Refocusing Motivation

In the last week and a half since the triathlon I've gone on precisely one reasonably good bike ride and one very, very short other bike ride. I've also put a little bit of weight back on since the race, nothing too significant especially since my weight can fluctuate by as much as 8 or 10 pounds in a single day. But enough weight has creeped back on me to make me realize that its time to put another event on the calendar to train for.

I've found that I workout much more consistently and for longer periods when I know that I've got an event coming up that I need to be proper shape for. I do not ever want to be standing on the starting line wishing I'd done more to train for the race that's about to start.

And I'm going to be using that knowledge to create another dynamic training situation. I'm making use of The American Triathlon Calendar to find some cool races coming up. I'd like to do some of the Santa Cruz sprint triathlons but I'm a little leery of the ocean swim leg of the race. That ocean water is really, really butt ass cold and knowing how hard it was to paddle through the lake at San Antonio makes the ocean swim even that much more daunting. But we'll see what comes up.

Ten Traits of a Champion

“Most look up and admire the stars. A champion climbs a mountain and grabs one.”

1. 95% of the people in the world say "Show me and I'll go do" Champions say "I'll go do and show the world"
2. You can make excuses or you can make money but you can't do BOTH!
3. Competition is a myth, the only true competitor of you is yourself. Stop comparing yourself or your success to others.
4. True forgiveness is saying "Thank you for giving me this experience" and being grateful for the growth and experience that it brought into your life.
5. While we can't deny the struggles and setbacks, neither should we be restrained by them.
6. Discipline will lead you from discomfort to comfort.
7. Excuses allow us to justify the reality that we have created.
8. Always bet on yourself
9. Vision without action is a dream.... Action without vision is a nightmare
10. Aim for the moon, even if you miss, you'll reach the stars.

Get On It

Cliches may be tired but that doesn't necessarily make them wrong. There is nobody with a greater ability to positively effect your life than you. You can't blame someone else for what you haven't done.

Someone I spoke with last night said something poignant to me. It is better to swing and miss than to just stand there with your bat on your shoulder. What that means is that, in failing, you are still moving forward, striving for better. If you aren't trying then you can't fail but you also can't succeed.

Anyway, here are some other cliches that come to mind. And yes, I am squarely back to being optimistic and pretty happy with the way things are progressing. We are moving forward, we are making progress and we will, eventually, come out on the other side of this financial crisis in a stronger place.

Carpediem - seize the day. Grab a hold of it, lead your day where you want to go, control your destiny and you're more likely to get there.
Life is what you make of it - well of course it is. But its a really good thing to try and keep at the forefront of your mind. If you are angry then your life is angry. If you are lazy then your life is lazy. If you waste your time then your life is wasted.
Do not try, do - actually, I just like pretending I'm Yoda every now and again.
Be here now - constantly looking forward or backward means that you are rarely fully engaged in the here and now. Thinking about what happened at work this afternoon to dreading the commute tomorrow morning distract you from recognizing that you are in the now. One thing is in the past and can't be changed, the other is in the future and you'll just have to wait for it to get here before you know how that turns out.
The present is a gift - its a gift that keeps opening up before you every single instant of every single second of every single day of every single life. Until the moment you die, every instant is a gift and not a bad gift at all.

What I'm trying to say is that you get out of your life exactly what you put into it. What did you always want to do? What have you always wanted to be? Write it down, own it, say it out loud, work towards your goals.

Blogging vs. Twittering

I was just reading an article in Wired that basically says Blogging is Dead. The reasons they lay out make some pretty broad assumptions about the reasons that people blog. For example, they say the chances of a well written article/post by a nobody like me showing up high in search results is virtually nil. And I can accept that. I used to blog with an eye to notoriety and expected book deals, groupies and Google AdSense millions to come my way anyday.

While I wouldn't complain if that happened, it is no longer even in the top five or ten reasons why I blog. Sure, I'd love to get paid to blog but it pays me in other ways. Like having gotten to know good people like Amy, Ryan, Lujza, Nutsy, Rick, Jack, the rather awesome fellas at the Mint 400, Easy and more (apologies if I didn't list every single blog I read here, it started to get silly). Blogging has become a sort of therapy for me. Mixed in among the ejaculate posts about politics, celebrity idiocy and news are posts about what makes me tick, about things that are important to me. Plus, it gives interested members of my family, who are mostly bound to the east coast, a chance to check in and see where my head is at, leave a comment or two and stay in touch.

Twitter, as much as I love it for its immediacy, funky community and brevity, has no staying power. A great tweet is off the page in an hour and gone for good in a day. During one of the presidential debates, I took part in a live Twitter chat during the debate (I'm sure Jay remembers the hundred or so tweets in an hour and a half). And I have some wicked funny comments, one liners and observations. But they are all so far down my tweet list now as to be gone forever.

And, maybe its my age showing, but I rather enjoy a little bit of permanence. Plus, the blog is a measure of my feelings, thoughts and what was important to me at the time. And yes, even the stupid low-brow attempts at political humor count.

Blogging offers a way to explore events and feelings in far greater depth. Twittering is, in many ways, a symptom and manifestation of our ADD society.

I remember a tweet by Brittneyg to the effect that she had such a short attention span, she wasn't even reading full tweets anymore, she was skimming them. What does it say about our society when we can't even slow down enough to read 140 characters?

I don't think blogging is dead but it might be if you're planning on starting a blog to change the world and get rich. That landscape has been claimed and is now being dominated by professional writers with teams of researchers. And, oddly enough, I don't read many of those blogs because they are so impersonal. I prefer blogs written by just a couple of people who I can possibly develop a relationship with, discuss things with and not be yet another anonymous commenter.

But Twitter has its place too. And I'm sure there's something else just around the corner that will shoulder its way into the mix as well. Like Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube and other social networking sites (things like Facebook but not Facebook because I absolutely refuse to agree to their ridiculous terms of use).