2009

2009 was a year of transition. New job, life status changes, ie. engaged, and a lot of moves.

1) I lived in 3 different places during the course of 2009. Nuts. I am sick of moving.

2) I learned what I have to do fitness-wise to enjoy life as I get older.

3) A real job. Work is neat. For once, I get to apply my knowledge that i have spent a lifetime accumulating in school.

4) Writing. Writing emails and blogs is different from real writing. I learned that the hard way, but I am happy with my improvement. And I'll only continue to improve.

5a) Engaged. It's nice I have met my teammate for the rest of my life. Now, it is just a matter of patience for us to wait and being our life together. There is a lot we have to look forward, and I think the wedding is only first of many things to come. I

5b) It's kind of auto-pilot for the guy after the proposal. But I will never forget May 2, 2009 for the rest of my life. Neither will she. The planning and thought leading to it is an incredible experience. And the moment itself? It's indescribable. The only thing you wait for is her answer, though you know the answer already by the look in her eye.

6) Homesickness. It really hit me this year. I miss my family, I'd like to be closer to them distance wise. They're a 3.5 hrs plane flight right now, but a 3 hr car drive would be nice, too.

7) JJ Abrams. You had a great year. Good work.

8) Go Horns. If they win in 1 week, they have chance to do something really special for the next 5-7 years. The door is open for them to become a dynasty. It's up to them to step up and do it.

Penultimate 2009 Post

The older one gets, the more bad habits form. You are in a hurry or lazy or whatever, and you do something the just get by. It's a recipe for bad habits to form.

For me, I formed bad habits with exercise. I would exercise, but it would not be pushing myself. I made excuses for not doing so, because I was afraid that the chronic compartment syndrome symptoms (fro pre-surgery days) would come back.

In truth, I needed to be pushed. I needed to challenged.

I started taking part in an athletic conditioning class after work at the gym. The class is composed of several series of anaerobic and aerobic exercises emphasizing increasing the heart rate and total body conditioning.

At the beginning, of the course, I was lagging, protecting myself, actually babying myself. There was a day earlier, in July, where the instructor stopped class, walked up to me, and looked at me. He questioned why I was wasting my time, if I was not pushing myself.

I was stunned. I did not know how to respond. I wanted to leave. I was embarrassed, humiliated. I went home that night, and I could not sleep as I kept thinking about that. I was not mad the instructor. He was right. What was I doing? How could I be at mad someone, when the only person to really be mad at was myself?

I did not go back to the class the month of August. I spent time remembering what we did for basketball practice back in the day. I called my Mom and asked her about her yoga. I tried swimming again, albeit the water was much colder than I remembered it. I evaluated my diet, looked at what I should do in that realm. I am pretty particular/careful, aside from my addiction to brownies, so I was okay there. I started jogging again.

Slowly, one day I "trotted" around the soccer field at a slow pace. No one would confuse me for Usain Bolt. But, it was more effort I had given to running for a long time. I also came up with a system of exercises to help maintain lean muscle without having to life weights, which bore the hell out of me.

You have a lot of time to think about things when you are running and don't own an iPod. For me, it was a time where I built up motivation, "ganas" as Jaime Escalante talks about in Stand & Deliver.

I showed up to the conditioning class about 4-5 weeks after the incident. The instructor saw me come in, and he gave me the jerked, raised chin greeting. The class started.

I was nervous as hell, what if I did not keep up? Was my time wasted?

60 minutes later, I was sweating. I was a bit sore. But I was standing, and not out of breath.

The instructor approached me after the class and hugged me. He told me he was proud of my effort and I had challenged myself. The best part of it was though, he said I could attend another class where you do the exercises in this class, but you also get to work with speed bags and those big body bags in boxing. This has been really fun the past couple of months. Tiring, but fun.

I spent most of my 20s understanding how to navigate the path of least resistance between a thought to its realization. Graduate school requires a certain amount of navigation to avoid the rocks or Scylla & Charybdis. My teens were all about being stubborn and taking things head-on, forgoing elegant solutions - brute force, if you will.

After my surgery, I quit pushing myself because I was afraid of re-injuring myself. I was scared. Now, I am past that, and ready to embrace exercise as something fun, not something that I have to do. I can do the activities I like, because I can find activities that accomplish my goals. Lean muscle and resistance training is very important for men and women. Free weights exercises are one way of accomplishing this. If you do not like free weights, there are other ways to do reach one's goals.

Life successfully navigated requires an amalgamation of both ways. I had to figure this out, and I have the gym instructor to thank.