Tag: run

reactive

There are many aspects of life that are beyond control. As much as I’d like to think that I am in control of; well, anything… I have to take a step back and realize that I am not, and probably never have been. There are only a few things I can claim as mine in a creative sense, and for me they are all songs (though if I’m writing about something, even that level of control is questionable).

The truth is that I am reacting to most things.

I accelerate when the light turns green. I book musical performances when I am available to do them. I apply for funding when funding is available. I reward exemplary behavior. I buy shoes when they’re on sale.

I cannot truthfully be held accountable for anything that happens so much as I can be held accountable for how I react to those situations…

The neighbor’s dog got out. My kid forgot her bus pass. The grocery store ran out of tempeh. My guitar amp is crackling. I’m stuck behind a train that’s going to make me late for work.

Yes – but what am I going to do about it?
How am I going to temper my reaction to scenarios in order to illicit the best (or least worst) result?
And – is there actually anything I can really do to positively affect the outcome?

Almost unanimously, the quick answers to all of these questions is ‘I don’t know’ but beyond the initial shock of being presented with any scenario – be it good or bad – the possibilities are as limitless as the confines of imagination.

If my neighbor’s pitbull escapes the fence, and I am walking on-stage in another city, I must do nothing because not only can I not affect change from my current location, I must also not allow this scenario to take over the task at-hand. I have to resign to entrust the situation with my neighbor’s dog to the people that are able to do something, and I can’t feel regret about what couldn’t be done… especially when it can and will and does get handled.

This is ultimately why I don’t drink anymore. My decision making prowess suffers a devastating downgrade when I do, whether it means saying inflammatory things under the guise of attempted humour, or allowing my judgement around what I eat to slide, deciding whether or not to drive… the list goes on, and it primarily goes on because when I was drinking, I was drinking much more frequently than I should have been.

I am still bound to say inflammatory things and compromise my own judgement, but I do it with a sober mind. So, when my actions and reactions are called into question, I can be held appropriately responsible for them. It might sound a bit fucked, but I take solace in the fact that every poor decision I’ve made in the past 17 months has been made with intention. I don’t hide behind weak, hazy excuses anymore, and I own every smart and dumb idea… which is hard, because I’m fairly bashful and humble about the good ideas, and when the bad ideas come rolling out, there’s no excuse for me to hide behind.

The reality of the situation is that I am doing my best. My path is a spiritual one, and the actions, or reactions, I take are in keeping with the curves in that path that I need to bend with in order to stay upright.

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.

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.

the most happy

“The revelation hasn’t been “you were happier when you were leaner” because I know that’s superficial bullshit. The truth of the matter is that challenging myself physically brings joy into my life.”

When were you the most happy with your appearance? Chances are decent that you didn’t know it at the time.

I suffer from a bit of body dysmorphia. That’s obviously a self diagnosis, and I’m inclined to downplay it a bit because I’m fairly certain that most of us have a touch of it. I recently stumbled across some old shirtless pictures of myself – no, not the old fat guy pictures, the ones from last year and the year before when I was training for triathlon and rolled that training into a half-marathon run.

What I saw at that time was problematic flab, negligible as it was.
What I see now is that my transformation was truly incredible. Needless to say I’m no longer in that kind of shape, but I can honestly say I’m not far off. I’m less than 15 lbs heavier now, and I am that way because of how hard I was training at the time and I’m certain that a bunch of that weight is muscle. Ultimately the difference between 192 lbs and 180 lbs is not much.

So I opted to dig into what kind of gym efforts I was doing at those times, and how much I was eating, what my protein sources were – everything. I changed my diet a while back to see what would happen, and shortly thereafter some heavy emotional stuff came my way that knocked me off course a bit. I began training less, and with less intensity because my attention was needed elsewhere, and I began eating less because I wasn’t training as hard… so I’m elated to say that my weight hasn’t fluctuated due to poor diet – it’s holding steady, really… but not at a place I would like it to hold steady, necessarily.

All in all, I’m feeling the pull back toward my disciplined morning practice, my purpose-driven workout regime and my optimized diet, and have been making great strides in pursuit of that.

The revelation hasn’t been “you were happier when you were leaner” because I know that’s superficial bullshit. The truth of the matter is that challenging myself physically brings joy into my life. I would like to reclaim that. The thing I see in the mirror now that I don’t like isn’t just pudge… it’s the reflection someone who knows he can do more.

What I’ve learned about happiness is this: Accomplishing tasks will not make you happy. Whatever your level of happiness was when you took on the challenge will be the same after you accomplish the task. You have to be happy where you are if you want to be happy where you’re going.

So I know fine-tuning my body won’t make me happy.
Trying my best, and living with purpose, though… that’s another thing.

The joy you have at the top of the mountain is the joy you bring with you.

on the train

I have not been training as hard this summer as last summer… and it took a while, but I’m fine with it. This summer I worked on my car, painted a couple rooms in my house, and took on various construction projects at home… not to mention a new job and a few gigs… songwriting… some family things… and yes, even some training.

Completing a good number of things things I’ve done have brought about a sense of accomplishment, but that sense of accomplishment is fleeting. I recently heard an interview with Light Watkins wherein he states that the level of happiness you are feeling right now is the same level you will feel after completing a task – and it resonated with me very clearly because I know exactly what that means. To tackle a problem is great – but another problem will soon obstruct you, and the only way you can truly increase your happiness is to pursue your purpose.

