Onwards!

"Onwards!" was a saying that Nordstrom's former CTO Edmond Mesrobian would use. It seemed pretty forced, but after hearing it enough, it gets kind of catchy.

"Move fast and break things." That is another saying. Not one of Edmond's but one that Mark Zuckerberg used at Facebook. It was kind of the subject of the final paper I just wrote for my first class of my master's program. I used it at Nordstrom and I remember a program manager saying, "Okay, but please don't try and break anything." It wasn't like we were trying to break things. The idea was to push the technology as fast and hard as possible to its breaking point. Then find what changes you can do to push it past that point.

"Move fast and break things," has fallen out of favor recently in the tech. industry. Too many people are too aware of disastrous failures like Theranos. That was so bad that its leaders were charged with felonies and Hulu made a mini-series about it. My paper argues that moving fast can work when teams are led by servant leaders and backed by ethical behavior. The examples of where "Move fast and break things," failed are either because it was tried by hardware companies that cannot recover quickly enough or because of bad ethics that permeated the company (or both).

I fully believe that a software organization that delivers small, incremental changes and is led by ethical servant leaders cannot only deliver quality products faster but can also build good citizens and have a beneficial impact to society as a whole. 

My friend, Josh Maletz, taught me what good servant leadership looks like. Servant leadership helps not just those being led and not just the organization in which it is used, but aims to help society as a whole. Research I read showed that servant leadership aligns with consequentialism, the philosophy that what is moral is that which is good for humanity as a whole. It also showed that the environment created by servant leaders inspires those being led to also become servant leaders and the effect snowballs.

[Note that at this point I realized the time was 11:53 PM MDT. I think I mentioned before that I do a lot of these blog posts within a website 750words.com that kind of gamifies sitting down to write each day. I had written a few hundred words last night and this morning, but hadn't hit the 750 word mark yet. So I switched over to write there. I include it here, misspelled words and all, to give a little insight to what a shitshow my mind can be.]

You know, I keep doing this to myself, trying to bang out my last few hundred words with little time left on the clock. Tonight I have about six minutes left to try and get in another 300 words. I am not even sure that I can type that fast, but I am about to give it a shot. Please forgive the misspellings.

I have another idea for a story. A short story this time based on the 7k I tried to run with my brother a few years back, before Covid. I wanted to get him off to a good start because I knew he wanted to do well in the race. So I started off fast. Too fast. Just about the one mile mark I got a bad charly horse in one of my calves. i tried to massage it out, but had trouble with it all through the race. I had not really trained well enough. Plus it was excrutiatingly hot! I was probably already dehydrated by that first mile.

So at that point I knew that I wasn't going to have the race that I had hoped for. All I could really do was soldier on as best I could. If you've ever run any distance that you are really not in shape for, then you will understand this next part. I began picking out milestones, saying to myself, just make it to that next tree. Just make it to that next signpost. Just make it up this hill and you can walk the rest. It was so hot that some of the milestones I chose were shade beneath the sparse treees along the roue in Fort Collins. I would say, just get to the shadow of that next tr...

[The clock hits midnight.]

e next bit of shade und3er the next tree. There were so many times ... Ugh! I missed getting in my words by like two words because the damn site would not save it. Ah well, Today (Thursday) is another day.

Okay, so here I am going to switch gears. I'll come back to the 7k story later when I write out the short story that I have in mind. For those wondering, I did finish the race. It was brutal. I am not sure that it was worth it, but Rob did well. So I guess that made it worth it. It was hellish for me, to be frank.

I want to get back to "Onwards!" though. So I just finished my first class. I had a 98.8% going into the last paper. I was about halfway done with the paper and thought I had managed my time well and then realized that I really had not done what the question asked. During this class I have had the habit of plowing forward with an assignment before reading all the assignment materials and asking any questions that I should. In the first assignment I had banged out a beautiful 2000 word essay in no time at all and then found that the assignment was for 500-700 words. Now, I don't know how someone could have answered the question being asked in fewer than 700 words, but I did spend half the time on the assignment trying to parse my ideas down to 1200 words. It turns out that I had far too many direct quotes from the sources I was citing. If I would have summarized those instead, I could have gotten down to under 700 words (maybe), but still half my wonderful ideas would have stayed on the cutting room floor. Just a couple lessons I learned from that first class.

