Plus Side: Got to go on a 50 mile ride with George Hincapie and 50 other people on high end bikes, hung with the pack, out-climbed some folks, got invited to train with a pretty good team and redeemed the usefulness of Reynolds 531 Steel in the face of Carbon Fiber, not to mention made a lot of great contacts for branching out into bicycle-magazine writing.
Minus Side: it was ass-cold outside and at the edge of my envelope to hang with the pack. And now, the next day, I feel sick.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Discipline
The two main themes of this year for me have been discipline and strength. Right now I'm only interested in the latter as it's helped me to achieve the former. And I'm not interested in the former in terms of the discipline of others... I'm focusing here on self-discipline.
Discipline, for me, has always been a counterpoint to chaos. I don't like ordered lives, but (and? so?) I try to live a disciplined life in a vacuum of order. (I think there are a lot of people like that, and a lot of people who have the opposing mindset, people who structure their lives so that they can be wild within it.) In any event, I feel like this year I've finally taken discipline head-on as a goal.
The wildly irresponsible manner with which L left me at the beginning of the year made it impossible to even get out of bed. But I had responsibilities, an album to finish, work to do. And so the year started off with this intense struggle to bring order to the chaos my life had become. It failed more than it succeeded, but it set the tone, so to speak, let me practice focus. The I left my job for a more structured job, thinking that would lend me some of its order. It didn't, and my methods of work and motivation didn't match with the job, so, live and learn... I left. During the job, however, I started to take the idea of racing bicycles and, more generally, of getting in better shape seriously, so I started exercising, finding and testing my limits, watching what I put into my body for the first time in my life (again, successes and failures abound), but I started thinking in a more disciplined way. When I left my job, I went back to writing, but with a renewed sense of purpose and a much more disciplined attitude. When I talk to mattio, now, about training, I think about it in the same way as I do writing assignments. I hold myself to training and writing schedules. Very loosely, but, that's the point: if they're my schedules, they can be changed at my will. But they're still schedules, and they help me feel productive.
I've never understood 'mind over matter' quite so much.
Discipline, for me, has always been a counterpoint to chaos. I don't like ordered lives, but (and? so?) I try to live a disciplined life in a vacuum of order. (I think there are a lot of people like that, and a lot of people who have the opposing mindset, people who structure their lives so that they can be wild within it.) In any event, I feel like this year I've finally taken discipline head-on as a goal.
The wildly irresponsible manner with which L left me at the beginning of the year made it impossible to even get out of bed. But I had responsibilities, an album to finish, work to do. And so the year started off with this intense struggle to bring order to the chaos my life had become. It failed more than it succeeded, but it set the tone, so to speak, let me practice focus. The I left my job for a more structured job, thinking that would lend me some of its order. It didn't, and my methods of work and motivation didn't match with the job, so, live and learn... I left. During the job, however, I started to take the idea of racing bicycles and, more generally, of getting in better shape seriously, so I started exercising, finding and testing my limits, watching what I put into my body for the first time in my life (again, successes and failures abound), but I started thinking in a more disciplined way. When I left my job, I went back to writing, but with a renewed sense of purpose and a much more disciplined attitude. When I talk to mattio, now, about training, I think about it in the same way as I do writing assignments. I hold myself to training and writing schedules. Very loosely, but, that's the point: if they're my schedules, they can be changed at my will. But they're still schedules, and they help me feel productive.
I've never understood 'mind over matter' quite so much.
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