On the right you see me in my running outfit minus my hat. I also wore my Memphis Riverkings hat. That hat means something to me because I got it when a season ticket holder for the Memphis Riverkings. I had a lot of fun going to those games. (The hat shows up in the second picture, below) It was a good time of my life. The red shirt here, that’s Honda red for a friend of mine who wears red a lot more than I do. You see the giant Garmin watch there? That was a Christmas gift from my best friend of the past 20 years. I wear it whenever I run outside. The ring I’m wearing on my left hand, that’s for luck and it’s in my pocket but there. The bib number, great first racing bib number, 88… that’s the year I went into the Navy. That was a pretty significant year for me in a lot of ways.

This race was, for me, the completion of 8 months of work. No, it wasn’t a marathon. But it was me setting a goal and sticking to it. I wound up running the race by myself, my friends weren’t able to be there and that was, at that point, just the icing on the cake. The part where I ran the race I’d set myself up to run was good. That was the cake right there. I ran the whole thing with a slight smile. Not just because the weather was perfect and the atmosphere of the race itself was fun, but because I was doing something I’d worked for and that I loved.

Doing something like that for myself, that much work, time, and sticking to it… that meant a lot to me. It does today, 2 days later. I’ve been trying to think of what is next, and I think right now next is to keep running and maybe do some more 5k’s. Summer’s coming, and it’s hot in the summer, and I’ve already noticed how much harder it is to run in the summers. I’m not done running. I love it. But this first race, this first goal that I set 8 months ago, and completed, for that I’m proud of myself. To those of you who supported me, put up with my running breaks, or my being late to places because I was running. To you, thank you.

Specific thanks to specific sites and online tools that I’ve used:
Couch to 5k, already mentioned, but a great training program.
5k101 has some great podcasts for running and training for a 5k. I still use them.
Active.com is full of tips for runners and is how I found which race I’d run first.
Twitter – I had lots of support from friends on twitter as I’d post my running times and progress.
SparkPeople – Great weight loss and fitness site that kept me focused on my diet while I learned how to eat while running.
DailyMile – this is where I log my runs. It’s a great site and I recommend it to anybody who exercises (Running, Biking, Swimming, Walking specifically)

Specific thanks to specific people:
My parents for being supportive, and teaching me that I could do what I wanted to do. The idea that I could do whatever I set my mind to if I just worked at it really impacts me in every way almost every day. I really don’t meet that many things that I think I can’t do. My confidence comes from them and that and I appreciate it and how much it’s impacted my life. I may be scared to try sometimes because I’m scared of not getting it right the first time, but I never believe I CAN’T do something if I work at it. That feeling is, as I meet more people, something a lot of people don’t have. A lot of folks out there don’t believe they can do much of anything and they limit themselves. You hear people say “My parents said I could be anything…” but I don’t remember my parents saying that. I don’t actually believe that either. I remember them teaching us that we could DO anything we were willing to work at. That’s an important difference. (I say that and internally flinch at what they went through when I made up my mind to be bad at math ugh, another story for another time.)

Kit, my roommate, best friend, and friend I’ve had the longest. I know you thought running was a ridiculous thing to do and that the times I was late to friends’ soccer games or parties or family events because I was running you made my explanations for me. You taught me to ride a motorcycle (something I was afraid of doing because I thought I’d crash and/or die), and always push me to do things even if I may not do them right the first time. You’re good at holding my feet to the fire and expecting more out of me even when I’m being stubborn. I said once that I like who I am better when you’re around than when you’re not and I mean it. I like who I’ve become by being your friend. Thank you.

My sister, Leigh. I’ve already done a whole blog post on how much I appreciate her and what she means to me. I’m not going to duplicate it here but I’d have been remiss if I’d not mentioned her here.

(This post is a double post, being posted to my simplerich.com blog as well as my running blog.)

