New job, life changes

So much stuff has happened to me and my family in the past few weeks, I feel like I need to write it all down, despite the fact that blogging seems like a chore lately. The big news is that I got a new job, contract position with XXX. I got a call out of the blue from a recruiter a week and a half ago, had a phone interview over the weekend, and I had a job offer a couple of days later. It's been very quick. I accepted right away but spent most of last week second guessing my decision. I feel like I made the right decision, though.

Definitely staying at my current job will be bad. They are laying people off here, so who knows how secure my position here really is. I can also continue to feel frustrated in my current role and lack of career development here, I've decided that that situation will not change, despite how much I complain about the situation. At least I will be getting a raise and going someplace where I'll have a chance to develop my skills and resume experience.

It will most probably be difficult, though. The new job is in Hoffman Estates, which is a pretty far commute. We only have one car right now so I'd have to take public transportation. I will be commuting for at least an hour longer than what I'm used to. And probably the most difficult aspect of the new commute is that it will be harder for K. to take care of the kids before and after work now that I'll be leaving earlier and coming home later. I'll also miss out on some time that I could spend with the kids before they have to go to sleep. We may have to buy a second car if the commute is too much, right now I'd rather take the train as it forces me to focus on my reading and studying.

I'm nervous about it. I was pretty hard on myself last week, for being indecisive, for putting my family in a situation where they have to sacrifice for my career, when I feel like I should be able to make their lives easier by now. I have a wonderful and supportive wife, that's all I can say. I really want this job to be a new start for me, I want to do well there and I will work as hard as I need to to make sure that happens. And I'll continue to study for my certifications outside of work to insure that my career continues to develop.

Read 'The Now Habit' recently, it's been almost a life changing book for me. I'm struck by how much perfectionism and procrastination are related to bad sense of self worth. Been making it a point to engage in compassionate self talk with myself, to the extent that I'm almost having conversations with myself in public. It feels a bit silly sometimes.

Weather's cold - low 30's. I've been running again though. Times are bad due to all the ice on the ground. I'm losing weight again though. I think as long as we try not to eat out as much as possible, and I bring lunches to work and continue to work out, I'll be down to my good weight again soon.

K. told D. that we need to be released from our current lease as we need an extra room to accomodate J., and I need to be within walking distance of the Metra station. D. said ok, so chances are we will be moving to a new house either in Bucktown or Old Irving sometime in the next couple of months. I feel like my life has been one major life change after another every couple of months ever since I met my wife. I have to admit that - other than my dad's death a couple years ago - most of these life changes have been good and my life is steadily improving.

Word vomit

After the blizzard there were piles of snow 4 feet high on every street corner.  People were engaging in the peculiar Chicago tradition of leaving chairs out in the streets to 'reserve' parking spaces near their homes.  In the past several days we had 30 degree temps, which flooded the streets with melting snow.  I finally motivated myself to go running again and ran 12 miles last weekend.  My shoes are soaked and my legs are sore again for the first time since November really.  A. and P. had a birthday party for one of their little ones last weekend, I told K. to tell H. and J. that I've been training all winter.
My mother in laws in town, she's been having a blast taking care of the babies.  We couldn't be more relieved to let someone take over for a change.  2 kids is definitely a challenge, I wish she could stay with us all the time.  My mom also watched N. Last Friday - N. spent the night at her lolas house which was also nice for us.  We went out to eat and had a nice relaxing evening with J. while our real high maintenance kid was away.  We tried to watch a movie in bed but fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow.
K. is all about dieting and losing weight these days, can't say that I mind.  Right now I'm about 10lbs overweight.  I guess I was so overwhelmed after J. was born that I stopped working out, among other things.  I was also driving N. 3 hours a day to daycare and back so I missed out on my study time on the train.
K's back at work now so she has the car again, and I'm back riding the ghettoness of the cta.  At least I'm getting a lot of studying done on the train.  Been reading this book on the psychology of procrastination and it's been pretty enlightening- I feel like I've been asleep all my life and just woke up.  I'm also amazes how much low self image, perfectionism, fear of failure, and self talk play into procrastination habits.  Been making it a point to talk supportively to myself whenever I catch myself falling into patterns.  I can't believe I never took this stiff seriously before.
Feel better about work, I'm still not where I want to be but I feel like I'm working hard and making good use of my time.  I feel like maybe people are noticing that I've been trying hard for the past few weeks, maybe not though.  It's really easy to slip through the cracks where I work.  I know that if I continue to work as hard as I do and most importantly, don't give up, that I'll eventually start to manifest positive change in my career.
What else.  Z. screwed up my haircut twice.  He made it too short and now I'm back to growing it out again.  It's not that big of a deal.  I've been playing a lot of guitar, a couple sings are coming along.  Mental note that I need to start practicing singing.  It's also our anniversary tonight, really looking forward to taking K. to the Signature room.  

