excuses

Are You Compensating For Something?

I enjoy listening to various podcasts when I work out, when I’m on the stationary bike or even when I’m running!

One of the channels that (almost always) climbs to the top of my playlist each week is Freakonomics, an economics podcast by the authors of that book with the same name that you’ve heard about, maybe even bought, but probably haven’t read.

Yet, if the prospect of an economics podcast just sent shivers down your spine, then put on a sweater and give a few episodes of this one a listen. I suspect you may face your fear to positive effect.

One episode I would suggest for runners is the recently posted “The Cheeseburger Diet” which while it does talk a lot about cheeseburgers, is actually less about cheeseburgers and more about the tangential observation that humans are interesting creatures and we do strange things… like this thing called compensatory behavior.

I’ve heard some of you compensating with my own ears

Compensation: You do it, too. I know you do. Because I’ve heard some of you compensating with my own ears.

So, the podcast led in with a story about one woman’s obsession with finding the ultimate cheeseburger. She sounded like my kinda gal: not because of the cheeseburger obsession, but because of the analytical, over-thinking process she went through of setting up a process, schedule, a grading system, and then (essentially) writing a book-length document chronicling the results and her adventure (which she has no plan on publishing, of course.) In the context, you think the story is leading to something about a new fad diet of eating cheeseburgers and fries twice a week as a model of some unexpected outcome relating to weight loss, but it turns out to be a little more mundane and grounded than that. (Get it? Ground-ed? Hamburger? Oh, never mind.)

Drooling Economists

As it turns out she followed some classic compensatory behavior. Just like salivating over a fresh burger, this is the stuff that makes human economists drool.

“If you take on some extra risk in one area of your life, you might need to compensate by adding some precautionary behavior in another area. Some of us are certainly better at this than others, but it is a nice act of faith, isn’t it? Faith in ourselves, and our ability to self-regulate, as opposed to relying on some top-down guideline that may produce the behavior you’re hoping for — or, given the power of the law of unintended consequences, may produce the opposite behavior.”

–Freakonomics Podcast, Episode 230

Cheeseburger Lady did not actually end up gaining a hundred pounds over her year of eating greazy burgers. Why? Because she made up for it in other parts of her diet: she ate healthier for the other nineteen meals of the week, as she put it, rather than just adding a more fast food to her menu. She compensated for one increasing health risk by consciously reducing another.

All Of You Runners?

Runners do this. I know we do this, because (a) we’re human, and (b) I’ve done it and (c) I’m therefore extrapolating my observational data to include all runners in the entire universe. Can you believe I actually have a university science degree?

Sarcastic exaggeration aside, I’ve noticed that many of us seem to do this in both positive ways and negative ones. We do this in ways that usually relate back to eating more because we’re running more. We do it by saying (stupid) things like: I’m burning more calories by training so I deserve a desert today. Or, I just ran ten klicks so I’m going to have a great big cookie at coffee afterwards. In fact, I’ve heard one particular refrain come from the mouth of many of my fellow runners at one point or another: “I run because I like to eat.” You know that one? I know that one? I may have even said it myself.

eating all the cheesyburgers

In the podcast, Cheeseburger Lady had managed to maintain her healthy weight over the year of her cheeseburger quest, and in fact improved a few other health factors like her cholesterol counts, and the reason proposed was that she had been compensating for a new risk factor (eating all the cheesyburgers) by behaving better in the rest of her life (walking more & eating less other junk.)

Conscious Compensation

As the podcast concluded, it was revealed that Cheeseburger Lady’s biggest struggle came when she stopped eating two burgers per week: she no longer had reason to compensate, perhaps. Her discipline wavered. The balance she’d found between risk-factor extremes had unbalanced, and…

The takeaway lesson, at least I think so, is simple to understand (if not-so-simple to implement.)

