I’m slowly introducing exercise back into my routine.

A few days ago, I unceremoniously added a feature to the front page of this blog which tracks the number of consecutive days that I did 100 sit ups.

It’s been hard, private work. There was a day last week I took the bus downtown, and I found myself needing to brace before we rounded a corner. Otherwise, my core throbbed.

I’m also adding running back to my routine. I’ve done a 4 mile loop every other day for a few weeks now. I’m still slow (9:10 pace?), and I’m still having to ice my knees at night.

But boy, I sure do feel grateful for the ability to get out there and pound the pavement!

A third thing I’ve been working on is my writing. I’ve been experimenting with blogging monthly recaps of my thoughts and whatnot that I collect in my journal, which feels useful to me, but not specifically the end game.

I’d love to turn all this writing into something useful. Like writing lyrics or poems.

I came across this article in my Instapaper queue, and it is helping me work through some of the reasons I like both of those parts of me.

I didn’t get a specific pull quote from this article because it feels like one of those articles you need to enjoy in its entirety.

• It's amazing how fast my mental health torpedoes when I get a terrible night of sleep.

• One parenting tip that's helped me cope with big emotions: reframe the situation from "you versus me" to "us versus the problem." It's not "why did you clog the toilet and let poop water overflow over the edge," it's "how can we make it so our toilet doesn't get clogged with an entire roll of toilet paper anymore?" Ask me how I came up with that specific scenario!

• Focus remains a challenge for me. I would love nothing more than to be able to set a schedule and stick to it, but when I go to sit down and honor the schedule, my body does everything in its power to stop me in my tracks. I can't tell why... maybe there's something more wrong with me, maybe I'm not disciplined enough. Maybe it's something else.

• Much of my 2024 experience involved adding a new entry to the list of questions that cycle in my inner monologue: "are these feelings just a part of the human experience, or is there a way to better way to process and cope with these feelings?"

• There's a quote by Yohji Yamamoto that goes, "Start copying what you love. Copy, copy, copy, copy. And at the end of the copy, you will find yourself." I wrote that down nearly two decades ago, and it's only in the last few months that I've started to understand what it means.

• My inability to manage tasks is what likely led to me getting sick going into my anniversary trip to New York. Everything is a choice, and sometimes, you gotta be okay with the consequences of the choices you make. I decided to spend an entire afternoon shopping and playing pull tabs at our old neighborhood bar with my wife instead of building graphics for a show I worked on. Then I had to stay up until 11pm building those graphics. Was it worth it? ...absolutely.

• If you ever want to see a masterclass in problem solving, go sit in the booth during a live television broadcast.

• Of all the terrifying places on earth, the one which still frightens me the most is sleeping in an unfamiliar bed.

• I'd like to further explore the intersection of fear and confidence.

• I spent a few days in New York, and it was fascinating to see the role that selfishness plays in that culture. In the midwest, cooperativeness is a necessity... if you were a dick to your neighbor in the summer, he might not wanna lend you firewood when you're freezing to death in the winter. In New York, everyone's selfishness stands in as a proxy for respect. People are curt not out of hostility, but as if to say "I won't take up any more of your time than I need to."

• I've known my wife for nearly 14 years now, and it took all this time to feel like I understand her. And now that I do, I love her even more, and I'm so lucky to have been married to her for a decade.

• I watched the entire "Mr. McMahon" docu-series on Netflix in a couple days (thanks Covid lol), and there was a moment in there where Shawn Michaels was talking about the kickback they were receiving from parents in the late 90s. His philosophy at the time was "if you don't like it, be a parent and ban your kids from watching it." Now that he has kids, he's realizing that you can't exactly do that. We can't shelter our kids from the realities of our society. There's so much good and so much bad that we are exposed to in our lives, and it's our job as parents not to shelter our kids from it, but help them learn how to navigate it.

• That being said: I loved the attitude era. I loved the campy stories of irreverent punks beating up their bosses, sticking up for themselves, meting out their own brand of vigilante justice. It is (and was) also super messed up. It can be both of those things.

• In the past, starting something new meant I should make huge, sweeping changes to my entire life. New job? That must also mean new exercise routine, new meal habits, and new hobbies. 36 year old Tim realizes that I can only bite off so much, and it would be more sustainable to focus on doing well at my new job, and then taking on new challenges once I am settled in.

• I like to think that if the famous writers throughout history had the same tech as us, they'd have their own RSS feeds and publish their own thoughts frequently on their blogs.

• There was a moment last week where I was grilling wings and watching my wife try to get our new moped running, my son argue about being outside (it was gorgeous out and I made him get off of Minecraft to enjoy it lol), and my daughter raise hell with the neighbor kids. I was listening to a new album, and reflecting on how much fun I had at work learning new stuff all week. That's when it dawned on me: "I've made it."

• I don't think my parents and teachers growing up were wrong to focus on teaching us skills we need to survive in this world. I just wish they'd also have taught us how to enjoy things, too.

