Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

After my run warm-up and stretching, I bent down and touched my toes. I was so surprised that I stood up and tried again to make sure I was doing it properly. Yup. Knees locked, able to touch my toes. One fitness goal accomplished.

On the other hand, the run itself didn’t go so well. 3.15M, 33 minutes. I really had to force myself to run that long. I think I’m still tired from skiing this weekend, tired from uncomfortable sleep, and not energized due to bad eating habits over the last 4 days.

Had I 3 hands, I’d note that 3.15M in 33 minutes would have been awesome for 3-months-ago-Nick.

Just had a nice, relaxing weekend skiing and hanging out with friends. Got snowed in Sunday night and had to stay an extra day.

I didn’t even look at my To Do list. Adding new items didn’t count. Better yet… I didn’t fret about all the things that I needed to do when I got home. I knew I didn’t need to think about them… so I didn’t. On the drive home, I realized that I hadn’t been fretting all weekend. Mind you, I thought about pink polka-dot elephants a bit too much, but even that is s-l-o-w-l-y getting better.

Interesting and inspirational people on the weekend.

• A couple with a 3-month old. Gave me a sliver of hope that it might be possible to have a life after Alex.
• A minimalist with a drive to GTD. Gave me hope that one day I might be able to do the same.
• Friends of ours are pregnant! Due about 9 weeks after we are. Yay! More company for Alex.
• A runner training for a marathon and then an Olympic triathalon. Encouraging. Even more so now that I’ve looked up the Olympic triathlon distances: .93-mile (1.5 km) swim, 24.8-mile (40 km) bike and 6.2 mile (10 km) run. Other than the swim, totally doable. Guess I need to learn to swim.

Wanted to do a shorter, quicker run today, so ran 3.125M in 30:48. Started my cool-down routine when Iron Maiden’s “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” came on. Good lyrics, good tempo, it’s about 6 minutes long, plus any song that mentions a stile can’t be bad, right?

So, sprinted (for me) another mile in 9:23.

I thought I’d appreciate Iron Maiden less as I got older. Somehow, I’ve grown to appreciate them more, especially their guitar riffs. Lyrics to Iron Maiden’s “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”

Tough of the track,
With the wind,
And the rain that’s beating down on your back.
Your heart’s beating loud
And goes on getting louder
And goes on even more till the sound
Is ringing in your head,
With every step you tread,
And every breath you take,
Determination makes
You run,
Never stop,
Gotta win, gotta run till you drop,
Keep the pace,
Hold the race,
Your mind is getting clearer,
You’re over halfway there but the miles
Just never seem to end
As if you’re in a dream,
Not getting anywhere.
It seems so futile.
 
Run, on and on,
Run, on and on,
The loneliness of the long distance runner.
 
I’ve got to keep running the course,
I’ve got to keep running and win at all costs,
I’ve got to keep going, be strong,
Must be so determined and push myself on.
 
Run over stiles, across fields,
Turn to look at who’s on your heels,
Way ahead of the field,
The line is getting nearer but do
You want the glory that goes,
You reach the final stretch,
Ideals are just a trace,
You feel like throwing the race,
It’s all so futile.
 
Run, on and on,
Run, on and on,
The loneliness of the long distance runner.

I was warming up for my run when the following paraphrased thoughts went through my head.

NickA: What am I going to worry about today during my run?
NickB: Nothing! Everything you need to worry about is in your system already. Relax and enjoy the run.

Pretty cool.

Speaking of things that are working:

• Saturday: 7.4M run and walk outside. Yay!
• Sunday: 3.5M run and too much walking outside. Eh.
• Tuesday: 4.0M on the treadmill in 43 minutes. Started at 5.6MPH, ended at 6.3MPH.
• Wednesday: Yoga. Really good. Stretched out a lot of muscles that have been tense due to whatever it is I have.
• Wednesday: 4.0M on the treadmill in 41:30. Started at 5.7MPH, ended with a few minutes of sprinting at 7.0MPH. The sprint felt really good.

Maybe I should run the other way when something reminds me of Lysol.

But I just can’t bring myself to believe that is the right course of action.

How does one stop thinking about pink polka-dot elephants?

My dad would say to us, “Don’t think about pink polka-dot elephants for one minute.” I’m sure many other adults have said similar things. It’s obviously impossible not to think of something that absurd once the thought’s been planted in your brain by the question itself.

So… how do I stop thinking about something?

More importantly, how do I stop thinking about something when the fact that I’m thinking about it is frustrating me?

Pictures: London '95-'97

This, or something similar involving putting my pictures from London into a photo album, has been on my to do list since May 1997. 8½ years. Eight and a half years

Today, it got done.

Ran around the river today with Daniel. Interesting.

• Holding up a conversation wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be.
• It was good running with someone else… or maybe it was just good to run with Daniel, who knows.
• We ran 7.4 miles. Actually, we walked for decent swaths of it, so maybe 6 to 6.5 miles of running?
• It was a beautiful day out today.
• I want to run in the summer… for some reason I feel I’m getting more of a workout when I’m sweating a lot, even if it’s because of the heat. Besides being 45°F today it was very windy.
• Thanks to a tip from Ain’t I Hip (who is just soooo much cooler than I am) I was comfy throughout the run.
• I didn’t feel the run anywhere near as much as I thought it would. Maybe a week off was helpful.

