mornings

The first hour of the day around here can be so challenging.  The adults in the house all cling to the fading memory of sleep like shipwreck survivors to bits of floating debris, while the youngest resident and his dog are ready to get the dervishes whirling immediately.

There is something about feeling rushed: getting the morning ablutions in, breakfast begun, the dog outside-and-back-and-fed, and food on the table before the Tyrannosaur 2 year old Rex realizes he's hungry...sometimes both the intensity of this chunk of routine and it's quotidian tedium makes me crabby.

I'm beginning to suspect that is one of those cases where the counter intuitive option may be best; perhaps I should rise earlier to sneak up on the routine when it doesn't expect me.

Depression is a sneaky bitch

You are rolling along, and things are OK, and then BAM - everything tastes like a penny, looks like a pile of Sunday night homework, sounds like soulless pop...

Depression is sneaky because it disguises itself, altering your perception immediately, making you feel that this state of bleak is normal...and having that feeling that your state of normal is bleak feeds into a dangerous downward cycle towards a more robust depression.

I hate feeling this way; I like to believe that I have achieved a heightened consciousness of self that allows me to recognize my own depression (to see through that disguise) pretty quickly, but that belief is likely delusional.

In Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" books, and specifically those dealing with the witches, he introduces this concept of "third thoughts" and "fourth thoughts" - the general idea is that everyone is capable of having "second thoughts" wherein they apply a basic level of analysis to their own thinking, but that sometimes it may be valuable to analyze your analysis.  The recursive nature of this analysis brings a danger of paralysis, and so must be applied judiciously.  I'm no master of the judicious application of self-analysis, but I would like to believe that such analysis has added value a time or two.

the man period

Can we talk about my cycle for a minute?  There have been volumes written about ladies' menstrual cycles, but I'm not aware of much in popular literature about hormonal periods in men (or really much about other types of cycles in women beyond those associated with their monthly ovulation and expulsion.)

I know a little about circadian rhythms; I have heard some theories about Seasonal Affective Disorder, but in my experience of living my own life, I have come to recognize a fairly consistent ebb and flow of certain feelings, desires, moods, and motivations that are suggestive of a system at work.

I suspect that I am not alone in the experience of these macro and micro cycles.

just for visual interest...still trying to address super long blocks of text.  and it's a nice shot!

So what types of cycles am I talking about?  Maybe a bullet point list will provide an anchor for the discussion; the following is not an exhaustive list, but shows several that come to mind right away:

• sexual desire / libido
• motivation to exercise
• "productivity"
• clean the house (nesting?)
• increase effort at job
• home improvement
• give time to creative pursuits
• attention to diet
• tend to extra-family relationships
• general mood

The language in the above is mostly tilted to "positive" sounding ideas, mainly because I'm in an upbeat cycle today; I could have easily bulleted a cycle of "laziness" in place of "productivity."

In terms of sexual desire, I think there are some generally recognized, macro-level cycles...can we agree here that most young men enter a period of heightened sexual energy and desire in their mid-teens that persists into the mid 20s?  And it's not like there is a continental shelf-style drop-off thereafter, but by the time a man gets into his 50s, he can still be sexually active in a healthy way while still having half as much drive as at 16 years old.

phone cam snap while hiking in the Presidio

I believe there is a generally accepted similar cycle for the ladies, supposedly "peaking" in the late 20s / early 30s.  But what I'm interested in here are sub-cycles, material rises and falls in libido during the course of a month or quarter or a given year...

I love my wife, and I'm consistently attracted to her and by her, so let's assign a baseline level of sexual interest for me at a level 5 (level 1 being "I have the flu, she has the flu, and we're staying the night at my grandmother's house" and level 10 being "it's the second night of a vacation in San Francisco and we are fully rested and have just enjoyed hyper-fresh seafood and just enough Sonoma red wine and we have nowhere to be in the morning and no distractions tonight and my breath smells just fine, thank you very much and several additional things are just right so get over here right now or we may both explode apart instead of together").

