Turning the corner on a new decade and year
This was originally going to be a post about beginning to track my workouts again, tackling a new year by getting fit and all that kind of crap. The workouts have been a bit haphazard though, so I thought I’d just reflect on the past few weeks and where things are going in the next while.
My ability to sit down and write anything meaningful has generally been hampered for some time by the MA I’m doing. Reading and writing a lot of very focused material so you can prepare another paper or do a literature review doesn’t leave much brain power for updating your journal online. Sometimes it’s two months or more between posts right now. I’m going to try to change that by just doing a little reflection. I think it will help me as I head into the crunch period of my thesis. Future reflections will be shorter and more focused, but what follows is akin to taking out the mental trash that’s been sitting at my cerebral curb for the past bit.
In no particular order
The things that sustain me and probably bore you my dear reader …
Fitness
A lot of my usual activity has been curtailed by the injuries and surgery I’ve sustained over the past year or two. I’m pretty healthy now, but do still suffer from a little left groin tightness if I run hard or long. I’m still exploring options on that, but I may just have to deal with it. It’s a lot better than it was while training for Boston, my inguinal hernia is all healed up and even my right knee is behaving with the right exercises and a couple daily glucosamine dosages. For the longest time the effect was essentially to stop getting out with my running friends, stop playing ultimate, stop going for road rides, etc, etc, etc. Given the amount of coursework I was doing during this, I felt that the timing was OK.
Now that I’m feeling well enough to train again and I’m keeping track of my workouts through Garmin Connect, I’m in the throes of data analysis and have absolutely no time to anything other than my job, my thesis and some forced workouts. Group runs and a possible return to ultimate will have to wait until I’m past the data analysis stage and strictly working on the never-ending writing and revision process that will begin in a few weeks.
Haiti
I can’t help but thinking right now, about two events at polar opposite ends of the spectrum. Due to my particular circumstances I’m not able to do much about or with either but they strike an odd juxtaposition in my mind. The Haiti quake of nearly three weeks ago still is present in my mind almost constantly. My wife and I donated some time ago and I’m dumbfounded by the generosity of Canadians. Some $90 million and counting. When you think of how many people don’t or can’t give and we’ve still give roughly $3 for every man, woman and child, it’s quite astonishing. The suffering and need is immense and I am hopeful that progress begins to escalate soon, as infrastructure is hampering aid getting to those who need it.
The Olympics
Then there’s the Olympics. Polls show that British Columbians are more pessimistic than anyone else in Canada. I know that the mildest January on record is giving John Furlong and his ilk convulsions and, as a taxpayer bound to foot the bill, I am very hopeful for a finanically successful games. What gnaws at me, however, is that locally most of us care more about that than the death toll and human suffering in Haiti (and many other places around the world). While the human ideals embodied in the original Olympic movement should be what international athletic competition is all about, what it has become about is money. Corporate money, government money and the economic spin-off we’ve been told is to come, but which may ultimately not, due to the lagging world economy. The timing of the warm weather and financial meltdown has been a bitch for Vanoc, but then again I bet the mild nights are nice for the homeless folks that Vanoc promised would get all kinds of help as a result of the games. I have a feeling we’ll be waiting a while to see that one.
Work
My brain doesn’t stop there. When not occupied with thesis research, international sport or disaster, I come back to what takes up 40+ hours of my week. Two big projects on the front burners mean there’s not much space for reflection during the day either. Rolling SharePoint 2010 out to BCIT is finally taking shape and I’m beginning to do needs analysis on a new Part-Time Studies course catalogue for the BCIT web site.
While finally settled into my new role doing my old work, the trailer I call home during the day gets no better. It’s a difficult physical space in which to work, with bad lighting, bad furniture and a persistent faint chemical smell emanating from the carpet or floor. It is what it is, but a creative or productive space, it is not.
Going forward
The training break I’ll be taking for five weeks to do a big chunk of my first thesis writing draft is coming in two. What probably gives me my fair share of stress right now is that I likely won’t have either my work projects or my thesis data analysis to the point where I’ll be productively writing the first draft of my paper right off the bat. It’s not due until the beginning of April, but that time will come more quickly than I expect.
I don’t expect most of my reflective posts to be rambling like this one and in a perfect world each of the ideas above would have been a more timely created piece of well-crafted prose. That’s the hope for future bits of mental flotsam but for now this one will have to do.
February 1st, 2010 at 11:19 am
Sorry to hear that trailer is so crappy. Here’s to a quick move to more suitable digs.
February 1st, 2010 at 11:22 am
Thanks Kemp. Unlikely to change anytime soon I’m afraid, but I’m not going to worry about it until the thesis is behind me. I’ll have more energy for that stuff as I get closer to the summer.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:55 am
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