Day 1 = apparent success July 14, 2008

Today went really well with regards to my uber training.

I had two main goals:

1. Bike to and from work
2. Go to a Ripped class at the gym

Done and done. And I even walked to the gym. Horay for 2.5 hours of physical activity on a work day.

I need a snack.

Ready to give up? July 13, 2008

A few weeks ago, just before my Chicago trip, I started debating whether or not I was going to go through with the Triathlon I had planned on. At the end of June, I pretty much decided I wouldn’t be doing it. I haven’t been able to get motivated for my training, which basically means I haven’t been training as hard as I need to be.

And here I am, the triathlon is less than a month out, and I hate the thought of giving up. I’ve been running through my head possible training options for the next 4 weeks to make this possible. Can I really get my running up to 5k? I’ve been really lazy with my running. At this moment, I can only run about 2K. That would be pretty much a gain of a km a week. I also took a look on the website of last year’s results. With my estimated timing of each activity, looks like I would come in dead last. And about 20min behind anyone in my age group. This run is supposed to be motivating, right? Not demoralizing? Is coming in last demoralizing, or will I at least be happy to have finished?

I could set up a really aggressive training schedule for the next four weeks, but:

• I am very likely to injure myself, and
• Half of those four weeks I’m on vacation, and really how much training am I going to do? Or maybe it will be the perfect opportunity for training

I think this is the comprimise I have come up with. I’m going to train super hard this week and I’ll see how it goes. If by friday morning I can run 3K, swim 500m in 17min, and bike 40K in less than 50min, I’m going to register. If not, maybe I’ll just set up an imaginary race day for myself and keep training anyways

Next V-city trip is booked July 2, 2008

I fly out on July 23, get in to town around 8pm, and will driving back this way with D on August 2 or 3. The details of that arn’t quite worked out yet.

There’s a lot I want to do on the trip and I hope that I can get it all in during the short time I’m there.

• Go to pemberton festival!
• Spend a day or two with Cait
• Visit my Aunt & Uncle on the island at least for a day & night.
• Kayak
• Maybe camp more? Although pemberton will be camping.
• Do a hike

Whee! Maybe I just need to move one of these days.

Too late on a work night June 25, 2008

An exhausting night, but I find myself unable to sleep after tossing and turning for 2 hours.

I went to bed early. I came home from softball and was exhausted. We were brutally defeated. I can’t help but play back the moments in my mind. Too many miscommunicated plays in the infield. Should I have predicted the bounce that put the ball in my ribs instead of my glove? The time J gunned for the ball but gave up when almost there? Should I have left my base to throw myself infront of the throws that gave the other team an extra bag? Was I positioned too far off my base?

I’ve never been great at sports. But one thing I do have is that I’ve never been terrible at them either.

So it’s 12:30 am and I lay in bed wonder, contemplating, and listening to Regina Spektor.

There’s so many things I’m unsure about. Am I treating myself and my body right? Do I keep pushing people away? Who are my best friends, who do I want to be my best friends, what should the role of a best friend be?

There’s one thing I know for sure. And that’s that I love what I do. My job is incredible, I couldn’t have asked for a better fit. Every day I like what I do, every day I feel brilliant, every day I feel confident. I know that I’ve found something I’m incredibly good at.

The thing that concerns me though is that every day I run the risk of finding out that it will no longer be going on. That’s the joy of working for a start up, especially one currently dependant on investor money. You never know if your job will be there next month. This leaves me with all kinds of calculations in my head. If I had to go on EI, could I still afford my place? Most likely, but it wouldn’t be easy. What worries me most is finding a new career. What I do right now is rather focused. Although I do have many transferrable skills. But will my years at an unsuccessful start up count for much on a resume? A company no one has heard of, no legitimacy, no comparison point. Realilisticly I live in oil town. Not a lot going on in the tech world here. Would I look for a job at an oil company? Would I give in to that huge beaurocratic world? Can I join a work for with regulated working hours?

Whether it is healthy or not, my career feels a lot like my identity right now. If I had no friends or social engagements or the like I would probably work 24/7. I try out balance though.

But what are my personal goals? Family? Marriage? Travel the world? Save the world? Volunteer? Be an athlete? Find love? Be loved?

