Tag: canadian athlete

here we go

It’s the Saturday before Christmas, and despite everything I said a couple weeks ago about only committing to what you can handle, we’re all about to find out how much that actually is. Some of us are so busy right now that we don’t even have time to read this blog post – so thank you for taking a minute.

I’ll keep it brief.

If I can encourage anything, it’s just be in the moment wherever you are and wherever you’re going. Just take your time and be present with the people you’re visiting with, because it’s very easy to be somewhere and be consumed with the next obligation – especially if it’s happening on the same day – but do what you can to enjoy and make merry with the people you’re with while you’re with them.

The holidays will be a whirlwind anyway, no matter how you slice it… and a whirlwind doesn’t need your help to move it along.

I hope you and the people you spend it with truly get the best of the season, and that you take care of yourself, and your brain, and the people around you in the midst of it all.

Let tomorrow happen tomorrow.
Let next week happen next week.
… and January can wait until January.

And… please do it without harming an animal if at all possible – or at least as few as possible. Animals are unnecessary casualties of these social contracts we commit ourselves to, and if we can leave them out of it, we’ll all feel better. If we’re truly in pursuit of “Peace on Earth, Good will towards all people” this season, then I’ll openly state that veganism is the end result of peaceful living.

All the best to you & yours.

… the season

I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds this particular time of year exhausting. I’ve finished all my performance engagements for 2024 and I’ve got a month to sort out the festivities… but if we’re really looking at the calendar, I’ve got 2 weeks, and I’ve already attended a Christmas party a week ago now.

It flies by. We all know it flies by.

So as we make plans to gather with the people we haven’t seen in a while, and in the spirit of cold weather and too much food, and the social contract of ‘tradition’ under which we operate, we include people we don’t really want to spend time with. We spend as little time thinking about the people we’ve blocked and unfriended – both in real life and on the internet – no matter how ‘grinchy’ it makes us, as a mechanism of defence for our own mental health and well-being.

As I ponder the notion of defending our mental health and well-being through the holidays, I can’t help but think that the whole notion of this tradition is a bit of a detriment to most of us. The functions we host and/or attend can be quite magical in the moment, but we all know that as the hour draws ever nearer, the stress compounds and magnifies.

The house is never clean enough or decorated perfectly enough.
The timing of the food being ready all at the same time is paramount.
“Did you iron your shirt?”
“Is that what you’re wearing?”
“I hope so-&-so doesn’t start talking about x, y, and/or z”

I’m flashing back to my youth, praying to whoever was listening to send SOMEONE from our guest list to the house early – or even just on-time – so I could stop dusting the window sills or whatever seemingly senseless task I was assigned that ONLY gets done during the day on Christmas Eve.

The way most of these stresses are handled is by throwing whatever food regimen you follow out the window and washing down the associated guilt and stress with booze. We pour that shit in our coffee first thing in the morning… and we pour that shit in our egg nog with breakfast… until we somehow reach what we’ve deemed a socially acceptable time of day to stop hiding our coping mechanisms… and as much as Christmas is 1 single, solitary day, we actually lose our fucking MINDS from December 20th until January 1st, and most of us go broke doing it.

Being that I’m vegan and don’t drink at all anymore… I don’t have a pool in which to drown my sorrows, so I try to just not have any sorrows in the first place.

If you need to get off this train before it drives off the side of the mountain, consider this your permission. If you’re looking for a sign, I assure you it’s a stop sign.

The holidays weren’t meant to be this self destructive or poisonous. This is the season of giving, after all.

Personally – my family and I have been dialing back holiday commitments for years. My daughter has 2 extended families, my girlfriend has family, then there’s my family… so it’s a lot, especially for my daughter. We actually managed to get my entire family to meet for lunch at Boston Pizza a couple days before Christmas and call it good with just that! However last year, a family member decided that someone (other than their self) should host a proper meal. The only people that showed up was me, my girlfriend, and my daughter. Not even the person who decided this should happen showed up.

We’re back to keeping it simple this year.
Maybe more simple than ever.

I strongly encourage you to do what you can do… but if you need to draw the line, then draw it.

Happy Holidays.

witnessing growth

So I don’t talk about it much without being intentionally vague… BUT… I have this kid, and in her 16 years on this planet – an occasion celebrated somewhat recently – she’s done all kinds of growing up and maturing. She’s done things or the smart variety and of the dumb variety and has learned from both. Her unique worldview is something that both inspires me and causes me to stop and think, and she’s masterfully funny – the kind of funny that people are when they’ve had real life experience.

Not only has she already accomplished things I may never accomplish, and lived experiences I may never live, but she has dreams and aspirations of being something important and moving away from her hometown to see what the world has to offer her and although I’m in now hurry to shoo her out the door, I am genuinely stoked.

