Running In the Time of Pneumonia

I’ve been sick with a persistent cough for about a month now, but last Monday it turned into pneumonia. I learned this from my doctor, but I could have learned it by rereading the blog post I wrote about Dracula a few hours before I went to the doctor, which clearly shows me losing control of my faculties. I was completely out of commission Tuesday-Thursday of last week, and since then I’ve been yo-yoing back and forth between feeling like I am just about healthy and feeling like I’m getting sick again and am going to end up in the ER. But yesterday, I went back to the doctor and had a second chest x-ray, which showed that the antibiotics I’ve been taking have successfully cleared up the infection, so I have empirical evidence that I am recovering nicely. The cough is still hanging around, though, and every night I have to chose between the real threat that I might wake up coughing in the middle of the night and not be able to get back to sleep for hours, or taking the prescription strength, hydrocodone based cough syrup they gave me and then still being groggy and have asleep through noon the next day. Good times.

But, the good news is I’ve been cleared by my doc to start running again. Last week I was struggling to walk the dog around the neighborhood, and when my cough got worse over the weekend I was worried that running would make it worse, so I didn’t try. I have official approval to pick back up, so I’m going to hit the road this afternoon and put in a few miles. I was supposed to run a 10K next Saturday, but I decided today to drop down to the 5k instead since I’ve missed over a week of training and my lungs are on shaky footing right now. Depending on how things go, though, I might pick up a different 10k the following weekend so I can really start working on getting my mileage up. We can add “walking pneumonia” to the list of bummers for the year, but we can also add it to the list of things that haven’t derailed my running project. Onward!

Walking Pneumonia (Sadly no Boogie Woogie Flu)

About 3 weeks ago, everyone in my house came down with some version of a day-care vectored head cold. My wife and the boys all got runny noses and stuffy sinuses and I, as is my wont, developed a cough. Everyone else got over it, and I…stayed sick. I spent a good two weeks having a lot of trouble sleeping through the night because of coughing fits until I finally broke down and went to the doctor. They gave me some heavy duty cough medicine and a steroid and sent me on my way. About a week after that, I was almost out of the medicine and the cough was as bad as ever— worse, in fact, since on Monday of this week I could barely get through a sentence in class without coughing. So, I went back to the doctor, and this time the diagnosed me with walking pneumonia and loaded me up on antibiotics. And I spent the next three solid days basically incapacitated at home on the couch. My cough has been steadily improving since I started the meds, to the point that today (Thursday) it is barely even noticeable, but I’ve been light headed and fatigued most of the time. I’m planning on going back to work tomorrow, but I’m going to give myself pretty light duty until I feel like I’ve finished this thing off.

Needless to say, my training has been temporarily derailed by all this. When I was struggling with the original cough, I kept running as much as I could (it is a source of some disagreement around the house as to how much my running contributed to my cold getting worse), but since the pneumonia kicked in I haven’t even thought about lacing up my shoes. The past two days, I took Mason for a 15 minute walk around the neighborhood. Yesterday, it almost killed me; today, I didn’t cough much at all, but it still felt like all the exercise I could handle. I’m a little anxious about losing fitness during this, but one of the big lessons I’m trying to process on this blog is that I need to learn my limitations and operate within them. If I don’t wait until my body is healed, then training through this will only make it worse. And, in the meantime, the little pulls and strains and stress injuries I’ve been accumulating get a chance to heal up. So, there’s that. Anyway it’s about time for me to head back to the couch, talk to you next time!

Achievement: The Barkley Marathons, Dracula and Elon Musk

1. I was home sick from school the other day, so instead of getting in a run as part of my training program, I watched a movie about running to help get me into the right mental space. Specifically, I watched “The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young,” the documentary about the titular Barkley Marathons. The Barkley Marathons is a famous(ish) ultra marathon event which requires competitors to run 100 miles in less than 60 hours through some of the most difficult mountain country in Tennessee. The course is unmarked and frequently off of maintained trails. It’s routine for there to be years in which no runners finish, which the race director considers a success. The documentary happened to cover a year in which three people finished the race, which almost never happens. It follows two of them in particular, and the way the filmmakers developed their character helped me think about competition and achievement, two of the biggest themes I’m working on in this blog. One of the two runners shows up frustrated with his performance at this race in an earlier year. He establishes at the beginning of the movie that his goal is to challenge the overall course record, and that he will consider the race a failure if he doesn’t complete all 5 loops of the race in a respectable time. The other runner has adopted a life of seeking out challenges and adventures after a death in his family made him question the validity of working all your life to secure a future you might never be able to enjoy. The first runner drives himself relentlessly through the competition, barely pausing to eat and drink in between his five 20 mile loops. He does indeed smash the overall course record by several hours. The second runner struggles throughout. We see a sequence of him lying down in a creek halfway under a bridge, clearly exhausted. There is a particularly harrowing sequence where he needs to rely on the help of other runners who have already dropped out of the race to lance and dress some very painful blisters. And he finishes the course as well, literally minutes before the 60 hour cutoff time. Almost everyone in the world will live there entire lives without ever hearing of the Barkley marathons, and of the few that know about it, fewer still know much about the performances of individual athletes at it, and even fewer still care about the course record or the performance of individual athletes or the course record. So, the performances of the two runners featured in the movie— one setting the record and the other just barely finishing before the cutoff— only matter in that they have meaning for those two athletes themselves. My sympathies, and I think those of the filmmakers, were much more with the second runner than the first.

2. One interesting paradox of athletics is that performance enhancing drugs seem to be more common in events with less money and less celebrity involved. While sports like baseball, football, and basketball have had PED scandals of one type or another, they are nothing compared to the crises that events like track and field or cycling have gone through. This is probably partly because running and cycling are almost entirely dependent on athleticism and fitness, without the team elements and strategy of other games. But the explanation I’ve heard from the athletes themselves is that there is more cheating in those sports because the only thing that matters is the achievement itself. They aren’t competing for millions of dollars, or trying to become national celebrities, or hoping to make the move into movies or something. They are competing entirely because they want to win, and thus cheating becomes an appealing choice for many of them. People will sacrifice the meaning of the thing they are attempting to achieve if it means other people are more likely to be impressed by it.

3. In the Barkley Marathons movie, the race director tells the interviewer that almost everyone who has finished the entire 100 mile course has an advanced degree of some kind, and most of the people that compete have completed significant post-doctoral studies. His explanation for this is that completing something like the Barkley requires an intense amount of planning and dedication. You have to set goals, and then you have to consistently work through setbacks to achieve those goals. You have to make sacrifices, and you have to make choices that won’t get rewarded. There is a specific kind of temperament that is very useful if you want to become a doctor, but is also the tool necessary to do something like run for 60 hours through heavily forested mountains in the dark in a race that no one is paying attention to.

4. We spend a lot of time talking about billionaires these days, and a common refrain I see from people on social media is, “If I ever had that much money, you would never here from me again. I’d go live on an island somewhere.” This comes up because it seems like our many billionaires are incapable of making that decision. No amount of wealth, power, or achievement seems to scratch the itch for public acknowledgement, so it needs to be temporarily sated by even bigger achievements in new fields, or by social media popularity, or by dismantling the US government. I have two possible explanations for why this is— one is that it takes a very particular personality type to become a billionaire, an unhealthy personality type that requires constant validation and that can never be satisfied. The other is that none of us would be capable of taking our billions off to a private island somewhere if we suddenly earned them. The need to have other people compliment us on Twitter is universal, and no one would actually walk away. I like to think the answer is the former, but as evidence of the latter consider that most people living a middle class existence in America really could, in fact, go live on an island somewhere. If you’re reading this blog, you probably have the means to go live a modest life on a beach in some forgotten country. In fact, when I visited Thailand a while back I met multiple expats who had done just that— pulled the plug on an early retirement of sorts in their 40s and gone to live somewhere cheap where they could stretch their savings and maybe some kind of modest teacher income out until they died. But almost no one actually does that.

5. All of which brings me to Dracula. I attended a lecture several years ago about Victorian Gothic Literature. The speaker’s analysis was that in the Victorian Age, England was the undisputed most powerful and important country on the planet, but the most popular art of the time period was about their insecurity about hanging on to all that power. Dracula specifically, and most gothic literature generally, depicts emasculated Englishmen losing their women to virile men from Central and Eastern Europe. It’s a book about an elemental force from a forgotten part of the world that is unimpressed by the trappings and affectations of modernity and uses a kind of spirituality to imprison people’s minds and sap their strength, literally bleeding them dry. This theme is hit even harder in the recent remake of Nosferatu, which seems particularly designed for a modern American audience with its fears of plagues of immigrants washing up on shore, destabilizing society, and revealing the self impressed men who think they know everything as paper tigers. Power and success don’t bring a sense of calm self assuredness, they just bring the fear of losing that power and discovering that the success is unearned.

Anyway, I’m currently training to run 5 half marathons as part of a road trip across 5 states during the month of July this summer. I hope I’m doing it because I want the challenge and opportunity for self discovery, but it’s a distinct possibility that I’m doing it because I want to prove something about how strong and impressive I am. I don’t think I’ll really know the truth until I’m finished— will I feel a profound sense of self actualization and inner peace? Or will I feel like this is evidence that I could do something even MORE impressive next time if I just try a little harder, and then that will finally be enough. Time will tell.

The project is also a fundraiser for the National Diaper Bank Network. If you’d like to help out, I’d appreciate it if you clicked the Donate button up at the top of this page and kicked in a few bucks. Thanks!

So Now I’m Running a Triathlon

Yesterday, a colleague sent me an email asking if I wanted a complimentary entry to a sprint triathlon in May. He had some passes to give away and had heard I was interested in endurance sports. I did not wake up that morning planning on entering a triathlon and, truth be told, if you had walked up to me and asked if I ever wanted to do a triathlon I would have probably said no. I obviously enjoy running, but while I find cycling to be a perfectly pleasant way to get from point A to point B I’ve never had much interest in doing it competitively, and although I’m a competent swimmer in the “don’t drown if the boat sinks in view of shore on a calm day” kind of way, it is not a pretty sight. But, when I got the email, I found myself replying and asking what the requirements were for the type of bike we needed to supply. This is a tried and true method I use to get myself to do things I probably shouldn’t— I’m not going to actually eat a bunch of cookies, I’m just going to go look in the pantry to see how many cookies we have; I’m not actually going to take a personal day tomorrow, I’ll just put it into the website now so the sub gets assigned and I can cancel it later if I start feeling more motivated. I’m an expert at leading myself along in small stages until I’ve got a full head of steam going toward making a bad decision and it feels too late to turn things around. So, I started a conversation about what was involved in the race, and that led to me checking out the website to see what the course looked like, and then I felt like I might as well sign up for it after all. So, in about 8 weeks, I’m doing a sprint triathlon.

