What’s for Dinner?

Last week Kimberly Hartke published a piece on pellagra, wondering aloud if it might be the root cause of the upswing in public shootings and violence.

Pellagra is a vitamin B deficiency, symptoms include: fears, fatigue, depression, confusion, paranoia, hostility, rage and anxiety.  In the early part of the 20th Century the rural South was rampant with pellagra.  It is this, in part, which is to blame for the Southern stereotype of being slow, dumb and quick to anger.

Yesterday, my fellow Mental Meat Head, Jason C. Brown, re-posted an article from the Exhuberant Animal.  In it Frank Forencich touches on the high drama that surrounds the diet debate and our tendency to polarize our selves into factions that war over who has the monopoly on Truth.

Vegans and Vegetarians claim their lifestyle is not only healthy but humane and castigate all non-believers with the mantra, “Meat is murder.”  Carnivores and the relatively new Paleo movement counter “Wheat is murder” citing theirs is the original diet to which we are optimally evolved, anything less is an invitation to disease, sub par mental capacity and a general waste of available space.

Full disclosure:  I have spent a little time in each of these camps.

In college, much to my mother’s dismay, I embraced a vegetarian lifestyle and lived this way the two years I lived in Athens, Georgia.

Recently, I entered the Paleo camp, mainly as part of my ongoing effort to solve the dilemma of my waistline.  I enjoy my chops, steak and bacon and I do better on less grains than more, but I can tell when my body is craving carbs and I’ve learned it’s foolish to deprive myself of something my body says it needs.

Which brings me to my point.

I have met and worked with people who live very successful and healthy lives on a vegetarian diet, I’ve met near total carnivores who do the same and I know vegetarians and meat eaters who seem to always be sick or with a cold.

So what conclusions can we draw from all of this, seemingly contradictory, information?

Here’s what I get.  Nutrition is of fundamental importance.  If you’re not getting the nutrition your body needs it doesn’t work right and can go completely haywire, prompting us to behave in ways we otherwise wouldn’t, possibly with disastrous results.

The specifics of that nutrition is a highly individual experience, each one of us is slightly different, our needs vary based on a host of variables.

This may be a radical thought, but our taste buds evolved to direct us toward what we need.

Profit based food systems take advantage of how taste buds work and try to direct us based on their motives, not our nutritional ones.

My only dietary advice then is to base your diet on real food.  It it takes much more than a sharp knife and a good stove or oven to prepare, you might be better off giving it a pass.

Stay strong.

Brad Hawley

I don’t know if you’re the praying type, but if you are, Brad Hawley and his family could certainly use your prayers.

On Monday, while training at a local Iron Tribe Fitness, Brad slipped from a chin up bar and landed on his head.  He was rushed to the hospital and had surgery for a cerebral hemorrhage.  At the latest report from his family, he is recovering but still having trouble breathing on his own.

I do not know Brad.  I have no direct connection to his family or to Iron Tribe Fitness.  I discovered this news via Facebook.  Iron Tribe is a competitor and I’ve been an admirer of their marketing for some time.  I keep tabs on them like I would any competitor.

Those who know me well also know I have been a critic of some of their methods.

I do not glibly write this post.  In fact, I’ve undergone a great deal of internal debate over whether I should publish my thoughts on this subject at all.  The last thing I want is to further my business at someone else’s misfortune.

Brad Hawley’s accident is a huge misfortune.  One that he and his family will be dealing with for some time.

Because I am not intimately acquainted with Iron Tribe I do not know what their internal processes are right now.  Through Facebook and online I see the outpouring of tremendous support.  Iron Tribe is to be commended for having formed such a tight knit community that readily jumps to one another’s support.

What I hope is going on is an internal reassessment of their methodologies and general approach to training.  Iron Tribe is no longer a CrossFit affiliate, but they began as one, and have brought with them some of the less desirable qualities of this successful affiliation of gyms.