In the grand scheme of things, although she’s several years away form completely cutting off her dependence on me and her mother, she’s mere inches from (legal) adulthood. Other parents I talk to seem to be genuinely worried about this time for their kids – and while in a financial sense I wonder how she’s going to do what needs to get done with late-stage capitalism casting a dark shadow on all of us, I am; again, genuinely stoked.

Her small army of parents have taught her how to think analytically, and aside from the tangible actions of parenting: scraped knees, dental appointments, food & shelter, et al. – that’s the gig. Nobody’s throwing us a parade, and I know the job is far from over but while I talk to so many parents who are worried about their children growing up, all the while, longing for the bygone days of excited christmas mornings and saturday morning cartoons, I have to say I loved those days, but I don’t really miss them… because looking at the road ahead, I am; again, genuinely stoked.

I loved having a little girl at every phase of life, and as this father/daughter relationship continues to grow, I can say I love this phase that we’re in right now more and more all the time.

I am: again, genuinely stoked.

discomfort

I don’t know if it’s been a particularly trying time, or if it’s been business as usual and I’m dwelling on things that need not have that level of attention. As I take a step back, it’s business as usual, but what’s unique to this time is the vehicular challenges I’ve been facing.

My faithful Ford Ranger (read: capital R, lower-case ‘anger’) pickup truck died on me a few weeks ago, and through some combination of stubborness and mental and emotional fortitude, I have still not sought the help of any professionals in this field. It’s a problem I want to solve on my own, and I have the skills to do it, but what I lack is the time… so as my neighbors quietly judge me (maybe), I continue to try things, test things, replace things, and audibly swear. For those who care, there’s no spark, and I’m close to having tested and/or replaced the entire ignition system, so I must be close.

The insult that’s been added to that injury is that someone thought it might be a good idea to drill a hole in my gas tank and steal the ingredients. They likely made off with about $20 of my full tank, allowing an additional $75 worth to drain into a nearby manhole, and if my impending gas tank patch job doesn’t work, a $1000 part to order and install. I’d rather they’d have taken my catalytic converter, as is the Edmonton tradition. That’s a problem I can solve on my own.

So in the meantime, I’ve been driving my 1962 Ford Fairlane 500. An absolute gem of a car that I love dearly, but it is a project car, and it’s age is showing in some regards so I’d rather not be leaning on it as hard as I have been lately. It’s my love for that car that has taken time away from fixing my truck.

The icing on the cake is that my mountain bike also needs parts… it’s functional, and a lot of fun to ride, so not really a concern… but still, literally every vehicle I own is in a state of disrepair.

The lesson here is probably patience. Most lessons tend to have patience as; at very least, and undertone. Really, I’m finding that I am too busy and my life is too full to really take the time required to solve required problems. This is something I aim to remedy. My girlfriend and I are making a conscious effort to stop & smell the roses, and really enjoy the summer while it’s here. I’ve certainly earned a lovely tan while running in the early morning sun and working on my old-ass house, my old-ass car, and my truck that is getting older & older-ass as we go, here.

At any rate, if all goes well, I’ll be driving my choice of selections from this small fleet of vehicles by the time this blog entry gets posted. In the midst of it all, I still managed to write an absolute banger of a honky-tonk rock & roll song called ‘one problem at a time‘ which maybe you’ll get to hear sometime next year.

Until next time…

mindful action

I recently heard a comedian talk about ‘mindfulness’ and the buzz around that word in the context of being aged in a tech-forward time. He’d stated that the notion of being mindful wasn’t a thing 30 years ago because if you had to ride the bus somewhere, all you really had to entertain you was the other people on the bus or the view out the window, and if when you got where you were going – say, a movie or something – and the person you were meeting got there 20 minutes later than you, your only option was to wait.

You might have had a portable music player but they were so horribly inefficient at that time that you might get 4 hours of cassette play out of a set of batteries, and that carrying around what would eventually be a dead walkman was actually a hassle.

So you were forcibly “in the moment” more often than not.

Now, we have mass distraction whenever we want it. We have a casino, weed shop, strip club, 24-hour sports channel, and tabloid in our pockets at all times and we can constantly see what other people are doing, or even spend an incredible amount of time planning and uploading a selfie.

We have the option to never be in the moment again, as our brains can constantly be elsewhere.

This is why art is so important to me.
When I’m writing this, it’s all I’m doing.
When I’m playing guitar – for people or not – it’s all I’m doing.
When I’m running – it’s all I’m doing.

I’ve long time been a proponent of delving into a thing – running, for example – and being in that state as long as possible, connecting with nature and seeing what can happen at the edge of my capabilities, but I’m coming to understand that it’s more than that.

It’s also meditative, and present.

If I’m not present when I’m running, or riding a bike, I fall. If I’m not present when I’m performing or practicing, I give a lousy performance. I have to be focused and meditative in order to get the job done.