There are, in fact, several reasons why I think this is a good idea. It will be good cross training for my half marathon road trip this summer. And participating in something like this will give me some good opportunities to publicize the fundraising elements of my half marathon road trip (in fact, if you ended up here because you wanted to read about triathlons, you should know that this website is part of a fundraising campaign I’m doing for the National Diaper Bank Network by running 5 half marathons in five states this July. Check out the rest of the website for more details!). But honestly, I feel like I’m in a phase where if I don’t constantly challenge my brain with productive problems, the unproductive problems are going to completely swamp me. Worrying about the fact that I’m going to do this tri is gives me a problem I can actually work on. Expending energy and time thinking about this and preparing will in fact lead to some kind of result. The same cannot be said for reading the news over and over again and arguing with people on the internet about Chuck Schumer or something. Any application of my anxiety that will actually produce a measurable result is a good application of my anxiety. So, let’s get anxious about swimming!

I feel like I should emphasize that this is a SPRINT triathlon, not some kind of Ironman nonsense. Its going to be an 800 yard swim, 15 miles on the bike, and a 3 mile run. And I’ll also emphasize that when I say “train,” I basically mean keep building up my running mileage, maybe with some biking thrown in. I don’t have access to a pool right now, and joining a gym for a few months because I’m taking advantage of a free triathlon entry doesn’t seem cost effective. But it does give me some added incentive to get heart rate up every day, and to be careful about my diet for the next few months. But as for today, I’m home sick and can’t train at all— I caught a day care bug from my kids last week and didn’t give myself enough rest to recover so it has turned into something more frustrating. So today, I’m not getting any mileage in and am instead devoting my energy to watching movies (The Substance, Death of Stalin) and writing the blog. If you’ve made it this far and would like to get involved with my fundraising campaign, please hit the Donate button at the top of the page— even small contributions help. Thanks!

Updates, Celebrations, Thanks!

I’ve been using this blog to do a lot of philosophical musing recently, but today’s just going to be updates on my training and planning for the trip. More philosophical musings next week, I promise.

1. THANK YOU to everyone who has donated to this project. A few days ago, we passed the $1k mark, which is amazing. I really appreciate everyone who has been able to donate even a small amount to help. My overall goal remains $5k, but we’ve got a few months to raise that yet. If you’re new here, I’m training to run 5 half marathons in July as part of a road trip from Indiana to Washington state and back. This is a fundraiser for the National Diaper Bank Network. If you’d like to help out, please click the “Donate” button up at the top of the page.

2. I wrote last week about a nagging hip injury that was limiting my ability to train. I rested for three days and started forcing myself to stretch every day, and things seemed to have resolved themselves there. I have such a hard time motivating myself to stretch, which seems stupid because it is so easy and obviously beneficial, but it always feels like a chore. I’ve been stretching after runs instead of before, which seems to help, and the results have been great. I’ve also added another layer of injury prevention by trying to get my diet healthier— if I can lose a little weight that will take pressure of my joints, and if I have more energy when I run it should make me less likely to get stress injuries when my form breaks down. I’m not going vegan, but I’ve been eating smoothie bowls at breakfast and bananas for snacks, and that seems to be helping.

3. I did six miles at a 10 minute mile pace on Monday and felt pretty good the whole way. I want to get my long runs up to at least 10 miles a week before I go on the trip, so I think I’m in great shape there.

4. The winter weather has broken! We’ve had highs in the 70s most of this week, which is a welcome change from the single digit temps we were seeing only a few weeks ago. As part of my continued efforts to control my anxiety (see my earlier philosophical musings posts) I’m not going to sit around worrying about climate change and just allow myself to enjoy the sunshine. The only problem with the warm weather is that it starts to slow Mason down— he was really in his element running through the snow when the temp was in the teens. But, running with him is still much better than running by myself, and he keeps me from overextending/exerting myself.

So, lots of good news on the project! Again, thanks to everyone who has donated. More updates and/or philosophical musings soon!

The Job Will Not Save You

I’m pretty confident that this is my favorite clip on YouTube. Well, actually, maybe it’s this. Or this. But that first one, the clip from HBO’s The Wire, with the detectives arguing about the meaning the find in their job— that’s the one that speaks to me the most. In that scene, Detective McNulty is arguing that their unit is one of, if not the, best units in the entire Baltimore Police Department. Detective Freamon doesn’t contradict him, but instead challenges his unstated premise— that being “the best” detectives is a thing that can give your life meaning and purpose. “The job,” Freamon argues, “will not save you.” You need to have something else, something on your own terms, separate from external validation, that makes things worth while.

I spent 14 years as a Speech and Debate coach here in Indiana, 13 of them at one of the largest and most competitive programs in the state. I was an assistant coach for the first 7 years and then ran the program for the last 7. We saw a lot of success over that time and I like to think I made an impact on a lot of students. I also invested a lot in trying to maintain and built the program at my school by hiring assistants, training and managing parent volunteers, coordinating with faculty and administration, and developing websites and other technology tools. I organized trips to national tournaments out of state and hosted some of the biggest in-state tournaments every season. It was a huge investment of time and effort and represented a big part of my identity, personally and professionally. And then, two years ago, I quit. This was mostly because I needed to be able to devote more time to my growing family, but, to be honest, I wouldn’t have stepped down if I hadn’t been burned out on many of the things I just described. It was time.

This past weekend, I agreed to judge at the state speech tournament, my first speech event since I stepped down two years ago. I wasn’t sure how I would feel being back at a tournament that I used to manage and that my students used to excel at. I thought I might rediscover my passion for the activity and decide to get involved again, or I might be angry that things had changed or the team had fallen off in my absence, or happy to be surrounded by old friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. Instead, I just felt out of place. Things had moved on, changed, and evolved without me. There were people who were happy to see me, but they were also busy working at the tournament. There were new people who had stepped into roles that I used to fill and were making them their own. I could have probably carried on as the head coach at my school, hosting state tournaments for another 7, or 14, or 20 years. But at some point, the same thing would have happened— things would move on without me, and, at some point, my impact on the activity would no longer be felt at all. The job did not, and would not, save me.

Think about the other two clips I posted up above. One is my favorite acting moment of all time— Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the greatest film actors in history, at the peak of his game, overflowing with charisma, humor, and menace all at the same time. But Hoffman died over 10 years ago of a drug overdose at the age 47. The job did not save him, and his success did not “fill him up” as Lester Freamon could have told him in wouldn’t. Or the other clip I posted, the last out of the 2016 World Series, when the Cubs broke their curse and won for the first time in over 100 years. I have a poster of that moment up in my classroom, but, when I look at it now, I see something different than what I experienced when I watched it live. The players featured on my poster are Kris Bryant, who seemingly surefire Hall of Fame career was destroyed by injuries; David Ross, who was fired as Cubs manager after a few lackluster seasons; Ben Zobrist, who went through an incredibly embarrassing and public divorce; and Addison Russell, who was accused by multiple mothers of his children of domestic abuse and ended up leaving the country to see his baseball career disintegrate in Korea. That one moment of absolute success and unqualified adoration from millions of fans did not go on to define any of those guys. I don’t have any idea how happy or self satisfied any of them are or are not, but, clearly, the job did not save them either.

One of my favorite books of the last 5 years is 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. The central premise of the book is that life is very short (4,000 weeks if you are pretty lucky, including many that already passed when you were a child a quite a few that you might get when you are too old or infirm to do much with) and that, unavoidably, you will miss out of the opportunity to do almost everything, and whatever you do chose to do with your time will probably stop mattering after you’re gone. If you devote your life to experiencing all life has to offer and have the ability to pursue that, like Richard Branson, you won’t come anywhere close to climbing all the mountains, playing all the sports, learning all the languages, mastering the different art forms, etc. And if you dedicate your life to greater purpose and fulfillment, raise a loving family, and make meaningful contributions to charitable causes, well, you end up just as dead as everybody else, and before too long all of those things will get swallowed up by the cosmic background radiation that is the passage of time. When I write it down like that, it might seem really depressing, but for me at least the idea has been very freeing. I won’t do all the things, and whatever “score” I run up— money, speech and debate state titles, thank you notes from students, hugs from my kids, thought provoking movies seen, etc— only matters insofar as I’m able to make it have temporary meaning in the moment to me and to people I actually care about. It’s not just that the job won’t save you. Nothing will, in that you’re never going to reach the moment where everything is what you want it to be a a big “Congratulations” or “Game Over” banner flashes across the screen.

Anyway this blog is about a charitable running project I’m training for. This July, I’m going to run 5 half marathons in 5 different states as part of a road trip out to the Pacific Ocean and back. I’m hoping it will be a wonderful, life affirming, paradigm shifting experience that reveals something about myself, the country I call home, and so on and so on. But whether or not it is, when I get home, I’m still going to have to take the trash out, I’ll watch the Bears lose more football games than they win, and before too long I’ll start looking around for another race to train for. I’m doing the project as a fundraiser of the National Diaper Bank Network, and I’m confident that the money I raise will do some immediate, measurable good for people who need help. But it’s not going to end poverty or diaper need— diapers are probably a good metaphor for what I’m talking about here because the need for them is by definition inexhaustible. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing the project. Lester Freamon’s argument is that you have to find something that matters to you and make it meaningful for you, outside of any external recognition or achievement. And that’s what I’m hoping to get out of this project. If you’ve read this far, I’d really appreciate it if you made even a small contribution to the project using the big Donate button at the top of the page. Thanks!

