Like genetics, only funnier!

First, the unimportant bit:

We’re finally here in Atlanta, weather isn’t that bad, the new office is nice and I’m as busy as I’ve ever been.

Second, the very important bit:

A big wish for a very happy birthday goes out to to Tiffany at Snerkology.  I’ve been reading her blog frequently for what is starting to feel like many years.  Tiffany is great at many things, not the least of which are amusing anecdotes about life and craziness; but she also excels at photography, and describing delicious food and how to make it, and delightful twitter moments that make me snerk-out-loud in airport terminals at inappropriate times.

What I find so delightful about Tiffany is that she writes in such a way that I always come away from her posts absolutely convinced that her and her husband would be exactly the kind of people I’d want to hang out with.  And her sense of humor.  It cuts like a wicked blade both ways, especially in 140 character chunks.  The world needs more of that when it’s done with so much aplomb and grace.  And snerk.

I admit that had it not been for an announcement by TB I wouldn’t have known the significance of today, and I can only guess at her age, but based on the freshness of her life outlook and the photographic evidence, I can only assume she’s turning 29 today. Again

Wonderful wishes going out to Tiffany and her husband as they wander through Maine on vacation and enjoy a special day.

The other day I was reading a blog linked from another blog that I read regularly, and a light went off.  I instantly understood why I don’t post as much on Bad Pants as I did on Dead Charming.  I think of my writing as articles and essays, not as posts.  It’s hard to write essays and articles when you’re busy with your “day job” for twelve-plus hours a day.

Which reminded me that I’m now allowed to talk about my day job in my blog.  The company that bought the company that I work for has a “uniform policy for personal internet communication, social media, and online networking” (and I deeply love the fact that they used the serial comma) which was distributed as both a .pdf and a printed brochure (which, frankly seemed redundant) during our onboarding process.  Now that the rules about talking about my job are more clearly defined than “pull a Dooce and we fire your ass,” I’ll regale all (six) of you with a description of what I’m sure you will agree is the single most boring job description in the world.  The job itself is FAR from boring, but describing it is like watching paint dry.

I am a Senior Implementation Consultant working in the Workflow and Service Solutions Group of the Tax Automation division of Thomson Reuters Tax and Accounting Global Services business unit.  Specifically, I am focused on delivering end-to-end integration of the Sabrix Indirect Tax Solution into complex financial and accounting systems for Fortune 500 and Global 100 customers around the world.

Essentially, if you were a large to super-large company, and you had a software package that automated your financial accounting (and you would), we provide a solution that can be integrated into your financial system that will calculate the appropriate indirect tax treatment for a particular product based on transaction criteria and produce a resulting rate combination, and then optionally record the transaction to a Sarbanes-Oxley satisfying audit record that can generate compliance returns and reports for legal jurisdictions around the world.

My job is to understand super-expensive financial systems (SAP, Oracle Financials, J.D. Edwards, Peoplesoft, Ariba, etc.) and the potential underlying technology platforms (Oracle, DB2, Java, XML, Unix in essentially every flavor from AIX to HPUX to Linux to Solaris, WebLogic, WebSphere, NetWeaver, JBOSS, et. all) and create solutions for integrating our product into those environments.  It’s different every time.

Every customer I’ve dealt with in the last three years has a name you’d recognize.  I’ve met with their CIOs and CFOs and Controllers and Directors of Finance and Technology Managers in boardrooms and conference rooms around the country.  They don’t come to us, we obviously go to them.

If this sounds specialized, well…it is.  There are less than a dozen people who do what I do.  My company employs about half of them.  Our partners employ the rest.

My day tends to involve solving weird interface issues between Java Application Servers and integration packages on unusual operating systems, followed by a call where we discuss chain transactions for VAT recovery and intrastat scenarios around the EU, followed by a call about creating test cases for use tax on cross-border supplier shipments through the tax-free zone at Shannon Airport landing in Newark and Toronto.

