Continue reading »]]> You know, I already had a number of sentences written out about having an online presence. To be honest though there are plenty of other people out there that have written better pieces about this topic. Whatever. This space here is all about stuff as it pertains to me.

Anyway, the other day I spent a moment or two cleaning up my résumé. Why? Well, it’s not like I’m looking to escape at this very instant, but I need to keep my documents up to date just in case an opportunity comes by. It would be foolish to shut down all avenues, know what I mean? As I was cleaning things up a question crossed my mind. If given just a few words, how would I describe myself professionally? Sure I’ve got skill with X, Y, and Z, but all of that is too specific. How should I market myself? What is my personal brand? Surely it’d have something to do with tech, right? After all, that’s the field I’ve been toiling in for more than a decade. What about the fact that I’m something of a people person? What of the fact that I’m a bit of an oddball? The combination isn’t exactly rare, but it doesn’t really lend itself to allowing people to put me in a neat and tidy box. What kind of job do I want? It almost looks like I would have to carve something out for myself. Unless I find a way to accurately describe me, how would anyone know about my other dimensions.

With this question in mind I ended up prodding a friend for ideas. Interestingly, his response was simple: “Tech person with great communication skills. Slightly quirky.” OK, so it needs a little bit of polish. All the same, it hits the keys things about me. I suppose that if I market myself with this simple and honest headline I might be able to attract that kind of position that I really want. One can only hope, eh?

Continue reading »]]> It’s been a rough few weeks. I haven’t really been in a very positive state of mind, and as a result I’ve had to retreat into my own shell for a little bit. When that happens something has to give. Unfortunately, this was something I had to cut back on while I sorted a few things out. I’m not saying that I now have it all figured out. Rather, I know that I’m in a better spot than I was previously. It all comes down to having a bit of healing, you know? And in order to get that much needed healing I had to step back and detach.

It’s kind of funny how detachment works. Whether consciously or not, when we find ourselves in bad states our bodies go into something like a self-protection mode. If the proverbial knife hits something deep down at our cores the reaction might end up being something somewhat primitive. For example, it may be common to feel drowsy or tired when someone talks about something that’s deeply threatening to you. That’s the body’s way of saying “nope, we’re not having any of that.” If there’s something that causes us to question something we intellectually believe to be true, we’re very good at reasoning our way away from that something. Over the past month I’ve had the chance to experience both ends. It’s been strange, and yet all very familiar. In the past I wouldn’t have paid much attention to these things and the triggers behind them, but my eyes have been opened recently. It’s fascinating that all of these things are sort of built-in. Being aware of these instincts allows me to move beyond the walls that get put up. Maybe I need to be uncomfortable. Maybe the questions need to be confronted. I don’t know. I’m not saying that self-protection is a bad thing. Not at all. I’m just saying that it’s so easy to stay trapped in the cocoon, when perhaps it’s necessary to step out and get on with living.

So here I stand: living and getting on with it.

Continue reading »]]> It’s OK; the problem is with me. I’m probably just over-sensitive to this kind of thing.

Things that left me mortified today at a Chinese restaurant:

• Someone in party talking about Chinese eating babies
• Someone in party exclaiming out loud multiple times that the food is terrible and wouldn’t come back
• Someone mixing left over sauce from his or her entree into their soup in an attempt to make the soup taste better

I mean…SERIOUSLY?

Continue reading »]]> It’s totally no coincidence. Lately I’ve been more injury prone. I don’t really give my body enough time to rest between activities. I can’t help it! I’ve got obligations! All I can do is do my best to try to take care of myself in between. It’s not always easy. On Monday I did a lot of heavy squats. I even set a new personal best for myself that night. I didn’t stretch properly after the fact. As a result my glutes, hamstrings, and inner thighs have been ridiculously sore. Today, two days later, I’m still feeling the effects. I’ve been meaning to use my foam roller on my muscles just to try to work out any kinks but it’s only now that I’ve gotten around to it. That in itself isn’t injury–it’s just soreness. Thing is, having that discomfort is throwing off my other activities. Today my running group started hill training. After I did one rep as I was walking down hill I started feeling soreness on the left side of my right knee. I tried starting a run a few times after I experienced the pain, but each time I had to stop again. I managed to push through a second climb, but after that I became even more cautious. Fellow runners were asking me if I was OK. I said I wasn’t and that I was just going to watch it as I ran up for a third climb. One runner told me that I shouldn’t just watch it: I should walk it. ”You know better!” It’s true. I do know better. If it was anyone else I’d tell him or her to walk it out. Why should I be different? So yeah, I’m sure my body hates me at the moment. I’m going to take it down for a while. I can’t risk having things degenerate to a state where I’m out of commission for an extended period. Nope. People are counting on me.