Limitations

One of my main strategies for success in life has always been to act like I knew what I was talking about and that I had the skills to do a thing, and then just try to do it. To be clear, this has not always worked out and has gotten me into a trouble a few times, but, on balance, approaching situations with the unearned self confidence of a heterosexual middle aged white male has worked more often than not. But training for this project, at my age, and especially after my injury last fall, is forcing me to try to recognize my limitations and work within them. Case in point: I’m currently dealing with a little bit of a hip problem, and I’m going to need to back off training for a little while until it heals up. Like Shakira, my hips don’t lie. I will need to listen to them.

My usual approach to things like injury prevention has been to ignore them. I rarely stretch, I don’t think to much about my diet as an athlete, and I usually ignore the little aches, pains, and pulls that are universal among runners. That sounds pretty dumb when I write it out like that, but, in my defense, it basically worked as a strategy for around 30 years of running. My stress fracture last fall was the first real injury I ever had as a runner—- real as in I had to get treatment for it and I had to stop training. That was about 3 months ago, and now my hip is hurting, and it is some serious work to convince myself to recognize my limitations and back off of training.

The hip thing started about 10 years ago, when I was training for a marathon (just like I was when I broke my foot last fall). I had really made that marathon a significant goal for myself. I had lost close the 30 pounds and had trained for months. I was running mile repeats/intervals as speed workouts, I was counting calories, I was focused on breaking 4 hours. And then my hip got all goofy. I got a diagnosis of “piriformis syndrome” and had to shut everything down for a week or so, and then gradually ramp back into my training. I didn’t break 4 hours but I did PR in the marathon. My hip hurt while I was running it, but I ignored it. It hurt afterward, so I stopped running for a while (and gained back about half the weight I had lost almost right away). And, as I got back into training, I accepted the hip pain as a new normal and worked around it as best I could. Over time, it got better. My strategy of basically powering through the injury had worked (?).

And then this past weekend I ran a competitive 5k— step one as I stairstep up to being able to run a half marathon at race pace— and that same hip seized up on me pretty good. And, falling back on my tried and true strategy, I ignored it and ran again on Sunday and Tuesday of this week. And then it hurt so bad that I couldn’t sleep on that side. And I looked at the calendar and saw that I’ve only got 4 months until I leave on my running roadtrip, and there’s no way I can accommodate another 6 week shut down. So I’m stretching every day, and taking hot baths with salts in the water, and icing, and not running. At least until it feels better. I am really, really trying to recognize my limitations.

A while back, I read something about “reverse brain storming” or “reverse problem solving.” The idea is that you brainstorm out all the things you would do if you were actively interested in NOT achieving your goal, and then avoid those things. The thinking is that success is achieved more often not through embracing a brilliant idea, but by avoiding the stupid ones. So, if I DIDN’T want to complete my 5 half marathon road trip this July, what would I do? Well, one thing to do would be to ignore signals from my body and run through significant pain until I get too injured to go on the trip. Just avoiding that is a whole lot easier than designing a brilliant training plan, and has a higher chance of success. And on the other hand,
”back off on my training because of a potential injury” honestly wouldn’t make it onto my reverse brainstorm list at all— after all, my goal is to complete these races, not to win them or get signed to a sponsorship. I can run them in less than ideal physical shape, but I can’t run them in a walking boot.

Anyway. If you’re new here, this is a blog documenting my thoughts and experiences while I train to run 5 half marathons across 5 states in July. The whole thing is a fundraiser for the National Diaper Bank Network. You can learn a lot more about it on the other pages on this website. If you’d like to contribute, please consider clicking the big “Donate” button at the top of this page. Even small contributions help a lot. Thanks!

5 Observations On My First 5K in 5 Months

I have actual progress to report! I started this blog to document how things are going as I train to run 5 half marathons this July and bounce back from a significant injury last Fall. However, there just hasn’t been that much to document for a while now since I’ve just been gradually building my mileage back up and being pretty miserable running in the cold and the snow. But! This past Saturday, I ran a competitive 5k! And it went well! That was my first race since October, a few weeks before my stress fracture was diagnosed. Here are 5 thoughts on the race, and racing in general:

1. In general, running races is something I enjoy a lot after I’m finished actually doing it, but that makes me pretty miserable during the actual act. This is even more true for running in the cold. We had 60 degree weather here earlier in the week, but the bottom dropped back out on Friday and the temp at race time was around 25 with a pretty gnarly North wind beating down on us. But it was dry and the sun was shining, so I’ll take it. I don’t like running races in the cold, but I’m always proud of the fact that I did it. It doesn’t feel like I’ve actually gone through a winter if I don’t run at least one race under those conditions, so I’m glad I was finally able to check the box.

2. This was the last ride for my running tights. When I was getting dressed Saturday morning, I noticed that the inseam of my tights was starting to have second thoughts about things, so, after the race, I tossed them. I will deal with finding a new pair in November. It will be shorts weather soon, and, until then, I can bridge the gap with sweatpants as needed. Farewell, noble tights, you served me well.

3. Mason, my Australian Cattle Dog, ran the race with me. He is definitely in better running condition than me right now and probably could have finished even faster if I’d had a little more left in the tank over the last half mile. Back in October, when I was in marathon shape and temps were still getting up into the 70s, I had to leave him at home on my longer runs because he couldn’t keep up. But for now, I’m holding my running partner back a bit. He didn’t mind, thought.

4. Why oh why oh why do people run with little speakers blasting music? Do they not own headphones? I have never been so confident to imagine that every stranger around me would enjoy listening to whatever music I had picked out. I guess I’m envious of that kind of self assurance, but, all the same, I might need to shove someone into a drainage ditch the next time the pass me blasting “Highway to the Danger Zone” out of tinny Bluetooth speakers.

5. Mason and I were the fastest dog/human pair at the race (an unofficial category without any prizes), and I finished way ahead of the walkers, but I was comfortably out of the running for any kind of overall or age group recognition. They gave out finishers’ medals, but I don’t even display medals from halfs that I’ve run, so the 5k ones usually go into the trash. And they were out of my size in shirts, so I had to go XL and ended up with a nice new pajama shirt. Nevertheless, it feels great to run a race. Running is a solitary pursuit, and I’m a solitary kind of person, but being a part of a big group all doing the same thing is an essential human need. And, calling it like it is, racing against other people, even if it’s just part of a battle for 45th place that the other person is unaware we are engaged in, feels good. I ran about a minute ahead of my fast mile pace from the past few months of training, and I spent the rest of the day feeling like I’d accomplished something. Running races is fun.

Next up, I’m going to run a 10k in April and then a half somewhere local in either May or June. Two days post race and everything feels fine injury-wise, so I’m feeling good about all the rehab running I did over the last two months. I should be in good shape to do my 5 state/5 half marathon road trip out to Seattle and back in July. If you’re new here, the whole thing is a fundraiser I’m doing for the National Diaper Bank Network. If you’d like to make even a small contribution to the project, please hit the “Donate” button up at the top of the page. Thanks so much!

Better Living Through Chemistry

I have a clear memory from when I was in junior high school, so probably twelve or thirteen years old, and I overheard my mom tell my aunt that my grandpa was taking “antidepressants.” My honest reaction in the moment was pure envy. My mind reeled at the idea that there was medication you could take that would make you feel less terrible all the time. At the time, I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain that I was feeling depressed, but looking back at it I clearly was. I had few friends and the ones I did were as likely to pick on me as some of the more outwardly hostile kids at school. My grades had collapsed and I had gone from a kid who did fine running to good in school to one who routinely failed classes because I didn’t bother to turn in the work. I had trouble sleeping and I didn’t find a lot of joy in things. And I had no idea that those things were uncommon, or that they weren’t necessarily evidence of personal failings or weakness. I thought that everyone else was just doing a better job than I was, and I needed to figure out how to do that too. But when I heard that there was a pill that you could take to feel better, man, I wanted it.

But this was the early 90s. I wouldn’t be diagnosed with any kind of mental health issues for another twenty five years. Medication and counseling that could help me with my issues were in the far distant future. Instead, I struggled through it. I felt bad a lot of the time. I discovered the psychological benefits of exercise. I thought about suicide. I discovered the joy of being on stage and performing. I struggled to maintain real friendships. I left junior high and went to a bigger high school where it was easier to find a niche and/or get lost in the crowd. Most significantly, a few years later, I went to college and discovered drinking, which became my primary method of coping with my social anxiety, my depression, and my struggle to understand other people. For close to twenty years, that’s how I dealt with things.

I finally found my way into counseling when I was in my mid thirties and the pressure of my job and my growing family was getting overwhelming. Doctors prescribed me medicine, which helped me function, getting me to the point where, another few years down the line, I found myself walking into AA and sobriety. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I’d had access to those resources when I was young and really struggling. Even access to the vocabulary to describe what I was feeling and that it wasn’t “normal” would have helped tremendously. Some people would argue that I’m stronger because of what I went through. I reject that out of hand. I’m strong because I work hard, set ambitious goals, and reflect on my mistakes. Being anxious and depressed just made me miserable, and if there was a way to have avoided it I would take it ten times out of ten.

I’m thinking about this today for two reasons. First, last week I had a physical and my doctor and I agreed to change up the meds I’m using for my anxiety. I think we’ve hit on a winning formula. I’ve spent the last week feeling like I’m living life with a cheat code. Things that used to bother me and sit with me all day still bother me, but it’s easier for me to pivot my brain off of them and onto things I would rather be focusing on. The anxiety is still there, but it is much easier to see it for what it is and compartmentalize it. If this is how “normal” people feel all of the time, then I’ve spent a lot of my life playing the game in weighted boots. It’s possible that my old friend homeostasis will balance out the new meds before long and leave me feeling exactly the way I did before, but it’s also possible that I might be experiencing a new normal. Which would be great.

But of course, the other reason I’m thinking about this today is that the US government is very likely to start striking an antagonistic posture toward antidepressants, which has me a little terrified. There are a lot of things the government is doing right now that make me feel like the world is falling apart, but taking the anxiety meds is one of the main things I need to deal with what just happened in the Oval Office between Trump and Zelensky, or the shutdown of global malaria treatments, or the mass firing of… you get the point. I assume RFK would tell me that I need to find healthy solutions to my issues, but my ability to do things like get consistent exposure to sunlight, sleep eight hours a night, avoid processed foods, exercise for at least 30 minutes a day, and so on is pretty compromised by living where I do and doing what I do. I am in fact a huge believer in the healing power of exercise— it is why I’m doing this whole project— and in talk therapy, and healthy eating, and all of that. But taking medication along with all of that still helps put me on even footing with a world of people who don’t experience life the way I do. I really hope they don’t take that away.