My main criticism is the valuing of volume and work capacity at the expense of all else.  The exercises that CrossFit and Iron Tribe employ are not the issue.  Movement is movement and, depending on your goals, any movement can be valid.  Taking a complex movement and performing a high number of reps as quickly as possible, however, is a recipe for disaster.

My heart goes out to Brad and his family.  I wish him a speedy and complete recovery.  I hope that Iron Tribe is able, a year from now, to use this story as one of personal triumph and inspiration.

I also hope the coaches and mangers at Iron Tribe see this for the warning that it is.

I believe, as a coach and a trainer, I am responsible for what happens in my gym.  I set the tone.  I train my clients, not only how to perform exercises but to have an internal dialog.  Part of that dialog is learning to know when enough is enough and when to pause or even stop.

The purpose of your time in the gym is to build yourself up, not risk your life.

Stay strong.

Neil Armstrong

My maternal grandfather retired from NASA at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama some time before I was born.  He was born in the early part of the Twentieth Century, walked to Chicago to find work during the Depression, and enlisted in the Army six times during World War II.  He was in his mid thirties and already a father.  My mother was born in 1948 after his return from the South Pacific.

Due to his previous employment and living in Huntsville, my brother and I were afforded quite a few trips to the Space and Rocket Center.  My favorite being the time my grandfather took me for Miss Baker’s birthday.  Miss Baker was a spider monkey, one of the first in space, and in 1959 one of the first to return from space.  Somewhere, I have a photograph signed with a paw print.

Like most kids of the seventies I was excited by space, rocket ships and space travel.  Not only did I grow up with names like  Starbuck, Buck Rogers, and Luke Skywalker, I knew of John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong.

Neil Armstrong’s passing was newsworthy enough to permeate my general news media block out, which, as far as I’m concerned, confirms the good sense of that block out.  If it’s important enough, I’ll hear about it.  Everything else is just clutter for my mind.

When I was in the first grade I received a blue ribbon in the science fair for my report and paper mache replica of Neil on the moon.  I don’t really remember what I wrote but that ribbon cemented my relationship with Neil, whether he knew it or not, we were buds for life.

Samantha sent me an obituary from Esquire magazine, written by Charles P. Pierce.  She pulled out this quote, saying, “Here’s what you have in common with Mr. Armstrong.”

“That was the great gift that he had — that great icy core of knowing that there was always something else to try, that a man can outthink his fate, on the spot, if he knows what he knows and when to apply it. There was in this guy a terribly fierce opponent for mischance.”

I don’t know if that’s true or not.  She is my wife and likely to be biased, but it’s is a quality I admire.  It’s what set men like Neil and my grandfather apart, a quality so elusive that we idolize those before us who had it.

Did I mention my grandfather walked to Chicago, Illinois to find work during the Depression?  Did I mention that he lived on a farm in Savannah, Georgia?  He enlisted six times during World War II before the army would take him, they finally began to run out of young soldiers.

More than losing men who know what it’s like to stand on the moon, I think we are losing men.  Boyhood is becoming interminable and we’re losing something much more valuable than the space race.

Stay strong.

Lance Armstrong

Let me start by saying I don’t know the truth about this whole Lance Armstrong thing.  I suspect only Lance, and a select few of his crew, know the actual truth, but like everyone else I’m not going to let that stop me from spouting my opinion on the matter.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Lance Armstrong was stripped, yesterday, of his seven Tour de France victories.

By attempting to enter the Tour de France, once more, he reopened the statute of limitations in his drug inquiry and faced more investigation and court time.

He decided it was not worth the battle and quit, saying he would not fight the inquiry and thereby forfeited his victories.

Since then there’s been quite the buzz, both from fans and critics.  This morning I woke to a Facebook post expressing dismay and eight subsequent comments voicing their support for Lance and ire against the evil sports establishment.  Here was my reply:

“Really guys? If he was clean he would still be fighting this. Face it, professional sports at this level demands some form of doping. It’s the great hypocrisy of sport. I don’t blame him so much for doping (even though I think it’s cheating) as I do the soap box and outright lying to the public.”

