I have been spending some time re-invigorating a couple of long term pursuits: swimming and music. As I began to think about these two very large and nebulous areas, I also began to hear in my head a certain amount of negative self-talk. Let’s use an example.

I have always admired swimmers as athletes. I love Olympic swimming and I have swum, briefly, Masters swimming. That means I swam in organized practices with a group of people who were coached. And we went to meets on occasion but mostly as individuals. So you swam races, from the blocks just like on the Olympics.

My favorite of all these experiences was swimming in the big pool in Federal Way that was used during the Goodwill games. It’s the swimming equivalent of playing basketball on the same court as your local pro team. It was really cool.

I also swam a lot as kid. I took swimming lessons many summers and eventually became a life guard at our local “puddle”. All the swimming I did then was in open water, not in a pool. I loved this too. You were in shape and tan – back in the day these were both good things.

Whenever I swam with other people my age, I was never one of the fast swimmers. This bugged me because in other sports I was one of the faster people. So I worked on my swimming a lot and had a fair amount of endurance. Life guard training is good at that.

In Masters, same thing. I was never making it to the fast lane. Lanes are broken up by speed in workouts. In the breast stroke, I was one of the better breast strokers during practices. In relays, I would often get slotted by the coach to swim the breast stroke with other faster guys.

So I took this as a challenge and have studied a lot about swimming in order to improve my other strokes. I took master classes, read books, bought videos and did the drills. Now I am a pretty good swimmer technically. I also found that this aspect of swimming fits me. I like instruction. I like the technical part swimming, music, and other things. 

But a lot of this was driven by negative self talk and even now that voice is present in my head. On my “bucket list” is the goal to swim an Individual Medley in a meet. It contains, cue scary music, the butterfly.

I have never swum the butterfly except very poorly. It’s a very technical stroke. If you ever see someone who is good at it, you will be amazed at how effortless they swim it. At slow speeds, it looks as relaxing as breast stroke.

I took a butterfly lesson a month ago. I have been doing butterfly drills for years, but I never put it all together. I figured I would schedule 3 lessons spread over a few months, just so the coach could help me put it all together. I paid for the lesson and took it an it was terrible.

Now I could just be happy with this. Why not? Who am I trying to impress? Who cares? What does “not doing it” keep me from?

I came from the lesson with a great coach who spent 1 hour and extra 15 minutes in the pool with me and I made essentially no progress. I think she might have felt bad for me. I literally could not effectively move across the pool. She recorded the effort. I watched it. It was awful. I came out of the pool thinking, “that was pitiful.”

Eventually, I thought this is fascinating. Why do I do berate myself on certain things and not others? Why is this more meaningful to me and actually makes me feel bad?

I don’t have an answer. But I’m exploring this feeling a bit. I’m letting my mind work around the edges of this odd behavior. I’m not a berator, yeller or shamer. I would never be a parent, coach or a teacher that shames and belittles students. I do not have some stereotypical voice in my head. It isn’t like a cartoon drill sergeant. But it also is not always a nurturing, helpful voice, full of good suggestions and encouragement. That inner voice is just more of a dick who knows how to push my buttons.

The good news is that I don’t think that a depressed person can explore this kind of introspection with any success at all. I don’t want to say I’m cured. But I am in a good enough place right now to avoid rumination and instead let my inner world be a source of interest and fascination. Thanks meditation and therapy!

Usually when I start writing a blog post, I have a pretty good idea about what I want to talk about. Mostly the title comes first and I go from there.
Not today.
I started a post that sounded really whiney and full of luxury problems. Then I just stopped and deleted it. I realized I was just making myself depressed. Sometimes the writing is a type of catharsis, a type of sharing. I know my audience likes that to a point because they say things like, “thanks for sharing.”
I guess, today, I don’t have the stomach for that. I am more interested in moving the thoughts forward, while at the same time, not making bold predictions.
Next week, I finish up my work year on Tuesday. I’m lucky to have banked some holiday time that I will forfeit if I don’t take it. I am looking forward to seeing Nathalie for the first time in months. I am anxious to hear her voice and soak her in.
I also look forward to a a little “me” time. I look forward to getting out in the world and taking in some of that x-mas spirit. I don’t even mind going to the mall because there is something about all the decorations that tickles me.
I look forward to finishing a little housework, too. All this is so much more real than my daily life at work.
I am anxious to hear how my musical arrangements were received first by the players and then the audience. Getting lost in creating those arrangements was at once a challenge (to learn new software) and a treat to re-invigorate a part of my brain that I forget exists and is fairly competent and confident. My brain is also the master of the work. No outside agents.
I look forward to connecting with friends and family, some of whom are facing challenges in their own lives. I look forward to taking walks with them and kibbitzing, especially with Amy – my number one walk buddy.
Bing – I just got the title.
There will be some trying moments, too. There will be some tedious moments or frustrating moments. There will be driving that seems unnecessary. But all that mundane shit will be worth it. It will all be folded into the milieu in which I turn away from work and focus on the other parts of life.
I’ve recently found a blog that I really love. it’s called the Bulletproof Musician. It is written by a musician who became a psychologist, Dr. Noa Kageyama. Think of a sports psychologist for artists.
I’ve been resisting making big proclamations and predictions of late. But also feeling some regret. In general, research shows that regret is a stronger emotion than disappointment. This quote, however, really resonated with me.

But I don’t want to get my hopes up and be disappointed if I fail to get there.
Fair enough, but know that if you fall for this common trap, all you’re doing is substituting possible disappointment in the present for probable regret later.