• Dreamworks is more than capable of serving as stiff competition to the Disney empire. The Wild Robot was really good! I wish there were more studios cranking out enjoyable, emotionally-charged stories catered toward a family audience in animated form.

• RuPaul often says, "if you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love someone else?" I find it difficult to love myself. All the techniques I've used to address my debilitating impostor syndrome involve some variant of tough love, and believe it or not: that never really helped me much. What's working for me currently is talking to myself the way I talk to my kids. Be positive. Focus on what you can change. Be humble and admit when you need help. And be there for others when they need you, too.

• I've struggled most of my life with feeling art. I look at a painting and can only see it at a purely technical level, as if knowing why an artist used a specific brand of acrylic paint explains the motivation behind the work. I've typically been more fascinated with how people do things rather than what message they're trying to convey. All this to say: I watched Jumanji again for the first time in years last week. I've seen that movie at least two dozen times, and I was legitimately spooked by it. Mid-20s Tim would watch that movie and think "I wonder how they pulled off that stampede shot inside the house?" Early-30s Tim would watch that movie and think, "were people in the 60s so into themselves that they didn't notice a child wandering into an active construction site and retrieving a treasure chest that was there in plain sight?" This time, I just felt myself as each of the characters. How it would feel to lose my parents in a car accident. How it would feel as a busy aunt who suddenly has to deal with two children. How it would feel to be a hunter whose only motivation is to murder the person who rolled the dice.

• I was raised to understand that love is showing someone how to avoid mistakes. As I reflect on that, I'd amend that belief to say that love is helping someone learn from their own mistakes and being there for them with firm support when they do screw up.

• Alexi Pappas once said, "Whenever you’re chasing a big dream, you’re supposed to feel good a third of the time, okay a third of the time, and crappy or not great a third of the time, and if you feel roughly in those ratios, it means you are in fact chasing a dream." I've been slowly working my way back into running shape, and I can confirm that I feel that way in those ratios.

• Running at 5:30a means I get to wander through my neighborhood and see everyone’s festive and spooky Halloween decorations instead of everyone’s political signs.

• One of the hardest aspects of being a software engineer is that the implementation details of your job change all the time. Did you know that in Ruby, if you pass variables into a method with the same name as the method is expecting (like a_method(property_1: property_1, foo: foo)), you can shorthand it to be like a_method(property_1:, foo:)? I learned that this week!

• If art is finding a way to express what is rattling around in your head to others, then maybe writing code is actually my artistic expression.

• When it comes to empathy, I've never struggled with the "getting into someone's mind" part. What I've struggle with is accepting that the other person's point of view is valid. And I'm still working on that.

I am a big fan of Deena Kastor. She’s an Olympic bronze medalist and former U.S. record holder for the marathon.

Deena shared her approach for injecting joy into miserable situations in her TEDx talk, which is certainly something I can empathize with as a former marathoner myself.

Doing wind sprints up the hill behind Coffman Union doesn’t sound like much fun, but when you’re doing it with others and trying to make each other laugh while you do it, it’s an experience you’ll never forget.

For cradle Catholics like me, death is forever a part of how you see the world: how you pray, how you celebrate, how you tell stories and create art. But that doesn’t make your awareness of your inevitable death any easier. The thought of not being with my wife and my daughters, of never seeing my family again—these thoughts overtake me with an ambiguous frisson, something like the rush of ecstatic exhaustion I feel somewhere near the top of the hill.

I won’t run forever. But running feels like a practice inherited from some ancient tradition, something primal and odd. I run in the heat to run into the summer, to keep the heat going as the evening light begins to dim.

Ugh, I really need to stop reading powerful essays about running.

Eventually, one of them will make me pick up a new pair of shoes and get in a couple laps around the block.

In 2020, when Hicks set the fastest known supported women’s time in a roughly 90-mile challenge called Nolan’s 14, which involves hiking and running 14 14,000-foot mountains, Dauwalter paced her through the night, telling jokes and stories to make the time pass. Around midnight, she asked Hicks if she wanted a bite of pizza and pulled out a slice wrapped in tinfoil from her pack.

The legend of Courtney continues to grow. If you are unfamiliar with the accomplishments of this Minnesota native, go look them up.

Just reading this article makes me want to dust off my running shoes and get a hundred miler under my belt.

Seidel went to Eugene in late June, during the U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships, for what is known as team processing, an administrative session to prepare athletes for international competition. They fill out paperwork and get sized for uniforms. And, new in 2021, athletes undergo a mental health screening.

Seidel answered the questions on the screener honestly—and her responses raised red flags. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) doctors, who administer the screening, referred her for treatment.

A USOPC spokesperson wrote in an email to Runner’s World that the test screens for anxiety, depression, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, and sleep disorders, among other things. The results athletes provide are then flagged for follow up by a USOPC licensed mental health provider. From there, the athletes are connected to mental health resources.

“The screenings are not intended to screen athletes out of competition or off Team USA, but are a part of a broad approach to intervene and provide support to athletes who struggle with mental health, so they are able to achieve their goals,” the spokesperson wrote.

