Happy New Year

I'm reading Andrew Weil's Spontaneous Happiness. I'm on chapter two and I've only read one other of Weil's books but I like his idea of thinking about the mind and body together, putting diet (as in eating well, not losing weight) and exercise ahead of medication, and thinking about how happiness and awareness play in a person's health. There's an old quote from E.B. White that I will likely mangle: "Everyone likes to read things they agree with." So it is with me.

A few years ago, in the depths of a crisis, a therapist I no longer see prescribed a mild anti-depressant for me. She said that she saw me as a classic case of depression and that medication was necessary. I was suffering from mistakes I had made and trying to climb out of the hole in any way that I could. So I followed her advice and began taking the pill. It wasn't a bad experience. I didn't gain lots of weight, didn't feel sluggish, didn't really feel much of anything.

About two months into the prescription I lost faith in the drug, the therapist, and my progress. I stopped taking the drug, stopped going to the therapist, and found that the work we had been doing hadn't been very useful to me. In fact, it had led to more hiding from myself than before.

Months after that I started to turn things around. The therapist I still see, when I asked her about depression, didn't say a lot. She suggested that I get out of bed in the morning and run.

At this moment, I weigh 208 pounds which is fifteen to twenty-five pounds heavy. I'm able to do most everything that I want to do and I feel alright, but I know that running more, eating less, and doing a bit of lifting will make me feel better in every single way. Reading books, meeting with friends, walking the dog, playing with my daughters, being with my wife, and cooking my own food all make me feel good. Writing makes me feel good. Moving forward, that's what I need.

Since writing this blog, I have been healthier in every way. Publishing daily has been a great push. I wrote a couple days ago about streaks and how they are only as good as what they do for me. This streak has been good because it has made me feel responsible to myself, lifted my game, and gotten me to do something I might not have otherwise done. It has also been about the writing and not about the streak.

This writing has been a daily dose of happiness.

I just talked with a friend about running. I said that I wanted to start a running streak in the new year. She warned me about what I already knew. She had read what I had said about streaks. Streaks, all too often lead to feelings of failure and less running, she said. She's right. I don't want a running streak, I want instead and awareness about moving forward.

Since everyone else is looking back at 2011 or ahead to 2012, I offer this semi-resolution: I want to remember each day that moving feels better than standing still. 

When I was in crisis, I was standing still, latching on to things that I hoped would pull me forward like a water skier. They did, but the problem with water skiing is that the skier has very little control as to where they are going. Now, when I'm not in crisis but, like everyone else, still struggling (in all the ways that struggle can be good), I know that movement helps. Writing and publishing 750 words each day is movement. Going for a run is movement. Talking with friends is movement. Being loving to my wife and daughters is movement. And, in a little bit of irony, sitting for meditation is movement.

I'll keep reading Andrew Weil because it's good to have someone to agree with. And along the way I might move forward because of what I find there.

And so ends 2011, the year in which I began publishing. 2012 is, for me, thirteen hours away. I don't know what I'll find there, what I will do, who I will be by this time next year, but I'm ready to start finding out.

Happy New Year to everyone. And in 2012, as always, we write on.

Receiving Word

For the second time in as many days I have had someone write to me saying that something I have done or written has affected them dearly. The first instance was a student writing to me from out of the past about how our time together transformed her in many ways, how her writing then was a way forward, and that she no longer feels the confidence to write and fears what she might say. The second instance was a woman writing about her continuing lack of confidence in her writing, her worries about going public with things on the page. She said that she was impressed with what I was doing here, publishing daily and the like.

Two things come to mind out of these. One, writing is about having some confidence and two, there are so many people in our worlds who are proud of and impressed by the things we do, or they would be if they saw what we were doing.

I'll take the second one first and say that publishing is what we all should be doing. For me that means putting stuff on a blog each day, but it could be any number of things. My friend Chris Murray sells his landscape photography (and you should buy some at chrismurrayphotography.com). My mother makes quilts. And my friend Kristin mentors runners. Each of them puts a piece of themselves out in public and that allows others to notice the individual talent and talk back to the person about it. This isn't about getting attaboys, though that can be nice too. It is about sharing. It is about seeing the wonder in people around us. It is about being inspiring and being inspired. Right now, I'm sitting under one of my mother's blankets, looking at a photograph that Chris took, and wishing that I was out running with Kristin. At some point, today, tomorrow or the next, each of them will read something I've written here. It's a generous and kind thing to put ourselves out into the world. Doing so feeds others and feeds us.

Which brings me to writing and the two people who wrote to me over the past coupled days. It's interesting to me that both women were, in one form or another, under my tutelage. In each case, they saw me writing, hear my writing, read my writing, and I did the same with theirs. There is another woman, one I haven't heard from in a very long time whose experience seems to me the ultimate expression of what I would say on this subject and what I want to remember today. I'll call the woman E and let you know that this story happened a decade or so ago when I taught at Fayetteville-Manlius High School just outside of Syracuse.

E was in a creative writing class I was leading. Many of the writers there were high-powered and most of what I did was to read their stuff and have conversations with them about it. But some of the writers struggled mightily. E was one of those. She wrote haltingly, struggling with the notion that her words were not good enough, that she wasn't good enough. Eventually, she showed up in class with a paper from the Guidance office.

"You have to sign this," she said.

"What is it?"

"I'm dropping this class."

"Really?"

"Really," she said. "You just have to sign it."

"Nah," I said.

"What?"

"I'm not signing it."

"But you have to sign it. I'm dropping this class."

"You can drop the class," I said, "but I'm not signing the paper."

We went round and round on this for a while. She was not happy, then she was angry, then she was sad, and eventually, she cried. I squatted down next to her and said that I liked her writing, that I liked her as a writer. I told her that she just needed to keep writing. And then I told her again that she could quit the class, but I wasn't signing a paper or helping her quit.

She stayed and she wrote. She found herself as a writer.

If nothing else, publishing each day tells me that I'm a writer. I think of the two women who wrote to me and, were I to sit in a room with them, I would have them write with me. It would be great. We would write, we would read aloud, we would write a lot more. By the end of the day we would have filled pages and pages. Some of that stuff would be good, most of it would be crap, but all of it would let us know that we are writers, let others know that we are writers, and give us the confidence to write on and on and on.

The Streak

I had a streak going on 750words.com when I first found the site. This was a couple years ago. I was dedicated as can be to writing every day and getting the days to add up one after the other. It felt fun to be doing it. Somehow it also felt important. I got through fifty, then sixty, and then seventy days. But on my seventy-first day I simply forgot about it. I was doing the writing in the evenings and so it was easy enough to be occupied on that seventy-first night and forget about it. I fell asleep without a care but woke realizing that I had lost the streak.

My reaction was telling. Again, this was a couple of years ago. I fell into something of a funk about it. A pretty deep funk. I had amassed seventy days in a row of writing but that morning those seventy days counted for nothing because all I could see was that I had broken the streak and that to fix things I would have to go for seventy more days. The fix seemed very far down the road, too far to feel probable, almost too far too seem possible.

Beyond that, I got into a cycle of pity for myself that included feeling that I was a failure and going into a period of self-flagellation. (I'm hoping that flagellation means what I hope it means and isn't indicative of suffering from bad gas.) I rode myself down, called myself all the names I most fear, and set about making it impossible to succeed. In short, I decided to become the failure I imagined in that moment of anxiety that I was.

Why? Well, that's actually a simple question to answer. I did it because it is much easier and safer to fail and declare myself a failure than it is to fail and get back up again. It's the equivalent to people who say things like "I don't do math" or "I'm not athletic" or "I guess I wasn't meant to succeed." I chose failure because I knew that I could accomplish it without risk.

I'm resisting that way of thinking now.

All of this comes to me because I came awfully close to breaking the streak this evening. I have had a busy day and so there wasn't a good time to write. Then, tonight, we had people over for dinner and wine and I was just lying down to sleep when I remembered the streak and got up out of bed. So, this time around at least, I'm still Cal Ripken.

I've set myself a goal to get to one hundred days in a row of writing on this thing. That seems reasonable given that I made it to seventy days once and am on my eighty-second day today. But after I hit one hundred things become much more interesting. That's when I need to decide what the streak means and what I'm really after.

As things stand right now, the streak is a discipline for me. It holds me to a task that has proven to be useful and enjoyable. But soon enough I can imagine that streak becoming larger than the thing I'm trying to do, that it will eclipse the real purpose of this exercise.

So what is the real purpose of this beyond the streak?

Writing every day to an audience is proving useful. I'm learning what it is that people want to read, I'm learning how to say things, and I'm beginning to develop some discipline in my writing (though tonight's piece lacks some of that). Beyond all that, and coming as a surprise to me, the writing is telling me what I want to be doing going forward. It is telling me that I can be a writer. That's a wonderful thing to find out.

But I'm not where I want to be in my writing. Not yet. The streak has gotten me this far and I'll ride it a bit farther, but after one hundred days, I might purposely take a day off just to get the streak out of the way and concentrate on writing. Then again, I might not. The nice thing is that I don't have to have that planned out.

What I need to do is to keep writing and keep thinking. What do I want? What can I do? What will I get myself into? These are the questions I want answers to. And, streak or no streak, failure or success, the only way to find out is to write on.

Let Me Proposition You

What gets me writing.