Regarding weight gain while marathon training

I am currently training for my 4th marathon, and I always gain 5 to 10 pounds of weight as well before each marathon. Although I do lose the weight again after the marathon, I dislike the feeling of that extra weight on me, and always wondered what the cause was. I did cut out a lot of my cross-training activities and replaced them for training runs which I thought might be the culprit, because as far as caloric intake, I've kept a daily diary for years, and I had not been consuming enough extra calories to account for all of the pre-marathon weight gain. I did think that some of the weight might have been water and extra muscle weight, but was still convinced that those two factors did not account for all of the extra weight that I always put on.

However, a month or so ago, I received a regional paper put out by a running organization in the Washington DC area, and there was an interesting article about marathon weight gain in it: The author of the article was a specialist in metabolic counseling and testing (I can't recall if she was a nutritionist by trade or something similar). She wrote about a woman who came to her also complaining of a 10-pound weight gain while marathon training. The author tested this woman's metabolic rate via blood and exercise tests. What she found out was that the woman's ideal fat burning range (was it maybe around 120) was well below the heart rate that the woman ran/marathon trained at. Therefore, the woman was doing all of her running and exercise work in the cardio range, and not burning fat. The author encouraged the woman to add 3 weekly 1-hour walking sessions to her exercise routine, and the woman lost the weight shortly thereafter.
Now, when I first read this article, I didn't agree with the conclusion because common sense tells you that calories in=calories out, and that this equation could not be altered by other factors such as heart rate while exercising or exercise type. However, although I did not have a metabolic test performed on me, I did decide to try the addition of low heart rate activities to my training routine, like the author had suggested. I have lost several pounds since adding low heart rate activities such as walking and biking to my marathon training schedule.
Sorry for the long post, but I just wanted to get that out there for those of you who seem to be suffering from the same pre-marathon weight gain phenomenon. I would love to hear comments to this theory - I still am not completely convinced that I'm right!

-a post on the Runners World forums, reminder to myself to try this out.

Do you hear the voice inside your head

To The Light House (Millionyoung Remix) - Memoryhouse
Under Cover Of Darkness - The Strokes
Mouthful of Diamonds (Alan Wilkis Remix) - Phantogram
Photojournalist - Small Black
Wet Hair (Japandroids Cover) - Teen Daze
Sun of a Gun (Savage Skulls Remix) - Oh Land
Plath Heart - Braids
Take_Me_Over_Thee_Loving_Hand_Remix_by_Tim_Goldsworthy - Cut Copy
Rad Racer Final - Work Drugs
Kaputt - Destroyer

Rollins Band - Low Self Opinion

Procrastination and self image

This is the self perpetuating cycle of procrastination and self image:

People who are perfectionists are often procrastinators. Procrastination is a way to deal with fear of failure. By this I mean, people who low self esteem and do not have an intrinsic sense of self worth use procrastination as a way to protect their self image. Procrastinators are first confronted by a challenging project, and since they have low self esteem they feel as if their worth as a person is entirely determined by their performance at a particular task. Therefore, if they fail at this task they will be a failure as a person. They are paralyzed by fear of failure, and they also use procrastination as a way of motivating themselves in an indirect way - in other words, if a person procrastinates a task long enough, sooner or later they are faced with a deadline they have to meet. So ther person completes the task because it has to be done by the deadline - but if they perform less than perfectly at the task they can tell themselves that since they completed the task under deadline, their less than perfect performance is not a true reflection of their abilities. In that way the person is able to preserve his sense of self worth, however shaky that may be.

You'd think that success at a given task will naturally reinforce a person's self image, but a person locked in this cycle never feels as if they've given their all and diminishes their chances of experiencing true success. A way to break this cycle is to change the patterns that prevent one from achieving a sense of intrinsic self worth.