Seidel said she was connected with a new team of specialists, many in Salt Lake City. “USOPC set up everything for me and they’re continuing treatment for me,” she said. “Honestly it was so much easier being able to have them take the reins on it. And feel very much like, ‘Okay, they’re going to help me out on this.’”

I recall sitting with my therapist for the first time during my big depressive episode in 2021. I hadn’t said a word yet, and I started welling up almost immediately.

“I have no idea why I’m crying,” I said to her. I hadn’t even explained why I was there.

“It’s probably because you are feeling relief,” she said.

She was completely right. I hadn’t really appreciated the need to unload your trauma and to allow someone to help you unpack and sort through your anxieties.

I’d still say that 99% of the tears I’ve shed in the past three years came after being vulnerable and letting others help me.

I felt those same tears well up when reading this piece about Molly Siedel, particularly the section in the pull quote above.

Say what you will about our Olympic committee: this policy is a walk off home run. Kudos to them for offering help, and mega kudos to Molly for being strong enough to take it.

I’ve had the fortune of getting to hang around several Olympians, and hearing them share stories of the pressures they face is incredible. I’m glad they have an opportunity to get relief when they need it.

When she feels as if she is running on shards of glass, when her legs feel like they are about to split open, when she thinks she can’t possibly run one more mile, Courtney Dauwalter starts visualizing the pain cave. It’s a place she constructs in her mind with elaborate detail. She conjures every crevice of the cave’s architecture: a large space with different tunnels inside. The cavernous paths in her mind can be wide or narrow, depending on the length and duration of the race. But with Courtney, they’re usually impossibly long.

Dauwalter, 37, is considered the world’s best female ultramarathon runner. She might just be the greatest ultrarunner of all time, period. She races astonishing distances of 100- and 200-plus miles, even once attempting a 486-mile course. She is often on her feet for a mind-bending 24 or 48 straight hours, in the harshest environments imaginable, from steep terrain and high elevation to extreme weather.

Each race, she intends to go into the pain cave. She almost craves it. She warns herself, standing at the start line right before the gun goes off, that she is about to embark on another uncomfortable journey to the cave. “It’s not always going to feel great,” she tells herself. “But that’s going to make us better. We’re going to get better from visiting it.”

I got to meet Courtney while recording an episode of C Tolle Run, and I can confirm that she is incredibly nice and wonderful to be around.

Her attitude here towards approaching uncomfortable situations is the one I want to have when I grow up.

This whole article is insanely inspiring. Courtney serves as one of those people who seem to understand how to live your best life: push yourself to do your best, explore the world around you, appreciate every little thing, and use all your tools to help you get better (even tools like negative thoughts and pain).

There is nothing quite like running super long distances, and reading this article makes me think I need to set myself up with another challenge.

(Not running-related, though. I think I’ve gone as far as I can realistically go with that sport. Tomorrow morning, I’m gonna pick up my bike and start building there.)

In his 2006 essay, ‘Roger Federer as Religious Experience’, the late, great American writer David Foster Wallace wrote that “beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty”.

“It might be called kinetic beauty,” he added. “Its power and appeal are universal.”

Watch Kipchoge run, and you’ll see his point. It’s difficult to find a sportsperson so impossibly suited to his craft, as if his entire reason for being is to coast over the ground at 4:40 per mile, a pace that for most would feel like a sprint.

But when Kipchoge does it, his head has virtually no vertical motion, his face so relaxed that he looks bored. His arms hang loose, swinging casually, his fingers in a gentle tuck, as if holding an invisible stick. His feet don’t so much hit the ground as stroke it, his toes pushing off the road with the elegant, balletic grace of a dancer.

Kipchoge is to marathon running as Jordan is to basketball, Williams is to tennis, and Gretzky is to hockey: an absolute monster, unquestioned in their supremacy.

Have you ever run a mile in four minutes and forty seconds? How about 26.2 of them back to back?

Can I go faster in my next marathon? I don't know, but I'll certainly try. All three of my kids, though, are realistic about what it means to try to get faster as the body gets weaker every day. They are excited about what they'll feel like at 18 or 28. They're climbing up the mountain as I'm walking down.

Inventor William Cubitt subscribed to the “no pain, no gain” philosophy. His “Tread-Wheel,” which was described in the 1822 edition of Rules for the Government of Gaols, Houses of Correction, and Penitentiaries, was presented as a way for prisoners to put in an honest day’s labor. Prisoners used treadmills in groups, with up to two dozen convicts working a single machine, usually grinding grain or pumping water, sometimes for as long as eight hours at a stretch. They’d do so “by means of steps … the gang of prisoners ascend[ing] at one end … their combined weight acting upon every successive stepping board, precisely as a stream upon the float-boards of a water wheel.”

Given a treadmill workout and nothing, I sadly choose nothing all too often.

However, it is fantastic that we have the option, and I’m glad the technology is evolving to make treadmill runs feel more like “real” runs.

I do wish, however, I had one of those treadmill desks. I could see myself easily getting 30,000 steps a day if I had one of those bad boys.