As usual, some of my best thinking… or at least… thinking that makes me happiest… happens when I take a shower after reading a good book. A large number of thoughts today. Surprising that I remembered them all enough to get them written out.

0. Foundations

Sometimes the way out of an argument is to change the topic and talk about interesting and fun things instead. A good way to remind the participants of the solid foundation for the relationship and to regenerate some goodwill that may have been lost during the argument.

1. High Strung

I’m high strung of late. Exhibit A: I feel that I’m high strung. Exhibit B: My brother told me to relax. I need to take it down a notch.

2. Experiment

When scientists want to figure out what the effects of a variable are, they try and hold the other variables constant while permuting the variable under investigation. That got me to thinking. What can I learn about myself by doing similar experiments? Along the lines of 30 days and Super Size Me.

Take for example communication. What if I ratcheted up the amount I communicate for a week? What if I stopped talking / IMing / emailing for a week? What would I learn?

3. TiVo is Useful

Add “Yoga” or “Exercise” to a Keyword Wishlist in TiVo. Voila. A good way to remind myself to do exercise.

Aside: Pet Peeve: People who spell “Voila” as “Walla” or “Wallah”.

4. Social

I seem to remember my parents being more social when I was younger. I’m not sure why that changed. Maybe it was moving to Montreal. Maybe it was the divorce. Who knows. Makes me wonder about how social Dina and I are going to be once we have kids. Yes… back to point 1., I’m high strung.

But that wasn’t the thought I had in the shower…

The good side of a friend of mine finding religion… at least he’s more social now.

5. Sensitivity

There are two ways to deal with something being sensitive: protect it or toughen it up.

This applies to many things. Injuries, sensitive spots in one’s personality, weaknesses in one’s gaming strategy, soft spots in corporate competence.

The nerdy analogy I came up with is how to protect one’s adventurer from injuries in an RPG game. Protection: flee or wear armour. Toughening: cast stoneskin.

6. Truth

The truth will set you free… but what if you enjoy your captivity?

7. Friendships

Friendships ebb and flow. Sometimes they fizzle. Sometimes they fade away. Sometimes there is a break-up. Seen through the lens of time, these things will all be for a good reason. Experienced in the present, it still hurts.

Anyway… at some point, one has to accept that all this is happening. That point, unfortunately, is now.

8. Entrepreneur

Prompted by something on TV, Dina asked me if I wanted to let my inner entrepreneur out. I don’t.

What I want to be do is ride the ebb and flow of the economy. Maybe profit a bit from the dot.com boom / bubble. Maybe take advantage of the housing boom / bubble. Don’t want to be too greedy. Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

Maybe I’ll wake up… it’ll be Friday morning… the Mystery Hunt will last 18 hours longer than it did in my dream… and the Patriots won’t have handed Denver the game.

Another powerful realization, this one from last week. I haven’t had time to write or think about it because of the hectic, Mystery Hunt-filled weekend.

I stress about getting things done because I am not confident that I can get it / enough done.

To deal with this I need to:

• Learn how to better get things done so as to…
• have confidence in myself and my abilities.
• Learn that even if I don’t get things done, the world won’t end so as to…
• stress less about things.

For some reason, I like the structure of my thinking in those bullet points.

Had lunch with Dina and a good friend that we don’t see enough because he’s out of town. But I digress already.

We got to talking about friendships and social politics. I said that over the last decade as I’ve grown into adulthood, I’ve learned that high-school politics lasts well past high school. Dina noted that it’s likened to high-school social politics because that’s just when it starts.

Epiphany!

Somehow that caused a lot of things to fall into place. It’s not as if the high-school interactions are something that happen and are left behind or that we outgrow. We grow into it because it’s a part of being social beings.

I’m really dense at times.

Mystery Hunt has come and gone again.

• It was short. I feel like I was robbed of a day of puzzling. Went home Saturday, watched the Pats game, came back around midnight, hunt over at 00:31 Sunday.
• Though the puzzles were clever / good / elegant, they didn’t engage me.
• Our team was good. I like the people. Interesting to have a set of people that we see and interact with only once a year.
• It was good to see Jon and Ain’t I Hip.
• The scavenger hunt was hard this year. Which made it that much more fun.
• Since the puzzles weren’t engaging, I spent a lot of time staring at metas. I think I helped solve about three of them. In some ways, didn’t do much that was useful besides organizing data and people.
• Jon’s team won! Good news because that also means the person who wrote the Puzzle Boat which I really liked, will be writing next year’s hunt.
• Next year’s hunt will be different… mostly because of life circumstances. Odd feeling.

Map My Run is a really neat site that makes use of Google Maps. Click around to set points along your run. The site calculates the distance for you. Useful for other things too.

Some running distances around the river, starting and ending at home.

Yes… I’m on a thinking-of-my-friends kick.

When in Montreal, we visited a good friend who’d started her own business. There’s something fascinating about watching someone you know pour themselves into a small business. Both endearing and impressive. Especially interesting when you start understanding some of the systems and automation behind the process.

The business itself, PrintAKid.com, sells personalized books for kids. Really cool, we’ve already bought one as a present for relatives and intend on buying more.

For my numerous friends living in Ottawa, if you need a pediatric dentist, I recommend Kids & Teens Dentistry.