In Five Years

Fun with website traffic… part 2

Michael — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:18:37 +0000

210 Nationals

Michael — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 20:43:22 +0000

I just spent the week out on the water sailing in the 210 Class Nationals. Man, what a week! We had beautiful weather almost everyday, and wind on all the days except the last. The second day of racing started out with lots of rain, but it soon passed and we ended up with a very nice day. The last day was a beautiful day, but we just never got enough wind to start a race so it ended up being a bit of a bust. We ended up 10th out of 20 boats, which we’re pretty happy with. We know we’re not in the top tier of racers, but we had a great time so we’re cool with that.

I’m uploading pictures to photos.lebarron.org at the moment, but there’s almost 1900 of them. I’ll go through at some point and pick out some good ones, but in the mean time feel free to browse if you like. Only about 500 are currently up there, uploading is fairly slow, but they’ll be there eventually.

Gyminee

Michael — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:27:59 +0000

Started tracking my food intake on gyminee yesterday. It’s pretty cool, very easy to use. I’ve never really tracked my entire food intake so it should be interesting, as long as I keep up with it. Some things I just have to guess though, like the sub I had when we went out to lunch yesterday. I have a feeling what I picked was too low and I ended up not having enough calories yesterday. I find that a little hard to believe, which is why I think I estimated low.

Meant to get up and work out this morning too, but didn’t get to bed until just after midnight, then there was a HUGE thunderstorm from about 1-3 so that didn’t help either. Would have been cool if it was earlier in the night so I could see it. Lots of lighting and some of the loudest/closest thunder I’ve ever seen. Basically thunder that happened about a half second after the lightning, shook the whole house, and just kept rumbling. Oscar actually crawled under the bed he was so scared, where he barely fits and never voluntarily goes. We did let him up on the bed for the rest of the night so he would calm down. He hasn’t slept in the big bed in a long time so he enjoyed it (and did calm right down).

Just a quick update, that’s all for now!

Workout

Michael — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:42:20 +0000

I started using Gyminee this morning to track what I eat. I’ve also been trying to get up earlier in the morning and do a quick workout. I say trying because I haven’t actually done it yet. I set the alarm early enough and everything, and I even wake up and get out of bed. For some reason I convince myself I should get back in bed though. I need to figure out how to overrule 5:30 AM Michael with 10 PM Michael and actually stay up and go do a workout.

Oh I also switched to decaf a few days ago, so I have a bit of a headache. Should go away soon I imagine.

Dream Big Story

Michael — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:41:52 +0000

I had an interesting experience leaving work on Friday. The kind of experience that makes me feel good about some of the choices I’ve made, and the direction I’m heading in with my life.

To start, what led to the encounter was the license plate I have on my car, as seen here:

I sometimes get a hard time about it, because people read it as “Dr. M Big” and for some reason think it’s hilarious. Of course, that’s not what it says, but my experience will illustrate that.

So, Friday afternoon I head out to my car as usual and start leaving the parking lot. As I’m heading out there’s a guy standing to left that’s waving me over. Not really sure what to think about it, I pull up next to him and put my window down.

“What’s up?”

“You’re the guy I’ve been waiting to meet!”

(ummm… what?) “Oh yeah? What can I do for ya?”

“Your license plate… means Dream Big, right?”

“Yeah” (????)

“I wait out here a few minutes each time I come to the gym to see if I can catch you leaving. You see, I saw the plate a couple months ago and took a picture of it with my phone. Since then, every time I look at my phone I am reminded to keep pushing and keep dreaming. Bruce Willis was filming a movie in Boston this summer, and I wanted to go out for a part. Whenever I had doubts about it or was unsure if I should, I just looked at my phone, saw ‘Dream Big’ and told myself I could keep going. Well, I got the part. So I wanted to tell you that you were an inspiration, it was my daily reminder to keep dreaming and that it could happen. I just wanted to say thank you.”

“Hey, congratulations man! That’s great!”

“Why did you get that on your plate anyway?”

“For that exact reason. Every time I go somewhere, I’m reminded to keep dreaming, and to keep reaching for the dream.”

Who Am I Writing For?

Michael — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:58:59 +0000

In short, I write for me. I’m not writing here for people to read it and then give me advice on my situation. I’m sure some people will eventually, don’t get me wrong, I love hearing from people, but that’s not my motivation for writing. My motivation for writing is just that, motivation. It’s a way to self motivate myself, a way to track what’s going on in my life, what I did today, what I want to do tomorrow or the next, how I feel about what I did or what I want to do. It’s my story, nothing more, nothing less. There will be good days and bad, high points and lows, but in the end, all there will be is me, and that’s enough.

Fun with website traffic

Michael — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:53:23 +0000

Rethinking…

Michael — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:44:58 +0000

I’ve been silent for awhile. I started writing again awhile ago, just here and there, kept the posts as drafts thinking I’d come back and publish them; never did. Life has gone on obviously since then. I got laid off, found a new job, went on vacation, had a birthday, I even have a son due in November. Through it all, however, my mind seems to be getting more and more off track. My overall plan is getting hazier instead of clearer. A big part of that, I’ve realized, is because I stopped writing, stopped keeping a journal, stopped getting things out of my head and down onto paper. The longer I go without writing, the harder it is to get back into it and start getting my life back in order again. I didn’t even really want to write this post, but I’m forcing myself, and I’ll force myself to publish it. Probably without proof-reading, as I’d use that as a form of delaying it and then might not even post it.

There’s a lot of stuff I have to still get out of my head, get organized, and get moving on, but at least this is a start. I can’t do it all in one day, which is tough for me to realize and work through, it might take months, most likely years for what I really want, but I’ll get there, just have to keep moving forward one step at a time.

Oscar

Michael — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:01:55 +0000

I went shopping the other day. Came back and brought all the bags into the house and set them down. Of course, Oscar is very interested as usual. I left the room for a minute and came back to this…

He wouldn’t move, had gotten himself caught in the bag. Of course he just sits there with that “what? everything here is totally normal, I don’t know what you’re looking at” look on his face.

Update

Michael — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:02:32 +0000

Granted, my last post said I would start posting again, and I did, in a way. I had started to write things down in a notebook. After awhile of doing that though, I think I’m coming back here, I can type a lot faster than I can write. Some of the entries are quite messy as I was writing too fast, trying to keep up with my thoughts. At least when I’m typing I can almost keep up, and it doesn’t get impossibly hard to read when I go too fast.

I got laid off from Kessler Group almost two weeks ago now. I’ve been out job hunting and have found a couple nice prospects. That’s not really the point though. Granted, new job prospects are good (We can only go so long without me having an income), but the more interesting part of it is that it has forced me into doing things that I was putting off. Simple little things like being organized daily, working through my task list instead of just sitting and staring at it, then going off to do something else, and so many other little seemingly unimportant things that I would previously put off are now getting done.

Almost like it has finally clicked that if I don’t grow and change I’m not going to go anywhere. Of course that’s fairly obvious, and I knew it before, but it didn’t really… you know… click. It hadn’t been internalized until recently.

Actually, on that note, it’s 8 AM so I should get started with my day.