Tag: canadian athlete

hindsight

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the cliche phrase ‘hindsight is 20/20’ – the idea of looking back on an event, or series of events, and concluding that you have much more clarity about those events with the knowledge and understanding you currently possess, comparing it to having ‘perfect’ 20/20 vision.

I take issue with this. I think it’s wrong.

There’s a word, and it’s a popular one these days, that completely negates the idea that hindsight is perfect. That word is trauma. A great number of details have been misremembered and incorrectly associated with events surrounding trauma, causing what everyone around us might conclude is an ‘irrational response’ right here, in the present. I’m reminded of a situation in a music store, where a loud banging sound caused a war veteran who happened to be present, to dive onto the floor, before getting up, finishing his transaction, and bashfully leaving the store as fast as he could. As far as I remember, nobody in the room knew he was a veteran.

I suppose you could say that the veteran might have concluded, after hitting the deck, that in hindsight, he’d acted irrationally… but I’d wager a guess that if it happened again a day or week later, his response would be the same in spite of the fact that he is fully aware that he is not in a war zone.

Furthermore, there have been studies that show that when we remember an event that happened in our past, our brain networks change in ways that actually alter the memory of the event. This means the next time we remember it, we’re not remembering the event, but we are remembering the last time we remembered it.

When I was young, I had a difficult relationship with one of my parents. The fact that this is no longer the case has very little, if anything, to do with hindsight. Although I have the ability to see things differently now, it’s not because the passing of time so much as it’s because I get along with that parent much better now, to the point that I subconsciously don’t want to think of them in an unflattering light.

What can we do?

Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I believe that the answer for me is to do whatever I can to not hold a grudge, and to cherish positive memories. I want to give people, and myself, the opportunity for redemption for wrongdoings.

We like to believe that we can change for the better as we grow and learn, but somehow justify denying other people the same opportunity for redemption, like we hold the monopoly on self improvement. I’ve been doing that my whole life…

And in hindsight, that doesn’t make much sense anymore.

movement

I’m a runner. I run, and a couple months ago I assessed that I was the happiest with physique when I could run 22 kms without stopping. I can’t rightly say that this is what made me ‘happy’, but that was me at my fittest ever. I’d just run a triathlon course on my 40th birthday and in a fit of whimsy I opted to sign up for the Edmonton Half Marathon and came in at a time that was more than 15 minutes faster than I thought I would.

The truth is, I wasn’t happy with my physique.
I was happier about it than I am now… but at that time, all I saw was flaws, and now I look at my shirtless progress photos from that time with envy.

So, as of mid-November I got back into half marathon training, and in so doing I’ve tried to analyze what else was going on in my life at that time and the answer was: not much. The tail-end of a global pandemic we won’t soon forget, and a handful of fun outdoor shows probably sums it up nicely… but I had peace in my mind like I haven’t had the luxury of this year, and that’s really what I want, and although the spiritual journey I’ve been on has brought me through some rocky terrain I know that things are improving.

I won’t get into why, because it wasn’t all things happening to me directly, but to people around me. Sorting through those things brought to light some old traumas and coping mechanisms to light. I’d thought I’d dealt with them, but boy was I ever wrong.

Turns out there is not ‘set it & forget it‘ life… but I get tired of feel at-odds with myself.
I want to be disciplined and I want to go easy on myself.
I want to train hard and rest.
I want to be productive and sleep.
I want to be present and I want to daydream.

It’s endless, really, but I doubt I’m alone in that.
What I wonder now is, do I have to choose? I feel like living in the moment means not having to choose. I should be able to train when it’s time to train and rest when I’m tired and not have to be so intense or so exhausted that either choice is all-encompassing.
Is training really the opposite of rest?
Is productivity the opposite of sleep? No – so why the conundrum?

Am I just impossible to please? Or just confused.

What does satisfy me is that at this point I’m not really going after ‘more more more‘ actively so much as I’m finding ways to simplify. I’ve gone so far as to purchase several of the same articles of clothing so I don’t have to be faced with choosing what to wear so often. I meal plan and thus am rarely unsure of what to eat. I go for quality over quantity, generally and it’s improved my life.

Maybe it’s all so I can spend time fixating on productivity.

That last line was a joke.

busy busy busy

I’ve been writing a lot lately, and not only in this blog, so I’m hoping that I don’t end up falling behind in this, but I’ve been working on grants for touring with Confusionaires and working on a few new songs I’m excited about. It’s also a busy time at my day job but that doesn’t really impact this blog much.

