The next four years

I wrote a Facebook note the other day, about things I wanted to do by the time I was 40 (I'm 4 years and a couple months from there). It was inspired by some discussions I'd had at work with a friend who has just 10 months until 40, and his "undone" things.

My list has two important things on it.

1. Run a marathon.
2. Write some fiction.

2 is easy, depending on how you define it. The writing exercises I'm trying to get back into could qualify under some definitions.

1 is a stereotypical BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). I don't know that I'll ever be in shape to run a marathon. But the road there will teach me a lot about myself and get me into the shape I know I want to be in. My escape clause is running a Half. I ran a 10K, I'm relatively sure that given another 6-9 months of training I could have been ready to at least finish a Half, even if I embarassed myself in the process.

I've started the writing exercises again.

I have yet to make a firm and serious commitment to the right nutrition and exercise routines to get me back into running shape.

So I'm here to write about the reasons I should commit myself to this:

• My daughter is only going to need more from me, physically. I need to keep up with her.
• My daughter needs a good role model for her fitness.
• I want to live long into my daughter's adult life and not be a burden on her.
• I am sick of hating shopping for new clothes.
• The self-confidence will help me at work.
• It will burn off stress from work and home.
• I was confident and content on a different level when I was at my most fit.
• I know I can do it.
• I want to appear more professional and disciplined.

I recently sat down and talked with some friends who have been steadily growing more involved with fitness over the years. I was inspired and jealous. And frustrated with my own recent lapses.

And by recent I mean last 12-18 months.

Of course, my lapse in writing is much more severe (though it doesn't count the same: I've been blogging steadily instead ... it's like lapsing on running but biking instead).

vs. the empty page

In 2005, my best friend loaned me 3 books on writing fiction. I had been inspired by his success in chasing his dream of writing, and felt a deep urge to put some of my own ideas into words.

I began doing some writing exercises, saving the results to a folder buried deep on my computer, for nobody else to read.

I did five exercises. And life caught up with me and I didn't do any more.

I took those 3 books out today, from the deep recesses of a bookshelf. I cracked them open. I found the exercises, and dug out the documents I had written. I read four of them. Somehow I missed the fifth. One of them was really good -- a comic story which failed utterly in accomplishing the desired exercise but somehow stumbled onto genuine humor about my own flaws.

I had forgotten I had even written it.

The others, well, they were exercises. Not every workout ends up with a pretty result.

Late tonight, when the house was dark and quiet, I cracked open the book and decided to do the next exercise. I opened up a word processor and stared at the blank page for several solid minutes. I brought up my web browser, hoping I had a new email to distract me. Nope. I tabbed over to Facebook, and clicked "Refresh." No new posts from my friends.

Fine. I tabbed back. Stared again.

And then I began typing. It came out slow and disjointed, but it came out.

When I saved the file, I realized I had already done the exercise in 2005. I compared the two results, written 3 and a half years apart. The topic was supposed to be a couple pages describing a difficult, painful, or partially forgotten memory. Back in 2005 I had written about an interaction between a 16 year-old and his mother, based clearly on my own life (but with all the names changed). It read like a scene in a story, but perhaps one where the star of the story is just a little too self-aware for it to be real.

In 2009 I wrote about a friendship that collapsed due to a series of events that started when I was 13 and wrapped up when I was 16. It read like a letter, or perhaps a blog post. First-person, no names changed, very little subtlety.

I re-read them both. I don't know which one I like better. Neither is a fun read. The story from 2005 is more polished but less honest. This year's story is nastier and sadder, but isn't as good a read. I imagine this has more to do with what I've been writing for the past year (aka blog entries and professional emails) than anything else. In some ways, the story I wrote today makes an excellent prequel to the one from 2005. Chronologically the two probably even overlap, although in the years that have followed the memories formed two distinct chapters of my life with nothing to tie them together.

In any case, it's a sort of victory to start the days with those books buried away and end it with a triumph over a blank page. We'll see where it goes from here.