We run. We fuel. We eat. We train. We burn calories. We consume some more. And in this complex mathematical dance of calculating optimal caloric intake to meet the ever-changing requirements of a casual fitness schedule we find a narrow path down which one side is hunger and the other side is over-eating. Straying from that path is as easy as under –or over– compensating. And when we compensate as a matter of course, as a purpose for the effort itself, that compensation in either direction becomes an excuse. In other words, if we learned one thing from Cheeseburger Lady it’s that we should not let compensation become justification.

Super Awesome Game Night Recap: Left 4 Solo

I showed up… Where were you?

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my attendance at the weekly gathering of we — the mid-thirties gamer guys with kids — is spotty at best. I failed to materialize last week for a moderately lame excuse, the exact nature of which was so lame that its epic lameness escapes me even now. But, Thanksgiving weekend, in the dwindling hours of a long weekend Monday, a few brief snatches of a precious day-off prior to starting the inevitable commute back to the office in the morning, I showed up.

And I waited.

Now, admittedly there was nothing formal planned. Red is normally always queued up with an event listing in our Steam calendar, and tonight there was nothing planned. But… here was to hoping.

I evaporated into the load screens of a couple potential game night game candidates, browsing their update logs and their status notices for the weekly feed of new content or altered play modes. Left 4 Dead 2 was featuring an enhanced scavenger mode mutation titled ‘follow the scavenger’ that — according to the post — was deeply favoured towards the zombies. So, probably not that, I thought.

I exited and bumped the refresh button on my friends queue. Nothing.

Everyone was too busy cleaning up from turkey dinners, roped into washing up duty, or perhaps just passed out in their swivel chairs from either too much turkey-delivered tryptophan… or too much red wine. That’s my story, anyhow, and I’m sticking to it.

I bumped Left 4 Dead 2 another time, finally after ten minutes or so loading up a friends-only server on the off-chance that a wandering fellow-gamer would see my in-game status and curiosity would get the better of him. I waited a little longer. Still nothing.

I fumbled with the keyboard, the mouse, the volume settings on my headset.

Finally, thirty minutes later, I jumped in. Plan: play, and if anyone else bothered to pull themselves away from holiday or family commitments on this quiet and chilly October evening then great. Otherwise… solo.

The “Hard Rain” Campaign loaded onto my screen. According to the wiki, Hard Rain sums up this way: “At the start of the campaign, Virgil drops off the Survivors with a mission to find and bring back diesel fuel for his boat. The mission is to travel to the Ducatel Diesel gas station through the abandoned town of Ducatel, the Witch infested ruins of the Ducatel Sugar Company mill and a cane field populated with Infected.”

To date, over the couple of years we’ve been holding these drop-in-awesome game nights, I’ve logged a little shy of thirty hours in Left 4 Dead 2. To novice ears, that sounds like a load of time. To veterans, that’s not quite a n00b, but still far from weak. Some solo time wasn’t going to hurt my skills.

I grabbed a katana from the ground and over the next twenty minutes or so — the details to be spared herein — I hacked and slashed my way through — according to my round stats — roughly two hundred infected, rampaging in hoards of virtual, relentless waves of killer zombies… yet still no show o friendly fire from the ever-silent, still-quiet, sadly-unchanging friends list.

An hour after the original expected start time for the Thanksgiving edition of Super Awesome Game Night — and yes, albeit, no formally scheduled event in the group calendar — I gave up, logged out, took my razor-edged sword and went home… and wandered over here to write up a report; A sad report, a report of of playing multi-player games in a lonely sort of way. *sniff*

PhotoFrustations

I’ve been really bad at taking photos this summer.

And by that I mean, I’ve shot a number of good macros, though not enough to justify the cost of that new lens I bought back last fall. I’ve also dragged the camera out to special events and holidays, clicking off more than my equitable share of snapshots of the same, but those occasions have been few and far between. Additionally, I have a ton of excuses and by far I’ve been enjoying the whole videographer thing a little more frequently than I should, so the big dSLR usually gets left home in favour of the pocket sized HD video camera. And there is too that the big camera is always just sitting there: charged, ready, waiting, though it simply, sadly, disappointingly-in-retrospect after a missed photogenic moment just doesn’t seem to get out enough. I… well… find excuses to not take as many pictures as I used to take.