I heard an interesting comment yesterday: ”Not all the insight in the world will help you accomplish something. You can have the deepest insight possible in to your addictions, but that doesn’t give you the tools to fix your addictions yourself. And that goes for any area of your life. You might have great insight in to what you want to accomplish and why you want to, but that doesn’t mean you know the right steps to get there. The key is in the process, not the insight. Are you on the right path?”

I tend to spend more time focusing on insight than I do on making sure I’m always on the right path. Maybe I don’t need to know what I want out of life. Maybe if I just keep myself on the right path, what is supposed to come to me will?

I’m not sure I’ve always stayed on the right path, but I certainly can’t complain about the deck of cards I’ve been dealt. All in all a lot has been handed to me throughout my life. I suppose a lot has been taken away as well, but I hope the positives outweight the negatives and that I can learn from what is taken away.

Well, enough rambling for one night. i can’t even remember what the original topic of this blow was.

Chicago, Night 2 June 19, 2008

I’m in Chicago right now for a business trip.

I’m here with 3 other coworkers, which is nice, but at the same time being the introvert that I am, it’s hard to get me time. Right now, I managed to get an hour by myself. Thank goodness.

Being around people constantly screws up my energy, so it’s nice to have some down time to sort myself out. Ever since we met at the airport yesterday morning it has been non-stop work. Discussing product at the airport, on the plane, at dinner, into the night. Today has been no different. Met over breakfast, went our separate ways for a few sessions, but every coffee or lunch break has been product strategy meetings. Right now I’m supposed to be typing up my notes from our sessions. This is what it will be like until 11pm Saturday. A busy, busy couple of days.

I don’t really have a lot of desire to see the town right now. I’ve never been here before, but on that note I’m also not that interested in exploring. I think it’s because I’m tired. I don’t really seem to have the capacity to be interested in new things at this moment. I’m not too worried about it though. I actually think my group has plans to check out a few things tomorrow night. Should be nice.

We went for mexican food last night. It was delicious. And the tequila was very good too.

I had a lot of crazy dreams last night. But in this one I’m still not convinced I had been dreaming. We had gone to bed and had probably only been laying down for 5-10 minutes when I thought I heard a knock of some kind, like a light knock on the door. I opened my eyes and looked around and saw through the dark someone standing at the foot of my bed. I thought it might be L (the person I’m sharing a room with), but I looked over at her bed and she was sound asleep. I went back to starring at the end of my bed, I was in that confused state halfway between being awake and being asleep. I wasn’t scared, but I was nervous. And after a few moments of starring, slowly the person shape began to dissipate. I rolled over an convinced myself my imagination was playing tricks on me. And it likely was.

I also woke up and screamed (not obnoxiously so) at some point, which isn’t unusual these days. It seems to happen more and more often.

I wonder what is haunting my dreams?

run, run, run June 11, 2008

So after a week of very little physical activity, I finally got out for a run tonight. I mixed it up a bit tonight and rather than doing my usual run, I did some hill running. There’s a big hill by my house (6 min run to the top), and I ran up and down it 3 times. It felt pretty good. And it was fun to do something different.

the words June 9, 2008

He promised to write the words for me,
When I couldn’t find the ones to write myself,
He told me he would make me a pathway,
When the trees were too thick to navigate,
He guided my eyes toward the moon,
When I was looking for symbols in the clouds,
He held my hands steady,
When I could barely make my vows.

He is still there with me,
With each word, walk, glance, and oath.
Except now I steady his hands,
As he realizes he’s in love.

that type of personality June 6, 2008

So it turns out that I am easily annoyed by certain people. I try not to be. I’m really good at identifying what annoys me and I think about it a lot and consciously try to get over it. I disect these things, get to the route, and even when the fundamental problem turns out to actually be an issue with myself, I still can’t get over my annoyance with the person.

