Overweight and overeating

My scale decided to give me a birthday present today. It dropped me below the magical imaginary line that exists between "obese" and "overweight." I really hate to write that, because I always think "I have a gut" and the truth is "I am obese." It might be "just a gut" but it's a big enough gut to trip a magical imaginary number on a doctor's chart somewhere.

Well, was big enough.

Of course, I celebrated (my birthday, not my lack-of-obesity) by having a sensible eating and exercise day ... up until my dinner out, where I got an appetizer (horror of horrors), a full meal, and dessert. And a beer.

So today I ate enough food for two days, near as I can guess. It's hard to count the calories in a hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant.

It's okay, though. I can't go through life eating salads and grilled chicken and veggies every night. There will be days when I splurge a little, and there will be birthdays and holidays where I splurge a bit more.

I still did my running workout (one week down!), I still ate my fruits and veggies and whole grains earlier in the day, I still felt healthy.

Mostly.

I've been recording my calories and exercise for 40 days now. I've been within or under my optimal weight loss amount for 36 of those days, and within maintenance levels for 38 of them. It's not quite time to call in the guys in the white coats yet.

Birthday Eve

I get reflective on my personal life at two times each year ... the stronger of those, generally, is my birthday. New Years, I'm usually too busy enjoying the holiday season and the NFL playoffs to spend too much time navel-gazing.

So on the night before my birthday, I look backwards and ahead.

I look backwards on a life I am, for the most part, very happy with. I have been to wonderful places with wonderful people, I have lent a helping hand, I have been a good friend and an excellent husband and am surviving as a father. I have exceeded expectations and surprised myself. I have used my powers for good.

This is not to say I have made no mistakes. The road has been full of detours and missteps. I've wasted countless dollars and hours, I've missed out on awesome opportunities, and I've lost touch with people I care about simply because I'm easily distracted.

But overall I'm happy with where I've gone and how I've gotten there.

I look forward to an unknown world.

I try to visualize my future and fail. I had no idea what being a father to a toddler would be. I am even less prepared to visualize being a father to a growing child. I am powerless to visualize being a father to two children, an eventuality that may someday arrive (or may not).

I have no idea what awaits me at work. So much has changed, so much is still the same. I'm in a state of constant flux. Sometimes I feel like I am incapable of being surprised any more, in that arena.

I can intentionally visualize what I want out of my next few years though. I want to teach my daughter to read, and do it in a way that she ends up loving books. I want my fit body back. I can feel it, my old level of fitness, hiding under this misuse, and I want it back.

I want to see new places, eat new foods, cook new foods. I want to experience new things with my friends and family. I want to strengthen my friendships instead of taking them for granted.

I want to create. I want to write. I want to somehow take this weird imagination of mine and couple it to the urge I have to stick words together, and get something out of it.

The first 18 years of life, you are a child.
The next 18 years of life, you take the hand you were dealt the previous 18 years and make what you can out of it.

And then what?

Running towards 40 ... or at least 36

I'm a few days away from turning 36, which is 90% of the way to 40, and that's been on my mind a bit of late. I'll write more about that as 36 gets closer ... for now, let's talk about running.

When I started running in 2004, I did it using the Couch-to-5K program, which at the time was just something people talked about on the Cool Running forums. Now it's got its own fancy (?) website but the program is the same. After, what, 18 months without running (more?), I figured I could do worse as a reintroduction than just restarting that program.

Today was W1D1 (Week One, Day One).

5 minute warmup
8 sets of (60 seconds running, 90 seconds walking) = 20 minutes
5 minute cooldown

This repeats twice more in Week One. The program runs for 9 weeks, and at the end your workout is:

5 minute warmpup
30 minute run
5 minute cooldown

It works, which I know because I've used it before. So has Jess (who, by the way, ran W2D2 today and has a 5K picked out to run with her mother in December).

It's a bit humbling to be starting W1D1 all over again, but it's good to have the structure. There's nothing wrong with a slow reintroduction. So today I popped my headphones in while Evelyn napped, and did my 30 minute workout on the treadmill in the basement. My legs were itching for more, but that's fine. They'll be crying for less, soon enough.

