Setbacks are inevitable, but not final

Eight miles of roadwork should be a victory, but it wasn’t.

I was registered to run a half-marathon in a couple of weeks. Through early August, everything looked good. I was running between 35 and 40 miles a week. I was kicking butt with my pace. And my clothes fit nice.

And then the fibro happened. I haven’t run much in the last couple months.

This morning (as I write this) was a checkpoint. If I could get to eight or nine miles without major problems, I could get through the race. There wouldn’t be a hot pace. In August, I ran six and a half miles, including hills, at a sub-ten minute pace. For me, that’s flying.

This morning I finally stopped after a little more than seven miles at a pace over 12 minutes a mile. My legs were angry and I walked the rest of the way home.

I could get through the thirteen miles. I would be absolute hell. But more important, it would set me back with the fibro and might cause a crash or an injury. It’s not the right thing to do.

I cancelled my race registration and felt mildly defeated.

Then, I came upon a post on a website called Ageist, for people who remember Watergate. The title is My 9 Month Fitness Transformation: Susan Guidi. At 63, in 9 months, she went from weighing 181 pounds to weighing 138 pounds. She can leg press 305 pounds. Right now, she’s building muscle, but during her initial workout phase, she was weight training five times a week and doing cardio every day.

This lady is 64 years old–which is pretty bad ass Which is kind of the point.

Ageist seems to be primarily aimed at women, but when people achieve things, it doesn’t matter if they can write their names in the snow. And to be honest, reading about someone who’s a few years older than I am and made the kind of turnaround is the perfect elixir for a guy whose body has been a pain in the ass. And arms. And everywhere else.

Eventually, I’ll move past this part. Things won’t hurt for no reason. And I’ll be able to achieve some goals. I primarily run and with two more half marathons later this winter, once my legs aren’t pissed off, that’ll have to be my first focus.

But overall health requires strength and flexibility.

Plus, if I do the right things, I can look and feel amazing before I’m 64.

Life has setbacks. It’s part of the gig. No one avoids them. The question isn’t whether they’ll beat you–they will. But eventually, you’ll move past that setback and do something amazing, if you choose to.

Reading about people who achieved things is hard when things aren’t going well. Right now, I can’t be the dude version of this woman. But eventually, I can. Eventually, I will. Eventually, I will run that damned half marathon and a marathon after that.

So there.

Dammit.

Bad things happen when winning’s everything

Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.

That’s a quote attributed to Vince Lombardi–the man who personified the Green Bay Packers, the NFL, and a commitment to excellence in the 1960s. He’s the man whose name is enshrined on the trophy awarded to Super Bowl champions each year.

And he never said that.

Lombardi. A certain magic still lingers in the very name.

“What is the meaning of love?” That’s an actual topic for a Lombardi locker room talk.

“Teamwork is what the Green Bay Packers were all about. They didn’t do it for individual glory. They did it because they loved one another.” That’s an actual quote.

Those quotes seem almost quaint in light of a litany of revelations about what happens when winning is the old thing.

It started with Joe Paterno and Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State scandal, with a red thread running through Bela Karolyi and Larry Nassar and a plethora of other stops on the way to Kyle Beach, former Chicago Blackhawks video coach Brad Aldrich and all the people who turned a blind eye because of the winning.

Beach came forward earlier this week as the former player suing the Blackhawks for basically ignoring sexual assault allegations against Aldrich. The suit came after an investigation commissions by the Blackhawks and carried out by the law form Jenner & Block was made public. In the wake of the news, Florida Panthers coach Joel Quenneville resigned. He was the coach of the Blackhawks when Beach’s allegations were ignored. He won three Stanley Cups for the Blackhawks and when he found out about Beach’s allegations, his primary concern was about upsetting team chemistry.

Joel Quenneville

That red thread includes the National Women’s Soccer League, which cared more about protecting the league and women’s soccer than about treatment of players and the conduct of former coach Paul Riley.

The red thread includes every person whose actions were swept under the rug because of winning. Every woman who was sexually assaulted on by a star or would-be star. Every child athlete sacrificed on the altar of supposed excellence. Every coach, journalist, and fan who turned a blind eye from criminal activity in the name of fortune and glory.