So why do I care about Facebook if I’m so careful about what I do on the Internet? The most common thing I hear about people when I bring up privacy concerns is “If you don’t have anything to hide what do you have to worry about?” My answer to them is, “Why do you use curtains or walls? Why do you shut the door when you go to the bathroom stall?” There are times when you don’t want the whole world up in your business. If I have co-workers and bosses who follow me on facebook, and I did, and they didn’t like what political sites I visited that suddenly showed up on my facebook page could that have consequences? Of course it could. Should it? Nope. But it could. What if it showed that I was on facebook while I was supposed to be working. Would they know I was on hold for the weekly conference call? Of course not.

Those are just the easy work related issues. The thing is. What I do on the Internet is no more Facebook’s business than it’s my phone company’s business if I go to the mall or to Wal-mart. It’s not their business. They don’t need to know it. Just because they CAN know it doesn’t mean they should know it. If they wanted to enrich my Internet experience they’re welcome to it, but ask me first. Let me CHOOSE to ask for it. Don’t opt me in.

I don’t really feel like I should have to explain my expectation of privacy honestly. The part where I expect and want it and am being asked to defend it is almost as offensive to me as my perception of Facebook’s violation of my privacy.

From a social hacking point of view what can we find out about a person from their facebook profile? Often they list their parents’ names which may include “mother’s maiden name” or “Father’s middle name” as appears in some security questions on some websites. Perhaps they show you graduated from Monkeyspanker High School and that security question is also asked, “What was your high school mascot.” Now decent social hackers would know that. That’s sort of my other point. Why should all that information be gathered up by the fine folks at Facebook for the social hackers out there to use? Maybe I don’t list my Mom’s middle name, but perhaps my sisters do, or my brothers, or my trans-gendered first pet whose name was “Sieze-her” and with all the information out there linking back and forth whether I put it out there or someone else does it’s out there.

I won’t deny that I greatly enjoyed re-connecting with my friends on Facebook. That added value to my life in general, and to my enjoyment of the Internet specifically. It was really good to meet them again as adults after having not seen them since high school. There are some really interesting people out there that I knew back when we were just high schoolers.   I will miss them. If Facebook were to decide that our privacy were important I’d gladly be back, but as much as I love re-connecting with everybody I feel like staying says it’s OK if a company has no respect for their customer’s wishes. It’s my saying it’s OK to treat my personal information as a publicly tradeable commodity. I’m not OK with that. My leaving may not make a difference to Facebook, but it will make a difference to me.

Thursday I’m going to be on Farmville meeting a friend of mine to watch Survivor together and then I’m going to log off my account, perhaps deleting it if I can find a way to do that.

The excitement is palpable though and the possibilities whip about like leaves in a gale.

Here’s the thing… what am I doing? Why do I not have that level of excitement and possibilities for myself and for what I’m doing? That seems like I’m doing something wrong here. Where’s my passion for what I’m doing? (Other than running and that’s sort of stalled right now because a) I’m ill and b) the treadmill that I have access to is nick-named “shin-killer.”)

So… my goal between now and Valentine’s Day is to find something I’m passionate about and start it. (Other than running… my next race is soon…  2/16/2010 (Fat Tuesday! WOOT!) I’ll keep you posted.

It may be online classes. I’ve thought about that recently and decided it may be a great option for someone who travels as much as I do.

It may be a sports car and a girlfriend half my age… OK. That’s not actually very likely come to think of it.

So… no pressure… what am I going to do with myself that I’m as excited about as I am about what other people are doing? Seems like I’m wasting the only life I have if I’m not excited about my own life as often as possible.

It makes me want to scream. I will say something a hundred different ways to get someone who is trying to figure it out. But when they stand there and won’t listen or try… when they just stand there with clenched fists screaming “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!”

It makes me want to yell. Seriously. It’s so hard to work around that. I can work through them not having a skill set. I can’t work around more negative talk than positive or trying. You know that whole lead a horse to water but can’t hold his head under it thing? Yeah… it’s like that.

There’s something I need to mention though.

I do it too.

My room mate wanted me to ride motorcycles with him when we lived in Memphis but my first shot at riding motorcycles didn’t exactly go all that great really. I was going to take a class but I was scared I’d either fall and hurt myself, or embarrass myself… even with the class. He would say how fun riding was and I’d flash back to how scared I was of screwing up and lock up.