As we approach the end of the year, I'm contemplating two months of daily blog posts and what it might mean.  I've been concentrating (or stuck) on the idea of becoming a better, happier, fitter person and that's what most of this writing has been about. That will continue and change throughout the coming year, I'm sure. I want to be sure that I'm not just navel gazing the whole time. Instead, I want to be writing my experiences and understandings in such a way as to engage readers. To that end, I thought I would write about what gets me writing and how these posts have come to be.

I started a list of the things that get me writing:
750words.com
a challenge
committing to publish daily (streaks)
an audience
carrying a notebook everywhere
thinking like a writer

Those are all the writerly things that I could think of on the spot and it seems a good enough list for now. There are other things such as having practice at writing, teaching high school English, reading, having creative and literate friends, and so on. There is a lot more to the writing than all this, but you get the idea.

This got me to thinking that I not only write a fair amount but I know something about how I got myself to this point with this writing. I'm not a novelist and don't know much of anything about that. I'm a poet, but I don't know that I'm fully aware of how that process works (though it might be a good thing to write about soon). What I am is a personal essayist and reflective writer. I know how to do that. I practice it. And I can teach others how to do it.

Which got me to thinking...

I wonder if there are others who have stories to tell but don't know how to start telling them. I'm sure that there are. My guess is that I know some of them. So what if we were to collaborate in some way? What if I was to mentor someone as they learn to write what is on their mind? It sounds like a perfect way to spend my time.

So what would I have someone do? Well, if they were local, I would meet with them at a coffee shop or bar where we could sit at a table for a long time and write. We would start with short bursts of writing, a little sharing, some more writing, and some more sharing. It would just be a matter, at first, of getting words on the paper or screen. I would introduce that person to 750words.com and get connected so that we could motivate one another. I would offer them a challenge and ask them to challenge me. We would meet again. We would, in short, become writing friends.

And if they were far away, we would do this sort of thing online. I'd have them write in Google Docs, on a blog, on Google+ and share the writing back and forth that way. Same goals, same challenges, different ways of meeting up.

But why would I do this? What's in it for me? At the moment, as I have it imagined, there's no money involved. I want to try this. I want to have more reasons to write, to interact with writers, to teach without all the trappings of the public school, and I want to see if this is what is next on my horizon. It just feels like it would be good all around to give it a shot.

So, do you have a story you need to tell? Have you wanted to write more, to say more, to put yourself on the page and out in public? If so, let me know. I'll go there with you. And if it doesn't work, we have nothing but a few pages of writing and some hours that we will have spent on the endeavor. That seems a lot like nothing to lose.

What do you think? Anyone out there ready to write on?

Finding and Making Happiness

Doing things that have no right to be any fun at all.

I've spent today doing things that ought to be chores and each has failed to be onerous. Odd happenings here on the 27th of December.

Woke early and felt good enough to get out of bed so I did just that, came downstairs and started loading old CDs into the computer so that I can get rid of the last two shelves of CDs in our den. Each one seemed to inspire in me the desire to hear a different song. Even now, hours later, I'm listening to a Bruce Hornsby disc I haven't heard in ages.

My wife was headed out to go house hunting with my mother, so it was up to me to herd the children to Wegman's for the week's shopping. The two girls were in pretty bad moods as we were getting ready to go, but then road quietly to the store and, once there, took on the role of helping me get things done. When I sent them for broccoli, they got broccoli. When they were sent for scallions, they got scallions. And when they were sent for cherry tomatoes, they brought back my friend Chris who was picking up a few things of his own.

He and I talked for a bit as I sent the girls hither and yon for produce. There was no rush to get anything done and we caught up about Nerf football, my parents' house hunting, and the possibility of he and I getting together the next day. Then we went on our way.

It took an hour or so and cost nearly $200, but the trip was successful and easy. It was, for lack of a better word, a joy.

After unpacking the groceries I set about making vegetable stock. I peeled a five-pound bag of carrots, chopped off their tops and bottoms and piled it into a stock pot. I diced half a dozen onions and threw them in. I trimmed a head of celery and threw the trimmings in. I went through the spice cupboard and the stock made the kitchen and house smell like a warm den, a burrow on a rainy day.

And then a little while ago, feeling a bit bored, I took the dog out in the rain for a walk and romp. We went down to the park where I let her off the leash in the empty, rain-sodden fields and she took off, circling back to me and having the kind of time that only a dog can have.

Or maybe I can have it too because I walked in that cold rain and couldn't help but smile at her antics, at how good it felt to be moving, at how good I felt in every way. It's a matter of becoming, for the moment, a dog.

Yesterday I wrote about how I was remembering mistakes and disasters of my own making, so it seems only right to think today of successes I create. I still have a sprained foot and running is out of the question for at least another day, but the walk was good and the dog is much better as a walking companion than as a running partner. My children are mostly happy (though listening to them in the other room right now, I'm wondering who will draw blood first). My wife just came in wanting to tell me something but then asked, "are you writing your 750 words?" to which I nodded. She then went away until I can finish. And the dog is standing beside me waiting for me to give her another bite of cheddar. (It ain't happening, dog.)

Each of these things are situations I have created, things I have set about to make work, and they are good. My relationship with Stephanie (my wife) is a beautiful thing. It takes work, it's not easy for either of us, but we are what we need and want in this world. My kids are hysterical and sweet, smart and filled with energy. They make me smile more than I thought anything could. And this dog, still begging for cheddar or another walk in the rain, is the dog I've wanted since I had to put my childhood dog to sleep.

Life begins every morning but doesn't end each night. That is a marvel. There is more and more to come and yet every morning we get a do-over. Could anything be better than that? I don't think so. It gives me courage to go on, fills me with desire to know what's next, and drives me to write on.

Disasters and Blessings

Just three years ago, around this time of the evening, my world collapsed around me. Mistakes I had been making, silences I had kept, and a general hiding from myself all came together, coalesced, and I felt my world fall out from under me. It was the equivalent of having constructed a scaffold far up into the night sky and then having the footings give way. I felt it all tumbling down under me and, like Wile E. Coyote, hung in the air for a moment, a terrible expression on my face, the pit of my stomach falling faster than gravity could ever imagine.

I suppose that, as disaster strikes, it is only normal to feel as if there is no hope, that this is the end, that doom is upon us. Even the small disasters bring this on for me sometimes. The fender bender, the gift in the wrong size, the spoiled milk in the refrigerator. With those smaller disasters it is so much easier to get through the oh-no moment. The car can be fixed, the gift returned, the milk poured down the sink and replaced. With larger disasters, it's another matters.

Well, sort of.

Thinking back three years ago I see that it's not all that different. It comes down to making decisions. I wasn't prepared then to make good decisions and so I kept the problem going for a while, kept myself in a state of hiding much longer than I needed to. The solutions, which seemed impossible at the time, were all close at hand. Each began with being true to myself and honest in considering things. Each began with being present in the moment.

I know, I harp on that idea of presence all too often, but it's the single most important thing that I can do for myself and it's the thing I most struggle with. Most of my problems three years ago had to do with holding onto things from as far back as 1998, disasters that I should have put to bed, should have accepted years before. In fact, most of the things that led to my world collapsing began closer to 1978. It has been a long road.

Tonight, I feel like I have some small bit of wisdom to impart and so, if you'll forgive me, I'm going to talk at you for a moment. If you can't forgive me for such an indulgence, I recommend that you check out TheOnion.com or TheBloggess.com. Either one will be more fun and worth the visit.

You're going to screw up at some point. I'm going to screw up again, probably sooner than later. When it happens and someone calls you on it, don't defend yourself. Don't surrender either. In fact, stop thinking of life as a battle or a game to win or lose. Accept what you're being told as that person's perception of you and then consider why you're being told this. The sooner we learn that the perceptions others have of us are founded in our actions, the sooner we can get better.

When you're thinking about it, and maybe you're still boiling over being called out for your mistakes, think back to the other people have called you out already. They were there, I'm betting on it. In my case, looking back, I see at least five separate times that someone let me know that I wasn't doing it right. Each time I was able to blow that off and keep going. But when I was called out, I remember looking back and hearing all those warnings again. Even so, I couldn't add up all of that and admit to what was actually happening. I was still trying to win. And because of that, I was losing like you can't imagine.

Remember that it's unlikely you can figure it out and fix things yourself. I tried. But living within the narrow confines of my own head I didn't have the perspective to see things, to really understand. Eventually, almost too late, I sought help from my wife, my therapist, my best friend, my family, and my other friends. Raising a child takes a village; recovery sometimes takes a whole city.

We screw up. That's the nature of being human. There's more to it than that, but part of our lot is that we make mistakes. Often we feel like that's the end. It might just be unless we can see what is happening, be aware, be present, and ask for help.

It's the day after Christmas and I guess my gift to you is this sermon. Here's hoping that you don't need it. Here's hoping that you're better equipped than I was to deal with my own mistakes and decisions. I hope that I'm wiser now than I was then and wise enough to know that I don't know very much at all.

Thank you to everyone who has helped me, who has taught me and helped me learn, and who have honored me with their friendship and love. The world is, for me, so much more beautiful than it was three years ago. Every day is, for lack of a better word, a blessing.

Write on.

Christmas Presence

I am writing this under protest. Under duress as it were. Not really, but it sounds like fun to say such things.