It doesn’t include the concepts of love and self-sacrifice.

It includes powerful people who re-enforce the win-at-all-costs culture they’re caught up in and it’s not confined to sports. As times goes on, it’s clearer and clearer that many child stars who grow up to be trainwrecks were pushed in that direction by an industry that used them and cast them aside. That usage wasn’t just as part of NBC’s Tuesday night line-up. It included sex abuse and pressure on female actors to live up to impossible bodily standards.

Along the way, it allowed people like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein to skate by because NBC’s Thursday night line-up dominated and because Weinstein made lots of money. Because of the gold medals and the Stanley Cup titles.

In the end, the red thread includes us. We’re the ones who demand victory and look the other way until we can’t any more. We’re the ones who want our team to sign Trevor Bauer in spite of the red flags, then become shocked–shocked, I say–when he’s implicated in brutal sexual assaults.

We’re the ones who bypass uncomfortable questions about our teams when they come up. Who, in my case, don’t probe too hard about the Mets after the stories of Mickey Callaway and Jared Porter come out.

We’re the ones who ignored all the smoke about abusive priests and defended our faith–when really, we defended everything our faith should stand against.

“What is the meaning of love?”

Love transcends winning–or should. Love demands we notice the red flags. Love understands that a Stanley Cup, Super Bowl, or World Series trophy tainted by human destruction isn’t a victory at all.

Joel Quenneville was a secular deity in Chicago during the Blackhawks run. His commitment to winning made him a beloved son of a city too often celebrated for loveable losing. Bill Cosby was America’s dad.

We don’t celebrate people for winning while talking about love any more. Love is weak. Winning is strong–and it’s the only acceptable outcome.

If that’s what we celebrate and demand, we can’t be shocked when we find the real cost of that winning.

To be calm is a revolutionary act

The old refrain says that if you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention.

By da-a-a-a-amn!

There are a million things in this world to be outraged about. I don’t have to list them; you probably have a list of them in your mind, ready to grab at a moment’s notice. The other night, someone on our neighborhood Facebook group was outraged that there were riding around the neighborhood on golf carts at 8:30 at night (it’s too late for that!).

It happens on the job, too. Careers are built on people who go from situation to situation, vividly pointing out all that’s wrong for the world to see. To find and expose flaws almost makes you a champion of justice. You don’t have to fix them or anything–just call them out so they get the airing they so badly deserve. Then move on.

Social media thrives on outrage. The best way to become followed on the Internet is to be outraged. Rage sells these days, probably better than sex. It gets the adrenaline pumping. Being angry at the right things almost becomes a mark of moral superiority.

It’s not enough to start the change in motion; it has to be instant. There’s no excuse for it not to be. In fact, change should be retroactive. That thing you said in 1983? You should have absolutely known then what you know now. Today’s standard is timeless, which means there’s no statute of limitations. No grace. Not when outrage feels so damn good.

There’s a scene in Star Trek IV in which the big whale machine in space is essentially destroying 23rd century San Francisco. While all hell’s breaking out and people are scrambling to do something–anything–Spock’s father Sarek says very matter of factly, “Perhaps you should transmit a distress signal. While we still have time.”

Ambassador Sarek, calm in the storm

The calmness with which he said it always stood out to me. His statement wasn’t sunshine blown up someone’s ass. It clearly conveyed the fact that very soon, a distress signal would be either impossible or irrelevant. The earth–at least the human portion of it–was being destroyed. And Sarek would likely go with it.

And yet his statement, delivered in little more than a whisper stood out among the chaos.

I’ve written before that we’re drowning in outrage. Everyone knows what’s wrong–and that it’s they’re fault (it certainly isn’t our fault and the fact that you’d even consider it means you’re barely worthy of human existence, let alone to right to express your toxic opinion).

When you have too much of something, you don’t go get more of it. You try to get rid of some. It’s, like, logical. And stuff.

So maybe, along with all the other months we recognize, along with the implication that you suck as a human being if you don’t recognize it, too, we need a month of calm. A month when we let that wonderfully righteous note that’ll obliterate them–maybe we let it sit for a day. Maybe instead of assuming we know all about someone based on a single trait–the one that pisses us off–we ask a question rather than making an accusation.