Thus, my claim that I’ve been really quite bad at taking photos.

(And I should fix that: maybe for August, the Fringe Festival approaching and all, and it being my *volunteer* job to help manage the photography team. I’ll be out. Thinking of photos. Making pictures. Taking pictures. Working on photo skills and moments to create in digital form. Or… and… maybe for August it becomes a photo-a-day kinda month. There are option to improve things. What say?)

But then…

I know the reason I’ve been so bad at taking photos this summer… and also, by the way, terribly bad this past spring, past winter, and past fall, too. The reason has been that it’s pretty much stopped being fun. Sorry. That’s just it. Too many people have turned it into a job for me. Too many people — though no one, single person is in any way to blame but myself — have just sorta said: oh. Brad has a camera and he likes taking photos, so… “hey… bring your camera when…” and there it goes. The fun, I mean. Down the drain. Bye-bye.

I let it happen to myself. It wasn’t you. It was me. I suck at saying no. I suck at getting out of participation. And I do like participation, which is part of the reason. But participation then leads to obligation and obligation quickly rolls into co-dependency… and that just opens up a whole set of quasi-effectual frustrations about why I’m actually doing what I’m doing, and how to get out of it. The summary of that is simply this: my photography was for me — it used to be my thing, that I did, and I shared what I wanted to share — then it became for others to share, and now I don’t get the same joy out of it I used to: my joy is co-dependent on others. And I let that thing happen to myself.

This really means two things: First, I’m going to attempt to make it for myself again. Meaning… I’m going to stop doing photographic favors for anyone (besides standing commitments) for at least the next year. If you haven’t already asked, it’s now too late. Don’t. Don’t ask for a favour. I will say no. Deal. And second, I’m going to break that co-dependency and give myself some reason to enjoy it again, likely a personal project that will cross into the content-generating efforts of this blog and other spaces… or whatever… but I’ll give myself until the start of August (in just a couple days) to finalize what that means, exactly. It might make for some good posts next month. It might not even register. I can’t say quite yet.

It just this: I’ve been really bad at taking photos this summer because I’ve had a lot of vague frustrations about what taking pictures has actually meant for me… and for who it has been done lately. So, I’m fixing that.

Two Weeks

It’s odd. It’s been only a couple weeks now since I shuttered the blog from public sight — though I’ve often gone longer without a post,so no big deal right? — and there have been a couple minor disturbances in the ether of my reading network. And I really do mean minor.

Questions. Wide-eyed looks of curiosity. Shrugs of assumed technical explanations.

But two weeks in and I’m fairly certain it won’t be coming back. And I’ve found myself rehearsing excuses for that. Sitting in the car making up fake reasons to tell people, clever comebacks to slam in faces of the folks who insist I should not have closed the blog. How wrong is that?

I won’t scold anyone. I haven’t. Chris emailed and politely informed me that my server seemed to be down. Yup, thanks… I replied without a real answer. Mom wondered aloud why my blog didn’t seem to be working. Oh really?… I shrugged.

But as much as I want to blow this in the face of everyone else, I will be the first to admit (at least while in a rational state of mind) that it falls squarely on my own shoulders. It’s my blog, my bag, my burden to bravely burn to oblivion if I so desire.

Actually, I’ve decided that I’ve come up with a multiplier for the life of information on the web. For simplicity sake, I’ve rounded the number to fifty. Time on the web time fifty equals an equivalent objective measure of time in reality. So something that has been on the web for one year has lived the life akin to a fifty year old human. By that measure, my blog is positively medieval. Ancient history. Yet embedded upon the webs with about the same impact as some obscure theory of alchemy as relating to modern science.

Just now my soon-to-be-ex boss, Tom (who I can name now that this blog is private) wandered into my office and loaned me a copy of the March 1, 2010 New Yorker where on page sixty eight there is an article regaling the mental roller-coaster of job loss. Subtle. Maybe. He’d called me at home a couple days ago when I was (literally) skipping this thing I’m still forced to call work in favour of some quiet reflection and getting caught up on my television.

