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The July Project: Number 31
It took me 33 days, but I’ve made it to the end of the July Project. The main objective of this month-long blogging initiative was to devote time and attention every day to thinking and writing about my efforts to move more and eat better. Even on the three July days when I didn’t post anything, the subject was always in my thoughts, so I’m calling that goal substantially accomplished.
Another stated aim was to collect ideas that I can reflect on at some later date when I find myself struggling to move forward, and to share those ideas with anyone else for whom they might be useful. A few people have told me that these posts inspired them to work harder on their own fitness or writing goals, so in that respect, the project has been an unqualified success. Many thanks to everyone …[MORE]
The July Project: Number 30
Yeah, I know it’s not July any more. The month ended in a flurry of activity during which I was too busy to complete any posts, so my first job for August is to wrap up July. Bear with me!
A few years ago, I started thinking of my daily walk as a crude analog to the wandering of our African savannah ancestors in pursuit of game and other food stuffs. They probably spent several hours every day chasing after or rooting around for their next meal, and the one after that, and the one after that. There are three grocery stores within a half a mile of where I pitch my tent, so I don’t have to wander in search of food. But evolution optimized my body and my mind for this movement …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 29
About a year ago, a business development client and good friend said to me, “I love my job, I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing, my whole life is perfectly on track except for this one thing: I’m fat, and it makes me miserable.”
My answer was, “Well, I guess we know what to work on next.”
She picked a bad time to get me fired up about a new project—the second week of August. She’s not a big fan of Houston summer heat. But she somehow pushed through her reluctance …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 28
At the end of last November, in an effort to jump-start a weight-loss regimen that had stalled, I made up my mind to walk twice around the loop at Memorial Park every day for the month of December. November 30 was a Monday, so I started one day early for good measure. The next day, just in time for my “official” December Project kickoff, the weather turned nasty for two solid weeks. December 1, it was raining and 45 degrees by evening. Then a cooling trend set in. By Thursday, there was talk of snow. I woke up Friday morning to moderate flurries …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 27
We’re down to the last five days of the month. I woke up this morning thinking how easy it is to run out of steam right at the end of a project like this, and wondering what extra effort I might need to put forth to get the rest of the way to the goal, which was to give time and attention to this blog every day in July.
I was also thinking about how I’ve struggled for the last couple of months to get rid of the weight I gained …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 25
Today was my first full, on‑the‑water rowing class. As I mentioned a few days ago, a friend (Mark) and I are taking a Learn to Row class offered by a club in Sugar Land, Texas. I was feeling apprehensive in the last few days because my first attempt at taking a few strokes tethered to the dock on Thursday night felt clumsy and awkward. We’d spent some time on machines and listening to the instructor in the classroom, but there was a part of the mechanics that I couldn’t make any sense of …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 24
Once in a while, everything comes together to create the perfect walk. There was an afternoon in Los Angeles in January of last year. I’d spent the day in a conference listening to brilliant people talk about their hopes for the future of human progress. I was high on contagious optimism and altruism. One of my new friends offered to show me the way to Griffith Park. I followed her through rush-hour traffic up into the hills, then she showed me where to park and where the running trail started. As I walked and jogged, the sun went down over the hills on one side and the San Gabriel Mountains faded to deep purple on the other. James Taylor sang “That’s Why I’m Here” on my iPod. I break into a grin from ear to ear / and suddenly it’s perfectly clear. It was an ecstatic moment. I’m sure that my feet never touched the ground.
And I recall an early spring day at Memorial Park in some recent year. Dappled sunlight was coming through the deciduous trees, just beginning to fill in with tender yellow-green leaves. The breeze was warm, and I knew it would only be a few weeks until it was too hot to walk at midday. But on this day, the sun felt great on my pasty-white skin. The soundtrack: Indigo Girls, “The Wood Song.” No one gets to miss the storm of what will be …[MORE]
The July Project: Number 23
I’m thrilled when people comment on my exercise regimen—or my blog—and say that I’ve inspired them, or that I make it look easy. But I wonder sometimes if “making it look easy” is doing a disservice to people who are working hard on their own projects for self-improvement. So tonight I want to come clean—it ain’t always easy.
I spent an hour last night trying to come up with a blog post. It was the end of a very long week with mountains of work, many hours of writing, two rowing classes, and a workshop to finish preparing …[MORE]
The July Project: Day 22
Tomorrow morning I’m teaching a workshop to about a dozen participants. The topic is using new online resources to grow an audience and communicate effectively with it. I know the subject matter reasonably well, and I’m confident that my expertise is at least a little greater than that of my students, so they’ll learn something of value. Even though a lot of the specific details are tools and techniques I’ve only learned recently myself, I know that I can teach with authority because of years of experience with design, communications, marketing, personal computers, and so on.
Contrast that self-confident attitude to how I spent my evening: the second Learn to Row class at the Greater Houston Rowing Club. Tonight I climbed on an Ergo rowing machine and worked on stroke technique until my arms were ready to fall off, and then we started playing around with actual boats. We stepped through picking up the “shells” and carrying them from the boathouse to the dock, swinging them down from shoulders to waist to water …[MORE]
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The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both.” |
—James Michener
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