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.

I choose to read

I just tallied up some of the choices that I've made over the last six months. After neglecting to update my bought but not read list for pretty much the entire year, I just found out that my path to Book Shelf Zero stands at 181 books. That's not really the point of the project. The point is to read all the books I own before I die. How will I ever find out what kind of transformation is waiting for me on the other side of all these books if I fail to read them? Of course I've never consciously think about the latent transformation potential of my unread books, but waiting for these books to change me in a way that makes me more of who I think I should be consistently emerges as the best explanation for continuously returning to this goal despite getting no closer to its completion. I'm not sure goal is even the right word. Compulsion. Habit. Distraction. Probably all of the above.

Completing the goal was never really the point of the activity in the first place. I was never going to stop buying books. The point was to read them at a pace faster than I was buying so I would eventually get to reading all of my books. The aspirational books are the most likely titles to elude a quick read. The fun ones get read. The ones that could actually change me in some way just sit on the shelves. They are fun little reminders that there are things I will never get to in my life, no matter how valuable the experience could prove. Book Shelf Zero is my fear of death project. Reading all of my books is a way to deny my mortality. I don't have an infinite number of somedays, but who cares about that when I have all of these books that I will eventually get around to reading. 

I recently bought a book because it reminded me of why I started this project (well, explicitly stated that I wanted to read my books, there was also an implicit assumption that I was buying these books to read them). My copy of The March to the Sea and Beyond once belonged to Philip Crosby. I know this because he used his embosser to mark the book, twice, and signed it the day he bought the book. I assume that Phil's family sold the books after he died. This item that he valued enough to mark it indelibly as his came into my possession when I bought it from a used book store in St Petersburg, Florida. My books will likely meet a similar fate. I feel like I've built myself with books. It's probably not accurate, I'm much more than the books I've read, but reading and books have always been a part of me. 

Book Shelf Zero is about reconnecting with books and reading (before it's too late!). The goal is a reminder to pick up and read what I own rather than hunting for the next book to buy. As buying books and reading them are two distinct but connected activities, BSZ was my way of shifting the arrow of that equilibrium towards reading. My failure to read more of what I bought is just me choosing to do other things than read. I've had plenty of excuses to not read over the last few years. If I am sincere about wanting to read more, and I really think I am, I need to make the choice to read. Directing my will towards reading and its transformative capacity will be my subversive act against the assault on our time, attention, and thoughts from all kinds of governmental and commercial cartels. My mind is my own. My choices are my own. I become the choices I make. I choose to read.

1 month into 2024 update

I finished reading Goshawk Squadron last night. That's 3 books for 2024. Both of the books that I've read in full this year were part of my end of the year Thristbooks order. That's me following up on my plan to read books that I feel like reading rather than committing to some plan that I will struggle to actually follow. I scanned my shelves for what I thought would be a fun, easy read. I picked up The Furies of Calderon after some consideration. I bought that book before moving down here, but I've been skipping it when looking for my next book. It's kind of a thick book, and I wasn't sure I was ready to commit to something that long (and it's the first book in a series). The difference this time was my having listened to the first and most of the second books in Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files. Those are crisp, clever, and well-written books. If this one is anywhere near that league, I figured it would be a fun read that wouldn't take long despite the book's heft. 

Well, I'm almost 70 pages in after starting it this morning. It's pretty much what I expected. It's been a long time since I've read a book that I want to get back to. The Furies of Calderon fits that category. The other books I've read this year, Goshawk Squadron and 10:04, were not exactly duds, they were both excellent books that went quickly (they're also both pretty short), but The Furies of Calderon is a different kind of engrossing. It's a fast paced, action packed thriller. There is no point other than a fun read. Those have been missing from my reading life for the last couple of years. I need to keep reminding myself that I read for fun. I don't need to prove something with my reading. 

Project Status

An update on pretty much any of my various projects will be about how little progress I am making towards longer term goals. Oh well. The year is winding down so I will have a chance to revisit some of my various projects, assess what's working (and whether I want to keep doing some of these things), and get myself a new direction on one or two of these efforts. 

My marathon training has been pretty much a carbon copy of last year's cycle. I've run about the same distance, have had similar length runs, and am hitting pretty much the same pace on my runs. The one big difference is the health of my knee this Sunday 3 weeks out from the race. I screwed something up during breakfast on the equivalent Saturday last year. I did not have that issue yesterday. That means I can do a long run this week and some more medium distance runs next week. I did a short run on the Monday of last year and that was it until the marathon. The running I did manage during the marathon was inefficient and super slow. I did very little training the weeks around Christmas two years ago because I was up with family in Virginia. Hopefully training right up until the race (with the appropriate taper) will result in a better race experience. I know I won't be doing an effortless jog over the entire distance. I'm hoping for less than 6 hours. That's an average of 13 minute miles. I would be happy with that. It would be a good building point for starting the new year with a better running plan. 

