Personal

Mental Pivots

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One of my most-viewed posts is “The Privilege of Existential Ennui,” written in September 2009. It’s the largest single driver of traffic to this blog from search engines, despite its modest length. In it, I mused that:

Part of me still vacillates between tiredness and motivation, between melancholy at what might have been, and zeal for what might yet be.  I’m not yet ready to accept the prospect of a plump wife with 2.3 kids and a used minivan in the suburbs.  Maybe I’m condemning myself to perpetual unhappiness.  Or perhaps I’m prudently refusing to settle for mediocrity, and that my day will eventually come.

Interesting. I understand where I was, emotionally, at that point in my life: I found myself frustrated at why the Jason of the real world and the Jason of my mental world weren’t the same person, because I didn’t believe myself subject to any external constraints upon the range of life options then available to me.

Yet much of that angst has evaporated over the last six years, mostly because I’ve since accepted several encumbrances that, while not impervious to slicing, nevertheless offer real value to me. So my thinking has pivoted on several very big things. For example, I’ve transitioned from treating my employment as just a job, inherently fungible, to now valuing it as a career within the healthcare-quality industry, with a logical progression leading toward retirement. Likewise, I’ve largely cleaned up my financial act, such that I pay the bills on time and don’t make dumb choices about large purchases. And I’ve launched a whole different side career as CEO of Caffeinated Press, an enterprise that’s not just “me in the basement,” but includes real products and services and real colleagues in a real office with real invoices and taxes and contractual obligations.

So the interesting question, perhaps, isn’t why so many people feel purposeless, as I speculated in 2009. Rather, the question is why so may opt against anchoring their lives in a way that leads to long-term happiness and success.

The generalized ennui that characterized my late 20s and early 30s has long since vanished. In its place, I run a mile a minute on various projects. Between the day job, the night job, service in professional associations and sundry hobbies, I am not at a loss for things to do. And, significantly, the things I do, I find useful and rewarding. So in 2015 I have ties — a career, a car payment, cats, a mostly different cast of friends, a podcast, a small business — that I didn’t have in 2009. I recently reflected, in fact, at how many of the useless bad habits I used to enjoy faded from my life, displaced by tasks supporting a series of annual life goals.

Once upon a time, I believed that the key to success in life was keeping your options open. Although I still see the value in keeping more than one door propped wide, the problem with keeping all the doors open is that you cannot ever get far enough along a path of specialization that you develop an identity more substantive than “jack of all trades.” Perhaps the source of existential ennui isn’t the purposelessness I shared six years ago. Perhaps, instead, it’s rooted in a deep-seated fear of being just another blank face in the crowd — or worse, of seeing how blank your face is and instead of fixing it, you retreat into that tiny foothold of autonomy you have left, elevating it as a virtue when it’s merely a security blanket.

The only way to stand out in the sea of humanity is to be excellent at something. And that excellence requires diligent work and many long hours of dues-paying. If you’re disaffected, you might not pay those dues. You might keep your options open. But such a path is not with emotional cost.