So, I know I passed the class. I would have even had I not done the last paper. I want an 'A', though. I read through the paper late last night after putting it together. I was going to have the entire night tonight just to do the citations for it. I read it over and wanted to completely start over. I can't exactly say what was wrong with it. It just wasn't good. There were lots of little things wrong with it: it wasn't researched as well as it could have been, it was too wordy in parts and had no depth in others, and it really didn't answer the question being asked. I spent part of the night tonight re-writing it before working on the citations.

I am not a perfectionist. I understand that we are not all perfect human beings and don't expect myself to be one. I do get horribly disappointed, however, if I feel like I am not doing my very best given the circumstances. I have been feeling that way a lot lately, that I am not living up to the best person I can be. I hate feeling so disappointed in myself. I hate that I can't enjoy any sort of feeling of accomplishment. Michael Jordan once said that his achievements didn't come from his desire to win so badly. They came through his hating to lose. I understand that.

I hate so much the disappointing things that I did in the past. I ruminate on them. I can't shake them. They drive me as well. I want to run further this year. I want to write more this year. I want to stop disappointing people including myself. I want to leave this world having made one little contribution to the betterment of it, no matter how small. However, I feel like it's miserably hot and that I really have not trained for this like I should. I am picking out signposts. Make it to Mardi Gras. Make it to St. Patrick's Day. Make it to Easter. Get to the top of this hill (Christ! This is a big fuckin' hill!), and you can have a little bit of a break. What else can one do? Onwards!

An Invitation to a Run

I just finished Haruki Murakami's book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. (It is a little strange to me that the first book I would get by him would be his memoirs on running, but that's what was available and how my thoughts have gone lately.) I was surprised at how much Murakami actually runs, or how much he ran ten years ago when he wrote the book. I expected something by an author who regularly ran around 3 miles a day, occasionally ran a 10k, and once did a marathon. No. Murakami has been running long distances regularly for as long as anyone I've heard of, probably around forty years now. At least at the time he wrote the book or journal entries the book was based on, Murakami was doing forty or fifty miles per week and had done a marathon close to every year for 25 straight years. Nor is he slow, not someone who plods through a marathon in over six hours. He was regularly running marathons in the 3:30 - 3:45 range, and didn't run over four hours until the time he was writing the book, well into his fifties.

Anyway, even though Murakami wrote about how he likes running for how it affords him time alone, I had this urge to write him and say that if he were ever in Denver that I'd love to run with him. (He does mention running in Boulder in the book.) Even to me, this seems like a very strange invitation to extend. I too really like my time alone when running. It's one of the things that makes it an attractive pursuit for me. I don't need to talk to anyone. However, I also like feeling a part of a group, even though I am not so open. I'm always invigorated by entering a race and being around a lot of other runners, even though I say maybe three words to any one person and definitely don't hang around post-race to socialize. It's still nice being around a lot of other people who can empathize, or is it commiserate, with what brought me there to that start line. Anyway, I feel like Mr. Murakami would understand my invitation, and may even take me up on it.

Not that I wouldn't have tons to talk about with the author. I would have tons to talk just about running or how he got started writing or just about him running a bar or Japan compared to the U.S. A million things. But I think that's why a run would be so good. I wouldn't be obligated to say much at all, and he wouldn't feel obligated to answer me. We are just running, after all, not doing an interview. Of there were conversation at all, it would come up naturally. There would necessarily be an economy to the conversation: we would only have so much distance and so much breath to spare. Frivolous conversation just would not do.

That's maybe why I've had the thought several times lately that I would love to just invite some people on a run if they were closer. If there were any conversation, it could be limited to as little or as much as any of us felt to offer. Pressure is transferred away from the conversation to the act of running. Getting through the run is the primary focus; the conversation is secondary. At least it can seem that way.

