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[regretsneverdream]

This should be the last post here, at least for a while. It’s on to another project for me.

Did I get what I needed out of this blog?

I wrote about our pre-Covid trip to Miami to see New Order. The post was something I felt compelled to get out, but I’m not sure it amounts to much.

I wrote about a particular regret, about giving up on sports too soon, almost by default, without giving it too much thought at the time. I could write an entire blog about regretting things. Maybe one day I will if my life takes a turn.

I wrote about the age my dad was when he died, how I’m not far from that age now, how that should change how I live. That was supposed to be the next blogging project, and someday it might be, but I’ve got something else planned next.

I wrote an extremely non-comprehensive history of me running.

I wrote a cliche post about recognizing and embracing this time in our lives with the kids all under one roof.

I wrote about remember 2013, moving to Florida, a period in my life when I was being present naturally without much effort because everything was so new.

I wrote about the temporariness of things.

I wrote about trying to hold onto the temporary things before I lose them.

I wrote about my weight.

I wrote about a rare moment when I had pizza and beer and didn’t over-indulge.

I wrote about wanting to write, to be a blogger with readers. And how I may not be living up to my moral obligation to seek happiness.

I wrote about how I’ve probably been just a bit too comfortable with the status quo to take risks and seriously seek happiness.

I wrote about how work was tough but I was able to unwind with the family and forget about the slog for a bit over a particular weekend and wondered if this was what work-life balance was supposed to feel like.

I wrote about wanting to be a creator but my revealed preference is that of a consumer.

I wrote about my lack of expertise.

I wrote about how I never think we have enough money.

I wrote about needing to live in the moment more often.

I wrote about cooking dinner for the family (serotonin) vs. social media (dopamine).

I wrote about wanting to foster an environment of health and fun for our family.

I wrote about my desire to get more healthy, wondering if that’s my one thing to ask the universe for.

I wrote about my trying to support my oldest son’s mental health during this quasi-lockdown. That was only two weeks ago and things have gotten so much worse with the onset of virtual school.

I wrote about me selfishly floating through life.

I wrote about maybe I never want to take risks because the risk presented to me is never my dream.

I wrote about trying to get under the desire for more money to the underlying desire.

I wrote about gratitude and authenticity, about how probably I don’t have enough of either.

There’s some themes and connections to the 25 posts I’ve made here before this one. Things to think about now and revisit later. Maybe organize differently into another thing. But for now, I want to give this project a Marie Kondo “thanks” and move on to the next thing.

[regretsneverdream]

Thanks and Praise

I got lower than I would have expected employee engagement scores on a recent survey. One question my team scored me low on was recognition, specifically, if in the last seven days they had received recognition or praise for doing good work. This one left me stumped initially because I thought I thanked them all the time.

When I talked to my wife about it, she said maybe I wasn’t recognizing them in the way they want to be recognized. She and I talk about this all the time, how she needs gold stars and I don’t give gold stars. Especially not for things I think someone should be doing.

For instance I hate junked up surfaces around the house. The dining room table is typically junked up and she knows it drives me bonkers. She said for the 10% of the time it’s not junked up, I should probably thank her. And if I did so, that 10% would probably slowly start to increase.

And stuff where we are getting better, I tend to put a negative twist on a positive comment. Like personal finance stuff, we have come a long way together. But whenever I start to talk about how good we are going, I typically end with how we could be doing better, “we’re so close...” This feels positive to me but negative to her.

My team at work has been going through a year and a half of organizational change. We have come so far, we have done so much great stuff. But I can’t help myself from mentioning how “we’re so close” to getting much better. Again, this excites me, but something is obviously not working for my team.

I have so much in life to be grateful for. I can think that to myself. I can say it out loud. But if I’m being honest with myself, do I truly believe it in my soul? Because maybe my gratitude feels forced and inauthentic because it is.

[regretsneverdream]

Maybe this is cliche or obvious or conventional wisdom, but it’s not the money, it’s the extra bedroom, the yard for the kids and the dog, the summer kitchen.

It’s easy to say and believe there are more important things than money and not chase money.

If chasing money is my primary objective, I am pretty bad at it because there are a lot of people who have a lot more money than me.

It’s the wanting things, the desire. Not for yourself per se, for others. The space for the kids to play and have friends over. For us to entertain guests. For the guests to stay overnight or a few weeks or a few months.