My big hairy audacious goal is to run a marathon before I'm 40. My fallback plan is to run a half.

I've got 4 years, and I'm on Week One Day One. I'm pretty sure I can get there from here ... one workout at a time.

Baby steps towards running

I bought running shoes the other day. If you aren't a runner, you might not understand why I'm writing this like it's an accomplishment.

Running shoes are, to quote the Internet, serious business. Everyone's feet are different, and running shoes are designed to prevent injury and increase comfort depending on what your foot needs. You could just go to the store and buy a pair of sneakers and run, and if your feet happen to be the right kind, you might not end up in crippling pain.

Then again, you could be like me (and many others), and require a bit more attention. And if, like me, you haven't run in coming up on two years, you may not remember what your needs are, and guessing comes with a high potential penalty.

So buying running shoes, for me, requires going into a specialty store, trying on a handful of shoes, and showing off my clumsy stride and form for a couple of fit 20-somethings who thankfully manage to not project "oh my god look at this old fat guy," but instead seem legitimately interested in making sure I have the best chance of succeeding when I strap these on and go out the door.

So, yes, new shoes have been purchased, thanks to the kind folks at Northampton Running Company, which is where I happened to be when I had enough time to kill to buy shoes. I ended up with an update of the shoes I ran in when I was training for the 10K I ran a few years back. Hopefully they'll work as well this time around as they did then!

I tried them out yesterday with a 15-minute walk, because that's all I had time for. I'm still trying to make sure my hamstrings and back can handle the stress of running, but eventually I'm going to have to actually get out there and see. I'll take them for another walk today.

Eating: Add, don't subtract

I stumbled across two great pieces of advice the other day with regards to eating healthy, in a success story on the Calorie Count blog.

Add things to your diet instead of slashing them.
...
Give your full attention to the food you do eat. Don't disrespect yourself and your food....

This relates to a New York Times article I read recently about how we're spending more time watching people cook than cooking. In it, food marketing researcher Harry Balzer says something interesting:

You want Americans to eat less? I have the diet for you. It’s short, and it’s simple. Here’s my diet plan: Cook it yourself. That’s it. Eat anything you want — just as long as you’re willing to cook it yourself.

These things come together for me and suggest some changes in how I think about food. A beautiful meal, cooked at home, out of delicious healthy ingredients, is much more satisfying and engaging than the best-tasting junk food. My wife and I are talking about trying to approach cooking like a hobby, picking out new recipes and ingredients every few weeks (or once a month even) and trying things out. The feeling of adding to our lives while still managing to eat healthier is something we want to embrace.

I also love the commentary on fully engaging with your food while you're eating it. If I'm going to spend 150 Calories of my budget on a beer, I'm going to make sure I enjoy that beer. Getting a muffin for breakfast instead of a healthy egg-beater omelet is an okay decision, but enjoy that muffin and make it count.

Some people think of food only as fuel. I will never be that person. I love to eat and drink. I love experiencing new foods, and I love revisiting my favorite meals and beverages over and over again. Some people would be happy eating nothing but scientifically perfect nutrition bars and water. But I need my spicy tomato sauces, my sausages on the grill, my sauteed mushrooms, my roasted sweet potatoes, my burritos, my hot sauce, my cilantro and lime juice, my tequila and my cold beer.

So don't fight it. Embrace it. Find ways to fully engage with food and drink while still building healthy habits. Don't slice out a huge part of your life and expect to somehow end up with something sustainable. It won't work.

Obsessed

I am now three weeks into my lifestyle rebalancing, and I'm really feeling the progress. I've dropped ten pounds (I know, too fast! See below), I'm getting used to some new habits, and I'm planning for the future. But let's talk about some of the unpleasant aspects of this.

