"Good Shape"

I am not in good shape right now, or am I? I was getting complemented on a recent Strava performance, and I was surprised how good it was, because I don't feel like I am in any sort of good shape. It is interesting how different perspectives of in shape and out of shape can be. I suppose my out of shape is faster than many people on the bike or on my feet, but I know, I can feel how slow I am compared to other times. However, feelings are not fact. It is quite possible that exercising continually the last decade has raised my bar so high that out of shape in my mind is more fit then years before. I don't have any races planned any time soon so it may be awhile before I find out. 

The point being, good shape is relative, even from one person to himself, because ultimately a large part of it is how one feels which can easily vary more than actual fitness. 

A Needed Change

In the next few days I have a little something to tell about a change I have made, specifically to my running. It's not official yet, so I'll wait a few more days, but the point is, I'm making a change.

It's not that things weren't working. On the contrary, I've been quite successful doing what I have been doing the way I have been doing it. Yet sometimes we need to change things in our lives. It's like moving. I suppose most people hate moving, but I've done it so much in my life that after a few years I start to feel stale. I have realized I can move just about anywhere and be a regular at three establishments in two months. I can find a few people who do the kind of stuff I do and make some friends. Sure, the longer spent in a place typically the deeper the connections made, but not necessarily.

Change is uncomfortable because we are giving up some aspect of "control" in our lives. Change scares us because we don't know what to expect. Change scares us because we've had bad experiences. Yet, change makes us grow because it forces a new stimulus on us. Our brains are forced to develop new connections to navigate the new experiences, and that is why there is often a bump, an improvement just after a change. Perhaps college is a time of such great growth because every semester is something new?

Instantly Waiting

I know at least three people followed the GPS tracks on Friday and Saturday as we trekked up and down Mt. Rainier. In many ways the entire story played out there in a new coordinate every ten minutes. Headed up or down? On the summit or not?

In this filtered world of everyone becoming his and her own media company the simplicity of the answers to the two questions above almost seem like enough to occupy the entire story. Did we summit? No. Done, story over, you can click the link below and go read about the Kardashians.

You didn't really click on that did you?

We live in an instant world. I am trying to upload the amazing GoPro video from the 15 minutes around when we turned around on summit day on Mt. Rainier, and it looks to take a good 2-3 hours at coffee shop bandwidth rates. I have both an expedition blog post to write up and a post about my little run up and down to camp Muir, and both are going to take an hour plus of my time.

I feel the need to be perfect, instantly, all the time, and I am not. I am not any of those things. Simply waiting to tell you what an amazing trip I had to Washington is hard even for me. Good things take time. In my opinion often we appreciate things we had to work harder for than things that came easy to us. You will have to wait to hear about our adventures on Mt. Rainier and wait to watch the video. Sure, you can see the result already, we didn't summit, everyone lived, not even any frostbite. Yet if we only restricted ourselves to the instantly available, what would be the point? What would be the point of working hard, of suffering, of enduring the intolerable?

In this twenty-first century things are going to be different. Fewer people are going to understand why they have to wait for something. Once the speed picks up, they will forget the previous times. What if I had to hand write this story and mail it to my family and friends? It could takes weeks to tell people. I would certainly regale a small handful with the details, but most would turn away, uninterested, in two minutes. What a strange world we live in.

I Live in Iowa: Week 205

Another week living the dream! But seriously, my life is pretty awesome, and I've lived longer than many of my peers. Weekends like this simply remind me of that. 

Work was good. I skipped a work trip to Germany, so I was the only drivetrain guy in the office. When we had a little drivetrain incident Monday my being in the office helped resolve the incident by Wednesday afternoon and "saving face" so to say. 

Having just finished a production launch every little issue that comes up has to be jumped on because if we don't figure it out quickly it could affect 100 machines instantly. That's always the challenge, we don't know what we don't know. I don't wonder how vechicles seem to have unique flaws any more. We test, we retest, and sometimes test a third time at full machine level, and then we go to production and truth is, there are certainly failures out there we don't know about yet.

One visit to the physical therapist and one to the orthopedic doctor, who wrote an MRI for me. Ugh, I don't even want to think about it now. I honestly think it was a tendon thing and between rest and physical therapy it's healed, or nearly. 

Then this weekend I attempted to climb Mt. Rainier with three of my friends and coworkers from Iowa. That is clearly too much of a story to include in my weekly summary. 

Next Stop: Camp Muir

Here we Go!

We can Talk About This Some More...

Decision making, it's the definition of white collar. We aren't necessarily the people who do the work, sometimes we are, but we are the people that make decisions. In the context of work those decisions are balancing, quality, price and service. I typically work on the quality vs price side of things, although service does come into the equation often enough. 

I read this on a blog maybe two years ago and ever since it has inspired me to make more decisions when I can. Frequently analysis paralysis happens when people don't want to make a decision with the information available, but look for more information. This can delay decision making for days, weeks, and on occasion months. Eventually things typically get escallated to the point where someone makes a decision. The funny thing being, the higher the problem goes, the fewer details the person often gets. I realized this in a recent meeting where someone threw up multiple road blocks, subtly suggesting a decision we had made was premature. After every question, we presented what had already been done, and near the end of the meeting he did not object to the decision we had made. 

Communication. Wowzers, I didn't realize how little time I would actually spend doing math, science and designing as an engineer. I feel like I go to meetings, talk to people, and more or less shepard parts through their testing and manufacturing cycles. 

The World is Still Here

Sometimes I do something, something that feels like the world should change, or possibly end, because I did it. Yet that hasn't happened.The truth is it won't happen for anything that I do. The point being, it's okay to take risks. We live in such a risk adverse culture that simply climbing a mountain seems like a death wish to many people. In the United States you can take a risk and figuratively fall flat on your face, I know I have multiple times, and not worry about things like where my next meal will come from.

Risk seems to have more to do with embarrassment than actual bodily harm most of the time. The nice thing about taking risks is regardless of the outcome, you took the risk, and future risks won't look the same because you have lived through past risks. The world is still here, and we still want you in it.