Some advice for the beginner runner…
March 20, 2008 5:12 amMeaning of Work
September 13, 2006 8:17 pm
I am halfway through the executive EMBA program at San Diego State and recently wrote a term paper on the meaning of work for my Legal and Ethical Responsibility of Business class. Craig P. Dunn gave excellent lectures on the ethical responsibility portion of the class and really made me think about what I am passionate about. It is a topic we often do not slow down to think about. By the time we are in our forties we end up in a job or career that does not align with what we would have picked when we were teens. We can all think of Bob Parr (Mr. Incredible) in The Incredibles movie sitting at his desk as an insurance claims adjustor. Below I examine what I feel passionate about and how it relates to my work.
There are certain books that we read and we are forever changed. One of the first books that I had that experience with was Cosmos by Carl Sagan. In ninth grade, I took that book to my classes and read it instead of paying attention to my teachers. Cosmos actually describes the greatest men and women of science and their contributions. Each of those scientists discovered a simple truth about the nature of the world. The ideas were so simple and beautiful. However, grabbing those ideas from the ether took a great intellectual leap. These leaps are non-intuitive and these great men and women are honored as geniuses for doing it. Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion exemplify this concept. The three laws are so easy to understand, elegant, and obvious. However, discovering the three laws of planetary motion is considered one of the great intellectual leaps in the history of science.
Another event, like reading the book Cosmos, where I felt forever changed is when I took a three day Robert McKee Story Seminar. In that seminar, I found not just new insights about film and story telling for script writers, but deep insights on the human condition. For example, when making a film, the audience is extremely savvy. They will quickly lose interest if the characters in the story make choices that are not creditable. To make characters believable, you must have them do the minimum under each beat in a scene where they have to make a choice. Now each character has a different minimum and for the axe murderer, the minimum may very well be to chop off the head of his victim. I believe this is the same concept of path of least resistance and why building mechanisms to drive progress is the best way to modify behavior. Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great is a proponent of this concept. If we are the protagonist in our own movie that is our life, then we are going to do the minimum based on our environment. Mechanisms change our environment and make our minimum actions align with our preferred behaviors and outcomes. But the one line from Robert McKee I remember above all else is that art is considered a classic when it expresses an eternal truth that does not lose meaning or diminish over time. A classic stays relevant over the years, much like the great laws of science.
Am I passionate about science or am I passionate about film? I realized after some consideration that I am actually passionate about what is common in my approach to both film and science. In fact it is how I approach software engineering and everything else in life. I am passionate about finding the simple structure and truths hidden behind complexity. I am passionate about thinking about the essence of things and having the epiphany and deep insight of a simple truth. I must then be able to express that truth in the physical world in order to be satisfied. With software, I am in bliss when I can do this. My success with software is that I have the ability to reach a point of knowing the deep meaning of a design prior to the actual implementation. When I have been miserable is when we are stagnated and are not moving forward or building software without thinking it through. I am a fan of Joseph Campbell who said “Follow Your Bliss!” which perfectly describes what this seeking a truth and expressing it the world means to me.
Running Journal Entry
September 12, 2006 8:46 pmRemembering 9/11
September 11, 2006 8:42 pm
The morning of 9/11 my wife and I woke up to a phone call from my mother in-law in distress. She told us to turn on the T.V. and she said she thought my wife’s brother worked in the world trade center. I’ll never forget that morning with my wife and the stress and tightness we had waiting to hear from him. We were fortunate. We reached him later that day and found out his train never made it to work that day (he was running late). We also later learned that he actually worked at world financial across the street from the world trade center–though he often had breakfast in the restaurant in the word trade center. It is one of the moments we all share that divides our lives with a before and after.
Why I Run
September 10, 2006 8:26 pm
My story goes back thirty eight years to when I was eighteen months old and had a childhood accident. I fell down the steps of a slide at a playground. Two days after the accident I turned green due to internal injuries and was rushed to the emergency room. A series of surgeries followed. Fortunately the doctors were able to put me back together. Except for having a couple large scars on my abdomen, I felt no affects from the accident growing up. I was even the captain of my high school wrestling team and ran back then regularly to make weight.
That changed when I turned thirty five. At thirty five I was married with two little boys and the co-founder of a software company. I was a bit chubby from the affects of being a family man. It should have been the best time of my life except I started to get intestinal blockages due to the scar tissue that had built up over thirty years. The blockages became frequent and extremely painful. The pain would come in waves about five to eight minutes apart and would last all day. Once the blockage passed I would be back to normal but a little sore. I joked with my wife and would say “I am the only guy that knows what it is like to go through labor”. We started calling it “giving birth”. It stopped being funny when it started happening every two weeks. The pain reached a new level and I even passed out a few times. Controlling my diet and taking medicines had no affect. Even two laparoscopic surgeries did not relieve the problem—I thought I was going to be like this for the rest of my life.
At thirty nine I started to have a mid-life crisis. I negotiated a Mini Cooper and an iPod from my wife—she got a new kitchen. I signed up for a 5k, and started running. After the 5k my brother in-law encouraged me to sign up for the Army Ten Miler in Washington DC. I started training and a funny thing happened. My blockages started to happen less often. When they did happened they were significantly less painful. Running cured me or at least made my problem manageable. Two years later I ran the San Diego Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon. A friend who is also a runner said she thinks about the pain of giving birth at the end of a marathon to help her get through the wall. I told her I’m the only guy that can use same technique. I am a runner now and that has allowed me to enjoy the best years of my life.
