shaking the dust off [oneself]

It’s a new year. What better time than now for a cliché self-reflective. Cliché or not, its something I need to do. The marking of a new year is just a milestone like any other. Its a blatant reminder that we need to take a moment pause look back where we’ve been, where we are, and make sure we’re headed where we want to go. I used to be move reflective (note the parallelism in reflecting on reflection..I hope that doesn’t break the space-time continuum) . Here it goes…

 

The Past

Social

I wanted to improve my social skills. Be more extroverted. This is something I’ve been working on since Dec ‘06. This goal is one of the main reasons I decided to pursue my MBA and even jumped on the social networking bandwagon. I even wrote a blog post back in April about it. I had a follow up post (a part 2) that sadly never made it out of draft.

I feel I’ve made really good progress on this front. Moving to DC was a great choice for me as a person. There is just an amazing abundance of social outings, gatherings and people to interact with.

Activities

I joined a kickball league to meet new people. It was a mixed experience. I didn’t end up making many friends from that, but it was absolutely surreal to be kicking a red rubber ball yards away from the Washington Monument. I blame the lack of friends mainly on the way the team was formed. We had 6 or 8 people (I forget) on our own and a sweet name (Kick Ballers), but that wasn’t enough for a full team. We ended up being placed with another group that had less people than us. That kind of killed moral for us as we lost our name and felt like it wasn’t our team. Part of that was just unlucky as the folks we were teamed up with. I might try it again next year if we have enough people for our own team.

I had good intentions on taking advantage of the DC meetup’s, but haven’t had time.  After kickball I thought it’d be fun to participate in a Ultimate Frisbee “league”. The one I found plays on Saturdays, which I’ve since devoted toward being in class.

Social Events

I’ve meet a bunch of really great people in my MBA Cohort. I’ve made it a point to attend all the related social outings. We just need to find some more social things to do together.

Online Social

I’ve tried to take advantage of online social tools. I could do better. I’m on Facebook, but I don’t interact much there. I mainly use it as an aggregation spot for all my various online social tools. That was somewhat a conscious decision, so its not all bad. I do use it to see what’s going on with people and so they can do the same with me. I use twitter. Its fun. I don’t interact like I should. I can’t say I’ve done much interaction with people on twitter. Its fair to say I use it similarly as Facebook.

Learning

Blogs

I certainly don’t read all the insane amount of blogs that I used to. At one time I was reading over 1,000 posts a day. Its one of those things that I had to let go of when time became constrained. I mainly just a handful read DC related blogs and get to the technical ones when I have a chance. I now get a fair amount of my news by following twitter related news sources.

Books

I did pretty good reading [non-technical] books.  I started keeping track of the books on GoodReads. My to-read list has grown and I should make some goals to keep reading.

Photography

I’ve done mediocre here. I’ve bought a couple books on exposure and aperture in hopes of becoming more proficient. I did take a couple photowalking trips and did upload some results flickr, but clearly I’d like to get better and do more. I don’t bring my camera around enough and I need to stop breaking it (my wide angle doesn’t focus like it should). 

Technical

As far as hard-core nerd learning outside of work, I’ve backed off quite a bit. I need to make sure my technical skills stay current. I have learned a great deal more about core networking as part of my new/current job, so I can say that I have done some learning this year. When the year started I had planned on developing some applications for my blackberry (like a really cool one for notifying you when you had to leave to catch the Metro), writing some cool apps in Silverlight or making some applications in SharePoint.

Experience

So far the most progress was made in the experience department. This is best in bulleted form.

Notable experiences

• Running past all the landmarks on the National Mall
• Random walking adventures through DC’s neighborhoods (Capital Hill, Adam’s Morgan, West End)
• Finding to dining places and experiences (sushi and Ethiopian food)
• Walking past the Whitehouse
• Traveling to NYC
• Caught a documentary at MoMA
• Morning run in Central Park
• My brother’s wedding in Maine
• Participating in the Great Lakes Relay
• Being in DC on election night
• Trips to Museums and such
  • National Aquarium in Baltimore
  • Museum of Natural History (a couple times)
  • National Gallery of Art