There’s a few specific things that people can do to completely get under my skin:

1. Interrupt my sleep. I don’t sleep a lot, especially during the week, so I really need all the sleep I can get. I also used to suffer from bouts of insomnia from the time I was born until about a few years ago. So really any moment I’m sleeping is a precious one to me. Fuck with my sleep and I’ll fuck you up. Seriously, that’s just how it goes. I can usually let first instances slide, but on the second I’m not so forgiving.
2. Assumptions or illogical conclusions during conversations. This is a tougher one for me to describe.  Usually it involves someone connecting together unrelated conversations. It annoys me because it throws the conversation off track and causes the need to explain a situation that didn’t need explaining in the first place. Here is an example:
   • Me: “So I went to the mall and bought new shoes tonight”
   • Other Person: “Oh, you told me the other week you were signing up for baseball, so you got new baseball shoes?”
   • Me: “Um, no. I never even said I needed baseball shoes.”
3. Giving me to-do lists. I’m really independant, so when anyone tries to control my daily schedule or give me suggestions on what I should be doing it drives me up the wall. To me it suggests that the other person doesn’t think you’re good at organizing your own life, or that they think they know a better, supreme way of doing things. Overall, I just find it disrespectual and as an imposement of an individual value system. Don’t try to tell me what I should be valuing and therefore what I should be doing. I’m really lucky in that during the past few years i’ve had bosses that don’t micromanage. Anyone who attempts to micromanage me doesn’t last.
4. Over agreeableness. It’s hard to have an interesting conversation with someone who always agrees with me. I often just say stuff for the sake of saying stuff and certainly don’t expect it to be agreed with.
5. Out of context philosophical conversations.  I’m sure everyone could agree that you need to be in the right headspace to have a philosophical conversation. Sometimes these happen after a late night of drinking, or sometimes after seeing a really inspiring movie, but they certainly can’t happen in a forced manner. Please don’t try to force me to have a philosophical conversation when there is no contextual situation. It annoys me because I feel like an ass for not being interested in participating in the conversation. If I’m not feelign philosophical, I can’t force myself to be. Just because you’re in that headspace, please don’t expect other people to be. If you want to talk about philosophical things you’re thinking about, that’s fine, just don’t expect me to be able to participate back in the conversation.
6. Turning situations in to big deals that are not big deals, especially when they are not your situation. The only way I can explain his one is with an example. Tomorrow, I am in a wedding party. Last week, I picked up my bridesmaid dress. The shop had buggered my alterations and changed the structure of the dress. However, overall I was happy with it and thought it looked really good. On the other hand, my mom was outraged that the shop botched my alterations and proceeded to call the bride’s mom to tell her about these “horrendous alterations”. This got the bride and the brides family all worked up, and then the bride called me in a panic to see “what I was going to do about the situation” and “how I was going to get my dress fixed”. It took me a while to calm her down and explain that the dress still looked good and would work just fine. I hate it when unneccessary stress is created. I’m pretty easy going (apparently except for when someone triggers something on my annoyance list) and I get really frustrated when stressful situations are created that shouldn’t have been created in the first place.

Ugh, even just writing those annoyances down created a really gross annoyed feeling in me.

Usually if someone just has a habit of doing one of these things I can get over it. However there’s a few people I know who do a few of these things and it almost just seems to be in their personality to be annoying.

If I care about the person, I try to let them know what I find to be irritating. However people don’t always seem to be up to that kind of suggestion. No one likes to be told they’re annoying.

And I’m sure I can be really annoying too.

Moments June 5, 2008

She knew that night would be the night
And it all fell together…
The rain on the window
Softly sung songs
A glance shared together
Reminicing on years before

To this day, she’s still not sure
If she planned the moment
Or if the moment planned her
But it didn’t seem to matter
And she certainly didn’t care
That moment, that night,
wasn’t meant for regretting
Just for enjoying.

So what’s the other side? May 26, 2008

Have you ever noticed that some people seemingly have a one dimensional personality? They’re the eternal optimist, pessimist, over-agreeable, over-eager, over the top…. whatever is may be it seems that you can categorize every single one of your interactions with that person in to one bucket.

While we often seem to expect and want consistency from people (as it helps us superficially understand them), I really find nothing more frustrating. I feel like those people arn’t being honest with me, I feel like they’re not being honest with themselves. This is just an example, and maybe I’m just far too suspicious, but if someone likes everything the see and thinks it’s the most amazing thing ever, it doesn’t feel genuine. I like to see versatility in people. What makes them tick, what makes them light up, what makes them fight, what makes them cry, what makes them love.