I'm finding out I'm a little obsessed. On Friday, I was making plans to go out for dinner on Monday. I knew it would be a Calorie-heavy day, so in my mind I was already planning how to cut corners for THREE DAYS prior. I saw that and nipped it in the bud, but it's telling when it comes to my mental approach to food.

Warning: the following is a bit self-obsessed, and way too detailed for anyone.

I'm "supposed" to have anywhere from 1800 to 2300 Calories a day. This will yield a healthy steady weight loss and still provide the fuel I need. Over the past 3 weeks, I've averaged probably closer to 1400. Some days it's 1200, some 1500, but if I go over 1500 I start to get nervous. Nervous even though I could eat a full meal in addition to 1500 and still be "okay."

I was trying to get to the root of this behavior, and I figured some of it out. It's partially that when I last was this strict with food, I was eating out on a regular basis. We lived in an area with more good restaurants, had no baby to deal with, and my wife was working and going to school and was much busier. We didn't cook nearly as often. We were also more social -- more likely to be going out for a poker night, a game night, a movie night, a random get-together that involved takeout (or delicious mexican food, you know who you are) and beer or margaritas ... basically I was constantly leaving room for a disaster in the evening, and I often needed that room.

Life isn't like that now. Going out to eat is harder because there are fewer options where we live now, and we're carting a toddler along. We're more likely to eat at home, and more likely to control the ingredients and make those meals healthy. With my wife also starting to pay attention to her food we're not having huge thousand-plus Calorie dinners.

So my new goal for an average day is to consume 1000 healthy Calories at work, leaving room, for a 600 to 700 Calorie dinner and a 100 to 200-Calorie dessert. Here's a breakdown of what I was doing before at work:

Breakfast: 200 Calories
(Egg beaters, onions/peppers, whole grain toast)

Lunch: 300 Calories
(Salad, yogurt, hard boiled egg, oil and vinegar)

Snacks: 200 Calories
(Banana, apple)

Total before dinner: 700 Calories.

So I need to add 300 Calories to my average day. A hundred at breakast, a hundred at lunch, and an extra hundred in snacks would probably work out well. I could add some dairy at breakfast (glass of skim milk, or some low-fat cheese), some protein at lunch (meat with the salad), and perhaps some fat to my snacks (almonds).

I could also change it up even more. Have a 500-Calorie sandwich at lunch. I write this, but as I do I get nervous. Sandwiches lead to bags of chips, bags of chips lead to french fries, french fries lead to big bellies.

This is the unhealthy relationship I have with food right now. I know it's not normal. I know I need to improve things. I'm getting there.

I'll write more later, including some other things I'm trying to do to take this in a healthy direction, as well as my thoughts on physical (not just dietary) fitness.

Two weeks in

It's been two weeks now that I've been sticking to my guns and eating right. There have been a lot of little challenges in these two weeks but doing the right thing has become its own sort of stress relief. It's hard to describe but the mental focus it takes to stay on track is partially fueled by the chaos I'm feeling in my work life. New boss, new responsibilities, new team members -- a lot going on.

My clothes fit a little better, I'm that little bit more self-confident, and the scale is reflecting my changes.

While I'm exercising regularly in the form of walks around the campus at work, it's not the same as a rigorous workout regimen. With two weeks of solid diet under my belt I feel like it's time to start thinking about the workouts. I'll be looking at some changes in this area next week.

My biggest concern right now is sustainability. I'm overcompensating right now, eating too few Calories rather than staying at the level I "should" eat to be losing weight at a healthy pace. If I go 100 Calories over that magic number I get panicked. I know I need to find a middle ground.

I'll get there.

What's strange is that the things which should motivate me (long, healthy life, energy to keep up with my daughter, and so on) aren't necessarily the things that got me going. I'm motivated by the fitness of my friends and co-workers, and not wanting to be the person left out. This doesn't surprise me; it's always been this way for me. Just interesting to note that having a baby didn't change that....

Tapped like a keg

I've read that only 5% of the eligible donor population gives blood. For most of my life I've been part of the majority. Today I switched sides.

