Voice Lessons

I have been seeking advice from a lot of people with regards to blogging. Specifically, how do you know what to write about. The consistent response that I get, to boil it down to a common thread, is to "find my voice." 

Finding my voice, basically, is to figure out what sort of topics I want to write about. This has been a hard thing for me to do. I have a dozen bits and pieces of blog posts written, on topics ranging from home ownership, to foster parenting, to training for a marathon. It is surprising how much of the Venn diagram of foster parenting and marathoning overlap. Pieces and parts of posts, but nothing yet that I feel like is worthy of posting. 

Something about the act of "finding my voice" that is very free feeling is that I can write about anything I want. Freeing and at the same time, a bit terrifying. It could be that the reason why I have an iPad with a pile of blog bits in front of me is that there is a part of me that feels like that I am not good enough to write something that is fit for others to read. When I look at the posts that I read and the podcasts I listen to or the videos that I watch as I eat breakfast in the morning, I often think to myself that these people are pretty talented to be able to put out stuff like this on a consistent basis. I look at that and I feel like I don't have what it takes to publish blog on at least a weekly basis.  It is a feeling that I am not alone in having. Feeling inadequate to be published has been talked about by a lot of well respected people in their fields. The term that commonly gets used is imposter syndrome. It is a feeling that has been felt by doctors, writers, actors, artists, musicians. Interestingly enough, it even gets talked about by world leaders in their biographies and obituaries. Even with the feelings of fear of negative criticism, sounding or looking foolish, or just being rejected by those who they hold in high esteem, these people of found the courage in themselves to just say it anyway.

Voice Lessons has been created to provide a chance for me to find my voice for my writing. No theme, no particular topics of expertise.  Someone who doesn't try to talk doesn't learn how. It will also give me a repeating opportunity, in the short term, to be be brave about what I have to say and put it out in the world. Voice Lessons are going to only have the common thread in that the topics are just stuff that I wanted to write about in the moment. What will the end result of this? I have no idea. A result that I am hoping to find is that I will develop the belief in myself to publish what is in my head and my heart, even of no one likes what I write, or if no one even reads it. 

The reason I write is not to be famous, or well regarded. I am fairly sure that I will not get rich doing it. There are really two reasons for me. I get the chance to maybe teach someone something new to them or encourage them to be daring. I hope to encourage someone to try something new. Everyone's life is a story, of sorts. I think that sometimes people go through troubles so that in the future, they have the opportunity to use the problems of their past to help others around them. Sometime, when situations feel dire, it helps to hear from someone who has been in that experience that it gets better. The other reason is admittedly more selfish. I write so that the words and thoughts that are in my head can get out. Words that feel like they will poison me if I keep them in for too long. Writing is something that I have always liked to do. It could be that the fear of not being good enough is part of what kept me from really trying to do it more seriously.  

This post is the first of I hope many. From the outside, it will appear to be totally random. If someone decides to read this one, and whatever comes out of my fingers after this, they will go on a journey with me to see what becomes of my voice. What sort of a writer will I become? It will be a lot of fun finding out together.

This Week in Running (February 5th to 11th)

This was a great week for me to get back on track on my running goals as I prepare for the marathon at the end of April. Considering that I have not been as consistent with my posting, it may be hard to tell that I have a marathon coming up.

January was not the training month that I wanted to have, but, who really wants to spend half of a month sick. I got hit with the flu that has been impacting a lot of people all over the country. Considering how many people have ended up in the hospital, or worse, I think I got off easy. This is especially important since everyone else in my family have a higher chance of getting sick than I do and none of them caught it. Something to be said for hand sanitizer and using a Neti pot to making this go away. I did have to take a trip to urgent care to get a high powered cough suppressant, so that I could sleep with out waking myself, or my wife up. Now, I am on to February and feeling up to getting back on track. For the sake of brevity, I have been training for the Marathon using the Nike Running Club app with a marathon training program built in. I tell it when my race is and it sets a plan for it. The plan is adjusted based on how well I run over the course of the week as well as how I do on benchmark drills that are spaced out over the weeks.

Screen shot from my phone. This is how many
shows I had to listen to as of Jan. 29th.

Monday, February 5th. I ran 5.75 miles this morning with a time of 57:49. That puts my pace at about 10’03”. Not too bad for recovering from rebelling lungs. It was nice to run in my usual places and see how things have changed. In particular, there is a part of my route where there is some new houses being built and that have gone up so fast since I have been down. It will be nice when the street lights in that area are up and working, so I don’t have such a dark spot in my route. Typically, I run while listening to podcasts. Considering how many podcasts I have in my queue, you would think that I don’t listen as often as I do. Thing is that I am working through a backlog of shows going back to 2016. I have gone through and purge out the shows that have lost my interest, or episodes that are very event focused. So, what is left is still subjects that I want to hear more about. On this run, I listened to the most recent episodes of MacStories and Twenty Thousand Hertz. It made the time pass quickly. It was good to get my feet moving again too.