If you don’t prioritize money, you don’t prioritize those things. Or at least your perfect vision of those things.

Well, I guess we can take the dog on walks. And the kids can play out front and around the neighborhood and at parks. And our back area is fine for hosting as our guest wouldn’t care if their meat was grilled on a $10,000 summer kitchen or a $200 grill on wheels. And when someone needs to stay the night, we can easily make remove by having the 3 kids squeeze into 2 bedrooms temporarily

It’s only our vision that is sacrificed. That’s what the money is for, to keep up that vision, that dream.

So alter our dreams, reduce our desire for money. Well, not alter per se. Focus on what is truly important. What’s the underlying desire for all the things. Why do we want them?

Our kids, their health, their relationships. Our relationships. With friends. With family.

If that’s truly all we cared about, not keeping up appearances around them, we could do it with a lot less money.

[regretsneverdream]

Status Quo Bias as Lifestyle Choice

In the spring of 2002, right before graduation, I signed a year lease for one bedroom apartment on Ludlow Avenue in Clifton, about a five or ten minute walk from the shops and restaurants.

I chose this option over moving to Hyde Park (but really Oakley) in a four bedroom with three of my fraternity buddies.

This choice was based on my vision of living a healthy post-college lifestyle--I couldn’t imagine myself making smoothies before work in the inevitable dirty kitchen shared by four twentysomething dudes.

This was the last time my vision drove my housing decision.

Three months later you moved in with me and we slid over to a two bedroom on the same floor in the same building.

Two years later we moved to a newer two bedroom apartment in Fort Wright because it was closer to your work without materially impacting my commute, and you couldn’t picture our new wedding housewares in our crappy, old apartment.

A year later we bought a three bedroom house in Newport with no money down because it was 2005.

Six years later we moved to the suburbs and a hellish commute.

Two years later we moved to Florida and our current house. We didn’t obsess over it (to the degree we do now when we think about moving) because I was taking a “three to five year role” so this was supposed to be a three to five year house for us.

I left that “three to five year role” after four, changing companies, keeping us in Florida indefinitely.

But this house is pretty perfect for us but for two things: a yard and a fifth bedroom/guest suite. And when a house with those things pop up in our vicinity, we think about things.

The house that’s coming available soon down the street doesn’t have the fifth bedroom per se, but unlike ours, it has the space to expand.

But like every other house we consider, it needs tons of aesthetic changes to match our tastes and what our current house already has, which means money.

We could do it though. We could go through the short term pain of selling our house and moving down the street. And just put 20% down, using some equity as to make some immediate fixes like flooring and painting, saving the rest as a starter fund for bigger changes. We could start a three to five year plan of adding on, making it our dream of hosting friends and family, the center of our world for the next ten to fifteen years.

But I think I found the problem. I am not sure if that’s my dream. I’m not sure what my dream is. I don’t think I have actively made decisions to pursue any dreams in any realistic manner. I am still floating.

I could see how people take the risk of over-extending themselves to pursue their dream. But if it’s not my dream, I am scared to risk over-extending myself, so my bias is always stay put and keep floating.

How can I be upset with my kid for not giving it his all at virtual school and soccer practice if I don’t do the same with my dreams?

[regretsneverdream]

I have this tendency to float through life in my own world, focusing on my own thing, until someone in my life isn’t happy about something--my wife, one of my kids, an employee, a colleague--and then I go about helping to solve the problem if I can.

Much of the time, I think, the problem stemmed from me floating through life in my own world, focusing on my own thing when I should have been focusing on their thing because they are in my life and important to me.

I’m selfish but bad at it. If I were good at being selfish, I probably would have a lot more to show for it in terms of accomplishments and money.

When I put my mind to something, I overthink most things, getting caught up in analysis. So maybe my natural state is floating to protect myself from this, I am not sure.

I want to just be present and enjoy life with my family.

Working from home for these past five months (and at least four more to go), make this hard to toggle on/off because my job requires so much thinking and analysis, it’s hard to step out of the guest room office in the middle of the day and turn that part of my brain off when it’s family time.

Confucius said something like “wherever you go, go there with all your heart.”

I need to show and tell my wife I love her more often.