I grew up in a faith that held blood sacred, and so would not consume blood or blood products, nor allow them in their bodies via transfusion. You can imagine that giving blood was similarly forbidden. I left that faith behind long ago, but that strong taboo remained in my subconscious. Coupled with my unease around blood and needles, it was easy to just skip it every time the call went out.

The cries of the needy eventually got too loud to ignore, though. The experience was relatively painless, since they come right to my building to hold the drive. From picking up the information packet to walking back to my desk took 70 minutes. I was a bit more lightheaded than I expected to be, otherwise it would have been even sooner.

(In reference to my previous post on fitness and diet you'll be happy to hear I ate a packet of raisins instead of cookies afterward.)

The whole experience got me thinking, though. A lot of the indoctrination I received as a child contained rational components. If you imagine a society that lives a certain way, it's easy to come up with reasons why certain religious commands make sense. And yet I was able to reason my way out of them, fairly easily, as I became an adult. But "God demands you hold blood sacred" is inherently irrational. There's no societal benefit hiding in the wings, nothing but a remnant of ancient superstition interpreted as divine law.

I reasoned my way out of all those superstitions years ago. And yet I skipped every blood drive my company hosted, for over a decade.

But today I took a stand for reason and for the rational betterment of the human race. It felt good. I was so busy being happy about that, that it didn't occur to me until later that the pint I gave could someday save someone's life.

Bonus.

The power of 48 hours

Last weekend was pretty much perfect. The summer weather was ideal: dry, sunny, warm but not oppressive.

On Saturday I went to the annual summer cookout hosted by an old college friend. There (and the holidays) are the only times I reliably see this circle of friends all together. Sure there are occasional parties, football games, and so on, but everyone tries to make these twice-annual events.

Reflecting on the day, later that night, I realized just how much some of my friends have embraced their fitness, and how much I've let mine slip. It was a catalyst of sorts, coming at the same time I stumbled onto some old fitness journals, some old spreadsheets.

For the two days since then, I've done what I used to do -- eat 3 healthy meals, have fruits for snacks, and limit my junk food indulgences to carefully controlled portions. I've tracked my food intake and activity levels online.

I've gone to bed feeling without feeling full. I've finished meals feeling merely full not stuffed. In just 48 hours I've reminded myself what a healthy normal lifestyle feels like. 48 hours is nothing to write home about, I know. It's just two days. Call me back in two weeks, right?

We'll see. For now, it's been a good two days.

The next four years

I wrote a Facebook note the other day, about things I wanted to do by the time I was 40 (I'm 4 years and a couple months from there). It was inspired by some discussions I'd had at work with a friend who has just 10 months until 40, and his "undone" things.

My list has two important things on it.

1. Run a marathon.
2. Write some fiction.

2 is easy, depending on how you define it. The writing exercises I'm trying to get back into could qualify under some definitions.

1 is a stereotypical BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). I don't know that I'll ever be in shape to run a marathon. But the road there will teach me a lot about myself and get me into the shape I know I want to be in. My escape clause is running a Half. I ran a 10K, I'm relatively sure that given another 6-9 months of training I could have been ready to at least finish a Half, even if I embarassed myself in the process.

I've started the writing exercises again.

I have yet to make a firm and serious commitment to the right nutrition and exercise routines to get me back into running shape.

So I'm here to write about the reasons I should commit myself to this:

• My daughter is only going to need more from me, physically. I need to keep up with her.
• My daughter needs a good role model for her fitness.
• I want to live long into my daughter's adult life and not be a burden on her.
• I am sick of hating shopping for new clothes.
• The self-confidence will help me at work.
• It will burn off stress from work and home.
• I was confident and content on a different level when I was at my most fit.
• I know I can do it.
• I want to appear more professional and disciplined.

I recently sat down and talked with some friends who have been steadily growing more involved with fitness over the years. I was inspired and jealous. And frustrated with my own recent lapses.

And by recent I mean last 12-18 months.