So if a normal day is a 5, why is that I find myself cycling through days-long periods of sustained 7s or a week or so of 3s?  To date, I have not found any consistent correlation to exercise or diet or good days / bad days at work...

Binder Park Zoo in MI, a must visit

I have found similar cycles in my moods...my friends and family can surely attest (thank you to not do so here in this space with too much volume) that every six to nine weeks I enter these foul mood periods, where my sensitivities spike and my relationships feel the strain.  As easy as it would be to make this all about me, I really do suspect other people have similar cycles (maybe to a greater or lesser degree than my own experience), and in that commonality, I see an opportunity to learn some things about human nature.

In terms of productivity, I have these bursts of thoughts that lead to things like the laundry shelf, and other ideas about expanding my business, or landscaping the yard, and while having these thoughts it all seems so clear: the way forward, the value of the idea, the desire to start right away.  But if life's practical considerations prevent an immediate start, often a few days after the idea struck, the inspired momentum fades...and then a sort of self-perpetuating depression cycle sets in as I try to regain that original inspired feeling.

FRODO!

I guess what I want is to better understand my cycles, to get a better sense of the normal duration and intensity, with a goal of managing or anticipating both the valuable opportunities and also the troubling aspects.  Sort of like how by 17 or so, young ladies start figuring out whether menses makes them too crazy (I've known women who have virtually no emotional volatility around their period, and those who really could benefit from a visit to the menstrual hut; what further complicates the situation is that some of the emotionally volatile category recognize this challenge and try to accommodate while others always seem to be surprised by those days...I'm now thinking about the possible repercussions of this parenthetical aside).

I imagine that it's not "healthy" to try to prolong the "good" periods too long, and I further imagine that the "down" parts of the cycle are also important to our emotional development...but I have to think that there are mechanisms we (I, in the event that this sort of cycle is something unique to me) could employ to amplify the positive that comes out of the "up" cycles and to mitigate the damage caused by the "downs".

my wife's first attempt at ikebana - great huh?

So?  Do you have cycles?  Do you have ideas on how to measure or manage them?

update on my quest for lean

This week provided some frustrations (weight gains, each day!) but also some opportunities for insights, into both my diet and my life in general.

If you've been following along with my diet, you know that it calls for eating lots of protein, fiber, and leafy greens for 6 days and then a "carb load" day that is essentially a free-for-all for the carbs I wanted but couldn't eat during the 6 days.  (My carb day is on Saturday, and I CAN'T WAIT)

Well, I have been following the plan like a champ, and I have been experiencing some challenges.

1.  I have been tracking my pounds and inches faithfully, and my inches have not budged (the book suggests I should be dropping inches like Palin drops boneheaded comments).  And my weight?  That deserves its own spot in my outline:

2.  The pattern last week and this week are similar, with a steady rise in pounds coming out of carb day, and continuing into the middle of the week, peaking Wednesday or Thursday and then sliding a bit into the weekend. Last Saturday's morning weigh-in (before the carb-tastrophe began) was my lowest weight I recorded in a VERY long time...but then?  I basically gained it all back, back to my "pre-diet" weight.  Which has led me to this critical insight:

3.  Poop is very important.  4HB doesn't address poop at all.  Reading on a Kindle gives you the ability to search by keywords pretty easily, so I'm pretty sure I didn't miss some critical section on keeping the bowels moving.  The closest the book comes is when it address "gastric emptying" as triage for the carb day...and I can honestly say that I have no problem "going" on carb day.  Carb day is wonderful, even if a bit gross.

Now, I know that several of my readers are well versed in nutrition and exercise and whatnot, and I'm sure that several of you are shaking your heads and saying "what did you think would happen after eating a whole cow's worth of beef in 3 weeks?!"

To which, I respond, "I didn't really know."

no particular reason, just wanted to share.  Cheese, Gromit!