I have to be ready at the drop of a hat (well, the ring of a cell phone that never shuts off) to answer questions about incredibly detailed technology issues from IT groups and Software Engineers, followed without pause by questions from tax managers and business unit accountants about software configuration customizations to accommodate detailed and specific tax and financial transaction processes from a non-technical perspective.

And I’m a specialist, generally Implementation consultants focus on one specific integration platform (Oracle Financials or SAP) but I’m one of two people (in the company AND essentially on earth) who goes the full cycle.  I can do SAP or Oracle, but I also design custom integrations from scratch.  Have a mainframe that sits on old AS400 gear and you want to batch process in a nightly run written in RPG and Cobol to our XML process engine?  I can help with that.  Have a completely custom built software system based on some version of DB2 running in Z/OS on IBM mega-hardware?  Yeah, I can help.  Hell, if you run on DB2 I’m gonna get your account, since I’m “it” in the DB2 department.

Fifteen years ago I wrote financial software for government agencies.  Now, I’m one of a handful of people with the skillset to integrate one of the most flexible and powerful indirect tax software platforms into pretty much anything that constitutes a financial package.  Well, one of two if you do something outside of the SAP or Oracle Financials world.

And I am in demand.  The interesting thing about being in the Tax Automation business is that taxes don’t really have a recession.  In good times or bad times, companies pay taxes; and companies that pay taxes want to find solutions that will help them maximize their tax accuracy and minimize their audit exposure.  When a company buys our product they almost always need time with our consultants to guide and assist them with the implementation.  As the consultant in question, this has been good for my job security.

All this job security means that I travel pretty much three out of every four weeks in a month; but now, I’ve been given an incredible opportunity.

My company (before the acquisition) was primarily based right here in beautiful Lake Oswego, Oregon (with our corporate headquarters in San Ramon, California…but that was just so we could say we were a Bay Area software startup ).  It’s great for someone who lives in (and loves) the Portland area, but kinda crap for supporting the eighty-plus percent of our customers who are in the east or central time zones, or the ten percent who are in Europe.  I’ve flown coast to coast pretty much every week in April and May, when I got to fly home.  Before that I’d been in Chicago, Columbus, and New York all for week-long stints multiple times since the start of the year.

People always tell me how “glamorous” it is for me to get to travel, and I will admit that the travel is a bonus to my job most of the time; but after a while life becomes an endless parade of airplane seats, airports, taxis, hotel restaurants and hotel beds.  You know you travel a lot when you land in a connecting airport and have NO idea where you are.  I had a layover in Houston and had to ask someone what airport I was in.  It wasn’t critical to know, I just didn’t recognize the layout, which was disconcerting.  Conversely, I could walk through the Denver and Chicago airports blindfolded and comfortably navigate from gate to gate while on a conference call and buying something to eat.

So, as the powers-that-be are happy with my performance, and have the ability to identify a gaping hole in our ability to support our customers, I’ve been offered a relocation package to move to Atlanta, Georgia and start up a practice that will focus on east coast customers and provide technical leadership for our UK and South American groups in a timezone that can answer before they all go home for the day.

I have to say, I’m excited.  I’ve never lived east of Boise, Idaho; so this is going to be an adventure.

OregonSunshine has been a true trooper as she scouted for new homes and worked on the practical details of our move (and also started to consider a change to her nom de plume).  We think we’ve already found a place to lease for the first year and still keep our “hobby farm” lifestyle, and we’ll be settling the details within the next few days.  I fully expect to be moved before the Fourth of July holiday.

Yes, my job is unusual.  I do technology AND finance…I’m a Geek AND a Nerd.  If anyone read this far without their eyes glazing over or falling asleep at their desk, well, I’m either really impressed or just a little bit frightened.  But I have to admit, I love my job.  I love the challenges and the complexity, and I really love the people I work with and the quality of the work that we do; but it does tend to eat into my free time.  Currently I’m “on the job” for about 12 hours a day…on a slow day.  Hopefully the move to the eastern time zone will help me find more time away from work simply by being closer to the work that I’m doing.  Well, that’s the plan anyway.