We were driving to a movie and he asked again when I was going to take the motorcycle riding coarse and I started yelling at him about how everything was easy for him. He’d been riding his whole life and I’d never done it before… “HE JUST DIDN’T UNDERSTAND!!!” He stopped nagging me about the class and a month later got it for me for my birthday. I could go or not but he didn’t talk about it any more. He found where and when and paid for it. He didn’t go watch. I did it and you know what? I love riding now.

I was scared to do something new and I was scared I’d be embarrassed in front of people. It helped that he wasn’t there to watch me learn how. I can totally understand people not wanting to be embarrassed in front of people they know. I try so hard to help encourage people when they’re wearing the shoes I was wearing that day… the day I was the one yelling “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!” I’ve been there. I’ve been the irrational one insisting that they didn’t get it.

I don’t know why I do it… I wish I could say “DID” it but I’m told I’m not totally cured of it yet. On the plus side if I start stone-walling now my roommate wails at me, quite dramatically, “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!” That tends to help jerk me out of my stone-walling.

If any of you have tips on how to turn can’t into can I’d live to hear them and I promise… I DO UNDERSTAND!

Work wasn’t worth a damn. It was a job but honestly, with the computer system as busted as it was (and when your automated re-order system doesn’t work and you’re in retail things go downhill fast), it wasn’t a career any more. It was a way to get paid for the first long time in years. Yes. There had been periods of ennui before, but this was new and appeared to be chronic.

I started running to run. I wasn’t consciously running away from work. I wasn’t running towards anything. I was just running. Today while I was running at the end of my mini-vacation I was thinking about going back to work. I got more tense with every step. I have a headache right now. I’m pretty sure it’s a tension headache about returning to work.

Honestly tomorrow I go back to work and I’d rather run. Not because of the work but because of the weather. This is part of my job frustration this winter. I have to travel, by car, for work and I travel a LOT. Tomorrow I’m supposed to drive to Omaha… the weather forecast is for an ice-storm that lasts at least one day and maybe two.

It’s the first day back from vacation and I have to go to work. I get that… the problem is that I’m not going to be able to do the travelling I need to do and that will stress me. It will also stress my boss and that will stress me. Now, the obvious option is I telecommute. I can totally do my job from home a day or two safely and efficiently… and my boss will accuse me of ditching work and just wanting to stay home. That part stresses me too.

So. I get to go back to work. I’m tired of this winter. It’s an additional stress on top of an already stressful year. I’m just not in the mood. Winter has to get the heck out of here. It’s starting to stress me out.

Oh, and the running? It’s still going really well. I need to train FOR something and I haven’t nailed that down yet but I’m still going. No standing still.

Sweet liberty The 12 Days of Christmas hula w/the 12 Aloha Virtues of MWA ~ Day 10 and the Virtue of FREEDOM: http://ow.ly/SkEM

There they are… those two words together in one sentence and I couldn’t figure out what the difference between them was. I know there IS a difference between them. I just don’t know what it is really. Freedom and Liberty.

There is a lot of talk about Freedom lately. That word’s on the rise while Liberty is on the wan. Nobody talks about Liberty any more but they used to use it more. “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happyness.” (sic) must be the most recognizable use of Liberty that every US Citizen knows. (I intentionally didn’t use “American” because well… Brazilians are American as are Peruvians and those dastardly Canadians! (KIDDING Canadia!) and they may not be as familiar with our Declaration of Independence as we are. There’s more to America than just the USA.)

I can’t imagine the founding fathers saying “Life, Freedom, and the pursuit of Happiness.” It’s not because I don’t have a good imagination. I do. I use it constantly when doing daily affirmations.

What does one do when there’s a question about word meanings? One hits the dictionary.

LIBERTY: (from dictionary.com)

1. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
2. freedom from external or foreign rule; independence.
3. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.
4. freedom from captivity, confinement, or physical restraint:The prisoner soon regained his liberty.

FREEDOM: (from dictionary.com)

1. the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint: He won his freedom after a retrial.
2. exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.
3. the power to determine action without restraint.
4. political or national independence.

