'Trivial' Pursuits

 

I’ve been thinking about value lately. I tend to overlook things that I should value. It creates an endless cycle of striving instead of appreciation for where I’ve been.

I joined the Army when I was 19. The purpose was two-fold: pay for college the old fashioned way and grow up a little. Is that the old fashioned way? I don’t know. I didn’t want any student debt (which I did have later) and from a purely objective point of view it was a great deal.

 Tuition for classes and monthly installments for expenses, just give a few years to Uncle Sam. A quid pro quo that still makes sense.

I adapted slow but finished strong. My Gunnery Sergeant awarded me the ARCOM before I left. I was proud of that. I think there was a small squad ceremony but I don’t remember it. I wrapped the award in newspaper and tossed in a drawer after that. I didn’t value it the way I should have. The certificate claims “exemplary performance” and I treated it like a stack of coupons to Chuck E Cheese.

School was my next ‘trivial’ pursuit.

 Education was a tougher climb for me for the first year. Coming from a regimented schedule where housing and food is taken care of, I suddenly had to set it up myself at college. It wasn’t overwhelming but staying on top of classes, housing and food was more than I had to do before. I did make headway growing up, my stated goal from the Army days. The 24 year old me was more mature than the 19 year old me. Still a ways from adulthood, but I was ready for the rigors of a 4 year college at least.

 If the Army provided responsibility and accountability, education filled the gaps with knowledge and critical thinking. When it was time to graduate I did. But I didn’t walk in the ceremony. It seemed like a silly thing to do. I’d have to buy the cap and gown, shuffle back to the folding chairs with the rolled up certificate and wait for the speaker to blather on. I really didn’t care. The school mailed the certificate and I stuffed it inside some accordion folder next to my old tax receipts. I didn’t value it.

 It’s an odd thing to think that after at least a couple of difficult classes I thought the ceremony a frivolous expense. But I did.

I moved to Oklahoma in 2008 to get a Master’s in International Studies. This time I had a job so I attended school at nights or when I could sneak in an afternoon class. Classes went on for around 3 years before I graduated again. Another missed ceremony, this time the IS coordinator begged me to join my classmates on a Saturday to walk. She even agreed to pay for my cap and gown. I couldn’t be bothered. I was on to the next thing. What’s the use in the dog and pony show? I figured. It’s the degree and experience that counts.

Besides, I did value the learning. I’m not big on ceremony. The Army probably had something to do with this but it never occurred to me until later.

Ceremony isn’t the point though and maybe I’m finally seeing that. Graduations are like little reminders of how far you’ve come and how much you’ve grown. They aren’t about bragging rights or celebrations of impossible struggles. They establish a track of accomplishment. They remind us that momentary difficulties have an end. They mark time.

Ever seen the owner of the company with a dollar bill framed on the office wall? Everyone recognizes this as the first dollar he/she made in their new business. Sure it’s only a dollar, but it has an outsize level of value.

When I look at a textbook from school or look at an old picture, I’m reminded of some of the tough times that God brought me through. The details come rushing back but the emotions are different. I’m stronger on the other side because I had grace to keep going. When tokens of achievement aren’t enough, remember the promise from Philippians 1:6 “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;”   

I guess I worried that if I became content with awards I’d stop trying to go forward and keep growing. It’s a ridiculous thought now. Those pursuits are neither trivial nor monumental, but we lose what we don’t value. The first step for me in this new value laden life is to start framing certificates and awards. I’ll start with the Army commendation medal (ARCOM).

 

Life Below Zero: My Comfort Show

 

I’ve been watching Life Below Zero again.

 Netflix had it a few years ago so I binged watched the first 5 or 6 seasons. Disney + has it now. I keep coming back to this show even when I get tired of it. For all the danger of the wilderness, the weather and the wildlife, I get the feeling personal injury is the most common disaster. A broken arm or leg could be the end of you in a cold year. Most are too secluded to be rescued in a pinch.

