Relocation!

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Just my 'magination

What if the only thing limiting our future was our ability to imagine it?

In a TED talk, Daniel Goldstein quotes philosopher Derek Parfit: "We might neglect our future selves because of some failure of belief or imagination."  Think about that:  we might be mistreating the yet-to-be version of ourselves merely because we suck at being able to imagine ourselves there in that future.

Goldstein, a behavioral economist, used the quote to illustrate why people often don't save enough money for retirement -- they can't fathom themselves becoming old and so putting a dollar away today to support themselves when they're old seems ludicrous -- but can't this be applied to any decision that puts us on a path either to the person we want to be or some other alternate universe that we're not as thrilled about?

When I'm trying to use willpower to put the cookie down, I often say to myself something along the lines of "Don't let short term pleasures override long term goals". The problem is, of course, that the short term pleasure, is, well, here. Right now. And usually quite yummy. And the long term goal? Well, it's oh so far away. My imagination is quite challenged to see how not eating the cookie today will cause me to be svelte and sexy in a year.

And that lean and fit future me? I have faith that I'll get there, but instead of being a wholehearted, can totally see it in my mind's eye kind of belief, it's more of the "sure it'll happen but I have no idea how" kind of belief (that allows me to eat the cookie because there doesn't seem to be a straight line between it and my future).

So, what if it really is just a matter of imagination?

What if I spent time envisioning the future me? I mean, really picturing myself, drawing up a complete story of what I'll feel like, what I'll be doing, how I'll look. Down to such details as what my daily eating habits are and how many times a week I'll be outside running and even what cute shoes I'll have treated myself to. Will this help? Will spending, say, 10 minutes a day playing this movie in my mind make a difference?

To be honest, it feels a bit woo-woo to me. A little hokey, even.

But then, can you think of something you wanted so bad you could almost taste it? Something that you would have sacrificed anything to get? I certainly do -- 4 years ago, I decided that I wanted to place in the top 3 in my age group in the local duathlon. I knew I needed to do some hard run and bike training, and I also had to drop a little weight. But my desire to get there was visceral; I could feel it in my bones. And you know what? I worked my butt off (almost literally) to get there. I ate well. I trained hard. I didn't let many short term pleasures get in the way of my goal. There were days when I wanted nothing more than to go back to bed rather than getting up and working out, but I dragged myself out of bed anyway.  I couldn't let down my future self. And damn if that didn't feel awesome.

That's the feeling to bottle.

At the time, I didn't really think of it in terms of working today for my future self, but that's exactly what it was. I could totally see myself on the course and picture what I would look like, how I would feel and exactly how I was going to race on that day.  I knew what I had to do those days in February and March to feed the person I was going to be on that day in late June.  

So today starts my experiment in envisioning my future self:  I'm going to spend time meditating on becoming the me I want to be. I'm going to paint a vivid picture in my head of what I'm going to look like, the things I'm going to be doing and even the day-to-day routine that I'm going to follow.  For this to work, that vision will have to be as real as something I can touch and hold, turning it around in my hands and seeing it from all sides. So real that my whole being will vibrate in harmony with it.  

Can this work?  I guess I'll just have to wait and ask my future self.

Anatomy of a 5-mile run

.02 miles: Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch...

Not exactly what I'm thinking at any mileage...

.05 miles: Must. Walk.

.15 miles: Okay, back at it... easy, easy...

.76 miles: This might not be so bad.

.83 miles: "Not so bad" ... What was I thinking?!

1.00 miles: Walk break! Woot!

1.32 miles: What percentage of done am I? Let's see, 2.5 miles would be halfway, so 1.25 would be a quarter of the way through, so 1.32 ... hmmm... okay, 1.33... 1.34... well, let's just swag it at about 30% done. Almost done!

1.37 miles:  Okay, no.  30% isn't even close to almost done.

2.00 miles: Walk break. Thank god.

2.10 miles: Get going, get going, get going...

2.11 miles: Okay, for reals now. Get going.

2.12 miles:  FOR REALS, body.  MOVE.

2.50 miles: HALFWAY! Now I'm *really* almost done.

2.64 miles: Dang. This wasn't over as soon as I thought it would be...

3.00 miles: Walk break, water break, change from podcast to music break, pep talk break, mop off sweat break, aren't I done yet self-talk break and then I'm all out of time as the treadmill clicks to 3.10 miles.

3.10 miles: Run! Run! Run! Maybe if I sound excited, my body will feel that way too?

3.82 miles: What the hell was I thinking, getting on the treadmill and loading up this workout? Huh? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Remind me never to do this again.