Maybe instead of worrying about bringing a knife to a gun fight, we wait to see if there needs to be a fight at all.

We’re all looking disruptive acts–to be revolutionary. Maybe being calm should be that revolutionary act.

This post was inspired by a long-ago Facebook post from a former colleague. She probably doesn’t even remember it. But I found it in my saved posts and it resonated If you see this, thank you.

Blech. That is all.

When you publish a blog post every day, you look for content you can turn around easily. That means sometimes you just react to whatever’s in the news. Topical content is easy. You read and react.

I’m tired of topical content. I’m tired of fighting. I have no attraction to news topics at the momment.

I read the Rolling Stone article about January 6. There’s a ton of smoke there, and a lot of kindling. But there’s no real fire. There’s nothing to connect the planning to the actual insurrection that occurred. I should care about this.

The District Attorney of San Francisco, Chesa Boudin, is joining the horrific George Gascon as progressive California DAs being recalled. I should care about this.

Britney Spears is a walking poster child for what we do to young entertainers and how we throw them away when we’re done with them. I should care about this.

And Major League Baseball, not content with the billions of dollars its making, is plowing into a work stoppage that could very well claim some or even all of next season. I should care about this.

I should care and be writing about the fact that the CDC is considering changing the definition of fully vaccinated to include boosters just weeks after the head of Moderna said he didn’t think a booster was necessary. Or about how we’re charging headlong into requirements to vaccinate elementary school kids and how you don’t really get to have discomfort about this, let alone hesitancy.

I should care about how Donald Trump’s new social media company, which champion’s freedom of speech, has terms and conditions saying you aren’t allowed to criticize the platform or annoy its employees (that’s literally in the terms). As someone who’s been employed since the last days of the Carter administration, I can tell you that being annoyed is part of the job, regardless of what your job is.

There are a thousand things I should care about. But I don’t. At least not this morning.

I’m tired of everyone assuming bad intent. I’m tired of every stupid thing being a litmus test. I’m tired of loud people who are often wrong but never uncertain. I’m tired of getting my fingers slapped for joking that Jets fans should consider Drano while others condemn vast swaths of people they don’t know over a simple difference of viewpoint get followers.

I want to care about what’s for lunch tomorrow and come home from school in time to watch Match Game. I want to enroll in full-day Kindergarten so there’s mandatory nap time in the afternoon.

Also, get off my lawn.

Art in motion: Curveballs and opening paragraphs

Back in the old days, one of my favorite things was to watch Dwight Gooden throw a curveball. He already had a masterful fastball. So he’d set the hitter up to expect the fastball and throw a rainbow twelve-to-six curveball and the batter would freeze. Or collapse. He was really, really good at his craft.

If you aren’t a baseball fan, you wouldn’t care. Even if you were a baseball fan, you might not take the time to stop and appreciate the mastery and beauty in a guy throwing a ball to another guy while a third guy (all overpaid, of course) tried to hit it with a stick.

It’s easy to walk past something that’s layered and nuanced and not even notice it.

Micki Browning is a writer friend. She’s also really, really good at her craft She recently guest blogged about opening lines on a site called Novels Alive. And she shared the opening paragraph of her novel Mercy Creek.

“Everyone had a story from that night. Some saw a man, others saw a girl, still others saw nothing at all but didn’t want to squander the opportunity to be a part of something larger than themselves. To varying degrees, they were all wrong. Only two people knew the full truth.”

That’s some damn fine writing right there. It buckled my knees and sent me back to the dugout.

Micki Browning

Although I haven’t read that novel yet, that paragraph promises amazing things. In four sentences, it covers the fact that eyewitnesses are sometimes unreliable. Who’s reliable? Who isn’t? And it baits the hook. Who are the two people? What do they know? Will I know who the two people are?

But it’s the middle where I found depth.

If my college roommate were exactly one year older, he’d have gone for a semester abroad on Pan Am flight 103, which crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. That gives me connection, helps me understand a tiny slice of what it must be like to lose someone that way.

Sometimes people go far beyond using emotion by proxy as a way to relate. After any sizeable tragedy, you’ll find people trying to insert themselves into that tragedy, from Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies taking and sharing pictures of the Kobe Bryant crash scene to people vamping on Instagram in front of Auschwitz. Everyone, it seems, wants to be part of the story.