[regretsneverdream]

Lockdown Parenting

Just I thought things were winding down at the house before bed two nights ago, I walked pasted my oldest son and he said he couldn’t quite figure out how Steam video games worked. I said what’s that? He then flipped out and started crying and said he doesn’t know and he keeps asking and no one will help him.

I had him walk outside with me as I took the dog out and talked to him as patiently as I could and got him to calm down. Turns out Steam is something he heard about on a few days ago, it’s related to PC gaming.

He is excited to try it as he just got a new laptop. We bought new laptops for all the kids for school virtual school which starts today.

My wife just set it up and got him logged on but isn’t having as much luck with the younger kids because we haven’t received all the info to get them logged in yet. We’re allowed to call the district help desk today if we still haven’t received what we need.

I told my son the laptops were for school and please don’t ask your stressed-out mom to help you figure out this video game thing before she’s got the whole school thing under control.

But I get it, a lot of things suck right now, and I feel bad for him.

I try to talk about how thing are bad for me and a lot of people right now. And it sort of makes me feel guilty thinking about how things suck because the things that suck for me are so frivolous, like lack of sports and movies and vacations and office work, while so many others are dealing with truly hard times like sickness and unemployment.

I tell him to give us a little patience and we try harder to listen to him and help him.

Yesterday morning I Google what Steam is and follow a link to a Common Sense Media post about it. And it’s sort of like the Amazon Prime of video games, and it should be fairly simple to figure out. But it’s meant for ages 13+ and my son is 12 and it’s going to become a whole thing that I don’t what to think about right now.

While on the site, I follow a link in the sidebar about supporting your kids’ mental health during the pandemic. The article--like all articles on all topics you are involved with but could stand to improve on--make me realize we are doing everything wrong. For instance, we probably need to cool it with the guilt trips on amount of screen time and shift the focus to positive screen time.

My son seems unhappy to me right now and I’m worried as he starting 7th grade right now, a time boys shift friend groups, where friendships a less driven by proximity then by interest, and it sucks to be doing virtual school right now. He has been having blowups like this a lot lately.

He needs more of our attention and it’s hard but we need to figure it out. I do have an idea for a creative project for him and me to work on together, but I want to let the school rhythm get under way a bit first. And we are thinking of twice per week over at his Grandpa’s, helping him get his new house set up, which should be good for him.

We have adopting the mantra of this being an adventure. Only a few more peaceful moments before the family wakes up and today’s adventure begins.

[regretsneverdream]

So what's the use in complaining When you've got everything you need

On our third day in Blue Ridge, I opted for some flat land closer to Main St and ran my normal four miles.

I came back to the cabin afterward and drank the Americano I bought downtown and read a few chapters of Murakami’s running memoir while the rest of you played some version of dominoes I wasn’t interested in learning.

Although I ostensibly desire to get healthy to survive, I can’t help but thinking about running more and more and getting in better and better shape.

Instead of the ten pounds or so I need to lose, I could lose twenty or thirty and still be in the healthy BMI range.

But what would I get if I lost that kind of weight, what would be the point?

I guess I could fit into clothes better and wear trendier stuff. But what would I get if I wore trendier clothes, what would be the point?

On the long drive back home to Florida, we had all sorts of discussion about preparing for the upcoming school and soccer seasons, both of which promise to be overly chaotic and stressful on account of the global pandemic.

I say a lot of things about focusing on what we can control, keeping our attitudes as positive as possible this fall, focusing on what is important--our health and wealth.

As we go to bed, you talk about wanting to be happy now, not feeling good enough. My aspirational mantra of “be present” is an aspiration I rarely live up to as I am so future-oriented. The way I talk about the getting better in the future goes over great with my corporate higher-up but probably causes you undue stress.

Naval says the universe will allow you to get the one thing you want if you focus on it, but you have to let everything else go. Unlimited desires are clouding your happiness. He said he got happy by getting older and realizing that life was short and he was going to die.

That’s where I’m at now, no?

So what’s my one thing?

[regretsneverdream]

I know there is a coherent thread between being healthy, having fun and what we value as a family, I just need to find it

Being on Whole 30 is like a drug that makes me feel good all the time.

Downside is I don’t look forward to going out to eat. Which is sometimes actually an upside I guess.

We are on a min-vacation in Blue Ridge and I don't look forward to any meal because I am not eating pizza or drinking beer. But then the rest of the trip is so much better because I feel good all the time.