Over the years I’ve had the chance to meet and work with athletes from a variety of sports at a variety of levels.  Steroid use, doping and other forms of enhancement inevitably find their way into conversation.

I know athletes who use, some who did and now don’t, and others who say they never have and never will.  What’s of general consensus is, it works.  What’s of debate — whether or not they should be used.

The “hypocrisy of sport” is as spectators we expect our athletes to perform at levels that demand enhancement.  We didn’t start doping, competition and the desire to win at all costs own that, but like any junky, once we got a taste, we wanted more.

Like modern day gladiators our athletes know that while their sport may be the vehicle of their success, pleasing the crowd is how they maintain it.  Many are willing to do that to the detriment of their own health.  Those who are not, we don’t even know about any more.

I don’t think Lance is a bad person.  LiveStrong has been a highly beneficial charity and I commend Lance for the work he’s done, the inspiration he’s provided to cancer sufferers.  I don’t blame him for doping.  Personally, I think it’s cheating, but I understand the realities of sport that demand it.

But, what about us?  What’s our need to build someone else up, to place them so high on a pedestal they can’t help but fall.

How would our lives be different if we became our own heroes?  Rather than waiting for someone else to come along and do amazing things, why not take initiative and be amazing ourselves?

Stay strong.

Risk Analysis

There are no guarantees in life.

Most of us, especially those of us in the Industrialized West, have been raised in such security the concept of risk is an anathema.  We joke about how kids are raised today versus how we were.  The differences are really quite staggering.

I never wore a helmet when riding my bike, even though I rode BMX style on trails of our own construction.  My range of play exceeded the confines of my neighborhood, while I limited my daughters to the end of the block.

Why we are so much more limiting?  Certainly, my parents felt bad whenever we got hurt, but I think they recognized that this was a part of life and while they felt a personal responsibility to respond to whatever trauma had occurred they did not necessarily feel responsible for the trauma.

Now I think we feel responsible for the trauma.  “If only I had wrapped little Bobby in bubble wrap and confined him to the closet he wouldn’t have fallen and busted his head open.”

I saw a news article yesterday talking about how most Americans have forgotten there’s a war in Afghanistan.  I knew the war was going on, but couldn’t remember the last time I’d thought about it.  People are dying on a daily basis at the behest of my nation and I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought in months.

Why?

I think because it’s unpleasant, by most accounts a failure, and something you and I can’t do anything about.  It’s bad news and we don’t talk about it.

We don’t talk about it, because it’s unpleasant.  We avoid risk, because of the possibility of unpleasantness.  Is this what we’ve become?

Wasn’t the defining quality of humanity our ability to choose short term pain in order to achieve a long term gain?  Our current rung on the evolutionary ladder was achieved through risk, through embracing the possibility of failure and trying anyway, and accepting the short term discomfort of effort and strain for the “maybe” of a big payoff.

Is this the consequence of those cumulative payoffs?  Have we reached such a station of comfort that no further effort seems worth it?

Last weekend Samantha and I cleared a hillside around the garden that was overrun with poke weed.  Historically, in the rural South, the young leaves of a poke weed were cooked and eaten.  Poke is poisonous.  My goats won’t eat it.  In order to eat it it must be boiled multiple times, the water from each boiling discarded and replaced with fresh water.

I marvelled at how we came to know how to eat a weed that animals wouldn’t eat.  It then occurred to me that whoever learned to eat poke was starving.  Poke was the only thing available.

Our comforts are an amazing gift, they allow us time and space to invent and create in a capacity historically unknown, but they’re completely wasted if all they do is lull us into complacency.

Stay strong.