Soon, my band will be announcing our Mexico tour, and we’ll be able to count ourselves among the ranks of export ready Canadian bands, which is big for us. We’ll be there for 10 days and play 7 shows (maybe more). Before that, we’ve got a a 2-nighter of Elvis, and a 3-show run of Buddy Holly performances at the end of January that you should most certainly buy tickets to… please… because Mexican gigs pay in pesos…

All that to say I’m really in a state of equal parts shock and gratitude, but I’m reminded that it’s important speak love into other people’s lives, too. We humans get so wrapped up in our own shit that we forget to come up for air sometimes.

A friend of mine is in sales, and recently posted a very vulnerable and beautiful post about the state of the world and ho she felt like she was distracting people from these things that need attention. It prompted a conversation and we got to really encourage each other in our ventures because these things are important – even though they’re not a war in Gaza, or a homeless crisis – we still get to facilitate people bringing joy into their lives, which is incredibly noble – but I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, and neither had she. It got me thinking about how rare these conversations are and that they shouldn’t be so rare.

Did these conversations used to be more common? Before the internet and the de-personalization of everything? I don’t know, and I don’t remember.

But I want to go to that place with people, to inspire and be inspired… and I have people I can do that with, and I am very lucky to have them… but there must be more. People are not just their avatars… they are complex and flawed and wonderous… and we should know more of them.

Anyway… that’s my stream of consciousness for today.

Much love.

judgement

As I work through a newly subscribed system, attempting to purge myself of ill will, I realize I have a lot of hang-ups for someone who’s ostensibly adapted the catch-phrase “everyone is doing their best.”

Even to take a tired old expression into consideration – There’s a fox in the henhouse – I’m compelled to acknowledge that, although I’m taking a metaphor literally, the fox is doing what he knows to do. My proclivity toward peaceful living and understanding that I am not a carnivore does not stop the fox from being a fox anymore than it stops the hen from being a hen. There are a number of things I can do to protect the hens from the fox, but changing the motivation of the fox isn’t really one of them.

So, too, I must allow cops to be cops, and robbers to be robbers, Donald Trump be Donald Trump, artists to be artists… and so forth. I can never say that “If I were that person, I’d do things differently” because if my life was there’s, and I made all the same decisions up to this point, I can’t rationally say I would do anything differently now. I realize I’m getting into the concept of free will being an illusion and I’ll stop short of that because I’m not really knowledgeable enough to speak on that, other than to say: If I was Jeff Bezos, I’d be Jeff Bezos… and notion of making decisions like Dave Johnston would be out the window.

So when I find myself in a place of judgement, I really have to cool my jets. I can’t rightfully pass judgement on anyone… and yet I do. Whether it’s ‘this band sucks’ or ‘that person is a junkie’ or ‘so & so is a jerk’ I must first acknowledge that I am out of my depth. Not only are these people doing their best – because we all are – but there is redemption for them – redemption being a thing I’ve spoken on before (and will again: spoiler alert) – because if there’s no opportunity for redemption, then there is no point in living.

The one I’m the most critical and harsh with… is me. I can berate myself to the ends of the earth about the 10 lbs I want to lose, or the struggles I have in my life. But if I heard my kid talk like that about herself it would break my heart. A friend showed me that fact recently when I shared my negative self-talk and it’s really stuck with me. If I’d want to intervene in someone else’s negative self talk, then why wouldn’t I want to stop myself from doing the same?

Food for thought… every day.

I’m not big on new years resolutions so much as I try to make changes when hey need to be made rather than waiting for a specific day… but since the new year is upon us, it really would serve us all well to be a bit kinder to ourselves. The kindness to others is sure to follow.

I haven’t been posting much about fitness lately, but I’ve been working my old half-marathon program at the running track at my gym that will carry me through until the thaw, which I hope comes early. Hopefully you’ve found something constructive and sweat-inducing to get you through the shitty months.

Much love.

what’s more

I can’t be the only one coming out of the holidays feeling like a bag of shit. This is something I’ve spoken about before. Beyond the nutrient lacking dessert-fest that the void between Christmas & New Years can be, beyond the complete upset of routine and schedule, beyond the stresses of people-pleasing and anxiety-inducing familiar visits, spending money for the sake of spending money, and yes – even genuine excitement, is the event itself.