Continue reading »]]> Honestly, I was in a rush to slash my bread. It was on the cart and being wheeled away to the hearth for baking. I had to quickly head over with the knife. Not wanting to do anything fancy I just slashed the loaf right down the middle to make a cleft. In the end, the results didn’t turn out quite as expected. I ended up with a loaf of bread that was rather rude.

My baking partner named it “clit bread.” Well, a little while ago I made one that I thought looked like a hat but instead looked like a boob. I know a few other in class have had their share of penis breads. I think pussy bread is a new thing. Uh huh.

Continue reading »]]> After all this time, I really do have a good sense of my limits, and when I can push myself. There is a fine line that exists between fatigue and being completely tapped out. Knowing when I still have gas in the tank is a useful bit of self-awareness. Thing is, it’s all too easy for me to just let pride get thrown into the mix, thus making my judgments a bit off.

Here I stand today (I guess lie down is more like it) having to take a rest from running due to a bit of a tough workout I had on Monday. The class on Monday started out well. I discovered that I was finally able to jump on top of a 24″ box. I was also able to increase my five rep max deadlift weight by 20 lbs. Good showing, really. Then came the nasty workout from the depths. The task was a ladder of 25 – 20 – 15 – 10 – 5. We had to complete those reps for pull ups, push ups, then broad jumps. So we had to do 25 pull ups, 25 push ups, 25 broad jumps, then 20 pull ups, 20 pushups, 20 broad jumps, and so on. Knowing that there were a shit load of pull ups to do I ended up adding an extra band to the bar to help me up. As this workout progressed, I knew that I was off. The pull ups were extraordinarily difficult that day. I’m sure the volume had something to do with it. I had to break frequently. For the broad jumps I challenged myself by picking a longer distance than I normally would. Kind of a bad mistake. My issue was that I got sloppy on a few of those jumps and landed awkwardly on my heels. I ended up jamming my left Achilles as a result. My body started compensating somehow and that ended up making my right knee ache. Immediately one of the coaches notices that I was off and told me to stop and switch to squats. I did a quick head to toe check and decided that I wanted to continue as I was. He insisted I switch, but I gave him a look that basically said that I wanted to finish what I started. I knew that in order to do so I really have to be careful with my jumps. If anything were to happen to me it would all be my fault. It’s not like the coach didn’t try to stop me, right? The whole thing was just tough. I just wanted it all to be over. I did finish, but well after everyone else.

Upon finishing I sat on one of the boxes and started lamenting to the other coach that things are just getting tougher for me. Now that I’ve inserted running back in with this, it’s all been very difficult. He pointed out that it’s likely that I just haven’t been giving myself enough time to rest between all the training I’ve been doing. This is likely true. He told me that everyone goes through slumps and periods where it’s like nothing is improving. As he talked about that I noticed a tear or two starting to fall down amidst all of the sweat. I was just visibly angry with myself. I wanted to perform somewhat well, but my body wasn’t letting me. Deep down it was frustrating, and perhaps scary to think that I was incapable of managing. He told me that I really needed to take a break to recover. Little did he know that my ankles and knees would actually require it. I really wanted to say that I was fine but it was obvious that that would have been a lie. I mean, yes, I improved in some areas, but I was really down on myself for this other component. By no means should I have been walking out of there feeling defeated, but I sort of did like an idiot. As I passed by the front office on my way out, the other coach saw me and made it a point to congratulate me. In passing he called me a warrior for having pushed through. I didn’t know how to respond so I kind of grunted uneasily. As soon as I stepped outside, I finally started letting the emotions out. As soon as I was in the confines of my car I let myself go before composing myself again for the drive home.