Big Boy Training

For those who care about such things, body shapes are categorized into one of three types–ectomorph, mesomorph, or endomorph.  These are  arbitrary abstractions and you may not fit squarely into one of these boxes, but they indicate points along a spectrum that can be useful identifiers.  The ectomorph is the classic “hard gainer” or beanpole, a long, lean bodytype that has a hard time gaining weight or building muscle.  The mesomorph is of medium build who tends to build and show muscle relatively easily.  The endomorph is the bear, the “thick sister,” or the husky fella who’s “big boned.”

The Commercial Fitness Complex caters itself very well to the first two body types, but seriously under serves the third.  Cardio based exercise systems, and most of the default systems we turn to when we think exercise, are relatively easier for lighter body types.  Since their bodies are better suited for these activities they excel at them.  It should be no surprise then when the endomorph gets fed up with training that is not only hard but isn’t achieving her goals.  The result is an entire segment of the population living lives that fall short of their true potential.

It’s clear that a greyhound and a St. Bernard have two very different bodies and two very different strength sets.  We rightly expect the greyhound to run circles around the St. Bernard and the Bernard to be much stronger than the hound.  The idea of St. Bernard races, while funny, are ludicrous because it’s clear that speed is not the Bernard’s strength.

So, why, in fitness, do we immediately send the big guys to do more cardio?  The idea that their size is solely the result of excess calories that need to be burned off may not be entirely accurate.

The one place the big boy does flourish is the powerlifting gym where size can work to his advantage.  Often ecto and mesomorphic trainers who work with an overweight endomorph are amazed at her strength.  All too often, though, it’s dismissed, “Well she has to be strong to carry all of that bulk.”  They miss that strength is a primary attribute of the endomorph and through strength training and proper diet counselling real gains, both in strength and body shape, can be made.

As an endomorph myself, I struggled for years trying to make myself fit into a smaller man’s fitness.  I’d find myself wishing I was 5’8″ and 165 lbs.  How sad is that?  God gifted me with unique strengths and I wanted to trade them because of fashion?

Only when I began to embrace my gifts did they flourish and I found myself approaching the life, and look, I’d been chasing all along.

Here’s a lesson we can all learn, regardless of bodytype.  It’s foolish to try to fit yourself into someone else’s mould.  Take some time, get to know yourself and understand what you were “built for.”  Don’t fight your inner nature, embrace it and thrive.

Stay strong.

The Demon

There is a demon every lifter must face before starting a training program.  It must be faced at the beginning and then again, in one form or another, as we continue to train.  Over time and with practice facing this demon will become easier, but it never fully goes away.

Those of us who have trained for a while know this.  We’ve made our peace, we understand the struggle and recognize its value.  This is an internal battle, one that can only be faced alone.  In the end, you either deal with it, or you don’t.

As an evangelist for Physical Culture, Self-Reliance and Personal Growth, I want you to win.  This is why I have a gym and I run it the way I do.  I don’t care about your six pack abs, your “extreme” endurance, or how much you can lift.  What I care most about is this demon and how you face it.

This demon has a name.  That name is Fear.

Fear takes many forms, but in the gym its three faces are Fear of Failure,  Fear of Rejection and Fear of Injury.

Whenever I talk to anyone about starting a training program I am confronted with Fear.  I hear, “I really need to work out, but I’m not in good enough shape to start.  What can I do to get ready?”

They never like my answer, a variation of, “Show up.”

This forces them to face Fear.  Extra steps, a pre-program, things to do before you start are ways of putting off Fear to delay the confrontation.

That delay has a way of growing.  The more we think we have to do before we start, the less likely we will.  As with most confrontations the event is usually much less than we’ve built up in our minds, but we’ll never know until we face it.

Now, here’s another truth.  This is not a one time battle.  Sure, the battle to actually walk in the door is usually the biggest, but once that demon is defeated, there are other, subtler, more insidious fears you’ll have to face.

“Get comfortable, being uncomfortable.”