If I’m driving a car while looking at my phone, it’s incredibly dangerous – yet people still have massive struggles with putting the phone down and being present… and as far as I can see, it’s because they’re out of practice. Even in conversation with someone else – if we are watching my phone at the same time, we’re cheating both parties out of this experience and fellowship, and possibly even showing disrespect.

Mindfulness is a muscle that needs to be exercised, not only to keep it strong, but to prevent it from becoming week.

It might sound crazy – even after 3 years of writing this blog, but I’m 42 years old and I’m (still / again) learning how to be alone with myself.

nature boy

I like to run. It fills me up.

I’ve been going for a few years now and it’s brought so much joy into my life – not only to run – but to run outside. At this stage of the game, climate notwithstanding, if I can’t run outside then there’s little point to running at all. So I run outside, even when the weather sucks, and I haven’t run less than 5km this year. Typically I shoot for 10 or more kilometers but there’s been a few 8km loops since that takes me around an hour.

This can take a round of of my legs, meaning I only really get to do it 3 days a week… which makes me want to go even longer. I typically do between 20 & 35km per week and that’s slowly turning into 25-40km.

So, in conjunction with the old half-marathon training program I’ve been revisiting, I’m also revisiting the old triathlon training program… and getting on my bike – again, generally a rain-or-shine outdoor activity. It allows me to destroy the other parts of my legs that running doesn’t kill.

I’ll get back to swimming eventually, too.

The key here, is being outside.
I’m not a fan of running on an indoor track, though I’ll do it. Same goes for stationary bikes. I hate treadmills.

The spiritual connection to nature I feel when I’m pushing myself to exhaustion and delirium while being immersed is addictive. I don’t have to be on the edge of exhaustion to enjoy nature, or to feel that connection, but there’s something magical that happens when you’ve depleted yourself and poured out all of your energy, all of your emotion, all of your sweat, all of your stress and cuss-words and anxiety and frustration until you’re completely empty and ready to be refilled by the hand of God, and just then the hand of God arrives and gives you music and poetry and breath.

I’ve tried my share of man-made things to help me feel this euphoric, but our species just doesn’t have the tech to make this happen without also killing us simultaneously… and our species also can’t beat the price.

Nature is all around us.
Nature is us.
And one of the most short-sighted things we ever did was decide to view ourselves as separate from nature.
If we saw ourselves as the extension of nature that we are, we’d behave much more differently to each other and to our environment.

going without

I feel like everywhere I look, I see positive & negative reports of intermittent fasting. It’s been like that for some time in my feed, and i know a bunch of people doing it. It never really appealed to me for a couple of reasons, such as:
– I am a food addict.
– People seem to do it to lose weight, and it seems like a odd way to try and lose weight from my purview, especially since I’ve never personally witnessed anyone lose any noticeable amount of weight doing it.
– Intermittent fasting implements the notion of eating during a specific window of time everyday, which is fine, but that’s not what the term intermittent actually means.
– As someone with a rough relationship with food, it seems like a fantastic way to mask an eating disorder.
– It’s a fad

For someone who keeps his personal health at the center of most decisions, the proposed health benefits never really made me want to try it… (and there ARE health benefits, I’m just not certain that weightloss is one of them).

Nonetheless, my girlfriend and I have been trying it on in the most entry-level way. For the time being we’ve adopted a 12-hour eating window followed by a 12-hour fasting window (much of which we’re asleep for). Immediately we’ve noticed an increase in the quality of sleep we’re getting, and with an eating window that closes at 5:30pm, evening snacking is off-limits. Often that 12-hour fast gets stretched to 13 or 14 hours, which is great. Breaking fast at 6am and following it with a long run (60-90 minutes or more) or a strenuous workout nets a greater sense of accomplishment and satisfaction with my efforts.

However; these benefits are not the cause of my curiosity so much as they are an added bonus.

No, the reason fasting appeals to me is completely spiritual. The yogis, the gurus, the krishnas, the muslims, the hunger-strikers, and Jesus himself all fasted in a state of meditation and prayer, as a show of strength and sacrifice to a higher power and were ultimately cosmically rewarded, perhaps even victorious in one way or another. This action seems to put me in better contact with the universe, with my environment as a part of nature, and in harmony with the various beings that I cohabitate with on this planet.

There’s a lot of science for & against fasting for numerous reasons, and usually I like to have the science to back up a decision. It sure came in handy when I started running long distances, when I became vegan, and a number of other decisions I’ve made – but I have to say that in this instance, the scientific discussion has little bearing on my desire to do it.

Again, my efforts so far have been small, but I can’t help but wonder what a 36-hour water-only fast might look like – what wonderful music I might create or words I may channel.

Maybe I’ll see God.
Maybe I’ll sleep a lot.
Either way, I’ll experience something I’ve never experienced before – maybe even something that nobody’s ever experienced before, and my life will be richer for the experience.

My life is richer for every experience.