I think this is why guys like to do business over a game of golf or over a couple beers. If the stated mission is to play a game of golf, then at some point the 18th green is reached, the game is over, and the day is a success whether any business was actually accomplished. If we go out for a couple beers and not a word is said between us, well we can still hang out the Mission Accomplished banner.

I like the idea of a run though. There's a little more purpose there. I am pretty bad at small talk, mostly because I abhor it. It really isn't the other way around. I'm bad at small talk because it just grates on my soul, and not the other way around. With drinking there isn't that forced economy. If there is some more serious words to be said, we aren't limited by time. Just the opposite: The longer we sit and the more beers we drink, the easier it will get to have some serious conversation. Not with a run. There is a set distance, so if we're three miles into a five mile run, you better spill if there is something to spill.

Yeah, I like the idea of a run.

A Ghost Story

I only did a short run last night. The day had been hot, and I had already run almost every day this week. Also, I was on call for work. Technically I'm not supposed to be more than 15 minutes from being able to get online in response to some technical issue with Nordstrom's credit card application system. Normally, this isn't a big deal. In the absence of some new software being pushed out, we don't get many issues, and the ones that do occur are usually resolved quickly by rebooting a server. However, we are in the midst of our biggest days of the year in terms of credit applications, as these are the days leading up to our yearly "Anniversary Sale", and we had already had issues over the past couple days because of the significant increase in traffic. So a short run made sense all around.

It was twilight when I started my audio book going in my headphones, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Murakami, stepped off the porch and started the timer on my phone. To be very technical about it, it was more like civil twilight when I went out. The sun had gone down below the mountains way off to the west, and even then would probably be below the horizon had the mountains not been there. There was no sun, but still some residual light and the air was still pretty warm. I went a mile and then a little more before turning around at the park by the local elementary school. This stretched out my short run a bit beyond the two miles I had done recently. I was running in my Vibram Five Finger shoes, minimal "barefoot" shoes. You can't just suddenly do long distances in them - your calves will be screaming the next day. You need to gradually build up the distance in them. I have only recently really started rebuilding the foundation of my running as a whole lately.

Just after the voice in my headphones told me I had gone a mile and a half I swore I heard a dog. I'm always a little wary about dogs when running in our neighborhood. People work out in their garages, even at night, and for some reason their dog will just sit and watch when a stranger comes running by in the dark. I've had to deal with dogs coming out and aggressively defending their territory on runs. It's never been a problem for me, though. I just stop and wheel around on them and shout, "Go home!" Every dog I've dealt with like this has been incredibly surprised. Every dog but one, a cute, skinny pit bull pup that just wanted to run along with me. Your results wheeling around on aggressive dogs may vary, but it works for me. 

Anyway, dogs aren't unusual, but I must have just been hearing things because there was no dog there. Dogs that aren't there aren't unusual for me either. It sounds weird, but on a number of times I've felt that I was being followed by a dog, just somewhere behind me. Just an eerie feeling. One time I had the feeling though, and there was a coyote loping along with me, maybe 30 yards off into the undeveloped field. No dogs and no coyotes were with me tonight, not even the eerie feeling I was being followed, just the thought I heard something, a thought that came and left.

Like I said, the air was still warm when I left. It was now "nautical" or maybe even "astronomical" twilight when I turned the corner back onto our street. Nightfall. Still enough light to see the bats circling above feasting on mosquitoes, but you could also see the first stars, Venus anyway. It was still a warm night but upon stopping I realized I was drenched in sweat, the night air feeling good on my back and forehead but still warm enough that I didn't have a chill.

I gave myself a few moments to sit on our porch swing and cool off. Then I went into the house, poured myself a glass of ice water, and took another few minutes to let myself cool off before heading to the shower.