Believe it or not, this can be done.  You can find comfort outside your comfort zone.  In order to progress and grow, you have to figure out how.

Whenever I face a weight I’ve never lifted before, Fear kicks in–Fear of Failure, Fear of Injury, Fear of Disappointing, others and myself.  An inner voice begins to question whether or not this is such a good idea.  I have no choice but to banish those thoughts.  If I don’t I won’t make the lift and my chance of injury is magnified.  It’s impossible to maintain a stable, upright posture when your mind is thinking negative thoughts.

Conversely, with strong, positive thoughts, my body reflects my mind and I am more secure in my lift.  In this state of mind I benefit, even from failure.

And so will you.

Stay Strong.

Of Gentle Giants and Vegetarian Wolves

I believe that the style of training and methods we use at Agoge Fitness Systems are the best to be found.  If I didn’t I wouldn’t use them.

Now, don’t mistake my words.  I am not saying that I am the best trainer or that my gym is the best gym, although I am pretty damned proud of my gym.  What I’m saying is that what we do and the way we do it is the best way I have found, so far, to train the human body.  There are others who do what I do better than me, but when I find them I make them my friends and my teachers and I learn from them.

What frustrates me is the difficulty I have in sharing this training with other people.  We have been so inundated with the marketing and hype of mediocre or otherwise harmful training that most of us don’t know what is really helpful, or effective, or even safe.  All too often we come to fear and avoid what we really need or would actually work.

Two stories come to mind that I ran across when my children were little.  The first is The Story of the Kind Wolf.  I read this one often to my girls at bedtime.  In this story there’s a kind wolf, hence the title, who works as a healer.  Unfortunately none of the little woodland creatures would use the wolf’s services for fear of being eaten.

It takes a cold, harsh winter and a desperately sick bunny for them to try the wolf, who, of course, saves the poor bunny and then reveals that it’s a vegetarian.

The second story is a made for TV movie Matthew Modine made in 2001.  Matthew Modine will forever hold a special place in my heart for his role as Louden Swain in Vision Quest, arguably the best sports inspiration movie ever made.  The 2001 feature was Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story.  In this tale, Modine gets wrapped up in the discovery of a giant’s bones and that he is a direct descendant of the original Jack, revealed to be greedy thief who made up the fairytale we all grew up with in order to cover his crimes.

Giants we find out are actually sweet, loving creatures whose hearts are as big as their bodies.  The whole “evil giant” thing was just a bad rap and one they could never shake because no one would ever get close enough to them to learn the truth.

Which brings us to our allegorical connection.  Our training; weight training, kettlebells, bodyweight and mobility work, sandbags, leverage clubs, and all the other stuff we do, is like the vegetarian wolf that’s really a doctor or the true nature of giants.  Most observers can’t get past their initial observations, the fear that says, “Oh, I can’t do that.”  But we who “do that” know, yes, they can.

We understand that weight lifting is a progressive practice, that by lifting what we can today we will be able to lift more later.  We’ve also learned that without radical changes in our diets (read: tons of protein) and pharmaceutical enhancement we’re not going to “bulk up” dramatically.  In fact, most of us get smaller and when we buy new clothes it’s because the old ones have gotten too big.

I think the best lesson I’ve heard my clients reveal is that they’ve discovered that after a period of weight training they move better.  The concept of the stiff and bulky weight lifter is the result of a lifter who lifts wrong.  He trains poorly and with bad form.  A strong muscle is a flexible muscle and one that is more functional.

Media hype, complete with tight, tanned models with six pack abs, whose main purpose in life appears to inspire envy, tells that we have to P90x at home, or Crossfit, or Spin, or BodyPump or, as a local journalist I thought should know better reported recently, join a pole dancing class (really, don’t you have to hand in your feminist card after that one?).  We’ve come to believe that if it’s not surrounded by flashing lights, a media circus or some kind of gimmick that it’s not going to work.

