors, relatively uncomfortable, slumped over, mentally counting backwards until the clock runs out on their practice, ever anticipating another sip of coffee and maybe a swing at the daily Wordle game.

The author to whom I refer is into transcendental meditation. I am not. However, the above scenario is described, though he says ‘I’m free to sit on a chair or lean back’ and as I listen to his audiobook I smarmily think “my preferred meditative position is slouching on the love-seat with my ankles crossed, supported by the coffee table in my living room” and all at once I realize: this is fine. The reason it’s fine is that I have been trying to adhere to what I thought meditating was when what I really needed to do was forget all about that and actually just clear my head. *** I do not wish to belittle or bastardize tradition, and I fully realize the merits of a disciplined practice of ANY kind, but in the interest of ‘starting somewhere’ I would say that I have definitely started ‘somewhere’ and I can always improve. I am certainly taking the ‘stop talking about it and start doing it’ approach, which requires some get-up-&-go; ironically, in the case of meditation.

Even the purpose of a mantra is not purely to give you something to focus on so much as it brings you back when your mind starts to wander. Even acknowledging that proves that your mind wandering is completely natural and there is no shame in it. It’s also worth noting that sitting on your ass on the couch is not the only meditative action you can take. As much as some people will tell you that ‘active meditation isn’t real meditation‘ I will; as a longer and longer distance runner, tell you that’s not correct. Even if it’s not completely meditative, it is at least contemplative, and that time spent in thought is crucially important.

When people tell me they can’t run because of sore knees, it breaks my heart that they are missing out on this immersive and meditative practice. I’ll be the first to admit that running isn’t for everyone, but I also know that the people that get into it through whatever strange avenues take them there are often quite surprised by how much they love it. I hope all the non-runners out there have something similarly meditative and beautiful in their lives.

In the end… it’s best not to get too wound up thinking about how to calm yourself down.

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Training this week has been great, and I’m always appreciative of a holiday – it’s an extra day of the week when I can just get lost in the immersive experience of being in the Edmonton River Valley. We are truly grateful to be able to spend time in this valley every day – it’s a true measure of prosperity in our lives.

I took a trip a few hours out of town to perform with Robin Kelly on Thursday night. Navigating these music trips always require a bit of planning as far as food and workouts to, but always feels like a triumph when I make it happen according to plan.

This is the video for this month. A little waxing about how we as humans like to insulate ourselves from the elements of growth

Here’s the transcription:

Stress, pressure, friction, and time. The 4 essential elements for growth of any kind. The elements of change.

Everything… from human perseverance… to precious gems, such as diamonds and emeralds… to thunderstorms… to sunflowers… to the eroded formations of the hoodoos – all are the product of stress, pressure, friction, and time.

Yet we as humans go to great lengths to avoid situations that put us under these types of duress, while fully acknowledging that nothing is gained, and no lesson is learned without them. We’ve engineered a life for ourselves that is geared towards avoiding these things so much that we’ve begun watching other people endure the elements of change as a recreational pastime. As entertainment in the form of televised sports and binge watching dramatic series.

We work jobs where we aspire to get to a point of comfort, and then commence trying to go unnoticed for fear that someone might expect more from us, or at least more than we can handle – so we hit the ceiling of what we’re capable of, rarely – if ever – trying to push beyond that. It’s by that logic that we can hypothesize that the entire world is run by people who are either incompetent at their given set of tasks, or overwhelmed by them.

The result is vicarious living, through our children, or our local athletes, famous movie stars, stand-up comedians, prolific musicians, or foul-mouthed politicians – whichever appeals to us more. These are the people who we’ve chosen to speak for us with our dollars and our social media posts – these people who do and say what we only WISH we COULD do and say.

They live and speak with reckless abandon – things we believe we could never get away with saying. 

They endure the stress.
They endure the pressure.
They endure the friction.
They endure the test of time.
They do things we could never do. But why can we never do these things?

We’ve cursed ourselves with contentment, and we traverse a plateau that represents lack of inspiration and resolve. We’re neither happy about it, nor are we particularly sad about it – but all the same, we’re exhausted by it and deep down we want to change it.

We’ve insulated ourselves from stress, pressure, time, and friction to the best of our ability – but that insulation is made entirely of limitations. Our own limitations.