As I stepped out of the shower I heard a drawer open in the kitchen, or shut I guess, because I only heard the sound once. No one was home though, were they? I listened closely now and heard a light switch click off and someone walk, I presumed, from the kitchen to the family room. Just as the footsteps stopped, our dog Bear launched a series of barks. Actually, it sounded like they walked the other way, from the family room to the kitchen. That didn't jibe though with the sequence of the light switch and then the walking.There is a regular light switch in the kitchen, but in the family room is a lamp with a switch on the neck as well as a dimmer switch on the wall for the overhead light. Neither sounds like what I distinctly heard as a light switch being flipped. I must have just heard the footsteps wrong.  Jen must have come home early while I was in the shower, had made herself something to eat and had now settled into the couch.  I waited for the television to come on, but it didn't. She's sitting on the couch with her nose in her iPad checking Facebook until I come out. I was going to go to bed, but maybe she'll convince me to stay up and watch the Game of Thrones season premiere. 

I almost called out "Hi!" but just figured I'd walk out and say, "I'm glad you are home." And then when she said, "You are?", I'd say, "Yeah because it would have been very strange if I heard someone walking around and came out of the bathroom and it wasn't you."

I toweled off pretty well, slid on the athletic shorts I've been using to sleep in and walked out of the bathroom. The lights in the house were still off. Jen usually turns on a bunch of lights when she gets home. I had heard her flip the kitchen light back off, so maybe she's happy just to sit in the almost dark. There was no glow from an iPad when I poked my head around the corner to look in the family room. I was a bit perplexed as I walked to the front room to check out the front window for her car in the driveway. Wasn't there. Had she come in and left again, maybe to run to the store? Maybe she was getting popcorn for the GoT premiere. No, I would have heard the door for sure.

At this point, I have to admit I half-hoped she was playing some relatively elaborate prank on me and was going to jump out of a dark corner to scare me. I played back the last few minutes in my mind. I had heard the drawer. Our drawers are old. There is this distinct sound they make. Even if I had misheard that, I had definitely stopped to listen and heard the light switch and the footsteps. I had heard those right? Maybe it was the dog? No, I had heard the light switch, and then the clearly human footsteps, because it was only after those that I heard the dog bark and then clearly a different sound of the dog pattering across the floor.

I texted her, just in case there was some small chance this was still some ruse. "Remind me to tell you about my ghost story," I texted. "Oooh yes! Can't wait!" Jen responded. She was still at work. She wouldn't be home for several hours yet. 

Waiting for Born to Pull Weeds to be published

I'm almost finished with Born to Run (the book by Christopher McDougall about ultrarunning, not the Springsteen biography). It's a bit premature to say that it is life-changing. It definitely changed my week, though. I will just sidestep the controversy about whether runners should just ditch the running shoes. From personal experience, however, I do side with the idea that less shoe is better and that the shoe companies have worked to destroy what millions of years of evolution have practically perfected. (Full disclosure: I haven't tossed my New Balance 860's, but I have changed [long before reading the book] to a forefoot gait and alternate with shorter runs in Vibrams, and all the physical issues I had before with running have disappeared.) The main thing I took away from the book, however, wasn't about footwear or diet or gait. It was the simple idea that to be a better runner, one just simply needs to enjoy running.

I also just recently finished reading Mark Manson's book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, and one of many quotes I took from that was, "Action isn't just the result of motivation; it's also the cause of it." It's what we've long referred to as "the tail wagging the dog". Manson talks about the cycle of inspiration-motivation-action. Usually we wait for some sort of inspiration to strike us before we get motivated to go and do something. Once we end up acting on that inspiration we are often struck with more inspiring thoughts, more motivation, and urged to more action. His point is that instead of waiting for some inspiration, we should just start off by doing something, anything, and letting the inspiration and motivation come to us as a result. It doesn't even matter if the action is completely wrong thing, just so long as you get started; you'll get back on the right track in short order. For writers this might mean getting down "200 crappy words" in Manson's example. Runners often say that the first step is the most difficult step of a run.

I've known this idea, of course, long before I read either Manson or McDougall. I knew if I could just start working out or just start a run I would feel better once started, even though I felt awful about actually getting started. With that attitude, though, I was really struggling to run on a consistent basis. When I was honest with myself, I was really struggling to follow through on anything with a consistent basis. Something else McDougall says in his book though, also really resonated with me. We westerners, well maybe he said Americans specifically, are always looking to get something, to gain something from our actions. We run to lose weight or be healthy or even to qualify for the Boston Marathon or simply lower our time. Everything I was doing, not just running, was to gain something.