I guess if I had thought about it more, but here's the rub:  as previously mentioned, I'm eating TONS more fiber and healthy greens than ever before in my life, and I would have also thought that these would keep the wheels a-turnin', so to speak.  As it turns out, you also needs massive amounts of water to allow the fiber to do its job...

So I have added water, along with a probiotic (acidophilus capsules) and a daily multi-vitamin in search of a better poop.  Because, again, I have to tell you, poop is important.  As I mentioned before, I can apparently carry well over a pound of pee in me, and now I suspect that my midweek weight gains point to the amount of poo in my trunk (sorry if this is TMI or too gross...I'm sympathetic now to Dooce's fear that people think her blog is poo-centric)

I also tweaked my food consumption on Wednesday and Thursday of this week (and so far for Friday) to drastically reduce the amount of meat...the last two days I've mainly eaten eggs, beans, spinach, and broccoli (I had a little salami last night and a late night bite of chorizo...), and things seem to be loosening up a bit.  And, tellingly enough, the weight has slid lower each trip to the water closet.

I'm still able to follow the diet, as I can get the 20+ grams of protein from 3 - 4 eggs and from the beans, but the lack of variety (and frankly, the missing tasty tasty fatty meat taste) will make this version of the diet less attractive and sustainable for me.

So let's take stock of this diet for a minute, and what else it has led to:

• Basic rules:  don't eat carbs at all for 6 days; eat tons of protein, fiber, and greens; "cheat" one day
• Don't exercise (much) - the book suggests that intense work-outs will affect the results of the bio-chemistry at play
• so I eat lots more veggies than before (unqualified positive, right?)
• I eat lots more fiber (should be good for cholesterol, colon health, etc)
• For 6 days out of 7 I consume no soft drinks, beer, HF corn syrup, cookies, candy...
• I've restarted taking a robust multi-vitamin / mineral supplement (I've been on again / off again on the supplements for years...)
• and I've begun taking a probiotic (should have started a long time ago)
• I'm drinking considerably more water (good for kidney and liver function, complexion, toxin removal, etc)

My point is that the diet has turned into far more than a diet...it's a lifestyle shift.  And that shift has brought both positive and negative externalities to the diet process.  The diet has led to a significant and expanding commitment to new routines...And this point leads to some more general life lessons.

ducks at the mall - again, just breaking things up a little for visual relief

There is a reason that our plans often fail; it's hard for humans to stick to a plan.

My friend knows that yoga will help his back and his mood, but occasionally "forgets" to practice.

Another friend knows she needs to save money consistently, period over period, but struggles to maintain the plan.

The faithful see themselves fail in their struggle with sin, and rededicate themselves to the fight, only to see the cycle repeat.

We resolve each year at the holidays to make a better plan for the next year, a more practical AND loving plan...

I plan every day to manage my family's tiredness in more effective ways...

Heck, New Year's resolutions are probably still fresh on everyone's mind right now, and those jokes provide plenty of fodder for this discussion.

So what is to be done?  We have to plan, right?  Maybe we just need to make different sorts of plans, create a system that allows for slippage and reconsiderations on the fly, a pragmatic approach to the 1 hour - 1 day - 1 week - 1 year - 5 year - 10 year plans...

My bias is to apply the "everything is relative" and "just stoically roll with it" model to this discussion, but I could be wrong.

lose the fat

As I mentioned in my review of 4-Hour Body, I'm trying out a diet to cut my body fat percentage; the diet is based at least in part on some recommendations from that book.

First, the rationale for cutting the fat:  I've never been especially concerned with carrying around a few extra pounds (maybe a key advantage of not being: a woman, "metro", non-bear gay...), and although my self-image is not really much changed, I have crossed another one of those "getting old" milestones, and I have had a couple of slightly high blood pressure readings, and and and...I want to see if I can lose some fat.

(editor's note: this post ended up getting pretty long and I didn't want it to dominate the front page, so I'm putting the rest under the fold)

on self experimentation

alternate title: reviewing 4-Hour Body.

OK, so I read the book.  It did take me longer than I thought; the book is long, and as I told a friend it's a sort of "kitchen sink" approach that is probably better suited to a blog environment than a standalone book.

