Category Archives: Attitude

run angry

March 6, 2014 6:58 AM , 2 Comments ,

Well I don’t necessarily mean angry but sometimes you get those days when your personal life or home life is just getting to you or maybe work is being particularly challenging.

I just had it.  My mood was just at that point.  My blood was up and cold weather or not I had to get out on the road.  No warm up or stretch or slowly building up speed, just run.

My feet pounding the pavement hard.  My fists practically punching the air as I strode harder and harder.  Glancing left and right at a red light.  Good.  No traffic.  I wasn’t planning to stop anyways.

Lengthening my stride as much as my short legs can.  I reach the park.  The trail leading to the park is flooded over.  I grab the railing and vault it.  Haven’t done that in decades but I can’t stop now.  Slipping on the mud a bit.  Shaking it off like a dog.  Need to keep going.

No one’s out today.  I cruise straight through like a missile.  Reach the other side and there’s solid traffic.  No chance to get across.  I run alongside till the traffic abates and get to the median.  More traffic so I hop and run on the median till I get my chance.

More than halfway done and not a twinge of fatigue even though I’m still going all out.  A little old lady walking along in the distance.  I will soon pass her but the sidewalk is narrow.  I look farther down at the oncoming traffic.  I’m going to run round her using the street.

My eyes estimate the traffic’s distance and speed and my body’s senses give me an estimate of my speed.  A quick mental calculation gives me the probability of pulling this off.  Everyone can do this.  It’s instinctual.  You do it every time you catch a ball.  I lunge sideways and run round her and then leap back onto the sidewalk never breaking stride.

A major intersection.  I glance at all the traffic lights I can see.  Run to the median and have to wait for crossing traffic.  I pause and flex my knees.  They’re stiff and ache a bit.  I keep going after the last car passes.

The last stretch.  Finish strong.  Stretch out those steps as far as possible.  Almost slide into the front door.

Now the sweat pours off me.  My eyes red rimmed from the salty sweat in them.  I don’t think I have a spare ounce of water in my entire body.

Shower off in ice-cold water.  I don’t even remember what upset me.

Posted in: attitude, running

Decision trees in our lives

March 2, 2014 6:29 AM , 2 Comments ,

I was going through my newsfeed the other day and a link came up for Huffpost live.  It was a discussion with Crispin Glover on the message that media puts out in some movies.

Interview

First of all I never realized that Crispin Glover was that deep a thinker honestly.  He’s apparently quite perceptive and insightful.  This discussion got me thinking on a different tack about how decisions affect our lives.

(by the way, this is one of the reasons that I love cinema.  You can derive so many themes, ideas, and visions from a movie that it’s astonishing)

In the above movie that Glover references (“Back to the future”) his character, George, makes a bad decision at a young age that affects the rest of his life.  He has been making bad decisions based on fear all of his life but this one really affect him and his future wife.

Basically he allows his future wife to be raped by the neighborhood bully.  This event victimizes both of them and they live in a spiral of hopelessness and shame leading them downwards on a dark path of despair. George takes a menial job and allows his tormentor to continue to harass him.  George and his wife end up trapped living a life that is neither satisfactory nor fulfilling.

George’s son goes back in time and intervenes causing George to make the right decision and this in turn affects the rest of his life.

When the son returns to the altered future he finds that his parents have been emboldened by the correct choice that George made and their life is a success in every way.  The same two people, the same town, but totally altered by one seemingly tiny change in the past.

Plugging all this back into the real world, how have the decisions in our past affected our current life situation?  You make that initial bad decision back in kindergarten and twenty years later you’re working in McDonald’s rather than going to Harvard.

A gross overstatement to be sure but I don’t think that the average young person gives enough weight to these seemingly innocuous life choices.  Go out and party on a Friday night or study, burn through your weekly paycheck or save it, stand up for yourself or let someone else walk over you.

One or two decisions you can probably bounce back from.  But it’s when you make bad decision after bad decision and they pile up on you and suddenly you find that your options aren’t that open anymore.  Suddenly you no longer have a good or bad option, suddenly it’s bad option or even worse option.  What’s more, the more you make these bad decisions the more you become accustomed to the penalties attached to them and even grow to expect them as a part of your daily life.