Personal, Politics & Culture

On the Proactive Avoidance of Relationship Regret

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Posted on my Roadmap is my one-sentence mission: “I will be a contented and healthy man who, upon his 70th birthday, can look himself in the mirror free of the sting of regret.” Easier written than done, perhaps, but thinking about the question 32 years early opens the door for opportunities to avoid incurring regret in the first place.
I’m sometimes asked whether I get depressed about not having married and “settled down” with a brood of crumb-crunchers and a little suburban house with a white picket fence and a used minivan and a slightly dopey golden retriever. Usually well-intentioned, the question nevertheless is curious, insofar as it rests on two rickety assumptions: First, that marriage and family are normative, from which deviation signifies loss or defect; and second, that I am ignorant of what I’m missing so therefore I should pine for it.
As to the first assumption, I can only say that I’ve seen many people marry and remain happy together for a very long time. I’ve also seen friends younger than I who have already divorced. I am aware, through my own family’s experience, of what divorce does to family dynamics. A few years ago, when I more actively searched for a partner, I was dismayed to discover just how many women in the 25-to-35 age cohort are either single or divorced … but with at least one small child. Marriage isn’t the institution it used to be, and most families I know have so absorbed the individualist Gestalt that “family” is perhaps more meaningful as a tribal affiliation than as blood-kin identification.
I am not unaware of the benefits of marriage and child-rearing. Should the right situation arise, I’d get married. But I’m not drawn to the institution and I don’t feel incomplete because I live in an apartment with no one except my feline overlords. I’ve seen too many elderly people in the hospital who bet on a spouse and children or grandchildren to look after them in their dotage — and then see those bets fail. No one is guaranteed a loving family surrounding you on your deathbed when you’re in your late 90s. People die; they grow apart, they feud, they have different priorities. When I did pastoral care rounds in the hospital, years ago, it wasn’t all that rare for the older patients to want me to stick around. To talk. Sure, they had families — but, you know, they were busy. Seems odd to structure a life, beginning in your 20s, on the gamble of what you’ll need or want in your twilight years. Yet that’s the message, fundamentally, of family: They’re the ones who will take care of you when you’re back in diapers. Good luck with that.
Life is a series of trade-offs. There’s no such thing as a perfect existence — just a never-ending churn of decisions balanced against each individual person’s proprietary blend of needs and wants. With marriage and kids, you get better income stability, regular affection, family bonding, life milestones. Without marriage and kids, though, I retain the freedom to make major life choices without getting them approved by someone else — I can come and go as I wish, buy or save as I wish, avoid having to live with the inevitable compromises that come with marriage, and if I needed to take care of my mom when she gets old, I’m not subject to the whim of a spouse who may resist or resent it. And certainly not least, if I were to retire to a sailboat and see parts of the world, no one will try to stop me.
The other argument for marriage and family follows from a basic human need for companionship. To which, all I can say is that I do not want for friends. I have a long-term stable core, a middle-ring network that comes and goes, and a large flock of friendly acquaintances. I occasionally have weeks where I think to myself: Self, you need to start declining some social invitations so you can get some work done. So I’m not exactly a lonely recluse.
The second assumption — that I should pine or grieve for what I lack — flows from the first. When you accept the normativity of marriage and procreation, then not having it becomes an emotional struggle, a challenge of self-worth, a grave problem requiring resolution. I think there’s a fairly strong Christian Reformed, West-Michigan-culture thing at play, there, too: If you’re not married by a certain age, then there’s something wrong with you. I know quite a few people who unduly stress out over their lack of a spouse. Anyone who’s spoken to the aspiring MRS candidates at Cornerstone University or Kuyper College or even Calvin College knows the fairytale: You wait for your prince or princess then live happily upper-middle-class forever and ever, amen. Lots of those women end up, several years after their graduation and their weddings, with OKCupid profiles that feature them with their infants. I know; I’ve dated some of them. That toxic culture has wreaked incalculable chaos on the lives of the young and the innocent thanks to the tyranny of impossible expectations.
But I digress.
My biggest frustration with friends who do lust after marriage is that the longer they search in vain, the more out-of-whack their thinking becomes. It’s as if there’s some magical ratchet in their heads that, as the months and years slip away, creates ever-more-unreasonable demands for what they expect in a mate — until they come to obsess after an idealized spouse who could not possibly exist in the real world. In a sense, that ratchet is a defense mechanism, with a twofold task of protecting them having to engage in serious self-examination while precluding relationships that might be “good enough” but are nevertheless avoided because they won’t be perfect. The fairytale always trumps, but the drama never ends.
As for me, I guess I have nothing to pine over because there’s not much related to interpersonal intimacy that I haven’t experienced. I’ve loved people. I’ve woken up smiling with someone else’s head beside mine on the pillow. I’ve known the thrill of a first date, the pain of a break-up, the emptiness of a drunken bar hookup and the joy of bonding with someone over drinks. My closest friends have been with me for going on two decades. If I ever woke up at 2 a.m. with a crisis, I can think of at least five numbers to call off the top of my head where the person on the other end of the line wouldn’t hesitate to leap to my assistance.
I am content. So, having weighed the merits and elected my current path, all I can say is — I think I’ve avoided incurring a regret that would otherwise haunt me in late 2046.

Personal

Welcome to 2014 — Get Ready to Rumble!

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Welcome to 2014.
I write this post from my home office, overlooking a quiet, snowy street. To my right, a coffee mug with fresh-ground Starbucks and a splash of Irish cream steams in the cool air. To my left, both cats sleep peacefully upon their pillows. Things around here are still. Serene.
The last 12 hours provided an excellent segue between calendar years. Last night, I made a pan of my spicy Andouille jambalaya, with which I paired a lovely white Michigan wine — the bottle was a gift from my neighbor, whom I helped get un-stuck from a snowbank yesterday afternoon. I built a roaring fire in the fireplace and wrote a new chapter in my novel, bringing the total now to just under 56k words. I chatted on Skype with some friends and traded celebratory text messages, then went to bed shortly after midnight. This morning, all is calm and the outlook is bright.
In retrospect, 2013 was a year of “two steps forward, one step sideways.” Let me elaborate:

  • On the health front, despite some ups and downs, I’m in fundamentally the same place as I was a year ago, and the year before that. I’ll take a “step sideways” instead of a “step backwards” any day, but this year, it’ll need to be “two steps forward.”
  • I finally got my mind wrapped around a long-term personal finance plan that will get me debt-free and ahead of the game (relative to the median of my peer cohort) for retirement savings over the next few years.
  • I competed in, and “won,” National Novel Writing Month, and I’m still working on the manuscript with the hopes of shopping it to an agent or publisher in the next few weeks or so. Much of this growth as a writer came with the support of my WriteOn! friends in the West Michigan area.
  • The podcast has grown by leaps and bounds, aided by the support of a handful of friends across the Western Hemisphere as well as the key learnings we took away from our two Las Vegas trips (the 360Vegas Vacation and the Vegas Internet Mafia Family Picnic). I peg our current listenership at between 3,000 and 5,000 per episode, based on file-touch data from my file server.
  • I swapped jobs, moving from a somewhat personally unsatisfying role as a report writer for the hospital to being a full-fledged data scientist in the insurance company’s Quality Improvement team.
  • I have grown in professional service, being asked to stay on for another three-year term as a section officer in the American Statistical Association as well as bumping up a notch in volunteer leadership within the National Association for Healthcare Quality. And … drumroll … I was the only nominee for 2014 president-elect of the Michigan Association for Healthcare Quality.
  • I finally made the Isle Royale trip last Memorial Day, knocking off a bucket-list item.

So the year just past was good to me. I had goals — many of which I met or exceeded — and I made some good life choices. I’m satisfied with the outcome. But mere satisfaction isn’t sufficient; you have to embrace change and create growth opportunities to meet your fullest potential. Herewith my goals for 2014:

  • Return to 2009-levels of fitness. Technically, not a big deal. I have incentive — my 20-year reunion, summertime trips, etc. — that provide motivation. Plus, I finally (as in, just last week) cracked the code about scheduling my day to make a dedicated fitness program work like it used to. Surprisingly simple after it dawned on me that I can walk and chew gum at the same time.
  • Get active in church/volunteering again. I’ve been “off duty” at church for the last five or so years. I’ve also been church-hopping, a practice made easier given that I live almost in the shadow of the cathedral. I’m sponsoring a friend into the Catholic Church this year, and his chosen parish has an involved RCIA program, so I’ll work with him through that, then probably meander back permanently to St. Anthony during the Easter season.
  • Take next step in higher education. I’ve already got the application paperwork for a particular Ph.D. program I’m interested in and will file it this month. And, I do have a Plan B if that doesn’t work out.
  • Get the novel published. This goal looks like a win for before Valentine’s Day, at least in terms of getting the final MS ready for distribution. I intend to give it a bit of time to circulate among potential agents and publishers, but I’m aware that the odds of being snagged are vanishingly small. So I’ll probably self-publish in early summer after a sufficiently large number of rejection letters arrive.
  • Upgrade my station license. Easy win for late winter. I have the study materials, I just need to prep for the exam and take it. At a minimum, I want my radio license at General class, but if the mood strikes — and if I get involved in the Kalamazoo group, which seems more with-it than the Grand Rapids group — I might push for the top-level Extra class.
  • Compete AOW + Rescue diver certification. I am friends with two certified divers, but I haven’t been under the water in years. That needs to change. Over the next few years I want to get divemaster certification, but for 2014 I’ll settle for Advanced Open Water and Rescue, which are the foundations for most other specialty certifications anyway. That means I’ll need to invest in gear, but … I need to anyway.
  • Build an emergency fund. I’m usually so focused on doing things that my income is like a conveyer belt, going in one side and out the other without really stopping in the middle. I need a fund for emergencies — car window smashes, cat vet trips, etc., so I’m not caught S.O.L. if disaster strikes. I’m aiming for $2,400 by the end of the year, just $200 per month into the secret envelope.
  • Run in the 2014 Metro Health Marathon. Finishing a marathon is part of the bucket list. With a renewed emphasis on diving and hiking and fitness, targeting a marathon in 2014 makes sense to ensure I’m at adequate cardiovascular levels for all the other things that require, you know, breathing.
  • Return trip to Isle Royale. Looks like this one is already pretty solid for the Memorial Day holiday week, too. Some of my writing friends are contemplating a trip (probably to stay at the lodge at Rock Harbor), and my brother is strongly interested in going too.
  • Hard-book a 2015 hiking trip to Denali. This will probably be the big trip of 2015 — two weeks in the Great Wilderness. The commute isn’t actually bad — just two days by road, mostly through Canada, if you want to avoid the pain of flying into Fairbanks. Denali is a different class of hike than Isle Royale; both are remote, but Denali has bears and (in most places) no trails at all. You’re just blazing away but still carefully honor Leave No Trace principles.
  • Visit Europe. This one should be easy, too, since I’m technically committed to attend a conference in Utrecht, July 23-25. The only real challenge is that I technically need to be in Boston on August 2 for a different conference. So I might fly into Amsterdam, do the conference, take a week’s vacation, maybe Eurorail it from Utrecht to, say, Paris or London via Paris, and then head to Boston directly or back home for a day or two before Boston.
  • Continue growing the podcast.  Tony and I are planning a pair of return trips to Las Vegas, including one for the 2014 VIMFP, so that networking helps. Plus, we’re working through a long-term plan this coming weekend, thinking through ways of monetizing the show and expanding our reach through alternative distribution channels.