Babies

N. is 2 years old, she has my face and K.'s complexion and hair color. She is an energetic, playful child with an overwhelmingly happy disposition. N. loves her mom and dad, and her toys, and fruit snacks. N. loves to dance and sing songs. N. loves movies about princess, especially movies by Disney or Pixar. N. believes she is a princess, and she is. N. dresses in princess dresses and glittery princess shoes, wears crowns and carries around a magic wand. In the summer N. likes to play in the garden and go running with her dad. In the winter, N. likes to go sledding and eat snow. N.'s best friend is kitty. At night N. sneaks into our room and crawls into bed with us, it's very difficult to sleep with N. because she likes to stick her finger in your ear and in kicks you in bed. I get up early every morning watch cartoons with N. on my lap. N.'s talking is not so good, we have a speech therapist coming to evaluate her next week - her talk sounds mostly like gibberish although I'm hearing a lot more words lately. Her talk is very cute, though. I will probably miss her baby talk when she starts talking like a big girl.

J. spends most of his life attached to his mom's teat - she calls J. her 'parasite'. J. was born skinny but he is getting a little fat. When J. is hungry, he will cry very loudly to let you know he needs his milk. J. is a very smiley and talkative baby, when he is happy he will sit on your lap and smile at you and talk to you for hours. J. is a very social and smiley baby.

Right As You Run

I know this guy who is a friend of a friend of my wife's. He is a single guy who owned a 3 br condo in , kept that place while he bought another place in . In order to afford these two places he would have to make a lot more than me and K. combined. How does he do it on a teacher's salary? His parents spoil him, his parents are both doctors, and he is an only child. I bet if you talk to him he'll say that he's worked hard for everything he has. I have been thinking about this dude, who is even more spoiled than my brothers are. I always compare myself to other people, it's not healthy. Probably a lot of people would say that I have it easy, and I think that I have the hardest life of anyone that I know. Me and K. have to be smart - nobody is helping us.

It's been a weird week. I've been working from home pretty much all week, due to the second to worst blizzard in Chicago history, and snow 10 feet high piled up in the alley behind our garage. I've actually been enjoying it, it's an opportunity to spend time with my family, play with my kids, watch movies. People are rioting in Egypt, I keep worrying about the economy, and this constant feeling of impending doom that does not go away. I remember this documentary I watched said that to be modern means to accept the fact that you could be annhialated at any minute, I'm paraphrasing. When I'm with my family, all that goes away and I'm happy. Also, it's easier to worry about my tiny little world and my petty ambitions than it is to worry about these huge macro issues that I can't even control.

They say that everyone has his Mt. Everest - it could be writing an album, writing a book, creating your own business, growing the largest watermelon in three states - it's different for everybody. Everyone will forgive you if you don't reach your goal, but on your deathbed you will be left with an empty hollow feeling if you don't make at least one serious attempt in your lifetime to reach the summit. Is my Everest raising a family? is it writing an album? is it being successful at my career - and what does that even mean? I can see myself in 40 years on my death bed. Probably if I never make an album I will feel some remorse, if I never advance in my career I will also feel regret at all the time I wasted when the kids were young that I could've spent becoming better at my job. I am always yearning for something better for myself, yet I don't know what I want. I'm also paralyzed as I've always been by perfectionism, fear of failure, and fear of being judged.

It's getting late for me to still be dealing with these things, I'm already old. When will I not be trying to 'figure it out' and just be in the flow? One thing J. always tries to stress is that I need to go easy on myself, and keep in mind that I'm dealing with major life changes in raising two babies. Anyways, the past week has been nice, cozy, enjoyable. I'm glad we had this week before K. goes back to work next week - maybe we won't see a time like this again.

I've actually been semi productive at work, and I feel better about my job, more on top of things. I'm not performing like I want to by any means, and it's not like anyone's noticed that I'm working harder. I'm also not looking for any jobs although I've gotten a lot of calls and emails from recruiters, nothing looks interesting. I also haven't worked out in a few weeks, I really feel out of shape and bloated. H. has just signed up for the Chicago Marathon 2011 - it's time to start thinking about spring races again. I need to start seriously training again once all the snow in the streets has been cleared. I played a lot of guitar on Mon. and Tues. but I haven't felt like it the past two days. So far this year I have music for two fairly basic songs, no vocal melody or lyrics. That actualy doesn't seem like a bad level of productivity given the amount of time I've spent on music.