So, I’ll try to post more and essay less, but honestly that’s just not how I naturally write.  If things are a bit quiet on this front, keep in mind that I’m probably in the middle of hauling my life across the country.  I’ll post pictures and tweet from my iPhone, so watch the twitter feed for updates.

And wish us luck.  I don’t know that we’ll need it, but it NEVER hurts to have all that we can get.

I’m trying to make more of a habit of it, and I thought I’m mention it here for anyone who wants to read more dribbles from my brain; I have posted a book review and a fiction writing exercise over on Serial Storyteller.

Nothing major, just, writing more than you’d know from just the post-count over here (it’s late and that sentence sucks, but I’m too tired to fix it, so…sorry).

Alright, I’ve started writing this post three times, so this one MUST be the charm.

I haven’t felt like this in a long time and I guess I wasn’t expecting the depression to hit quite so hard.  Sarah, my eight-year-old daughter, has gotten on a plane and flown back to her mother.  She was here for her spring break, and I was lucky that it coincided with my birthday on the 14^th.

We took her to the airport Friday and she completely and utterly didn’t want to go back.  I understand, we have chickens and goats and horses and 20 acres of woods to explore and a giant house to ramble about in; but, never the less, we took her up to PDX and I sat in the gate as she walked to the plane and then waved once more through her tears before climbing the stairway and disappearing for another long span of months.

Now, I find myself in that dangerous place, the place where I have trouble balancing the world “as it is” with the world “as I wish it could be.”  Right now, it would be very easy for the dragon to grab me by the throat again and squeeze me for all I’m worth once more.

Which brings me full circle back to writing and blogging and whatever.  There was a time when I wrote things that I was proud of having written.  I have not felt that way about something I’ve blogged in a long time.  At one point I felt that anonymity was the key; that by being behind a veil of self-defense, I had the freedom to say things in a way that wasn’t filtered and ultimately made for better writing.  Now, I think that’s just crap.  I think that for the last year or so I’ve just been too damn cautious in my writing, and that it has suffered for it (when and if I even bothered to post it).  It wasn’t the anonymity that made it better, it was the confidence to just write and let the chips fall where they may.  I used to be the kind of person who “did” first and “worried” later (if ever).  Now, I calculate everything.  I analyze, and measure, and contingency – until I don’t act at all.

The downside is that I recognize that depression is affecting my reasoning, and now I don’t trust my inner voice to have a monologue that isn’t overshadowed by my negative emotions.  I’m in a bad place, doing my best to not be in a bad place, and that’s a bad place to write from.  What troubles me, is that when I was writing things I’m proud of, I was enmeshed in a deep and consuming depression.  On the surface I was doing “OK,” but underneath I was seething with frustration and drowning in my own dark waters.  Is that my muse?  Is that where I draw inspiration?

What’s odd, is that at the same time my personal/blog writing has dried up, my professional/fiction writing has improved in both inspiration and output; which is a tradeoff I’ll gladly accept.  I’ll start posting more of that on Serial Storyteller in the next few weeks, so at least there will be something to show for all the effort.

After a lot of thought, I realized that the difference is how I perceive “critique” of the things I write.  I cringe when someone who “knows” me critiques my personal writing, or my personal writing process, or the meaning behind the things I have to say that are personal to me.  It strikes a nerve that was safely hidden behind my anonymity.  I realize that if I’m going to write things that ARE personal, then I have to give them up the same way I give up my fiction.

I grew up with a fiction writer in the house.  From the age of six until long after I was out of college, my mom wrote genre novels for Pocket Books and St. Martins.  Some won awards, some were “not her best effort,” but every last one of them left the house, went to an editor and reviewers and readers, and had to be given up.