So. A lot on the plate, but it’s all doable, and much if it is already teed-up.
I had a good 2013, and I look forward to a good 2014. And I hope and pray that your 2014 is your best year yet.

Personal

Psychic Energy Caps

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I snort in disbelief when people talk about aligning their chakras or feeling their chi or whatnot. I don’t believe in “metaphysics” in the sense of The Secret or in mystic fields that your soul can touch to attain inner harmony.

That said, I do think that people do draw off a fixed pool of mental stamina. Each person’s pool fills to a different level and you can only swim in the water you have.

A good metaphor might come from video games — you know the type, the sort that have a “mana” reserve that you draw from to cast spells or use special abilities. When you run out of mana, you are blocked until your pool refills.

As I was gallivanting about town yesterday evening, it occurred to me that one barrier people erect on their road to fulfillment rests in not managing their pool of mental stamina effectively.

Let’s break it down into mathematical terms to illustrate the point. Assume you have 100 energy points. You sit down and arrive at a list of life goals that include a mix of short- and long-term tasks you need to achieve them. How do you balance each task? If all your short-term tasks end up consuming 120 points, and you only have 100, do you wear yourself out? Do you give up? Do you stagger accomplishments? No two people are going to respond the same way. Often, people will not realize that they’re venturing into negative-energy territory and instead get part-way through an initiative and then give up from exhaustion.

Many people survey the book of work they’d have to accomplish to live their ideal life and, adjudging it too difficult a read, set it aside and content themselves with just getting by.

You have to master your own psychology. If you know that you have 50 free points, then spend 40. Spend them on one major project. Take your various projects and attack them in parallel, not in series. Instead of spreading yourself too thin on a bunch of things, take one big thing at a time and break that thing into easily managed parts. Don’t commit all your resources lest you find yourself out of energy at the wrong time and thereby risk failure or loss of motivation.

Many self-help experts suggest that goal-setting is the key to success. Although I agree with this sentiment, I don’t think it goes far enough. Not only must you set goals, but you must set an execution schedule that lives in harmony with the available energy you have at your disposal.

Remember — lots of stuff sips from that pool. Relationship drama? Workplace angst? Family discord? Self-loathing? Too little sleep? Poor nutrition? Life leaches your supply of mental energy, sometimes faster than you can re-fill it.

Thus: Set goals that are achievable not just in an objective sense, but also in light of  your own life situation and your own psychology. Don’t bring yourself to the point of mental exhaustion, when all the efforts you’ve expended crash and you risk backsliding or retreating into despair.

 

Personal

The Quantified Self: January’s Results

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Lots of people put their stock in the “quantified self” phenomenon — which, in brief, is the idea that tracking and analyzing various personal measures helps achieve goals.

In late December I developed a template in OneNote that serves as a daily journal. One sheet, one day, no other apps or spreadsheets or tracking tools. The sheet contains a one-sentence, high-level goal for the day, then it includes my unified calendar, a list of tasks, a diet log, an exercise log, a record of financial activity, a “health metrics” section and a place for recording accomplishments or reflections. Each type of information has a specific OneNote tag formatted with a regular comma-delimited pattern; OneNote 2013 lets you pull together a summary page that includes all tags, so I can just cut-and-paste tag sections into Excel for quick-and-easy trend analysis. Pivot tables are your friend.

Upside: Between a Windows 8 desktop, a Windows 8 laptop, a Windows Phone 8, and OneNote for my Android tablet — I can keep the daily list updated from any screen, no problem.

I’ve been supremely diligent throughout January of tracking this information. Some of it will fall into the “interesting but not all that useful” category — e.g., task histories. Others prove much more useful; the appointment section lets me make free-form notes under each tagged calendar item, making it easier to find information later.

The five parts that have proven most illuminating are the daily records for calories, exercise, spending, weight and blood pressure. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

  • I lost exactly 10 lbs. in the month. Woohoo.
  • I consumed roughly 61,138 calories. Of these, 9.6 percent were enjoyed at breakfast, 41 percent at lunch, 28.4 percent at dinner and 11.8 percent as snacks. Alas, a whopping 9.2 percent of January’s calories came from adult beverages.
  • It appears that 3,100 daily calories marks my “break even” rate — more than that, and I pork up; less than that, and I slim down. This number is consistent with online calculators.
  • My average daily calorie count was 1,972, with a high of 3,215 and a low of 960. Population standard deviation of 609.
  • As I spent more time in the month performing aerobic exercise, my blood pressure — especially the systolic value — improved. I have shifted from consistently measuring as low pre-hypertensive to consistently measuring in the high normal category.
  • Between 12:01 a.m. on January 1 and 11:59 p.m. on January 31, I spent about $80 less than I earned. However, the month was unusual — I had extra income but paid down my credit card and replaced a few big-ticket things, so January’s pattern feels unusual.
  • My spending fell along somewhat surprising categories. I shelled out less on dining out than I would have guessed, but I did incur a whopping $250 just at the gas pump (thank you, GMC Jimmy 4×4). For February, I’m refining my category list, whittling it down to just 12 different buckets of spending.