Steeped in tradition, wrapped in a bad sweater, and wrung out over the dining room table is that little nugget of an event that we’ve blown way out of proportion. It; too, is exhausting – as exhausting as the contemplation of how we can do Christmas better next year: “Should we host a meal?“  ”should we hide under the blankets until it’s over?“  ”should we give ourselves an early gift of a tropical vacation that takes us away for the holidays?“  ”should we spend less?“  ”should we favor quality over quantity?“

There’s no right answer, and there’s no wrong answer, and for most of us, the month of December will once again take on a life of it’s own, flinging us to the edge of our social capabilities before demanding a resolution for January 1st no matter what we think we’re deciding now.

I have a child – and just one – so calling a moratorium has never been an option, but fortunately that child ages each year, and gradual changes are inevitable, which honestly helps keep me interested.

But this…

This feeling of post-holiday malaise feels similar to the day after running an endurance race. I’ve run an endurance race and I can make that comparison with freedom, but if you’ve never done it and are still willing to compare the Christmas holidays to running a marathon, I will assure you that you’re not far off.

Christmas for my family, which has historically been a long, drawn-out ordeal has been summed up quite nicely into 3 days. Next year, I hope to narrow it down to 2 – and preferably not consecutively.

On December 22nd I ran 10 kms and on December 26th I ran 7 kms and in between was a blur. I’m comforted by the fact that running 7k on boxing day is not something most people did, and that it set my head right. I’ve definitely shaken off the holiday blues faster than ever before but it still came up and surprised me all the same. Perhaps it is constant. Perhaps I could even set my watch to it’s predictable intrusion.

But feeling this way is not wrong.
I just hope you can shake it off when it’s time.

You don’t have to be a sloth for that week between Christmas & New Years… but you don’t have to beat yourself up for not being productive, either. Just act when it’s time to act.
And when the oxygen masks drop from the ceiling above you, but your own mask on before helping anyone else.
In other words…
Just be kind.
To you.
And then everyone else.

always searching

With each passing day, it becomes more clear to me that the 40-year game of addiction whack-a-mole I’ve been playing isn’t about substance at all so much as it’s about pacification. Pacification. I almost wrote ‘nurturing’ in place of that word, but it would have been in error.

I’ve not known what I needed or how to go about getting it so I’ve put a metaphorical soother in my mouth to hold back any crying I might have done (but let’s face it, crying still happened) in some half-hearted attempt to appear strong or attractive or badass, all of which worked. For a while, anyway. If these things didn’t work, then we wouldn’t use them as coping mechanisms.

That’s why drugs, sex, money, alcohol, gambling, food, jumping out of airplanes, and social media are such a problem – they work and they are powerful… that is, they work until they don’t, in which case not only do you have to go back to solving the problem and dealing with your newfound (powerful) addiction, which is hard – much easier to spin the ‘wheel of misfortune’ and find something else to; yes, pacify.

That’s what I’ve been doing since I was a kid.

That’s also why junkies & fuck-ups get really into Christianity, or body building, or 12-step programs, or workaholism, or become gym rats and health freaks who find themselves running low on bare skin with which to tattoo something meaningful – this is feeling self referential now, I’d better watch it – and these things will work, too, especially if you don’t want to do the work. Nobody is going to go up to a well dressed man in a $700 suit driving an Acura and tell him he’s clearly got a problem, nor does an Olympic gold medal bring about an intervention, because these things are great achievements… as though great achievements and successes couldn’t be the result of an addiction, or at very least a fixation.

Don’t misread me, though – I’m not saying that the desire to be successful or the desire to be the best at something is unhealthy. Goals are healthy. Achieving them is fantastic. However, these accolades can serve to mask a deeper problem… such as Elon Musk’s fixation on putting people on Mars as an effort to escape his relationship with his own father, or Donald Trump’s fraudulent aspirations for success, for the same reason.

I couldn’t blatantly say something like that anymore than I could say that everyone who does intermittent fasting has an eating disorder. It’s simply not true, though intermittent fasting is an excellent way to mask an eating disorder.

I’ve been told somewhere along the path that I should not become too good at the wrong thing, because the success will keep me unhappy for the rest of my life. As much as I have done that in my professional life, it means something different now.

Now, I’m gonna keep running, and keep playing music, and keep working on cars, and keep getting tattoos, because… fuck you I won’t do what you tell me – possibly forever – but these things have to; for me, anyway, operate in conjunction with doing the brain work, and the soul work, as well as the body work.

