Marches and Rallies

One of the first things that happened on this journey of motivational renewal was having the honor of being a part of the Women's March on Washington on January 21, 2017.  I marched in St. Paul, MN, alongside my dear friend Shelley and her longtime friend (and now my friend) Gretchen.  Shelley has been a longtime, fierce advocate for LGBT civil rights, including making phone calls during the 2012 election season in support of defeating Minnesota's anti-marriage amendment (and WE WON that one!!!!)  More recently it's become apparent that women's rights are being targeted more and more, and I told her now it's time for me to have her back.

I've never been to a protest/rally/march like this in my life.  I'm more the "silent" type, and a firm believer that changing hearts and minds comes one heart and one mind at a time, and that it's a long slow process.  And I still believe that.  I've been out for about 12 years now, and every person I encounter in my life is someone I hope to have a positive impact on when it comes to what they think about LGBT people.  That's an ongoing, lifetime process.

But I'm learning the value of "big and loud" now too.  Certainly, the Women's March made a huge statement in Minnesota and across the country.  In St. Paul they expected 20,000 to show up for this, by the end there were over 100,000.  There were similar results across the country.  But there is great value in just seeing that you're not alone, by being surrounded by people who think and feel the same way you do and who want to change the world for the better.  Since the election I've had a really hard time reading news of what's going on in the world, and what's going to happen.  Sometimes I was just sad, sometimes I felt helpless, and most of the time I wonder how things are ever going to change. 

But my attitude has changed since the march.  I can read the news and be "angry" without being depressed or overly emotional.  I don't carry it with me all day long.  And I'm motivated to be a part of the solution.  I've realized that myself, and probably many people who have similar ideals and beliefs, probably got a little complacent in the last 8 years.  It's not necessarily a bad thing - when at least some things actually ARE changing in a positive way, there isn't as much to stand up and fight for, and ultimately that's the kind of world we'd like to see.  But I think the abruptness of this change has caught a lot of us off guard.  And it's easy to get angry and depressed and bitter - unfortunately social media has made it all too easy to get sucked into back-and-forth posts that result in very little actually getting done.

The following weekend was a rally in Rochester in response to the ban on refugees and travel from predominately Muslim countries.  I also attended this rally, and felt much the same way as I did the previous weekend.  There were 1000+ people in attendance, which is a fantastic turnout for a city that only has a population of about 110,000.  There were some great motivational speeches given, but also some very actionable things that we can do to help.  I went away from the rally with a similar boost in energy and motivation.

I am optimistic and hopeful that this will continue, that people will continue to stand up for what they believe in, and be similarly motivated to be the change they want to see.  I'll end with a quote from "The American President" (I wish our government looked like it did in that movie).

"We fight the fights that need fighting."

I'm back...and the world has motivated me

It looks like my last blog entry was 3+ years ago, and even then they were very few and far between.  It's not that I haven't had lots to write about or talk about, but lack of time (and a little laziness maybe) have contributed to me not actually writing it out and publishing it, even though I've thought about it many times.

But I'm back.  There's a lot going on in the world, and besides being involved, I need an outlet to "talk" about things and hopefully even get some discussion and debate going.

Just to catch you up....since June, 2013 a lot has happened:

• I got married!  Yes, in October 2014, surrounded by MANY family and friends, my husband and I were married.  It was a wonderful, beautiful day.
• I moved into a new and interesting/challenging project at work that really aligns with the masters degree I spent two years earning.
• I'm still doing CrossFit :)
• We lost a kitty :(  Mr. Fluffy Face passed away very suddenly one night at the age of 5 years and 4 months.  We still miss him all the time.
• We got another kitty!  (about a year later)  Bubby has been a wonderful addition to the family.
• The band I got involved with at the beginning of 2013 continued to grow in popularity and became hugely (locally) successful, we recorded a CD, we played at "Down By the River Side" and "Thursdays on First", played all over the area to great crowds at bars and other venues, and even flew 16 hours to the Marshall Islands and played there for a week.  And...we've now retired.

I'll be posting more shortly.  To whoever is reading, thank you, and I'm glad to be back :)

Things I wish I could tell my younger self

I generally don't dwell on thoughts like this.  I'm a firm believer that a person's experiences, good and bad, shape who they are and get you to where you are today.  If you could warn your younger self not to make the mistakes you've made, or if you could share pieces of wisdom you've gained over the experiences of your lifetime, you'd probably keep your younger self from learning from those experiences and gaining the very wisdom you're sharing.  Of course my sci-fi geek friends and I would debate about whether or not you're creating an alternate timeline...but I'm talking philosophically here :)

That being said - there are a couple pieces of wisdom I really wish I could share with my younger self that I don't think would hurt my "timeline" and would be of positive outcome.

