Category: Incoherent Thoughts

The end is nigh!  Well at least for this weird and bizzarro year that has been known as 2020. For most of us, it began with high hopes but now is mostly focused on simply getting to late Spring/Summer of 2021 when (hopefully) the world becomes a more likable/normalized place. The reality is, it won’t.  Every generation has its defining moment, and the COVID-19 Pandemic will be it for this one. These defining moments can be game-changers, and I’m hoping for the most positive outcome from this one.  If anything, we’ve learned how interconnected and fragile this world can be.  It hasn’t taken much to upset the apple cart and cause many institutions, structures and, in turn, people to suffer. The Pandemic has put a spotlight on mental health issues, and my hope and prayer is that we don’t let this spotlight disappear as things normalize.  There will be costs associated to the last 10 months (and the next six or so) that won’t show up in traditional means but in the mental health category.  It will be important that we as a society don’t forget that and address this often-ignored and underserved area with proper resources and understanding. But this is a soapbox for another day. Hindsight is 2020 and I like to write a little bit about mine and how I coped with it. Consider a year in review.

Part 1 – Life happens while you’re making plans

I can break my year down into three distinct parts. The first part encompasses the first four months of the year. My 2019 was a year I wanted to forget. There were too many changes, deaths, and upheavals in my life. Part of it was that I bit off more than I could chew and ended up being chewed up and spit out instead. The saving grace for last year is that I started changing some of my patterns that would ultimately help me get through 2020. The first was my eating habits (intermittent fasting) and the second was listening to audiobooks. Those two simple changes that I made in September of 2019 are the reasons I’m leaving my 2020 better than I entered it.

Like most years, I made goals for 2020.  My initial goals were simple.  I wanted to use all my vacation in 2020, travel internationally, complete a 72- hour endurance race, get below 200 pounds.  By the end of March most of these goals would not be attainable or realistic for me because of factors outside my control. Only the last goal of getting below 200 pounds was feasible by this time.  Everything else would have to wait.   

But life wasn’t all bad—my 2020 got off to a great start.  A New Year’s Eve party led to a weeklong ski trip in Colorado in January.  I made choices to move on from people in my life and was in the beginning of “formal season” when Friday, March 13^th hit and the world turned upside down. If you are asking yourself what “formal season” is, it’s when there is a charity event almost every Friday and Saturday night in Birmingham through April.  For about $150 a weekend, you can get dressed up, dance, and connect with people.

When the world turned upside down, my activities became pretty much isolated to work and ensuring the safety of our essential work staff. This carried on through the rest of March and April. My only escapes were the trails and my audiobooks. I spent at least one—if not both—weekend days out in nature on the trails of Oak Mountain State Park, Cahaba River Park, or Red Mountain Park. By the middle-to-end part of April, it was the only thing keeping me sane. As an old friend used to tell me, nothing changes until something changes. So, something had to change.

Part 2 – Life Marches On… a 1,000 miles at a time

There is an old saying that an idle mind is the devil’s playground. I quickly discerned that the Pandemic was going to stretch on for a while, and knew I needed to better fill my time than watching Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus. I sat down and rethought and tinkered with my goals. I wrote about my new goals back on May 1^st in hopes to encourage others to make lemonade out of the lemons they were given. Funny thing about goals is, when you speak them into existence (especially print), they become more tangible. For those of you who are too lazy to look back, here were my goals:

Financial Goals

• Double the amount of money that I have in Savings by the end of the year. (Met)

Intellectual Goals

• Read/listen to 24-30 books by the end of the year. (40 Books)

Physical Goals

• Achieve and maintain weight range of between 195 – 205 lbs. (The Mendoza Line) (Maintained)
• Achieve a body fat percentage less than 15% (NOPE!)
• Complete more than 1, 100 mile or more races including The Endless Mile. (1/2)
• Complete a 1,000 kilometre race (1,000 mile complete)

Relational Goals

• Develop and maintain 2 or more new life enhancing/giving/breathing relationships this year. (1/2)

Spiritual Goals

• Seek God’s wisdom first in my decision making (subjective, but tried)
• Become literate in all of Jesus’s parables by the end of the year. (Never found right source material, added to 2021)

The second act, or part, falls neatly into the May through August timeframe. I took a hard run at the first four goal areas with the focus on my physical and intellectual goals. I got below the 200-lb. mark and have stayed there since May 1^st. That goal was more than six years in the making. I started the day at 200.5 lbs. and ended it at 195.5 lbs. The 1^st of 5, 50+ kilometer days over the summer didn’t hurt. That was all part of the 1,000-kilometer Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee (GVRAT 1000) that I finished in 58 days. I’d eventually sign up to complete the 1,000-mile Great Virtual Race Back Across Tennessee and complete it. When it was all said and done, I completed over 1,020 miles this past summer, and more than 90% of them were spent alone.