Health

Physical

I’ve been able to take good physical care of myself. (my WiiFit age is equal to my actual age). I love being able to run outside in the “winter”. Something I was not able to do (err. not willing to do back in Michigan). I ran the equivalent of a marathon in the Great Lakes Relay. I’m looking forward to doing that again next year as it was just a blast. I also ran my first 10K at the Marine Corps Marathon. I finished with a time of 41’05” (6’36”/mile pace) which ended up being 48th place overall (out of 5,000 registered runners)

Mental

I’ve seen the most improvement here. Not to talk ill of Michigan, but the environment there was very negative. That takes a toll on someone who tries to be positive.  I’ve noticed I just don’t dwell on the small stuff any more. I’ve learned to let go of things. Simply, that I cannot control everything. Or I suppose more accurately, you don’t need to control everything. I feel like I work just as much (or possible more) as I did in Michigan, but I get more done. Probably because I’m around people who are more positive and don’t look to block good ideas that aren’t their own.

I’ve been able to learn a lot from my brother and sister-in-law and their friends on openness and goodness. A trend I hope to continue.

 

I think that’s a fair recap on my progress for 2008. There’s been forward and backward progress. Some planned, some not. Next I just have to lay out the plan moving forward…The Future

When Fitness Means Life or Death

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/when-fitness-means-life-or-death/

That’s the premise of a new reality show from Discovery Health that premieres tonight [1/11/08]. Called “Fit to Live,” it’s based on Dr. Pamela Peeke’s book of the same name and raises the question of whether you have the strength, endurance and agility to escape a natural disaster, flee a burning building or pull your family from a wrecked car.

Fitness isn’t about working out at the gym or running a marathon, notes Dr. Peeke, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland and chief medical correspondent for Discovery Health Television. Fitness is important for coping with life’s emergencies, big and small, whether it’s running to make an airport connection or fleeing a burning building.

What an intriguing perspective on health and fitness. Its not really a secret to those that know me my feelings toward the weight related state of most Americans. That being said, I do try and avoid getting into those sticky discussions (or excuses) people have for why we are so garrulously overweight. What I think I like about this perspective that its casts unhealthy living in a more of a selfish light. Why is it that we don’t see the fitness related health of others as a source of concern for the longevity of our own existence? If I can’t count on you to save my life, or worse yet you hamper my ability to save my life because you get winded going down a flight of stairs, shouldn’t I be motivated to speak up against you eating an entire pizza?

I was watching a television show a couple years back when (20/20 or something like that) where they were pointing out the how obesity is socially acceptable whereas smoking is not. Where people would volunteer advice to someone they saw smoking that they should quit. Restating to the smoker what they had surely heard a hundred times before; how bad smoking is for them, all the repercussions of smoking. All while their other obese friend to their left continued gorging themselves. What was interesting about that was the way people  justified their lack of  active social concern for the health of the obese person over a smoker. The primary motivator for individuals saying something to a smoker seemed to be second hand smoke. So the concern for others really seemed to be ones concern for their self. People didn’t see how someone  else overeating would negatively affect them. Of course most people aren’t economists (at heart or profession). Food and nutrition being resources of finite amounts, individuals consuming excessively certainly does affect others. In fact the Wall Street Journal published an article about How Much Water Goes Into a Burger [and accompanying blog entry].

A fast-food quarter-pounder costs $3, and 1,300 gallons of water. That’s how much it takes, per burger, to hydrate the cow, grow its food and process its carcass, according to the Web sites of the National Park Service, the U.S. Geological Survey and a bottled-water trade group. By contrast, a loaf of bread uses up 150 gallons, and milk requires just 65.

Certainly this statistic is probably intended to fuel the “green” discussion, but I think it also helps qualify what we all give up so that someone can eat more than their “share”. If  we saw that the fast-food burger was more than $3 that someone pays for it, would we be more socially outraged bearing witness to people eating a half-dozen at a time.

If we [socially] weren’t willing the say something based on the economic costs (resource scarcity) or the financial costs (increased health care costs) is there hope on we’d say anything because of potential survival costs?

I guess that will somewhat depend on what the viewership is for the show…

Technorati Tags: Fitness,Health,Opinion