Adults can reckon with this paradox, realizing although there are foods that taste better than roasted Brussels sprouts, you won't feel gross after eating them and therefore can enjoy them.

Kids, on the other hand, pretty much feel good all the time and are fine with pizza and soda.

Though my oldest turned 12 recently and also recently realized he feels like crap when he eats crap. I want to help him. But he has such a bad attitude when we offer him reasonably healthy food, and as much as I want to help him, I also want family dinners to be somewhat calm and enjoyable, not arguing over vegetables and lean protein.

But even I fail a lot of the time, so how can I expect him to figure this all out.

I did Whole 30 in June and felt amazing. Let myself relax in July but rode the Whole 30 reverb wave for the first half of the month or so. Then fell hard off the wagon the back half of the month. So I'm back on the Whole 30 wagon for August, probably longer.

This whole concept of on and off the wagon, I'm over it.

I can see myself in ten years being like, “after this weekend, I just need to buckle down for a month or two, then it’s smooth sailing.” I just want to live my life and feel good.

I sometimes think I use my need to “get healthy” as excuse to not accomplish other things.

Like, I’ll get to starting that business or writing that novel after I get healthy.

Being up in Blue Ridge, around all the hiking and kayaking and camping I think about trying in the back of my mind, what’s making me wait? I only have ten years with the kids at home, just six with the oldest, now’s my time to do things with them. I want to top using getting healthy as a reason to wait to live life, but rather connect being healthy as part of living life and doing cool stuff.

We want to be a family that has fun and does cool stuff.

James Clear writes about the bad workouts being as important as the good ones to establish your identity as someone who works out.

I ate too much (low carb) food at dinner last night and struggled through a run here in the mountains. But I put my running shoes on and I did the bad run. I am a runner.

We are about to start hectic youth soccer of conflicting practice times and game schedules for the three kids. Maybe now is the time to connect the food we eat as a family to activities do as a family and how we feel as we do it.

And we need to make sure we have fun doing it.

[regretsneverdream]

The whole family has been listening to the new Taylor Swift album a lot this past week. “Exile” seems to be everyone’s favorites song. My youngest kids has an interesting observation about about the lyrics. I think of a funny joke based on his interesting observation that work good as a Facebook post. But I had decided to stay off social media for the month. 

I decide to go back on for a moment to make the post. And of course I need to check back a few times that day and the next day for likes and comments.

My post get single digits likes and comments.

Why do I chase these dopamine hits?

I haven’t given up LinkenIn because who cares and that’s technically for work. But find myself scrolling there out of boredom these last few days without Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Reddit.

And, wow, I can’t take the inauthenticity there. That’s got to be least authentic social network.

Frank Bascombe has all sorts of authentic conversations and connections with people from various parts of my life. The conversations I have are about work or kid stuff with people I don’t really want to have authentic conversations with. The people I’d have authentic conversations with are back in Ohio or other parts of Florida and I am terrible at keeping up with them.

Robert Lustig says not to chase dopamine but rather serotonin which can be increased via the 4 Cs--connect, contribute, cope and cook--all of which can be accomplished by sharing a home-cooked meal with love ones.

I cooked simple dinner for the kids two nights ago and have to admit that it worked. I did so again last night and it worked again.

[regretsneverdream]

I am not sure how to properly live in the moment

I don’t know if I really believe I am going to die early like my father did. If I did, wouldn’t I be doing things differently now?

Not sure how exactly, but I imagine to “live like you’re dying” more skydivin’ and Rocky Mountain climbin’ than reading Richard Ford novels on your Kindle while your 7 y/o son plays Minecraft on the Xbox.

I usually try to find a quiet spot by myself to read. But the house Saturday was fresh out of quiet spots, so I chose the corner of the sectional in the family room where he was designing yet another house.

He kept interrupting me to share details of his latest creation but at one point said he should probably stop talking so much. I asked why. He said because I was trying to read.

It was August 1st, the first day with my experiment with consuming less news. I find myself reading social media or media media and getting all worked up by some opinion someone I don’t know or at least don’t know very well has on a topic that doesn’t impact me.

I deactivated a few accounts, deleted a few apps, unsubscribed to a few things. All that’s left are a few business and tech sources that I tell myself are necessary for my job. But it being the weekend, I probably have to wait until Monday before there’s new stuff in my feed on those subjects.