Tuesday, February 6th. This day had one of my most challenging drills to date. The schedule called for a 6 X 1000 meter speed drill. B as I call, I had to run 1000 meters as fast as I could, pause for about 90 seconds, than do it over again until I ran it 6 times. So, I ran full our for 6 kilometers (3.72 miles) over a time of 33:35. That is an average pace of 8’54”. My time on my fastest kilometer was my second interval, with a time of 8’06”. On this morning, I had Cortex playing during the run. I listened to a pretty good piece of the episode by the time I finished the drill. I was completely worn out.

Wednesday, February 7th. This was an indoor training day. I have been using the Nike Training Club app for my Cross Training work. The routine for this session is called Back It Down. I have been running consistently for about 3 years, but, I have basically ignored my core and upper body strength and I can really feel it whenever I do one of these workouts. It only took a little over 24 minutes to make me sweat like it is summer time. All of it was focused on upper body and core strength as well as balance. I listened to music on my iPhone during this since there is a lot of talking during each part of the workout.

Thursday, February 8th. This was a benchmark day. About every couple of weeks or so, the Nike Running Club app has me run a 7 minute warm up, followed by an all out sprint for 3 minutes and a 5 minute cool down. I have done a few of these before, but, this was the first one I have done in a while where I wasn’t sick or it wasn’t freezing outside. I also run these with music on since this is a guided drill with a lot of talking. I covered a total distance of 1.63 miles with a 9’18” average pace.

Friday, February 9th. This was a big day. A problem I have had with my training, even before I got sick was I had a tendency to skip my long runs on the weekends. Between being tired from the long week as well as getting up with my youngest to that my wife can catch up on her sleep, it was my training that suffered. I decided to let the schedule decide when my long runs would happen instead of moving it to the weekend and letting it not happen. Friday was the day for the long run, so I let it be. I got up at 3 am instead of my usual 4 and got out there. I ran 12.5 miles in a time of 2:09:08. That is an average pace of 10’20”. It was great get that short term goal done. During this run, I listened to the Accidental Tech Podcast and Do By Friday. Two very different shows, but they both kept my spirits up as I covered the distance. 

Art from the Nike Running Club app recording my run
on Friday. I felt rabbit fast that day.

I felt really good getting those accomplishments done for the week and I feel like this marathon coming up is not impossible. I even hope to improve on my time from last year.

2018 (That is going to take a bit to get used to.)

We are at the beginning of a new year and it is a time of renewal. It is a time where people set new goals for the year. Some people’s goal come in the form of resolutions to do things like work out more or eat less. I am not the sort that waits for New Year’s Day to make changes, so resolutions are not part of my normal vocabulary. If I want to change some thing, I just start making the changes. I plan on talking about goal setting soon, but today is not the day for that.

My Best Nine from 2017 according to Instagram

2017 was a really difficult year in a lot of respects. We had a house fire in early March. While the actual fire damage was fairly minor, due to my wife’s very quick thinking, There was several thousands of dollars in damage as well as the time my family was displaced from the home. No one was injured in the fire, but, it did put the family in a bit of a tailspin until we all returned home a few months later. 

About a month after the fire, I competed in my first full Marathon. I picked one that was close to home, but at the time of the race, we were living in a hotel about 25 miles from where we live, so I had to drive a farther distance to the race than planned. That was not the only “home field advantage” that I lost or forfeited. I have lived in my town for over 10 years. I knew that the area where the race is held is windy all of the time. I did not take that into account when I picked what I was going to wear during the race. As a result, I froze over the whole course, wearing only a t-shirt and shorts. I would have benefitted well from a long sleeve shirt if nothing else. I ended up finishing the race with a time of 5:12:47. Not a bad time at all for my first marathon, but I will have to admit that I was disappointed with my time, initially. I had it in my head that I could estimate my time based on the times I have had during my half marathons. That could not be farther from the truth. Running a marathon is a lot more than double the physical requirements of a half marathon. There is a sizable mental aspect to the event. I learned about myself as well as how to prepare for a marathon. When I finished, I thought a lot about if I would do another one. In time, I decided that I would and that is part of what I will be talking about in the weeks ahead.

As far as my running for this year, I ran a total of 1,036 miles over the course of the year. Not bad, but I do plan to go farther this year. I am also planning on working more on my upper body strength. I think that will go a long way toward helping me improve on my overall race performance. I will be writing about that as well.

While 2017 was not the year that I wanted, it does not define what 2018 will be. I would like this to be encouraging to whom ever read it. Another project that I am doing this year is posting a picture a day on Instagram. If you are interested in seeing what I post the, please follow me @1pairofshoes. That is my handle on Twitter as well, but, I kind of just post wha comes to mind there as well as retweet the things that I find interesting. Beware!! Happy New Year!!