Of course, my lapse in writing is much more severe (though it doesn't count the same: I've been blogging steadily instead ... it's like lapsing on running but biking instead).

vs. the empty page

In 2005, my best friend loaned me 3 books on writing fiction. I had been inspired by his success in chasing his dream of writing, and felt a deep urge to put some of my own ideas into words.

I began doing some writing exercises, saving the results to a folder buried deep on my computer, for nobody else to read.

I did five exercises. And life caught up with me and I didn't do any more.

I took those 3 books out today, from the deep recesses of a bookshelf. I cracked them open. I found the exercises, and dug out the documents I had written. I read four of them. Somehow I missed the fifth. One of them was really good -- a comic story which failed utterly in accomplishing the desired exercise but somehow stumbled onto genuine humor about my own flaws.

I had forgotten I had even written it.

The others, well, they were exercises. Not every workout ends up with a pretty result.

Late tonight, when the house was dark and quiet, I cracked open the book and decided to do the next exercise. I opened up a word processor and stared at the blank page for several solid minutes. I brought up my web browser, hoping I had a new email to distract me. Nope. I tabbed over to Facebook, and clicked "Refresh." No new posts from my friends.

Fine. I tabbed back. Stared again.

And then I began typing. It came out slow and disjointed, but it came out.

When I saved the file, I realized I had already done the exercise in 2005. I compared the two results, written 3 and a half years apart. The topic was supposed to be a couple pages describing a difficult, painful, or partially forgotten memory. Back in 2005 I had written about an interaction between a 16 year-old and his mother, based clearly on my own life (but with all the names changed). It read like a scene in a story, but perhaps one where the star of the story is just a little too self-aware for it to be real.

In 2009 I wrote about a friendship that collapsed due to a series of events that started when I was 13 and wrapped up when I was 16. It read like a letter, or perhaps a blog post. First-person, no names changed, very little subtlety.

I re-read them both. I don't know which one I like better. Neither is a fun read. The story from 2005 is more polished but less honest. This year's story is nastier and sadder, but isn't as good a read. I imagine this has more to do with what I've been writing for the past year (aka blog entries and professional emails) than anything else. In some ways, the story I wrote today makes an excellent prequel to the one from 2005. Chronologically the two probably even overlap, although in the years that have followed the memories formed two distinct chapters of my life with nothing to tie them together.

In any case, it's a sort of victory to start the days with those books buried away and end it with a triumph over a blank page. We'll see where it goes from here.

Geocaching on Marathon Monday

Area runners are conspiring to get me back on the roads -- I must have seen a dozen out today while driving the rural roads of the Brookfields. I guess everyone finds the Marathon inspirational.

As always I took today off, and was checking my email on the blackberry when I saw 3 emails in a row from geocaching.com - 3 new geocaches within a few miles of my house. The types of caches we do as a family are fairly limited right now: roadside hides are the majority, followed by easy walks. Rough hiking is just too hard with the stroller. So when I saw that all three were roadside caches I figured we should dash out and try and record our name first on each one (called FTF, for First To Find).

Of course, with a 10-month old, it's not that simple. Getting packed and changed and ready took a while, but we were soon enough on our way. The first geocache was at the site of the Woolcott Homestead in the Brookfields. The Woolcott family settled there in the 1680s and built a tavern which was often visited by travelers on the road to Boston (remember, Route 9 in Massachusetts was the main way to Boston before the Mass Turnpike was built). The Woolcotts played a small part in the often tragic history of relations between the settlers and the Natives; John Woolcott's wife and two daughters were killed by Native raiders in 1693. Though the family remained in the area, all that can be seen on the site now are marker stones. And near one of them we found the coffee canister which had been repurposed as the geocache. We took from it a trackable coin in the shape of an Easter Egg (appropriate since I startled a rabbit while searching for the cache).

We drove down the road to view another historical marker and turned around; by the time we drove by the cache site another family was signing the log book. We were first, but by less than 5 minutes!