So it’s novels. I tell myself (because I read it somewhere) reading books in front of the kids is a good thing, modelling the way so to speak. But a Kindle is just another electronic device--something we want them to use less of--so I’m not sure that’s the precise modelling the way I’m going for

I turn off of my Paperwhite (at least it’s the sort of Kindle is really just for books not games, but I’m not sure the kids know that) and put it down to turn my attention to him.

Another thing I read recently is give your kids attention when they ask for it.

I watch him play for a few minutes. I offer my opinion on roof color and who gets to live in this digital house vs. who merely gets to visit.

A few hours and a few errands later, I am bored again and want to read but still concerned about modelling the way, so I pick up that physical copy of that Haruki Murakami running memoir that I was going to read after I finished the Richard Ford novel.

(I decide the novel will be just be for my morning ritual with coffee before writing this blog, so my posts should prove to be extra gloomy until I can knock out this book. I like it so I want to finish it.)

I read only the first chapter of Murkami’s book. It describes me so much my eyes start to water. They are watering again as I type this. I don’t know what emotion I am feeling exactly. But there’s something about a world-renowned Japanese novelist who’s a year older than my mom being able to describe my thoughts.

I think about telling my wife to read it, or maybe even reading it aloud to her some evening before bed. We’ve never been the sort of couple to read aloud to one another. But earlier this week, she read to me some passages from a self-help book she goes back to every now and again for inspiration. It was based on the teachings of Lao Tzu, and listening to her read it to me put me to sleep in a good way.

It is now Monday morning, and I can now look back at those in-between moments of the past few days and picture them fondly. But I was bored in the moment. Maybe I am not thinking about the boredom the right way.

[regretsneverdream]

It certainly feels like we need money to ride this train.

There was a Reddit post I saw saying something like above a certain income level people really can’t think of anything to spend money on.

We are at the income level mentioned in that Reddit post.

And you if increased our income by another, say, $100k, I could make that money evaporate pretty easily. I can imagine exactly how we would spend it.

I think we would not really notice the changes that additional money would bring. You think we would. Maybe and fair enough.

But we wouldn’t be any happier, would we? Isn’t that the subtext of the Reddit post?

So why do we obsess over not having enough money?

I had this realization five years or so ago when we were working on the monthly budget. We couldn’t fit everything we needed into the monthly figure. It was a puzzle we struggled to solve. But when I took that monthly number and multiplied it by 12, it was a higher number than I even thought possibly to earn as income ten years prior.

***

Everything above this, I typed yesterday. (Came through today to edit for clarity and add anything else I thought needed adding, as per my usual blogging style.)

Immediately after typing this yesterday, I had an epiphany of how to change/reorganize our monthly/annual budget to ensure we prioritize what’s important.

Need to work out the details/logistics, and maybe that’s a blog post for another time. But I’m definitely excited that this blog might be proving it’s worth as a place where thinking (and the spurring of thinking) happens.

[regretsneverdream]

When you’re standing in the kitchen thinking about ordering takeout even though you’ve already bought groceries and have plenty of time but still not sure if you feel like cooking

There’s this thing I’ve seen in various corners of (mainly tech) internet about the only interview question you need.

You give the candidate five minutes to explain something they know about. Could be anything, work or hobby, but the person gets a chance to demonstrate their technical understanding of something and their ability to communicate effectively about it.

I imagine myself as the candidate and have no idea what to explain.

I could explain a hundred things at the surface level, but couldn’t withstand the scrutiny of followup questions to any of those things.

I am an expert in nothing.

John McWhorter described this about himself 25 years ago, when he was first rising to prominence in his academic career. He called himself “undercooked”:

This is not me having impostor syndrome. I was an impostor...I was good enough just hadn't learned enough. And after about 5 years I realized I was undercooked, and I cooked myself. So I now know I am good enough. But in 1995 and 1996, all I was was slick, well-spoken, funny--when I talk I tend to sound like I know what I'm talking about, but the smarter graduate students could tell that I didn't.

I have developed what is referred in the corporate world as executive presence. On Wednesday I presented to my boss + her boss + his boss + his boss. It went great. Everyone loved it.

On Friday I met with a colleague + someone on her team and it did not go as well. At one point, the person on her team asked a detailed question tangentially-related to the topic at hand but not entirely relevant. I sort of brushed past it because I didn’t know the precise answer. My colleague then gave the precise answer. That is, she knew the precise answer to a detailed question about my team’s work that I didn’t know myself. 