In the meantime, I will continue to do what I do. If you’re new here, this blog is part of my project to run 5 half marathons in 5 states this July. I’m doing it as a fundraiser for the National Diaper Bank Network. I’m hoping that a combination of exercise and purposeful activity will help me navigate the slings and arrows the news and the world keeps throwing at me. If you’d like to get involved, please consider making even a small donation using the link at the top of this page. Thanks so much!

Endurance

I heard someone talking about raising kids the other day. He said that new parents assume that the newborn phase must be the hardest part, and if they can just get through that thing will get easier. Then, they get into the toddler phase, and assume that THAT must be the hardest part, and if they can just get through it, then things will get easier. Etc etc. This guy’s argument was that the teenager phase was actually the hardest part, and that you never actually reach a point as a parent where it suddenly gets easier. My boys are 6 and 3, so I can’t speak to the teenager part yet, but I have some doubts about this argument already. Easily the hardest part of the last six years was when our younger son was a newborn and our older son was 3. I know that’s the hardest part because it’s the only time that I had legitimate doubts about my ability to get through it. I have very clear memories of standing by the kitchen sink at 1 in the morning mixing up a pitcher of formula and trying to figure out how I was possibly going to survive the experience. I was confident that I would, since so many other people have in the past (one of the crazy things about parenting is it is simultaneously the most miraculous, unequivocal, bizarre things you can do, but at the same time it is one of the most common, universal, ordinary experiences of humanity) but I honestly had no idea how I was going to make it. But you know what? I did.

I’ve had similar experiences in some of the long distance races I’ve run. I’ve stood in the starting corrals before a marathon and found myself wondering how I could possibly run all this way and endure the pain that I knew was coming. And yet, I did it. One of the more surreal experiences of running a marathon is that you run 6 miles— a distance that would impress almost anyone and that many people will never run in their entire lives— and you still have another 20 miles to go, which is a cartoon, made up sounding distance. And yet, people do it, every day, all around the world.

I quit drinking around three and a half years ago, and when I started out, I had no idea how I was going to do it. The concept of an entire second half of my life without alcohol just seemed absurd. For years, I had struggled to complete a “Dry January” or hold myself to some kind of “only on the weekends” policy, and now I was going to never drink again? And yet, so far, I’ve done it. I did it the same way I ran marathons and managed to get through sleep training a newborn while dealing with a threenager. One day at a time, like the book says. You just focus on getting through this one day without drinking, or running to that next lamppost, or staying alert through one more day of work after another sleepless night, and then all of a sudden you look up and you’ve put some actual distance behind you. At some point, you look up and you’ve hit a goal. And then, most importantly, once you’ve done that, now you know—- actually know—- that these things aren’t impossible.

I’m thinking about this today because I was looking back over my last 3 blog posts and they kind of look like a slow decent into nihilism. I’m pretty upset about the state of things in my country right now, and, like a lot of people, I’m struggling to process just how big some of the changes that are happening are and how impossible it seems to imagine a path through to a better future. But I’m actually pretty confident that we are going to make it through, in the same way we get through everything else that is painful, overwhelming, and exhausting. One day at a time, one moment at a time. Keep track of progress, recognize that we’re already a little closer to the end than we were a few weeks ago, and do the next right thing. Like every other difficult, miserable thing I’ve endured in my life, I’m pretty confident that one day I’ll be able to look back on this as something challenging that happened in the past and now is over.

It’s currently 8 degrees outside, and I just went for a three mile training run. I didn’t really want to do it, but I made myself get out there and keep moving, one foot in front of the other until it was done. And now I’m warm and comfortable after a hot shower, writing my blog. I completed my winter night jog and now it is in the past. I endured it. In fact, now I have that experience to look back on as motivation. Some day this summer when I’m running a half marathon, I’ll be able to remind myself that I got out and ran in the cold so that I would be ready to finish this stupid race, so let’s not quit today buddy.

Let me stipulate that this isn’t true for everyone. I’m experiencing the pain of the current moment in the abstract and as anxiety about the future. I read news stories about things that are happening and worry about what happen to me or my kids at some vague point in the future. I haven’t been fired, no one turned off funding for life saving medicine I need, I’m not in increased danger of hate crimes or discrimination. I recognize that. But this is also a blog about my personal experience, so that’s what you’re getting here.

Anyway. If you’re new here, I’m writing this blog about my experiences training to run 5 half marathons across 5 states in July of this year. The project is a fundraiser for the National Diaper Bank Network. If you’ve made it this far, please consider hitting the “Donate” button up at the top and making even a small contribution. Thanks!

Therapy

I’m starting to think that everything I do is turning into an effort to keep myself from losing my mind. I wrote earlier this week about the fight or flight response that ‘all the things’ is triggering in me, so I won’t rehash all of that here, but suffice it to say that I had the following conversation with my department chair this morning:

Department Chair: Look, I know you don’t want to do this, but the Superintendent wants us to, so you need to get it done.

Me: They pardoned Eric Adams! Nothing means anything anymore! Why am I out here following the rules like a sucker!

So, I’m not feeling great. I spend the entire day looking for strategies to try to keep myself on stable ground. Here’s a list of everything I do that I now think of entirely in mental health terms:

• Run

• Spend time with my kids

• Spend time with my wife

• Solve NY Times crossword puzzles

• Build a jigsaw puzzle

• Post on social media

• Listen to music (instead of listening to podcasts)

• Listen to audiobooks (instead of listening to podcasts)

• Box breathing (4 count in, hold for 4, 4 count out)

• Take medication

• Write this blog

• Publicize my charitable fundraising project (I’m raising money for the National Diaper Bank Network, you can read all about it on this website, maybe donate a buck or two!)

• Tell myself not to post inflamatory things about the news on social media

• Tell myself not to send inflamatory text messages to people I disagree with politically

• Work hard at my job

• Stop taking my job so seriously

• Work on my summer plans (I’m going to run 5 half marathons in 4 weeks across 5 states. You can learn more about it on the website!)

• Focus on living in the moment

Those are all things I used to do just because I enjoyed them. But now, they all feel like an effort to distract myself from what my brain wants me to think about all the time (threats to global security, threats to the constitution, threats to my career, threats to my kids’ futures, etc). Every time I do any of the things on that list, I do so with the conscious, intentional hope that doing this will make me feel better for a little while, that this is a healthy way to manage my stress, etc. I don’t do anything just because it seems like a good idea. I’m not convinced this is sustainable, and I don’t know what to do about it. Let me know in the comments if you’ve got any ideas.

Traumatized

I’m 44 years old, and I’ve never felt this way before. For at least the last week, just living in the world kicks my flight or fight response into action, and I walk around all day feeling like I’m under threat and desperately need to take action. But there’s nothing I can do and instead I just have to keep putting gas in my car and answering emails like the world isn’t trying to kill me. It sucks. I understand where that feeling is coming from, but figuring out what to do about it is proving to be a much bigger challenge.

I’ve done my best to keep this blog/project apolitical, and so even in this post I’ll stop short of telling you who I think you should vote for or arguing that you should change your mind. A big part of the audience I’m trying to reach with this project includes people who disagree with me politically, which is why I’m raising money for the National Diaper Bank Network— I picked that charity because I assumed that, regardless of ideology, no one would be opposed to helping children and families in need. I may have been proven wrong about that, but I’ll get in to that later. This post will get into my personal ideological stances about a few things, which you are welcome to disagree with, but I’m hoping you’ll read on in an effort to understand where I’m coming from, even if you think I’m wrong.

My intense, visceral reaction to the news of the day started when I heard about the overnight destruction of USAID. I don’t think its unfair to call it that given that Elon Musk bragged on Twitter that, over the course of a weekend, he had “put [it] through the woodchipper.” I won’t pretend that I knew all that much about USAID prior to its dismantling, but I was immediately concerned about any government program being unilaterally wiped out in the middle of a Friday night. And when I read more about it, I was immediately more upset. I had heard of PEPFAR before, the program founded by President George W. Bush to combat the global spread of AIDS. I knew that PEPFAR has done an enormous amount of good on that front and is widely admired, but I didn’t know all the specifics. But then I read this article from Wired that included the detail from an humanitarian worker that, since funding through USAID to PEPFAR was cut off, 300 babies now had AIDS that wouldn’t have otherwise. This detail made me feel physically ill— the idea that someone basically found a button that would give 300 babies an incurable disease, pressed it, and then bragged about it online made me feel like I had been punched in the stomach. I reached out to a friend of mine who is a big Musk supporter to ask his opinion about it, and he responded that he was just happy someone was trying to do something to balance the budget. The idea that an intelligent person who I respect thinks Musk is acting altruistically, that a conservative Republican, the party the professes endless admiration for strict readings of the constitution, was happy about a shadow organization getting access to government buildings in the middle of the night and playing with the computers, and that someone who has genuinely convinced me of his humble religious conviction could speak so callously about children with AIDS simply didn’t compute in my brain. I spent several days just trying to reconcile it, and I think that was the real beginning of the feeling for me that the whole world was being pulled out from under my feet.

A few days later, this stress became more personal as it became apparent that one of the next target of Musk et al would be the Department of Education. Ending the Department of Education has long been a conservative goal— I first became aware of this during Rick Perry’s “oops” moment at a primary debate back in 2012, when he couldn’t remember all of the cabinet departments he planned to eliminate but DID remember that one of them was education— but it had never struck me as a realistic possibility until the last week. Dissolving the department of education would result in all control of education, including funding, to the states. One of the main things the DOE does it provide support for students with special needs— my wife is a special ed teacher, and I have no idea what will happen to her program when the DOE goes away. One of the other main roles of the DOE is to protect the civil rights of students who belong to protected minority groups. Given the political climate in my state, I have real concerns about the safety of some of my students right now and, on a more personal level, I have no idea my protections my own boys (6 and 3 right now) might need as they grow and develop a sense of themselves.