 Here is something we all know, Alaska is a wilderness that’s only available for the heartiest of souls. It’s vast, cold, remote and full of dangerous wildlife. Those that live exclusively off the grid practice a strict form of self-reliance. Naturally there are cities in Alaska where rugged individualism isn’t necessary. It’s not like everyone eats moose venison and makes boots from beaver pelts. But the tundra dwellers and dog mushers and lonely cabin in the woods types live off the land in every way. They fish, hunt and trap for sustenance and chop down trees to make firewood. The Inuit family (Hailstones) along the western coast has multiple ways to fish and hunt. They use nearly everything from animals they kill and built shelters, boats and various traps.

Why do I like the show so much? I think it's the comfort I feel in knowing the characters and their positions, livelihoods and attitudes. The show profiles different people spread out around the state. Their only connection to each other is their dependence the land. Not all have allowed cameras into their homes for the entire show. Some started and stopped and then came back again, like Andy Bassich who raises dogs for racing just off the Eagle river near Canada’s Northwest Territories.

 Each yearly cycle is only vaguely different from the previous one. We see the seasons come and go and watch them cope with the cold winter, the melting ice, the short summer and the nonexistent fall. They repeat stock phrases like “If you ain’t ready to rely on yourself don’t bother coming up here”. These get repeated an awful lot by all the people in the show. It’s almost like the producers keep reminding them of what’s clear to the viewer already, this is a tough life.

I’m sure everyone who watches these shows asks themselves, “Would I do that? Live off the grid and hold up in a cabin cut off from all human life?” No and hell no. But I can appreciate that some people live for it and allow us in for a little while.

There isn’t any great genius in the show or curious revelation about the wilderness. But there is a comfort in watching a new episode with a familiar cast, struggling with similar issues every year. A lot of shows we watch are like this. Think of your favorite sitcom from years ago. Did the characters have a well-established personality? Did they get into tight spots and find a resolution just before the show ended? How many times did Kramer from Seinfeld resolve a quirky issue? How about George? Was there an obvious beginning, middle and end to each episode that built on the characters’ particular oddities?

Most stories work that way, problem--crisis--resolution. It’s a necessary arc for telling a story even in reality shows. Their lives aren’t that interesting, but put together enough footage with an artificial deadline and you have a show. I’m not being unfair. I keep coming back the same way I did for countless TV shows as a kid. My biggest excuse for watching a couple episodes per night is the comfort factor. I’m tired and I don’t want to try anything new.

Let’s find out if Glen sees a grizzly bear today.

I’ve watched enough animals being skinned that I could do it from memory, which is a skill I'm not sure what to do with. I almost wish that a wolverine or a lynx would prowl my street so I could set traps. I imagine hanging a caribou from my clothes line post and peeling the fur off while the neighbors watch, horrified. Actually the front yard would be better, right between the chiminea and the rose bush. I’d wave at them, hands covered in blood, in a friendly way as they walked their poodles around the block. Skinning game animals is not unusual for hunters (no I’m not) but looks really out of place in the city.

One of the more memorable shows had Sue Aikens, who manages the remote Kavik camp, field dress a caribou in the middle of winter. She followed a herd on her snowmobile and dropped one after missing with at least a dozen shots. She rushed back to camp to grab her sled for the carcass and began cutting organs out. The temperature was near 30 below zero, she couldn’t feel her fingers and the body was almost too cold to cut up. Her race against the clock was very real. She was at risk of getting frostbite and losing the light. She hurriedly tossed organs into the sled while covered in a bloody white snowsuit she used to camouflage herself on the tundra. I was seriously impressed.

In a show that’s mostly slow on excitement here was a real thrill. I’ll keep watching until I find another show with a familiar pattern. I’m sure I’ll come back again.

 

Patriots Out West

 

I’ve been following the drips and drabs of the election interference and the subsequent audits over the last few months. Arizona started it. Thank God for the patriots of that state.

They wore out their legislators with letters and phone calls, trying to get them to approve an audit. I’m not sure which branch of government is responsible for conducting it. The Senate is running the audit in Arizona with full legal authority to do so. Are they authorized by the governor to do so? I’m not sure. Who decides when, where and how the process goes forward?

 Governments have specific channels for how bills move from committee to a full vote and they also have rules for challenging elections. A lot of this is new territory and it’s been a slog to just get to this point.