Running/walking my way through summer probably helped save my sanity. Well, that and some very deep conversations with friends on Facebook messenger. The movement goals became my primary focus and driver of my activity-planning for several months. It gave me something to look forward to and a purpose outside of work. There weren’t many days that I would go out and do less than 8-10 miles of intentional movement. I paired the activity with listening to my audiobooks. I went through all 14 books of the Wheel of Time Series as well the Bobiverse. I listened to half a dozen post-apocalyptic novels, several of which were based on flu pandemics. Station Eleven was probably the best out of that bunch. I closed out this year listening to the Witcher Series. All that walking/running/reading helped keep me off the couch this summer. My final count was 40 audio books for the year 2020. That’s a far cry from the two total books I read/listened to from 2001 – August 2019. My chiropractor has a saying, “Movement is Medicine.” For me, movement was medicine for the soul. The constant mileage helped prepare me for my end-of-year goals, two endurance races.

Part 3 – This Is Not the End…

The final part of my year encompasses the last four months of the year. But before I get to that, I failed to mention that I was trying the “wonderful” invention that is online dating during the Pandemic. I could write some really great stories that came from the experience. I met some great ladies along the way. I also learned that my pickup lines could have used some work. But it was one comment on a picture of young lady dressed in a T-Rex outfit that seemed to work. I simply said, “I think we’d get along.” Five months later that comment is still spot-on.

My summer focused on movement helped prepare me to go after several lofty goals I had set.  One was to complete my 5^th 100-mile race. My reach-goal was to do it in less than 30 hours, almost a full four hours faster than my fastest time. Hard work pays off! I set personal records for my 50k, 50 mile, 100K, 24 hours, and 100-mile distances at the 2020 Endless Mile. My time was 26:47:30 on that 100 miles (more than a full 7 hours faster than my previous best.) My 24-hour distance was 18 miles better than the previous high. I felt amazing this year compared to every other year. I never hit a pain cave or a point where I was questioning my sanity during that first 100 miles. In fact, my 100^th mile was sub-12-minute pace. The last quarter of that was sub-7-minute pace.

Unfortunately, my race ended at 105 miles. My knee hit an immediate snag and my race was done with over 18 hours left on the clock. I actually ran over 30% of that first 100 miles. I went out a little too hard and didn’t ever slow down. That in combination with bad form and an aggravated ankle were my downfall. Correctible issues and teachable moments. My reach distance goal was 150 miles for the Endless Mile, which was very attainable, even with a significant slowdown. A different time and place, I would have made the decision to push through, but I’m not as stubborn or stupid as I once was…I don’t think. I still had one more race on the calendar at the time. A Race Across the Years…

But life happens while you’re making plans. The Race Across the Years was what I had been training for since the original 3 Days at the Fair was cancelled back in the Spring. I was going to skip the 72-hour race and go straight for the jugular: A 500K race in late December/early January in Arizona. Most of my jumps in distances have been drastic. I went from doing 5k’s to half-marathons (13.1 miles) in 2013.  From half-marathons to ultramarathons (31.1 miles) in 2014. From ultramarathons to 100-milers in 2016. So why not 300-milers in 2020?

Not all stories have happy endings, but this one is neither happy nor sad. In the words of the great American philosopher Nicholas L. Saban, Jr., “It is what it is.” At the time I was finishing my laps at the Endless Mile the event was cancelled. Part of me is still wonder what if, but I’ve since moved on. I closed out my running this year on a brutal 55k known as the Blood Rock or Snow White and the Seven Dwarves as I prefer to call it. I’ve just tried to keep moving since then and maintain my sanity.

My 2020 ends in a better place than it started, and I found out just a little bit more about myself along the way. It’s easy to look back and see how I would have done things differently because, of course, Hindsight is 2020. Some day when I look back on this weird year, I’ll probably remember it more fondly than what it actually was: a detour. We are often only concerned with the destination and not the journey. This year definitely was a journey that I did not see coming, and I will still spend a long time processing. But I can’t complain about the end result in my world.    

One thing that I wish I had learned earlier in my life was that in order to I reach a goal you would often have to change behavior.  Sounds really simple, right?  Then why do most people fail? I believe the answer is simple: we fear change. It’s uncomfortable and we don’t like feeling that way.  But that begs the question, if a goal doesn’t push you out of your comfort zone is it really a goal or just the continuation of an existing behavior or a slight modification to it? My belief is that the continuation is nothing more than a new standard or norm.  There is nothing wrong with having standards, but goals should drive us to do something greater or something different.  I’ll use myself as an example.

When I graduated high school I felt very lost. I thought I had dreams of becoming an architect and even a psychologist. I had no plan to get there and looking back I think these were things I said to people to make others happy.  I graduated high school with a 2.78 GPA, ranked 222 out of 636 students in my graduating class. The fact that I remember things like this should tell you something about myself.  I believed these things matter, but I was lazy, unmotivated, and had no direction.  In many ways, I was just comfortable in my own uncomfortability. Psychologist might refer to this as a form of learned helplessness.  It wasn’t until after my first semester of college and experiencing academic success that I truly began to understand the importance of goals.