I'm barely reading. I don't think I've read a single page in over a week. I don't have the energy to read before going to bed and I'm not looking for time to read in at other points during the day. I'm too distracted by games and other trivialities. I have basically zero shot at meeting most of my New Year's Resolutions, but I could read a Dickens book. I read a few pages of Oliver Twist. That's my best bet at finally checking another Dickens book off my list, but I haven't built any momentum. It's more a choice and being lazy than any actual barrier between me and getting some reading done. I need to change up how I use my time and make time for reading. I really don't like this lack of progress on reading books. Hopefully I can use my week off Christmas week to build some momentum and head into the New Year poised to get my owned book pile a little smaller. 

Books, training, odds

I finally finished another book. My reading time has shrunk to almost nothing, but I still try to read a few pages every night. I used this approach to get through 10 lbs Penalty by Dick Francis. There was a 5 Books post on his novels a month or so ago. I could remember seeing his books in the bookstore so I found one at the library and gave it a go. It was a fun book. The story moved along briskly, the writing style was pleasant, and the dialogue wasn't stilted or awkward. I liked the book enough that I went up to a local library and bought a couple of his books from the used book section for 75 cents each. I don't count these as owned books. They are basically open ended library books. I will put them in the local take one leave one box when I finish them. 

10 lbs Penalty was my 21 book of the year, but, more interestingly, it is book 799 of my Goodreads list.  Assuming I don't start reading something else, definitely not a given, Jefferson and the RIghts of Man will be book 800. This book is going very slowly. I am very much against abandoning this one as I left Jefferson in France when I stopped reading The Hemingses and he's currently in France as I'm about a third of the way through the second volume of the Dumas Malone bio. I would like to get back to the US with Jefferson in one of these chronological biographies. My wife is out of town this week so I will make it a point to read a decent chunk of the book each night. If nothing else I'm hoping to build momentum and get myself moving enough that I can make it to the end of the book. I'm not really feeling anything else I have sitting on my shelves. The most likely usurper would be the 4th Sanderson secret project book. I would like to finish that by the end of the year, but I have a couple weeks until I start feeling pressure on that one. I have the last week of the year off so I'm hoping to do some day reading during that week. A fun book like Sanderson is a perfect fit.

Marathon training plods on. Saturdays are usually for long runs, but I spent my morning taking my wife to the airport. I tried running after dropping her off last year. That was probably the worst run of the training cycle. My solution for avoiding the heat was to use the treadmill. That kept me out of the sun, but it was still blazing hot, even with a fan blowing on me. My shoes were giving me all kinds of issues and my watch got very confused by the treadmill. I got in 10 miles of a planned 18 and called it quits. My training never really recovered. I did a shorter run the next week, was at Disney World the week after that, and messed up my knee getting into our booth at dinner. I'm still amazed I was able to finish the marathon. So rather than tempting a repeat and getting off my training track, I will skip beer and go to bed kind of early tonight so I can get up and run tomorrow. My plan is for 16 miles. That gets me to the turn toward Animal Kingdom on the actual marathon course. Having that reference in mind during these long runs has helped me stay focused on making the entire distance. It's not just an abstract number. It's a physical place that I can visualize myself running through. The deeper I can get in training, the better I should do on the actual course.

My plan for the post run portion of my Sunday is to exert myself by hanging out on the couch. Sports betting is once again a part of my life so I will turn on Red Zone and spend the day taking it easy. I should replace a section of screen around my pool, but I'm typically not in great moving around status after my long runs. Maybe tomorrow will be different. I plan on getting in the pool after my run. I've been avoiding the pool while some scraps on my knee and hand heal (I tripped on the sidewalk during my Thursday run the week before Thanksgiving). I've managed to avoid adding more money to my account after my initial deposit. I've been a bit free in making bets. I found a pretty good rhythm when I was betting on college basketball games a couple of years ago. I didn't do as well when I was in Virginia last March during the conference tournaments. I was just betting favorites without really having a strategy or an approach. I have fallen into that same pattern in the first couple weeks of having the ability to bet games again. I thought I was going to have to reload my account, but I put my last $35 on a three game Premier League parlay that cashed this morning. (I usually bet conservatively to avoid big losses, but I read a tweet about Elon Musk's approach to risk and decided it was the right time to go all in.) That bet got me back over $100 so I could take a step back and reassess my approach with a fresh bank roll. I've used the public bet info in the CBS Sports app to get me out of my losing approach. I'm not looking to make a bunch of money. I just want to be able to keep making small bets to keep things interesting.