What I've Learned This Year

Sometimes, staying in one damn place isn't being stuck but letting all the chips settle before the next adventure.


Everyone should really have a mentor. Or five.

Spending a few minutes (hours?) in your boss' office talking about your day, his thoughts on the election, and the Reconstruction Period of American history can be more productive and important than working through your lunch on a report about Japanese technology bylaws. That's called "camaraderie."

I can eat lettuce or licorice and I will always be the same weight.

My family is more important to me than I like to admit sometimes.

Reading is a perfectly acceptable activity. And documentary watching definitely counts as being productive.

I like to run. Hard. And fast. But marathons are a real commitment. And my legs hurt after.

Even though I get boyfriend-lust, flying across the world to spend forty days without access to phone or internet (or showers) would probably put a damper on a relationship.

I don't have to make all of the changes in my life at the same time. Small changes over a long period of time work just as well, and I get to keep my sanity.

Just because someone is older than you, doesn't mean they have it all figured out. Sometimes 35 year olds need 26 year old wisdom, too.

It is possible to find the best roommates ever from Craigslist.

The internet makes the world a very, very small place.

Changing careers can be frightening and soul crushing and worrisome, but that the alternative is NOT making that change. And I think that's worse.

Maybe living in Manhattan isn't all that bad.

What have you learned this year?

Getting My Ass In Shape to Climb A Mountain

HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINS, WHY ARE YOU SO HIGH?!

So there was this one time that I stopped working out basically altogether and instead ate brownies for three meals a day. That time in my life was called job-switching and pre-Thanksgiving and I'd like to announce you all that it is over. Except I still might eat brownies for breakfast.

HOWEVER. I have been a rockstar at the gym. I think something about knowing that my little gym membership is up in less than a month is getting my ass there more and more. Oh, also the fact that I have to hike like 7 million miles in the Himalayas in April. At 18,000 feet. If that doesn't scare you into six-pack abs...

I will look way more badass than this. Yea, I didn't think it was possible either.

So I've made a short-term goal to break 1:50 in a half-marathon. It's not an enormous goal, but it's one that will take some effort and concentration. Truth? I've never actually trained to race a half-marathon. I don't think I've ever trained to RACE a race except when I was trying to get under 4 hours in 2009 (I did and then I promised myself that was my last marathon ever...and then I did 3 more).

In the effort to not only attempt to stay alive while hauling 50 pounds on my back in the Himalayas, but also get RILLL FAST (not to be confused with "RILLL SWOLE") in a half-marathon, this is what my week last in workouts looked like (starting last Wednesday):

WEDNESDAY: 5 miles at tempo just over 40 minutes (fail, I didn't really do a great job tracking that one)

THURSDAY: Ate many, many Christmas cookies at holiday Christmas party (aka GYM FAIL)

FRIDAY: 5 miles at 9:00 min/mile pace, 1 hour of power yoga

SATURDAY: home yoga (basically lots of crow pose. GAH! CROW POSE! YOU RUIN ME!), 3 miles easy pants in the park

SUNDAY: Do not leave house, instead stay warm and drink lots of tea and bake Christmas cookies. Also known as "Rest".

MONDAY: Body sculpt with Constance, 5 miles at 9:00 min/miles

TUESDAY: 3 miles easy, tons of squats, crunches, booty lifts

WEDNESDAY: 30 minute temp run (8:00 min/mile pace, 3.75 miles), 45 minutes of the Titan Method (similar to a ballet or Physique 57 class)

So all in all, not too shabby. This weekend I'm going to try to get a long trail run in on Christmas Eve at Fleet Feet in Rochester (and maybe I can connive my brother into doing 3 or 4 with me) and then probably hit up some power yoga at Breathe.

Then I will dissolve into a pile of pillows with some good books and Christmas cookies.

How have your workouts been this week? Holiday time is tough, so does anyone have some awesome quick workouts that they love to do?

On Being in the Arena

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

--from Teddy Roosevelt's "Citizenship in the Republic" speech at the Sorbonne in France, April 23, 1910

***

Sometimes it's easy for us to get bogged down by the negativity in our lives. We always want to do more, to do better, to be the best of ourself that we can be. We want to schedule our lives to be of the utmost productivity. Or at least more productive than the girl in the next cubicle.

