Making my life better

If I need a reason for why I do things like run the WDW Marathon, getting the year started overcoming a big challenge could be as good a reason as any. I completed my fourth WDW Marathon in 4 years on Sunday.. My times are incredibly consistent given the nature of the marathon. I finished 3 of those 4 marathons in 6:20. The only exception is 2023 when I sat down wrong and messed up my knee a couple weeks before the race. I'm not going to revisit my recurring marathon training themes. I know what I need to do to be more comfortable in these runs. If I'm not up for the training, why do I keep entering this race (other than I really enjoy the whole runDisney vibe)? A pretty basic answer is that the race provides motivation for me to actually get out and run. My recap of my first WDW Marathon in 2022 highlighted that I was using the race to get my training runs back up to at least 10 miles. I run more when I am registered for a marathon. My run volume would plunge without a marathon looming over me. The race itself is highly rewarding. Every hard event is inherently rewarding, but covering all those miles on Disney property gives the marathon a little extra panache. There are drawbacks too, but the positives far outweigh the negatives. I also do the marathon because I can do the marathon. I'm approaching 50. My time for these kinds of activities is not unlimited. I need to accept the challenge while I still have a choice. There will be a day when my body makes the decision for me, but I still have the agency to make the choice to get out there and cover the miles. Running the marathon just feels like a better choice than not running the marathon. It's a choice that makes my life better. 

Making my life better is the point of all my resolutions/side quests/various pursuits and activities. Reading makes my life better. I'm not going to detour into detailing the specifics of how reading makes my life better, but it does. My Bookshelf Zero challenge is about getting me to read the books that I expect will make my life better. Reading a challenging book is not always pleasant in the moment, but I will be better for having read it (just like I'm better for having endured the marathon). Staying strong and losing weight are about staying healthy and active so I can live my life as I choose. I watch my Mom lead a small life where she has implicitly accepted all kinds of limitations by not taking care of her health. That is not the life I want to live. I set resolutions to give me an extra kick to get to the gym. It doesn't always work as much as I would like, but that goal probably gets me there more than if I didn't have that external measure. 

I put a book buying ban on myself this year. That restriction makes a moment less fun (lots of good choices for sale at the library yesterday, but no books for me this year), but focusing on reading what I already own makes my life better. I attempted to explore jazz last year. I was looking to expand my musical horizons and find new rewarding experiences. I found that I don't particularly like that style of music, but at least I gave it a try and don't feel like I'm missing out on something that would make my life better. I failed a goal, but I learned something valuable about how I experience the world and derive meaning from what I experience everyday. 

Of course I only explore a small part of my life in this space. I rarely delve into professional goals and challenges. I never share any details about the nature of my relationship with my wife or how I feel about being a parent. I call my resolutions and other goals side quests because my family and career are the primary adventure. Doing all that I can to make those parts of my life the best they can be will do more to make my life better than any book I read or workout I complete. I've made the decision to find another job. My current job is not doing much to make my life better (or maybe the best thing I could do to make my life better would be to find a new job). I've applied to what looks like a good opportunity. We'll see how it all plays out. I've been thinking deeply about my relationship with my wife. I look back at some of my actions with regret (it's about how I have failed to show her how I feel about her with words and actions, not any deep betrayals like cheating or something like that), but I'm focusing on how to move forward and make what we have better. Small improvements in my marriage will make my life dramatically better.

Here's to making my life better in 2025.

Resetting (Bookshelf Zero and a few other things)

I updated my list of owned books yesterday. I've been buying books without being overly diligent about adding them to my tally of owned but unread books. Assuming I haven't missed any, I'm at 190 books. That puts me pretty much back at the initial stages of this little project. Well, at least in terms of the number of books that I own but have not read. I made a shelf on Goodreads for the books that were on my original tally. That stands at 130. I'm not really worried about my lack of progress on Bookshelf Zero. I haven't exactly been committed to the project for a couple of years now. I feel worse about how I have pretty much just been going through the motions on my little personal side quests for the last couple of years. I feel like I'm past the big emotional and mental obstacles that have been dogging me for the last couple of years. That urge to channel my personal energy into making progress on a meaningful task has been gradually ratcheting up over the last couple of months. The onset of the New Year brings the annual refocusing of my energy into these long term plans. I feel ready to get more serious about my reading, fitness, and other goals. 

