As part of my “sharpening the saw”, I am realizing the things that I am not good at. Part of the sharpening is deciding whether I have the mettle to improve my skill level in activities which I have picked up haphazardly. I can either get better at playing the guitar or get rid of the guitars completely.

One activity that I am not good at is running. I ran cross country in high school, but was the “last man” on the team. “Last man” is a euphemism for the slowest member of the herd, or voted most likely to get eaten by any chasing animal. Being on a team, getting a letter in a sport, those were important things in high school, unfortunately there isn’t quite an equivalent in adulthood.

I have a list of things I want to complete in my life. If you call it a “Bucket List”, you’re liable to get kicked in the teeth. Items range from “Visit the Pyramids” to “Plan big anniversaries” and “Have better relationships with my friends and family.” An item that has lingered on the list is “Run a marathon.” I have blogged about my progress (do a quick search for marathon or running), but I am not a good runner.

What does this mean? 

I am putting “Run a marathon” lower on my list of life goals. I’m not scratching it off, I might want to do it later in life. What I am doing is redefining what that goal means. By “run a marathon”, I really meant, pick a sport and do it to the furthest it can be done.

I have ridden a bicycle for a considerable portion of my life, and a good amount of the riding I have done has been long distance. In recent history I have biked across Wisconsin and I know my body was built .. or sufficiently beaten into submission, to ride bicycles long distance. My change in goal is to ride competitively in long distance events, centuries, double centuries, even something like the  Adirondack 540. My Uncle Tom was a competitor in Race Across AMerica and my Dad did rather well in the Audax Randonnée Series, so I am taking on the family mantel of riding long, far and as fast as possible.

I am running from a marathon, but I am running to a sport that I am better suited for.

Everyone is going green, what are you doing to leave the world a better place?

The latest “green” fad is a just that, not so much focused on lasting change, but to fit into the Hollywood-styled, t-shirt wearing, “let’s make this easy” lifestyles. To be frank, that doesn’t work for me.

I have decided to embrace my inner hippie. Not the free-love, narcotics-laced or the down with “The Man”, tax-evading type, but the crunchy granola, save the earth hippie, tree hugger may be the operative word.

When I was young the books, movies and television I consumed has strong messages of protecting the environment. Here’s looking at you Captain Planet! I even attended two ecology club meetings before my mom pulled me out due to the salty language of some of the membership.

Since Hazel was born, Esther and I have realized that we have a large number of chemicals that we use everyday, some of which have questionable health implications. While trace amounts of chemicals are all around us, we figure why expose ourselves and our daughter to more than the background radiation the Universe puts out.

That being said, we are diapering Hazel in cloth. It was initially a scary / daunting task, but after a few weeks of trying, I can confidently say that It is not that hard and not as disgusting as I originally thought.

We are also reducing the amount of other chemicals by creating our own weed killers, laundry detergents and cleaning supplies. All of the organic versions of products, we are making out of items that are generally found in the medicine cabinet or pantry. This is the newest part of being a hippie we have adopted, so it will be interesting to see how this goes.

I am still a vegetarian. The amount of land that is clear cut for livestock is astonishing as well as the amount of waste they produce. Yes, that waste is pretty toxic.

We are also reducing packaging and the throw-away nature that our culture is permeated with. We currently recycle more that we throw away and are going to start composting, reducing the amount that goes to the landfill even more. We reject plastic bags when offered preferring to use a longer lasting alternative and we aim to buy products that have as little packaging as possible.

Lastly, I am riding my bike in lieu of driving. That is no small feat. Racing to work in the morning twilight or home amongst the hurried drivers is not an easy or 100 percent safe undertaking, but the benefits are two-fold, I get a great workout riding over twenty miles round trip, and I am reducing the number of days I put carbon emissions into the atmosphere. If I had the opportunity, I would ride everyday, but that would require me relocating my work wardrobe to work, and that would be a little awkward.

I know the things I am doing are small, but they are becoming increasingly important to me. I am now thinking about how small everyday actions can have a larger impact. How may disposable cups (from Starbucks or a fast food restaurant) have you thrown away from in the past 30 days? Think about it. I realize that, yes, I will from time to time eat a meal that requires me to dispose of the wrappers without recycling and not eat organic. I also realize that chemical exposure from cleaning supplies is minute, but how are you embracing your inner hippie?

Image via Wikipedia

I eluded in my last post that I there has been a point in my life that I changed from being Catholic to being Buddhist. That point has been a long time coming and I want to explain how I came to that point.