Writing is both an art and a business.  If you do it for a living, there’s money involved; and where money is involved, emotions had better be checked at the door.  Editors and agents and reviewers and readers ALL wield sharp swords and they take no prisoners.

You start with an idea; you give it form and purpose, breath and wings.  You raise it up; you feed it and make it grow.  Then, you take it out into the world, and you give it up.  Either it flies, or it fails.  The chips fall where they may.  The most horrible moment is watching the people you trust take a sharp sword and attack your precious thing.  It hurts you; in your heart, in your soul, in your confidence and faith in yourself.

When I was eleven years old, my dad got an album for his birthday that I probably listened to more than a hundred times before I turned twelve.  The lead track was something so powerful it was probably the most significant single song that defined my pre-teen and teen years.  I wore out two cassette copies of that album before I was fourteen, and I’ve had a copy on CD ever since.

The album “…Nothing Like the Sun” by Sting isn’t really something you would expect to be defining for a teenager in the 90’s, but if you want to have a little insight into who I am, that album is key.  Every single second of it is specifically meaningful to who I am, and how I perceive the world.  As much as I love the whole thing, the first track is absolutely integral to who I am and how I perceive the role of parents, the acts of creation and protection, and the process of sacrifice and forgiveness.

I think the lyrics are some of the most beautiful poetry ever set to music, and I’m quoting them from his book “Lyrics by Sting” to have the line breaks and spacing “as intended” for the printed page.

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The Lazarus Heart
-by Sting

He looked beneath his shirt today
There was a wound in his flesh so deep and wide
From the wound a lovely flower grew
From somewhere deep inside
He turned around to face his mother
To show her the wound in his breast
That burned like a brand
But the sword that cut him open
Was the sword in his mother’s hand

Every day another miracle
Only death would tear us apart
To sacrifice a life for yours
I’d be the blood of the Lazarus heart
The blood of the Lazarus heart

Though the sword was his protection
The wound itself would give him power
The power to remake himself
At the time of his darkest hour
She said the wound would give him courage and pain
The kind of pain that you can’t hide
From the wound a lovely flower grew
From somewhere deep inside

Every day another miracle
Only death would keep us apart
To sacrifice a life for yours
I’d be the blood of the Lazarus heart
The blood of the Lazarus heart

Birds on the roof of my mother’s house
I’ve no stones to chase them away
Birds on the roof of my mother’s house
They’ll sit on my own roof someday
They fly at the window, they fly at the door
Where does she get the strength to fight them anymore?
She counts all her children as a shield against the pain
Lifts her eyes to the sky like a flower to the rain

Every day another miracle
Only death could keep us apart
To sacrifice a life for yours
I’d be the blood of the Lazarus heart
The blood of the Lazarus heart

Every time I create something this song is ringing in my head.  When I taught my daughter to ride her bike, this song was ringing in my head.  When I talk to my dad on the phone, or IM with my mom, this song is ringing in my head.

We give life to something, and then we hope we’ve given it everything it needs to survive and flourish and fly away.  I know that I’ve done this with my daughter, even when it hurts so much to realize what I’m doing.  And I don’t regret it.  She’s a beautiful girl with a strong heart and a brilliant imagination, and she will overcome the failings of her parents.  I know that someday she will have the strength to fight the birds that no longer sit on my own roof, I know that my blood has given her the heart she will need.

I have to start giving myself and my writing that same level of confidence, that same freedom to fly.  I need to trust more in the blood that I’ve given and the heart that it creates.

Alrighty, so I was tagged for an award by my lovely wife/fellow blogger/training partner/life coach and I’m extremely tardy in posting it up.  I am supposed to tag fifteen blogs that I am new to following, which, would be impossible.  I don’t follow fifteen blogs regularly in all of the blog-o-sphere, so fifteen new ones is just not gonna happen.

I am also supposed to list seven things about myself I’ve not mentioned before.