And the only way out is to embrace change.
The only way out is through stress, pressure, friction, and time.

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Training this week has been awesome. We’re rounding out the month of June, carpool driving duties will be paused for a couple months, and that’s great because these sessions are getting longer and longer. The upcoming long weekend is welcome, but there won’t be any slacking going on in our training program, despite the inevitable social pressures to make poor decisions.

The weather forecast has been very inaccurate lately, and I couldn’t be happier about it. What once looked like a full 2 week period of nothing but rain has only left me soaked by rainwater once or twice (as opposed to being soaked in sweat, which is normal).

Soon I’ll be jogging the 14.5km commute to work.
Not sure how I’m going to get home just yet though… doing that run twice in the same day might be a little ambitious, but never say never. I’m thinking a jog to the nearby train station might bust up some lactic buildup in my thighs at the end of the day, and then I’ll take transit home.

So, if I may be so candid: I’ve been fat and I’ve been lean, and I can tell you definitively that there’s a difference in how I was treated then vs. how I am treated now. Be it retail environments where sales people were reluctant to help me, or other varying social environments, I was most certainly cast into the role of the black sheep. Honestly, I owned that role, and I wore it well, but there was a slow-grind happening not only on my physical health, but on my mental health as well.

As a result I was in pain. I never would have described it as physical pain at the time but it most definitely affected my demeanor; thereby rendering me unapproachable by many, and I carried myself as someone who was proud of being unapproachable. A tough guy. Unwavering. This became my safe space that I would would recoil into.

The problem with projecting the tough guy persona out into the world is that inevitably, someone is going to take on the task of taking you down a peg. Standing tall through those situations only further embedded the chip into my shoulder, and the would cycle inevitably repeat.

What I know now is that I lacked confidence – and what does that have to do with my being overweight? everything. Aside from the fact that another person’s weight, health, or clothing side is nobody’s business but theirs, I know there are people who can be happy in their own skin at any size – and I am not one of those people. Those people have my admiration to a degree I can’t adequately explain; and I may be limiting myself in saying this, but I am most comfortable in my own skin when I am actively pushing my physical limits. I’m not here to judge anyone, and I realize that I open myself up to be judged every week.

My backstory includes being a food addict. I still have urges the way any narcotics addict or alcoholic feels the urge to use – the difference being that within my current food regimen, if I accidentally make short work of an entire pineapple; well, nobody gets hurt. But once upon a time… well, let’s just say that the aforementioned ‘tough guy cycle’ is not the only cycle I’d find myself trapped in. Even as recently as a week ago I had a food ‘cheat-day’ that served more to devastate me than it did to reward me for hard work. I overshot by a great deal and mentally I went back to a place I didn’t want to be anymore. Fortunately I have the history and discipline not to stay there too long, but it was a reminder I won’t soon forget.

I am obviously reflecting on the past a bit, but the fact remains that the people our paths intersects with are a lot more than meets the eye. We truly can’t guess what anyone is dealing with, or where they are in their journey – and we’ve ALL been told how far “judging a book by it’s cover” will get us. Furthermore, their story will carry on after your encounter is over, just as yours will – and if you are capable of growth and change, then obviously so are they. I know, because if you’d met me when I was 30 years old, you might not recognize me today.

So, in similar conclusion to last week’s post, we need to take it easy on people. We are learning and changing creatures – all of us – with complex brains who achieve goals, have setbacks, get injured, win trophies, lose loved ones. Our tendency to gossip and speak ill of each other serves to hurt and hinder community when our priorities should be the opposite. Denigrating people for where they are in their journey is harmful behavior.

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Training this week has been intense. Runs are extending and my program is really teaching me how to run on tired legs, because my legs are always tired. As a cross training exercise, I’ve been getting back into the swimming pool and it’s been a real game changer to have those long stretching motions back in my life on a regular basis – and that hot tub isn’t hurting anything either!

My run on Monday was cut short by a couple km’s when I realized I had to get home and drive kids to school, so I’m glad the school year is coming to a close because by July I won’t be able to get my full run in and still drive them. Fortuitous planning, but not intentional planning.

There’s a fresh video coming soon.

