“Choosing … to run”

Well, as Jerry Seinfeld once said, “I choose … not to run.” Or walk as the case was. I’m packing it in for March 2024, but this was the most I have stepped since July of 2023, when I clipped 21,000 by 5 steps. (Long way of saying 21,005.) Anyway the charger is now charging and I am writing you all!😂

Overall, I’m pleased. This has to be the most walked steps ever in my history. Now comes the difficult part of reintroducing running into the equation. While I’m not fat, I have slipped in my diet over the past 20 days or so. I’m dreading the weigh in. I probably picked up a couple extra pounds, this despite no drinking in the past thirty some odd days.

I’m also dreading the return a bit because I am now coaxing gently towards my mid fifties. I’ll be 54 in just a couple of months. My hip still bothers me. And I seem stiffer. I’m just going to have to resume at some point slowly. I also want to re-engage my yoga practice in the hopes of staving off injury. It will be a lot of work. I have not run in 6-7 months. It’s been even longer since I’ve done any yoga.

My idea is to start in April and wind it down in November. There are a good couple of marathons in November, and though my days of flirting with qualifying for Boston seem further and further away, it would please me greatly to finish a marathon. People do do it. I’ve done it before. Ten times. More if you count my COVID efforts. Even last year, before I crashed and burned, I had a day where I ran fifteen and walked five.

Anyway, it’d be a dream to finish one now … after all this time and all I’ve been through.

SSW

Cowboy

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A cowboy.

Now that I’m 53, I see how wise I was!🤣

SSW

Damn, that’s a lot of steps!

As a measure of sobriety, it’s really hard to match my 21,005. I’m realizing the err of finding success only in that accomplishment.

Here I sit with about 19,500. I have one day to get my 1,500+ steps per day. First assume I get 21,005 tomorrow. Pretty basic assumption. Seems doable.

But now, I have to add 1,505 x 30 which equals 45,150 to tie this halcyon mark of the past year. That’s basically 66,000 by the end of tomorrow. That’s a shitload.

So, I probably won’t get it done. I’ll be fairly put out to get it accomplished. So put out that maybe it’s best I not. I need another 20,000 by the end of the day… minimum. So… wish me luck, but it’s a tall order.

SSW

Almost Prufrock…

What’s something most people don’t understand?

This is really me … I don’t understand timing. I get that there is a time for all things … a moment for all seasons … but the particulars of executing in a particular instant are lost on me. Though I might know what to do, quite frankly, I don’t know when to do it. 😂

It is a trait that has been with me for a long time. It’s made me passive and yielding … able to start a scene or two … but at times … almost the fool.

SSW

Always Optimism

So… to best my best from last year 21,005 steps on average per day, I’m going to have to make 750 up tomorrow and then 750 the next day. Now … I do have time. But I have to clear 44,000 steps, and some change, over the next two days. That’s an extraordinary number. I stand to get 37,000 today. I’m really tired!🤣

So … I’m probably not going to do it. Yet, my number today is the second best over the last year. And… it’s with zero running. All steps have been taken at a walking pace.

Next month is next month. As for this month, we shall see. Optimism. Always optimism.

SSW

Seriously?

How has technology changed your job?

Oh my goodness? What a boring subject! 🤣 And… it’s Good Friday!!! I’d rather think about something else.

Should I, for instance, have bought the Starbucks coffee of the woman who waved me into line in front of herself … against her best interests? I did not, and, being really honest here, I’m feeling bad about it!😂🤣😂

Seriously. Job technology?!? I expect better prompts from a prompting … prompisary.

SSW

Nein! Nyet! Nah! … OK!!!

How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?

I guess the answer is rooted to how often benefits that I seek are enhanced by saying no. Not that often when you look at it like that. I guess it all depends on the value of saying no. Then again, how often are you enhanced by always saying yes?

It’s a tricky wicket to know.🧐

SSW

To Be a Great … Golfer

What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?

Being excellent at a sport would be nice. I think I would choose golf. If I was a really great runner, I would have been finished twenty years ago. That’s pretty much true for any sport of my liking, be it baseball, basketball, or football. It’d be fun to be a good skier. But I think if I could choose any sport at which to be great it would be golf. You can play well into your forties. There’s all kinds of events too for seniors. Any time, you’re in such places as Southern California, Hawaii, Florida.

Of course, you’d have to be really excellent to get to the level of touring pro. Many stories are there of guys who were pretty good, but then never made the tour. You could be really good and not even know why you weren’t good enough. That’s one thing that makes being a pro golfer difficult.

But if I could be anywhere on the satellite with those guys, it would be nice. I think one advantage is that it is a long walk, if you will. At 39 your still might be “pretty good” at any sport. Now, Lebron James is “pretty good” at basketball. But he’ll be out of the sport in a couple of years. Tom Brady, likewise… a great player into his forties. And now he’s done.

A really good pro golfer, on the other hand, might compete in or even win a tour event at 40+… maybe even a major. It’s a sport where heroes avoid the sharp contrast of when time tells the bodies of basketball players, let’s say, that it’s over.

Anyway… it’s a living.

SSW

Where Everything is Fine

What is your favorite type of weather?

I’ve been giving this a considerable amount of thought. The place where I come from is a small town in the Midwest. Weather can be dicey. There’s tornados, on one extreme, 100 degree heat during a summer fry, on the other, and bone chillingly cold temperatures for a third.

I hate hale storms. I don’t care for heavy rains as they can quickly become hale. Ice can be nice, all pretty and everything except when it causes a power outage, which it often does. Thick cloudy overcast days where it does not rain are nice … when it doesn’t rain … which often is not the case.

There are a few days May and a few in October which are pleasantly sunny to the nth degree! It is these days that I look the most forward to.

Then I imagine myself on the beach.

Afternoon in Northern Florida

And everything is fine! 😌

SSW

Voices in My Head

”He Left Family and Career, Driven by Voices in His Head” the story in today’s Wall Street Journal sadly leads with. This is the story of a lost schizophrenic lawyer. He was a JD graduate of the University of Chicago, 2007. Not too shabby by any account.

But he lost it. Now he resides amongst 75,000 homeless in Los Angeles. His sister holds out hope. She, for her struggles, is a recovering alcoholic. At home, three thousand miles away in Virginia in an apartment lives, his mother. She is a retired first-grade teacher. She says that God is walking with her through these events.

I don’t know what imposes on me the ability to write. I have no judgment or advice about how any of this can improve. But I think myself lucky is all. Lucky that I don’t have the disease as Rob does.

My friend in the practice of law “Chet” was a bit of a hell-raiser as a boy. Driven to smoke pot, and other such ventures, he had a no money on the one hand and a mother on the other driven mad — she divorced her husband and buried herself in the midst of three month affairs with all sorts of men. This after a period, when Chet was very young, of … normalcy I guess. Each one dissolved in disaster.

Chet told his story at a meeting at church. I was astonished. He seemed so unaffected by anything before. He had three boys, all of whom are fine young men, a wife of sublime character, a dog and a modest house that he’s now renovated. I don’t remember all of his story but they breakthrough seemed to come all at once.

He said, “I’m just flesh and bones. I’m a young man who in the space of a year in the future could be wrecked. But I’m not wrecked now. If I do what I must, I’ll be all right.” Today is twenty years from then. Chet is alright.

I’ve been like both of these gentlemen, yet somehow my story is different. It’s not better. It’s not worse. It’s far from about the same. I’m different. Yet I find something valuable in each of these stories. I find something in all the stories I accumulate… that I relate together. Even if one is in a newspaper that sparks another I first heard twenty years ago.

SSW