Her team and my team tend to have frustrating interactions. She wants my team to do more. She sometimes misses the point of the big picture of what direction I’m trying to take things (though I could probably do a better job articulating if I knew my stuff better), but more often she is kind of right and has a point.

Since that meeting I’ve been reflecting on all the things my team and I could or should do differently. It would be a lot of work. I would never deliver a presentation to my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss about it, but it would make things better.

But do I want to do that work? Do I even want to be cooked?

[regretsneverdream]

The first few notes of the 2nd movement from Beethoven’s 9th symphony, they’re so iconic. They take you to a place. They make me question my own ambitions about why I have dedicated my life to creating something like that.

I have a bit of a creative outlet at work but on the other hand not really.

At home it’s all rearranging the furniture or talk of trading up houses or if a beach condo is realistic now or do we have to wait to retirement.

I recall ten years ago, talking to friend and all the home improvement projects they worked on, and being like, I would rather spend that time building a business. Of course I didn’t spend anytime building a business.

And now here I am, 41, and already thinking about riding this out to retirement.

I read a Penelope Trunk blog post ten years ago that was probably true about income plateauing at 40 but probably did me more harm than good as it limited my thinking about what was possible.

I heard Tyler Cowen being interviewed and he talked about being 58, and all he’s been doing for the last 15 years, and all he is still doing. And I’m like, I need to change my perspective of getting to 55 and sailing off into the sunset.

James Clear wrote a throwaway line in Atomic Habits about wanting to make more money and needing to shift your identity from consumer to creator and I want to read an entire book about that sentence.

[regretsneverdream]

The Slog of Work

Work has been a slog lately.

It’s been a challenge to my typically optimistic worldview.

And creating cognitive dissonance between my professionally cheerful readouts to leadership and my tough one-on-ones with my key employees enduring the slog with me (and even tougher internal monologues full of self-doubt).

To be sure the new normal of indefinite-enough work-from-home has some something to do this feeling of slogishness.

And similar what I posted on Facebook back in March (and I almost meant) about the canceled family spring break trip to Spain about this being relatively not that bad in the grand scheme of things, so many have it so much worse than me amidst this global pandemic blah blah blah.

Regardless, as I try to make sense of the slog, my rational brain, desperately trying to make sense of my career efforts, sends me thoughts of “is this what growths feels like?”

Maybe I am finally getting uncomfortable and this is a good thing.

But then I wake up Saturday morning after a particularly challenging Thursday and Friday at the (home) office.

After sleeping in til 8:30 then rolling over and really sleeping in til 10, a time I haven’t slept to in far too long, I proceed to have a pretty nice Saturday.

Some coffee. Walk the dog. Some internet reading. Taking more notes from that book I finished a few weeks back but still want to organize my thoughts on. Standing in the kitchen, raiding the fridge for some semblance of a lunch with two of the kids, while we talked about who knows what. More coffee. More reading. Bike ride with the oldest kid. Family reunited for webcasted church, takeout Thai dinner, and finally getting around to Hamilton on Disney Plus which made my eyes water numerous times.

This felt good. This wasn’t a slog. Is this is what work-life balance supposed to feel like? (Why am I hung up on how things are supposed to be?)

When I started this post, I thought I was going to be writing about the disconnect between my sunny disposition and how I have been feeling.

That I’ve been feeling bad lately. (Mentally, not physically. Physically I am feeling wonderful.)

Bad I’m not feeling bad in life. But it’s just about work. And I have to believe work will get better.

I just need to make sure to keep my feelings about the slog away from the family. Despite my perfectly fine Saturday. I noticed my attitude starting to deteriorate on Sunday evening when work was nearing.

What the family needs from me right now is joy and play and fun.

[regretsneverdream]

The child is grown The dream is gone

I have been too comfortable throughout my life.

My parents raised me in a comfortable suburb.

I attended and graduated from a comfortable suburban public school.

I got good grades but had no grand college ambitions and applied to mainly comfortable state schools and didn’t even choose the best one.

I attended that mediocre school in that mediocre city in a mediocre major and started a mediocre career at a mediocre company.

Maybe this comfort has reduced my stress levels and helped my heart health.