You see the problem. Both words use each other to define each other. But liberty is most often defined as a freedom FROM something. It’s almost as if it can’t exist in a vacuum. One can’t simply BE liberty (obviously, it’s not a verb). But one enjoys Liberty when one is liberated and one is most often thought of as liberated FROM something, be it oppressors, insanely high tax burdens, or despotic governments.

I think the most telling thing about us not using liberty as much as we use freedom nowadays in the US is that we’re pretty much liberated already. We’re one of the most free countries in the world, (please leave Homeland Security and the Patriot Act out of any comments as exhibits to the contrary not because they infringe on our basic liberties, but because this isn’t a political blog. I know. I know.) When we in the US talk about Liberty we talk about it happening in other places. We say that we “liberated Baghdad” and that sort of thing. We’ve been known to “Liberate Hostages.” We appear to have, in our national psyche come to a point where we see ourselves as liberated (Remember the Women’s LIB movement? that was our last big use of Liberty) more than before and now we’re ready to go out there, enjoy and protect our freedoms while we liberate those around us so that they can enjoy THEIR freedoms.

One can’t be free until they have been liberated however, and our liberties, our freedoms, are to be both enjoyed and protected. There were loads of inspirational quotes about both words but I think the most telling thing about them is that we, as a country, don’t seem to feel, collectively, that we need liberating right now. I hope that it remains true that we remain liberated and free.

Thank you Rosa for prompting me to write this, and formalize it. I’ve said before I get a lot of thinking done while I run, but I’m most organized in my thinking when I write things down. If I can nail an squirming, wriggling idea down by writing it down and clarifying it I’m better off in keeping it straight in my head.

I’m reading The Spark right now, a book that I will review in much more detail later. It will be a weekend post since I agreed to do book reviews on weekend posts. One of the primary themes of the book is that lifestyle changes, whether they be fitness changes, dietary changes, business changes, motivational changes, any kind of personal, internal change, is best made incrementally with a string of small victories building to a larger change. The pyramids aren’t climbed in one step. They’re made up of many steps that are, by themselves doable goals that lead to something magnificent.

So, towards that end 2010’s goals are going to be many, short and medium length goals, that will set up a chain of successes leading to a bigger over all destination of larger success. The advantage is if there is a set-back it’s not a set-back on the huge, overall goal. It’s a set-back on one tiny portion of the goal. That’s not as soul-crushing as blowing a giant goal. As someone who quit smoking 5 times before having one stick I know what it’s like to slip once and blow the whole kit and kaboodle!

When I quit smoking (6/15/2005) I didn’t quit forever. I quit cold-turkey and quit for the rest of the drive home. Then I quit until the following morning. That next morning I quit until lunch. (I didn’t smoke in between those quits, those were just my goals… like getting a first down rather than going for touch down every play.) You can see the pattern. Mentally staring down the barrel of a forever quit was too daunting. I’ve said before I’m a sprinter, not a marathoner and that is still true today, even when I run (Not that I’m a sprinter either as it turns out. I raced a 16 year old a while back at the campgrounds and he beat me like an old rug. I should have tripped him. He’s young. He’d heal!) So I’m going to follow The Spark’s advice and make a chain of small achievable goals.

Just because a goal is small and achievable doesn’t mean it’s a gimme goal. We recently had an Ownership Thinking workshop at my work and someone set forth as our first goal to do something that was not only 70% complete all ready it wasn’t something we could fail on. It was an assignment. There was no challenge to it. It was a gimme goal and it didn’t mean anything when we accomplished it. It was like having every team member get a trophy after a game where nobody kept score. We didn’t care about it as a first step in the Ownership Thinking program because it was as much an accomplishment or challenge as putting on our socks. That’s not what I’m talking about by small goals. (Things improved after that by the way.)