Seriously?  I wrote out “101 Things About Me” twice already with no overlap…I’m tapped out people!

Oh, OK.  Fine.  How hard can seven things be?  Right?

1. The last movie I saw was “Alice in Wonderland” which qualified as “being stoned by proxy” for two hours.  Also, the movie was good but the ending sucked like a starving man at a crawfish feed.
    
2. I saw the band Train in concert in a tiny town in southern Oregon.  Sort of an outdoor music festival type thing.  They KILLED.  Then they resurrected the bodies and KILLED THEM AGAIN just to prove their unending awesome.
    
3. Speaking of music, the other day someone said a song on the radio “sounded like high school” and it made me think for a while.  High school for me sounded like a combination of Van Halen, Def Leopard, Bryan Adams, Damn Yankees, Enigma, Richard Marx, Madonna, Michael W Smith, and Amy Grant.  Probably all played at the same time.
    
4. I am a manly-man; I like football, baseball, Sportscenter, beer, fast cars, scantily clad women, and all the other manly-man things in the world.  Conversely, Pride and Prejudice remains both my favorite book and favorite movie.  So sue me.
    
5. While I’m not much of a cologne wearer, my favorite is Armani.  Not the new Armani, but the original classic Armani Cologne.  The one my daughter said smells like old people (I disagree, I say it smells like a fine men’s store).
    
6. Video footage of me doing stupid things can be found on the interwebs, performing the following general activities:  Skiing, falling off the roof of a building, launching a potato more than a mile with a cannon made out of irrigation piping, smoking a cigar while golfing without pants (it’s not a detail captured on film, but rest assured that alcohol WAS a factor).  No, I will not tell you how to find them.
    
7. For years (decades actually), I was far more recognized for my artwork than for my writing.  I have literally hundreds if not thousands of dollars in art supplies, a wonderful drawing desk, and a significant investment in digital tools as well.  I won awards, my art was published multiple times, and I was probably a strong enough illustrator to work professionally full time if I’d have wanted to go that route.
    
   Then two things happened:

   When I started my divorce from wife #1, I ended up giving away 95% of my portfolio stuff and only kept the really awful painting starts that I didn’t want her to destroy out of spite.

   Around the same time I had a series of neurological issues that have left me with minor and intermittent dyskinesia (yes, the same dyskinesia that TB’s wife named her blog after, and which is often seen in Parkinson’s patients after years of Levodopa use) of the limbs and acute focal dystonia (like super powerful writer’s cramp plus spasmodic muscle twitches) in my right hand.

   And about a 70% reduction in my ultra-fine motor control in my wrist and fingers.  Fine motor control is pretty OK, I can type and write notes in handwriting that doesn’t look like mine, and use a screwdriver, etc…but the ultrafine control, the sub centimeter precision movements are gone.  It’s like the brain sends the message but the hand just never gets the delivery.

   Two MRI scans, plus two neurological specialists and a series of medical trials later, and I can officially say “I’m ok, it’s very rare and I just have a loose wire somewhere above my shoulders and below my brainstem.”  No big deal, doesn’t happen more than a couple of times a year, and it doesn’t keep me from working or driving or golfing or rocking out the Guitar Hero or gunning down splicers in Bioshock 2.

   But it does keep me from doing art.  At all.  I struggled with it SO HARD four years ago that I’m too afraid to try again.  I don’t want to KNOW that I can’t do it anymore.  I’d rather just keep setting up my desk, making my workspace ready, keeping all my supplies at hand and pretend that I’ll actually do it again someday.

   Otherwise it’s admitting that the one thing about me that I used to think “made me special” really is dead.

As my wife pointed out, it would have been more meaningful if I’d have added the translation to the latin I was studying.  My problem is that the translation loses so much, especially since a five-hundred year old version of that passage in english is perhaps the most well known prayer in Christianity, and english from five hundred years ago doesn’t really speak to the intent of the passage as well as I’d like.