So. I’m going to keep up with the daily tracking. I’ve found it to be a useful mechanism for keeping front-and-center the stuff I need to do and to prod forethought about my patterns of consumption.

Cuz hey — 10 lbs. in a month isn’t anything to sneeze at.

Personal

The Quantified Self: January's Results

4 Comments

Lots of people put their stock in the “quantified self” phenomenon — which, in brief, is the idea that tracking and analyzing various personal measures helps achieve goals.
In late December I developed a template in OneNote that serves as a daily journal. One sheet, one day, no other apps or spreadsheets or tracking tools. The sheet contains a one-sentence, high-level goal for the day, then it includes my unified calendar, a list of tasks, a diet log, an exercise log, a record of financial activity, a “health metrics” section and a place for recording accomplishments or reflections. Each type of information has a specific OneNote tag formatted with a regular comma-delimited pattern; OneNote 2013 lets you pull together a summary page that includes all tags, so I can just cut-and-paste tag sections into Excel for quick-and-easy trend analysis. Pivot tables are your friend.
Upside: Between a Windows 8 desktop, a Windows 8 laptop, a Windows Phone 8, and OneNote for my Android tablet — I can keep the daily list updated from any screen, no problem.
I’ve been supremely diligent throughout January of tracking this information. Some of it will fall into the “interesting but not all that useful” category — e.g., task histories. Others prove much more useful; the appointment section lets me make free-form notes under each tagged calendar item, making it easier to find information later.
The five parts that have proven most illuminating are the daily records for calories, exercise, spending, weight and blood pressure. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

  • I lost exactly 10 lbs. in the month. Woohoo.
  • I consumed roughly 61,138 calories. Of these, 9.6 percent were enjoyed at breakfast, 41 percent at lunch, 28.4 percent at dinner and 11.8 percent as snacks. Alas, a whopping 9.2 percent of January’s calories came from adult beverages.
  • It appears that 3,100 daily calories marks my “break even” rate — more than that, and I pork up; less than that, and I slim down. This number is consistent with online calculators.
  • My average daily calorie count was 1,972, with a high of 3,215 and a low of 960. Population standard deviation of 609.
  • As I spent more time in the month performing aerobic exercise, my blood pressure — especially the systolic value — improved. I have shifted from consistently measuring as low pre-hypertensive to consistently measuring in the high normal category.
  • Between 12:01 a.m. on January 1 and 11:59 p.m. on January 31, I spent about $80 less than I earned. However, the month was unusual — I had extra income but paid down my credit card and replaced a few big-ticket things, so January’s pattern feels unusual.
  • My spending fell along somewhat surprising categories. I shelled out less on dining out than I would have guessed, but I did incur a whopping $250 just at the gas pump (thank you, GMC Jimmy 4×4). For February, I’m refining my category list, whittling it down to just 12 different buckets of spending.

So. I’m going to keep up with the daily tracking. I’ve found it to be a useful mechanism for keeping front-and-center the stuff I need to do and to prod forethought about my patterns of consumption.
Cuz hey — 10 lbs. in a month isn’t anything to sneeze at.

Personal

Of Bourbon, Blizzards and the Underwear Gnome

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The howl and rattle of the wind through my dining-room storm window, just moments ago, heralded the return of arctic air to Grand Rapids. The approaching winter storm provides a perfect minor-key counterpoint to my mood of late. Last week, Michigan enjoyed single-digit temps; this week, we pushed into the upper 60s; in the next few days, we’re predicted to sink into the low teens with subzero wind chills. Meanwhile, it seems I’ve been the poster child for whiskey-induced introspection. Fitting, I think. In winter’s heart, both blizzards and brooding go better with bourbon.

It’s been a rough week at the office. Rough enough, that the storm-window barometer jarred me from exploring memories I hadn’t touched in quite some time. Memories of my sophomore year of high school, actually, when it felt like everything sucked and the worst moment of the week was bedtime on Sunday night because I knew I had a full five days of hell ahead and I’d give anything to skip to 2:35 on Friday afternoon. I know — in a mental sense, anyway — that my loathing of West Catholic stems merely from the echo of adolescent angst; I fit in maybe 85 percent of the way with my peers, but that missing 15 percent slices deepest when you’re a teenager with no sense of perspective. I concede that my high-school years weren’t really all that bad. Not really. But much distance lies between today’s considered judgment and yesterday’s painful memories.

