Husband, salesperson, ultra-runner continually pushing himself to be a better version of himself and living an ultra life, a life lived to the full.
I am a 56 (going on 57) year old who thirteen years ago experienced the worse hell I ever thought a human being could ever live through. After working hard and studying even harder, my wife of almost thirty-five years and I found ourselves in Central Asia broken, angry and depressed with all our hopes and dreams lying on an airport floor as we were escorted by the police of the country we were serving in out the door.
The last thirteen years have been fueled by my friend and mentor’s one sentence comment as he met us at the airport jobless, overweight and out of shape, with no money, suffering from emotional and mental breakdowns and with no desire to hope, dream or even pray for a future. …
January 19 has become Resolution Give Up Day, don’t be that person.
It’s become so popular to make New Year resolutions and then quit them that somebody decided to create a holiday around ditching your New Year’s resolution.
There’s even a calendar to help you plan your fun around ditching your resolution because now you can quit guilt-free. The website, www.timeanddate.com, created this fun holiday to make quitting fun.
Strava, the largest sports participation app, has revealed January 19 as Quitter’s Day, the day most people halt their resolutions and sink back into their sedentary lifestyles.
There are many good reasons people quit their resolutions before they’ve even gotten started. Life gets in the way, you have a terrible day, suddenly what sounded good January 1 just plain sucks. …
Whether that is a good or bad thing is a matter of opinion.
***Began writing this before the incidents of January 6, 2021. This just reinforces the points being made.
President Trump has proven that as a politician, he is a complete failure. Time and opinion will tell whether this is a good or bad thing. Arguments can be held for both.
Perhaps the better argument is whether we need politicians or whether America and the world would be better off with less politicians. …
When the noise gets to be too much, run away.
Step out on the sidewalk of any large city to go for a run, and “it” immediately assaults every one of your senses. Escape to a park thinking you can get away from “it” for some quiet miles and suddenly, there “it” is again, assaulting your mind and robbing your peace.
What is “it”? Noise; unrelenting and constant. The noise of large cities can rob you of the joy of running. You could put earbuds in and cancel out the street and city noise, but all you are doing is substituting city noise for other noise.
Weeks and months of city running can make what is normally something that brings you peace and joy, a step into more chaos and a feeling as if something is being stolen from you. …
Life was meant to be lived to the full.
If I had a penny for every time somebody has said, “I can’t run as you do.”, I’d be a very wealthy person.
Running doesn’t take superhuman effort. It takes not letting what you think you can’t do stop you from starting.
I use running as an example, but kick that around a little bit and figure out what impossible you’re letting stop you from living life to the full.
Impossible is a limiting word, and I’d like to introduce you to some people that don’t let the impossible stop them.
People Who Don’t Let Impossible Stop Them
If you’ve noticed that you’re not making gains in your fitness, it’s time to hit the reset button.
Have you ever had a computer, laptop or tablet and it starts to slow down? Every time you try and work on the device, you get more and more frustrated and want to throw it out the window.
Finally, in a fit of frustration, you get ahold of one of your techie friends. They do everything they can, but finally it’s time to do the unthinkable. So you save all your important data someplace safe.
Then you reset the device to the factory settings. What happens is that all the things that you’ve added to the device get erased and only the things that were on the device originally is all that is left. …
Anybody who isn’t a devout R or D could have seen this coming and avoided it.
On January 6, 2020 we saw something happen in the capital city of the United States of America that we never should have seen.
The violence and the chaos were scenes we would normally see in third world nations after an election. They should never have been seen in a nation with a foundation like the United States of America.
Yet they were. And perhaps, if we could step back from the talking heads on television and the tweeting about how outraged politicians are about this, we should be asking ourselves the most important question out there today. Not how.
Why? …
Overcome this fear and find running success in 2021.
As I stood on the start line at the 58th Annual JFK 50 Miler in November 2020, a familiar feeling came into my head. The thoughts and weight of a number of 50-mile race failures were replaying on a continual loop.
As I came off Weverton Cliffs I was behind time. I calmly put all thoughts of failing aside and went to step into the portable toilet on the side of the road.
As I stepped towards the toilet, IT happened. …
Humor
Some people just drive their cars, others are expert drivers
When my wife and I moved from a small town in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming to a megalopolis in Virginia, little did we know that we were expert drivers.
In Wyoming, you simply get in your car, and you drive for miles seeing nothing more than antelope and prairies as far as the eye can see. Once you get to a crossroad, you simply indicate which direction you’re turning, slow down to make sure there isn’t another car on the road (there isn’t — EVER), and simply make a turn.
In large cities, this is not how this is done. No, no, no! In a large city, you must immediately become an offensive driver (using the offensive, as in “I am going to offend you now! use of the word) utilizing a little known art practiced only by the most expert of drivers. …
Lessons writers can learn from Vincent van Gogh.
Writers, as with every career pursuit, should learn to rely on more than just one revenue stream if they wish to make a living.
Unfortunately, too many writers won’t ever earn anywhere near what their art is capable of earning them.
Recently I took my mom to the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg Florida to see the Vincent van Gogh multi-sensory exhibit. My mom is my all-time favorite artist and a great story in her own right. If you have the opportunity to explore this exhibit, it is worth way more than what we paid to see it.
Vincent van Gogh is one of my favorite artists, but also a cautionary tale for creatives wishing to make it big with their craft. The story of Vincent van Gogh is best told by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. …