First, I've come to realize that with just about any skill in life, there is just no substitute for experience and repetition.  Certainly aptitude and ability differentiate someone's maximum potential or capacity for something, but in the end, NOTHING replaces years of experience and practice.  This is most evident to me with my saxophone playing.  I've been playing saxophone pretty much continuously since the 6th grade (26+ years if you're counting).  That's thousands of hours of playing and practicing a wide and vast variety of music and musical situations.  My horn is like an extension of me now.  I have many musically talented friends where I see this sort of thing too - a longtime friend and colleague plays piano and when I watch him I can just tell that he doesn't have to think about it anymore, it's just an extension of his mind and fingers.  I've made some attempts at learning other instruments in recent years.  Some I just don't have the physical aptitude for (trumpet - requires the right lips).  But others just require a lot of practice and experience, something I don't seem to have the time or attention span for at this point in my life.  And gaining 26 year of experience on something starting now is going to be awhile .

Second, I would share EVERYTHING I've learned on eating, exercise, and health.  Mainly because what I've learned contradicts all the "conventional" wisdom that was drilled into us as kids and young adults.  When I was younger I just sort of assumed I didn't have the capacity to lose weight, be in good shape, etc. etc. and I've since proven all of that wrong to myself.  I'd love to tell my younger self that you are capable of all of those things, and not only capable but they're not as hard as you think.

Healthy Living Update

I do INTEND to set aside time to blog more, and I have even had the idea of creating a separate blog to share all my health and fitness experiences and research...but alas, life happens :)

I felt compelled to give an update though, in light of some of the many recent articles I've read related to healthy eating, genetically modified foods, CrossFit, and self-image.

On Food - I'm glad to see that some of the "true" science is finally coming to light and starting to expose about how backward our food system, the FDA, laws, etc.  The fact that giant agribusiness companies like Monsanto are trying to control anything and everything about our food system, getting laws in place to protect THEM, and fighting tooth-and-nail to stop mandatory labeling of GMO foods pretty much tells you that they know what they're doing is not in the best interest of the world, but they must protect their business model.  I believe that we all have the right to KNOW what is in the food we eat; and then we can make the choice ourselves as to whether or not we want to eat something that's labeled a GMO.  And I also believe that there should be no way that "life" can be patented.

Along the same lines, we continue to perpetuate bad  and disproven "science" and allow special-interest lobbies (both food and pharma) to influence our dietary and nutritional recommendations, which spills over into the medical field.   The "low-fat" diet that has become accepted practice for healthy eating came into play around 1977, the same time the obesity problem in this country started its rise.  Studies and emperical evidence have shown over and over again that the low-fat, low-cholesterol, high-carb diet doesn't work, and is based more on speculation and observation than actual science.  This article sums up a lot of these points nicely, but I've done much reading and research on my own.  And of course I have been following the low-carb/low-sugar/paleo diet since March 2011 (see some of my earlier posts) and am as healthy as I have EVER been in my lifetime - my "numbers" are all normal to great, my blood pressure is as low as it's ever been (much of that might be due to CrossFit though) and I haven't been truly sick since March 2011.  I eat REAL food.  I don't feel starved or deprived.  I enjoy the food I eat because real food tastes good.  I drink real, fully-caffeinated coffee with real cream.  I don't count calories.  I avoid anything marked "low-fat" or with ingredients I can't pronounce like the plague.  Sugar is almost non-existent in my world.

On CrossFit - wow, I could talk for hours, and I'm sure some of my friends get sick of it :)  But this is really good stuff for me.  My ONLY goal when I started last August was to STOP DOING NOTHING.  I wasn't horribly out of shape or unhealthy, but I was pretty sedentary.  I am definitely whatever the opposite of sedentary is now.  Just to give you an example of the amazing stuff we do in these workouts - today we did what is called "Prowlers", which is basically pushing a 250-lb sled 25 yards up and back, for 6 rounds (alternating with a partner).  I was slightly woosy by the end, but by a couple of hours afterwards, I felt FANTASTIC.  And that's typical for me now.  I can tell that I have more energy, sleep better, am MUCH stronger, and am MUCH more flexible (and I still have a LOT of room to improve there).  Sure it's great to be able to lift the big weights and do more situps or pushups or burpees than you did the time before, but this stuff carries over into being able to do things in real life, which is really the goal.  When I'm 70 I want to be able to carry my bags of groceries or bags or lift my grandkids (and yeah, with the age I'll be starting to have kids, 70 for young grandkids is pretty likely).  The workouts and the community are great and fun, but seeing the results of health and fitness in real life is even more fun.