But it’s made me comfortable enough to never take any meaningful risks so here I am typing my thoughts on a blog that no one reads.

If I was uncomfortable in my hometown, I would have probably chose a more ambitious major at a more ambitious college.

But even if I weren’t, if I were uncomfortable upon graduating from college, I would have chosen a more ambitious job in a more ambitious city.

But even if I didn’t do that, if I were uncomfortable in that life, I would have spent more time in my 20s starting my own shit to create something more meaningful than OK-to-good annual performance reviews from large corporations.

But even if I didn’t do that, if I were uncomfortable in the career trajectory I was settling into in my 30s, I would have done something more original than what I did.

The child is grown, the dream is gone? More like the 31-year-old has aged 10 years, the dream is gone. And soon enough the 41-year-old is 51, the dream is gone.

[regretsneverdream]

Comfortably Anguished

I’ve started blogs on and off for 12 years or so.

One iteration of these blogging attempts from a little over 9 years ago--that I kept up with for 3 posts per week for 4 weeks--was about existentialism and parenting.

I was going to read and learn about existentialist philosophy and somehow connect that to parenting.

That was probably a terrible idea but I felt (still feel) compelled to write and that was the best idea I had in January of 2011.

Jean Paul Sartre says I should commit myself to action since there is nothing else to this life but the actions I choose to do.

Albert Camus says it is my moral obligation to seek happiness. He waited 12 years to finally pursue the woman he loved and died on a car crash on the way to see her.

I've had a lingering feeling I have not been ambitious enough with my career. For every risk I’ve taken, I’ve chosen to settle an order of magnitude more often.

Penelope Trunk think most people just think they should care about career advancement as to opposed to actually wanting it. I want to keep my job and keep making money to support my family. But she may be right.

What do I really want?

When I settle into empty nest life a decade from now, I would love have a blog with readers. I could add a bunch of clarifying details, like being a facilitator of a community of like-minded people. But it’s really just comes down to having a blog with readers.

That’s not so ambitious, is it? Possible, maybe. Likely, who knows?

Seth Godin says own it. That I’m selling myself out by thinking about what is likely over what is possible.

But how do I get there?

James Clear says visualize the person I want to be and work backward from there.

So what would someone who wrote a (widely-?)read blog in 10 years being doing now.

Learning. Reading. Writing. Trying. Doing. Living.

I daydream about blogging about heart health stuff. About how to stay alive. Noticing things and making connections that no one else is making. Being on Joe Rogan and him saying things to me, “like this is really important, why is no one else talking about this?” 

Naval says before writing a great book you must become the book. Penelope Trunk says her blog works best when she tells her readers what she is learning about while she’s learning about it.

I could do this as I learn about taking care of my heart and outliving my dad and, even better, outliving the 20-year term life insurance policy I’m about to buy.

There are so many other things I could being doing to fulfill Camus’ moral imperative of being happy. But this is enough for one blog post.

[regretsneverdream]

Saturday you said you wanted pizza. I said that’s fine, that sounds good to me too. I’m not giving up pizza forever. I said let’s get some beer too.

We opted for my favorites in both categories, a large Extravaganza from Anthony’s and six-pack of Cigar City Jai Alai. But you likes those too. Though you asked we get the pizza without mushrooms.

I put three slices of pizza on my plate and opened one beer. With half of my third slice to go, I needed another beer so I got one. I finished the last slice then slowly enjoyed the rest of my second beer.

Then that was that. 

Wait, we had dessert a little later, some Publix bar cake with decaf coffee.

Since you had two slices of pizza and one beer, there was three of each remaining. There was a serving of bar cake left too.

I stopped eating before I hated myself. It was all very reasonable. It was a Saturday night and my Whole 30 was over.

I didn’t go to bed stuffed. I didn’t wake up feeling bloated. 

So when we grilled out the next day, we finished those beers, again, two for me, one for you. If I would have had a third on Saturday night, I would have felt compelled to go buy more beer as one wouldn’t have been enough for Sunday grilling.

You were able to have that last of the bar cake the next day, as I don’t need dessert that often.

You were able to have two slices of pizza for lunch on Monday, and then that last piece as part of Tuesday’s lunch.

I didn’t skip any runs. In fact I ran 4 miles Sunday morning, then again on Monday morning, then again on Tuesday morning.

Again, it was all so reasonable.