My indifference to things that I once found very meaningful has been a bit troubling. I don't know if I've been depressed or just worn out. The wife and I were talking about the path not taken earlier in the week. I have no idea what challenges were lying in wait for us down that path, but I doubt they would have been harder than what we have gone through since September of 2021. We downplayed the emotional stress and struggle of our year apart while we were living through it. Yes, we acknowledge it was hard, but I know I didn't really acknowledge just how big a challenge we had taken on with our decision to move. That was by far the hardest thing I have ever done. It took a ton out of me in just about every way possible. It wasn't like life was a piece of cake after that year was over. The adjustments we were all going through once in Florida took their toll as well. My energy was going to those issues. I wasn't defusing extra energy into reading or other activities. I was using all I had just to get through everyday. I was still doing the things that were a big part of my RIchmond life, they were just on a smaller scale. The ratio of the amount of energy I used for work to what I used for personal stuff slammed to the work effort. I'm finally getting that work effort under better control. The challenges and what I need to do everyday haven't changed much, but I have figured out better ways to navigate these issues. It's a process that will continue with new projects, new owners, and all of the uncertainty of professional life. 

So I start 2025 feeling better equipped to handle life. That means finding the time and energy to work on long term goals rather than just finding the energy to get through the day. Managing my energy is the real challenge. I just haven't had the physical energy to read at the end of the day. I haven't had the mental energy to read earlier in the evening.Reading rather than watching some random YouTube video would be a better use of my time, but I have needed some time to recover from my day and build up some mental energy. Finding ways to refill my energy by reading or some other more constructive activity rather than just watching a screen would be a real coup. That's what I need to figure out this year. The first step is wanting to do those things. That's what has been missing for the last couple of years. 

My low energy hasn't just made it harder for me to make positive progress on my goals (like actually reading books). Submitting to temptation and doing things that feel good, like buying books or eating crappy food or taking it easy on a workout, are also a big part of that low energy state. Making better choices, which almost always means doing the harder thing that will have benefits down the road over the easy thing that feels good in the moment, has been a big challenge as I've dealt with this life stuff. Better discipline around what I want long term will be a big part of getting back on the right track in 2025. I'm not sure exactly what that looks like in the moment, but that definitely needs to be the 2025 theme. Reading more books. Buying fewer of them. That's the path to getting the things I want to get from my reading.

A couple of updates

I'm deep into the marathon training calendar. I'm wrapping up week 4 (I think). THe plan is more of a suggestion at this point than a plan that I'm actually following. The dual derailers of a hamstring injury and getting sick (probably COVID but I never bothered to test) put me way behind on the fitness needed to do the 10+ mile runs in this early phase of the training plan. I basically do my standard 4 mile weekday run (which I can finally do without a walking break (again, I had just gotten back to this point post injury before I got sick)) and then do a long run on Saturday. I had to balance distance with getting home to get ready for a trip to WDW on my long run this week. I was planning on going 10, but cut it back to 7 when I could tell my wife wanted to do something other than sit around the house this Saturday. I felt good on the run, did the entire distance with only stopping to cross streets and to wait for a guy to use the improvised footbridge over a muddy hole down by the Pinellas Trail. I was doing longer distances at this point last year, but I have a pattern of sticking to the plan in the first few weeks of a training cycle only to see my weekly mileage fade considerably in the weeks leading up to the run. 

I'm not worrying too much about my plan adherence this year. I'm doing a half marathon with my wife the first weekend of November. My goal is to train up to that distance (even though we'll be walking most of the race) and build from there. My longest runs have been in November for a January race the last few cycles. I should be in pretty good shape for the marathon if I can push a couple of 18-22 mile runs into December. Those later runs are much more important than a 10-12 mile run in October. At least that's what I'm telling myself. I've been remiss in not doing ab work or watching my diet to lose a few pounds. Both of those things would go a long way in minimizing my pain in the last 10 miles or so of the marathon. The longer I can keep pushing a running pace, the less time I will spend out there. I'm not looking for a marathon PR, but I wouldn't mind a course PR. 

There is no way I'm making my reading goal for the year. I was going for 40 books. I'm still in the teens. I'm close to finishing book 15 for the year. At this point, I'll be happy to get to 20 books. I've been buying kind of freely, partly to speak with my wallet about men reading novels, so there will be no reduction in my to-read list. The reasons for my reading drought are numerous, but the most recent thing to cut into my reading time is my participation in The Catherine Project. I mistakenly picked the discussion of Lucretis's On the Nature of Things. That was not a good choice. I just can't get into thinking too hard about what some Roman dude wrote about how atoms work. If I had more context I may find the book more interesting, but I don't know what intellectual currents were flowing in Rome. I skipped last week's discussion. I just didn't have the mental energy after dealing with a hurricane the week before on top of work and other life events. There are only 2 weeks left in the session so I will login for those last two. I may give the Project another try, but I will do a bit more research into the books to make my choice rather than just pick something that fits my calendar. 