At the same time that this was happening at the Federal level, at the State level, my governor has proposed a budget that would eliminate millions of dollars in funding for public schools. This would have serious, immediate, painful impacts at my school. It would lead to larger class sizes, decreased programs and opportunities for students, and probably a reduction in staff (a polite way of saying people I respect will lose their jobs). And this is happening with the DOE nominally still in place— if all decisions about school funding go to the states, and my state has many lawmakers interested in supporting private schools, including my high performing school district, which just avoided a serious effort to create a charter school with public money, and we are already looking a budget that would cut millions from every school district in the state, what is likely to happen to my career and my students?

So, I’ve been walking around for days with all the parts of my brain that evolved to keep my safe from sabertooth tigers going full blast. I feel like I am under attack and there is nothing I can do about it, and that people I care about are in danger and there is no way I can help them. I feel like things are spiraling out of control faster than anyone can deal with. A friend of mine maintains that, since there is a strong argument that it is unconstitutional for “DOGE” to do what it’s doing, judges will start issuing restraining orders and reversing their actions. But it seems to me that the whole point of Musk moving the way he is is to make that a moot point. USAID is done, “fed through the wood chipper.” Now that a judge has found that to be illegal and told them they shouldn’t have done it, the toothpaste is out of the tube/the bell can’t be unrung/etc. And I have no idea what is going to happen next. All of this made more sense to me when I read this Pro Publica article about Russell Vaught, erstwhile Project 2025 leader and current Office of Management and Budget director, making speeches where he explained that his explicit goal was to make public sector employees feel “traumatized". He was talking about people at the EPA, but that’s how I feel as a public school teacher right now. When I looked at Mike Braun’s picture in the news with the headline about cutting millions from school budgets, my response was an immediate “I can’t keep doing this!” In this red state, it has been a solid 10 years of changes and threats of changes to public education, and every election brings with it the possibility of my career being upended in terrifying ways. I can’t keep feeling this way— I’ve been pushed to the point where I can’t keep fighting.

When I came home from work on Friday, I told my wife that I was ready to start planning a move to a blue state. That isn’t a decision to make lightly— this has been my home for almost my entire life, and I resent other people making it so inhospitable that I have to leave. Moving would mean leaving behind my dad and my wife’s parents. It would mean leaving the school that I’ve worked at for 15 years, where I’ve earned the respect of colleagues, administrators, and students, in order to start the whole thing over again in an entirely new place. It would mean leaving the house that we’ve made a home, taking the boys away from their schools, all of that. But I can’t continue feeling this way— I just can’t. So, we talked about it for a few days, made a list of pros and cons, etc, and decided to leave everything alone for a month and see what things look like in March. We aren’t going to find new teaching jobs in California or Colorado right now anyway, so we might as well let things play a little while longer and see if they are as bad as I think. Talking this through made me realize how much my sudden desire to move was connected to that same “flight or flight” response I mentioned at the beginning of the post. I can’t do anything about the threats I’m perceiving, but my amygdala insists I do something, so I end up looking at Oregon houses on Zillow. And suffering from terrible heartburn. And not sleeping. It’s not great.

Here are some things I’m doing to try and combat those symptoms and feelings. I’m putting restrictions on my news and social media consumption- I just took a 24 hour reprieve from both, and, when I checked back in, things had continued as they had been without me. I think that staying on top of the news is a way for me to feel more in control— if I understand everything that is going on, and share it to my social media followers, I am somehow fixing it (but I’m not). I’m trying to do more things with friends, so I went to a cigar bar with a teacher friend last night and watched minor league hockey while puffing a Padron. And I’m running, training for this project.

One of the main things I’ve learned about mental health over the last few years is that it an unrealistic goal to say you’re going to “cure” your issues. I don’t think that if I start playing more Mariokart with my son instead of reading the news, I will suddenly no longer be an anxious person. But I will create more unanxious minutes, and if I string together enough of those minutes, eventually things will improve. Oh, and I take SSRIs. Multiple SSRIs.

My charitable project for the National Diaper Bank Network is one of the main things that I’ve been able to stay focused on in these difficult times. If you’ve made it this far, please consider clicking the big “Donate” button at the top of the page and making even a small contribution. Thanks so much!

On Anger

I’ve been watching old seasons of the TV show Battle Bots on Max with my 6 year old. I tell people it’s because he likes to watch it, but the reality is, most of the time it’s because I want to watch robots break pieces off of each other while people yell and scream. All the appeal of prize fighting with none of the CTE. Anyway, as we’ve been working our way through the seasons we recently hit the COVID/2020 season. Suddenly there were no spectators, people were in small clusters and separated by big pieces of lucite, they were learning how to conduct interviews over Zoom in real time, and everyone was wearing masks. It did not bring back happy memories to suddenly be thrust back into that world. But one thing I found interesting about, looking back dispassionately from 2025, is that suddenly, everyone on the show was angry. There weren’t any (televised) arguments about masks/distancing/etc, but in the COVID season contestants were abruptly arguing with the judges, the commentators, and their opponents in a way that they hadn’t in any of the previous seasons. Stressful times amp up anger and it needs an outlet.

My wife and I have observed, and worked on, the fact that we tend to argue with each other more when we are stressed about other issues—- the kids are acting up, money is tight, other family members have difficult needs. We can’t yell at the bank, or the three year old, or grandma, so we end up yelling at each other (and, again, then talking about it and working on it so we don’t keep doing that in the future). Anger at things outside of our control wants to find an outlet in things that we can control, whether or not that is fair.

I’ve been thinking about that over the last two weeks as various new political realities unfold across America. I’ll keep my own politics out of this blog since that’s not what this project is about, and since it would be very easy to backtrack from this blog to my employer, but I think regardless of political persuasion we can agree that things have been stressful for the last few weeks. Earlier this week, I was in a real spiral about the abrupt cutting of funding to USAID— you are welcome to whatever political opinion you want to have about the justification for that, but hopefully we can agree that it is bad that people that were receiving healthcare and nutrition suddenly aren’t. Specifically, I read an article about the fact that, in the few days after funding was cut to PEPFAR, a minimum of 300 babies now had AIDS that would otherwise not have. This made me angry. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do with that anger that could do anything about the situation. I responded by getting in a big argument with a friend of mine who is a big supporter of Elon Musk, to the point that I’m not sure our friendship, which I valued, is repairable. I’m not sure if I there was anything gained from this argument, but I am very confident that our argument will have no impact on USAID funding or babies with AIDS.

You can of course see this same phenomenon over and over again in just the last few years. Many people were very very angry about COVID restrictions and, since you can’t yell at a virus, some of them ended up channeling that anger into attacks on Target employees. Many people were very very angry about civilian deaths in Gaza over the last year and, since Bibi Netanyahu doesn’t care what they think, they took it out on university property (in a few anecdotal cases). Looking back at it dispassionately, what is the net benefit of all that anger?

So, what is the solution? Here are some things that I’ve found help me (imperfectly of course, since I was yelling at people about Elon Musk just a few days ago). I find some small thing I can do that contributes in some kind of meaningful way to solving the problem—- I set up a few small monthly donations to organizations that I think are doing some good about things. I don’t believe those donations are going to make everything be the way I want it to be, but when I feel overwhelmed I can look at my bank statement and know that I supplied a few billable minutes for some paralegal somewhere that might be a part of making things a little better. I then make an effort to get myself out of the online spaces that contribute to my anger. Yesterday, I went with a friend to see the movie Companion (two stars, not life changing but a perfectly good use of two hours on a Wednesday evening) instead of doomscrolling. And if I can’t get myself out of those online spaces, I try to engage in conversations there that will help people instead of contributing to their anger—- I spend a lot of time posting about moments of positivity, and when I did find myself sucked into an online argument about the state of things today, I did everything I could to keep it focused on civics (what our representatives can actually do about things) instead of ideology (what we wish our representatives can do/what we should yell at our representatives about their inability to do).

And I exercise. On Tuesday, after I had already invested 20 minutes in doomscrolling and didn’t see a way to stop if I kept sitting on the couch, I told my wife I was going for a run, grabbed the dog, and took off for a few miles in the February drizzle. This complicated getting the kids their dinner and probably won’t make a difference in terms of my marathon fitness in a few months, but it helped me in that moment a lot more than texting articles to my Musk fan friend would have. At the end of that run, I felt genuinely better and more connected to the immediate world around me, and that feeling stuck with me for the rest of the day.

That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing with this project. If you’re new here, I’m training to run 5 half marathons in 4 weeks this July on a roadtrip across the country, and I’m doing that to raise money for the National Diaper Bank Network. This project gets me motivated to exercise almost every day, and it gives me a sense that I’m doing something that will have a small, measurable impact.. If you’ve made it this far and you’d like to be a part of things, it would be great if you clicked the “Donate” button at the top of this page and kicked in even a few bucks. If you don’t want to help my project, I’d encourage you to find one that you do want to get involved in and find some small way to contribute. I promise you, you’ll feel better later!

It’s February 2nd! It’s Groundhogs Day!— Updates and Turning Points

For a long time, I’ve maintained that Groundhog Day, February 2nd, might be my favorite day of the year. Let me explain. First, the Harold Ramis movie is in my top 5 movies of all time, and I’ve made a ritual of rewatching every year, sometimes live-tweeting along my favorite lines (this was, admittedly, more fun back before I quit drinking). But I also think of Groundhog Day as being the turning point in the year, when we go from winter being even more dark and depressing day after day as we move away from Christmas into things gradually improving, weather getting better, days getting noticeably longer, and Spring Break starting to appear bigger and bigger on the calendar. The year bottoms out sometime around the end of January and then goes on a run of steady improvement that peaks somewhere around the 4th of July.

I started this project because things were at a pretty dark time for me personally, and I wanted something positive to hold onto and take some ownership of (for those that don’t know, I’m planning on running 5 half marathons in 5 states in July, and I’m doing it to raise money for the National Diaper Bank Network). It is now about three months since I started drawing up plans for my trip, and having this as something to work on has given me something to focus on and a place to see gradual improvement, which has helped me out as things around me seem to get even worse. I was starting to feel discouraged a week or two ago, but donations are suddenly starting to pick up speed, and I feel like, maybe, groundhog day is the turning point. Here are some updates about why I’m feeling optimistic:

-Over the last week, donations to the project have come close to doubling. That’s money set aside for me to donate to the National Diaper Bank Network, an organization that I know converts every dollar they receive into genuine good for people who need it. And its also money set to help fuel the project, which is great because…

-I’ve invested a lot of personal capital into the project already. I am now registered to run all 5 races— Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Washington, and Idaho, I’ve booked most of my campgrounds—- Yellowstone and Grand Teton all set, waiting on Glacier to open up their booking, and I’ve reserved the AirBnBs I’ll need on the race days so I have a safe place for my dog to hangout on race days. I’m splitting donations to the project between into equal portions for the Diaper Bank and for overhead on the trip, and now that a few more donations have come in I’m covering a bit less on the old credit card.