My family and I have just returned home from an overnight stay across town at my brother's house where we celebrated Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my family, some of my wife's family, and a whole slew of friends. It has been a wonderful two days, but as with any holiday and time with family, it has also been tiring and now, finally home with the kids tucked into bed and some of the mess put away, I want little more than to go to bed and lie there with a book until I fall asleep.

But first, 750 words.

It's good for me sometimes to have these obligations. I shy from obligation more than is good for me and, often enough, look on simple appointments as obligations, giving them a negative spin that is out of proportion to the occasion. Sharing the holidays with family and friends, wondrous as it is, before it happens can feel like an obligation, a thing I have to do instead of something I want to do. It is all too easy to let myself slip into that sort of thing.

An example that I think most men will get is one I remember from just over ten years ago when my wife and I were trying to get pregnant. She monitored her cycles and when the time was right we needed to head for the bedroom. Pretty much any other time in my life I would kill for my wife to beg me to go to bed with her, but when it was an obligation, when we had to do it, even sex felt like a task to get through. Crazy.

It's all in perception. Which brings me to tonight's writing. I said that I was doing it under duress, but that's a load of crap. There are few things I enjoy more than banging out words like this. (One of them led to the births of our children, but the less said about that the better.) I know that as soon as I sit down at the keyboard, I'll feel energized.

The same is true for me when I let myself be with my family, when I sit still for a moment and am just there. This isn't easy for me. I get anxious around them because all my life I have felt pushed into a corner or an identity when I am with them. I am the ____ kid who always ______s and is just like his _______. You fill in the blanks for your situation, I'll keep mine blank for now because when I can leave those blanks behind and not help people fill them in, that's when things work.

This weekend, I was able to do that some and I fell into old patterns some other times. It's okay. The process is what I'm working on, not the end result. My family has known me for my whole life, my wife's family since I've known her, and some of our friends have known me since before I was born. There is a certain amount of childish residue that will always cling to me and that I think I can live with so long as it is the shadow that trails along behind me and not the disguise I wear. Shedding the disguise, assuming a real identity, and allowing the shadow to exist, all of that is complicated stuff and so it's okay that I have some success and have some things that I still need to work on.

All in all, I'm figuring it out. There are moments when I think, "I'm 43 years old; shouldn't I know this stuff already?" (And shouldn't I know for sure if a semi-colon is the correct punctuation in that sentence?) But my plan is to live way past 86 and so, I'm not even halfway through this life of mine. I have time to figure things out. I have Christmases to come in which I'll have to figure out how to be a son with his parents, and sadly all too soon I will have to work through how to be a son without his parents. Then I'll have to know how to be a father to grown children, a grandfather, and so on. It's going to be okay so long as I keep working at it, accept that it's a process, and stop worrying about it too far in advance.

I started writing this ten minutes ago with the complaint, blew off the complaint, and noticed that I was just writing. I went to a place I didn't fully expect and came out with a new thought as though I had just reached under the tree, pulled out a gift, unwrapped it and found something I hadn't asked for but which fit perfectly. It's a very merry Christmas for me and, I hope, for you. Just a few days left in this year and then we move on to the next. And always we write on.

Setback

I just started Christmas Break from the school at which I teach. Yesterday, the day before break, is typically a blow-off and celebration day at schools. At ours, we watched Elf, played basketball, and shared good food that isn't good for us. It was lovely and fun and we wished everyone a happy and safe holiday as they walked out the door. I wished them well while standing with my foot resting on a bread bag filled with ice.

During the basketball game I had felt a soreness near the ball of my left foot up near my big toe. I hadn't been stepped on, hadn't tripped, hadn't in any way injured myself except I felt really sore. I stopped for a moment and tried to stretch it out, but nothing doing. We played for a moment or two more and then called the game with them feeling really tired and me limping. Back up in my classroom I discovered that it was really sore and sensitive to certain movements and touches. I got out of my shoe, my sock, and into some ice.

Much later, the pain got to be worse and constant, so I took myself to prompt care to have x-rays done. Turns out that nothing is broken, which is wonderful, but that something is sprained, which is painful, and I won't be doing a lot of walking for the next few days.

This goes too for running. Ugh.

My Christmas Break was set to be all about running and being fit. I was planning to get outside as much as possible, to put in a bunch of miles, to walk the dog, to play with the kids, to generally be active and out and about. This morning, a bunch of friends are doing an inaugural Christmas Eve run that I had been planning on doing with them.

Those plans are shot.

Yesterday, thinking about all of this, I felt the usual slide into, "woe is me, my life is ruined." It's my seven-year-old voice coming out again and I stopped for a moment to consider what I was saying and what I was thinking.

Yes, I'm sidelined from running for the day. Tomorrow, I'll see what's what. My guess is that I'll be out tomorrow too, but I don't know. It is literally a day-to-day thing. I can assess it each morning. I don't have to have it all decided right now.

Yes, it hurts a bit. I'm up at four in the morning because each time I turned in bed my toe caught on the blankets and woke me up like a cattle prod. It's tough to sleep when I feel like an Occupy protester getting attacked by the police every few minutes. But I have taken some pain killer, I'll ice it soon, and as the day goes on, the pain is likely to diminish. Besides, it's nice to be awake at this hour, typing, drinking hot coffee, and having the place to myself.

This is a setback, but I'm thinking about that word and I find that I really like it. Setback sounds like something that someone would do to a player's game-piece on a board. I've been setback three spaces but the dice will come around the table again, I will roll, and I'll move forward.

The other thing about this is that my wife is lovely.

Yesterday, when I told her I had hurt myself, she was so loving, so sympathetic, but also so normal about it. These things happen, especially to a 43-year-old who still has a blast playing ball with his students. She asked if I wanted her to take me to prompt care, if she wanted someone to wait with me. She read the instructions sent home by the doctor, she got me a pillow to elevate my foot, she told me to sit and let her do all the work. These are the small works of true love.

There's a lesson or moral or metaphor here and I'm too much of a hack to let it go unstated. I've been setback three spaces in this game and lost my turn. I now have nothing to do but sit and look at the world, listen to what is going on around me, and be present to all that is going on. That it is Christmas Eve and I will be seeing a whole slew of good friends tonight and that tomorrow I will watch my children tear into gifts with glee is an added bonus.

I've been set back and now I can sit back and be aware of wonder and joy. Talk about a nice holiday gift. I'll miss running, but even with a sprained foot and toe I'll write on.

Overindulging, Staying Positive, Trying to Change

In the past couple of days I've written about how to get going on something. Writing was my first example. I said, there's no such thing as writer's block, it's just a writer not writing, worrying too much about his words not being worthy. The solution, I said, was simply to write and accept. That works for me. I've been writing a lot lately even though I haven't felt especially inspired or inspiring. Still, because I keep writing, the occasional good thought occurs to me and goes down on the page or up on the screen.

This morning I'm thinking about something over which I'm not so sure I have a good plan. It's especially apropos now, around the holidays, as I tend to over-indulge around this time of year. I'm wondering how to have control and how to stay in the moment especially when it comes to food and drink.

This morning, I stepped on the scale and read 209 which is heavy for me. I can pull off 209 without looking particularly bulbous, but it's not a weight at which I feel healthy. Here's what I mean: 209 is the kind of number I see when I haven't run in a week, when I have been eating late in the evening, and when I notice that I'm having an extra glass of Bailey's each night. 209 isn't a number that says, "hey, fatty." Instead, it says, "don't you think you ought to get off the couch and put down the Doritos?"

Stepping off the scale I felt energized rather than depressed. This is good and not always the case with me. I often see the number and dwell on what has passed, the mistakes I've made, the cookies I've eaten, and so on. Today I must have slept well or the stars were aligned, because I clearly thought, "yeah, this is doable." I went into the kitchen to make my lunch. I measured out portions. I packed some fruit in place of a other things I might have brought. I chose to not make coffee and filled the water bottle instead.

This is all good, but I worry about the rest of the day. It's like when I get ready for bed at night and carefully lay out running clothes for the morning. I'm absolutely sure as I do it that I'll wake up and put in five miles. But when morning comes, the bed is warm, I'm sleepy, and I can hear rain on the window. I reset the alarm and go back to sleep. It could happen the same way with this eating thing. Sure, right now I'm energized and certain about things, but later I'll be tired, bored, anxious, or something else and there will be chocolate chips handy, a cookie on a Christmas tray, or a vat of spinach-artichoke dip and tortillas. Something will come along and, if I'm not ready, if I don't have some sort of plan for things, I'll be 209 tomorrow and probably not as sanguine about it.

So I need a plan. Not a plan where I have everything worked out ahead of time, but a plan like the one I have for writing. There it's easy: just keep writing. But with eating and drinking, with overindulging, the mantra is tougher because it's a negative: don't overindulge. I'm no good with that sort of thing. I can follow a plan that says to do something, but I'm nowhere near as good at one that says don't do.

The obvious thing is to be present throughout the day. That's the over-arching goal. That's what really happens when I write. I'm present enough to know that one word leads to another and that writing creates ideas. With eating, it's another story. I need to build to presence around food and drink. I'm not there yet. So, how do I become present?

I've tried writing down my food, but that's easy to defeat: if I want to eat something, I choose not to write it down and then I go eat some more. Besides, that feels unnatural and punishing.

