balance

I am always searching for balance.

I have goals to look a certain way, perform to a certain level, run certain distances, eat a certain way, write songs to a certain standard… in amongst working and sleeping and being an attentive adult / father / partner / employee, it doesn’t take much to knock it all off kilter.

So, I have to stop and take stock of where I’m at.

It comes down to what kind of life I want to live.

If I could have everything I wanted, I’d be a Ironman Triathlete who played 250 shows per year to 10,000+ audiences, and have a personal chef, and would train 6 days a week… but it would be a solitary life, surrounded by people and close to noone.

If I trained for an Ironman, I’d have to put my rock & roll band on ice for a while. Any vacation time I had would be spent training. I’d hardly have time for my family because all I’d be doing was training, eating and sleeping.

If I were to chase bigger crowds with my music, I’d likely have to scale back my training, and spend more time at the right parties, socializing, and I’d compromise my health and the quality of my art.

If I lean into my daytime career, I’d likely crater my band, and possibly alienate my family doing so. I wouldn’t train much at all and I’d eat in restaurants and sleep in hotels far too much.

So I try to live my life in the middle… and my life in the middle is pretty great.

I’m 43 years old. I am on 0 medications, and have 0 health complications to be concerned with. I am available to people who need me, including my employer, I have great artistic output with top tier musicians and we do things the way we want them to be done.

All this to say, I am grateful for what I have, and I am happy where I am – because where i am is in a state of progress. I am moving forward in my life and in my art, not backward. I train hard, and I eat like an athlete… but there’s still room in my life for a vegan donuts. I play rock & roll and write songs constantly… but I’m still home for dinner and a dog walk. I work hard, but I’m still available to my family and my friends.

I’m serious.
But I don’t take myself too seriously.

I’ve been trying to find balance for so long that I almost didn’t recognize it when I found it.

Sisyphus

In times such as these, with high inflation, increasing job turnover, general discontentment with wages, a mental health crisis, and all of the woes that come with the changing times, I feel like I hear the comparisons to Sisyphus’ plight – rolling the boulder uphill for eternity – all the time.

In the moment, that might seem relatable, but there are a few things to know about Sisyphus before making that comparison. As all stories of ancient Greece and the gods, there is justice being doled out in every story, so before we go tying ourselves to the plight of a character, we should take note of one thing:

Sisyphus was an asshole. A smooth-talking and outwardly polite asshole by all accounts, but an asshole nonetheless.

The first king of Ephyra; the region now known as Corinth, was an evil king who killed visitors to his land as a show of strength, which was a violation of the tradition of hospitality as laid out by the gods. He conned his way out of death – twice – including sweet-talking his way out of the underworld with a promise he’d never intended to keep. So upon his 3rd encounter with the underworld, was given the option to submit to death and live in the underworld, or take the opportunity to leave once again and live forever – IF he could roll the boulder up the track and push it out of the underworld.

… so there he is, gradually going mad, having given his boulder a name and speaking to it like it was his confidant and friend.

That latter part could maybe be compared to the concept of the ‘work family’ depending on your work place, I guess – as with the concept that Sisyphus is working towards total freedom as many of us are working toward retirement… but at the core of the story is an absolutely terrible person who placed himself, through his own deeds, in a terrible position…

… and I may or may not know you… but I don’t think that’s you.

the return spring

I recently replaced; among other things, the clutch in my 1962 Ford. It’s a very cool vehicle that’s endured a lot of misuse and abuse at the hands of it’s masters over the years – so this car & I have a lot in common. I love this car – I’m emotionally invested in it and after 13 years, I oughta be. vehicles of this vintage were intended to be worked on and I intend to work on this one, and although there’s really only one way to do most things on cars like this, there’s still a pretty generous margin for error and I’ve certainly spent some time there.

Replacing the clutch (…again) can be a big job. If you’re looking at your clutch, there’s a strong likelihood that you did a lot of work to get to a point where you could see it. I’ve seen mine a few times and it always involves multiple cuss words to access it.

The reason I was looking at it this time is because I killed my throw-out bearing. If you don’t know what that is, it’s what disengages the transmission from the engine temporarily so you can shift gears, and it does that every time you step on the clutch pedal. If there’s too much tension on it, it will keep pressing; albeit lightly, and cause undue wear & tear on the clutch components – those components we just did a lot of work to access. That said, if there’s not enough tension on ‘the return spring‘ that is responsible for re-engaging the transmission to the motor, then the throw-out bearing will; again, continue to press up against things it ought not be pressing up against – causing that very same kind of undue wear & tear.

Needless to say, my clutch had been out of adjustment for a long time, and the components burnt out. This is interesting to me as I do a lot of self analysis when I’m working on my car – my time in the garage is a reflective and contemplative time for me, and when I realized that things were set up to fail NOT because there was too much tension on a mechanism, but because there was not enough, I had a eureka moment in more than one way.

Yes, I solved the problem – or part of it, anyway. The rest was done through some routine adjustments that are akin to completing the job. A eureka moment, to be sure.