-My training is coming along nicely. I was basically starting at zero at the beginning of December after nearly two months in a walking boot. For at least the first month, I was in pain and really limited as I gradually worked my way back into things. For the last month, I’ve started to see results, but my ability to get out and run was really limited by weeks of snow and cold. We’re getting a burst of temperate weather now, though, which coincides nicely with me starting to feel like I’m 100% my old self when I’m out running. I did almost 5 miles at Fort Ben today, and I was pain free and able to hold a respectable pace. With a few months still to train, I feel confident that I will be back at full half marathon fitness before I leave.

-Engagement on the various social media accounts I created for the project is starting to pick up. Most of the support I’ve received to this point has been from friends and family, but the Instagram and Bluesky accounts I created specifically for this have started to get more attention. This is great because I haven’t had much running content to post there. The runs I’ve done have almost all been in gray, overcast, wintery Indiana, and if people are interested in that then I know I can get people engaged when I’m able to post from the Rocky Mountains. I can keep the fundraiser going all the way through the end of July, and once I cover my planned budget then 100% of every donated dollar goes to the Diaper Bank. Facebook has gotten my project started, but if I can get a toehold on Instagram I can hopefully really blow it out this summer.

-I started this project because I was feeling pretty depressed and helpless, and I don’t feel that way any more. My injury coincided with some very bleak national and international news, and that was all very hard on me because I couldn’t rely on exercise as a stress relief to help me process it. It’s easy for the news to make me feel overwhelmed, and now that I can run again and I seeing results on this project, I’m increasingly insulated against that feeling. When I scroll through social media, I see many many people repeating that they have all this anger and frustration and nothing to do with it. The hard reality is, there really isn’t anything we can do to change the big picture in the short term. Some very limited opportunities present themselves from time to time, but the reality is things continue moving without our say so almost all the time. But anyone can make changes and take actions in their own small part of the world that can produce a measurable, beneficial impact. For me, exercising and raising money are two of those things. Thanks for helping me to do them!

The Superior Hiking Trail and the Cursed Pants

Here’s a story about perseverance and the most embarrassing pants-related thing that ever happened to me. As I’ve been writing these blog entries, I keep coming back to themes about overcoming adversity, shutting out anxiety, moving on from difficult experiences, etc, and I think this story hits all of those notes pretty effectively.

For my 40th birthday, I decided I wanted to spend a week backpacking on the Superior Hiking Trail. The SHT, as it’s known, runs along Minnesota’s Lake Superior coast, from the Canadian border in the North down to Duluth. It three or four weeks to hike the whole thing, which my wife wasn’t going to give me as our first born was barely a year old at the time, but I was able to finagle permission for a five days/four nights camping and hiking, plus a few travel days. This would have to be sufficient for me to prove my manliness and competence as I headed into middle age.

I had never attempted a project on this scale before, so doing the research, accumulating the gear, and testing everything out on some smaller hikes took a few months. A few years prior to this experience, I had attempted to do a three night loop trip around part of the Appalachian Trail and ended up calling an outfitter to pick me up early because of supply issues, so I was determined to have everything in great shape before I set off into the North Woods. I bought a new camping hammock, new hiking shoes, cook stove, and a new pair of hiking pants. Of all that new gear, I didn’t even guess that the pants would be the thing to humble me.

The hike itself was fantastic. Lake Superior is my favorite US geological feature, and I particularly loved the isolation I found on the trail—- because I only had a week to hike, I elected to start at the far Northern end and hike South, so I went the first 48 hours without seeing another human being. But on the morning of the third day, as I pulled on my hiking pants and prepared to greet the morning with purpose and enthusiasm, I was myself greeted with the sound of tearing fabric. These pants were from Columbia—- a well respected brand for outdoor equipment—- and I had only worn them for a few days, but a whole had opened up around where the two inseams meet, and every time I moved, it got a little wider.

Here’s what I think happened—- this was the COVID summer, so the trail had not been cleared and maintained the way it normally would be. The day before the pants ripped, I had spent most of the day pushing through sections of trail that were totally overgrown with ferns, bushes, and weeds. This both put stress on the pants, and also soaked them thoroughly with dew and rainwater. When I got to camp, I hung them up, but there was no where near enough sunlight or breeze to actually dry them. So the next morning, when I slid into these wet, clammy pants, my toe caught part of the fabric at just the right angle and started a small tear. Once the tear was going, it just continued to grow.

I only had two pairs of pants with me—- the hiking pants, and a pair of fleece sweatpants to wear around camp that would have melted away to nothing under the stress of two more days of hiking. I did not bring a sewing kit or stapler. I had some duct tape, but it wouldn’t adhere to the wet fabric. So, I did the only thing I could do—- I started hiking in my holey pants.

I had the vague hope that the my oversize hiking backpack, complete with sleeping bag strapped to the bottom, hung down low enough to give me some coverage, but that was mostly just what I told myself to get my feet moving. That days hike took me through a state park and into a much more crowded section of the trail, so I was consistently around other people—- young, old, families, etc—- all of whom got a pretty good view of my sweaty boxers if they had to walk behind me for any length of time. Not having anything else to do about it, I walked on.

The next morning, the last morning, when I put the pants back on they tore even more—- there was no longer a “hole” in the seat of the pants, we were now dealing with a total failure of the garment to fulfill its basic functions. But it was better than not wearing anything at all, so I hiked on. This last day of the hike took me into town, down the main street, and up to the lobby of the hotel. No one at the check in desk remarked on my sad state, and I carried myself with confidence to my room, at which point I was finally able to throw the pants away and cover my shame with a new pair that I had packed in my overnight bag.

The lesson to me is twofold. First, at the time I was very anxious and embarrassed about hiking down the trail with my boxers in the breeze, but I have lived the past four years without ever encountering anyone who happened to pass me on the shores of Lake Superior in northern Minnesota. If someone had noticed my condition on the trail, the wouldn’t have thought that I was an idiot for wearing pants with a hole in them, they would have immediately understood what had happened and felt some real “there but for the grace of God go I” sympathy. And, more importantly, once the pants tore, I had no alternative to just keep hiking—- wishing I packed another pair or a sewing kit didn’t get me any closer to my hotel. So, there you go—- if you feel like things are overwhelmingly bad, all you can do is recognize that we are all in this together and the only way out is through.

Today, I am training to run 5 half marathons in 5 states in July. This is a fundraiser I’m putting on for the National Diaper Bank Network. If you’ve made it this far, it would be great if you clicked the Donate button at the top of the page and kicked in even a few bucks. Every little bit counts. I will be doing a lot of camping on this trip, but I’m car camping, not back packing, so I will definitely be able to pack multiple pairs of pants.

Postscript—- I contact Columbia when I got back and asked for a refund. They said I would need to mail them the pants as evidence that I wasn’t scamming them, or maybe so they could give the pants to the boys down in the lab to figure out what went wrong. I told them they I had thrown the pants away in a trashcan outside my hotel and they were now deservedly moldering away at the bottom of a Minnesota landfill. The Columbia rep told me there was therefore nothing they could do. So, if you’re buying outdoor equipment, I recommend you look at North Face.

On Doom

There is a lot going on in the news right now that makes it easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless. I’ve found that if I’m not careful, one way I try to handle that is by obsessively reading about it all, and maybe then reposting it to social media. This is my way of trying to minimize that anxiety by giving myself like an active participant in everything that is going on. Then I end up feeling frustrated with the world and myself—- despite the fact that I read so much and thought so much about it, things didn’t go the way I wanted them to! The world remains full of people who don’t understand things the way I do, even though I posted about it online! But of course, I have no control over the news of the day—- in my entire life as a news reader, voter, teacher, etc, I doubt I’ve done one thing that had an impact on the national news or the direction the country was headed. My sense of control over the events is entirely an illusion.

So I have to try to limit that impulse. I have to stop myself from doom scrolling and doom reposting But it is difficult to to just excise some behavior from your day, because the reason it was in your day in the first place was because it filled some kind of need, or you’d tricked yourself into believing it was filling a need. You have to replace it with something that more effectively accomplishes the goal. So, as for me, I’m using this writing project to focus on the small ways I am able to have a positive impact on the world. For example, over the three day weekend, I…

-Went for a 3 mile run. It was my best training run to date and felt like real progress on my recovery from last Fall’s injury

-Replaced all the smoke detectors in my house. It involved shutting off some circuit breakers and rewiring the connections. Since I have no real handyman skills, doing this without burning the house down was a real achievement.

-Assembled an Ikea set of bunkbeds for my kids. It took about four hours and was really hard, but now the boys get to share a room and have the other room as a designated playroom.

-Actually, I assembled an Ikea set of bunkbeds with my wife, without arguing, and had some good conversations with her without the kids bothering us.

-Gave my dog at least 30 minutes of exercise every day even though it is bitter cold outside.

-Took time to relax on my couch and enjoyed watching all four NFL playoff games.

Those are the kind of small, everyday wins that actually give some meaning to my time. I have to make myself spend time reflecting on those kinds of experiences every day. That’s how I avoid feeling hopeless and powerless.

This is also why I’m doing this project—- this blog is here to document my thoughts and experiences while training to run 5 half marathons in 5 states in July, which is fundraiser I’m doing for the National Diaper Bank Network. If you’d like to do something that will have a positive impact on the world, I’d love it if you clicked the Donate button up at the top of the page and made even a small contribution. Talk to you next time!

Race Reviews

Here’s a rundown on a few significant races I’ve run over the last few years. I enjoyed my experience at all of these races, so my goal here is less to tell you which ones are “good” and “bad,” but instead to help identify what people/interests would make the most sense for which races. So, in backwards order to when I ran them, here are some reflections on major races I’ve done over the last 3 years.

