Post-WOD Position

I have not been able to get the box lately. Lately encompasses since The Games this past July. Life (life and life) outside of CrossFit demanded and still demands my attention. The guilt of being away from the gym is great albeit highly irrational. I am not paid to CrossFit. Nor does CrossFit bring me love and affection. It doesn’t feed me or take me out to the movies or rub my earlobs to relax me after a trying day.

In fact, CrossFit many times treats me bad. It makes my lungs cry. It fills me with self-doubt and self-loathing about my physical abilities. It takes my money. It makes my shoulder, and my ankle and my neck hurt. And sometimes it’s WODs just downright hurt my feelings. But nonetheless, I feel like I have neglected CrossFit. Irrational.

But instead of dwelling on my clearly misguided guilt about being away from it, I’ve decided to call my sabatical my CrossFit off-season. [Read more →]

When I was in college I had a professor who knew just about everything. He could intelligently articulate some knowledge on nearly any subject. It was soon after entering his Urban Studies class that I discovered how this was so. His office consisted of three very large rooms filled to the brim with books. And I don’t mean books stacked neatly on shelves like you might find at your local Border’s Books. I mean, no-room-to-walk, filled with books. I’m sure he had upwards of 10,000 books, magazines and newspapers crammed in those three rooms.

The first time I visited his office, I asked had he read all those books. Without hesitation he said, “Yes.” I don’t know why but it struck me as one of the best things I’d ever heard. The pursuit of knowledge in and of itself just appealed to me. I thought to myself, “I want to know all there is to know about a bunch of stuff. I’m going to have a library like this too.” Over the next twenty years (sigh!), I’ve accumulated a hodgepodge collection of books, newspapers and magazines. And yes, I’ve read most of these items in whole and all at least in part.

A partial glimpse of my library

As was my goal, over the years I’ve accumulated a lot of knowledge over a modest array of topics. However, as I’ve gotten older and perhaps a natural byproduct of doing so, I’ve become less interested in learning about a wide range of topics. I haven’t thought about that change too deeply, but every now and again the thought pops in my head as to why this might be so. I’ve brushed it off as simply being in a reading slump or being occupied with other things. But I’m also filled with the thought it’s more to it. [Read more →]

Flickr by tantek

How tempting is it to go it alone? The American spirit celebrates the individual and treats achievements as if they were all self obtained. So each one of us has a little something in us that makes us want to be a trailblazer. We’ll look at someone doing something with ease and skill and think emphatically to ourselves, “I can do that.”

I’ve done it myself. I’ve seen a furnace put into a buddy’s rental property and after it was said and done, I thought I knew a few things about installing furnaces. I’ve tackled small plumbing jobs around the house on my own. I have even given myself a haircut. I have had varying degrees of success with each endeavor. I won’t go into details. But I will say that my degree of success was highly correlative to the amount of time and effort I put into practicing and studying the endeavor prior to attempting it which was very little.

I am a true believer that anyone, given enough time and the right tools, can learn to do anything. The question becomes, should anyone do anything. The answer is probably no. [Read more →]