Geocaching on Marathon Monday

Area runners are conspiring to get me back on the roads -- I must have seen a dozen out today while driving the rural roads of the Brookfields. I guess everyone finds the Marathon inspirational.

As always I took today off, and was checking my email on the blackberry when I saw 3 emails in a row from geocaching.com - 3 new geocaches within a few miles of my house. The types of caches we do as a family are fairly limited right now: roadside hides are the majority, followed by easy walks. Rough hiking is just too hard with the stroller. So when I saw that all three were roadside caches I figured we should dash out and try and record our name first on each one (called FTF, for First To Find).

Of course, with a 10-month old, it's not that simple. Getting packed and changed and ready took a while, but we were soon enough on our way. The first geocache was at the site of the Woolcott Homestead in the Brookfields. The Woolcott family settled there in the 1680s and built a tavern which was often visited by travelers on the road to Boston (remember, Route 9 in Massachusetts was the main way to Boston before the Mass Turnpike was built). The Woolcotts played a small part in the often tragic history of relations between the settlers and the Natives; John Woolcott's wife and two daughters were killed by Native raiders in 1693. Though the family remained in the area, all that can be seen on the site now are marker stones. And near one of them we found the coffee canister which had been repurposed as the geocache. We took from it a trackable coin in the shape of an Easter Egg (appropriate since I startled a rabbit while searching for the cache).

We drove down the road to view another historical marker and turned around; by the time we drove by the cache site another family was signing the log book. We were first, but by less than 5 minutes!

We made our way to the second of the three caches, a few miles away by a pond. As we approached we saw a car pulled over and a man bent over peering through the underbrush beneath the roadside trees. We slowed down and considered joining him, but decided not to interfere with his hunt. After all, the third cache remained a possible FTF target! Bravely onward we went on some of the most beautiful scenic roads in East and North Brookfield to a small bridge that crossed a narrow stream. Hidden on the guardrail was a magnetic hide-a-key with a few folded pieces of paper within. We signed our name second (alas, today was not a multiple-first day) and took in a bit of the view before getting back on the road.

We considered returning to the second cache but with the baby's morning disrupted already and the drive longer than we expected we abandoned the hunt and took a more direct route home. As we headed towards Spencer we passed a field with nearly a dozen deer grazing, and a pair of turkeys, one posing most dramatically. We made it home and fed our daughter and finally got her napping a short while later.

While my wife dozed off and I watched the thrilling finish of the Boston Marathon, I knew I had to write this post. The views we saw today weren't spectacular, but they were beautiful and memorable. And we would never have seen them if not for this new hobby of ours.

A single mile

My lovely wife has a class this morning, so I'm left with Evelyn on the most beautiful Saturday morning we've had so far this year. Mid-40s, sunny, and headed up another ten+ degrees. Even with huge puddles, tons of sand and mud, and snow lining the roads, I had to get outside. I bundled Evie up and put her in the Jeep carriage, and took the safest path I could come up with for a walk.

We ended up covering almost a mile, most of it along part of what was my regular summer running route in 2007. Usually that was a 3-mile run but sometimes I made it as long as 5.

It's so weird to write that, 2007, as if I have been hiding in the house for years, but it's true -- I didn't run at all in the summer of 2008.

Walking the along the route I used to run every weekend showed me a few things:

• I love being outside
• My body is going to need some retraining
• I can't wait to share this with Evelyn

Even though we live in a semi-rural area, the roads are not wide and as such it's not the safest place to run, never mind with a stroller. It's going to take some creativity, but it's something I really want to do. I look forward to writing more about it here.

A moment of introspection

A few years back, while my wife and I discussed for the hundredth time whether we would have children or not, she said something to me which really reminded me why I fell in love with her. She told me we didn't need to have kids, but if we didn't, she didn't want to be living the same life in a decade that we were then. She was fine with giving up her dream of being a mother, if I would come forward with a much different dream to take its place.