Some plans are changing

So after I convinced myself that sticking to the course with my fitness approach is the right choice, at least for right now, I did make a pretty big change to a near term fitness plan. I made a big revision to my marathon training plan. Last year I used the training plan from the FIRST plan. The plan is based on 3 runs a week, my schedule, so I thought it would be a good fit for my schedule. It may be, but I am not in good enough shape to start this plan in a couple of weeks. The first long run is 13 miles. I just did 7 miles on Saturday. I can try to push it but I will either hurt myself or constantly be short on my distance goals. I took a look at the long runs for the training plan I used prior to trying the FIRST approach and decided those distances were a better fit for my current fitness level. The first long run is 10 miles. I can manage that in a few weeks. 

The FIRST training plan is based on a high mileage volume. I kept the other training runs the same so I guess I'm using a hybrid approach. No matter what plan I use, it's just really important that I get in all the miles on the long runs. I must go longer than 15 miles in early November as the longest run in my training cycle. The plan doesn't matter if you don't actually do the plan. 

Should I change my fitness plan as I get older?

I was already planning on using this space to reflect on whether I should revisit my standard goals and approach in the context of my advancing age. Then I wandered into seldom visited Facebook and saw pictures from the 30 year reunion of the high school I attended in New Mexico. Seeing some of these people in the context of our old high school, I only recognized a few of them, accentuated that they are almost 50. I certainly feel the shortening of my time. There are plenty of goals I will never achieve. My life may begin to shift and alter as I adjust myself to changing physical circumstances or I lose interest in things I used to enjoy, but I really want to avoid a situation where I'm skipping activities because I don't want to deal with some minor discomfort. 

Staying physically and mentally vital requires many of the lifestyle choices that were part of my Naked Sexy narrative. Sure I've been chasing the same handful of physical goals for years and years. I'm not really sure what staying physically active would look like if I tried to mix up my goals. I have a good core of activities that I enjoy enough that I'm happy to keep doing them for as long as I can stay healthy. I watched a few miles of a live stream from the half marathon at DIsneyland this morning. I have no desire to run a race out there, but I'm very engaged with the East Coast version of runDisney. I visualized myself out on the marathon course pushing through the late miles while I was out for my long run this weekend. I've been too quick to avoid the hard parts of my runs the last few years. I stop when it gets hard rather than being stronger than the moment and pushing through. I've built a physical and mental base that too many people my age are missing. They don't have anything that gets them out running 7 miles in Florida heat and humidity. 

So I guess I don't need to adjust my general approach to working out, at least not my activities. I could always have a better approach to my workouts. I could do more when I'm lifting, but I did get to the gym to lift three times this week. I need to get on the rowing machine more often, but I've been using that more this year than I have in ages. I walk plenty. I need to do more ab work and get in more rolling sessions to keep things limber and loose. I have said these things over and over again. I just need to do them. I guess that's what I need to change if I really need to revolutionize something about my fitness and wellness strategy. 

Rhythm of War complete; books left to be read? Who knows

I finished Rhythm of War last night. The surprises and reveals that made the first couple books in the series so remarkable are not really a big part of this book. It's the fourth book. We're transitioning into the conclusion of the series. Characters are being put into position. THey're building up experience points and figuring out the next quest in their journey. The pleasure is in spending time with familiar characters in a world that we know as well as the characters. We learn with them rather than learning from them. Rhythm is a step down from the first couple books, but it was a 1200 page book that never felt boring or dull. I enjoyed being in the world. I was kind of sad that it ended. I have been listening to a chapter or two on my way home. That was a nice way to wrap up my day. I would have liked to keep that flow going. I guess I get to wait until book 5 comes out in a few months to get back into that reassuring pattern. 

These fat fantasy books always have these grand battles between good and evil. The characters are concerned with Big Problems. They're not worried about the little details of their life. They're worried about saving the world from Evil. They're working on saving lives by thwarting the schemes of Gods and Demons. Participating in that struggle is why we read these books. Sure the stories are suspenseful and we want to see what happens next, but we're participating in the struggle. We're not just passive observers. We're emotionally invested. We expand our life by witnessing the battle, recognizing the sacrifice and pain endured by our hero. Engaging with these themes makes our life bigger. These characters give their entire being to a movement. Their identity melds into their mission and purpose. The scope and grandeur of the struggle Sanderson's characters engage in are a big part of what makes his novels so compelling. It's hard to feel like you're wandering and aimless when you're engaging in an interplanetary conflict. 