There’s even an old Rockford Files episode (a two–parter) where a police groupie wants very badly to be part of the action and almost gets people killed.

You know what happens when Jim gets his gun out of the cookie jar? Bad things, man. I mean BAD things.

In our social media obsessed culture, there’s public release for that need. It speaks to a hole that can’t be filled. To how you can be lonely while standing in a sea of people.

It speaks to how I felt a little lonely when I had to serve a day in the Facebook penalty box because there are a lot of people I connect with there. People want connection and will sometimes do warped things to achieve it.

I got all that from one sentence in an opening paragraph of a novel. A few words opened up that entire thought process.

When I watched Gooden strike a guy out with that curveball, I’d take a second and reflect on the skill and artistry of what I just saw. Sometimes, I just said, “Damn.”

Same thing here.

And it’s even better because Micki Browning will never play for the Yankees, the way Gooden did.

On being in social media jail

I’m in Twitter jail as I write this. After Sunday’s debacle by the Jets at the hands of the Patriots, I made a reference to drinking Drano, which is against Twitter’s rules regarding self-harm or harm of other people.

It’s not the first time I’ve been put in social media jail. When a doctor doubted the pain associated with fibromyalgia, I suggested that he be shot in the kneecap and that would give him an idea. That earned me 30 days without going live. Then when someone was frustrated with someone else, I posted that you could always shoot them, which got me a day in Facebook prison.

To be clear, in no way am I suggesting that violence against yourself or another person is valid or reasonable. I was being sarcastic and a little snarky.

In context, if I thought someone would actually drink Drano or shoot another person, I wouldn’t have made those comments, but I made them and I suffered the consequences. Both Facebook and Twitter are free–I don’t pay to use them. And they have terms and conditions, which I violated.

I don’t have a constitutional right to post stuff on either platform and they’d be within their rights to ban me for any reason they want. That’s what happens when businesses are free to run according to their own rules. Publix could ban me tomorrow for complaining that they take way too long to make a damn sub. That’s freedom and it applies even when you don’t like how it’s applied.

I’m pretty sure Jesus probably wouldn’t post things suggesting shooting people or drinking drain cleaner and in that, I have some thinking to do.

But the fact is, though I have a right to say almost anything I want, I don’t have a right for anyone to amplify those things. Twitter and Facebook jail aren’t real. They’re virtual prisons, a snarky way of saying you got your hand slapped.

I write this because it’s important to come clean–because I don’t someone to say after a future apology that I’m only sorry when I get caught. Writing a blog post every day–sometimes about topical subjects–carries the risk that something I wrote in a long-ago forgotten post will come back and bite me in the ass.

I’m also writing this because later, someone will be silenced on social media and I’ll post that those are the rules. It’s not a right. And because I can point to this post where I applied that standard to myself.

Overall, my presence on social media is intended to be a positive thing. I want to lift people up. Sometimes I do that with humor. Sometimes that humor is edgy.

In a world where yesterday’s off-handed remark that was allowed becomes tomorrow’s proof that you’re responsible for tragedy, I understand the need for these types of limits. And over all, the world probably isn’t diminished about a drain cleanser reference for Jets fans.

As the sitcom lyrics say, “It’s a different world than where you’ve come from.”

Darkness doesn’t mean you lack faith

Faith isn’t knowledge. Faith entails doubt.

I’ve been writing a lot about the Fibro lately. (Writing hint: Whatever you’re talking about, just put the in front of it, and you’ll reach the AARP set. The Fibro. The Covid. The Twitter.)

My Fibro isn’t that bad but it’s putting a serious crimp in my frigging life lately. I can’t run, which means my weight-loss odyssey is stalled. And I’ve got three frigging half marathons I’ve signed up for starting next month. It pisses me off.

On top of that, the cat’s peeing on the walls. Now, in addition to fitting in doctor’s appointments and working, either my wife or I had to take the damn cat to the damn vet. Our cat hates the car. She meows like you just stuck her on a skewer the entire trip down and she inevitably poops in the back seat. Won’t that be fun?

But we have to take her to the vet and figure things out because we can’t have her running around peeing on the walls.

There are other things, too. There are always other things.