I feel right now as if I should be wrapping this up with some grand idea that solves the problem. Life, and writing, don't work that way sometimes. At the end here, I'm left with a feeling that I should be good to myself. That I should be kind. A lot of my eating around the holidays comes out of anxiety: I'll be at a party and the thing to do is to keep my hands busy because otherwise people might notice me. I'll be on my own and not sure what to do with myself and so I'll entertain and distract myself with food and drink. I do a lot of my eating and drinking out of a lack of appreciation for myself and the kindness of others. Being kind is the first step. And for now that's all I've got.

But as usual, you know I'll write on.

God Bless Us, Every One!

A friend wrote to tell me that my entry about basketball and teaching interested him and went along with what he had been thinking. He mentioned another game, Idiot Ball, which is transcendental but I explained why I can't play it in school. There are many reasons. It was awfully nice to have someone write to me about something I had written, to say that they had connected with it.

This morning a stranger wrote a comment on another entry that it was the truest thing he had ever read on the subject. I emailed a copy of that comment to my wife and said that it was the single nicest thing I had ever read about my blog writing.

Last night, a woman who also writes a blog, wrote a series of comments to me. We had a little comment conversation as though we had known one another for years, as though were were fast friends. And, in many ways, we are.

And Tuesday night, while sitting in the Carrier Dome watching SU kick the living crap out of Bucknell, my best friend in the world talked carefully and thoughtfully about several things I had posted. His attention to the stuff was obvious and touched me.

All of which explains why, when a student asked me this morning what I want under the tree for Christmas, I was able to say that I was already receiving it. No lie.

This is the year in which I am reinventing myself. I was about to write that it is the year in which "I am _trying_ to reinvent myself," but then I heard Yoda saying, "there is no try," and went with the more affirmative statement. (I don't hear Yoda all that often, but when I do, you bet your ass I take note. The force is strong in that one.) This is the year that I figure things out. I'm talking "school year" here, so it's not like I have to get this all set in nine days (though I wouldn't mind). The reinvention is coming out of writing.

I have long fancied myself a writer but never really published anything. I won a fiction contest once in college, and that was really nice, but then that was pretty much it. The extent of my publishing has been to write poetry, stories, and essays to use in my classroom with students. It has been great, but it turns out that it's not enough for me.

For years I convinced myself that I didn't need publication. I wasn't that writer. And I didn't feel as though I was good enough to be published. So I kept to my notebook, typed on the computer, showed a few things to family and friends and students, and went along with things. That was fine when I was satisfied with my life. Now, I'm thinking that I need more.

A long time ago I wrote on the board of my classroom the following lines: "We have the opportunity to be extraordinary. The choices are ours." I always liked the sound of that, but I think that I only believed it for others. I knew somehow that I was supposed to be extraordinary, but I couldn't figure out how to make that happen and I was afraid to fail.

Everyone says that they are afraid to fail. My particular fear was that failure would lead to the end of trying. I was this way in middle and high school too when it came to talking to girls. I couldn't ask a girl out because she might say no and, if she did, I felt as though there was no recovery.

Well, we all know that's nonsense. Even I know it now.

So this year I'm trying. I've been writing these blog entries. I have gotten two poems published and I'm posting more and getting set to send a bunch more out for publication (or rejection). I'm putting myself out there because I understand that I really do have the opportunity to be extraordinary.

Here's why I know it and why I've gotten what I want for Christmas already: it's because of the notes that I get back from people that help me understand that we all have something to say and that, if we work at it, we can engage others. I've engaged a few people in the short time that I have been publishing. That's the most rewarding thing I can ask for in a professional world. I've created something and it has been of use to others.

I'll keep writing. No way can I stop. And I know that whatever I find to do going forward in this life, it will have writing at its center. I hope that people will keep reading what I write and I hope that you will keep writing back to me. Not just with compliments, but with arguments and disagreements too. I hope that you'll point me toward things I should be thinking and writing about. I hope that you will help me push forward. Basically, I'm saying to myself and to all of you: write on. And thank you.

Writer's Block, Runner's Block, and Relationship Blocks

I've struggled all day to think of something worthwhile to write on this blog. I started by thinking about numbers and accuracy but it didn't go much of anywhere. I tried just now to write about wanting to smash something against a wall, but that left me wanting to smash the laptop against the wall. Never a good idea, but especially troubling when the laptop is my own. And so, I'm left thinking about being blocked.

The typical version of this is writer's block. I don't believe in writer's block. It's hogwash. A blocked writer is one who is just not working, not writing. I have never suffered from a real writer's block. Instead, I have had days like today when I just don't feel like I can get anything good written. Writer's block isn't about having nothing to write, it's about believing that nothing I have to say is worthy. The cure is simple: to write something unworthy and move on. I applied that cure earlier today when, with nothing good coming out of my fingertips, I just plugged away until I had 750 words that were neither coherent nor elegant. Still, I had covered that much ground.

Throughout the day I had my notebook in front of me and while my students watched a film that we are studying, I kept at work on a short story idea about a man with cold hands. I hand-wrote 11 pages of the thing before it fell apart. I stared at the last three pages, reading and re-reading, hoping that the ending would resolve itself. I went back to the beginning after the kids had gone home, but the whole thing was only murkier to me. I had nothing. Well, I had 11 pages, I just had nothing for an ending. Not yet anyway.

Other blocks are tougher to deal with. In running, I occasionally hit the block of not getting out the door. For a year now I haven't been able to get out of bed and run in the morning with anything approaching regularity. Time was, I got out of bed before five and hit the gym each morning by 5:30. Now, the alarm goes off and I fail to summon the will to rise. I solve that problem by running in the afternoons, but that's hit or miss. Last week was hit, this week is miss. I think about running in the abstract and it sounds good to me, but in the actual world, the one in which it rains and I come home from work ready for a nap, it's much more challenging to get out there and do the miles.

I end up not getting out on the road and instead sitting on the couch or (heaven forbid) typing at a computer as I am now and feeling badly about it. Like writing, my running blocks are usually me deciding that I couldn't possibly go out for a run and sabotaging those things. The solution is as simple as it is for writing: just get my self out there on the road and get running.

Finally, there are blocks that are much more challenging to me and for which I don't have simple answers. These have do to with relationships such as those I have with my wife, my children, my family, and my friends. The blocks here are similar to writing and running blocks in that the block is largely a matter of avoiding the task at hand, a matter of failing to engage.

The solutions here are probably just as simple too, but I resist them. When I am having a relationship block there is a large part of me that revels in that block, the clings to it. I think that others have this most often when driving. A driver cuts you off in traffic and you curse them out. Maybe you flip them off. I tend to pull up to their bumper and flash my headlights (really mature, eh?). You should just let it go. I mean, what's done is done. But the feeling lingers, the anger is still there and you want...something. So it is with me in relationships. I get frustrated and I want...something. What that something is, I don't know then and on reflection I still don't know.

It has been the kind of day when I don't know what I want, don't know how to get the relief I feel I need (mostly because I couldn't describe the relief if my life depended on it). Still, maybe there is comfort in the simple fact that I have been able to churn out something like 5000 words on a day of writer's block. Now all I have to do is to get myself out in the rain for a run and maybe sit down with someone I love (and who loves me) to try and figure out where I have come off my tracks.

That, and as always, I need to write on.

I Like Dreaming

Yesterday, using my iPhone to try accessing Facebook, I got frustrated (again) by how slow the device is. Mine is the iPhone 3G and I got it in August of 2008. By the terms of the industry, it's an antique device. No wonder it runs so slowly. By now I should have upgraded at least once, probably twice and then I would be on Facebook in a jiffy.

But why?

Last night I was all set to go out soon and get an iPhone 4 with 8GB of memory. It was a compromise. Sure, there is the new iPhone 4S and there are versions that have much more memory, but I was economizing. The 4 with 8GB of memory was _only_ $99. I figured that economizing was the way to go. Last night, I was all set to go out and buy the thing soon.

But why?

That's the question I've come to this morning. If my phone doesn't work well to access Facebook, then maybe the solution is to not access Facebook on my phone. I know, it's crazy, but what if I don't really need to be connected with everyone all the time? Perish the thought.

I thought about it for a few moments and realized that I need my phone to do a few things. I need to be able to make calls on it. I need to occasionally figure out where I am with its GPS capability. I like to be able to take pictures with it. And once in a while I check mail, Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ on it. The first couple are needs, the last two are wants. My phone can still do all these things even if it does some of them slowly.

So no new phone.

In some ways that's disappointing. I kind of got myself worked up to wanting a new phone last night. I thought of it as a treat. And I figured it would be a relief to be able to get online that much faster. But in many more ways, the decision that I'm coming to now is much more satisfying and it's not just because I'll have that hundred bucks still in the bank. It has more to do with the feeling of not buying something, of not engaging in the consumption mill, of staying out of the economy.

I've long been someone who gives into urges. As a kid that meant that I wanted to buy a lot of things and, when I couldn't afford to buy them, I stole. Lovely, I know, but it's true. I shoplifted, of all things, school supplies (I'm that much of a geek and always have been), thinking that the thing I stole was going to be great to have. Getting home, I almost always set the thing aside, threw it away, or lost it. As soon as I had stolen it, I felt lousy about it and didn't want it any more because I never really needed it. It was similar for many things I bought. I got them home and found that owning them took away all the wanting.

Wanting something is a lovely feeling. It's a dream. There are things in life that I want still and one of them is a really cool phone. But having the thing takes away the dream for me and I'm beginning to see that a better dream is what I need. It's not the thing that I'm after but the things I can do with that thing. Let me give you an example and wrap this up.