4.00 miles: Four miles would be just as good as five, right? This is a nice, round number, perfectly respectable and more than most people in the world are running right now. It would be a good time to quit, wouldn't it?

4.01 miles: Damn. Thought too long, now I've got to keep going to five miles.

4.10 miles: Okay feet, don't fail me now. Time for the last bit of running. You can do it, you can do anything for 10 minutes, right? No troubles, no worries, just one foot in front of the other...

4.36 miles: Isn't it at 5 miles yet?

4.39 miles: Not yet?

4.42 miles: Still not. Sigh.

4.50 miles: Halfway through the last mile. The math was too easy, I should do this again at 4.57 miles.

4.57 miles:  <incapable of math>

4.62 miles: Sweat in my eyes! Oh my god, the pain!! I'm blinded!

4.71 miles: The faster I run, the faster I'm done...

4.77 miles: Okay, slow down, can't go that fast...

4.87 miles: Closer, closer, closer...

4.92 miles: Done yet?

4.93 miles: Is the treadmill broken? I should be done by now.

4.94 miles: What the hell...

4.95 miles: It's gotta be broken...

4.96 miles: Less than 30 seconds. Don't wimp out now!

4.97 miles: *%&$*#(@

4.98 miles: Must. Not. Trip.

4.99 miles: Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

5.00 miles: I did it. Made it. Accomplished my goal. Sure, I'm a sweat-soaked mess but at least I can lay claim to a job well done. Or, at least, a job done. No trips or spills or falls. No tears, no blood, no major injuries. I can only hope my next run is as totally awesome as this one.  Can't wait!

What I'm listening to (#1)

To say that I love podcasts is a monumental understatement. I not only love them, but I revel in them, eagerly looking forward to time driving in my car and even staying on the treadmill longer than my prescribed workout time to finish out a particularly mesmerizing episode. I know! It's like magic, right?

And since I'm completely infatuated, I thought I'd share a few of the podcasts that I'm lovin' on right now:

Pop Culture Happy Hour This is a fairly new find for me and I've totally fallen in love with it. It's snarky, witty and insightful conversations on all things pop culture, from movies to music to TV shows. And not recaps, but opinions, discussion of themes and explanations of subtleties that, frankly, I'd never even recognize if it weren't for them. This podcast makes me feel hip and with it, which is no easy feat when you're talking about a 44 year old who mostly watches sports on TV and listens to news on the radio. They always end the podcast with a segment called "What's making us happy" and my own resounding answer to that is the whole PCHH team. THEY make me happy.

Planet Money This podcast is all about making boring economic and financial stuff incredibly fascinating. The team does a great job at taking current and historical events and weaving a story around them so the events and forces behind them are not only understandable, but relatable. They manage to take these complex, overarching economic theories and find people who are actually living them and tell their stories. Just recently I learned all about the Gold Standard and I really enjoyed it -- seems impossible, yet, it's totally true.

Intelligence Squared An Oxford-style debate, this podcast makes me feel all smart and brainy just by listening to it. Hell, I feel smart just having it in my playlist. Two teams, one for the motion and one against with three segments: opening statements, questions, and then closing statements. It's recorded in front of a live audience and before the debate, the audience votes pro/con/undecided. After the debate the audience is polled again, and the side that has the biggest percentage gain wins. The panels they have are smart, informed experts, passionate about the side they are trying to prove. One of the last topics I listened to was "Amazon: the readers friend" and they went back and forth as to whether Amazon was a evil behemoth or not -- really, very informative. 

Dear Sugar Anyone who used to read Cheryl Strayed as Dear Sugar on TheRumpus.net will be thrilled to know that she's back, but in a podcast rather than written form. If you have never read Strayed as Dear Sugar, do yourself a favor and bury yourself in her archives online -- you won't be disappointed. Strayed brings such warmth, vulnerability and empathy to her advice that it seems to touch your very soul. She makes me feel all the feelings, if you know what I mean. The podcast -- she's also joined by Steve Almond, the Dear Sugar who preceded her -- has a different sort of feel to it than her writing, but she still has the ability to cut through all the crap to get to the heart of the issue.

So, what's everyone else listening to these days

Water on the brain

I'm in my basement, an overwhelming musty smell making me crinkle my nose. Arms and head hanging, I inspect the puddles of water that are slowly creeping from one wall out across the floor.  As you would expect, water in a basement -- except, perhaps, for those rich enough to have a pool or hot tub down there -- is not a good thing. In fact, it kind of ruins my day.

I march myself back upstairs and gather up an armload of old towels (the upside to having two dogs?  There is no shortage of towels around the house...) and head back down to sop up the water that's already there and put up a barrier against the water that continues to drip in.  See, a week ago we had the 5th biggest snowfall in Chicago history.  And today?  The temperature is nearing 40 degrees and the ice dams in my poor gutters are drip drip dripping down the house and magically seeping through to my basement.