So yes, it was a great summer, but I am back on the training train – and if I’m completely honest, part of why I am okay with not training so hard through the summer is because I am back to it now, to the degree that brings me the most joy.

That’s not to say that training is my purpose, but training does bring about an alignment of values – of heart, soul, and mind – and conditions me to be at my best physical shape when I am realizing my purpose. My actual purpose is one of service in the arts, but if I am polluted and out of shape, I will inevitably short-change the recipients of that service, be it at my day job or in my songwriting and performance career.

All in all, It feels so good to have reclaimed my routine of endurance, even if it has cost me part of my evening routine by way of an early bedtime… sorta. (it will once the lack of sleep catches up with me).

I have a full life, with great hobbies and great people in my life – but if I am not at my best, then I cannot give my best, and nobody wants the fractional version of me.

easy does it

“I can actually be stubborn as an ox, when I choose to be – so I imagine it’s time to stop choosing to be.”

There’s nothing quite quite so humbling and self reflective as someone’s uninhibited criticism of you. Even when the emotion is removed, there are nuggets of truth, or at very least nuggets of perception – but even then, someone else’s perception of you is always the truth to them.

If someone is mean to me; especially if it happens on multiple occasions, it’s no stretch for me to conclude that the person in question is mean. The fact that other people love them and can be vulnerable and safe with them doesn’t change my perception. So, when I act the way I act and someone finds it smug or distasteful… well… I am those things.

I know I can’t govern how I’m perceived. I can only control my actions and reactions – so I naturally move forward with a newfound sensitivity to how I might be behaving – at least for a while – and in the meantime I try to create a new habit or a new outlook that is move loving and inclusive. It’s a tall order for an introvert such as myself but there’s no reason why I can’t learn this new behavior as an individual – after all, we as a society do this all the time. There are a lot of words and phrases that we’ve said that are no longer acceptable to say in polite company. We collectively gave our heads a shake and made some improvements.

My issues are more behavioral though. I know I can come on a bit strong and I’m pretty hard to argue with on certain topics – but I can learn to have a little more grace. I can actually be stubborn as an ox, when I choose to be – so I imagine it’s time to stop choosing to be. The last thing I ever want to do is make an enemy out of a friend, or negatively impact someone’s life so badly that they consciously decide to run hard in the opposite direction, not only physically but spiritually.

To carry that guilt would be the absolute worst.

Truth is, I can have a little more grace with myself, too. I honestly get the worst of my own criticism and I’m certain that I’m not the only person who is my own worst critic. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be a certain way – the most disciplined, the most hardcore, the smartest, the strongest, the best musician, the most poetic, the most impactful, the most available and the most efficient.

What I have learned recently is that I find things that save me and I envelope myself in them. Veganism. Music. Endurance Sport. Most recently: My Car. These things come to me when I need them most and I throw in hard with them to a point of obsession. I’ve done so negative things as well… junk food… booze… pills… and I have become the worst example of humanity available at the time.

But I still look myself in the mirror and am ultimately grateful for the fucked up weirdo I was, because that fucked up weirdo got me here… and I should go easy on him.

And if I can extend grace to my worst critic… then I can extend grace to anyone.

So… easy does it.

do hard things

“There is an amazing series of events that happens when you identify something you can’t do, and then choose to take it on anyway. there are countless examples of this in all of our lives, because there’s a pretty good chance that if you are good at something, you probably spent some time sucking at it.”

There is an amazing series of events that happens when you identify something you can’t do, and then choose to take it on anyway. there are countless examples of this in all of our lives, because there’s a pretty good chance that if you are good at something, you probably spent some time sucking at it… and for some reason, likely either through the enjoyment of the activity or through identifying the merits of performing such a task.

The example I come to when I think of this is running.

Now, I used to weigh 340lbs and be asthmatic, and if you’ve known me for any real stretch of time then you know that I am by definition, a late bloomer. In other words, running isn’t JUST a thing I ever thought I’d be able to do recreationally – it’s something that I never even wanted to attempt.

Until I did. I literally started running because it’s hard.

I had taken a few small measures to eat cleaner and I dropped a couple pounds and had an infusion of energy – so I opted to put that energy to good use.

It took some serious TIME and MILEAGE to get where I am now, but at this point if I don’t run at least 3km, then I didn’t run at all, because that’s when I start sweating. A 8km – 10km run is a pretty energizing start to the day, and if I want to run the tank dry then I’ll keep going to 14km, maybe more.

That time and mileage is important – it’s where the discipline was adopted and strengthened, because I know just as well as anyone else does – if you want to climb the ziggurat, you must start with the first step. The first step for me was finding a ‘Couch-to-5km’ program on the internet. There are a million of them and they’re all roughly the same, but what programs like this give you is a guided process.

You don’t have to run. You can do something else, but you do have to start.
What you do is up to you, but to stretch yourself beyond what you’re currently capable of doing is always amazing.

When I was obese, asthmatic, depressed… existence was hard. Waking up in the morning was hard. Everything was hard… but I soon concluded (similar to a linchpin line in a cartoon I saw once, stating that ‘when everyone is a superhero, then no one is’) that when everything is hard, then nothing is.