For the past few months I have been looking at GPS watches to use while running. At first I wanted the Garmin 610 because it is the top-of-the-line model. Then, as I started digging, I saw that it was more than I needed or wanted. I pared down and down until I had decided on the Garmin 210 which much more fit the uses to which I would put it. But at $200, I couldn't justify the purchase. It didn't make enough sense.

I started thinking, mostly while I was running, about how I would use a GPS watch. It was in no way necessary, but there were good uses I could put it to and I saw ways that it could change my running for the better, give me more freedom but still let me track numbers the way I like. And on one run, I figured that if I could find the thing for $100, then maybe I would get it.

The next day a reviewer I respect wrote of a GPS watch for $99 that fit exactly how I want to use the device.

Kismet.

I didn't just want the watch, I wanted the things I will do with it. That's a dream that works. And it fits with what my wife wants to do for me for Christmas.

Back to my phone. My dream is to do fewer things with my phone, to use it less, to get away from all this social networking stuff when I'm not at a computer. That's a good dream and, lucky for me, it requires that I not buy a new phone. And with fewer interruptions from my phone, maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to do more writing and real dreaming.

Write on.

The Christmas Season

Sitting in my classroom with fifteen minutes to go before my first students, I feel panic come on me. It is in the center of my chest and feels like a catch in my breathing. Taking deep breaths feels weird and uncomfortable. If I wasn't at work, I would lie down on the floor for a moment and close my eyes.

This is how things go sometimes. It isn't that I have so much to do or that something has happened, I just feel out of sorts and that has led to anxiety. My response? This writing. It won't cure anxiety, but it helps me live in it for a few moments, and that is half the battle.

I turn off the music, close my eyes, touch the keys softly. I let the speed of my thinking slow down to the speed of typing and I try to relax and breathe.

I read a blog post today about a guy going out for a couple runs. I wanted it to be interesting but it wasn't. He went into too much detail: "I did this, I did that, and I did this other thing." About three hundred words in, I quit reading because he hadn't taken me anywhere. So I had better start getting somewhere with this.

Peace is a foreign concept. We used to produce it locally, I'm sure, but it has been outsourced, shipped over seas. Or, to put it more accurately, we are exporting anxiety and the sense that frantic is the only way to be.

My mind this morning is filled with a hundred to-dos that won't get done and that, undone, won't matter. My body is anxious (that whole breathing thing) because my mind is trying to move too fast. What I need is peace.

Christmas is advertised as a season of peace, but in the ways we do things it is anything but peaceful. There is the frantic run to the stores, the "have tos" of wrapping, baking, cooking, and cleaning. There is work to attend to, the children and their obligations, and the extended needs of our extended families. It's tough to be peaceful when I'm easily distracted and there is so much to distract me.

I came to this entry looking to survive anxiety and now I have found some peace and a way to go forward with the day, the week, the season, and so on. Let me tell you:

Outside the window is a coating of snow under a blue sky. An evergreen blows in the breeze and so too do two red ribbons tied to a porch across the street. I have turned off the music, tuned out the voices in the hall, and my breathing has calmed to normal. I'm thinking about my wife right now, seeing her smile in my mind, and hearing her voice. No, I'm hearing her breathing as she lies next to me at night and we drift to sleep. Peace.

Throughout the week, as Christmas approaches, I want to think of peace and give peace to my loved ones and to myself. I can buck the frenzy of the season. I can enjoy my family, the things that we need and want to do. I can choose to be at peace.

As a beginning to that, I wish you a peaceful holiday season. I offer you this thought: consider what brings real peace into your life: the smile of your grandchild, the flavor of chocolate, a morning run in the cold, a hot cup of coffee, a kiss from your husband, a prayer before you sleep, the end of a good book, or simply a moment of stillness. Find that peace. And if you can manage it, share that peace with everyone around you.

Write on.

(Today is the 50th post to this blog. Sweet.)

Yesterday... No, today, right now

Yesterday...

The line in the song says, "yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away," but most of what I struggle with was front and center yesterday as I walked up the trail in Highland Forest during my first trail run.

The occasion was the "Last-Chance Trail Run" put on by the Syracuse Chargers Track Club. Runners, for a measly ten dollars, come to a beautiful forest park, run the trails, and then gorge on pancakes. I mean, seriously, who could say no?

At times, out on the trail, I wish I had said no.

I rode to the run with two experienced trail runners who generously invited me along though I was a complete novice. I was nervous, knowing that I couldn't hope to keep up with them. This is not false humility. Both of these guys are strong, fast, and experienced at running trails. I am many things, but I am not fast. I'm not nearly as strong. And it would be my first time. I told them that they would drop me in the first mile. They smiled, thinking I was just nervous. "When you drop me, it's okay. Keep going," I told them. "We all run our own race."

(The Last Chance Trail Run, by the way, is not a race. Runners start whenever, finish wherever, choose their own trails, and so on. Everyone runs are in the same park and eats pancakes afterward.)

We started and I tried to keep up but was four feet behind within a dozen steps. I hung on for half a mile and then felt them slipping away. Just as well; the pace was killing me. I kept them in site for a while, then started paying attention to trail markers because I was on my own.

Running on my own is fine. I used to have lots of trouble with it out on the roads. I would just stop mid-stride and walk. I couldn't figure out how people got used to going long. But now, on the roads, I can go eight- or ten-miles whenever I have the time. On the trails I don't have the same capabilities. On one long hill I found myself walking and wishing I could just sit down and be done.

I've been writing about being present in life, but yesterday, just over a mile into the run, I had lost the moment. I was thinking about how far I had to go, how much I wanted the run to be over, how I wished I could keep up with the guys, and how I was beginning to regret that I had come along at all. In short, I was giving into anxiety and falling out of the moment.

I made a concerted effort then to find the present.

I struggled through ten minutes of walking to place myself in the moment. The first step was to be okay with the fact that I was walking. I was panting on the hill. I was sweating in twenty degrees air. I was alone and nervous. I worked to accept. "This is the situation," I said, "and it's not bad."

The hill was long and I had time to think. I tried jogging but didn't get far. But I kept going and kept thinking about what was happening, what I was doing, what it was all about.

The following things came to me:

• I was pushing myself into something new and good 
• My body and mind were still in motion
• Being new at something gives me permission to not be very good at it yet 
• There would soon be pancakes

More than all that, I began to feel each moment as a good thing. It was all very tiring, but the weather was gorgeous. It made me nervous to be in the woods alone, but I knew that I could follow the trail and that other runners would pass me by from time to time. I wasn't moving fast, but I kept moving.

At the finish I was careful to feel what it was like to have reached the end of the run. It turned out to feel almost exactly like being out on the trail. I rejoined with my friends and ate pancakes. I had covered 6.3 miles over an hour and three-quarters. We talked about the footing, puddles, mud, slopes, slipping, and dancing through roots and over logs. I told them that my 6 miles had been much more challenging than the half marathon I ran months before. They all nodded.

And then, when I got home, I told my wife "Oh yea, I'll try it again soon!" which is just another way of saying, write on.

Accomplishments and New Adventures

I'm up early this morning having not been able to sleep past three. Finally, at quarter to six I rolled out of bed, made some coffee, scooped the cat litter, and sat down here to write. There is plenty to talk about.

I am in the midst of accomplishing something I set out to do. Seventy days ago I started back to writing on 750words.com (I didn't start publishing them until October 31). If you don't know, 750words.com is a place to do daily writing and it's all about streaks. I've been on and off the site for a couple years and my longest streak is seventy days in a row. Today, I tie that streak.

It's easy to get excited about finish lines as they approach. When I started back up on this writing, seventy days felt an eternity away and so it was easy to think that once I got to the milestone I would feel changed. It just ain't so. Here I am, tying the record and I'm the same guy. Well, not really, but the changes are more interesting than conquering a challenge.

I changed as I wrote. I changed when I started publishing. I changed day to day and not in a linear fashion. For the most part, as I got into the writing, I lost track of the number of days. Once in a while I would note the streak and then move on. That was it. I was too busy running the race to think about the finish line.

That's a lot of what I was talking about two days ago. I've been present to writing and trying to be much more present in living. In that way, the challenge, the finish line aren't what motivate me. Instead, the act is motivation. It's hard to put it in the right words -- I feel as though I'm dancing around the idea instead of nailing it down -- so I'll go with the old Harry Chapin lyric: "It's got to be the going, not the getting there that's good."

And so it has been.

Today, my interest is held much more by a new adventure than by something in the past. A friend has been inviting me to run some trails with him. I have consistently demurred. The reasons I have given him don't matter because the real reason is anxiety. He's a stronger runner than I am, experienced at running the trails. I've never run trails and I worry about a lot of things. The friend is a super-friendly guy, very generous and kind, but yet I worry that I'll hold him back and he will regret having asked me. In short, I'm afraid of failure and heretofore have avoided it by declining the invitations.

Not today.

This morning I'll walk down to his house and together we will catch a car-pool up to Highland Forest, a sensational place, where we will run an eight-mile trail loop. I'll admit, I'm nervous about this and I think that some of my not sleeping was about this, but the anxiety is okay.