The latin is taken from the Roman Catholic Common Mass.  If I were to translate it myself, it would start something like:

Father of all things, existing above and beyond in a place outside of our dimension, we hold sacred even the invocation of our feeble human attempt to describe you.  May the entirety of creation come to know unity, and a transcendence of our mortal existence through an utter and all encompassing surrender to the perfection and peace that is your intent and plan for all creations in every shard and facet of the universe.

As a child asks for food at a grand dinner table, laid out with delicious things to eat, so do we ask for that which you have already prepared for us.  The request honoring the offer to provide that you have already made to us.

We ask that you will actively and personally forgive and redeem us from the failures we have stumbled into; both failures with the holy and infinite, and failures with others here in our day-to-day experiences.  As you forgive and redeem us, so do we seek the knowledge and grace to imitate and repeat that forgiveness with others who have failed in their relationships with us.

Guide us away from those things which will cause us to fail you and others, and when we begin to go down the wrong paths and blind alleys, we ask that you would lead us back to the best roads and the safe harbors that will help us continue to improve ourselves, our families, our communities, and our world.

That about covers the first paragraph, from “Pater noster” down to “sed libera nos a malo.”

The current Missal translates that paragraph as follows:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Yes, I realize my translation is more “wordy” but there’s just so much more poetry to the actual latin (and even more so with the actual source Greek, but that’s another post for another time).

I will go into more detail about this later; probably a lot of detail, and probably not much later:

For Lent, I’m giving up Agnosticism.

(That line KILLS in the right circles.)

What follows is a quote I’ve spent a lot of time reading over and thinking through.  For all three of my readers, I realize I’m the only one who can read it as quoted.  Sorry about that.

Pater noster, qui es in cœlis, sanctificétur nomen tuum: advéniat regnum tuum: fiat volúntas tua, sicut in cœlo et in terra panem nostrum quotidiánum da nobis hódie; et dímitte nobis débita nostra, sicut et nos dimíttimus debitóribus nostris: et ne nos indúcas in tentatiónem. Sed líbera nos a malo.

Líbera nos, quæsumus Dómine, ab ómnibus malis prætéritis, præséntibus, et futúris, et intercedénte beáta et gloriósa semper Vírgine Dei genitríce María, cum beátis Apóstolis tuis Petro et Paulo, atque Andréa, et ómnibus sanctis, da propítius pacem in diébus nostris: ut ope misericórdiæ tuæ adjúti, et a peccáto simus semper líberi, et ab omni perturbatióne secúri.

Per eúmdem Dóminum nostrum Jesum Christum Fílium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus sancti Deus.

Per ómnia sæcula sæculórum.  Amen.

I promise: not preachy, just personal. To each his own.

Alrighty then…

So I’ve spent some time over the last couple of weeks actually drafting up a series of posts.  I tend to work better that way: outlines, synopses, drafts; you’d think I have a “workflow” for this stuff all worked out!  Anyway, before we start down that path, I realized that I need to set forth the rules I’ve been using for the last few years when it comes to comments.

These rules are the result of years of occasionally blogging on topics that bring out a different crowd from my usual collection of like-minded blog readers and fellow leaky-brain ramblers.  More than ninety-nine percent of my non-spam comments are approved.  Hell, even the occasional spam comment is approved just because it’s sorta funny in an ironic way.  So these rules very rarely come in to play.  But when you need them, you REALLY need them; so what follows are my time tested criteria for why I won’t approve your comment:

1. No Punctuation.
2. Comments in ALL CAPS.
3. Comments longer than the original post.
4. Comments that reference more than three verses from the religious works of your choice.
5. Comments that actually include entire citations from the religious works of your choice.
6. Comments that insult either my position or the position of other commenters.  I reserve the right to decide the difference between ardent disagreement and out-and-out insulting.
7. Obvious Trolling.
8. (corollary to # 7) Obvious Troll-Baiting.
9. Having a worse potty-mouth than I do.  I have been known to edit particularly foul-mouthed comments, substituting humorous non-swear words and phrases (or archaic and out-of-vogue ones) for over-used examples from our current spoken English.  I do this rarely.  Generally I just hit delete.
10. Using the “C” word (and no, I’m not talking about “crap”) under any circumstances.  Why is this different from #9?  Because all other criteria are flexible, this one is not.