This is going to be a long and winding post, so I'll offer a micro-review up here, above the fold, and talk more about the details and my plan to incorporate some of the ideas from the book in my own quest for self-improvement below the fold.

The book is a masterpiece of marketing.  The author, Timothy Ferriss (wealthy and famous from his previous book 4-Hour Workweek) leveraged a lot of "new media" and some other clever (or annoying; it's subjective) mechanisms to get the book a great deal of exposure.

The book addresses a handful of topics of interest to most people: how to lose weight (body fat); how to build muscle; how to improve your sex life (the experience itself, not necessarily the quest for partners); how to sleep better.

His contention is that there are some basic "hacks" that people can employ to get more out of what they have already, one example being that while people have to eat, we do not have to eat refined carbohydrates (anything white, per the book).

So the short review conclusion is that I got value from the reading, and can recommend portions of the book to others for reference, but I found the style lacking and most of the real content highly derivative of other well known sources from recent years.

For more, and for my personal application, click on through.

and...we're back!

Wow, a lot has happened since we left off here eight days ago.

I finished the 4-Hour Body, and started a diet program based in large part on the book's recommendations, and I'm already seeing some measurable differences.

We hosted a Christmas holiday dinner.

And there was something else, can't put my finger on it right now, um...oh yeah:

WE HAD A BABY!

He came a little early, but in the "full term" range of weeks, and everything is awesome except for the 8 whiskey + 2 Jaeger shot feeling one has in their head after labor+delivery+3 nights of little sleep.

So, we're back, and I hope to ramp up the posting again right away.

no apologies

I wonder when the word "apology" in the modern, English usage changed from the Greek apologia meaning (basically a defense).

We have this word "apologist" that we use to describe a person who writes or speaks in defense of an idea: CS Lewis is a great example of a popular culture Christian apologist.

But our noun "apology" or verb "to apologize" is a different bird.

I've known people in my life that apologize all the time, for everything...I find myself saying "I don't want you to be sorry...I don't want you to say "sorry"..."

And I've known people that cannot seem to say their sorry, even when they kick the dog (metaphorically).




What I don't get is why there isn't any sort of standard understanding of what it means to apologize, how it works, how one is supposed to respond to an apology...

I dated a young woman who suggested that I should apologize if her feelings were hurt, whether such hurt was my intention or not...it was a powerful suggestion and I have incorporated it into my life in the years since.  It sometimes leads to an apology like this:

I'm sorry that you are upset.  It was not my intention to

hurt you, and I'm trying to understand what happened

in this case so that I can avoid that in the future.

Some people resent this sort of apology; to them it may sound to similar to the non-apology that goes "I'm sorry, but...".  The "but" is the problem.

A lesson that took me a long time to learn was that relationships are hard.  We all hurt each other all the time, generally in unintentional and unaware ways.  This isn't cynicism or "darkness" in my perspective; it's a realization that proceeds from something like the NTTATS theory...we experience life in nuanced ways that differ from those around us.  We hear things in "the tone" of people speaking to us that they may not be aware of; we perceive slights and social awkwardness in a way particular to our lifelong collected conditioning.

So what to do?  My therapist (it's been a few years since I sat on the couch) suggested that in my own life I needed to find the "sensitivity dial" and roll it back a few levels.  Apparently mine "goes to 11" and to function in the outside world you need to be set around 5...too much higher and you are a bundle of perceived hurts; too much lower and you are a sociopath.

In honor of the holiday season and all that it brings, I'm going to tweak my dial and shoot for these two goals:

1. have my apology engine cranked up and ready to go
2. lower my expectations for apologies from everybody else

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it may be obvious but I'm experimenting with embedded videos!

Knights in White Satin

This is how I heard the Moody Blues song when I was a kid - a kid obsessed with all things "medieval" and spent my nights in Star Wars print cotton, reading about knights and dragons and fair ladies waiting to be courted.

