Peaks are Never as High as They Look

“Climbing the Devil’s Thumb, however, had nudged me a little further away from the obdurate innocence of childhood.  It taught me something about what mountains can and can’t do, about the limits of dreams.  I didn’t recognize that at the time, of course, but I’m grateful for it now.”
-John Krakauer, “The Devil’s Thumb”

This week, I was rereading Eiger Dreams, a collection of essays by John Krakauer, and I came across that quote.  It really spoke to me.  It’s probably no secret to anyone at this point that I almost didn’t come back to law school after this summer.  The first chunk of law school wasn’t so great, either, and I couldn’t figure out why.  My living situation has improved (I have a roommate and a dog now, so I only talk to kitchen appliances for fun and profit), I have fewer classes, and the classes I’m taking are (mostly) about things that I’m actually interested in.  I’m also really enjoying being an associate member of a law review, although it does cause me some stress from time to time.  Plus, my music is really doing well.  I recorded an album (although I still haven’t finished the album art…), made some t-shirts, and, most importantly, feel like I’m playing the best shows I’ve ever played lately.  In short, I have very little excuse to feel anything but pretty fulfilled with how life has been going.

But I didn’t feel that way.  I haven’t been depressed or anything, but I’ve just been sort of coasting along without any real engagement or satisfaction.  I was stuck in a very familiar place of doing things because they were what I was supposed to do, not because I was interested or passionate about them.  Maybe I got there because my internship this summer wasn’t what I hoped it would be.  Maybe it’s just someplace I’m destined to end up every once in a while.  I don’t like being there.  The best times in my life have been times when I haven’t worried about the why of what I’m doing, because it’s obvious.  I’m out doing things because it fulfills my passions.

I think the root issue that got me bogged down here was thinking about my “career.”  When you’re in school (especially after everyone else your age has a real job), one of the go to conversation topics is what you want to be when you grow up.  I’ve always struggled with that question.  I have some ideas from time to time about things I want to be – a political operative, a fishing guide, an economic development or environmental attorney – but when I start focusing too hard on those things, I usually find out pretty quickly that they don’t live up to my expectations.  I think it’s because if your entire justification for existence is some kind of end goal, like a job or to stand on the top of a mountain, and you don’t make the effort to enjoy yourself en route, you find pretty quickly that the goal could never be worth the misery you put yourself through on a day to day basis.

The essay that that quote comes from is about Krakauer’s ascent of the Devil’s Thumb in Alaska, which he had obsessed over for years.  When he finally reached the top, it was barely big enough for him to perch on, and after just a minute or two, he left.  A few weeks later, he was back working the job he’d quit to pursue his lifelong dream.  I think if the only reason I keep doing what I’m doing is to reach some particular end goal – being a rock star or an environmental lawyer – eventually, if I attain that goal, all I’ll be left with is, “Now what?”

It’s important to know where you’re going, but I’m realizing that it’s just as important to make sure you’re happy while you’re getting there.

Exit Strategies

Been an interesting summer so far.  In retrospect, swinging straight from law school into the externship was probably not the best plan.  I could have used a little more time off to recuperate.  It would have made it somewhat more complicated to get the hours done that I need for my class credit, but I think it would have paid dividends in sanity.

I’ve been thinking a lot these last weeks about escaping.  The start of it is, one of the ways I cope with stress is by constructing plans to do something (often pretty absurd) to alleviate the situation causing the stress.  So, when finals got bad, I decided to become a community college professor.

Quick clarification: generally speaking, these plans are just escapist fantasies.

See, a guy from some association of community colleges stopped by the law school to talk about career prospects for teaching there with a law degree.  Turns out, a juris doctorate is sufficiently legitimate to put you on the doctorate pay scale at a community college teaching things like Business Law.  Then, over the weekend before exams, Jimmy Buffett played a concert in Kansas City.  I didn’t go, but they broadcast the audio over the internet, so I listened in while I was working on some things.  It got me thinking about how much I loved the Florida Keys when we were there last year.  Short version is, I spent my recreational time that evening looking at job listings for professorships at a community college on Key West.

Then this week, Frank Turner put out a new record, and there’s a new song on it called “I Am Disappeared.”  He’s written songs before about not being tied down to a place, being ready to leave at a moment’s notice, so the subject matter isn’t at all surprising, but it’s a good song.  The chorus goes like this:

“And on the worst days
When it feels like life weighs ten thousand tonnes
I sleep with my passport
One eye on the back door
So I can always run
I can get up, shower and in half an hour I’d be gone.”

