First Quarter Update

I gave myself a little side quest to read a book while my wife was out of town. She left on Saturday. I started Indignation, a Roth book I bought on a used book binge before I left Richmond, that same day. She's still out of town, we'll see her Friday night, but I finished Indignation last night. It's a short book that butts right up to the limit for a novella. My copy is 230 pages, but the font is big and the margins are generous. The shortness of the book made it easier for me to finish in a few days, but the book was engaging and pleasant. It was deeply Roth, but his writing makes up for his focus on intensely personal experience. I'm happy to have read it. Roth is yet another reading project lingering on the edge of my future plans. I should probably finish at least one of my many reading threads before I start crossing titles off of a list. (I've read 3 Roth novels according to my Goodreads records with another one of his books in that I'm not sure if I actually finished this on space.)

Indignation is the fifth book I've finished this year. I'm ahead of last year's pace, I was just finishing up my fourth book this time last year, but way behind my reading pace of years past. At least I haven't bought any books this year. I actually haven't even felt tempted. I want to read down the pile that I've built up over the last year or so. All my recent buys are intriguing so I'm not looking for something new to pique my reading interest. We'll see how easily I refrain from book shopping once I'm left with the ambitious reads that I scooped up in my carefree and optimistic youth. That's in the future. I'm content with what I have in front of me at the moment. I started Submission today. Houellebecq feels like a superior Roth. I appreciate the masculinity inherent in their novels. I'm the antithesis of the reader publishers care about right now so there isn't much contemporary stuff that really resonates with my life experience. I can read and appreciate current prominent women writers, but it's nice to have a book that resonates with my male brain (no matter how estrogen soaked). That lack of really compelling new material is a big reason why it's been easy for me to stick to my book buying ban. I expect that I will just drift into older books rather than wander into the pointless crap on the tables at Barnes and Noble (older books outside of the most classic of classics have essentially disappeared from B&N shelves).

The book I finished before Indignation, The Doctor's Wife, was an effort to go back to men writing free from the imposed guilt of being a white man. It was a fine book, but there was a strong feminine energy (which I guess shouldn't have been a big shock given the title). The use of a female protagonist had the same feeling of the main character in the Hulu Predator movie Prey. The character didn't need to be female. The story could have been told with a similar impact and result with a male character. The use of a woman (girl in Prey? Her age is ambiguous) feels like an attempt to be subversive rather than being an essential element of the story. I guess there are no more men's stories. We're all just interchangeable people. Strong women must be more essential than strong men. 

I'm making no progress to become a strong man. I've decided that my reluctance to go to the gym is rooted in my dislike for the Y that I've been using. It's an excuse, but it's also true. I've never really liked the way the free weight area is set up. A new Crunch is opening soon. I'm hoping new scenery (and equipment) will get me back into a gym groove. One evening, Friday morning, and Sunday afternoon would be enough to get back on track. Easy to say, harder to execute. I'm starting to get fat so I need to start lifting again soon. My body is aging quickly. I may not have many years of throwing 225+ around on the bench. 

First reading update of 2025

Two months into the year, I've managed to finish two books. That low number is more due to the massive Wind and Truth that I read to start the year more than any lack of reading on my part. I obviously didn't read as much as I could have during January and most of February, but I managed to make it through the fifth volume of the Stormlight Archive. I've decided that the disappointment people have expressed about Wind and Truth is more about the exceedingly high expectations created by the first two books in the series. W and T was overly long and lacked the exciting action that was central to earlier volumes, but it moves events along nicely. The increasing importance of the Cosmere in Sanderson's books is also likely turning people off. I've read enough of his other stuff that I knew Wind and Truth had to end with Odium positioned to influence the wider Cosmere. That's the only way that story can really move forward. We may have even seen some of his plans being executed in other Cosmere books. If you're not into that broader narrative, Wind and Truth is not going to do much for you. I will keep reading the series despite the massive time commitment required to get through them. 

I've also finished James. I had read about half of that before I bought Wind and Truth so it was an easy task to finish that slim (by comparison) book. Everett is a good writer so the book was a pleasure to read. I'm not as taken with as all the acclaim would suggest. That acclaim is too based in the broader scope of the book more than the book itself. That's just a decision that culture has made. Celebrate the political or social space staked out by the book rather than the inherent quality of the book itself. I don't regret reading it. 

I picked up The Last Picture Show after James. I have about a third of the book left. This was a quick read. I've read a good bit of McMurtry so it's been nice getting back into the appealing flow of his prose. The dialogue is believable, the characters are authentic, and the story is well paced. The efficiency of this book highlights the bloat of Wind and Truth. The danger of The Last Picture Show will be going on to read the sequels. I could probably get them from the library (print versions, I don't see them in Libby), but I would rather focus my reading effort on my owned books. Maybe there is a place for an audiobook. I've never listened to a McMurtry book. I should finish this one by the end of the weekend to get to 3 books for the year. At least I will stay on my book a month pace. 

I pulled The Doctor's Wife off the shelf with The Last Picture Show. I read a couple dozen pages soon after it was delivered. I was quickly engaged with the story, but I was in the middle of James and about to start Wind and Truth so I set it aside. It's a short book so it has the appeal of a quick read to go with a good story. I may change my mind, but I'm pretty sure that will be my attempted book 4. I will need a quick read as the college basketball tournaments are about to ramp up. Those will take my focus for a good chunk of March. I'm actually building some reading momentum. I should really try to get at least a few pages in around the games.

I have stayed strong with my book buying ban. I haven't really even been tempted. 

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.