We made our way to the second of the three caches, a few miles away by a pond. As we approached we saw a car pulled over and a man bent over peering through the underbrush beneath the roadside trees. We slowed down and considered joining him, but decided not to interfere with his hunt. After all, the third cache remained a possible FTF target! Bravely onward we went on some of the most beautiful scenic roads in East and North Brookfield to a small bridge that crossed a narrow stream. Hidden on the guardrail was a magnetic hide-a-key with a few folded pieces of paper within. We signed our name second (alas, today was not a multiple-first day) and took in a bit of the view before getting back on the road.

We considered returning to the second cache but with the baby's morning disrupted already and the drive longer than we expected we abandoned the hunt and took a more direct route home. As we headed towards Spencer we passed a field with nearly a dozen deer grazing, and a pair of turkeys, one posing most dramatically. We made it home and fed our daughter and finally got her napping a short while later.

While my wife dozed off and I watched the thrilling finish of the Boston Marathon, I knew I had to write this post. The views we saw today weren't spectacular, but they were beautiful and memorable. And we would never have seen them if not for this new hobby of ours.

A single mile

My lovely wife has a class this morning, so I'm left with Evelyn on the most beautiful Saturday morning we've had so far this year. Mid-40s, sunny, and headed up another ten+ degrees. Even with huge puddles, tons of sand and mud, and snow lining the roads, I had to get outside. I bundled Evie up and put her in the Jeep carriage, and took the safest path I could come up with for a walk.

We ended up covering almost a mile, most of it along part of what was my regular summer running route in 2007. Usually that was a 3-mile run but sometimes I made it as long as 5.

It's so weird to write that, 2007, as if I have been hiding in the house for years, but it's true -- I didn't run at all in the summer of 2008.

Walking the along the route I used to run every weekend showed me a few things:

• I love being outside
• My body is going to need some retraining
• I can't wait to share this with Evelyn

Even though we live in a semi-rural area, the roads are not wide and as such it's not the safest place to run, never mind with a stroller. It's going to take some creativity, but it's something I really want to do. I look forward to writing more about it here.

A moment of introspection

A few years back, while my wife and I discussed for the hundredth time whether we would have children or not, she said something to me which really reminded me why I fell in love with her. She told me we didn't need to have kids, but if we didn't, she didn't want to be living the same life in a decade that we were then. She was fine with giving up her dream of being a mother, if I would come forward with a much different dream to take its place.

In the end, we decided together that we wanted to be parents, wanted this life. I do not write this because I regret that choice.

But sometimes I wonder what very different life we would have come up with so that our lives in 2017 would be nothing like our life in 2007.

Late last week I stumbled upon the blog of someone who took an approach that called to me from across the "what if" chasm. She ditched a corporate life and is traveling the world as a freelance writer and consultant. You can read her most recent post here.

Happy New Year

As I start this post there are 40 minutes left in 2008. I looked back earlier this evening at what I hoped I would get out of this year and what I really did. It is keeping me from saying too much about what I want from 2009, that's for sure.

I'll forever remember 2008 as the year I became a father. This was life-changing in ways I have only just begun to explore. I cannot put into words the number of things I have gained, nor the things which I have lost (or at least temporarily misplaced). Change is like that.

The biggest result of this of course is that there is a new person alive today who would never have existed if not for me. This is an incredible responsibility, and I feel humbled by it daily.

2008 wasn't just about becoming a dad, but everything else pales in comparison.

As I said, I'm hesitant to make predictions about 2009. But ...

I think 2009 will be about finding out who we are going to be for the next decade of our lives. We survived the pregnancy, we brought a new life into the world, and we made it through the first six months. Now what? Who are we now, in addition to being parents? How do we reframe ourselves as individuals and as a couple in this new context? Where do my hobbies fall in, which ones are forever gone and which ones can and should I rediscover? How do I reclaim my fitness so I can be there to walk my daughter down the aisle on her wedding day? Where am I going in my professional life? Where are we headed financially? How do we adapt our friendships, our family relationships?

How do we grow, while helping our daughter grow too? How does everything get rebalanced now that there's a new priority #1?

