Yearly Archives: 2013

Night Runs

I love them. Ever since I picked up the running bug a couple of years ago I’ve found that it is my favorite time to run.

Just got back from a short but fast 2.5 mile jaunt. It was pretty hot today (mid-90s) but has cooled off to a very comfortable mid 70s this evening. There is a light cool breeze blowing fairly steady. There was a gorgeous crescent moon in the sky and what I believe to be Procyon shining bright just southwest of it’s tip.

The street I run on1 is a very popular street for runners and walkers. And, why not, it is a perfect bouled for running. Fairly straight, moderate inclines and declines, and super easy to gauge pace and distance. It is also is beautiful and full of well maintained Victorian era mansions. So, it is no surprise that it is well trafficked during the day. But at night, after 10pm or so most days, it is pretty quiet. When I run at this time, despite the occasional car or bike or pedestrian, I feel like I have it all to myself.

I find this is my best time to think during my run. To just let my mind go or concentrate on my breathing. Especially lately as I have been feeling rather off. A good night run makes me feel a bit more on.

  1. For those familiar with Saint Paul, I run on Summit Avenue. Here are some facts that even most locals don’t know about Summit Avenue. Beginning at Dale St. and going all the way to Cretin Ave., every stoplight is a half a mile (So, Dale to Victoria is a half mile. Dale to Lexington is a full mile). There are four blocks between each stoplight. This makes each block 1/8 of a mile. Therefore, if you are running quarter mile intervals, you know it is on/off every two blocks. Final pro tip: From the corner of Dale to the first crosswalk at Saint Thomas and back is exactly 10k. ↩

The Yo-Yo Expert

I once had a friend who loved to yo-yo. He was a computer security specialist by trade. But, when he had some down time or wanted something fun to do or just needed to get out of his own head for a while, he’d whip out his yo-yo.

Working through a problem? Yo-yo. Bored? Yo-yo. Frustrated? Angry? Yo-yo. No date on Saturday? Yo-yo.

This had been his “thing” since he was a teen. And, over time, he started to pick up ious tricks. He, in fact, became quite good. He’d show up at parties and people would ask him to yo-yo. Mesmerizing the crowd for an hour. He then decided to enter a competition or two. He won these handily. Other lesser skilled yo-yo enthusiasts happily paid him for learning tricks and tips.

Pretty soon, he built a business around this. He’d hire himself out for parties, sell instructional videos, win cash prizes at competitions. Not too long after, Duncan offered him a paid sponsorship. They gave him more money than you can imagine for playing with a kids toy and flew him around the world doing something he loved.

Now, he did not set out to become a professional yo-yo expert. All he was doing was passing the time in the era before Facebook and social networks and all of the other things so many of us “pass time” with existed. Yet, the passion for the skill and fun of the play he had was so deep that at a certain point he couldn’t not build a business around it and find some way to do it full time.

Now, I’ve lost touch with him and he is not coming up on my searches. I don’t know what he is doing today. Maybe he is still doing yo-yo professionally or maybe not. But…

Oh, I forgot to mention, do you know how it was he became a computer security specialist? He loved to hack into people’s systems in the early days. Big companies, small ones, banks, etc. You know, just for fun. He was a kid. He didn’t do anything to them. He did it just to see if he could. He’d leave a backdoor sometimes, maybe. Not always. He was easily bored once he got in and generally just moved on to the next.

But then, once day he got caught. Some savvy IT guy at one of these companies tracked him down and asked him how he got in. He told him that they would have to pay to find out and that he would be happy to fix it for them. At that moment, he realized that he could build a business around that for every single place he hacked. That he could offer to hack people and fix their problems and not risk getting arrested for it. At a certain point, for both his level of skill and own personal safety, he couldn’t not build a business around it and find some way to do it full time.

My point being that, basically, freelancing ultimately boils down to this:

  1. Discover who you are and what you love to do.
  2. Build a business around that.
  3. Repeat.

Anyways, where was I? Oh, yes. I don’t have any idea what that guy is doing right now. But, my guess is it has something to do with these three steps.

Empty

I’ve missed a couple of days this week in my daily posting. Mea culpa. What can I say? One should not dwell on such things. The world didn’t end after all. One picks up and moves on…

But, what exactly do we pick up? What do we pick up from failure? Even when it is mostly ourselves we’ve failed? What do we move on with?

Hopefully, we pick up lessons learned. We move on with the knowledge learned from these.

For me, I think part of my failure to honor my commitment here is not a lack of writing or things to write about. It is, in fact, that right now I have too much to write about. I’m actively writing two books that are greatly related. One of them is released and people have paid for. Therefore, my head space dwells mostly in that subject area. The writing I do around this is committed to these two projects such that I have nothing left in me to be shared here.

One of the things I have learned from running is that, in training, you always want to end your run feeling like you have a “bit left in the tank”. In other words, that you could go a little bit further if you wanted to. The fact is that I have not been doing this with my mental energy. I’ve been reaching the end of my day empty.

I think the solution may be to change my strategy a bit. Perhaps to share some of the research and process and ancillary thinking that is going into the other work. Perhaps seeing some of this will be useful and revelatory to you. Perhaps it may even help you in your own work.

I’ll try that for a while and we’ll see.