I was fortunate in the fact that I began to dream big during that time and I laid plans out on what I wanted to do. I can remember make a list of things I wanted to accomplish at Montevallo the summer before attending.  That list had about twenty things marked on it. It wasn’t until 2015 that I got to mark off the last thing on the list, getting inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. I didn’t have what most individuals would consider the typical college experience; I had an extraordinary one that I’m still reaping the benefits from today. Many of my goals during that time took me way out of my comfort zone and I had to grow to achieve them.  What held true then still holds true now. However, what I value and how I do so has changed significantly.  So my approach to goal setting has had to make that shift as well.  I still follow the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely) method, but I look and manage my goals through a five capitals model I was introduced to several years ago.

The Five Capitals

The basic idea behind the five capitals is that you use one capital to gain something in another capital.  The capitals in order of importance from least to most are financial, intellectual, physical, relational, and spiritual. Think of it like a pyramid, similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy with Physiological which has (basic needs) on the bottom and Self Actualization (fulfillment, enlightenment) at the top. The Five Capitals Model is similar with Financial on the bottom and Spiritual at the top. In between you will find Intellectual, Physical, and Relational in the middle.

The idea behind the five capitals can be found in Jesus’s parable of the crooked/shrewd manager in Luke 16:1-20.  The shrewd manager actually swindles his boss and his belongings to better himself when finds out he is going to be relieved of his duties, and likely losing a place to stay. I recommend you go back at read it AFTER reading this post. This tends to be one of the more confusing parables, but the point that Jesus was presenting was that the shrewd manager was using the most basic/financial means to gain relational favor.  In this case, somewhere to go after he was let go. Hence, he was using the most basic capital (financial) to attain a more valuable capital (relational).  This is an oversimplification of the story and the capitals, but I don’t really want to write 10,000 words delving into the deeper meanings.  My goal is to make you think of a different approach to goal setting as well as realizing you are likely going to have to change your behavior to reach it. But to give you a more practical understanding of the five capitals, let me give you two examples:

• You (yes,you) use your money to join a gym to get into better shape. You would be using your financial capital to gain physical capital.
• You buy a Dave Ramsey book to learn how to manage your money. You get good at managing your money and start helping people. You make new friends through helping them save money.  In this case you use some financial capital to gain intellectual capital.  Then you use the intellectual capital to gain relational capital.

I don’t feel like I can do the five capitals justice in 500 words or less, but I tried. If you really want to dig into the concept of these particular five capitals, I recommend Oikonomics by Mike Breen & Ben Sternke. That leads me to my goals for 2020. Hopefully you have a proper frame to view them through now.

Financial Goals

• Double the amount of money that I have in Savings by the end of the year.

Intellectual Goals

• Read/listen to 24-30 books by the end of the year.

Physical Goals

• Achieve and maintain weight range of between 195 – 205 lbs. (The Mendoza Line)
• Achieve a body fat percentage less than 15%
• Complete more than 1, 100 mile or more races including The Endless Mile.
• Complete a 1,000 kilometre race

Relational Goals

• Develop and maintain 2 or more new life enhancing/giving/breathing relationships this year.

Spiritual Goals

• Seek God’s wisdom first in my decision making
• Become literate in all of Jesus’s parables by the end of the year.

I started out my year with most of these goals. Most experts will tell you that you shouldn’t have more than 3 -5 goals, but I believe many of these are interconnected.  For example, I’m listening to audiobooks when I go running/walking.  That’s hitting at two goals at once for me. The goals that are underlined and in italics are ones that I’ve added since January.  If you notice, I’m still trying to use the SMART system in writing out these goals where possible.  A resolution to lose more weight provides no accountability nor destination weight. How can you measure something if you don’t know where you are going? What you can/will measure you manage.

I currently believe I will complete most of these goals.  I’ve had to change my behavior in all five capital areas to make progress towards them.  Some of these changes have been more uncomfortable than others. But I’m already starting to see benefits of it my physical and mental health. Others have noticed and asked what am I doing, so that’s one reason I’m writing it all down. I’m giving you the first step of my game plan. Goals become more real when you write them.

My questions for you today is are you making progress towards your goals? Do you even have goals?  Today is May 1^st.  There is no time like the present to start goal setting.  You still have 8 months left in this year. Heck, I started my quest to get below 200 lbs. well over six years ago.  I didn’t start changing my behavior to reach that goal until September of last year. Only then did I start making progess.  I know for many of you that 2020 has been a big ol’ bag of crap.  As an old friend used to always tell me, “Nothing changes until something changes.” So what’s stopping you?