After reining in the puddles, I go back outside and look at all the ice that's formed in my gutters, on my roof, attached to my downspout and even simply frozen directly to the side of the brick wall. This is certainly not what I wanted to be dealing with this weekend. Curses! I wanted to enjoy the unseasonably warm temperatures rather than shaking my fist at their consequences.

It's still so hard to figure, though -- we also get torrential rain storms during the summer and does the rain get into the basement?  Nope -- dry as a bone.  This water is just dribbling down the wall, looking a whole lot like the coming of Spring (it isn't, by the way, just wishful thinking on my part) but it's persistence does what the torrential rain storm cannot:  seep through my foundation and end up pooling around my workout equipment (hey! reason #26 not to workout!).

So, yea, this kind of sucks, but maybe I should look on the bright side, right? What's the moral of this story? That slow, steady movement can really go a long way in breaking through barriers, even brick walls. Where raging strength fails, persistence can succeed.  There's a life lesson for you.  And now?  The only ice I'm going to deal with are the three cubes clinking around in my glass, helping to end the day better than it started.

25 Perfectly Acceptable Reasons Not To Workout

1. I coughed so I must be getting sick and should rest.
2. It’s too cold out.
3. It’s too warm out.
4. It's too _____ out.
5. The dogs will give me a guilt trip for not playing with them.
6. I don’t have any clean workout clothes.
7. I just did laundry and I don’t want to dirty anything right away.
8. Did I hear donuts calling my name?
9. I don’ wanna (said in my best, whiny, toddler voice)
10. My horoscope said that it might be dangerous to lift anything heavy today.
11. But there’s a marathon of Law and Order on TV!  I'm sure that’ll never happen again!
12. My blog isn’t going to write itself.
13. I’ve just gained the trust of my bed and hate to endanger that trust by leaving.
14. The sun will make me squint too much and give me wrinkles.
15. Right after I clear the next few levels of Candy Crush….
16. It’s such a good hair day that I hate to ruin it by sweating.
17. It just seems like so much…. work.
18. There’s no one else home and I’m afraid that I might accidentally get pinned down by a barbell.
19. My chakras would revolt.
20. I'm trying to conserve energy in the event of a zombie attack.
21. I've got a very important appointment with my couch that I must keep.
22. Girl Scout cookies are in season again and I'd hate to be rude and not answer the door when they come calling.
23. I've fallen and I can't get up!
24. I need to immediately start working on my new year's resolution to get more sleep.
25. I'm testing out the theory that a watched pot never boils.

Of course, for every 25 reasons for not working out, there's always one good one in support of getting your sweat on: that feeling of accomplishment and badass-ness you get from taking on the world and coming out victorious. And that trumps those 25 excuses any day.

What's your favorite perfectly acceptable reason for not working out?

Lessons from a Past Life

The merciless sun was beating down and sweat was pouring down my face. My feet were blocks of cement strapped to the stumps of my legs, and I wanted nothing more than to lay down on my back, smack dab in the middle of Michigan Avenue, hoping that I wouldn’t get run over. Instead, I just kept muttering an insipid Nike slogan to myself, “Don’t suck. Just do it.”.

Of course, I assume that I wasn’t the only person out there feeling that way: after all, it was mile 23 of the Chicago Marathon. It was perfect spectating weather -- mid 70’s and sunny -- which meant that it was not exactly great marathon weather (the sunburn I’d have at day’s end would attest to that fact).

But, let me start at the beginning. It was October 2011 and this was my fourth marathon, my third Chicago Marathon. After each marathon, I always swore that this would be the last. Really, the last one! Honest! But then, as the agony of the last marathon faded, it would be replaced by the angst of the unsettled score I had with the distance: the completion of a sub-4 hour marathon. And that's how I got to be in the middle of Michigan Avenue, ready to pass out, looking as if I were on a death march.

Spoiler alert: I didn't go sub-4 hour. My finish time was 4:09:40, just a little bit over what I had wanted, but it didn't matter -- I was ecstatic. And the whole experience taught me lessons that I'd do well to keep in mind:

Training matters
Every day, there was something I had to do and I had to want it more than I wanted that cookie or to sleep in. And going against everything I thought I knew to be true about myself, I trained, trained hard and kept at it with a consistency that I didn't think I had in me. No matter what anyone says, the hard goals in life require dogged preparation.  

If it were easy, everyone would do it
Sure, there were 45,000 other runners around me, but still over 2.6 million people just in the city of Chicago that weren't doing it because they didn't think they could. Hard goals separate you from the crowd.