It’s also worth noting that announcing your goals as means of motivation does not produce better results. Think New Year’s resolutions. He says make resolutions, but just keep them to yourself and quietly work toward them. That works the best for more people.
I am happy to be looking forward to some relaxation in the coming weeks. Whatever is to come after that is what I guess I will quietly work toward.
Bon courage à tous.

I visited Western Washington University yesterday with my two kids and one of their friends. The purpose of the visit is a little complicated but let’s put that aside for now.
First impressions of any college I have visited is how young and vibrant everyone is. Same here a WWU. I really wanted a piece of that. I want to have that kind of idealism and optimism around me. The flip side is how much I am not one of them.
I even feel this at our local community college, where I take Italian 6. People who discover I am taking Italian always say the same thing, “Why are you taking that? Didn’t you already go to Italy?”
I say the same thing, “I like it. It’s good for my brain.” And that’s true. But even though I might be the youngest person in my Italian class. I’m still in a class, at a college.The other people are there because the want to be there. They are trying to change something in their lives or brain. This might be the closest they come to going to Italy, but it’s closer than they were yesterday.
It’s not the same as WWU or Boston University or UMass Lowell, when I was there. But even Bellevue College is a dynamic, energetic environment. Mark Neslusan likes to say that undergrad was the last time anyone really cared about what you think. What you write, what you think, what you say. It’s all very critical and absorbed deeply by those around you. And you do the same for them.
Around here, WWU is called “Western.” It’s part of the Washington state system. It is in Bellingham which is only 20 minutes from the Canadian border. It is a beautiful place, akin to Middlebury in that it is tucked away from everything and essentially designed to enhance and embrace the local scene. It is surrounded by tall Douglas firs on one side with a view of Puget Sound on the other.
It was rainy so you couldn’t see any of the nearby North Cascades but there are plenty of snow covered peaks around too. I personally loved the physical place.
The closest school to western that I know is UVM, with the lesser burden that Western is not the flagship of the state. That job is the UW.
Class sizes are small, average 14 to 18. The undergrad program is the focus so not a lot of TA classes. And the student body is medium, 14,000 students.
The school lineage is like UMass Lowell’s South Campus in that it was a Normal school for training women to be teachers when it started. Later, is subsumed a number of other colleges to become an umbrella university. It has a little 60-70’s flavor too as the Fairhaven college is a design your own major, no GPA college.
In the tour, the guide did a great job of anticipating the question of how does that work if you go on to grad school. The guide was in her own major she called Eccopreneurship. She is studying sustainable design and interior design. You receive a BA when you graduate. The bottom line is that it works fine, judging from the results that graduates have had.
The architecture is walk through the past 150 years. From old brick, to poured concrete to certified green. Poured concrete is not a great look but you seem to see it on every campus. The UML south campus library for instance is a bit like that. At think point, it looks a little fish out of water.
Everyone there is wearing rain coat, back pack and some kind of low slung sport shoe. We arrived during the twice-a-year humans versus zombies week and saw students walking around with Nerf guns and orange bandanas while other wore green one. The consensus was that that orange/Nerf people were the humans. Zombies don’t use guns.
It all sounded and looked great to me. If I lived here, I think I would go there.

I hear people say, “I’m lazy.” I don’t think they are lazy most of the time. The concept of lazy, when applied like that, is like “potential.” I have even more distaste for the concept of potential.
I say it too. Lately, though, I have realized it is a sneaky form of self-hatred. Even if you want to do more, more of what?
What’s wrong with the amount of doing that you are already doing? And how does hating your level of doing help you get more done. And then what?
Somewhere between 10 and 18 I began to see myself as lazy. I don’t know where this came from. Laziness seems to be more damaging when it is self-inflicted. Potential is, generally, another persons pronouncement of your laziness.
I see now that I wasn’t so much lazy as insecure and perfectionistic. When I couldn’t do something perfectly, I procrastinated. (Psychological partners that are well known). For me, this was tuba playing and solfege (sight singing). Rather than take a class and invest the time needed, I dropped it. Two tweaks to my thinking would have been more beneficial in the long run. Do invest the time and accept something like 75 to 85 percent as okay. The mythology of being perfect is strong in music. As a professional you eventually learn that what separates the amateur from the pro isn’t mistakes but how they recover and move on.
French was similar for me, but eventually need propelled me forward there. Communication is far more important than a great grade. With music and language, you must try to do it in order to do it at all. If you don’t play harder pieces, you don’t ever improve your playing. If you don’t speak the language haltingly and stupid, you never will get to a point where you understand and express your own thoughts.
It’s not being lazy, It’s being afraid.
I see now that that age (18 to 22) is a bit more tender than I thought it was then. Yes you are an adult but you are not fully formed. Criticism should be spare. Encouragement and redirection tends to be more helpful. That’s my opinion now as I see my near 18 year old daughter move through her life.
Looking it at from another angle, we don’t call Tibetan monks lazy when they sit and meditate for many hours a day. We call them contemplative. Anyone who has sat still for more than 5 minutes knows that it isn’t easy. But to the external eye, sitting around all day is lazy in most contexts, isn’t it?
What’s the point if all this laziness goes away? What it everyone stopped being lazy? How bad would that be? We’d have a world of better amateur piano players and people who communicate better in more than one language? And how does that make the world a better place. I don’t see it being that much different.
We are going to all of a sudden have more productivity? Doesn’t that mean more consumption, too? We are going to grow more food ourselves because we have more gardens. We are going to make more money? Well not if we all become less lazy in proportion.
I’m just not seeing the upside. So maybe we could just stop saying we’re lazy and accept that who are is fine. You’re good. I’m good. Let’s have a coffee and be contemplative.