Doing science made (maybe makes, not really sure of the tense to use here) me feel like part of something bigger. I was participating in this effort to understand how our reality works. My piece of the effort may be small, but a contribution makes me part of the big effort to figure the world out. It sounds paradoxica, but the more I realized how little we really know the more meaning I found in doing science. You would expect that insight to make the entire effort feel meaningless, but getting a glimpse of what is under the surface of our daily physical reality made the effort worthwhile. This wasn't looking at the cold void and feeling alone and vulnerable. This was looking out and seeing the grandeur of what makes us who we are as both conscious individuals striving to live a life and physical beings bound and limited by how we're physically constructed. We're not isolated specks of dust floating in empiness. We're small parts of everything. 

Jung looked at individuals and extrapolated from the few to the many to all of humanity stretching over time. There's a consistency to our experience that stretches across time and place. He's. reaching out to me from death and across seas through his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul. I've been reading a few pages here and there while working through Rhythm of War. I picked it up after reading about a paper where mice learned to avoid eating cherries from the experience of their grandparents. This learning through the generations (they posited that changes in gene expression was the origin of this generational learning, but it's very much part of that broad scope of what we don't know about the world) was suggested as proof of Jung's collective unconscious. I read about this in a different book by Jung, Man and His Symbols (this was the last book I read before I started college, I don't have it marked as read in Goodreads, I don't remember much of it, but I know I read the whole damn thing). I had this other Jung book on my shelf so that became the book that I picked up to start reading. I feel like I'm on the edge of understanding something pretty important and this book has been part of giving me a peek into something that feels important. 

Maybe the point of all of this is to understand our place in the grand tapestry of existence (the wording could use some work). The meaning of life isn't that it has no meaning. Meaning emerges from living. The meaning is in appreciating our contribution, no matter how small, to the constantly unfolding processes of reality. Sounds a little woo woo but that captures things well enough for me to get back to it after I have had some time to realize just how banal the thought really is. 

The spreadsheet says I'm at 179. Is the exact number really all that critical when I'm this far from zero?

Making the choice to finish a book tonight

The picture is actually worse than the 181 that I admitted to in my last post. I have 3 more books coming from Thriftbooks and another one on order from a different website. If I'm all about getting back to reading, what will I be reading to regain some momentum towards BSZ?

I have 4 books in some state of progress. I will finish The Metal Master, a Doc Savage book that I bought when I picked up the embossed copy of To the Sea and Beyond, tonight. I kind of feel like counting this as a finished book is cheating, it's only 130 pages, but it's a stand alone novel so it gets counted as a book. (My curiosity about Doc Savage is sated, I don't see any more of these in my future reading plans.) I'm making steady progress on Rhythm of War doing the audio/ebook combo. I'm about 50% of the way through it. It's a solid book with a fun world, rich characters, and an engaging story. I will keep making steady progress on that while I work on other reading projects at the same time. I will definitely finish those two, but I'm not so certain that I will see the other two books that I have going to the end. One is an ebook, I'm not going to read that in lieu of Rhythm of War, and the other is a book that I haven't picked up in months (I just can't get through Jeffereson's time in France). I guess that means I get to pick out something new to read after I finish The Metal Master tonight.

What I read isn't as important as long as I actually pick up the book and read it. My focus right now is choosing to do the thing I tell myself I want to do rather than just doing the easy thing. I thought I would read more these last few days that my wife has been out of town, but I've mostly just sat on the couch looking at a screen. I did manage to write a couple of blog posts (assuming I actually finish this one, which if you're reading it means that I did get to some point that I considered the end) but accomplished very little reading. I thought I would finish The Metal Master on Wednesday night after reading about 75% of it on the plane ride back from Virginia. That didn't happen. I'm too busy monitoring bets or watching YouTube videos. That tendency to do things that are easy is the habit I'm trying to break. Taking strong actions toward long standing goals has been a big challenge the last few years. I'm back sliding on BSZ, have basically had the same half-assed training for all my Disney Marathons, and have managed to lose pretty much no weight (at least I haven't really gained weight either). Yes my job is demanding and I'm pretty beat by the end of the day. That doesn't mean that I can't make better choices when I'm not at work.

Let's make a better choice now. It's getting late, and I very much want to finish this book tonight. With that in mind, time to wrap up this post and finish The Metal Master.