An audit is a very thorough process requiring machine data, physical ballots, voter rolls and countless other checks. Requests from the Senate for the mail in ballot verifications was denied. Maricopa County (Phoenix) is withholding evidence of how they ‘verified’ the ballots and the auditors can’t move forward without it. Cyber Ninjas, the group doing the audit, says they county has passwords for the vote machines. The county hasn’t turned them over; they say they don’t have them. Also there were 74,000 votes cast from people who never got a ballot in the mail—suspicious much? Not to me.

Georgia is doing a slightly different type of audit that only affects Fulton County. We know that double counting happened, they falsified the tally sheets in favor of Biden and stacks of mail in ballots had no fold marks. Why is that last one important? A ballot needs to be folded to be mailed in. It’s about as close as you get to blatant fraud. It suggests a lot of them were just printed off en masse, or filled out by paid workers. A ballot worker tipped off Tucker Carlson to the lack of folds. He included that bit in his nightly show on July 15. 

There were enough irregularities exposed before the election was certified but state electors certified it anyways. They knew it was a fraudulent election because they knew Fulton County was a hotbed of corruption. They looked the other way and tried to make Trump look like a kook for asking the state to reevaluate their count--Looking at you Raffensperger.

Other states have shown interest in doing an Arizona style audit. Pennsylvania’s State Senator Doug Mastriano is openly campaigning for one. There is an audit underway of the biggest 3 counties, of which Philadelphia (known cesspool of graft) is one. Others like Wisconsin and in the early stages of gathering evidence to push for a full audit. A lot of this hangs on what turns up in Arizona I suspect. If clear, large scale fraud is shown, which I’m sure it will be, audits become the next logical step for battleground states. The evidence for grand irregularities, non-updated voter rolls, witness testimony across states and mail in ballot shenanigans made this a suspect election from the start.

How many states shut down counting in the early morning hours, only to have Biden get a surge in votes immediately after? This screams dishonest and I believe most  Americans think so as well. It’s always been a matter of applying enough pressure to elected officials to do the right thing. Arizona went first; this was a citizen led effort by patriots out West.

I can’t predict how these audits will go. I’m sure of the fraud and I’m sure each state will find enough to overturn the election for Biden. He got 80 million votes, REALLY?

What happens once a verified audit proves the obvious? Do states call new elections? Does the Justice Department move to shut down the audits? Do the American people just accept Joe and throw their hands up and say, like Chicago Bears fans, “We’ll get ‘em next time.” There is no legal precedent for this, not on this scale anyway. I’ve always thought the mail in ballots would prove the most obvious place for fraud. There is likely plenty with the voting machines as well but this year was guaranteed to see a spike in them because of Covid. It always represented an easy chance to inflate the Biden vote.

I’m not for chaos in the streets but I won’t vote again in a national election if I can’t trust the process. I’m sure a lot of my fellow Americans believe exactly that.

The End of a Thing

 

Why is there such joy in problem solving?

Probably because when tasks seem daunting there is a need to want to get help. Whether car repair or new plumbing, the beginning of a project is like looking up at a mountain you have to climb.

 It’s all stress and insecurity and unknowns. Two questions hang loosely in the air like a fine mist--How long is this going to take and do I know what I’m doing?

Two years ago I decided to tile my kitchen floor. I did a little research (YouTube) and talked to the guys at Lowes. I made multiple trips to pick up equipment I’d missed the first time. I rented a tile cutter after the hand one proved useless. I bought cement backer board to lie down under the tile. My neighbor owed me a favor so I asked him to work off his debt by helping. He had done it once before and I needed someone with experience.

I would describe the finished product as decent, just don't look too close. It wasn’t pretty and we made some mistakes measuring and cutting the tiles but it came off right. I didn’t figure it out completely. I had help but the bulk of the work was me and my neighbor talked me through some of it. The planning and execution felt good and some of the insecurity I initially felt washed away with the cleanup.