In the end, we decided together that we wanted to be parents, wanted this life. I do not write this because I regret that choice.

But sometimes I wonder what very different life we would have come up with so that our lives in 2017 would be nothing like our life in 2007.

Late last week I stumbled upon the blog of someone who took an approach that called to me from across the "what if" chasm. She ditched a corporate life and is traveling the world as a freelance writer and consultant. You can read her most recent post here.

Happy New Year

As I start this post there are 40 minutes left in 2008. I looked back earlier this evening at what I hoped I would get out of this year and what I really did. It is keeping me from saying too much about what I want from 2009, that's for sure.

I'll forever remember 2008 as the year I became a father. This was life-changing in ways I have only just begun to explore. I cannot put into words the number of things I have gained, nor the things which I have lost (or at least temporarily misplaced). Change is like that.

The biggest result of this of course is that there is a new person alive today who would never have existed if not for me. This is an incredible responsibility, and I feel humbled by it daily.

2008 wasn't just about becoming a dad, but everything else pales in comparison.

As I said, I'm hesitant to make predictions about 2009. But ...

I think 2009 will be about finding out who we are going to be for the next decade of our lives. We survived the pregnancy, we brought a new life into the world, and we made it through the first six months. Now what? Who are we now, in addition to being parents? How do we reframe ourselves as individuals and as a couple in this new context? Where do my hobbies fall in, which ones are forever gone and which ones can and should I rediscover? How do I reclaim my fitness so I can be there to walk my daughter down the aisle on her wedding day? Where am I going in my professional life? Where are we headed financially? How do we adapt our friendships, our family relationships?

How do we grow, while helping our daughter grow too? How does everything get rebalanced now that there's a new priority #1?

If there's anything that Eager Feet was meant to be about, it's questions like that. There's still room for this blog in my life. I just have to find time to fit it in.

No promises, no resolutions, just questions and ideas.

Happy New Year.

Keeping eager feet moving

The last time I talked about a new hobby, it was kayaking. I had gone with some family and really enjoyed it. Fast forward a couple years, and while I've been kayaking a few more times I'd hesitate to call it a new hobby of mine.

Well, these eager feet have found a new way to get moving -- geocaching. I've always thought of geocaching as a pretty niche hobby, for the subset of people who are both hardcore geeks and hardcore hikers. But it's gotten insanely popular over the past few years, and it's easy to be a casual geocacher these days. The price for introductory hiking GPS receivers is pretty reasonable, too.

So, again, after hearing a ton about it from family, my wife and I decided to give it a try. This time, we ended up buying the equipment ourselves and getting more into it.

I'll tell you pieces of three geocaching stories to introduce the various faces of the hobby.

1. At a state park, with the baby in a stroller and the sun beating down on us, my wife and I searched for a metallic container the size of the eraser at the tip of the pencil. We were pretty sure it was magnetically attached to a guardrail, and after a lengthy sweaty search I finally found it.
2. We drove through a town, on a two-step journey. The first brought us to a small monument we had never seen before, where we found a piece of wood with coordinates carved into it. We went to those coordinates, and found ourselves at a small park we had never visited, though we had seen it from afar. We explored the park, found a trail, zeroed in on the coordinates, and found a container hidden at the base of a tree.
3. My brother-in-law asked for my help in solving a puzzle cache, the only clue to which was the name of the cache, a passage from a fantasy novel, and an image of an item from those books. After days of struggling down dead-ends, I ended up figuring out that the clue was hidden inside the image via a simple Steganography technique. I did all this without leaving my desk. He will go to those coordinates and hopefully find the cache (and hopefully give me credit for solving the puzzle!).
   

I love exploring, I love trails, and I love the geeky roots of the geocaching hobby. Want to do nothing but hit tiny caches people have left in parking lots and roadsides? You can do it. Prefer to do 20-mile deep hikes to find caches only a handful of people have discovered? That option is there too. Want to find something in the middle?

I think this one might be one for the long haul.