simplerich

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.

Earlier today I twittered that I was a fan of SmartyPig. I got two e-mails asking me a) Is it for real with those interest rates and 2) how do I use it? Well a partial answer for how I use it is to show some examples of what I use it for:

SmartyPig is an online bank I use it for saving towards specific goals both necessary and luxury. I think of SmartyPig as a reverse credit card. Instead of putting something on the card and then paying for it. I pay for it in small, manageable payments, and then, when I have enough, I move the money back into my bank-account and go buy the thing I was saving for. Rather than paying the credit card company interest on the thing, I get paid interest while I save for the item. This helps stop me from making impulse purchases, and gives me time to anticipate the purchase and shop around for best place to buy it.

When I first heard of SmartyPig and the really high interest rates (3.05% APY as of 5/27/09) they were offering compared to my other banks I was very skeptical. If it’s too good to be true it probably is was my assumption. I set up a trial account for my car stereo. 286 dollars. Yes. I can afford that as a one time purchase, this was a test of SmartyPig though. How easy was it to set up an account and would they really give me my money back at the end? Well, it was that easy, and yes they did.

SmartyPig is owned by Westbank and my deposits are FDIC insured. I started the account with twenty-five dollars and couldn’t do anything with it until the twenty-five dollars posted from my Wells Fargo account to SmartyPig. Once it was in though (about 3 days), I could adjust the amount of my monthly deposit as well as the total goal I was saving for and the time by which I wanted the goal met. I could raise the goal really high or down to $250 (the minimum goal you an set). I could even close it out and get my money back out and transferred back to my Wells Fargo account if I wanted. They didn’t hold my money or make me leave it in for any length of time. It was still my money, and still accessible by me. I set it at the goal at the cost of the car stereo, set the time for a couple months down the road and watched the money automatically transfer from one bank account into the other. I was notified at every step of the way by e-mail that a transaction was about to take place, and that one HAD taken place. It was very transparent and painless.

Once the goal had been reached it stopped withdrawing money and was willing to just sit there, continuing to acrue interest until I took it out. I opted to have it transfer out to my Wells Fargo account and in two – three days it was in my checking account waiting for me to go get my stereo, which I did.

So, I use it now for all my short term savings goals. My emergency fund is in INGDirect still. In the examples above I pay my insurance annually to not have to think about it or pay any weird fees for splitting up the payments and I’m saving towards a nice birthday present for myself. So, I tell it when I need the money and how much and it figures out how much it will be to get to that goal. Then I forget it. I make sure to set the goal a week before I need the money to allow for bank transfer times and then I just forget about it. It’s similar to bank offered billpay except I’m making interest on the savings.

My other goal is for a Kindle2. I really want one. I’m hoping that between now and when this goal is reached there’s a service pack to allow the Kindle2 to read PDF’s. I don’t want the DX as it’s big and I want small. Big would undo the advantage of the small form factor I’m looking for in the Kindle2.

Oh, a note on public and private savings accounts. These two savings accounts I’m talking about here are two that I’ve made public for examples. You don’t have to make your savings goals public, obviously I don’t make all my banking public, but these two were good examples of uses for SmartyPig.