I remember laying in bed as a 15-year-old and fantasizing what my life would be like when I was 30. Would I be married? Would I have kids and a nice house? Would I have earned a DVM or Ph.D? Would I be an Army officer or a business tycoon or an elected official? I just assumed, like a protean Underwear Gnome, that something undefined but surely magical would transpire between those lonely teenage nights and my inevitably glorious future — some Happily Ever After that would stitch all the pieces together into an elegant tapestry of contented prosperity.

Didn’t. Happen.

But that’s not to say that as a 36-year-old, I’m full of rage over broken expectations. I’m not. It’s taken a while, but the intimate relationships I enjoyed in my early-to-mid 20s with my dear friends Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Lust, Greed, Wrath and Pride provided an experiential framework that, recently, has proven astonishingly useful in my everyday life in the fullest Johnny Cash sense of the idea. Plus, I’ve got enough miles under my belt that the inner serenity I fought to cultivate just a few years ago comes easier now — to the point that I chuckle at the irony of fighting for serenity, even though I really did struggle with it. Experience puts meat on the bones of theory. Adversity makes for the richest experience. Thus, self-inflicted adversity in youth yields early-onset wisdom, through which prism one can say, “Been there, done that, it’s going to be OK.”

Still.

My friend Duane used to laugh at me because during our heyday playing World of Warcraft, I’d roll a dozen low-level characters and couldn’t ever commit to leveling one up. I’d travel a certain distance down the character’s path, then select a new one because I thought it might be better in some vague and usually inaccurate way. Years of casual playing, and the highest I ever got was a Level 45 Undead warlock named Elianna.

Duane had a larger point, methinks, expressed in his usual gentle and roundabout way: The only path that really matters is the one you’re on, so quit worrying about the trail over the next ridge. Just keep marching in your own boots.

Which brings me to my current introspection. I suppose it reduces to a single question: Which path provides the surest footing on the journey to my 70th birthday and the ultimate moment of truth, when I look in the mirror on a September morning in 2046 and ask myself if I have any regrets?

I know that having fairly unconstrained options as a 30-something is a luxury few enjoy. Still, as I survey my banquet of existential riches I’m left woefully undecided, paralyzed by choice. I have my bucket list and my annual goals list and whatnot. It’s not the long-term or even medium-term stuff that’s vexing. Its the short-term path. It’s tomorrow and next month, not next year or next decade.

You can fix one big problem in your life at a time, or three little ones. Try more, and you’ll fail; the enormousness of the challenge overwhelms. So you have to decide which problems you’ll tolerate and which you won’t while you rank-order your solution set. It’s like juggling with flaming tennis balls. If you have five balls and one is on fire, you can manage the one. You might even be able to manage two. When all the balls are on fire, though, you’ll end up with singed fingertips.

So which short-term problems to tackle first? Knowing, as it happens, that the decision you make today will shift your path to September 2046 in ways yet to be revealed?

Thank God for bourbon and blizzards.

Personal

The First 10 Days

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Annual resolutions fade quickly. My new OneNote-based daily tracking tool, which I’ve been using religiously every day so far this year, has provided some insights that are fun to play with, and which make it easier to keep on track with those NYE resolutions.

For example: I log every meal — the date, the time of day, net calories and a brief free-text synopsis of what I ate. Same with exercise: date, type, time in minutes, distance in miles, and a brief note.

So far, over the first 10 days, I’ve netted slightly fewer than 1,500 calories per day. That’s intake less exercise, computed for my age and current weight, assuming a sedentary lifestyle.

The resting metabolic rate for a male of my age and weight is almost exactly 3,000 calories daily. This means, in effect, I’ve lost 4.3 pounds over the first 10 full days of the new year. My bathroom scale supports this math.

Which means I will hit my goal sometime in June, barring any unfortunate backsliding or “piggy” moments.

So far, so good. The daily tracking routine is salutary, although it will get easier when I can stop lugging around my laptop and instead use the Microsoft Surface Pro I intend to buy the day it hits the shelves.

Philosophy

A Schema for Planning Your Self-Actualization

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Last week I had to substitute teach at Grand Rapids Community College for my friend Duane, who was out for emergency medical reasons. The class is Interpersonal Communications, a summer session within the Communications department. The class focused on content about defining interpersonal communications as a concept and reviewing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Interesting thing about Maslow. A lot of younger folks think they’re at the top of the pyramid, having achieved self-actualization because they are college students or have a nice car or enjoy the affections of a hot significant other. But young people almost never summit the hierarchy. They’re deluding themselves because they don’t really know what it’s like to be at the very base of the pyramid and lack the life experience to know what it’s like to be the master of your own fate instead of merely succeeding at surfing the winds of someone else’s destiny.