It's pretty much a non-sequitur for you guys, but a friend asked me to write about "moods and productivity".  I guess the inspiration for the request comes from the fact that he (and I!) can both be moody bastards and tend to bounce from periods of excited insight and desire to produce to somewhat more subdued periods when we are convinced that our labors are for naught and our ideas are unworthy.

In my experience, the environment strongly affects my productivity.  The scene above was the site of a frenetic writing spell I went through over a course of 2 days when I hand wrote a couple of chapters of a lovely story in the tradition of Carl Hiassen or Christopher Moore...the relative ability to not think about anything more pressing than when I was going to get my next Balashi somehow freed me up to think about interesting characters involved in a whacky plot.  Of course, I didn't finish that novel, which may be fodder for a future blog post dealing with unfinished projects...

But back to moodiness and productivity!  I also have anecdotal evidence to offer that a nice walk (alone or in company) or a long run often sets my mind onto tracks of Ideas, and Plans, and Lists of Things to Do.  But a funny thing about (my) human nature is that tiny little setbacks to the implementation of the Ideas/Plans/LoTtD can absolutely blow me up.  Why is it, in that moment of setback (just prior to the blowing up) is it so hard to remember that original inspiration, that feeling of possibility that infused the moment of inspiration...and why is it so hard to remember to go for a walk when you're feeling down?

I have a heuristic I apply to my friends that seem stymied or "down" but that I often fail to apply to myself.  I ask:

Have you had enough water today?

Have you done any stretching /yoga?

When did you last eat and/or have a poop?

Have you tried going for a walk?

It's amazing how often this works and I don't have to resort to next level heuristics (which involve standing on a chair, lying in the floor, and possible doing a handstand.

CFA Level 2

I'm a candidate for level 2, scheduled to take the test in June 2011.  It's been so long since I passed the level 1 exam that I would have to think on it for a while to recall exactly when that was.  I intend to chart some of my progress through the studying process; as of now I'm limiting my study material to the official readings provided by the CFA Institute: 6 workbooks covering the various topics that inform the exam questions.

My blog is in no way related to the CFA Institute beyond the fact that I am a candidate to sit for the level 2 exam.

Run Like A [insert awesome reference of your own choosing]

I'm no athlete.  I wish I could say that I make up for that with other socially valuable qualities, but I'm not always sure about those either.

Don't get me wrong - I can throw a football in a tight spiral, I can hit a decent free throw percentage, and I started water skiing when I was barely old enough to walk - but I was never one of those kids that people wanted on their ball team.  One of my chief struggles was with a skill so central to sport that a relative lack of ability is a huge obstacle to enjoying sport; in a nutshell, I couldn't run.

In high school there was this program or challenge to get the Presidential Physical Fitness award, and to qualify you had to hit so many targets: some number of pull-ups, a jump rope challenge, etc.  One of the targets was to run a mile, maybe in 9 minutes?  What I remember for sure was that I completely flubbed the mile, and it was the only category that was keeping me from the award...I ultimately ran for it again and just barely made the mark.  I wasn't overweight, I was a reasonably active kid, but something just did not work for me in the running department.

Fast forward 15 or so years, and I was still no runner.  The wife and I would bike for miles, I could swim a half mile in the pool, but when I laced up the sneakers and went for a run it always felt TERRIBLE.  I don't recall why, in this context, I thought reading a book about running would be interesting, but I bought a copy of McDougall's Born to Run and absolutely fell for it.

Read it for yourself, if you like, but the thumbnail summary from me to you: people evolved to run, and to run with the equipment god gave us.  I started over, learning to run in a "minimalist"s style and I haven't looked back.

The first weeks of my adult running life I got up to a couple of miles without a walk break; a year later I ran an unofficial half marathon along Chicago's lake front.  Running is now my primary form of weight control and physical conditioning.

At this point in my life I have decided to leave evangelism behind, so I won't be knocking on anyone's door to spread the love of barefoot running, but if you want to chat about it and ask some questions, feel free to comment on this post.