Don't listen to the critics. Don't get jealous of the girl down the hall who has it waaay more together than you do (disclosure: she's doesn't). Do it your way. Because you're the one in the arena. You're the one that is making the mistakes, learning, growing, failing, overcoming. It's easy to point fingers when looking in from the outside. But really, it's your arena, not theirs.

I have a lot of visions. For myself, my career, my personal life. For this blog and my writing. And I get frustrated a lot. I get frustrated with how slowly it all seems to take. How I never seem to get there when I want to be there. Hell, after I quit my job and took off to Asia for three months, I thought I would never, ever, ever again be tethered to a desk. And 18 months after I got back, I'm working a corporate lifestyle to finance my next adventure.

But you know what? It's okay. I'll get there. And sometimes, getting there doesn't mean making a string of rash decisions to get my ass out the door. For me, who has no problem making rash decisions, sometimes it means pulling hard on the reins and staying put for a while. To find out what it really feels like to be in the arena. To know what mistakes look and feel like.

What does your arena look like? Mine currently looks like a stack of unwrapped Christmas presents and unbaked cookies.

Back in the Training Game

As I get ready for my forty days in the Himalayan backcountry, I've been trying to get back into a more normal training routine. While it is not going to be an all out physical assault like, say, an attempt at Denali, undertaking any sort of expedition will be rigorous. I'm really trying to build my leg strength, particularly because, as a woman (and likely, one of the few women on this program), I will still be expected to carry a serious amount of weight (50-60 pounds). That's almost 50% of my body weight.

So I'm slowly getting back into running, slowly increasing my mileage, and slowly upping my speed. I'm training for a half-marathon and my goal is to be below 1:50 (I think my fastest half marathon to date was around 1:55). This means not only upping the mileage, but increasing my leg strength to increase my turnover speed.

But no dieting, I learned sort of serendipitously. A few weeks ago, when I was on the train home for Thanksgiving, I was sitting next to a woman whose nephew had completed the exact same program that I was setting out to do.

"Make sure you add a few pounds before you take off for India," she warned. "After forty days in the backcountry, shoveling snow, hauling packs, and eating granola my nephew lost almost 10 pounds."

And with that, I'm off to mow down cookies, and add sugar to everything that touches my lips.

What was the last adventure you were excited about? Have you ever had to get in shape to travel? Or traveled to get in shape (for a marathon or something)?

From Corporate Ace to...Teacher?

This post is going to sound a little whiny and self-serving. Only a little, toward the beginning really, but I'm warning you in advance so you can back out now and not make any rolling-your-eyes comments about my #firstworldproblems.

I've been sort of looking at making a big career shift, which Penelope Trunk says is fine, because most of Generation Y only stays in a job for 18 months. That is a comforting fact in relation to my recent career shifting, but not such a comforting when I realize that I spent almost four years in the same job doing the same damn thing everyday without a promotion. Why did no one tell me that I needed to GET UP TO SPEED WITH GEN Y?! #firstworldproblems

There was a time in my life when I thought that I would be a corporate rockstar. I guess technically, I still could be, but I'm certainly not headed on that path. I like to work hard, and have goals and a direction, but it's really hard to see the value in something that neither I nor anyone else I care about is directly benefitting from (for example, analyzing financial projections for a tech startup, or refilling a damn coffee urn because a client is going to be working late on a filing). I'm big picture, and I'm a people person. Someone forgot to tell me that entry level corporate jobs in New York City require absolute obedience and the desire to be really, really small picture, which I am most definitely not (An example of this is that I write blog posts riddled with grammatical errors not because I'm illiterate but because I simply don't care enough to read my blog posts through after I've written them). I have enormous ideas and the initiative to start them, but what I really need is someone to follow through on my awesome ideas for me while I go start other awesome ideas (#firstworldproblems).

So anyway, I graduated from college and had wild dreams about being a rock star event planner and being flown miles around the world to plan events for dream clients and then yada yada heading up some HUGE corporate event planning division and living in a bombass apartment in midtown and owning furniture not from IKEA.

