Better Motivation, Thanksgiving, Living an Ordinary Life in an Ordinary Way.

Motivation

For about the past three or four weeks, on weekends, I’ve been consistently getting up around 4:00 am and either riding my bike or driving to the gym Saturdays and Sundays.  Been a little hit or miss before that.  No idea why I’ve had better motivation recently than formerly.  My doctor told me about a year ago I should concentrate on strengthening my back and rotator-cuffs to alleviate bilateral shoulder pain he attributed, in part, to having overdeveloped my pectorals.  But to look at me, you wouldn’t think so.   Still, I’ve complied with his advice and my posture has improved as well as, a little bit, that shoulder pain.

My workouts have lasted about an hour and a half, and I incorporate legs and abs, some tricep and chest, with my primary lat, back, and bicep work.  Am I a glorious specimen of beautiful middle-aged masculinity?  Not so much, although I feel better – it’s good to feel strong.   I’m gaining weight, but my clothes still fit, so some of that must be muscle.

Thanksgiving

This was our year to spend Thanksgiving with my wife’s family but we stayed home for the holiday because of my work schedule.  We spent a really pleasant day with my family, instead.  Friday, my wife finished decorating the house for Christmas and my son and I went for a bike ride around the neighborhoods.  We stopped by and visited my godparents and then rode home when the boy looked like he was about to fall asleep.  He’s not ridden much over the past couple of months, so he had a hard time riding back up hill.

Ordinary

By some miracle or fluke of predestination and providence, I turned out not to be a complete monster.  I’ve written in this space, at some time or other, that for me or someone like me, the great adventure is to live the ordinary life in an ordinary way.  You can probably not grasp how unimaginable an outcome that seemed for me when I was young or how much joy it brings me now.  It’s what I’m daily most thankful for – my wife, son, our health, meaningful work for both my wife and myself, a modest house in a modest neighborhood, self-directed recreational activities like cycling, paddling, strength training, reading, a small and extremely Calvinistic congregation where we are accepted and maybe for the most part liked and to which we contribute by participation, prayers, offerings.  Also my extended family – much more important to me now in middle age than it seemed when I was a young man.

I have a lot to be grateful for and I hope you do, too.

Thinking About Another Kayak Part 2

I was able Monday at lunch to speak with the Seavivor’s owner by telephone.  He’d already sent photographs by email.  The kayak’s beautiful, but at present I cannot justify spending what the Seavivor’s doubtless worth.  Still, it was certainly worthwhile to meet, however briefly and by telephone, another folding kayaker.

Back at my desk, I found myself effortlessly and efficiently going about my work-related tasks – paperwork associated with a long, structured interview conducted during the morning hours.  In that work, I experienced a sense of inner peace which came as a surprise when I noticed it.  Contentment for the time being and living reasonably, well within my means.

Monday’s Leadership Lesson

You lead from in front.  You develop and model competence.  You do your own work.  Where there’s a gap, you fill it with your own effort until it can be repaired.  If you created the gap through your own failure or series of failures, you own up to, learn the lesson that teaches, and immediately start doing better.  You will be held accountable.

Work Weekend

My friend, Eric, is out from North Carolina. We’re hoping to get some painting and other work done at the new house today and Sunday.

  • Priming closets
  • Removing objectionable wall-paper borders
  • Removing picture nails and patching the holes
  • Maybe getting the living and dining rooms primed
  • Cleaning woodwork that doesn’t have to be painted right away (previous owner smoked, and the paint’s yellowed)

While we’re working, we will also discuss solutions to the country’s political, economic, and moral problems.

I Just Work Here

Yesterday morning discussing the arrangements for the day’s scripted activities, the man sitting across the conference table acquiesced courteously saying, “This (that is, the milieu) is your world.”  Surprised, I looked up at him from what I’d been reading to him and said, “It’s not my world, I just work here.”

Back From Chattanooga

We drove down to Chattanooga Sunday afternoon/evening, and didn’t get too lost in town looking for the hotel.  It helps that we’ve been there a couple of times before.  After checking in, we walked across the street from the hotel to The City Cafe and overate.  Seventy-Six danced in his high-chair as he observed a group of teenagers dancing in line by the jukebox to a rap or hip-hop selection.  Somebody once explained to me the difference between rap and hip-hop, but the nicer distinctions were lost on me.  I guess as ‘music‘ it amuses at least the infant who inhabits our home.