When I was getting ready to be confirmed in as a Catholic, the leader of the confirmation class goaded us to ask questions. This lead to long debates over spiritual topics and how church dogma related to modern living. This lead to long Socratic sessions on the role of faith, the church and religion. Most of the answers I got were satisfactory, but a number were not.

This was the same time I was in biology and chemistry, learning the physical nature of the universe and the spiritual and physical did not seem to be able to coexist. This was solidified by when I took physics in my junior year of high school.

I was not happy with a purely scientific view of the world, there are still things that are unexplained and there will always by the larger questions of “Why are we here?” and “What is the meaning of life?”, I was simply not happy with the responses I got to questions regarding the intersection of science, faith, and scientific ethics and morality.

These unsatisfied answers sat and festered. I was not religious in college, I can count on one hand the number of times I attempted to go to church. Emphasis on attempted. The things I did learn in college were continuations of things my parents had taught me. I took a sociology course with Gary Wilson, one of the best professors I had, in which he forced me, through introspection and well chosen reading, to really think about what I believed in. Themes of social justice, a person’s self worth and equality were prevalent. I don’t think this was his intention, but it really pushed me into a place of discomfort with my relationship with my Catholic upbringing.

After graduation, when Esther and I moved to Virginia, we moved in together against the wishes of my parents. It was an economic decision, and after we assured my parents that we intended to get married, they dropped the subject, although I knew it did not sit well with them.

As we picked a date to get married, we tried to go back to church, knowing that a Catholic wedding was the only way both of our parents would be satisfied. We tried five of the seven local churches and I was disappointed in all of them. Fire and brimstone seemed to permeate the ground around the pulpit. Homophobic and chauvinistic messages spewed forth from most of the priests, while the book they read from spoke of loving all of mankind, regardless. This clearly was not the place for me.

But the wedding, oh yes, the wedding had to be Catholic. There was no way around it and as I started to understand that a wedding is not about the people getting married but about the people attending, I knew that I would have to bite the bullet. We found a priest who we thought would help us through the process of getting married, but instead he insulted our choice of venue, grilled us over our living situation and made both of us feel generally uncomfortable. Not our guy. In desperation, a friend of a friend who knew a priest in a town 65 miles away introduced us to the priest who would marry us. Finally, that hurdle was over.

Esther and I were married. But something was missing, not between us, but for me. I was angry a lot of the time. Not at any one thing, but in general, a level of tension filled my life and lead to a few blow ups at home. Eventually I realized that I need to ask the larger questions again, but I need to do them in a framework that didn’t conflict with my inner compass as much. So did was I always do: research.

I looked at every religion, Judaism, Ba’hai, Islam, the varied flavors of Christianity, and the only one that I found that I could really believe in was Buddhism. It seemed to quell the festering questions of my youth and gave me a new outlook on the way I live my life and how I treat those in it. I felt like I had a things to reach for, enlightenment to attain. And even the more esoteric parts of buddhism, like reincarnation fit well with my desire for the natural to be explained by science. Energy is never created or destroyed, merely transferred from one state to another. The total amount of energy in the universe is constant. – The law of conservation of energy

Am I saying that being Catholic made me an angry person? In some instances, yes, but for the larger part, no. I am saying that being Buddhist has given me a framework to deal with my anger more effectively that before. I am more content with what I have, I am okay with my losses. I don’t hold grudges, I am more generous than I ever was before. I have found a sense of equanimity with myself, my relationships and my universe.

My choice has created a weird tension with my family. People has referred to my decision as having “issues”, which I am okay with, although it sounds like I have a rash on a sensitive body part. I would like to talk with people about my “issues”. I found a book which explains Buddhism in the least mystic terms and gave it to my parents, I don’t know if they are reading it. I know my grandparents are probably weirded out. In the end, I guess this post follows the theme of the previous. I am available in multiple ways, including the phone If you need my number, email me first. If you have some lingering weirdness in regards to my choice to be Buddhist, contact me.

Being a new dad has lead me to codify something that I have been practicing and preaching for a long time. 360° Awareness.

I have seen plenty of time when my 14-year old brother-in-law is walking through a store, paying little mind to the goings on around him. Standing in the middle of an aisle, blocking someone who is behind him or reaching for something not realizing that his reach would cross the view or reach of someone else.

Part of the issue is that he is fourteen and I can forgive him for that. The other part is that he doesn’t have 360° awareness.

I have found that this lack of awareness is limited notd to my brother-in-law, but teens and adults of all ages. It is not a bad thing, but boils down to a lack of common courtesy. Not being aware of the people and happenings around you, shows you are disconnected from what is actually going on.

In a crowd, I am shocked by the number of times a person walking in front of me stops abruptly, for no apparent reason. This is baffling and quite jarring, particularly when I am in full gait and nearly knock the person over.