But I slowly realized that 1) Events is not the industry for that to be your life ever, ever, ever and 2) traveling on someone else's dime means you're not actually doing the traveling piece but instead just doing your job in a different city with a different commute in the morning and a different pizza joint to try out for dinners.

So teaching? Well, teaching is sort of one of those careers that I never thought I'd want to have, partially because (don't hate me) it's not all that hard to get a teaching job. I always just thought that I was better than teaching and that I deserved to play on an adult level.

But I feel like that's stupid. No, that's definitely stupid. 1) Anyone can teach, but teaching and MAKING AN IMPACT is incredibly, incredibly difficult. 2) It's also stupid to live your life for anyone else. It sounds ridiculous and cliche, but I swear, I'd be good if I never had to wear ill-performing, non-sweat absorbing cotton dress shirts ever, ever again 3) Everyone in the corporate world wants to be a teacher, they just don't call it teaching. They call it mentoring, or coaching, or public-speaking-on-my-area-of-expertise. But it's really, really just teaching. It's not teaching kids, which is somehow supposed to make it one of those three previous words that I listed above.

So, bottom line is that I love to travel. I love to change my surroundings and am feeling so goddang antsy in New York. I love blogging when I get comments like "yep, girl, you inspired me today" and I love guiding when I feel like someone totally has an AHA moment after I describe the flight patterns of a turkey vulture.

And I secretly want to spend a month or so at a time learning to SCUBA dive, or surf like a champ, or ski my face off. And when you're a teacher (especially a teacher at THIS badass school or THIS sick place for kiddos) it's not only part of your work environment, it's LITERALLY PART OF YOUR JOB to be proficient at awesome action sports.

So, I'm moving to India for a bit, gunna get my ass kicked by mountains, carry my entire life on my back, learn how to mountaineer, travel around the rest of India for a while and then get on with the living, traveling and educating. Sure, it makes me feel a little guilty that the return on my fancy schmancy college investment is going toward a lifestyle like this, but I can't live my life for anyone else, can I?

Have you ever completely shifted gears? In life or school or elsewhere?

26 New Things: Go to a drive in movie

It was August. I was dating a very lovely boy that lived so far upstate in New York that they had drive-in movies within a reasonable driving distance.

And so, after gushing about how one of my goals in life is to go see the wonders of the silver screen from behind the romantic glass of a Ford Envoy, off we went with snacks and blankets and rose-colored glasses.

Until we both realized that, nowadays, Ford Envoys don't have bench seating, making snuggling impossible unless you want to get very friendly with a gear shifter.

And also, this picture? Totally false. Technology has RUINED the drive-in movie by allowing you to tune in from the radio in your car. WHICHMEANS! That you can't get all frisky and hop on the hood of your car and neck like a coupla' teenagers. You have to sit in your car, separated by the gear shifter and trying to pretend that it's comfortable sitting in your car to watch a movie.

In fact, I'd say that all parents SHOULD let their daughters go on dates at drive-in movies. Let me tell you, there is NO funny business going on inside of a car that can't be done in a movie theater. For reals.

Wanderlust: India

I'm going to India.

I haven't told anyone yet (well except everyone on the internet and my family) but, after 13 months of staying relatively immobile in New York, I've decided that I want to travel again.

In my decision to travel, however, I knew I could travel pretty much anywhere since I have been saving money like a crazy lady. Yes, even in New York City it's possible to save money. What's that phrase about if something is important enough to you, you will make it happen?

With my savings I could:

-go to France and live in a tiny villa in the countryside for a few months.

-travel for a year to every developing country in Asia (sorry, Japan, maybe next time).

-road trip up, down, and across the United States

However, what I've decided to do is spend forty days in India getting my ass kicked by mountains. With 60 pounds on my back. And no showers.

I've always loved the outdoors but have never actually considered myself very proficient in the outdoors. However, as I've started to guide part-time in Manhattan, I've realized that I love interacting with people. But as a guide, your goal isn't to educate as much as it is to simply lead. And I feel that I have so much more to give as an educator, teacher, coach, supporter, or mentor.

So I'm going to spend forty days in India learning how to mountaineer, getting jiggy with some crampons, not losing my ice axe, shoveling a shit ton of snow outside my tent, and hopefully developing the skills that I need to be a more effective educator.

What are you excited for in the New Year?