How do we break this downward trend?  Is it even breakable?

Well yes of course it is.  We can hope for an outside agency to intervene (like someone with a time machine or a crazy millionaire philanthropist willing to invest in you) but that rarely happens.

Most of the time it’s going to happen by making a hard “right” choice some time and following it up with even more hard “right” choices until you climb back to where you want to be in your life.

That’s what makes these early choices on your decision tree so vitally important.  Once you bend that stalk in the wrong direction it takes a mighty effort to turn it back the way it should be going.

Posted in: attitude, decisions, goals, habits, movies

The doldrums

February 18, 2014 6:45 AM , 2 Comments ,

Despite trying to keep myself going at full speed all the time (or perhaps because of it) sometimes I get into periods of time where my energy is at a low ebb.

Work doesn’t appeal to me, neither does exercise, writing, not even brainless activities like web surfing.  I feel just drained of energy.  In Spanish I would say that I have no “animo” related to animation.  To be clear, it’s not a depression but a lack of will to do anything.

These type of days can play havoc with the rest of my week.  Specially on days when I have more than enough to do already.  I do what I can but without any real enthusiasm.  I feel overwhelmed as things get done hardheartedly or don’t get done at all.

I recognized these patterns years ago but never knew what to do about them.  I shrugged my shoulders and figured that this was the way that things were.  Falling behind schedule was acceptable to me.

But no longer.

I can’t allow errant fluctuations in my energy dictate my life for me.  So what to do?

Well firstly I recognize these periods of listlessness when they occur.  I don’t just hope that they will go away but address them.

Next, get onto my scheduled activities and force myself to go through them.  We all have things that need doing and need to be done well.  Focus, focus, focus.  Make an extra special effort to get things done right.

Lastly, economize my energy.  I have things that need doing and things that would be nice to do.  I focus on the essentials on these days.  Leave the other stuff for another day.  But note them down so I don’t totally forget about them.

The doldrums will still come and go over time but there is no reason why I need to let them rule my life.

 

 

Posted in: attitude, energy, habits, schedules

The killer instinct

February 12, 2014 7:18 AM , 2 Comments ,

I had to choose a physical activity elective in college to meet the school’s physical fitness requirement.  I could have gone with something conventional like weight lifting, tennis, or running but I wanted to stretch my boundaries (that’s part of what college is for, right?) so I decided to try handball.

Handball is a little known sport.  Racquetball is the better known court game and with good reason.  Handball is not for the faint of heart.  The key differences between the two court games center on the ball and the equipment to return the ball.

Unlike the racquetball, the handball is a nearly solid piece of hardened vulcanized rubber.  This increases the amount of energy that it can return when it bounces.  It is also smaller in size making it a harder target to see.

The second difference is the equipment used to return the ball.  In racquetball you get a nice solid racquet to bat at the ball with.  In handball it’s your own fleshy palm that takes the beating.  The only protection you get is a kidskin glove that mitigates scratches but really does nothing to soften the blow.  I’ve seen people unable to remove their gloves after a match because their hands had become so swollen.  They had to soak their hands in ice water to get the gloves off.

Despite of the rigors the class was full to capacity and after learning the basics of the sport the instructors put us in a round robin style tournament.  We would play one match per day and the winner of the match would be the one that got to 21 points.  One particular match stands out in my mind.

I was playing against a slightly younger guy.  He was blond, tall, but not very athletic.  He walked slightly stooped.  He was heavy but not fat.  I recall that he had a very lethargic demeanor.  He just seemed to not want to be in the class and had an attitude of wanting to get this out-of-the-way and move on with his day.

We barely exchanged a word as the match started.  It soon became apparent to me that this guy was just going through the motions.  I quickly began racking up points.  8, 11, 15, finally the score reached 18 to 3 in my favor.  I was feeling cocky and felt some disdain for this guy.  He was barely trying after all.  Yet at the same time I felt pity.  Part of my brain thought “no one should lose like that.  Give him a few points.”  So I deliberately lost the service and let him serve.