I was thinking about Maslow this week as I enjoyed cigars, Scotch and pleasant conversation with my friend Rob. Rob is a smart fellow and an irritable bastard if ever there was one. He’s the kind of guy who could convincingly yell, “Get off my lawn!” and you’d believe it. But he’s also an insightful guy with a good heart lurking beneath the crust of his curmudgeonhood.

The discussion with Rob meandered across many different subjects, but one that stuck out was life planning. He has goals and the sketch of an outline for getting there, which is good. Many people never think about their Bucket List and fewer still outline a concrete plan of action for achieving any of those items. That’s where Maslow fits in; a self-actualized person won’t just wistfully regret not achieving greatness — he’ll grab it by the horns and wrestle it into submission. Indeed, Maslow himself said: “The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within, and to be able to hear those impulse voices from within — and to make the point: This can be done.”

I started a well-defined process of life planning in 2007. I revisit my master list every few months to tweak it as needed. Over the years I’ve spoken with people who kinda-sorta understand the value of such a process, but they lack either the motivation to execute it or the conceptual framework for building it. I can’t force people to do anything, but I can offer my own thoughts about how to plan your life well enough to let the self-actualizing kernel within you to thrive. Caveat: What works for me may not work for you. That said:

  1. Disabuse yourself of the romantic notion of who you aspire to be, and start with who you are.  We’re all masters of self-delusion, legends in our own minds. The hardest part for most people is to come to an honest assessment of one’s true strengths and weaknesses without conflating them with the aura of the Ideal Self we keep locked in a deep part of our psyche. When you look at what holds you back, for example, your glance should be inward; if you find external reasons for all of your failings, then you haven’t dug deep enough.
  2. Develop a personal mission statement, a simple declaration for yourself that establishes your vision of what a self-actualized life entails.  A good exercise for getting there consists of the deceptively simple-sounding task of writing your own obituary. When you die — I hope, at a ripe old age — how do you want people to describe the quality of your character? What notable achievements do you want memorialized?
  3. Craft a bucket list of specific, achievable life goals you want to achieve before you die. No two people will have the same list, but the list is relevant. Maybe you want to be published, or climb Mt. Everest, or visit every continent, or run a marathon before you turn 40. Whatever. List at least five things that, when you’re whittling on the front porch as a wrinkled old man, you can point to as extraordinary accomplishments worthy of a well-lived life. When you finish an item, add more. Use the SMARTER approach to developing the lists — make them specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-limited, ethical and rewarding.
  4. Identify pertinent strategies that will govern how these goals should be achieved.  A plan of action requires a methodology that frames the appropriate execution of that strategy. This is the ethics part of the equation. What values color how you’ll live your life? I’ve developed six maxims that guide my own approach:  Reduce consumption; cultivate serenity; nurture relationships; exhibit insatiable curiosity; do fewer things but do them boldly; and favor action over study.
  5. Classify your goals according to some logical schema.  Choose the broad aspects of your life that mean something and set goals accordingly. You could set goals for finances, physical fitness, travel, spiritual development, academic achievement, etc. The schema — the framework — for each person will be different. But the framework lets you set goals in each category and helps you link goals among categories to help with prioritization decisions. For example, if you want to climb Mt. Everest and also reduce your body-mass index from 40 to 25, it makes sense to focus on the BMI restriction first (morbidly obese people may have trouble with mountain climbing). But knowing you want to scale Everest means your exercise program should focus on cardio and endurance instead of just weight lifting, as a strong man with weak cardiopulmonary function will have a tougher time scaling Everest than a slender man who can whip out a marathon without thinking.
  6. Break down big goals into a series of smaller, time-limited tasks.  Maybe your goal is to hike the Appalachian Trail. Good for you, but that’s not enough. You need to start with smaller tasks, like buying gear and doing day hikes and then graduating to overnight hikes in the backcountry. You need to meet fitness goals and bank enough cash to sustain you and research the trail. You need to learn about drop boxes and pick up tips about first aid and figure out how to deal with the various animals and plants you’ll encounter. Hiking the AT may be laudable; deciding to do so with no prior hiking experience isn’t, unless you set milestones to get you ready for the trip. Its also easier and more motivational to meet smaller, local goals that serve as stepping stones to bigger tasks that support a major bucket-list achievement. Divide and conquer.
  7. Track your progress.  Keep your tasks organized in Outlook or OneNote or Evernote. Maintain a journal. Log your calories or your workout routines. Start a blog. Just do something to give yourself a documented record about where you’ve succeeded or where you’ve failed. You need to know how prior performance looked so you can refine your approach in the future.
  8. Revisit your plan periodically and never hesitate to revise it.  Minimally, do a complete re-think and revision every six months. Dedicate a day or a weekend to looking at your progress and adjusting your plans. Treat it like a private in-service: Go somewhere quiet, rid yourself of distractions and continue on your journey of focused self-improvement.  Remember that there’s no shame in adjusting timelines, deleting goals or modifying tasks.
  9. Keep the big picture front-and-center in your daily life.  Print your goals list and keep a copy in a notebook or on your refrigerator. Look at it daily, or at least several times per week. Remind yourself over and over and over about what’s important so that you keep going. Even fitful progress is better than no progress at all.