The truth is, we as a people have become so divorced from our bodies that we have to distract ourselves from what were doing while we’re doing it in order to do it.  That’s why every room full of treadmills and ellipticals has a wall of TV’s in front of it.  This type of exercise is mind numbingly boring.

The irony is that your mind and your body are connected.  You can’t veg out and have a good workout no matter what the workout is.  In our workouts this is glaringly apparent.  Veg out with a heavy weight held over your head and you’re likely to get hurt.  The same applies on the treadmill, it’s just a slower more insidious process.

Those of us who “get” this are a small dedicated crew.  We meet on a regular basis and train not necessarily for perfection, but betterment.  Like any small but dedicated crew we are happy to share our passions.  It’s as though we stumbled on a small little piece of Truth, maybe not THE secret of life, but certainly A secret of life.  We’ve found small, little victories that have had a large impact on our lives and we think, maybe, if you tried it too, you’d find your life vastly improved.

It seems a shame not to be able to share that.

Stay strong,

Solon and Croesus

I had a cancellation this morning and was in desperate need of a haircut.  I’m an old school guy and so get my haircut at Vincent Oliver’s Hippodrome in Woodlawn.

Vincent is in his 70’s now.  He graduated from Woodlawn High School , which is only a block away from his barber shop, in 1950-something.  The majority of his clientèle are old classmates, who gather at his shop to gossip about old friends and reminisce about the good ol’ days.

Vincent has old barber chairs that glide up and down and must weight a ton a piece.  He shaves the back of your neck with hot lather and a straight razor, and you leave smelling of Aqua Velva.  I truly love that place and I don’t know what I’ll do when he retires.

This morning there were a few guys ahead of me and I had time to read while I listened to them carry on about military experience, vintage cars and who was still alive and what they were up to.  As I scrolled through my inbox on my phone I ran across today’s post from the Art of Manliness, Count No Man Happy Until the End is Known.

Brett McKay gives us a tale from Herodotus of the rich King Croesus and his visit from the Athenian sage Solon.

After several days of  wining and dining, Croesus asked Solon who, in all of his travels, was the happiest man he had ever met.  The spoiled king expected Solon to reply that he was, but was dismayed to hear Solon give the name of a fellow Athenian, and a man of common birth at that.

When Croesus expressed his outrage Solon went on to explain that the man in question had lived in Athens, where his local government had given him the freedom to prosper, he had had several fine sons whose wives had borne grandchildren.  At the end of his life he died bravely, on the battlefield, alongside his countrymen while driving out an enemy force.  He was honored with a public funeral.

Croesus could not make sense of this but felt surely he must be the second happiest man and so asked Solon again.

The wise man replied with the names of two Argive brothers and went on to explain how the Argives valued family and physical fitness.  The two boys’ mother wanted to make a pilgrimage to Hera’s temple, but didn’t have the oxen to pull her cart the many miles to the holy site.  The two boys strapped themselves to the heavy cart  and conveyed her the entire way.  Once there they were greeted by a crowd that congratulated the boys on their strength and their mother for having raised such fine sons.

In an expression of her own gratitude the mother prayed to Hera that she might convey on her sons “the greatest blessing that can befall mortal men.”  After a day of feasting and celebrating at the festival of Hera, the two boys lay down in the temple for a nap.  Hera granted their mother’s request by letting the boys die in their sleep.  The Argives celebrated these two by erecting statues in their honor.

Croesus was flabbergasted.  How could three dead men be happier than he?

Solon admitted that as rich as he was he did have certain advantages.  Food and shelter and the basic necessities were pretty much a given for him, but his money by no means gave him a monopoly on all that lead to true happiness.

The sage’s happy list included civic service, raising healthy children, self sufficiency, a sound body and honoring the god’s and one’s family.  Besides, being rich brings it’s own slew of issues, in the immortal words of The Notorious B.I.G., “Mo money, mo problems.”