If there's anything that Eager Feet was meant to be about, it's questions like that. There's still room for this blog in my life. I just have to find time to fit it in.

No promises, no resolutions, just questions and ideas.

Happy New Year.

Keeping eager feet moving

The last time I talked about a new hobby, it was kayaking. I had gone with some family and really enjoyed it. Fast forward a couple years, and while I've been kayaking a few more times I'd hesitate to call it a new hobby of mine.

Well, these eager feet have found a new way to get moving -- geocaching. I've always thought of geocaching as a pretty niche hobby, for the subset of people who are both hardcore geeks and hardcore hikers. But it's gotten insanely popular over the past few years, and it's easy to be a casual geocacher these days. The price for introductory hiking GPS receivers is pretty reasonable, too.

So, again, after hearing a ton about it from family, my wife and I decided to give it a try. This time, we ended up buying the equipment ourselves and getting more into it.

I'll tell you pieces of three geocaching stories to introduce the various faces of the hobby.

1. At a state park, with the baby in a stroller and the sun beating down on us, my wife and I searched for a metallic container the size of the eraser at the tip of the pencil. We were pretty sure it was magnetically attached to a guardrail, and after a lengthy sweaty search I finally found it.
2. We drove through a town, on a two-step journey. The first brought us to a small monument we had never seen before, where we found a piece of wood with coordinates carved into it. We went to those coordinates, and found ourselves at a small park we had never visited, though we had seen it from afar. We explored the park, found a trail, zeroed in on the coordinates, and found a container hidden at the base of a tree.
3. My brother-in-law asked for my help in solving a puzzle cache, the only clue to which was the name of the cache, a passage from a fantasy novel, and an image of an item from those books. After days of struggling down dead-ends, I ended up figuring out that the clue was hidden inside the image via a simple Steganography technique. I did all this without leaving my desk. He will go to those coordinates and hopefully find the cache (and hopefully give me credit for solving the puzzle!).
   

I love exploring, I love trails, and I love the geeky roots of the geocaching hobby. Want to do nothing but hit tiny caches people have left in parking lots and roadsides? You can do it. Prefer to do 20-mile deep hikes to find caches only a handful of people have discovered? That option is there too. Want to find something in the middle?

I think this one might be one for the long haul.

What I believe

Some well-meaning extended family member recently sent around a link to an article written by a well-known conservative, listing "what he believed." I found it very hard to read, because I disagreed so strongly with what he said, and it bothered me to think that my own family didn't know what I believed. I became scared that I would never be able to tell them about my beliefs without seeming to be spitting on their values (the same way I felt that the article spit on mine).

I decided to try. What I found is that it's very hard for me to come up with a clean bullet list like he did. And maybe that's for the best.

See, I believe very few things.

Belief is a scary word to me, because it denotes an attachment to something which isn't known for sure. I try to avoid that kind of attachment, as it can create an unnecessary resistance to change and growth.

If I tell you I believe something, I will usually be able to tell you why. There are some exceptions - statements of value which are very difficult to explain. But I can try. If you ask if I believe something, the answer will often be "I don't know," because up until I was asked it wasn't necessary for me to form a belief.

Most things I believe, I believe because I have seen sufficient evidence of their truth. For example, we know that usually introducing diversity into a system makes it hardier. This applies in a trivial way to food sources (a disease which targets a single strain of plant cannot wipe out your civilization's food supply if you eat a variety of foods) and financial investments (a single market's failure cannot ruin your portfolio), among other systems. You can extend this out into many areas. A team can solve a variety of problems if people on that team bring a variety of perspectives to that problem. So, an ideal workforce (of people who are trying to solve diverse problems) is made up of diverse backgrounds. So, I "believe in diversity." Any situation where you want me to believe diversity weakens a system, you must try very hard to convince me.