My Goals for 2010 follow, in no particular order:

• Minimum 10 Minutes of cardio every day with no days off. (Yes it’s low, but it’s doable and constant and I will do more most days. Do YOU do this much a day outside of basal movement?)
• Finish SparkPeople’s 28-day bootcamp that starts January 3, 2010.
• Run a 5k road race in spring in under 30 minutes.
• Run a 10k road race in the fall. (Time to be determined when I know what’s reasonable)
• Make at least two positive blog posts a week in any of the three blogs I’m currently maintaining. (simplerich.com, simplerunner, and my fitness blog over on SparkPeople.)
• Hit and maintain a healthy BMI by February and keep it through the year. (BMI = Body Mass Index)

You’ll notice an absence or work related goals on there. That’s no entirely an accident. I’ve asked my managers, I have 11 of them now rather than 8. I got three more stores to manage last week. I’ve asked them to get me a list of their goals for the month and year. I’ve also asked them to let me know what areas we as a company most need improvement, what areas I can help them the most, and what they would do if a) They owned their store and what they would change on the first day it was theirs, and b) what they would change tomorrow if there were no rule or policy against it. I’m going to use these to formulate my goals this year. It’s going to be a somewhat bottom up approach to managing this year, but I’m going to try it and see what happens. I’ll still be their manager obviously, but I’m definitely not going to be the only one driving this ship this year. I’ve got to do my job differently than the way I have been. I’ve got too many stores for me to continue doing it the way I was doing it. I finally realized the reason I was so burning out was that I was trying to manage the 8 stores I had the same way I was doing things when I had 5 stores and it was just too overwhelming. Then add to it the insane policy changes and I’m not alone in thinking they’re insane but there you have it… Anyway. Things had to change.

So, my goals that you see here are mostly about me and my fitness. My assumption is, if I take care of those things that work will take care of itself. That’s not as sloughing off work as it sounds. I just believe that I need these things to get me out of the death spiral I was in most of last year with work when I focused on work more than anything else and it wasn’t a healthy balance at all. By the end of the year I would have said “Thank you” if I’d lost my job. I’d have handed my boss the keys and hugged him in appreciation. I would have changed my phone number and never missed those calls again. That is NOT a healthy place for someone to be who is as high up as I am in the company. Attitudes are contagious and it was exhausting to try and be upbeat and positive when all I wanted to do was go home and lay under the covers and hope it all would just go away. I don’t feel like that now. But I did.

So, by focusing outside the spiral, by taking my eyes off the thing that was making me crazy I’m going to work on non-work goals as a primary focus and let work be my job again for a while and not my life. Because you know… as lives go… it wasn’t terribly rewarding there for a while. I think it will be better now that I’m remembering it’s a job, not a wife or husband. It’s a career, not the way I define who I am. I’m not my job. That’s I guess my only work related goal in 2010. Remember that my job is not me.

You’re wondering what this has to do with Tigers.  Tiger’s symbolically are representative of Power, Generosity, Illumination, and Energy and my goal in 2010 is to exemplify as many of those as I can in my personal and work life. To me personally the tiger is all about movement, and the energy of a coiled spring or the pent energy of a crouching tiger about to unfold into a long, lithe orange and black missile aimed at something. Their muscles ripple under their coat as they run and their eyes are fixed on their prize as they tear across the landscape. 2010 I want to have that kind of energy, that kind of feel to it. I envision 2010 as the year I reaffirm myself as interested in myself and developing myself and not just trying to go through the motions.

In running there’s an expression called “Hitting the wall.” What it means is your body has used up it’s supplies of glycogen. Glycogen is what the body goes to for energy when it’s primary energy source is depleted. If you’re out of glycogen you’re running on empty and it feels like you can’t go on. You’re exhausted in every sense of the word at that point. Obviously, it’s not desirable. In marathons it happens much more than in short races, typically around the 20 mile mark (32km) according to wikipedia.

So, hitting the wall could be described as when you’ve run as far as you can, exhausting all your energy that you have readily available to you and what’s left is primarily will-power and the body consuming and destroying itself. Yeah. You don’t want to exist in that state very long if you can help it. Ideally you’d like to avoid ever getting to that point.