Yeah, yesterday was tough. I really need this time for healing myself and resting. On some level I guess I have the heart of a warrior. I will continue to push myself and work hard. I just need to take care of myself more. I know that seems to be an ongoing theme for me, but I need to keep reminding myself. It’s all too easy to lose sight of the fact that this is necessary.

Continue reading »]]> The last 48 hours or so have been pretty busy for me. In preparation for the dinner party I was having at my place I had to do a pretty good job cleaning my place. That job spanned Friday and Saturday. And today I had a run in the morning, followed by bread class in the afternoon. Class was especially draining today because we were working with a high hydration dough that was sensitive to over-mixing when using the machine. As a result, we had to knead the suckers by hand. Since it was a wet dough kneading wasn’t an option at the beginning. We really had to kind of pick it up and slam the dough back on the table. Class was quite fascinating to listen to: talk talk talk SLAM talk talk SLAM talk SLAM. All of that slamming of the dough on the table really drained us all. By the end of the class I felt zonked out. From there I visited the parents just to drop off some of the bread, but right after dinner I couldn’t help but just nap on their couch. I had nothing left in the tank.

So, no, I still haven’t learned my lesson. I wrote about these same conditions a few weeks ago. Maybe I should bring coffee into class, or something with a fairly high carb content. I speculated about it before but I haven’t implemented anything yet. All of this is only going to get way tougher once my running distances start increasing. Ah hell, and just think about CrossFit that I have to squeeze in on Monday along with improv practice. I’m overworking myself entirely, like a dough with over-developed gluten.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

Continue reading »]]> It’s a few days after the fact, but I might as well mention what happened on Saturday. A buddy of mine from university invited me to his birthday party way over yonder in Kitchener-Waterloo. Despite it being a fair drive from Toronto I decided to go. The party was interesting. It took me a while to come out of my shell, but I eventually got around to mingling. I ended up running into a few people from my old class. Catching up with each of them was fascinating. At this point, we’re all now years removed from our last university experiences, and yet upon reconnecting it’s like not much changed.

For a good chunk of the party I ended up talking to a classmate who was once the class rep. Back then I didn’t really talk to him all that much. If I think about it the number of words I spoke to him at the party outweigh those I spoke to him during the six years I was there at UW. That’s crazy. Now, we got around to lamenting the fact that on the whole our class didn’t really gel. And really, how could it? On the whole, there was hardly any time for us to breathe. How could I have known that the class rep dude is actually a really fascinating conversationalist? We really only ended up connecting well with people that were pretty much in our immediate circles. What else could we do? And now it’s only through chance that some of the looser connections are reappearing. People come and go. I get that. As much as it was interesting hearing updates about other classmates not there, I felt that it was better to focus on the one connection and start building that up. Why spread the net wide to capture many people?

Continue reading »]]> It’s been a long time since this last happened, but I had a bit of a meltdown at work. No, I didn’t fall into sobs or anything of the sort, but my mind fell into a haze and I had to shut myself off for a little bit just as a matter of self-protection. Work has been a little bit overwhelming over the span of a few days and with a deadline approaching rather quickly the threat of failure was really starting to freak me out. Luckily, enough colleagues and one of my managers were able to talk me away from the proverbial ledge. Still, it took me an hour or two as well as a good walk around the building for me to calm myself and return to a productive state.

For me, my big take away from this experience was just a greater awareness of how I tend to approach the idea of failure. It is one hell of a scary thing, and I’m quite sure that most people have issues with it. I mean, who likes failing? I think that people will naturally gravitate toward activities that allow them to avoid failure. Still, the act of failing provides such unique learning opportunities that it should almost be embraced when possible, know what I mean? In my case, I resist it so much and when I get close to it I fall into a panic state. Then, when I’m past it I end up in such a state of relief. It’s predictable. If there’s one thing that I need to work on, it’s that I need to be a bit more fearless and just accept failure if it happens. Easier said than done, for sure. All the same, I can’t let my fear of failure take over. There’s no point in being in a state of paralysis. Better to just get in there. The only way out is through, right?