Seeing a project to its end brings a reward unlike anything else.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to use WordPress. Trying to get my business going is a challenge for a lot of reasons but mostly, it’s my lack of knowledge with WordPress. I don’t think I realized what I was getting into but that’s a gripe for another day. Time spent trying to figure out how to make the website colorful, put borders around text or add images is not my idea of fun.

Someone has to do it though. I can’t keep paying some freelancer to do aesthetic stuff. Yesterday I sat down and just worked it. I opened every box, clicked every clickable icon, edited every piece of text and previewed the results a hundred times. It seemed ridiculous to spend so much time and energy on such a simple task. I’ll spend hours writing and not notice the time but 5 minutes on an image, outrageous!

 But I figured it out. The process dogged me until I nearly broke the screen in a fit of rage, but I figured it out.

Solving problems (even little ones) is rewarding because we see ourselves differently. An exclamation mark replaces the question mark.  Often, the actual problem isn’t that tough but my attitude works against me. My lack of will to start in the first place puts a lid on the whole ordeal. It’s probably the single biggest roadblock to progress. I’ve noticed this in all types of scenarios. Whenever a difficult or unwanted task demands attention I make it worse with my lack of enthusiasm or just plain loathing.

Self improvement is this way too. From fad diets for weight loss and CrossFit for muscle, if our attitude is less than enthusiastic we’ll never see it through. King Solomon wrote “The end of a thing is better than its beginning; the patient in spirit is better the proud in spirit.” (Ecclesiastes 7:8) I imagine he saw a lot of efforts fail due to attitude or neglect. He must have known the troubles that creep in with building projects. He is responsible for the temple which took 7 years to complete. Building anything requires patience and diligence. It also requires a flexible, resilient attitude to all the changes that come up. How often does a plan that takes 7 years to complete go according to script?

Solomon doesn’t strike me as a rotten attitude kind of guy. I don’t mean he didn’t get angry and shout at the builders on occasion or kick the unfinished walls after a fight with the designers, I am talking about his passion for the job. His commitment saw the project through no matter how bad the day to day alterations were. The finished work of the temple wasn’t just a load off his shoulders, it was a standing testament to diligence.

Beginnings are easy. I begin projects all the time. Sometimes I even begin longer term ones that take weeks or months, like online classes and landscaping jobs. In between starting and finishing is a whole world of problems to solve that knock people out. That middle bit gets tricky. But challenge yourself to see the next one through and you’ll know what Solomon meant about the end being superior to the beginning.

 

 

 

Adulting Made Easy: Psalms 31

 

Psalms 31

The goodness of the Lord is never ending and He remains a refuge in dark times.

I made the comment the other night on our men’s group chat that pastors have a tendency to make serving the Lord sound easy. I wasn’t being nasty or calling them out, but most of us in that group were raised in a mainstream, born-again Christian church.

 When we are young we don’t have a lot of experience in tough life lessons (there are exceptions). Whether a painful divorce or an addiction to drugs and alcohol, we hadn’t fully experienced some of the chaos of life. The pain is often a result of our poor choices in life but not always. Sometimes others bring about misery that affects those closest to them.

There is a childlike understanding of the how the world operates that eventually dies in us when hardship creeps in. The scriptures give us all the answers we need but how often do we really sit down and absorb them like we should? The Psalms are full of desperation and cries to God for deliverance. It takes going through real struggles to really feel his heart and cling to the Father for help. That desperation doesn’t ring true for kids the way it does for adults.

“I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind; I am like a broken vessel. For I hear the slander of many; fear is on every side; while they take counsel together against me, they scheme to take away my life.” (verse 12-13)

Much of that is specific to the weight of responsibility that comes from leadership. But it’s not just leaders that understand opposition, when we believe God for anything in faith the enemy will attack.

The ‘easy’ walk message with Christ is probably unique to the particular brand of protestant, faith centric religion I’m familiar with. But it’s also the way I used to understand the message of the gospel and not necessarily the intent from the speaker.

 The “Christian” designation is hardly telling of your belief structure. If you were fortunate enough to hear sound teaching from the scriptures at all, consider yourself blessed. But a lot of denominations focus on the suffering and struggle of a walk with Christ to the extent it feels like all there is. Which begs the question, what’s the point of believing in a resurrected Christ, Who conquered sin and death? Where is our hope in a life of victory over Satan’s attack?