Hatfield/McCoy Marathon (West Virginia/Kentucky): This was a gorgeous race that includes 13.1 miles in West Virginia and another 13.1 in Kentucky (I registered for it in part because I have an extremely loose goal of running a half marathon in all 50 states, so doing the full here let me cross two states off my list in one morning). You can run either have as its own race—- the first, the Blackberry Mountain Half, is in WV and involves a significant climb up a mountain/very tall hill and then the descent down the other side; the second, the River Road Half, is pretty flat and takes you through some small towns and countryside on the Kentucky side. Because of the topography, it’s probably not what you want if you’re looking for a PR, and some of the mile markers and the overall distance were off per my Garmin, but it was worth it for me for the countryside and the mountain air. There weren’t a lot of options for staying in town, but the town itself is pleasant and I appreciated the fact that they had showers available at a local gym. Crowd support was nice for a race this rural, and the overall crowd of runners was big enough that I never felt isolated (especially because the full marathon encompasses both halfs), but also never overwhelming or crowded. It’s not a big motivating factor for me one way or the other, but the swag was pretty nice—- high quality tshirt and a very creative if somewhat impractical medal.

Savage Gulf 25K (Tennessee): This trail race aggressively markets itself as being brutal and difficult, and they are not lying. I ran the 25k, but they also offer a full marathon. The full requires documentation that you have completed a marathon before, and having done the 25k I understand why. The location is beautiful but also somewhat remote (I stayed at an Airbnb cabin that was almost an hour away from the start). The first two or three miles are pretty standard trail running on a dirt track wide enough in places to pass with only some rolling ups and downs, but then you descend down into the gorge and everything changes. You go down a steep set of stairs carved out of the rocky walls of the gorge for about a mile, and then you run along very technical, bolder strewn paths for the bulk of the course. I was only able to “run” in small stretches—— most of the time I was walking/scrambling over rocks, boulders, roots, and branches. I enjoyed the experience because that’s how they market it and that’s what I paid for, but don’t sign up for this expecting anything resembling a conventional trail run. The descent down into the gorge was tricky and challenging, but the climb back up out was even harder— it’s the least technical part of the course to that point, but is just a punishing steady uphill climb after you’ve spent a few hours stumbling and leaping over obstacles. I honestly thought I was going to need to start a new life for myself at the bottom of the gorge instead of finishing the climb. But, I did, and I’m happy for the experience. There was basically no swag for the race—- I ordered a sweatshirt but there was a problem with the printer and I got a refund instead. But the race admin and other runners were all great—- highlights included a veteran of this race who told me a few miles in “Just remember nobody out here is trying to earn a sponsorship, just keep going and finish” and the race director who hooked me up with salt tablets and sugar when I finished because my legs were cramping so bad I couldn’t run. If you read the promotional materials for this race and decide that it sounds like the kind of experience you want, you won’t be disappointed.

Columbus Half Marathon (Ohio): This is my favorite urban race on roads that I’ve done. It is very flat and very fast with amazing crowd support. The course takes you through a variety of unique and interesting neighborhoods (the full goes through the Ohio State campus, but I only did 13.1 so I don’t have firsthand experience). The race is a fundraiser for the Columbus children’s hospital and they actually have patients out on the course at the mile markers to remind you what you are running for. If I wanted to set a PR, this is the race I would set my sights on. Good swag too. Overall great experience!

Grand Island Half Marathon (Michigan): This is my all time favorite running experience. This course for this trail race is on an island in Lake Superior. You start the day with a 5 minute ferry ride from the town of Munising out to the beach. There is very little development on the island itself, although there are some legacy properties left over from before it became a nature preserve. The course is wide dirt trails, with plenty of room to pass, except for about a 1 mile stretch on the beach. You get amazing views of the lake and the woods throughout, and there’s enough topography to make it interesting without ever being too challenging. The highlight for me is that the finish line is about 100 yards away from the beach, so if you like you can just keep on running out into the water, which felt great after a few hours of exercise. Make sure to bring your own hydration system since they don’t allow cups or anything else that would bring trash onto the island. I appreciated the way they staggered starts for the full marathon and the 50k before the half, which meant there were always runner out on the course and you didn’t feel too isolated even though it is a smaller race. I did a few days of camping up in the UP for this race as well, which is a pretty great way to spend your July. I honestly think everyone should have this race as a bucket list experience.

Dances With Dirt Gnaw Bone (Indiana): If you’re someone who enjoys the outdoors and you live in Indiana, you will end up at Brown County at some point or another. This area is about as hilly as Indiana gets (banks of the Ohio excluded), and the trees here are famous for their fall foliage. I did the half at the Dances with Dirt trail race here last spring and I really enjoyed most of it. The first two miles or so and last two miles (the course is a loop, but you you repeat the straightaway from the start line to the loop) were very difficult. It’s mostly horse trail, so the ground was torn up and soaked into mud. I enjoy running through some difficult terrain, but this seemed like I was trying to cross No Man’s Land at the Somme in several places—- I think challenging trail races are great when there is some kind of natural beauty to appreciate because of the experience, whereas the beginning and end of this race felt more like it only existed to be difficult and uncomfortable. BUT, once you get out of that initial section, it is some very pleasant trail running with some challenging climbs but nothing too overwhelming. I did enjoy the fact that on the way to the finish line you run through a creek for about a quarter mile. This was refreshing and also went a long way toward getting the worst of the mud off me before I had to get back in the car. The tshirt is great and I wear it all the time. I do think they redesign the course pretty regularly, so take everything I just said with a grain of salt.

Fort Ben Half Marathon (Indiana): I live in central Indiana, so I’m pretty familiar with the big races in and around Indianapolis. The most famous and popular race here is the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon, the Spring half the takes runners from down town out and around the famous speedway. It is worth doing once, but outside of the speedway the course itself doesn’t have much to offer and the overwhelming number of runners is tough to deal with. The best long race in Indianapolis is the Monumental Marathon. The course is flat and fast and the production is impressive and professional. But my favorite is this one at Fort Benjamin Harrison. I ran my first full marathon on this course back when they used to offer one, but now it is just a half. There are no where near as many runners for this as the other big ones in the city and the vibe is laid back but still competitive. The course takes you all around Fort Ben, which I believe is the largest State Park inside a city in the country. There are some hills, but we are still talking about central Indiana here, so it’s not going to set any records in that department. The weather in this part of the country in late October/early November when this race is run is pretty fantastic. I don’t think you’re going to travel to Indiana to run this one, but if you’re already here it is a great experience.

Winter Trail Frosty/Winter Night Trail Run/Summer Night Trail Run (Indiana): I’m grouping these three races together because they are put on by the same group and run on the exact same course, but the changing seasons make for three very different experiences. The course is at Eagle Creek Park out on Indy’s West Side. Eagle Creek is built around a large, manmade reservoir, which isn’t the most amazing scenery in the country, but in Indiana you get what you get. There is a pretty good hill that takes you down from the start area to the water, and then a matching climb up out of it as you go around the loop, but otherwise it is pretty flat. There are large sections of single track where it is hard to pass and some stairs that feel pretty treacherous depending on the conditions, but otherwise it the trail makes for very nice running. The course itself is a 10K loop, so if you want to run the half you do it twice—- this also makes it easy to change your mind and stop after the first half if the trail takes more out of you than you thought it would (this happened to me the first time I ran here). If you run the summer one, be prepared for insects—- I put on plenty of mosquito spray but still breathed in some huge clouds of gnats. You are required to wear a headlamp for the night/evening iterations, and it would be dangerous to run either race without one. When I did the winter night one, my headlamp was more a “let other people know where I am” style than a “illuminate my feet so I see where I’m going” one, and it made things pretty tricky. It’s worth doing all three of these races to see the park in different conditions and to have some cool stories to tell.

Gulf Coast Marathon (Florida): When it is family vacation time, I usually try to build a trip around a race I can run, so last year on Spring Break we drove down to Pensacola so the kids could enjoy the beach and I could run this race. The race is in the town of Pensacola Beach, so you have awesome views of the water and the unique houses along the shore almost the entire way. There wasn’t much in the way of crowd support, possibly because its a tourist town and this race was a little early for the season to really be going, but the weather was perfect. The course itself involves a very long out and back section, which isn’t my favorite thing to do (I spend most of the time assuming we are almost to the turnaround, getting disappointed every time I go around a little bend and see we aren’t doubling back yet, and then getting frustrated by the continuous stream of people faster than me going back the other way) but also involves some interesting people watching and absorbing of local color. My experience of this race is a bit colored by the fact that I was out of shape, went out to fast, and struggled hard for the last few miles, but if I had been prepared for it I think I would have enjoyed it more. And it is nice to finish at a little local resort with food on the beach.

So there you go, some thoughts on some of the more interesting races I’ve run over the last few years. I’m currently training to run 5 half marathons in 5 different states in July of this year—- you can learn a lot more about that project and the associated fundraiser on this website. If you want to donate directly to the project, you can click the big donate button at the top of this page, which I would appreciate! Otherwise, stay tuned for more running content here!

Motivation

I got out and ran my 3 miles yesterday, despite the fact that it was below freezing outside and a fresh layer of snow that hadn’t been properly plowed the day before and instead had slightly melted and then frozen into an icy mess. It was not the most fun training run I’ve ever done, and I don’t think I got up to enough intensity to really work on my VO2 Max, but I’m really glad I did it. I was not motivated to run—- I had to shovel the driveway first, which took about half an hour, and when I was done with that I was strongly tempted to just call that my workout and spend the rest of the day watching football. But I didn’t—- here’s why and how.

First, how I motivated myself. When I’m struggling to find the willpower to go out and run, one of the best tools for me is just to reflect on how I will feel later in the day. I know that, no matter how uncomfortable the run is, I will definitely be warm and dry later in the day. And I know I will feel a lot better about myself if I do the run than if I don’t. Getting out and running is a mortgaging my current comfort against the pride I’ll take in the achievement later. I use that same rubric the other direction, too—- I used to try to get up and run first thing in the morning, before school, but it was a real struggle to get myself out the door, and a lot of the time I wouldn’t. So I was starting the day with a sense of failure, which wasn’t great. One solution would have been to try new ways to motivate myself, but it just didn’t seem like it was going to work for me. So I changed my routine in order to set myself up for success, and on most weekdays I run after school instead. I set a realistic goal for myself and then rely on the fact that I know I’ll feel good when I hit it.