Being present during writing is easy for me. Being present through anxiety is another matter. My therapist tells me that it's okay to experience anxiety. I've spent the better part of a year trying to figure out what that means. I have learned over the previous forty-two years that anxiety is something to react to, to run from, to push down hard. The fact that I haven't felt very good under that plan has in no way deterred me from following it. My therapist is trying to get me to feel better, to live life more fully, and one way to do that is to accept anxiety, be present to it, and see what happens then.

Each time we've discussed this, there has been a strong voice inside me saying, "you've got to be kidding."

Yet, already, just writing the words "I am anxious" I know that I feel a little better even though that's not the goal any more. Feeling better is a finish line and I know that it's an elusive one. It's not that I can't feel good, it's that the image of "feeling better" I have carried in my mind is one in which all the work is done and I'm healed. We are never healed. Instead we can be _healing_ and that's what I believe being present to anxiety is doing for me. When I can accept the anxiety it is no longer an enemy and I no longer have to use energy to combat it. I can save that energy for the run and, given that it's eight miles of very hilly trails with a fresh coating of snow, I'll need all the energy I can muster.

As for streaks of writing, I'm tied with my old streak. I'm happy about that, but I'm really happy knowing that, regardless of streaks, I'm bound to write on.

Robert Fulghum on the Basketball Court

One of the pleasures of working at my school is that I serve as one of the PE guys. That means that every Friday I take a bunch of kids down to the gym and play basketball. I like basketball. I like it the way I like writing, which is to say that I love it. I would love to find a way to do a 750words type of thing with basketball where I was playing it every day. As it is, I play on Fridays and that's pretty good.

But playing ball here is different than just picking up a game anywhere. I'm out there with kids from seventh to twelfth grade and of really varying ability. I get to play ball but it might be the most intense _teaching_ that I do all week. I don't want to go all Robert Fulghum on you here, but just about everything that kids need to know they can learn on a basketball court and I'm out there trying to teach them.

Today, there were eight of us in there for half an hour. Two of the players are much better than I am. They can move fast, they handle the ball better, they can jump higher, and they have game. Their shots are smooth, their vision is good. Three other guys are pretty good. They can play but their shots are halting or they don't run (because they smoke too much) or they over-commit on defense and dribble into traffic. And then two more are really terrible. They don't have any fundamentals, don't understand much beyond the fact that their team is trying to get the orange ball through the metal ring. And then there's me.

I'm 43 years old, twenty pounds overweight, and trying to insure that everyone is in the game. So I'm not a killer out there. But I can play. I can cover those first two guys enough to slow them down and I can get by them enough that they don't know how they're letting an old guy score. I can outplay the other five without too much trouble. So I'm comfortable out there, able, and in good enough shape to hang in there with any of them.

Mostly though, I've got a smile. I smile when they make their shots. I punch their shoulders when they pull down a rebound. I tell them when they do things smart. And I'm always directing, bailing people out of bad situations, and telling them not to sweat it when things go badly for them. I try to teach them my smile. I try to show them that it's a game, that they are on a team (and that they will be on a different team next week), and that the only thing they need to do is keep going.

Most of them get that sort of thing even when things go badly once in a while. They come in with chips on their shoulders and they usually, after a few weeks, learn that it's not that type of game here. They play hard and there are kids who never smile, but they get it.

At one point today, I had the ball up top. I wanted to pass but none of my guys were open and there was an opening. The two best guys were there and I saw a seam. I drove. I jumped. I twisted. And when I shot, I knew it was good. One of them said nothing. The other hooted and hollered and said, "look at the old man!" This was the moment I most wanted to teach them about. I nodded to the kid who had yelled. He smiled back at me, shaking his head. The other guy came up to guard me as we inbounded. He said, "hell of a shot, man." I said, "one part luck, one part practice, one part taking a chance." He didn't smile. Instead, he nodded.

Then he stole the ball from me.

I smiled at him and yelled, "don't be cruel to old people!"

Basketball is a good game. It's a better teaching tool. Coming up soon are going to be some new standards to measure what teachers do. Politicians are promising to get tough on teachers. Administrators will be implementing all sorts of new observations and testing schemes to see if people like me are _learning_ these kids what they need to know to feed the economy. I'm hoping that I can get observed in the gym during basketball. I have objectives, a lesson plan, and the whole thing is differentiated for all levels of skill. And every single kid, from those first two, down to the two who can barely play, passes the damn test. When they come out of the gym, every single sweaty kid is a better person than when he came in.

Don't worry though. Basketball is a good game, but so is writing. You should see what they do on paper when, as in a game of hoops, we put the ball out there and all of us get out and play. You should see what they do when we write on.

By the way, I learned everything I need to know about basketball and most of the other stuff at 201 North Street during the eighties and nineties. It's all about being able to hit a hook shot without breaking ankles on the exposed tree roots just off the baseline. 

Goals, Achievement, and Being Present

Thank you to Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.net, Matt Frazier of No Meat Athlete, and Andy Gapin of AndyGapin.com. Their good writing prompted this essay. If I have misinterpreted their writings, I apologize.


Don't be a slave to your goals; be the master of the moment.
Presence trumps goals and challenges. 

Yesterday, Leo Babauta wrote a blog post entitled achieving, without goals. It was followed by a response from Matt Frazier of No Meat Athlete entitled, What Do You Say To Yourself When It Hurts The Most? Then Andy Gapin posted Why Do We Do Things That Aren't Fun?" responding to Frazier and Babauta. I had read Babauta's post earlier in the day and had a feeling that something wasn't getting through to me. I wasn't alone. Frazier and Gapin were struggling with it as well and because of their struggles I understand something much more now.

Babauta transformed his life, in part, through setting a whole collection of goals for himself, breaking out of his old routines. He has written extensively about this on his blog Zenhabits, but now he has come to a new conclusion that he can achieve much better without goals. Setting aside goals is the thing the others had trouble with.

Babauta recounts a conversation in which he was told that, "without goals, a lot of people wouldn't do anything." Babauta doesn't buy this and neither do I. The carrot is simply not enough to lead people on all the time.

Frazier and Gapin talk about how goals work for them, how they get them past when it hurts, when it's no longer fun. Their common thesis is that the goal, the challenge is what sees us through the tough tasks when we are naturally inclined to quit. The sweetest of carrots is necessary, they say, to keep us moving forward through intense hardship. It draws us out of the past and pushes us forward into the future.

This is when they run into trouble and dance around Babauta's main point -- an idea that Babauta himself dances around as well.

I can't dance, so I'll say that achieving goals happens when we are present in our lives. Presence is more powerful than goal accomplishment. Presence is, for my money, everything.

Babauta writes, "Goals keep you focused on something in the future instead of being present and enjoying what you're doing right now." Frazier wonders how it could be possible to enjoy an ultra-marathon, especially when we reach the "well-known 'no man's land' between miles 30 and 40. You've run more than a marathon, perhaps more than you've done in your training. Your muscles and feet are sore and you want nothing more than to sit down. But you've still got a long way to go... 15 maybe 20 miles, too much to feel like you're almost there...you've got an experience that is frankly, painful. It's learning to deal with the dark thoughts that creep into your mind here that make the difference..."

Frazier's problem comes out in that section. During that time in the ultra he comes unstuck from the present. He is focused on the accomplishment of the distance he has already covered and the task of how many miles lie ahead. He looks back, he looks forward, and his only nod to the present is to the pain. I'm sure it is painful, I'm sure it kills, but the pain didn't start 30 miles in. Instead, that's the moment he lost presence and without being present he has to rely instead on a goal to pull him through.

Gapin puts it differently, saying that without a goal he would sit on the couch and watch TV all day. I know the feeling but I also know the lie of that statement. He's talking about absence. Someone present in the moment isn't a couch potato even when they watch television from the couch. Gapin says that without goals we wouldn't do anything that wasn't fun. He has a point, but his definition of fun is troubled. He gets close to the truth in his fourth paragraph:

"When I was running the Philly Marathon there was a spectator holding up a sign that said, 'it doesn't have to be fun to be fun.'" It all clicked for him then. "I was in crazy amounts of pain and, by most definitions, I was not having fun, but yet, what I was doing was still fun to me as a whole."

In that realization Gapin found presence. Because he was in the moment, he was able to live with the otherwise unreconcilable contradiction of having fun while feeling pain, having fun in something that couldn't possibly seem like fun.

The paradox remains confusing only when we are not present in the moments of our lives. I've been writing this essay on and off for two and a half hours. I wrote the first draft on the computer, but it wasn't what I wanted to say and I scrapped it. This draft I wrote by hand and then typed. It wasn't easy and it shouldn't have been fun, but I have been present throughout the process and so I've been enjoying every word. I had no goal with this piece, just an urge to talk back to what I had read. I had nothing that I needed to accomplish and now, coming to the finish line of it, I have the same feeling that I have had throughout the writing. The finish isn't the goal. There is no goal.

Babauta's achiving without goals is about achieving presence. Once present, Frazier's and Gapin's questions resolve themselves. "What do you say to yourself when it hurts the most?" You say, be present. You say, breathe. And "why do we do things that aren't fun?" Because they are fun when we are truly in them.

I'm not about to suggest that I've reached a state of being present throughout my entire life. I'm just learning how to be more present. For me it's all about what I wrote at the beginning: I won't be a slave to the goal; I will instead always try to be the master of this moment.

Write on.