As I point out in rule 10, these are basically criteria, not hard rules.  I’m likely to let a reasonable comment that only breaks the first rule pass if the comment is short, and the intent is clear and vitriol free. Likewise with a comment that seems reasonable except for the (perhaps accidental?) use of the caps-lock key.  I myself have posted comments that were longer than the original post, so the third one is highly flexible…but not if it’s trolling, quotes the Koran for 33 verses, or if seven hundred of its thousand words can’t be repeated on broadcast television before the watershed hour.

Also, these rules essentially only apply to new commenters.  If you’ve been approved, commented consistantly in the past, and have a generally reasonably position that you are defending ardently in a way that bends these criteria, I’m VERY unlikely to revoke your comment.

Except for rule 10.  Break rule 10 and I will delete your comment and assign you to the spam filter for all time.

So, last night I stepped on a scale for the first time since last autum.  I was expecting to be EXACTLY where I was then, about 275 give or take a pound or two.

254

That’s more than twenty lbs.  I haven’t even DONE ANYTHING yet.  I gave up Soda…big whoopie deepie doo.  Well, and started tracking my calories.  Again.

Now, this is exactly what I don’t want to get into this time around.  No focusing on the scale, no pouring over every missed opportunity, no berating myself every time I eat more than 2000 calories in a day.  The number on the scale is just a number.  It’s not me, it doesn’t say ANYTHING about how healthy I am, what I look like, what I FEEL like…just how much resistance a pressure pad dispersed when I stood on it.

I will not be posting regular weigh-ins here.  In fact, I doubt I’ll weigh myself again anytime soon, it doesn’t help me.  In fact, it does the opposite; I generally either feel bad about not losing enough, or I slack off because I think I’m ahead.

But not this time, no weight goals carved in stone.  My only goal is to dive into the water at the breakwater docks and swim under the Hawthorne Bridge on August 22nd; swim, bike and run like a man possessed; and not stop until I cross the finish line in Waterfront Park.  750 m in the water, 26 km on a bike and 5 k on my feet.  I don’t have to “win”.  I don’t even have to do well.  Just finish in less than four hours.

If I train well enough to survive, then weight loss is possible.  But it’s not about the weight loss, it’s about finishing.  I just want to finish.

And tonight I took the first steps down that path, litterally.  I stretched, warmed up with a slow walk for 3 minutes, walked at a fast pace for 10 minutes, ran for 2 minutes, walked at the same fast pace for another 10 minutes and finished with a two minute cool down.  Nothing spectacular, it’s my first time on the treadmill in a LONG time and my first time ever in the new shoes…so I took it easy.

One down, four more days to go.

For anyone not familiar with my writing style, please be advised this post will be long.  And full of personal denouement.  And long.  We will start with some backstory, charge into some current issues in my life, and then forge on to goals and expectations for the coming year.  Did I mention “Long”?

First of all, lets start with boring “new years resolution” stuff and just get that right out of the way.

I am, without a doubt, in the worst shape I’ve been in for the last half-a-decade.  While I’m not at my “high-water” mark from 2002, I’m not exactly moving in the right direction either.

I’ve never been much of an “exercise guy” by self-definition.  More of a “food lover/great chef/eats everything on his plate” kind of dude.  I have been since I was 12 years old.  Conversely, I was skinny as a rail as a kid.  I looked like a stick figure in my wedding photos.  I ran track in high school and set records that stood for years.  I played Soccer in college.  I could eat Taco Bell out of bean burritos and mexican pizzas on any given day, drink a gallon of soda and still look like Don Knotts’ skinnier kid nephew.