I honestly can't think of something apart from binge-watching "The Wire" that I have done recently simply for the fun of doing it [Well, and skiing... I definitely just ski because it makes me happy -- though two or three times in a winter isn't going to cut it]. I've either felt obligated to do something - going to work, weeding the yard, even taking a week off of work for vacation - or was looking to gain something - stopping drinking, going for a run, taking online programming courses. Not that doing all those things wasn't for good reasons, and not that I didn't enjoy my vacation or the runs or not putting up with the empty calories and lost memories due to drinking. My approach, however, my motivation was misplaced. If the motivation is because we feel obligated by some outside pressure, what happens when that pressure eases off? What happens when our own selfishness outweighs that outside factor. That sort of motivation just isn't as effective as motivation that come from within. Worse, if we are motivated by seeking some gains, there are two possible outcomes: we make those gains, get what we are seeking, or we don't. If we don't, we get frustrated. If we do make the gains, we are only led to want more. Get a promotion or raise and we want another. Lose five pounds and then we want to lose ten. Run a marathon in 3 hours 45 minutes and we try and get that time under 3 and a half hours. Win six Tour de Frances and we will do whatever it takes to win the seventh.

Do something because it makes you happy, though, and all the rest of the motivation works itself out. The narrator in one of my favorite movies says, "Fight Club became the reason to cut your hair short or trim your nails." I've already experienced the feeling this week. After my first couple of runs this week, runs that have been better than any I've had recently, I began thinking, I need to eat right so I can get back out there and run. I know it seems like I'm just trading one end for another, but the motivation is different. If you eat right because you really enjoy feeling healthy, good for you. I was trying to eat better because I felt like I was supposed to. That motivation came from without. Now I'm trying to do it as a means to an end that makes me happy.

After the revelation that happier runners are better runners that came from Born to Run, my next runs, like I said, were so much better than the other runs I've done recently. First, I shrugged away the idea that I was running to get a better time or lose weight. I mean, I'm still hoping for those things, but either decided or simply realized that those weren't the reasons I was running. Again I either decided or realized that I was running because I like to run. Suddenly I didn't care about time or distance. I didn't care how my legs felt, didn't even really notice. Admittedly there was still some tail wagging the dog going on. I forced myself to smile when my thoughts turned to getting tired. That action at least reminded me that I could simply slow down - no one cared what kind of time I turned in for a late Wednesday night run. Yesterday I even walked a bit, and the only times I've ever walked before was because I was "defeated", those times when the heat or wind or overambition forced me to stop running. I always felt awful for walking. Yesterday, I simply realized that running almost every day this week had sapped some strength in my legs. Twenty or thirty seconds walking would give my legs and mind a bit of a break in order to finish out the run strong, and I did.

Finally, even as I wrote this blog entry I began to think about those other things that really do make me happy -- writing, riding my bike, playing basketball -- that I haven't been doing because I've felt otherwise obligated by things that don't make me happy. Then I've thought about those things that I already do where the motivation has been skewed or misplaced somehow. As an eight year-old kid I used to sit in my room with a Timex-Sinclair 1000 computer hooked to a little black-and-white television, for hours inputting BASIC commands to get a line to march around the screen. I really do enjoy programming, but it became a chore. It became a means to not only put food on the table but also pay doctor and vet bills and put new cars in the driveway and buy bigger and better computers. I really do like yard work, particularly gardening and mowing the lawn. I've become frustrated though with the weeds and dry weather and chickens that eat all my tomatoes. Am I doing these things because I like to, because I need to, or maybe because they are a means to something else that I like?

Anyway, right now it's about 85 degrees, and I want to get a long run in. I have a feeling there may be some walking thrown in there, maybe even a good deal of walking. At least it will take my mind off of all the damn weeds though!