Why am I talking about this here and not over on my running blog? Because I recently hit the wall professionally. The day after posting that I was inundated with e-mails and messages on twitter (I don’t like the word “tweets.”) and phone calls from internet friends and people I’ve met in person. I deeply appreciated it. SparkPeople, the fitness site I’m using to track my food and fitness ran an article that was especially timely called, appropriately enough, “Hitting That Big Ole Wall.” The article outlined 5 steps, ways to deal with hitting the wall. These apply to running, as well they might since the article was written by an Olympic marathoner.

1. Just keep going.

2. Don’t think.

3. Bribe yourself.

4. Word watch (watch for negative thinking/self-talk)

5. Negotiate with yourself. (different from 3, go read the article. It’s short and good.)

The three that I most want to focus on are 1, 2, and 4. In running I know to do 1. When I’m tired or running for time. I know to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I also know that in the grand scheme of things my plodding along doesn’t matter. But what’s important when running for time is that I continue to put one foot in front of the other. That’s true at work sometimes too. When the fire is out. It’s important to keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t dwell on it.

That brings me to number two. I’ve been doing this job for a while. I know what needs to be done. I know that some of the changes we’re making aren’t changes I myself would make if I were in charge. The thing is… I’m NOT in charge. This isn’t the time to obsess on every possible bad outcome. This is time to put one foot in front of the other and get through this. Right now, until this passes it’s time to soldier on. Yes there will be problems, but they won’t be made better by my paralyzing myself with what-ifs or should haves. It’s time to Keep Calm and Carry On.

Lastly for what I’m going to talk about is the word watching. That’s a big one for me. I’ll catch myself speaking in absolutes and using words like “always” and “never.” And those two words are always bad to use and never absolutely true. (See what I did there? Yeah. I know, it’s less clever if I point it out. It’s Christmas, cut me some slack would you?) This is important though. If you do all three of the things in here at once wrongly. You quit moving, over think, and engage in negative self-talk then nobody wins.  I lose as my job performance tanks. My employees know that there’s something wrong in the state of Denmark and my boss now has one more thing to worry about, whether or not I’m about to quit on him out of frustration.

And here’s the thing. Ultimately all of this boils down to that doesn’t it? Am I going to quit over it? I can afford to. That is an amazingly liberating thing actually. If I couldn’t afford to walk away I’d be feeling trapped in addition to all the other things that are going on and that would stink. I recommend everybody save two ways. Long term retirement savings and short term emergency fund savings, and once that’s funded start putting away some “Screw you I quit!” money. Surprisingly I can afford to quit and knowing that makes it my choice to stay not me staying because I have to. If I choose to stay I can’t get as mad at The Man for messing with me because I always have the trump card of Cartman’s “Screw you guys, I’m goin’ home!” That fact alone makes it more tolerable.

So, are things rosy on the work front? No. They’re still pretty abysmal actually. I think some pretty terrible decisions are being made and some insanely difficult policies are being put into place that will absolutely cost us a fortune, reduce productivity, sales, and profit. I think the people making these decisions are being given very bad information by people they trust. I think that the situation will in no way be made better by my quitting. I believe if I stay I may be able to moderate the insanity a little bit and make things better for those with whom I work.

I believe I will have weeks, and months (It’s been about six months that I knew all this was coming and it comes to a head on the 28th finally hence my meltdown. I kept hoping it would stop or I’d wake up but it’s about to happen for reals.) where I’m Keeping Calm and Carrying On. But I also know that there will be weeks and months where there is light at the end of the tunnel. I believe that there is a chance to pull the stupid out of the fire and hammer it into something useful.

How’s it go that the Chinese ideogram for crisis has two roots, danger and opportunity or something like that? (Turns out this isn’t entirely true, or evidently even partially true. Don’t let it be said I don’t try and do some fact-checking on this thing.) Well. I’ve made up my mind to treat this like a run for a while. One foot in front of the other, head up, eyes on the distance, not looking at my feet, and keep on keeping on. I’ve built another savings goal over on smartypig.com that comes due in July. If things aren’t better then I’ll have enough for me and my room mate to go on a very long Alaska cruise. Not sure if he’ll want to go or not. I haven’t asked him. If not then I’ll be able to be gone for twice as long. Either way. I win. So. I’ve got a goal. One foot in front of the other until July and re-evaluate then. My hope is that I’m not in glycogen-debt for that amount of time and I just wind up with a nice vacation fund.