First snapshot from one of our hotel room windows

First snapshot from one of our hotel room windows

I walked past that dome building on my way back to the cube-farm after lunch Monday

I walked past that dome building on my way back to the cube-farm after lunch Monday

Third snapshot from yet another of our hotel room's windows

Third snapshot from yet another of our hotel room's windows

That's The City Cafe down there mid-frame

That's The City Cafe down there mid-frame

Fifth view from one of the windows of our room

Fifth view from one of the windows of our room

Monday, my work activities fell out as scheduled, and parts of both reports are complete.  What a beautiful, warm, sunny, breezy day.

Surprisingly enough, I had time for lunch.  I don’t, usually, when I work away from the office.  I walked a few blocks down MLK to a an open plaza and ate a vegetable sandwich from Subway near and in line of sight with the shiny tall building that bears the big red “Krystal” logo.  For those of you who don’t know, Krystal is a fast food company that franchise-store sells a variety of small, square hamburger like unto a very bland White Castle hamburger.  Both types of burger are detestable, and it is an abomination to eat one.

The Subway in which I spent about four bucks for a sandwich (I forgot and left in the hotel room the lunch I’d prepared beforehand) was crowded at about 11:45 am Eastern Standard Time, which is how Chattanoogans reckon time.  Most of the those behind whom I stood in line, and those who stood in line behind me as I moved forward, looked overweight, ill-complected, unhealthy.  It was about five degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the sandwich shop than it was outside, and not well enough ventilated  to suit me.  A miasma of sweat stinking softly, bearing aloft spice molecules from poorly cooked dishes hastily consumed on some prior occasion arose from those around me mixed with the aroma of scented soaps, laundry detergent, sour breath, and the restaurant’s own bake oven, sandwich fixings, and cleaning solutions.  My fellow diners all wore garments that fit them badly in some particular.  I suppose I was no exception, although I felt better in my clothes than any of them looked to me.

I was glad to finally get my sandwich, get my cup of ice-water, and get out the door.  I ate in the fresh air sitting on a park bench.  I got a speck of yellow mustard on my blue oxford-cloth shirt no bigger than a tiny stitched polo player’s noggin.  While not beside myself, I was annoyed.

I walked back a different way to the soulless looking cube-farm on a hillside.  I say soulless-looking deliberately, even though my hyphenation is inconsistent, because some of those laboring within do seem to have souls.  Souls grown in or inhabiting a small urban setting in the American South.

I met a woman who wept.  Tall, graceful though many years stricken the result a choice that one-time made sense to her.  Beautiful in her way, and lonely.  I could not comfort her.

I thought of my own wife and my own son and the small child full of potential I once was on sunny, warm, breezy days like the one in which I then found myself.  I thought of choices that made sense to me, of choices that may make sense to me in the future.  I thought of my wife and of women, and how they begin life as babies, are loved; how they are little girls, and loved; how they are loved for their beauty, grace, and the light of their smiles as they mature; how some of them marry and are loved by their husbands.  I thought of those women who are alive only when they are loved, and I thought about what is left over when love is gone.

As you might imagine, I had trouble keeping my own emotion at arm’s length, which is where it assuredly belongs.

I thought about the course of our lives as humans on earth in time, and the when-where constant motion of our existence.

I cannot write more about my thoughts about my son and wife and the woman I met only that once and keep my own emotion out of electronic type.  It’s proper place is somewhere in my own life finding some expression with the two people I love most lived out here in our home.

Some days feeling is unavoidable.

Something awful we saw while walking to the riverfront Monday evening - horrible-looking tiny MB car

Something awful we saw while walking to the riverfront Monday evening - horrible-looking tiny MB car

Monday evening after I got back to the hotel, I ate four pieces of what I’d consider a relatively small pizza my wife had saved for me from her lunch.  She, our son, a friend of ours and two small children of her own, had lunch in another part of downtown Chattanooga while I was working or walking or eating.  After eating the cold pizza – with an alfredo, as opposed to tomato, topping, chicken, artichoke hearts, and spinach – we put the little boy in his stroller.  I listened to my wife talk.  Together we walked down to the riverfront where we ate ice-cream and frozen yogurt.   and walked back to the hotel as the earth moved and shadows lengthened.

Tower on the Children's Museum - I'd like to live in a house that has a tower like that one

Tower on the Children's Museum - I'd like to live in a house that has a tower like that one

We didn't, not here at least - Playtime-esque bistro sign near Aquarium

We didn't, not here at least - Playtime-esque bistro sign near Aquarium

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