Failure is a multifaceted word in this day & age. Generally regarded as a bad thing, failure often defines our situation at a low point – not accomplishing a goal, or not accomplishing a task. However we’re encouraged to exercise to a point of failure in order to build muscle, drawing illustration to ‘learning from our failures’ as they can certainly be education, if nothing else. The question becomes ‘is failure bad?‘ more than it is ‘have I failed?‘

Being the self-deprecating mammals that we are, we tend to more efficiently assign the label “failure” to our ourselves – to our own souls – while defending our questionable decision-making to the bitter end.

That being the case – what is the prerequisite for being a failure? How does the number of failed accomplishments are required before we; ourselves, are considered failures? I’m being facetious of course, as the number of personal failings doesn’t factor in at all, especially when you can list a great number of accomplished and upstanding individuals – ALL of which can tell you their misgivings – who are textbook successes – These people include such household names as Michael Jordan, Martha Stewart, and The Beastie Boys.

Failures are lessons; important ones that are learned in the trenches and low points and pave the road for the triumphs of those who see their goals through. One instance I think of frequently these days as I prepare to release another album into the world, is the story of making an album 15 years ago. The Fat Dave Crimewave “This Is Rock & Roll” was (and is) great, and I stand by it. However, it’s the most poorly promoted album I’ve ever released and a lot of hard lessons came out of it. Lessons about planning, leadership, foresight… the songs and band were excellent, and the recording is phenomenal – but our primary goal was to make an amazing record. When it was done, the goals were never reset, so we treaded water for a bit and eventually imploded. Now – It’s also worth noting that we learn from our successes. That same album taught me a lot about writing and recording at a level I’d not previously reached.

This brings to mind the triathlon course we ran last month. If you’ve been following along for a bit then you know that Lu and I recently completed a triathlon course of our own design. It was a goal we had and it was a goal we conquered, but we learned a lot. We learned how we like to train, how to build a training plan and follow it, and how to get definable results. We learned about heartrate training and stamina. We beat our time goals and built our confidence. We learned how to navigate post-event fatigue and recovery, and we learned that we NEED to get back in the game with a new challenge – which has brought on new lessons and research about hydration requirements, calorie replacement, and other required knowledge for long-distance running.

In essence… just go easy on yourself. Relax your mind and take up the task at hand. Beating yourself up isn’t necessary – the road to your personal successes will beat you up bad enough without your mind’s help! Gradual increases are key… whatever you’re doing, you can push for 10% more next week, then 10% more than that the following week. This will keep you on task and help you not to psyche yourself out.

Anything that is humanly possible can be done by you… Eventually.

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Speaking of which, training this week has been good. Last Saturday’s run kicked the stuffing out of me. We ran 18.23km which was definitely overly ambitious, and I spent the rest of the day fatigued – In other words, we went to the point of ‘failure’ but we missed ZERO training days as a result, and that alone is a win.

It’s important to remember that there really are no training days – there are training weeks, and if we batter ourselves too hard to work the next day’s program then we’re setting ourselves at a disadvantage.

I’ll be careful with today’s long run, as my band Confusionaires are performing at the Highlandia Festival tonight in the Highlands neighborhood in Edmonton. We’re on at 8:30pm so come on down!

I’ve been critiquing my own habits for a good spell now, and in admission of such things I’ve elected to share. In truth; several blog posts start from this place.

We all have people in our lives that we know and love who elect to make decisions and perform behaviors that are different than what we would do under the same circumstances. We love them as much as ever and we hope to see them learn their lessons and make improvements. We can offer advice from time to time, but ultimately that’s not really our role in the relationship – we’ve never been asked to mentor them.

Anyway, I do this thing where I give people the opportunity to behave differently than they normally do; then when they don’t, I get upset. Now, I’ve never set a precedent, or asked anyone to specifically alter their behavior – even as a personal favor – in this situation, so for me to expect any different behavior than the behavior I’ve known for years is ridiculous.

I’m well aware that this is 100% a ME issue – and that’s the point.

What’s more is that I’ve recently been on the receiving end of such a scenario, where there’s been misplaced emotional reaction to changes I’ve made in my life and I’ve had to take the emotional responses of people in stride. It’s one thing to try to be objective, it’s another to feel like you are the only person doing so.

The lesson I’m learning is that there’s so much anxiety and frustration that can alleviated in my life simply by not allowing our preconceived notions to dictate the outcome. Predicting the outcome serves no real purpose, so I’m resolving to allow people the freedom to be human, and then reacting in the most level and rational way possible.