It’s ostensibly a blog where I talk about management and retail management.

After today’s melt down on twitter I realized I didn’t think that it was a good idea for me to talk about work right now in any context on the Internet. It’s part of that whole, “If you can’t say something nice don’t say anything” thing. I’m so frustrated, irritated, over-whelmed, and filled with feelings of hopelessness and despair that I really can’t think of anything to say that’s nice. I’m sure a relative quiet has been noticed around here lately.

Short version: We got new software at our corporate offices and the person who did it did NOT run the new system in parallel with the old system for even an hour to see if it would work. He turned off our old system and turned on the new saying, “If you keep the old one you won’t learn the new one. No sense using crutches! Dive in. It’s the only way you’ll learn!”

That was in October. Things still aren’t working right and seriously it’s horrible when you’re in retail and product doesn’t re-order and the office that does the ordering doesn’t know what your inventory is and there’s no way of telling it. I just don’t know what to do anymore. All I’m positive about is that we, on the front lines, are doing all we can to keep the doors open. My crew has really come together and is busting their butts to make bricks without straw and I have tremendous respect for them for it. But I’m just too tired to pretend any more. I’m ready to work at Wal-greens at a register. Seriously. I just don’t want to play right now.

Hopefully after Christmas things will sort out. I’m constantly assured that there’s improvement and things will fix themselves any day now. I pray I’m still here when it happens.

Until then, until I like work again this will be my last post about work. Things are just too stressful and tense right now. Those of you who work for the same company you know it. I’m turning off comments here so nobody says anything that gets them in trouble. There are too many eyes on this blog for me to be comfortable with what people may say and how it may be taken. If you want to e-mail me I’d love to hear from you. But comments… probably a bad idea.

This post is probably a bad idea, but I’ve looked. We have no internet policy. I’ll win the unemployment if they fire me and you know… I’d sleep in tomorrow if they did and wouldn’t look back. That’s what an emergency fund is for.

This isn’t about me really, but it’s going to start out that way just bear with me OK? I was book smart. I skipped second grade (Not a good idea by the way in my opinion. These days they don’t fail people because socially it’d be a bad idea… Yeah, I sort of wish they had thought that when I was skipped. I was socially way out of my league and it took me a while to not feel out of sorts, but that’s not the point.) The point is school stuff came really easy to me. I thought it came easy to everybody. I remember a conversation in High School with my Mom where I was saying that everybody should be required to take Algebra. I’d probably just heard Jubal Harshaw say it. I was easily impressed. (Moment of silence for The Grand Master please…) I know now that I was an idiot. But it was something that I thought was a gift, only instead of being grateful for it or humble for having received it, or recognizing it may have a downside. I was an elitist ass. I eventually grew out of that, but in the meantime my sister Leigh got to bear the brunt of the annoying part about my being book smart.

The thing with being a kid is that the metrics used for a REALLY long time are metrics like… school work or grades. An area in which I did pretty OK with very little effort (with the exception of math which my grade skipping didn’t help me on at all). Later, we’re skipping a lot of years here, I went to college and hit a wall. There were a LOT of people around me as casually intelligent as I was, and the spoon feeding of the high-school classes wasn’t cutting it. Suddenly school was hard. My sister meanwhile, graduated high school early, by working hard, studying hard, and applying herself. She didn’t skate through it. She worked at it. And finished early.

I was in college and needed to study for the first time ever. I didn’t have a clue how. I’d never needed to before. I failed a class. No kidding. Failed it bigger than life. The one thing I’d always done OK in without really trying was something I was screwing up and had failed at. So. I took the class again and had the highest average in the class (I have jokingly said that I beat an Asian girl in math as my highest achievement but I feel bad because when she saw she was second in class she cried. I pointed out I had the advantage of having taken the class before but it didn’t seem to help.) I worked hard on it that year. I learned to study and I studied and it wasn’t easy. I did, for one semester, in one class what my sister had done for longer and I hated it. I liked the class. I didn’t like that I had to work at it.