As I said, this approach won’t work for everyone; it’s a right-brained strategy that favors logic over intuition. Nevertheless, I encourage everyone to follow some path that includes well-defined goals. Especially for folks in their mid-20s through their late 30s — a prime time for laying the foundation for a happy retirement — making solid, long-run choices now may pay handsome dividends later in life.

Personal

The Year That Was; The Year That Will Be

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On balance, 2011 was kind to me. I spent the year in residence in a lovely South Hill apartment, and my rusty, ancient Ford Ranger really didn’t fare too poorly. I traveled a bit, including two trips to Las Vegas and a week in Miami Beach for a conference. My health stayed stable, and I have mostly re-provisioned after the Great Purge of 2009. I’ve made progress on many fronts, earning just over $7,500 from my side business and even making the first steps back to church via the Cathedral. And the monthly cigar-and-cocktail evenings have helped bring a different focus to my personal social networking. (Oh, and PPQ — 100 percent attendance rate in 2011. That’s all I’m sayin’.)

So, my farewell to 2011 is largely without disdain, although the year did go out with something of a whimper: I went with Tony and Jen to the Laurel Manor NYE party in Livonia and didn’t acquit myself as professionally as I would have preferred. It was a somewhat fancy affair, with 500 or so attendees, many of whom were older folk in tuxedos and ball gowns but there were plenty of the younger crowd, too. Let it suffice that despite the good conversation and the salmon/filet dinner, I was insufficiently attentive to the nature and pace of the product flowing liberally from the premium open bar and ended up paying the price. I think part of it was that the bartenders were wildly inconsistent in how stiffly they poured the drinks — some were thin, some would shock a bear’s liver. Hard to pace yourself when you’re not acutely aware of what’s coming your way.

The last week of the year witnessed unheralded productivity. I’m not sure if it was the time off, or adding fish oil to my daily vitamin cocktail, or what, but my vacation saw me knock off more long-term goals from my to-do list than I’ve accomplished in the last two years combined. Among other things, I wrote a journal article, tweaked my various social-networking profiles, set my 2012 goals list, wrote a letter of inquiry to finish my master’s degree, pulled my annual credit reports, knocked off a bunch of around-the-house tasks, scheduled a long-delayed dental appointment, set up appropriate Mesh syncing for my files across my phone/netbook/PC, updated my freelancer profile with SPJ, reviewed my 403(b) investment allocations, blogged a fair amount and sketched out the drafts of four different books. Whew. And that was on top of holiday parties and a few other goals I accomplished too personal to mention in a public blog post.

So. I’m off to a good start. As part of my 2012 planning, which began in October (as usual), I’ve pulled forward my long-standing personal vision: “I aspire to be an elderly man who, upon his 70th birthday, can look himself in the mirror free of the sting of regret.” This vision will be realized in party through four major life goals and six core strategies:

Major Life Goals

  • Begin the Great Loop by the time I turn 40.
  • Complete a circumnavigation. Eat lunch in Antarctica.
  • Finish at least one major thru-hike (PCT, CDT, AT).
  • Write at least one fiction and one non-fiction book.

Core Strategies

  • Reduce consumption.
  • Cultivate serenity.
  • Nurture relationships.
  • Exhibit insatiable curiosity.
  • Do fewer things, but do them well.
  • Favor action over study.

In the master plan, I’ve got a series of almost 50 tasks between now and September 30 (and a handful extending until 2016). These tasks represent time-bound chunks of the various activities I need to do to make progress on my bucket-list goals. So, it’s good to have a plan of attack. Other major things I want to nail this year, at a lower grain than the bucket list, include (finally) running the Riverbank Run and G.R. Marathon, getting the prerequisites out of the way to begin divemaster training, return to the dojo in late winter, go skydiving this summer, and take a long weekend to backpack/hike in a national forest.

In other news … 2012 is looking interesting. I’ve planned out attendance a series of business-networking mixers to grow my company, and the prospect of playing in the new water park in Las Vegas in June provides great incentive to get back to my target weight (no one likes a shirtless muffin top). Tony and I are spending the weekend together in a few weeks to dedicate solely to joint business planning. I’ve already booked a client meeting for next week, and I’ve got a good handle on my tasks, calendar and bills for January. Yay.

I am looking forward to 2012, and I hope that my dear readers have a safe, happy, healthy and profitable year as well!