I remember eating hostess chocolate covered mini-doughnuts BY THE BOX every morning in high school.  One day, a classmate of mine looked at me and she said “someday you’re gonna regret eating those.  They will catch up to you.” and I laughed her off.

I am here today to say, “Holly McCutcheon, you were SO right.”

I used to be a serious couch potato.  Like, 50 hours a week or more level couch potato.  And video games.  And computer games.  And then we invented the DVD player!  And THEN we invented Everquest!!!  Aww…what memories.  Ah, what a monumental spread to my ass!

Between sedentary jobs, no desire to exercise, and a poor fitness example at home growing up (no blame, one parent had a debilitating illness, and one was a bit busy with, like, WORK and stuff) I didn’t really have the tools to do better.

I had a couple of health scares, some massive life changes and some opportunities to learn new habits, and eventually dropped back down to about 205 lbs.  That might not sound like much when I was 168 lbs the day I got married, but for a guy with my build, 205 was pretty good.  I was trim, in good health and looked ok with my shirt off.  pretty much all I could ask for.

That was 2007.

This, is 2010.

If you multiplied the time difference in years by 20, you’d have a pretty good guess at the number of lbs I’ve gained since then.

I’ve discovered some things about myself recently.  I suck with generalized goals.  I don’t track them well, and I don’t have a good history of sticking to them.  Life gets in the way (which is what life is, the stuff you have to do before you get to do the stuff you want to do) and eventually the hills obscure the road forward and my momentum simply tapers away into “laters” and “next times” and “when I cans”.

What I need is a giant grandfather clock with an extra hour on the face between midnight and one that reads “later” so I can finally get around to all the things I’ve put off until then.

Or perhaps I should try goals that don’t suck.  That might help too.

Of course, I tend to use really REALLY crappy goals like “lose X amount of weight” or “wear pants whose waist is less than my inseam” with numbers and sizes so impractical I can’t possibly hope to reach them anytime soon, and then I get discouraged when I don’t get there in three weeks.

So this year, I’m going to try a different approach.  Basically, I’m going to take a page from my wife and try a slightly more unorthodox approach.

A couple of years ago, my cousin ran his first triathlon.  He didn’t win, but he did finish.  He also found himself in significantly better shape than he was before he started training.

Going from couch potato to triathlete sounds insane just on the face of it, I get that.  So the challenge is a part of the allure.  I don’t have a regular access to a swimming facility.  I don’t own a road bike to ride.  I haven’t run distance since Bill Clinton was in his first term.  The whole thing sounds outlandish.  But I think I can do it.

Not all at once.  Not tomorrow, not even any time soon; but I think I can finish a standard Olympic Triathlon by the end of the year.  By the end of next year I could finish a 70.3 (half-ironman), and before I turn 40 I could try to qualify for the Ironman in Kona.  Now THAT would be great reason to vacation in Hawaii.

There are several triathlons here in the Portland area every year, and several more if you include Bend and Seattle as well; so I should have plenty of options to chose from this fall for my first triathlon.

So, as part of my motivation, I will start posting my training log here on this blog.  Five times a week.  I’ll start with the running and the exercise bike, and hopefully later this spring or early summer I’ll buy an economical road bike and start posting times and pictures from my training route around my neighborhood.

I’m sure I’ll lose some weight in the process, heck, I’d LOVE to drop out of the “Clydesdale” bracket before I try a 70.3 (that’s a year and a half to lose 70 lbs or so) and I think that’s doable.  But training for a triathlon is about getting in shape, and being healthy.  Losing the weight is a side affect, not the goal.  I think that will help.  Training five times a week is a goal that I can make.  Even if I miss some days, there’s a direct, reachable goal right in front of me when I try again.

It’s just five days.