And this morning, it just seemed really dark. It seemed like everything was about to call into the hole I was standing in and would bury me. All of that seemed inevitable.

I’m supposed to be living in faith this time around. If I had faith the size of a mustard seed…

And then I remembered that faith entails doubt. Faith is not rock-solid knowledge. It’s trusting in what’s unseen. It’s relying on what can’t be proven. It’s walking into the valley of the shadow of death.

The valley of the shadow of death is a scary place. You get to have doubts going into there. You even get to freak out a little. You get to think dark thoughts and feel overwhelmed as you step into the shower. You get to wonder how in the hell all this will work out.

In fact, sometimes it’s a sign of sanity to have those doubts.

And then you get to continue forward, doing your best to reassert that trust.

That’s why faith is hard. Walking by faith rather than sight can be challenging.

Without doubt, by definition, faith cannot exist.

Doubt is a necessary part of faith. But it’s a part you have to take account of, listen to–because sometimes doubt is really valid guidance–then move forward.

It’s not the doubting that matters, but the moving forward.

Being Stevie Wonder to others

In Mark’s Gospel, this blind guy, Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, asked Jesus to cure his blindness. The crowd–who assumed he was blind because he was a dirty, dirty sinner that God smote because that’s how things work–told him to shut his dirty sin-filled pie hole. Jesus called him over and asked what he wanted and he said he wanted to see. All the people who had just told him to shut his sin-filled pie hole, told him to cheer up because Jesus called him.

Jesus gave him sight and a mighty roar went up from the crowd. (Yay.)

And everyone lived happily ever after. (Mark 10:46-52, New Revised Chris Edition [NRCE])

There are a lot of people who’ve asked for sight, from dirty, dirty sinners to pious people who really walked the walk. And the begged and begged and when they breathed their last, they didn’t get what they asked for.

If you were to randomly think of a blind guy right now, odds are pretty good you’d land on one of Ronnie Milsap, Ray Charles, or Stevie Wonder. (Given my age, Stevie Wonder comes to mind.)

At 12, Stevie Wonder landed his first #1 hit, Fingertips. The album that came from Recorded Live: the 12 Year Old Genius reached number one on the US Billboard charts in 1963. At 15, he reached number three on the singles chart with Uptight (Everything’s Alright). To date, he’s won 22 Grammy Awards. He won often enough that stand-up comics, primarily Eddie Murphy, used to make fun of how long his acceptance speeches were. He’s charted 65 singles on the Billboard hot 100. Ten of them reached number 1.

Stevie Wonder’s a musical genius.

Imagine if Stevie Wonder had gotten his sight back. On one hand, this is a guy who’s brought joy to millions with his music. On the other, what would his music have been like if he’d gotten his sight? And how many of the blind people he inspired wouldn’t have had that level of inspiration?

God isn’t Santa. Sometimes we’ll ask him for some very reasonable things, good things. And sometimes the answer will be no. Sometimes we have to continue with our blindness or the chronic illness or whatever the problem is.

When that happens, we have a choice. We can be bitter and angry. Or we can be Stevie Wonder.

Odds are pretty good no one reading this blog post will become a cultural icon. But you never know who you’ll inspire by just living your best life in spite of whatever thorn pierces your side.

Maybe when you ask for that miracle, the answer to your prayer isn’t no. Maybe you’re just given a different miracle, one where you inspire a person who wouldn’t otherwise be inspired.

Maybe there’s someone who has what you do and, in seeing how you handle it, they have a way back from the cliff.

Maybe there’s someone who’ll hold on one more day because of your example and that day will get them to their miracle.

Or maybe you’ll just bring joy to people exactly as you are.

That’s a pretty cool thing, too.

None of this is to say that your burden isn’t real or heavy. But it is to say that heavy burdens can sometimes generate their own miracles, and those miracles have meaning, too, if you’re open to them.

Grace for Alec Baldwin

If Alec Baldwin were conservative, he would be Mel Gibson. And I would write very much the same post.

Alec Baldwin is a outspoken and aggressive progressive, with a sharp tongue and a take-no-prisoners attitude when it comes to people he disagrees with politically. Conservatives–including me–don’t like him and I suspect the feeling is mutual. Put bluntly, he seems like an asshole who people celebrate because of his political beliefs.