I also have a training partner. Many people join running clubs or run with a human partner, but I run with my dog, Mason. Mason is an Australian Cattle Dog, which means he ideally needs about 4 hours of exercise a day—- he doesn’t always get that, but if I don’t take him running he might not get any at all. When he doesn’t get his exercise, he’s miserable and he makes my wife miserable by barking and eating things he shouldn’t. So my running partner motivates me in several ways—— I have more fun running with him than by myself, I have a sense of obligation to make sure he get’s his exercise, and my life is much more pleasant if he’s in a good mood. Accountability= motivation.

Lastly, I motivate myself with races. I sign up to run big, challenging races in the future, which keeps me honest about training in the present. I think the races are more important as a motivation tool for my training than they are as ends in and of themselves. As a teacher, I know that Spring Break is more important because it motivates me through Winter than as an actual opportunity for fun and recreation. Spring Break is never as great as it seems like it’s going to be, but the idea of it is always enough to carry me through February. Similarly, sometimes when I’m in the start corral before a marathon I am pretty mad at myself for signing up for it, but I never regret the fact that it motivated me to get in shape over the last six months. Of course, sometimes this has backfired and having a race hanging over my head just makes me anxious and depressed because I’m not training enough, but the more I run the better I understand what I can realistically expect of myself, and I plan accordingly. Speaking of which, I’m currently training to run 5 half marathons across 5 states in July—- you can learn more about it by going to the About Page for this website, you can even donate to my fundraiser! Anyway.

Why is it important for me to motivate myself and run? I think it’s interesting how that has evolved over time. When I was a runner in my teens and twenties, I honestly ran and did athletic things to stay in shape and impress people, especially girls (this didn’t necessarily work, it’s not like I was chased around the 5K course by screaming fans). As I got into my 30s, I ran to prove things to myself—- can I run a half marathon? OK, I can, can I run a full marathon? Can I run a harder marathon? Once I hit 40, my main fitness goal just started to be to stay healthy—- my doctor started warning me about my cholesterol and blood pressure, so I lost weight; my mom developed diabetes and I really don’t want to get diabetes, so I lost a little more weight. But now, my main motivation to stay in shape is that it makes me feel better. I got out and ran yesterday because I had been in a bad mood all weekend, and I felt a whole lot better after I got back. I have really been struggling with my mood for a good month or so now—- the news seems to be all bad, my kids are demanding an stressful, the holidays are tough—- and fresh air and exercise are two things that almost every study agrees will make you feel better. I also take SSRIs and go to therapy, but the one thing that always puts me in a better mood is running. So, I’ve got to stay motivated. But it will be a lot easier if this weather ever breaks…

Why I’m Running

I’ve been out of my walking boot for about six weeks now, and I’m starting to feel like I’m no longer “working myself back into shape” or “taking it real slow and easy,” I’m back and I’m training for real. I’m not in the marathon shape I was in before I got hurt back in October, but I was able to do a couple of three mile runs on the beach when we were on vacation last week, and again in the snow at home this week, so I feel like an actual runner again, not like a rehab patient. This makes me feel good about myself and about my training—- I am on pace to be ready to run 5 half marathons in 5 states in July! But I need help—- that’s what this website is for. And my wife says I haven’t done enough to explain what I’m trying to do and why, and she’s smarter than me, so let’s try to sum it up.

First, what am I going to do and how can people help? I’m going to go on a road trip next July from my home in Indiana out to see my brother in Seattle. I’m using this as an opportunity to see parts of America I’ve never seen and really celebrate being healthy and able to run, so I’m going to run half marathons in 5 states—- Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Washington, and Idaho, all in that one month. I’m asking for donations to this project to help defray the costs, but also as an opportunity to do some charitable work. I’m partnering with the National Diaper Bank Network, and I’m going to split all donations between the overhead for my trip and a donation to the diaper bank up until I’m able to cover my $2,500 budget for the trip, at which point I’ll donate 100% of any additional money I’m able to raise. Let’s talk about why I’m doing this!

First, why am I raising money for the National Diaper Bank Network? They are a highly rated charity that does excellent, measurable service that has significant impact across society. By collecting and distributing diapers and other childcare supplies to families in need, they make it possible for families to send their kids to daycare and early childhood education programs, which impacts not only those families but the entire education system and then society as a whole. My wife and I are fortunate to have strong careers with excellent family support, but even then raising our two boys has been the biggest financial stress we have ever encountered, and it often puts significant strain on our ability to function as a family—- I can’t imagine what that experience is like for families less fortunate than ours, and I hope this project will help some of them. I picked this charity because I felt that it was a cause that literally everyone can get behind—- regardless of your political persuasion or ideology, we all want families to be able to take care of their children, and we all want kids getting all the help and education they need. Donations to my project directly help families and kids who need that help most.

Second, why is this project important to me personally? It has honestly been a very difficult six months or so for me. My mother passed away unexpectedly in July of 2024, which left me in a lingering depression. A few months after that, I broke my foot when I was only a few weeks away from running a marathon that I had been training for for six months. This had the knock on effect of depriving me of one of my main strategies for combatting depression and anxiety: exercise. All this was happening against the backdrop of a continuous series of awful news stories both nationally and internationally. The whole thing left me feeling overwhelmed, like life was out of control and there was nothing I could do about it. So, I decided to take active steps to do one positive thing, for myself and for the world. Completing this road trip will make me feel like I’ve accomplished something meaningful, and preparing for it gives me something to do that is more helpful than doom scrolling social media. This is my effort to live out the idea that “It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.” But I can’t do it alone—- that’s why I appreciate all the help I’ve been getting from others along the way!

So, I’m asking for your help. I’d love it if you could donate to this project. You can use the “Donate” button at the top of the page, or go to my gofundme directly using this link: https://gofund.me/d1b71826 Even small donations—- even a dollar!—- help, not only by contributing financially to the project but also by boosting its engagement in the eyes of the various algorithms I’m depending on to spread awareness of it. You can also share the website, or this blog post, or one of the other blog posts I’ve written here—- I’ve written some things about sobriety, running, and anxiety, and I think that some of them are even kind of good. Just commenting on this blog post will help boost its traffic and engagement. Every little bit counts! Thanks so much!

Social Media Serenity

This week, my Bluesky feed wanted me to care about congestion pricing in New York City. Actually, it wanted me to care about bias in the New York Times’ reporting on congestion pricing in NYC. Every time I logged in, I saw angry/sarcastic post after post about the way the Times was unfairly pulling out anecdotal examples of people being negatively affected by this policy. I do not live in New York City, let alone drive there. I don’t have a subscription to the NY Times. I will never cast a ballot in an election that has any impact on congestion pricing there. To tell you the truth, I don’t really understand what congestion pricing is, and the only reason I have a sense of which side of the culture wars I’m “expected” to be on for this issue is the identity and writing style of the people I see posting about it. And yet, I keep reading the posts and I actually start to find myself getting angry about this. This is the polar opposite of recognizing and accepting the things I cannot change, and it makes it harder for me to summon the courage to change the things I actually can.

After I wrote that paragraph, I switched tabs over to Bluesky and scrolled through the “Discover” page—- there are posts about the wildfires in California, the fact that every app on the internet is getting worse, the negative impact of private equity on hospitals, Mark Zuckerberg changing the moderation policies on Facebook, and anxiety over the fact that Donald Trump might pardon rioters from January 6th. The only one of those things that my actions could have nay kind of an impact one is the Facebook thing, and I doubt my individual decision to engage with various Meta products will have much impact on their policies. Social media connects me to the world, but when it specifically connects me to the world’s problems, it makes me feel like I need to do something about them. And I can’t. So it makes me anxious and miserable. It makes me feel helpless, and makes it easy for me to despair. None of which is good for my day to day life—- it makes me worse at my job, worse around my family, less able to engage with my hobbies, and more likely to lose my sobriety.

The solution, for me, is to focus on the Serenity Prayer. I start by asking for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the first step there is to stop actively looking for issues that I can’t do anything about. I stop looking at social media, or I actively curate my feeds to see things I know what trigger a doom spiral. When I do need to focus on those big issues, I force myself to mediate on whether or not they have any impact on me (congestion pricing in New York) and whether I could do anything about them (wildfires in California).

Second, I ask for the courage to change the things I can. That’s what this project is—- this blog is part of a website for a fundraising campaign I’m trying to run for the National Diaper Bank Network. I’m not going to solve diaper need with this campaign, but if I can raise even enough money to buy a box of diapers (which I’ve already exceeded) then I will be changing something for the better. Yesterday, it was bitter cold outside and the snow had not been properly removed from the roads in my neighborhood, but I went for my run with my dog anyway—- it took courage, but I changed a little bit of my physical fitness, improved my mental health, and made my dog happier. To publicize my fundraising project, I’m going to run 5 half marathons in 5 states next July—- it will take a kind of courage, but I think it will help produce some change, and it will change my self esteem and sense of the world, all of which will make me a better husband, father, and teacher.

Finallly, I ask for the wisdom to know the difference. Part of that is simply allowing myself to recognize the meaningful things I have accomplished—- today, I made breakfast for my kids, I taught three classes, and compromised with my wife to make a childcare plan for the evening that makes sense for both of us, and I wrote this blog post. It’s easy for me to overlook those things, but I have to take the time to celebrate them—- my natural inclination is to think that anything I do successfully is just baseline competency, but sometimes I really have done a good job. I also have to forgive myself when things that I attempt to change fall short of my expectations—- this fundraising campaign has not been the roaring success I hoped it would be when I launched it and it’s easy for me to beat myself up over that, but once I’ve managed it to the best of my abilities, I have to recognize that it’s ultimate success is outside of my control. There is a real arrogance in me getting frustrated with myself for not doing things well enough that everything in my life works out the way I want it to. If I get angry at myself for failing, it implies that, if I only tried hard enough, I could do literally whatever I wanted, which of course I can’t. Recognizing the difference means accepting both life’s successes and disappointments as being sometimes outside of our control.

Anyway writing this kept me from forming any anxiety about the parking situation in New York. If you read this far, please consider making even a small donation to my campaign—- you can use the “Donate” button at the top of this page. Thanks! Talk to you next time!