On self-image - there is a lot of discussion among our CrossFit community on combating and redefining what our society idealizes as the "perfect" body type.  My favorite slogan on a T-shirt my friend Caly has is "Strong is the new Skinny".  I wish everyone would believe that.  And I know that body image issues and wanting to be "skinny" is a much larger issue with women than with men, but the up-and-coming generations of men are getting programmed with the body self-image issues too.

Growing up, I ALWAYS wanted to be skinny.  I'd be jealous of the people that seemed to have no problem being skinny no matter what they ate or did.  And I admit that I still have a little bit of that thinking - sometimes I'd like to, for just ONE DAY see what it feels like to be skinny.  But I've also come to realize that my body is built a certain way, and that being skinny for me is not being healthy.  And I've also come to realize (wisdom?) that just like I wish I could be like some skinny person I see, they probably wish they could be "built" like I am.  I am able to bulk up and build muscle with relative ease - I've ramped up really fast on Olympic Weight Lifting at CrossFit even in the 8 months I've been going.  If I were skinny I wouldn't have that ability.

I love to see the women at my CrossFit classes.  I love seeing them working just as hard as the men do, and getting just as excited at a new lifting PR or being a previous time record.  I love to see the self-confidence that they have in being STRONG and fit, not necessarily "skinny".  A recent WOD article talks about this (it was written for women but I think men can take wisdom out of it too).  If I have a daughter someday, I hope  that her self-confidence and self-esteem is built on being smart, strong, fit, etc. and not being whatever society's image of a woman's body is at the time.

OK, maybe blogging shorter and more often would be a good idea :)

Throwdown

OK, I just now see that I haven't posted since last July.  In fairness, I've been busy - a lot has happened - I graduated with my Masters in Security Technologies degree, I got engaged, I joined Crossfit, and I got a puppy.  Oddly, a lot I could have blogged on, but too busy to do so.  Maybe that changes starting now...

I feel I have to report on one of my activities from this weekend.  Last August, I joined the "Crossfit Progression" gym here in town.  For those not aware of the Crossfit philosophy, this Huffington Post article does a good job of describing it.  At its most fundamental level, it's about whole body, highly efficient workouts, although that's a gross over-simplification.

Today marks 6 months since I joined Crossfit in August.  Consider that in August, it had been really 6 years since I had done any serious form of exercise or set foot in a gym, which is significant since prior to that I was a gym regular and had run 3 marathons.  While I was not in horrible shape thanks to my March 2011 decision to finally get control of my eating (see all my previous blog posts about how low-carb living can save your life), it was humbling to go to my one-hour "baseline" workout with coach Matt.  After about 15 minutes, it took all my willpower and several minutes sitting on the bathroom floor to not throw up!  Matt assured me this was pretty common, and encouraged me to sign up and give it a try.  I did - beginner class 3 days a week, 1 hour a day, was pretty horrible, I was so sore that first couple weeks I could barely get out of bed in the mornings.  But...after a few weeks I started to get the hang of it.  Then I got "promoted" into regular class, and to my surprise, I was hanging in there.

Somewhere around November, I remember looking at the workout of the day (WOD in Crossfit lingo) and thinking "boy, I can't wait to do this one!" and then realizing what I had just thought.  By 5 months I was back to hitting lifts that had taken me years to get to before with my "traditional" programs.  I could easily see the difference in my body too - I hadn't lost any weight, but I hadn't gained any either, and it was very obvious that muscle had replaced bunches of the fat that was left.

But yesterday...I participated in the Crossfit Progression "Superfriends Throwdown".  One of the aspects of Crossfit that is different from other gyms is that it promotes the "sport" of working out, competitive workouts if you will.  You don't have to do the competitive part; indeed, if all you want is the best workout you can get in an hour's time, you won't be disappointed.  And to be honest, I'm only ever really competing with myself.  But the 10-team competition we had yesterday within our gym community was as motivating and fun as anything I can remember involving exercise.  Each team had 4 people - two men, two women.  There were 4 workouts, which you could strategize among your team for maximum points (either total weight lifted, or time completed).  As it turned out, there were clearly 4 teams competing with each other at the top, and 6 competing with each other for the rest of the spots.  But in the end, what I loved was that everyone was encouraging everyone else, and the coaches NEVER stopped coaching from beginning to end.  I personally got a PR (personal record) lift in the first workout, and I would not have gotten it if coach Alex hadn't coached me through it, especially the mental stuff.

I tend to get really passionate about things in my life that I find value in or that work really well for me.  This is one of them.  If you had told me 6 months ago that I would be able to complete these 4 workouts, much less in one Saturday morning, I would have told you you were crazy.  If you had told me it would only take me about 5 months to get back to the level of fitness I was at back when I was power lifting and doing marathons 10 years ago, I would have told you you were crazy.  I think yesterday I decided I'm done not believing.  No more "if you would have told me" stories.