But the idea that a system was unsuccessful due to a lack of tension struck me as very interesting in a metaphor for life. We actually see this al the time – we know people who have said; or perhaps we’ve said it ourselves – if we don’t have a deadline, the task won’t get done. Any non-pressing task will inevitably get back-benched for time sensitive ones. We pay our bills on time because if we don’t, there’s a penalty. There are deadlines for homework assignments, grant applications, race trophies, showing up to work… quotas for tasks assigned… donation commitments… speed limits… final exams… meeting times… the list goes on and without some structure around both the ‘catching’ and the ‘releasing’ then nothing really works as intended.

We may not count these things as being particularly stressful because they come with the territory of making commitments – even fun commitments like going to a movie or meeting friends for dinner have some structure around them. It’s not until we’re over-extended, or too-tightly wound that we start failing to be able to keep up with even the most casual commitment, and our personal systems go into failure.

The lesson here is about striking balance, and setting ourselves up for success.

Everything I am doing, I am doing in order to get to my preferred destination, but if we’re not seeking balance in the meantime, we’re bound to break down before we ever arrive, and in includes an amount of tension as well as relief.

the finest print

“… that small decluttering of our periphery has allowed for a more concentrated focus on the tasks at hand – which are very exciting.”

Alignment. Personal alignment of mind body and spirit – that’s the daily goal and the eternal pursuit.

I’ve been finding that; although I feel completely aligned in the broad sense of the term, there are always some days that are just better than others – and the less good days need to be given the respect they deserve. Without those (relatively speaking) down days, we wouldn’t knw that the good days are.

Lately I’ve been feeling really good – like it’s all laid out in front of me. It’s as though my list of priorities are all getting the amount of time and attention they need right now and it’s inspiring all on it’s own. My girlfriend and I have been focused; somewhat peripherally, on a project that we’ve elected to put on the back burner for the time being. The reason for that is that we’ve both come to our own similar, yet separate, conclusions that this particular project hasn’t been serving us the way it should if it’s to become a priority.

Our two independent, yet same realizations have allowed us to realize that we were becoming a bit distracted with the project – and that distraction was only taking a small measure of time and energy away from our main priority right now – which is my band, Confusionaires. It wasn’t a massive distraction, but it was a distraction nonetheless – and that really only means it’s a distraction now.

A lot of ideas don’t take flight because of poor timing, and I can chock this idea up to that pretty easily. Frankly, the idea of following through on that idea later, rather than sooner, is just exciting.

In the meantime, that small decluttering of our periphery has allowed for a more concentrated focus on the tasks at hand – which are very exciting. I’ve got a new record coming out in 2023 – it’s a record that the band is really excited about, and I truly believe it’s a high water mark for all of us. It’s also going to have the best launch campaign budget of any album I’ve been a part of.

It’s a lesson; among many, about living in the moment and attracting more of what you are, rather than what you want.

This post is entitled ‘the finest print’ partly in reference to a Tom Waits quote I’ve always appreciated: “The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away” which is among other things, a statement about keeping your wits about you. When your body, mind & spirit, are in alignment you’re aware of the small print without incident, and the broad scope view of everything is just as detailed as the microscope view.

If I have any words of encouragement on this subject, it’s to trust yourself and trust your process.

Training this week has been good, but taxing. My increased efforts are certainly being felt, and my diligence in fueling myself needs to be executed with precision. This became painfully obvious to me on Wednesday.

Typically, on the days I’m at work, following my program is simple. I can only eat the food I brought and I eat it at prescribed times through the day. But on Wednesday when I was summoned to pick up my sick kid from school mid-day, I forgot to eat mid-day. All of a sudden it was 6:30 and I was in a poor state from not eating, but I couldn’t really even figure out why. I ate a meal and had a very difficult time stopping eating after that – the old food addict tendencies had kicked back in with force and I’m fortunate that there isn’t much junk food in my house.

But I have to move forward.

Monday‘s swim was great – a full kilometer in roughly 45 minutes, which is a time I can be happy with after years of fear of the deep end of the pool.
Tuesday I pedaled for 60 minutes and worked my chest and biceps hard.
Wednesday was a rest day, but Thursday became a rest day inadvertently as well. My dog got me up at 2:30 to go out and I just couldn’t get back to sleep, so when my alarm went off at 4:30am I got out of bed and tried to make a go of my usual morning, but it just couldn’t happen. I have to be ok with the fact that I went back to bed.
Friday was 45 minutes on the bike and a back & triceps workout, and Saturday is set to be a 60 minute bike ride and a 15 minute run. This week I flipped those two in the interest of saving time… I’m not sure it worked though.

All things considered, I feel like I’ve moved past the Wednesday eating hiccup and the missed training session on Thursday pretty well. I have to strive to not have these things happen, but I also have to know I can get past them, and the sooner I get past those bumps in the road, the more I can live in this moment – and this moment is pretty great.