It all has to be in alignment or the machine doesn’t run right.

laughable

Certain recent global pandemics that shall remain nameless shook things up a lot. If an understatement exists, surely it was the one I just made.

Mixed into the barrage of things we all had to roll with whether we liked it or not; were a couple things that a good number of people I’ve talked to recently actually miss about the inappropriately termed ‘lock-down’ time. The most consistently cited was the slower pace of daily life.

<sarcasm> y’think??? </sarcasm>

I’ll start by quickly assessing and then pushing aside the fact that it wasn’t actually the slower pace of the pandemic that appealed to us, but rather that the break-neck speed of e-commerce and the never-sleeping algorithm forever parting us with our money in exchange for temporary amusements is not a pace that the human body was ever designed to endure, nor was our collectively exhausted brain – and now that the aforementioned break-neck speed has resumed, a great number of people are resounding in wonderful rebellious chorus: fuck this.

I don’t remember the exact point at which I stumbled across a meme informing me that “it’s ok to stop mainlining cable news” and my respect for meme-culture, if that is indeed a thing, shifted.

Between my conscious decision to stop watching new news; having determined that anything truly important will be brought to my attention either directly or indirectly, and the more recent advent of news outlets being forbidden from posting directly to Facebook (because Facebook refused to pay them for their stories being shared… which is another fun discussion for another day), I am happy to say that the fear machine, in my world, has been cut off at the knees.

As a member of the adult, caucasian male demographic in North America in 2023, and a fervent self-analyzer, I can assure you that most of our decision making is based in one thing: Fear. It’s for this reason that I’m elated to have these reach of these news outlets curtailed significantly, even if it means they might sink to some desperate depths in order to retain Canadian readership.

My observation is that in order to unite any number of people is through connection on a common emotional level. It’s spiritual in nature, because it’s subtle and personal. On a small and positive scale, it’s what unites young couples – the sharing of stories and laughing together; laughing of course being one of the few expressions of self that is socially acceptable. The sharing of tears has a similar effect, but it more acceptable in settings such as bible studies and addiction recovery meetings, or occasionally in a movie theatre where Schindler’s List of some similarly heartbreaking film is being watched, as it’s heartbreak that crosses all personal boundaries. The imagination is triggered in most cases and a relatable experience may come to mind, cascading the emotion – which is why when you’re laughing, the cracking of another joke can make you laugh harder, even if it wasn’t as funny. A shared sadness can have a similar effect, but generally speaking people find these feelings uncomfortable, and avoid these scenarios.

The same emotional connection is made when a feeling of fear is shared, except without the obvious jubilation that a shared laugh brings about. Fear is more humbling and subduing because of it’s negative nature, so when fear is broadcast and shared, it has a sweeping effect as it; too, triggers the imagination and causes a cascade of negative emotion. What is even more problematic about fear is that we as humans tend to fixate on it.

I’ve heard this described as an evolutionary trait, wherein once upon a time, our primitive ancestors might be foraging for food miss something helpful and nourishing such as a fruit tree because they were more concerned with the presence of snakes lurking in the grass. Seeing the snake would be more important to survival than eating an apple or a pear in that moment, so attention to the negative is crucial in times of stress for this generation of ancestors. Eons later, we live under constant stress and anxiety to the point of physical fatigue… but this age-old trait is apparently why we have such trouble looking away from car accidents, too.

So, to have the presence of this fear reduced dramatically will ideally make more room for the sharing of laughter and tears, and connecting with each other on an emotional and spiritual level – the kind of connection we were truly missing through the pandemic (and I would argue much further back than that). Meaningful connection through the sharing of stories, and the spoken word is absolutely crucial to our existence as a species and as a group of individuals, because we quite honestly share more commonality than difference.

It’s fear that serves to categorize and label us. Not love.

I recently drove between opposing sides of an issue – a protest and a counter-protest, held on opposite sides of the street on my route to work. It was big, and people were still just arriving at the time I was passing through. Upon exiting the protest/counter-protest gauntlet, I came to witness a couple walking up to a cross-walk wearing traditional religious garb small-talking with a couple of; and I use the term lovingly, blue-haired freaks. It was fairly clear that both couplets were destined for opposite sides of the street to address the issue at hand, but they appeared to be walking together, and being cordial and polite despite the impending discord.

It made me think about both sides of the issue, and how quickly political and societal issues would be resolved if each side saw the other side for who they are: people… doing their best.