I missed some easy returns and soon the score was 18 to 6.  I figured that was good enough.  Time to finish this off.  But then something happened.  His serves started coming with more force, his returns were running me back and forth and making me slam against walls.

18 to 12, 18 to 15.  Had he been gulling me?  If he had it was a masterful performance.  Did I just totally misread this guy and was he in fact a wolf in sheep’s clothing?

Whatever the case may be, I was breathing hard and rivulets of sweat were pouring down my face, stinging my eyes.  I dove and missed another return.  19 to 18 in his favor.

The next point seemed to go on forever.  Finally I caught a return by the very tip of my middle finger flexing it farther back than it should go.  Somehow my finger didn’t break off and sent the ball back.  The ball just barely tapped the front wall and fell flat, taking him by surprise and making him miss.  I had the service back.

My finger throbbed in pain.  I felt sure it was either broken or dislocated.  He sauntered back to receive my service.  The smirk on his face irritated me.  I smacked the ball as hard as I could and lobbed the service right through where he was standing.  It made him scramble to get out-of-the-way. An “ace”.

19 all.

The fingers on my left hand wanted to fall off.  No choice but to serve with my off-hand.  Barely any strength in my service.  We go back and forth.  A lucky return into a corner and the ball ricocheted all over the place.  No chance for him to return.

20 to 19.  Game point.

Another weak slap and we bob and weave all over the court.  He returns a power shot straight back to me on my left side.  I have no choice.  Punching the ball is not illegal though it is rare and for good reason.  It feels like I’ve punched a sledge-hammer coming straight at me.  I can feel a jolt of pain shoot up my arm.  It must have looked as painful as it felt because he just stands there gaping as the ball contacts the front wall and bounces on the floor.

game.

He mumbles the customary “good game” and leaves.  I don’t believe I ever saw him again.  As for me I head over to a nearby bus stop cafe and buy a giant cup full of ice and stick my hand in it for the rest of the morning.

I had nearly lost the match because I had not developed my competitive instinct sufficiently.  Lord knows I don’t approve of carrying competition to extreme levels but I also have to be wary of being totally docile.  That type of passivity can also be a vice.

Posted in: attitude, sports

optimism, pessimism, and me

February 8, 2014 6:43 AM , 1 Comment ,

A funny cartoon I saw last year:

3 glasses on a table. All filled to about mid level with a yellow liquid.  The bubble over the first glass reads “I’m half full” and he has a smile.  The second bubble reads “I’m half empty” and the glass has a frown.  The last bubble reads “I think this is piss” and the glass has a shocked expression.  The caption below all of them reads:

“Realists: the only ones who really know what is going on.”

Attitude can color every fact and action in your life.  A crowd of people can read the same news story and draw entirely different conclusions.  An event can alter two person’s futures in totally different ways just due to the way that their frame of mind processes the event.  That crucial first impression can be read in different ways by two people meeting the same person at the same time.

I’ve been called a pessimist by people I know and by online tests.  But I think the term has been used as a broad brush for anyone that doesn’t always look for the bright side of anything and everything.  Thing is that optimism isn’t all that good an outlook either.  You can trip and fall just as much by assuming that everything will turn out alright as by assuming that everything will fall apart.  The real world is so multi faceted and complex that I don’t think you can look at everything in a totally optimistic or pessimistic way.

My outlook on life is to hope for the best but prepare for the worst and to always see things as they are and not as I hope or dread that they are.  Tough advice to follow sometimes.  Specially when I have to struggle with my own fears and desires that want to set their own agendas within my mind.

After I make a decision or form an opinion about an object, an event, or a person I have to think to myself is this really the way things are or am I letting some unspoken filter alter my thought process?

Did I make that sale?  Is the roof going to make it one more year?  Will the economy get better?  Does she like me?  So many things to be concerned about.  So few concrete answers.  All I have to go on is my gut.

Posted in: attitude, life in general, personality, thought