When the going gets tough, the tough just keep plodding along
There were parts of the marathon that just flew by, like the early miles when my biggest worry was whether I was running too fast or if I should have Gatorade at this water stop or the next. And then there were the other 24 miles where just about every cell in my body wanted to quit, but even still there were those few rebel cells in my body that whispered, “Just a few more steps…” over and over. Just move forward -- that’s all that counts.

The finish line is the shizz
I made the left turn onto Columbus Avenue and saw the finish line banner up ahead, waving in the breeze. I saw the time clock, sadly past 4 hours, but not yet hitting 4:10. I unearthed 45 seconds of what felt like sprinting (in reality, um, yea, not so much) and crossed the finish line, arms raised in triumph, hearing the announcer say my name. And with that, I fell to my knees, simultaneously laughing and sobbing, and was just so damn relieved that it was over (side note: there’s no better way to attract cute EMTs than to fall over after running a marathon).

There’s no better feeling than being proud of yourself and your effort
After assuring the EMTs that I really was okay, I could feel the sense of accomplishment and fierce pride spread through me. I did it. I really, truly did it. Perhaps I hadn't hit my 4 hour goal, but I had trained as hard as I knew how and I didn't quit out on the course, not once. I knew that I had pushed as hard as was possible and that feeling, well, there’s just nothing like it.

And that’s really the main takeaway from all this: I can do whatever I want and anything is possible. All it takes is commitment and consistency and the deep down desire to get it. I've done it before, I can do it again. Any goal is just a marathon in disguise.

2014 has come and gone in a flash -- isn't that always the way? Like Gretchen Rubin says, "The days are long but the years are short". So true.

2014 was a good year.  Sure, there are definitely some goals that I didn't hit, but overall it's been a fun year. I feel like I'm settling more into being true to myself and overall I'm FAR less concerned about what people think of who that person is.  I've taken a few awesome trips, discovered the joy of learning how to balance on a slackline and even started teaching myself a few things about web design -- a few of the many things accomplished during 2014 and only a fraction of things for which I am grateful.

And what's on the docket for 2015?  You'll notice that anything weight/fitness related is conspicuously absent from the list -- it's easy enough to say that I want to lose weight and get into shape, but I'm still not positive what form that will take, so I've decided to just leave my options open. But, that's not going to stop me from making my annual list.  I mean, what would January 1st be without resolutions?

2015:  The Year of Growth

Meditate every day  I know.  I know!  I’m a little afraid to commit this idea to (virtual) paper, but it’s now been 17 days that I’ve done it (going through the program at headspace.com) and I’m strangely enjoying it.  I still don’t know exactly what benefit I’m getting out of the practice, but somewhere deep inside, I feel like this might be key to something important. If nothing else, it gives me a block of time to be mindful and relaxed and grateful.

Read 50 books  Upping my last year’s goal by 150% and would like to split it about evenly between fiction and non-fiction. Along with this -- recording each book read on Goodreads.  I really love to be able to see exactly what books I’ve read and what I thought of them.

Go through all classes on codecademy.com  I just never make enough time for this but I really do want to learn these skills.  This is one of those hobbies that once I start doing it, time just flies. There’s something about creating and coding that gives me a confidence and pleasure that I don’t get in many other places.

Keep journaling daily -- and read through the corresponding entry from a year ago  This is a continuation from last year; definitely something worth doing.

Teach old dogs new tricks  Gotta keep the dogs stimulated and mentally sharp, Clarke especially.  Belle gets a fair amount of physical exercise (we play fetch where I stand on the main floor of the house and throw the ball up to the 2nd floor loft), but Clarke is a lazy butt (and also seems to spend a lot of time all gimped up) and so learning new tricks is a great way to tire him out and keep him learning new stuff.

Digitize my life as much as possible  Bills, photos, any type of paperwork -- it's all about getting organized and removing clutter.  And can't forget to also implement a backup scheme!

Complete the 30 Days of Writing online  Sarah Peck is starting a One Month of Writing Prompts -- 750 words a day for a month -- and I’m all signed up.  It’s free and I’m hoping that it gets me back into the habit of writing every day.  I avoid writing sometimes just because it’s hard … but I know (full well) that the more often I do it, the easier it becomes.  Funny how so many things in life are like this.

Focus on self-care -- whole foods, good sleep, good sweat and practicing gratitude on a daily basis  I need to give more importance to my physical and emotional well-being.  If I can’t keep my eyes open, if I’m not getting fresh food and I’m not paying attention to the moments that happen every day to be thankful for, then I’m not being kind to the most important person in my life.