As such, I "believe" that societies should not restrict human diversity. The USA has benefited in the past from its diverse population, and will benefit more from a more diverse population. If you want to justify a limitation in diversity, you must be able to demonstrate the extraordinary benefit to justify the opportunity cost of eliminating that diversity. For example, it is easy to make a case for limiting the number of languages you print road signs in, once the percentage of people who speak a language drops below a certain number (based on unreasonable cost to create extra signage and a lack of readability). I do not believe the same argument can be made against gay marriage, bilingual education, or ballots printed in a language spoken by a sufficiently sizable minority of a local population.

We also have sufficient evidence for me to "believe" our current understandings of gravity, magnetism, relativity, and evolution. I like to think I have no emotional investment in these beliefs (you could say I believe I have no emotional investment in them!), but until that is tested, it's unclear if it's true.

Some statements I find attractive, perhaps due to their simplicity or some similarity to my own view of the world. I do my best not to hold any attachment to these, but it certainly is tempting to believe them. Mathematically, for example, it's tempting to believe that there are an infinite number of pairs of twin prime numbers. On a similar line, some statements I would like to be true, but that doesn't mean I believe they are true. I hope that societal progress on a grand scale is positive, and that society in five thousand years will be fundamentally "better" than society now, just as our society now is fundamentally "better" (for the average person) than it was five thousand years ago. I tend to say "I like to think," as opposed to "I believe," for things like this. I certainly wouldn't feel like my world had been crushed if we found there were a finite number of twin primes, but it does make me sad to see local regression in standards of living for society (such as the situation in much of Africa today).

I do believe a small number of statements because they align closely with my deeply held values. I believe that it is wrong to hurt someone just because you can, for example. I believe that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I believe that clarity in chosen words is important in avoiding misunderstandings. I hesitate to even call these beliefs, because I can't picture something which could change my mind on them. I have trouble understanding people who have that same level of clarity about beliefs like "eating meat is immoral" or "homosexuality causes societal collapse," and yet I know they exist.

When I read an article written by a man who has dozens of "beliefs" that he wants to share with me, I find it distasteful, even offensive. And when I realize that politicians are making policy and trying to change the world based on those same beliefs, I find it frightening.

So you'll have to excuse me as I delete your email. Maybe some day I will show you this post and you'll understand why.

Compressing My Interests

Part of being a huge geek is knowing all sorts of up-to-date information on tons of subjects.

Part of being a new Dad is having very little time to get said information.

It provides an interesting conflict, the result of which is that I have to pick and choose what I want to stay up to date with, and what information I'm fine with falling by the wayside. For example, I'm staying current with Rock Band 2 news, but I have no idea what's going on with the Star Wars franchise. Today I made a conscious choice to stop reading forum posts on the PS3, getting condensed news via a couple PS3 blogs instead.

The second part of this story is that I have a new set of interests, relating to parenting. So not only do I have less time to deep-dive into my interests, but I should have more interests competing for my attention as well.

I have a newfound respect for parents of all varieties - athletes, geeks, musicians ... combinations of all the above. Whatever. Kudos to you for being able to balance it all. Looking forward to making it work for me, too.

Please like what I like

Yesterday evening, I downloaded some of the new songs available for Rock Band (two master tracks by my favorite band, Rush). I was eager to try them out, and our daughter was quiet and content after a bath. So my wife and baby sat together and I plugged in my fake plastic guitar.

I wasn't a third of the way through Closer to the Heart before Evelyn was crying and fussing.

I hope this isn't a pattern :).

I want at least a few years of my child enjoying what I enjoy before she turns into a terrible teenager who hates everything I like just to spite me.

Maybe I should give her longer than three weeks, eh?

I'm a Dad ... and my Dad's a grandfather

My daughter Evelyn was born on June 23. She's nearly two weeks old. The hours race by (except when they crawl) and the days all blend together.

Today, my father and my daughter met for the first time. My father was not a big part of my life when I was growing up. My parents divorced when I was young. The situation was complicated, and neither he nor I made a big attempt to stay in touch as I grew up.

New lives come into the world, and old lives are thrown into disarray. My Dad and I have a lot of catching up to do.

I hope he makes an excellent grandfather.

And I hope I make an excellent father.