The Necessity of the Run

One thing about posting my writing every day and having people read it: they can sense the moods I'm in and start to feel the rhythms of my life. In the past week I have had one friend writing email to me asking about things that I have written and suggesting ideas. It has helped to move me forward. Another friend wrote to say that she would help me with running. She could sense that I was in a hole and offered a hand up.

I wrote yesterday about the need to be able to ask for help and I also need to be aware that I can accept help. I've tried to do that in both of the instances described above and want to be sure that I do it over my life entire. It's a good project to have.

As you may have guessed if you've been reading for a while, I'm also trying to listen more carefully to myself and to think about what I need. Today, in class, I have started kids writing about what they want, what they need, and the difference between those things. They are struggling with the idea that there is a difference between wanting and needing. One student is trying to argue that his gaming system is a need while another has sworn that whatever she wants is something she needs.

When my students write, I write too. What follows is adapted from my writing notebook entry for today.

What do I need?

More and more I'm learning that I need to run. Without running, I'm not the person I want to be. Running is for me the symbol of moving forward. Not running is standing still.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been mush. I've been stuck to the couch, listening to the television's white noise, staring through the laptop screen, not paying attention to myself and what I need. And so I have sunk into a depression of sorts.

I say "of sorts" because I don't think of myself as depressed. I don't think that my condition is that severe. I don't sink into something out of which I can't climb out. The darkness doesn't swallow me. Instead, I get to feeling lazy, intimidated by whatever it is I might better be doing, and so I sit still. I get stuck in ruts. I follow patterns. I let the world run me. I become a victim of events.

Isaac Newton said that an object at rest will remain at rest until acted upon by some force. So it is with me. A Brian at rest on the couch will remain on the couch until he chooses to exert some force to set himself in motion. The force in this case comes from within. Or it doesn't.

Monday afternoon I got myself out for around three miles. The run was easy enough. I stuck to the flats and I just went for a run. I didn't think too much about anything. I felt the beat of my bare feet on the pavement (I run without shoes, but that's a topic for another time) and enjoyed how my body warmed in the cold air. I just ran. It wasn't a thinking activity in anyway. And it was just what I needed. I came home, showered, and then sat before the computer (without the television) and wrote. I turned out good stuff. I was running even though I was sitting on the couch. Forces were at work and I was in motion.

Yesterday was really a tough day. By the time I finally got home around six (that's late for me) I was worn out mentally, emotionally, and (I thought) physically. The sun had gone down and it was cold, but I changed into running clothes, strapped on the head lamp, and went out for five miles. Again, I wasn't thinking about all the stuff that had worn me down during the day. I wasn't dwelling on my life at all. I was in the moment of each step of that run. And when I came home, I was aware still and I accomplished the things I wanted to accomplish.

I am still having all sorts of trouble with sleep. I keep waking at three or four in the morning and lying there in varying degrees of panic and anxiety. I'll have to see about that. Maybe it will come out in the run. Or in the writing.

What do I need? I need to run. I need to be in motion. I need to write and produce things I take pride in. I need to keep moving forward. And, as you can guess, I need to write on.

Walking the Bicycle

I hadn't considered before that I could choose to walk the bicycle.

Yesterday, waiting for a red light to change, I sat in my car thinking the thoughts of the day. As I sat, a young man walked a bicycle up Genesee Street through the intersection where I was waiting. He passed in front of my car's grille and kept going. Without much in the way of consideration, I thought, "Why doesn't he just ride the bike?" The notion in my head was that he was lazy, that he was somehow less than I would be in his situation. I was thinking, haughtily, that I would be pedaling even though he was making his way uphill in clothes that were more suited to work than to riding. I thought, "I would gut it out up this hill."

The light was one of those that takes forever to change and I had some more time to think about the guy walking the bike. I looked at his receding shape as he made his way up the hill. I thought that he was probably not sweating terribly, as I would be were I pedaling. I was surprised by how far he had gotten from where I still sat and by how effortless it seemed to walk and push that bicycle. I considered how far ahead I would be if I was riding my bike past him. The answer was that I wouldn't be that far in the lead.

It occurred to me then that he had made the right decision at the bottom of this hill to step off the pedals and step down to the ground. At the top of the hill he could remount his ride and glide down the backside of the hill to the flatter sections of Genesee where he would make great time and not work overly hard. I thought about it and it all made sense. Before that moment, I hadn't really considered the idea that I could choose to walk my bicycle up a hill and remain a good, hard-working, respectable person.

Crazy.

Yesterday, shortly after seeing the guy walking his bike, I got an email from a friend with whom I run. She is a dedicated and disciplined runner. She trains for races in ways that I have never been able to, holding tight to a training schedule and following through. More than that, she is a generous trainer of others. Unlike those shrieking coaches on weight-loss shows, she is quiet and encouraging, kind in every way as she takes people who haven't run a step since lollipop-age and helps them find their way through their first 5K and on into half-marathons. She has been reading my posts here and noticed that I was struggling. Her note said, in part, that she wasn't sure if she could help with any of the other stuff, but she was only too happy to help me get back out on the road running.

It was a lovely note to receive and, in part because I had seen the bicyclist/walker, I was able to receive it fully. Shortly after reading her note I went out and ran three miles. It felt good. I almost banged on her door as I passed her house to let her know that I was alive again. Instead of such a fuss, I wrote her an email. In it I said that I have been struggling and that I would like some help getting back out on the road.

I don't know about you, but when people offer me help, my first thought is to say something like, "no, it's okay, I've got it" or "I can manage, but thanks." I ward off help and try to steer clear of admitting that I'm in trouble. I'm the guy who keeps pedaling all the way up the steep hill even though the bike is going only as fast as I could walk it and I'm dying up there. I have so much trouble listening to anyone (even myself) saying that it's okay, you can get off the pedals, walking will get you there. I especially need to practice saying, "yes, please," when someone offers me their help.

I'm not much for projects and plans, but I'm going to give two things a shot for ten days. Each day I'm going to do at least thirty minutes of movement. My go-to will be running and I will need to reach out to people to help me with that. I run better with partners. The second part includes that reaching out. I will ask for help with one thing every day. If I do it for ten days, I might do it for twenty, and from there, who knows?

I'll start, in a small way, here and now. If you've read this far, would you please share a link to my blog with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+? I sure would appreciate it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to walk this bicycle up the hill and see what things look like gliding down the other side.

Write on.

A Series of Dreams

And now for something a bit different.

I had a series of dreams last night and into this morning that left me more tired when I woke than when I had gone to sleep. It would be one thing if this was the first time this had happened but it's not even the first time that I have had almost exactly this same dream and it has been all I have thought about since waking. And so here we are.

In the dream I have to get some place. It doesn't matter where I have to get to as much as the fact that I have to walk or run to get there and back. This wouldn't be a problem except, in the dream, my legs ache and I can barely get them to move. Everywhere I have to go seems to be up a slight incline. It's not a hill, just an incline, but I can barely get my body to go up the damn thing. I end up putting one foot forward and then pushing my hands against my thigh to bring my other foot up. I walk the way climbers do near the summit of Everest and I feel as though I have just as much of a chance to survive.

In one of the dreams this morning, I was walking back from a visit to some people in a dormitory (more on that in a moment) and I had to get back "home" through some sort of mall. It's a place I've been too many times in my dreams. The hallways are tiled, potted plants sit in the middle, and the place is just about deserted. The only business with a strong presence is a place that sells pianos. They have sales people in the hallway. A dozen of them, maybe more, and each is next to a piano out in the hallway. They are stopping every passerby except me. I keep wondering, "how can they still be in business? No one has money for a piano? No one wants one anymore?" The whole thing is like some artifact from the past that has somehow hung on. That or I have been flung backward. It's disorienting. And I can't get myself moving up that hallway. Every step is misery. Every step is just this side of agony.

In another dream, I'm on top of a rock looking out at a beautiful vista. Someone else is there with me but they are like a shadow. At some point we see a dinosaur-like creature down below and it is a danger to everyone there. It eats some large animal and I'm shocked by this. I point it out. I'm terrified. But the shadow person (people?) next to me explain that it's not one animal. It's a group of small animals and nothing to worry about. I'm sure they're wrong, but when I look back, they are little more than a group of puppies or kittens romping through. It's right then that the rock atop which we sit rises up into the air and I can't figure out how we will ever get down. I start to panic, but no one else is bothered. Don't sweat it, they seem to say.

Back to the piano mall part of the dream. I'm coming from a dormitory I have visited to bring something back. It's filled with people I think I know. In the dream they are all people I have gone to school with, high school I think. I have brought back something they were missing, but no one is happy to see me. Most, in fact, move away. They fade into the shadows. Only one guy talks to me and that seems out of obligation. He takes the thing from me but he makes it clear that he would rather I leave. He doesn't say it, but I hear, "please go." I've done something wrong. I've offended them in some way. I have done some transgression. lt feels as if I should know what that is and the fact that I can't imagine it haunts me.

All of this is to say that my dreams are haunting me this morning hours after I first awoke. Like my writing, I'm wondering what I'm supposed to learn. I'm wondering what I'm trying to tell myself and why I'm so tired. Something is up. Something feels as though it is changing or needs to change. Figuring out what that something is will likely take longer than today. I just hope that at some point I can get some sleep. Because I've got to tell you, I'm too tired to face this morning. Still, there's nothing to do but to write on.