Baldwin also killed one person and injured another when he fired a prop gun during the filming of the movie Rust in rural New Mexico. News reports say Baldwin was distraught after the shooting.

The families of the victims, 42-year-old director of photography Halyna Hutchins, who died, and 48-year-old director Joel Souza, absolutely deserve prayers.

Hutchins’ story is at once both inspiring and tragic. According to her website, she grew up on a Soviet military base inside the Arctic Circle. The movies she watched there inspired her eventual career. She graduated fro Kyiv National University in the Ukraine, served as an investigative reporter in Europe, then attended and graduated from the American Film Institute conservatory in 2015 to start a new career. In 2019, she was named one of American Cinematographer’s rising stars.

Halyna Hutchins, the woman killed by the prop gun fired by Alec Baldwin

That’s the life Alec Baldwin ended.

It’s fair to guess that if a conservative celebrity were to have done what Alec Baldwin Baldwin–the guy who called his 11-year-old daughter a rude pig on a phone call ten years ago–might be a little less than conciliatory.

Tragedy has a way of softening even the hardest ass.

In the not-too-distant past, I was the kind of person for whom personal tragedy elicited a ‘karma’s a bitch’ response from people. I was the asshole in the mirror. Two things helped me out of being that guy: a desire to change and one person who saw that desire and stoked it.

The asshole in the mirror

I don’t know Alec Baldwin personally. For all I know, he’s a different guy than he’s appeared to be. We all change. I like to think I’m a walking example of that.

Today, Alec Baldwin is grieving. He killed a woman. At 63-years-old, it’s reasonable for him to think he killed a relatively young woman.

Alec Baldwin, distraught after he killed Hutchins and injured producer Joel Souza.

I struggle to imagine the weight of that. Especially if, as it appears, the production was strapped for money and cut corners to get by. The movie wasn’t backed by any studio, but by an assortment of production companies (including Baldwin’s). It’s possible criminal negligence occurred and will be proven. That’s tomorrow’s discussion.

For now, this is a guy who needs the kind of grace he hasn’t shown in the past.

That’s what Jesus would do. He was the guy who asked forgiveness for the people who tortured him to death. He’s the guy who’s softened my heart and turned me from the guy for whom others might smile a bit when tragedy struck. He’s the guy who loved me when I was unlovable and only asks that I do my best to copy his undeserved love.

If you follow Jesus, the marching orders are clear.

When the storm comes back…

Tuesday morning, I went ran and it was great. Four and a half miles and I knocked off because I didn’t want to overdo it. I had a little pain, but it wasn’t bad.

And then Wednesday happened.

Round two of the Fall 2021 Fibro Ass Kicking Festival is underway, baby. (Tickets available at TicketMaster and fine retailers near you.)

It’s back. It never totally went away.

Then pronoun’s different, but…

Faith is belief in something without tangible evidence. And right now, I have no tangible evidence this will get better. It would be easy for me to collapse into the pain. I kind of did that back in 2015. I watched TV, ate everything bad for me, drank a little too much, and probably wasn’t fun to be around.

This time is different.

I don’t know exactly why it’s different. Last time I forced myself not to think of the future because it was too bleak. If I allowed myself to go there, it freaked my out. I had a kid in college, another about to start and no earthly idea how to pay for it all. Six years later, they’re both through and life has turned out better than I had any reason to expect. We even live in a new house instead of the decrepit mobile home that dominated my fears.

I’m good at beating the odds. I’m not that good.

I may not ever feel as good as I did a month ago. I may not run again. I may always feel this level of pain and fatigue.

And that’s okay. If that’s how it is, so be it.

The only thing I can control is my response to whatever happens. If I take a positive approach to the storm coming back, I’ll weather that storm better, even if it’s horrible.

So it’s back. It’s kicking my ass. It’s got me back in bed binge-watching Castle again. (Except for Season 8, which was bad.)

But I’m stepping away from work when I need to. I’m not feeling like damaged goods because I can’t do everything I want. God led me here for a reason and he doesn’t expect me to handle it alone.

I’ll have my moments–we all do–but I’ll manage with it for as long as it’s here.

That’s kind of bad ass.