But… I have to use the word ‘reacting’ pretty conservatively, since my priority is not to react. This stretches me as a person – have I mentioned lately that I’m an artist and thus emotional reactions are my jam?

It was recently bestowed upon me that “every situation is neutral” before you put your perspective on it. Everything from loud thunderstorms to playoff hockey are a matter of cause and effect, and neither are particularly terrible or fantastic until our personal opinions put a filter over the experience.

So, I’ll strive to be objective and neutral, and in doing so I will prevent the things I cannot control from controlling me.

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Now… things I CAN control… like training this week; for example.

We’re into the month of June, which means our Zone 2 session on Mondays are going from 60 minutes up to 75 minutes, and the other sessions through the week are getting longer. My stabilizers are catching up with the trail running workload. One thing I hadn’t anticipated that will actually work in our favor is that the school year will be over, which means my shifts in the carpool will no longer be a factor in training JUST in time for these sessions to be at their peak length.

Last week, I most definitely overworked myself by adding 2 x 45 minute bike rides every day (my commute) so I’m using that as more of a cross-training exercise as my running sessions get longer and longer. As much as I’d love to do everything all at once, I know this is a progression. Our summers are painfully short and I’m trying to squeeze everything out of this one – but care and caution must be taken, too.

Confusionaires had a show in Hinton, AB that I was looking forward to, partly because I’d be able to go for a run in close proximity to the mountains, but it was cancelled.

Onward and upward, friends!

Labels are a funny thing, and can be a contentious subject depending on the label (and the person being labeled). We embrace some and eschew others, and somewhere in between there are some we just live with.

I’m a musician, and an athlete. I like these labels because I work hard to achieve and maintain them, but they’re pretty broad-spectrum. They lack the specific nuance that sets me apart from other musicians and athletes. Regardless of the specifics, these labels are like clubs I belong to, that have pride and prestige despite some bad apples who inevitably spoil the perception of the bunch. I’ve also been a lot of things I never wanted to admit – drunk, fat, rude, underachiever, lazy, narrow-minded, set it my ways… it’s a long list.

But there’s a whole other kind of labeling we’re not quite so aware of. We label what we don’t understand, and we do this as an excuse to differentiate ourselves. Now the obvious example here are racial slurs (which I won’t use or condone the use of). However; in a more nuanced way, we label individuals as ‘special’ ‘talented’ or ‘gifted’ (among other flattering terms) as a way of assigning limitations to ourselves.

At the risk of blowing my own horn, I’ve been told “I could never do what you do” by some of the people in my periphery, and told that I am “more motivated” or I’m “driven” or I am “talented” that are intended to be complimentary, but when we say these types of things to each other, we place limitations on ourselves. For example, if I tell someone who’s a thoughtful and considerate speaker that they are “crazy smart,” I am not only putting them on a pedestal, I’m lowering myself at the same time because the implication is that they are “crazy smart” and I am not. What’s more, they may not feel my complement is accurate and feel inclined to console me about my self deprecating comments. It’s possible that this is what some of us are looking for when we do these things – consolation.

Beyond that, we provide ourselves with excuses for mediocrity at the same time. By someone telling me I am “talented” they are excusing themselves from achieving a possible goal, when the reality is this: Anything that is humanly possible can be done by you. That’s a lot to swallow all in one gulp, but the difference between a couch potato and an endurance runner is an allocation of time.

Don’t sell yourself short. We honor those around us by offering the best of ourselves. Don’t gloat… but don’t misrepresent yourself either. Words carry a lot of value, and you should know that you can do what you want to do.

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Speaking of doing what we want to do… Training this week has been solid and consistent. Getting out and running in our River Valley is truly a gift, a measure of prosperity beyond money. I’m fortunate to do it, and I’ll be even more fortunate if I can conjure up a short run around Calgary tomorrow morning before I head back north. This week’s efforts have included cycling to work, which has been liberating in ways I hadn’t imagined. The commute has been 14.5kms with 83m of elevation change, twice a day. Completely magical.

Today, my band The Confusionaires are departing for Calgary to play the East Town Get Down festival. We’re on at 9pm at the Border Crossing – Hope you’ll swing by if you’re in the area. Lovebullies and Chixdiggit, and Julius Sumner Miller are playing the same room, so show up early and settle in!