It’s all related you know. This blog. This boredom. This lack of purpose. And the impending changes to my employment. I’m in limbo. Marginally depressed. Paranoid. (Yes, really… as if some frakked up jilted past contractor could be bothered to sabotage my career.) And I’m having trouble coping.

So I’ve shut down the blog because of all those reasons I mentioned before… but also… also… also because I need to get past the expectations of others and get on with my own fucked up life: I need to stop making excuses to play to the pity of others. Closing the blog to public consumption means first, no more public disclosure and no more blurred lines of the same and second, no more states of apology and justification for myself.

Why did I shutter the metaphorical gates of the blog? Because I was done with it. Life changes. Things change. Ideas get stale and I damn well was finished with this little experiment. You want to read my inner thoughts and opinions? Give me a hundred bucks and I’ll write you an essay on anything you want. Otherwise, get over it. I’ve got things to do.

Delays and Unmotivations

December 19

For reasons of stupidity, I needed to be at work a little earlier than usual this morning. Given that the roads were a mess from the weather and some of the major routes were significantly delayed or closed due to the same, this meant I as required to leave a lot earlier than usual. In fact, I was out the door earlier than I’m normally out of bed.

Day 19: Decorating… at last…

I went and got gas. Considering the possibility of a long drive (to work and then beyond) I stopped for a coffee. My in-dash thermometer read minus twenty five degrees Celsius.

And waiting to turn back onto the main road I paused, waiting for three guys, steam boiling from their faces, to go running by.

Now, consider that I’ve been fairly bad lately. Between schedule, weather, and general malaise Ive not been out for nearly a week. And the next couple weeks are not looking much better for the practical side of my fitness regimen. Between large meals, excesses of treats, and lots of driving — well, let’s just say running is going to slip slowly from the priorities.

Now, that said, in thirteen days I’m slated to run a five kilometer race. And in sixteen days I’m registered to start a ten kilometer running clinic. Rain or shine — or should I say, blizzard?

I suppose that means I should dig out the old neck warmer, strap on the ice grips, and lace up for a nice long — but cool — dash around the neighborhood this evening. I suppose…

I Blame the Basement…

We love the progress so far, but having to spend every free moment for the past few weekends shopping, selecting, running electrical, cleaning, hauling junk, or otherwise connecting the dots on the construction process, I have officially had zero time to write. I’ve barely blogged, one might have noticed. Thus, I blame the basement that even my lame attempt at a reduced version of NaNoWriMo has gone completely unheeded in wash of my obligations to the role of homeowner and general, all-around coordinator of supplies with the expertise.

Thus…
Word Count as of Right Now: 0
Intention to write story by November 30: -> 0
Intention to complete story eventually: 50/50

On the bright side: today is painting day. When I get home from work there might be colour on our (new) walls. And to think that just three weeks ago it was one big empty room. Joy!

grace period declined

funkypig: Hey. I’ve missed you.

8r4d: You jest.

funkypig: No. Really. It’s been quiet down here without you. I enjoyed it for a while. I enjoyed the solitude. But now I’m just bored. Nothing to do but watch from behind the glass. You should try it sometime — you just might gain a bit more respect for my situation.

8r4d: Yeah? Go on.

funkypig: That’s all. Just bored.

8r4d: Uh huh.

funkypig: Well… there is… ah, but, I suppose that’s the price of it, right? You give a whole piece of yourself over to the next and then… then it just goes on. And on. And on some more. Somehow you forget the reason for it all.

8r4d: I’ve been making an effort.

funkypig: Weakly. You gotta admit.

8r4d: It hasn’t been a priority, exactly. There have been so many other things to think about. People relying on me. I’ve a purpose to fulfill. You know how it is?

funkypig: No.

8r4d: Well, you could.

funkypig: Not likely. Not my game. And besides, I gave you two months. Two months. And then I wanted to see you here again. The clock is ticking, you know. A few days. Then, well, I’ll expect you back down here. Regularly. No excuses.