Mid-Year Update

July 1, which is halfway through 2012 already!

Nineteen days from today my capstone final report for my masters program is due.  It's hard to believe it's gone so quickly - I started last June and it feels like it's just been a whirlwind.  I am fortunate to have met so many great people and professors through this program, and am honored to have had 4 other outstanding colleagues in my year-long study group.  Now I just need to get the report done....

I saw my niece today, a few days after her first birthday.  Already toddling around everywhere - but still as happy as ever.  I hope to get to see them more in the coming months when school is finished.  I also dropped Erin off at the airport after seeing the family, for a few days visit to Vermont.

Work - I still like my job.  People are still surprised when I say that.  I will hit 15 years on July 7th.  Hard to believe it's been that long, I've been fortunate to have been involved in some great projects.

Carb update - well, I haven't been paying as close attention as I should the past few weeks, there have been some weddings and other events and it's hard to resist some of those things you don't get to have very often like wedding cake.  Still, I'm staying within reason.  Today wasn't quite so good, just due to a lot of driving around and the need for convenience, I ended up having McDonalds breakfast, Caribou on the way to the Cities, Wendy's lunch, and then the one I should have passed on, DQ with the girls.  When I got home I decided to see if the nutrition information is available for all of those places.  It actually is - I commend restaurant chains for posting all this detailed information online, although I fear it's because they know no one really pays attention or cares anymore.  I was, however, disturbed to find out that my Blizzard Mini (yes, smaller than a small size, it looks like a bathroom dixie cup) still had 61g of carbs, 45 of which are sugar.  That's more than even a large full-sugar white chocolate mocha.  OK, so no more DQ :(  It continues to amaze me how much sugar is in our diet EVERYWHERE...you have to make a real effort to avoid it unless you make everything you eat at home.

Misc - I got my new Galaxy S III phone on June 21st when it was released, and I love it (and I love that I was able to give Erin my 2-year-old EVO, which HE loves!)  I have to say the technology in these phones is now pretty amazing - I hold a palm-size powerful computer, which is probably more powerful than my current work laptop, and arguably has a nicer display.

I hope everyone has a great 4th of July, and that somehow we can at least take one day to forget about partisan politics and elections and be a "United" States.

Mr. Brooks

I was just about to write this and then decided to read through my feeds before posting, and read my dear friend Shelley's blog and her post about a dear person in her life who departed earth too soon.  It sort of reinforces to me how we all have those people throughout our lives that we may not see every day, or even have seen for many years, but who were SO important in defining the people we are today.

Mr. Brooks was my first band director when I started playing the saxophone in band in 6th grade.  He was a wonderful teacher - approachable and easy-going enough for a shy kid like me to get along with.  A wealth of musical wisdom that he just wanted to share with the middle school students who came through his band.  Always a smile when you saw him in the hallway.

Mr. Brooks taught me how to play the saxophone.  I'm sure that giving music lessons was part of his teaching contract, but I also have to think that his contact didn't cover all the lesson hours he put in with kids, or the help he gave them finding instruments and sometimes even fixing them.  I remember a day in 7th grade when we had chair placement and I finished 7th chair out of 8 that day, and was ready to quit band.  I went to my lesson later that week and Mr. Brooks said that I just needed to hang in there and practice, that I had the ability it just hadn't all gotten together yet.  Thankfully I stuck with it (my mom had some say in that too, thankfully :)

I have been playing the saxophone now for 25 years.  I've been involved in many things, groups, organizations, etc. over those years, but my saxophone has given me more opportunities and allowed me to meet more people and be a part of more important things than anything else in my life.  High school band, college marching band (all the great trips I got to take! and many of my best friends came from there), concert band, and pep band, Rochester Civic Theater pit orchestra, Kasson Community Band, 37th Street Gold Jazz Band, Notochords Jazz Band, music groups at church, playing for weddings, the salsa band and world band gigs I got to be a part of.  And probably more stuff that I haven't thought of.  So many things and people I probably wouldn't have been a part of had it not been for Mr. Brooks and his desire to share the joy of playing music with kids.

I have tried to make a point of telling people from my life that they were important to me, that they made a difference.  I've been blessed with so many.  And sometimes I have actually made the effort to do it.  But not enough.  I hope Mr. Brooks knew how much of a difference he made in my life and the lives of so many other kids.  It's too late for me to tell him that now.  Don't wait "until later" to tell those people how important they were to you.  It probably means more to them than anything you could say or do.