Being aware is not just a common courtesy, it is also safe. Knowing what objects are moving in the periphery can keep the people around you safe as well. A mother at WalMart wasn’t aware and her daughter was nearly run over by a palette of potting soil. People walking in parking lots are too focused on their conversations or cellphones, not noticing their path of travel intersects with a moving vehicle.

Try, if you can, for the next few days to be aware of the things that are going on around you. Try and be 360° aware.

I have a daughter, Hazel. She’s new and it’s weird to be someone’s parent. That is part of what is weird, not being responsible for someone. I have had that arrangement with my wife for a year or so and I am used to being the provider. This is a different.

I look at Hazel when she is sleeping and it is hard to believe that she isn’t a child I will give back to another set of parents in a few hours. I have to remind myself that she is my little girl. I have been busy caring for Esther, helping her recover from the difficult delivery. Keeping myself busy really makes me cherish the times when I get to hold and yes, even change the diapers on Hazel.

gknauss:

One of my favorite scenes in Star Wars is in the conference room on the Death Star, where Grand Moff Tarkin is getting a status update from his lieutenants on the fate of the stolen battlestation plans. When I was nine, it was cool because Darth Vader used the Force to strangle an uppity bureaucrat. Now that I’m 40, it’s cool now because it almost exactly resembles every corporate meeting I’ve ever been in, with sniping and pettiness and ass-covering. And walking embodiments of galaxy-spanning evil.

My kids recently brought home a reprint of the first issue of the Star Wars comic — a quickie affair, obviously drawn from storyboards instead of the movie itself — and the scene is even better.

Darth Vader — Sith Lord, Jedi killer and what remains of the broken soul of the hope of the galaxy — uses his mastery of the elemental force of the universe to summon a hot cup of joe. None of this pouring from the admin-provided urn over chit-chat before things get started, oh no. He floats it to him right in the middle of an argument. Total dis! Oh, I’m sorry. Where you making a point? I was thirsty. Man, who makes this sludge? Am I right?

The only problem being, of course: How does it drink it, exactly?

June is coming quickly, never more true as we wait for our baby. It has been rumored that Apple is releasing SDK built apps for public consumption. Oh yeah, and that iPhone 2.0 3G thing. While I am curious about the 3G availability and any price increases on the 3G data plan, the thing I am most excited about is the third-party applications.

Some of the applications I am most looking forward to are:

• OmniFocus Lite
  I need a way to take my OmniFocus with me. Syncing (not necessarily over-the-air) is critical and I would like the application to be a mobile version of the robust Getting Things Done application.
• Office Lite
  The mobile office suites are limited to viewing most document, that combined with the iPhone’s native view-only capability makes getting real “office” work impossible, unless you really like Marker Felt fonts. A iPhone native office suite would be very nice, I don’t need it full featured, but cut and paste would be very attractive for me to throw some dollars at.
• Call Screener
  Blackberry has a cool app that lets you whitelist calls you want to receive, but lets the rest go to voicemail. I love this idea. I would easily throw $20 – $30 at an app like this.

I am a marked man. A VP and I had a disagreement regarding a a proper hue and luminence and now it seems that I can’t do anything right. Not that I’m no performing my job duties, it is simply little things that are getting my neck in the wringer.

My plan for the next few months, lay low, don’t draw attention to myself of my work and ride this out. Why are office politics so messy?

On a lark, I watched Wine Library TV at lunch today. I have heard about Gary V on a couple of podcasts, even on NPR, and let me tell you, this man is passionate. While Gary was trying some Australian wines I was really thinking about Buddhism and alcohol. I have stopped drinking alcohol completely outside of two times, my sister and my cousin’s weddings. I am wondering if a little alcohol every now and again, a single glass of wine, is against the rules.

The Buddhist precepts are:

1) To undertake the training to avoid taking the life of beings.
2) To undertake the training to avoid taking things not given.
3) To undertake the training to avoid sensual misconduct.
4) To undertake the training to refrain from false speech.
5) To undertake the training to abstain from substances which cause intoxication and heedlessness.

The Fifth Precept is where the no drinking comes out. I have, through great social pressures, managed to keep my consumption of alcohol to just two events in the past year. My religion has become very important to me and I think that if presented with those two opportunities again, I would choose not to drink.

I twittered:

Having watched @garyvee doing his thing, I now am thinking that not consuming alcohol could be a rule that is bent and occasionally broken.

But now after reflecting on it, I don’t know if I want to throw away a year’s worth of work and social conditioning. I think I twittered in haste. I think for now, I will not be imbibing.