8r4d: It might be tough. It can’t be a priority, you understand.

funkypig: No? It should be.

8r4d: Says you.

funkypig: Says I! Damn right. And you know why?

8r4d: I have an inkling.

funkypig: Her. Otherwise what’s the point? Are you going to give that all up — not come by here anymore — then in a few years wonder what you have left to offer? You are not a drone. You can’t just be a nanny. You’ve got a responsibility. You’re a role model now. Not a roll-over-and-die model.

8r4d: I suppose — you may have a point.

funkypig: Yeah.

8r4d: Don’t be so glib. I’m still adjusting.

funkypig: Shut up. You’ve adjusted. You know it. Now it’s just an excuse to avoid coming back and putting in the effort.

8r4d: Maybe. It was tough without the excuses. Now…

funkypig: It’s a slippery slope, dude. And the further you slide… well, you know. Toss the analogies. Whatever. Your choice.

8r4d: …

funkypig: So?

8r4d: So… what are you doing in ten days?

All Blocked Up

funkypig: I’m disappointed, you know. There has been oodles of opportunity, yet you squander.

8R4D: Squander? That’s unfair.

funkypig: But you’ve written nothing since you’ve been on vacation. Nothing. Nil. Nada. Nicht.

8R4D: I get it. I see where you going with that.

funkypig: You were going to be, ahem, caught up by the end of May, I recall. What did you say? Back on track, was it?

8R4D: Something like that. Your point?

funkypig: You’re not.

8R4D: No. No. Very true. I’m not, but I would argue that I’ve got something of, well bluntly, writer’s block. There is nothing there. I sit down at the computer and…

funkypig: Nothing?

8R4D: Bleh! Putt! Fizzle! Nothing. You don’t just turn it off and on, you know. I won’t make excuses about lack of time, other obligations or projects, or that kind of thing. I’ve sat down to write more times than I can count on my fingers…

funkypig: Ten, right? I forget sometimes.

8R4D: Yes, ten. Anyhow, I’ve sat down to write more times than I can count on my fingers — and maybe my toes, too — and, yeah, well, you know where this is going?

funkypig: Nothingness. Void.

8R4D: Exactly.

funkypig: I know it’s not my role to be, well… ah… erm… encouraging, but, y’know. Chin up. It will come.

8R4D: Useful.

funkypig: It’s my first time.

drifting messages

Just off a short-long-weekend hike type thing with the cub pack (email me for a private link to the photos if you really want to see them — I’m not posting it) I’m tired and sore and covered in mosquito bites which are just now starting to itch.

I arrive in the office to a message from the infamous Jeff — Red Deer-ish now — and he assures me that he does read my webpage and I shouldn’t be saying anymore bad things about him. (Or was it anymore good things…. I don’t remember.) As a result, I think I’ll need to find more excuses to torture him here. I don’t think he can throw fruit THAT far…

more stats:

potter.status: 100%
blogshares networth: $1,189,333.77
time until lunch: 0 minutes

blue.rain.drops

I decided to come into work this morning at the regular time despite the perfect excuse not to. Rather than sleep in until about 8ish, call the office and tell them I had a (work.related) meeting at 9ish, then mosey on over to the meeting just in time for 9ish, I took the complicated route. This is the route where I take the bus all the way to the office, then sit at work for about 45 minutes until it’s time to catch the bus back up to my meeting. After the short meeting I’m going to get to climb back aboard ye ol’bus and ride it back down to the office, only to await the end of the day when I not only get to ride transit all the way home, but over to judo tonight as well. It’s a bus.kind.of.day.

and.as.for.not.writing.all.weekend

No excuses. I was busy doing this, and doing that. We went to Ikea at one point and spent a small amount of money. I think it even fell into the formula. I was defragging my hard drive for a time and couldn’t be bothered to stop it to blog.write. Things like that tend to interfere. Not that it matters. I wouldn’t have had much interesting to write anyhow: unless anyone wanted to hear my frustration with mildewy buildup in the bathtub. Or dishes. Or… well… see how much fun that could get.