So I quit. I dropped out of college and entered the Navy as a Nuke. Supposedly you have to be smart to be a Nuke. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I met people in there in the school who hated me, got so mad at me that they couldn’t stand it or even talk to me because again… I was getting it and they weren’t. Only now I knew how to study so I wasn’t just getting it and getting by. I was doing really well. I wish I’d learned to study sooner. I’d have done better when I was in high school.

My sister DID study. She worked and got done with High School ahead of schedule and joined the Marines… holy crap! I’d talked to the Marine recruiter, but as soon as he said how long his boot camp was I was done. No chance in hell of me surviving a 12 week boot camp. She did it though. I had joined the Navy and started running before I went in to get into better shape. I’d run and do push-ups and sit-ups and whatever else I thought I’d need to get through the 8 weeks of Navy boot camp. She’d done it harder though… again.

I never told her in all that time how proud I was of her for what she’d done. I got skipped in 2nd grade. I didn’t do anything to deserve that except know how to read. She’d taken time off the back end of her education… the hard years, and she’d earned it. She’d set a goal and done it, the hard way. Then she’d joined the Marines and did that too. I bragged about her to everybody who would listen. She wasn’t “in the service.” She was a MARINE. That’s not like other branches. I don’t care what branch you’re in… Marines are tougher. (OK. Navy Seals are excluded here, they eat Marines for breakfast with milk and sugar sprinkled over them. lol)

Skip forward again… she’s married with a son with a great house, she knits, she paints, she bakes and cooks and is, as far as I can see… working her butt off to be a great Mom to her son. When her husband (a Marine she met while she was a Marine) was going to be called-up and deployed and she was going to be on her own she took care of business, and didn’t fall apart or anything like that. She put on her butt kicking boots and took care of things.

When I heard she was going to do a running program called Couch to 5k I thought I’d give it a look. And I did. In management I’ve often told people I’m a sprinter, not a marathon runner. I can do anything for two weeks. No job is too hard that I can’t do it for two weeks. Need me to run 8 stores while I open a new one and train an entire crew and put in 20 hour days? No problem… two weeks, maybe three but then I’m going to need to crash.

In job negotiations with the new owner of the company I work for I didn’t talk about salary or compensation or his expectations. He talked about all that. I talked about time off and needing it. I know my limits. I learned early on that I’m BAD at working on something long term. It’s a limitation I have and I know it. This Couch to 5k thing… that’s a 9 week course… self started… got to get myself up off the couch of DOOM and do it myself. I have never done anything myself for that length of time. I said that if she could do all those things she’d done then surely I’d be able to do them. Once in my life I should, before it was too late, live up to the standards my sister had set for herself and surpassed over and over again in my estimation.

Last week I finished the 9 week running program in 12 weeks. I finished it because my sister who I’ve never told how proud I was of her was my inspiration. Not her finishing it. I don’t know if she has or not yet. She has no twitter feed *hint*hint*. But because of the way she’s lived her life. She’s, to my eyes, worked hard to make sure that she lives it fully. There’s an expression in racing that you run so you leave everything on the track. When you finish a race there’s nothing left in you as you cross the finish line. You couldn’t run any further because you’ve run it and run it your best and hardest without burning out too soon or crossing the finish line with any reserves meaning you didn’t run hard enough. To me she’s running the race of life that way. She doesn’t appear to be coasting through life just waiting for things to happen and I respect that and appreciate it and love her for it.

Thank you Leigh, for introducing me to the C25k and thank you for being someone I wish I were more like. You make me proud to say you’re my sister.

(This is a double blog post… if you see it on simplerich.com and my SimpleRunner blog in your newsreader it’s not stuttering. I am. She’s worth a double post to me.)

(PS: To those of you who say I’m romanticizing things and no brother sister is this lovey dovey… lol you’re right. We weren’t. I was an ass and she was too… but we were kids. We’re allowed. We both grew out of it and turned into decent people.)