In addition, life is constantly changing.  Today you can be riding high, living the good life, but tomorrow it could all be gone, the market crashes, a Tsunami hits, those pictures go public.

“This is why,” Solon finally concluded to Croesus, “I cannot answer the question you asked me until I know the manner of your death. Count no man happy until the end is known.”

Croesus would have none of this and showed Solon the door.  Years later he would have a first hand example of exactly what he meant.  He lost a son in a hunting accident, then misreading an oracle he launched an ill planned attack on the Persian Empire only to find himself hog tied atop his own funeral pyre about to be barbecue.  In a grand moment of “Oh!” he is recorded as having cried out, “Oh Solon! Oh Solon! Oh Solon! Count no man happy until the end is known!”

To my mind, the big message is, for us it’s too early to tell.  Call yourself happy?  Right now you might be.  Are you miserable?  You might be that, for the moment.  Whatever you are it’s bound to change.  Don’t become too attached to anything.

Which is not to say don’t form attachments.  A life devoid of connections is a life devoid indeed, but recognize, things change.  I have a string of mala beads, a Buddhist rosary, if you will.  I’ve worn it around my wrist for well over ten years.  Yesterday, for the first time I can remember, it came up missing.

After a good thirty minutes of looking for it I had to admit, it couldn’t be found.  I texted Trey and asked him to check with the cleaning service, they had been at the gym that afternoon, cleaning the cat walk that ran over my desk.

As I left the gym I had to acknowledge, despite my disappointment, that perhaps this was just another lesson in impermanence.   On the way home, resolved to live without what had become a part of my personality, Trey called to tell me it had been mistaken for trash but recovered.

The lesson?  Fortune turns on a dime.  The key to riding it is to focus on what you can control and let the rest go.

How you behave in the world is under your control.  How you act in relationships, both on a community and a personal level, is under your control.  Contrary to public opinion, your health is under your control.  You decide what you eat.  You decide how much rest you get.  You decide how much exercise you get.

Choose wisely.

Stay strong,

Bad Mood

Most people do not realize that as they continue to find things to complain about, they disallow their own physical well-being. Many do not realize that before they were complaining about an aching body or a chronic disease, they were complaining about many other things first. It does not matter if the object of your complaint is about someone you are angry with, behavior in others that you believe is wrong, or something wrong with your own physical body. Complaining is complaining, and it disallows improvement.

— Abraham

I have been in the most evil, foul mood for the last few days.  It got so bad that I just skipped writing because I just couldn’t find anything nice to say.  I couldn’t bring myself to manufacture a positive and I wasn’t about to bring you down with my own nastiness.  So, like my Granny (and Abraham) taught me, I just kept my mouth shut.

Well, at least to you anyway.  Those closest to me will attest I’ve been a whiny assed baby, a grump and an ogre.

But remaining relatively silent for a few days and giving myself the time to experience my bad mood, explore its contours and corners and reflect upon it, I was able to come to a realization.

Nothing was going to change unless I did something about it.

If I’m unhappy with my current situation.  If, in order to be happy, I need others or circumstances to change, I am the only one who can do something about it.  If my current efforts aren’t producing the results I want, it is absolute foolishness to continue those efforts and then bitch about not getting the result I expect.  Clearly what I’m doing isn’t working and it’s time to make a change.

Always do what you’ve always done and you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

So, we’re trying again, a new tactic, a new method, a new way.  Dave’s life version–who knows?  There have been so many changes and revisions along the way I can’t even begin to keep count.

Nor will this be the last time either.

The only constant in life is change
—Taoist joke

I’ve already begun to implement some of my new ideas and that in and of itself has brought a much better mood.  The best antidote for stagnation and frustration is movement.  Take a step, change direction, do something, you can always correct your aim along the way.

For the record, I’m still not happy about how things are right now, but I’m doing something about it and that has gone a long way to making me feel better about it.