Sometimes the straight scripture is muddled from teacher to student, a great example of why we need to read it for ourselves.  

When we move from adolescence into adulthood we hopefully “put away childish things” like Paul says in I Corinthians 13:11. We put away the gospel too, which we never truly learned, as if it were an inspirational book that held no clarity for our modern dilemmas. And as much as we want to throw some blame towards our childhood faith, we never grasped the true nature of faith.

We wanted the victory without the war.

We never read and believed it because we didn’t want to do the work of faith. We didn’t plant the seeds and water them. We didn’t speak the scriptures and put aside the creeping doubt that snuck in like an invasive weed. We didn’t hold fast to that truth when the drought came and the wind, threatening to destroy our promise from God. We didn’t plant ourselves, tree like, near the rivers and develop a root system that would sustain us through the dry times. Fortunately for Christians it’s never too late to start. Some just take longer to put away the toys.

 King David writes from a place of experience.

“I will be glad and rejoice in Your mercy, For You have considered my trouble; You have known my soul in adversities, and have not shut me up into the hand of the enemy; You have set my feet in a wide place.” (verse 7-8)

When churches teach success and victory it’s because that’s what Christ’s life was about. His victory over death, sin and disease is our victory too. But we need to do the work of reading God’s Word and applying it to our life. We need to know that ‘wide place’ that David knew. We need to know how to talk about victory and success in this life because we’ve seen our Heavenly Father bring us through the dark times.

  

Exercise and Running

 

I haven’t done an exercise article in some time.

 Not because I’m sitting around eating apple fritters and downing chocolate milk. Oh I’m doing that too but mostly there isn’t a lot to report on. Notice how slyly I turned my “running” blog into an “exercise” blog. You didn’t even notice did you? All this talk about getting up early on the weekends and finding some raw, unseen power to crush mile after mile under my New Balances... Ha!

 I’m still putting in work but life has been a little busier these last few weeks. So I’ve transferred a lot of my city running to the treadmill, in addition to other cardio work that’s honestly just as tough.

I dare anyone to walk the stair climber for 30 minutes and not be more whipped than 3 miles jogging in the heat.

Last week was vacation which means no work outs, zero. We need to take a break sometimes from work and play--remember what is was like to sleep in for a few days in row. I’m not sure what exercise falls into. Most days it seems like work. It’s consistent and difficult and I don’t usually want to go. The week before vacation was a home project, my mom needed a French drain for her condo. The week before that it rained. Well, it rained at some point. I do remember being happy with the approaching clouds when I rolled back to sleep after checking the weather at 6:00 am. In-between I’ve done a few 4 and 5 mile jogs on the treadmill but no long runs in the heat.

This is beginning to sound like excuse making I’ll grant it. But my foot needed the rest anyway. I’ve had some irritation again after my longish run (9.5) almost a month ago. It wasn’t serious but it always hurts after longer days.  The heat hadn’t moved in to the area yet but the sun was threatening to make it feel hotter than the temperature showed. I needed to push myself that day because I hadn’t run a long distance in some time. I had a few 6 and 7 miles but nothing over that since the colder days.  

Right now at least I’m not concerned with training for specific races. The idea with a lot of runners is they join a group with a goal in mind. Sometimes it’s a 5K or a 10K. Often they can be ready to do a whole marathon with the right mindset and coaching. For me permanent fitness is the goal. It probably sounds like a lazy way to avoid doing the work of actually running every 3 to 4 days. But I’m not training for a race and I have other ways of making sure cardio remains the goal. I make sure I get at least 30 minutes per day 5 days a week. 

The weekend running is all bonus time and I enjoy it as much now as I did when I started.

I mentioned the 80/20 training method in a previous post. The idea is to run 80 percent of your total distance at a slow pace and 20 percent at a quick pace. This builds endurance by strengthening legs and lungs. It works well for indoor (treadmill) stuff but I don’t love it for the outdoors. I hate looking at the watch all the time and I’m still not comfortable jogging slowly. I haven’t given it the effort it deserves but I have time to figure it out.