Making Myself Uneasy

Some things should be easier.

I've been trying to set up and HP Laserjet printer. It's not the sort of thing that should take any time at all and yet, this is my second time trying to install the thing and still no luck. It's sitting on the shelf next to me and, were I the type to anthropomorphize things, I might say that it was smugly smiling at me. Laser printers are so superior.

It's gotten me to thinking about things that should be easier and aren't because we have needlessly complicated them. Congress and the President are experts at this. Insurance companies too. And computer manufacturers have long been the experts at this sort of thing. So too am I.

I haven't been running lately. It has been about a week and a half, maybe longer, since my last run. I find all sorts of ways to complicate the process. I can only run in the morning, but I don't get up out of bed. I'm too busy and can't go out during the afternoon. I can't go after dinner because dinner is sitting in my gut and kills me when I try to run. And so on. In other words, there are thousands of reasons for me to not run and I have invented every single one of them.

I'm as bad as Hewlett-Packard. Oh no.

I got off the phone an hour or so ago with my mother. She is in the process of packing everything she and my father own and moving it from the Thousand Islands region back here to Syracuse. When I spoke with her, she mentioned what a hard time she was having finding a new place to live, how long packing was taking, the worries as to whether or not my brother and father will arrange a new place to put their antique cars, and so on. The whole process is making her very nervous.

I listened to all of this as best I could while trying to silence the conversations I was thinking about inside my head. It seems so easy to tell her how to do this and to choose not to be nervous. I mean, duh. But then I look at that smug laser printer (no, I wouldn't consider giving it human attributes, not me) and I feel the tension of my failure to get it to work welling up in me.

Yet another case in my life of trying to do what I say not what I do.

My oldest daughter has spent a good portion of the day moping around the house wondering what to do with herself. She is lost unless she has a playmate. This has always been the case with her but to a much lesser degree. I want to say to her, snap out of it, woman! But instead I have been trying to encourage her to call her friends on the phone, to go for a walk with her dog, to write a story the way she always did. None of this has gotten her out of her funk and, once again, I'm going a little nuts wondering why she won't take the most basic steps to get herself going. It's like she's ten years old or something.

Oh, yeah. She is. Okay, but still, come on, kid. Do as I say, not as I do.

So it seems that there is a theme to my day.

When I'm done with this writing, I'm going to take another crack at that printer, but this time I'm going to do it from left field. I think that there is a really buggy early beta of Windows 8 out there that I might download and mess with. If that won't work, I'll grab a different Linux distribution and go at it with that. It's time to challenge myself, but that's not enough.

Before I do any more tinkering, I will take a sheet of paper and write the following on it before tacking it to the wall in front of my desk: "Settle down, Francis." It's one of my favorite lines from Stripes and it applies pretty damn well to me, to my mother, to my daughter.  If we just settle down, we'll see that the whole thing is within our reach, that we've done it all before, and that it's just a matter of moving forward.

I'm very likely to fail in my next attempt with the printer, but it's something that I can take a shot at. And maybe I might learn something truly useful and be more help to myself, to my mother, and to my daughter. That would be pretty cool.

Write on.

What Other People Know

This morning I'm thinking about my search for what's next in life. I've been working it out inside my head for something like ten years, but this year have tried to elevate that game by publishing my thinking, reading what others have to say, and tentatively seeking outside counsel. It's that last bit that I most struggle with.

I've long felt that I'm supposed to just know what to do. It's the myth of self-reliance. Sure, self-reliance is a good thing but not when it is at the expense of also depending on others. Once again, it's a matter of balance, one of my favorite themes here. I've been out of balance in this regard, believing that I had to come up with the answers all on my own.

Part of my problem has been that I thought it was a sign of weakness to not know what to do. And I've been taught not to show that kind of weakness. I thought that I was in a very small minority of people who weren't satisfied with the shape their lives had taken and were looking to change. It turns out that it's just the other way around. I know very few people who are satisfied and even they are looking for what's next. That, it turns out, is the normal way of living.

Figuring that out helped me feel comfortable, but I still didn't want to talk with other people about it. I had no idea how to approach them and my first few tries were halting and ineffective. I simply didn't have the words for it. Only in the last month have I begun to put it together and even now I have to think hard to help others understand what it is I'm asking. The progress is slow, but I'm seeing already the wealth of expertise that I have within the reach of my circle of friends. I see that this is where I can continue to begin.

All of this has me thinking about what other people know and how much I have to learn from them. It gave me pause this morning, thinking of it, because this blog has mostly been me writing the things I know. "Who am I," I wondered, "to be spouting off about things when I probably don't know all that much." I can't talk about professional photography the way that Chris can, can't talk about writing novels like Toby would, don't understand the ins and outs of compassionate thinking the way that Stephanie does, can't bake bread like Faith, and I would be hopeless in the engineering world that Scott navigates so easily. I looked in the mirror as I thought this, toothpaste running slowly down my chin, and had a moment of resignation.

Then I got over it and had two thoughts that picked me right up.

One, Walt Whitman would tell me that there is no one in the world better qualified to talk about things than me. And if Walt gives me permission, then things are okay. Seriously, why shouldn't I talk about things that I know and keep trying to learn? There's no good reason not to. If it bugs anyone, they'll skip that entry or stop reading altogether and find what they need elsewhere. Meanwhile, writing all this is useful to me. So, I've got a right to do it. But you already knew that. I'm the one who needed convincing.

And speaking of you, my second thought, was that I should ask you to write something that I can post here. What do you know that you want to tell the world? What truth have you discovered through your passions? What do you have in you that should be let out? I want to know. It's part of my plan to learn from other people. It's part of my trying to learn how to ask people for things.

So, think about what you know. Think hard. Start writing. Begin with the thing you know and keep going to talk about what it has taught you about yourself. Are you really good at restoring old cars? What does that say about you and say to me? Maybe you know how to keep a house clean and uncluttered. I desperately need some help with that. If you write it, I'll put it up hereon the blog. If there is a sudden influx of 500 articles, I'll have to work out some sort of system. That would be a good problem to have.

So what do you say? Are you willing? If so, leave a comment here or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook. And write on.

A New National Holiday

Today is my wife's birthday and I'm going to devote 750 words (at least) to talking about her and trying to say some of the things that I have been thinking all day, all this year, and for over twenty years now. Rather than wax rhapsodic about her and just turn this into a love letter, not that I have any problem with love letters, I want to think about her in a way that works for a larger audience then just her and me. So here goes.

I met Stephanie when we were both in college, walking back and forth through the wind and snow in Oswego, NY. This was a year before we actually "met" in that we were just passing on walks to and from class. I didn't know her name, just her hair. She had (and still does) a massive head of hair that is the first thing anyone notices about Stephanie. I came to know her well enough that I started doing a nod to her as we passed. This was as close as I come to bravery around a woman I find gorgeous. See, by then, we had passed often enough for me to notice her eyes, the crooked smile, her lithe, sexy body.

There's a whole story about how we first spoke to one another and we differ markedly in our recollections of that moment. Since it's her birthday, I'll keep that conflict to myself. Our real meeting, however, we agree on, and that was as I checked into my residence hall the next year. She greeted me and, as resident assistant on our floor, she checked me in, handed me the keys, and later visited to see how I was doing. To say that I was smitten is to get it just right. I kept her talking as long as I could and I was sad when she left to go about her duties.

Since then, more has happened than could ever be summed up in so small a number of words. And some of it is all ours, nothing we would ever share with anyone. It's the stuff that glues us together. Now that you've "met" her, let me tell you some things that are important.

She is compassionate and filled with empathy. I had no idea that compassion or empathy were so important before knowing her. In fact, up until a few years ago, I had no idea what those two concepts were really about. She has always known. She has known it at a level deeper than words. She is teaching me to think about others before I focus so much energy on myself. That's filtering into my teaching. It has dominated the ways in which we raise our kids. And it's helping me find my way in the world at a basic level. And she has gotten me to all of this without once demanding it. She just has that presence and it teaches me. Were it possible, I would have her team teach my classes with me just to have the kids I teach see the power of compassion and empathy at a level I can't conjure yet.

Another thing, she's quiet. It's not shyness though. I've long thought it was. It's more a reticence. She is thinking about things very, very carefully. She turns them over and over. She does not jump to a conclusion, she does not spring into action, she does not go into anything with wild abandon. She takes care. When our kids talk about something, she listens. She hears what they are saying. And then she pauses and waits for them to say the next sentence. So too with adults. People talking to her know that they can say more because she creates the spaces. The quiet space for another thought. She gives them that. Her quiet is a gentle generosity. It says, "tell me more."

And there's her love, which is fierce but child-like. Watch a little kid with a puppy. That's my wife's love. She squeezes, she holds her teeth clenched because she cannot contain how much she loves. She brims over with it and often enough weeps because of it. Love is too beautiful for her. Her love is pure and brimming over.

There's more I want to say, lots more, but I'll end with this. A woman like this, with that kind of love, willing to be quiet and listen, and filled with empathy and compassion, well, it's easy to step right past her. Worse, it's easy enough to step on her. December 9th, today, is for me a national day to take notice of those around us who do not draw attention down on themselves. It's a day to keep in mind that I too need to be quiet, to listen, to feel for others, and to offer love. And I'll start by doing that for my wife, the wonder of my time on Earth, my friend, my love, my dear.

Write on and Happy Birthday.