(Frank is English, hence the odd spelling of “tons”)

I think it’s easy sometimes to paint yourself into a corner, to get yourself so far buried that you’re frozen where you are.  It’s also difficult sometimes to see alternatives, even when they do exist, because they’re easy to dismiss as “impractical.”  I think that’s why it’s a good idea to construct exit strategies.

Now, this isn’t an argument against commitment.  Some things are worth committing to unswervingly.  What this is is a suggestion that we practice at thinking through ideas thoroughly, that we develop the skill of finding ways to make worthwhile things happen even when they seem unreasonable or impractical, because sometimes those ideas can turn out to be the best of all possible worlds.

So don’t just think about running away to Europe.  Look up airfare.  Build a budget.  Think about places you can scrimp or increase earnings to make it happen.  Find a boat for sale that you can sail away in.  Find that beautiful wilderness in a far away place that you’d love to wander through.  Embrace the silly idea, even if just for a few minutes, because it will free you from the drudgery of your current existence.

Often, when I do this, I find at the end that my current reality is actually not so bad as I thought.  I carry my flight of fancy out to its practical implications and discover that it isn’t quite the paradise I had hoped for.  At that point, it’s much easier to throw myself back into things.

Sometimes, though, I find that the flight of fancy has real wings, and I can ride it to a place I would never have thought possible.

Paradise.

Just breathe.

I went home for a friend’s wedding this weekend, and it was great.  Todd and Jennifer are among my favorite people, and they’re wonderful for each other, and I got to spend time with both my real family and people who may as well be.

It’s funny, then, that I spent so much time this afternoon beating myself up for doing it.  See, I have these exams this week, and in some ways I probably should have stayed at home and spent the weekend preparing for them, especially since the tighter scheduling means that the time I used last week to decompress is not available this week.  That’ll be tough.

The long and the short of it is that I lost it for a little while this afternoon in a way that I usually don’t.  I let myself get so upset with everything I had to do that I couldn’t do anything else.  So, I did the only thing I could really do at that point: I shut down.  I closed my laptop, sat down in front of my TV, and watched an episode of Castle that I recorded last week but hadn’t had time to watch yet.  I think, to some extent, I just needed a few minutes of distraction to let the adrenaline spike wear off, but what really settled me down was this song that played at the end of the episode.  I’d never heard it before, but there was one little set of lyrics right at the beginning:

“I’m a lucky man, to count on both hands
the ones I love.
Some folks just have one,
yeah, others, they’ve got none…”

So I went and looked it up once the episode ended, and it turns out it was a song called “Just Breathe,” by Pearl Jam (you would think I’d recognize Eddie Vedder’s mouth-full-of-food singing by now).  I found a video on YouTube, and watched it once.  Then I looked up the lyrics and watched it again.  And I felt better.

You see, the hardest thing for me about this first year of law school has been keeping perspective.  It’s such an isolated little universe that it’s really easy to lose track of the wider world and what all this work really means.

It’s a lot like Monet.  Now, I’m not a terribly artsy person, but the Nelson has all three panels of one of Monet’s paintings of water lilies, which even I know are kind of a big deal.  Saturday afternoon between the wedding and the reception, we went and saw it, and I gotta tell you, I was blown away.  It was beautiful in a way that I’m not sure I can actually put into words.  The funny thing is, though, if you stand close to it, it looks like nothing.  I mean, parts of it, you can still kind of see that it was someone painting water lilies, but even those parts, it kind of seems like whoever was doing the painting wasn’t very good at it.  But you step back from it, and suddenly it becomes something else entirely.  At the risk of sounding hokey, it’s somehow a better picture than it would be if it were more detailed.  But then, when you walk up close again, it turns back into paint smudges.

When that happens, suddenly it’s easy for me to end up in a place where my grade on this contracts exam (that’s frankly probably impossible to study for effectively anyway) seems more important than family.  And that’s not a place where I’m ever happy to be.

So I ended up spending this afternoon and evening both studying and putting my head back together, and I feel better about things.  Instead of being upset about how absurd my Tuesday exam is likely to be, I’m laughing at them a little bit, and thinking about a book I read a long time ago by Robert Heinlein:

“I had thought — I had been told — that a ‘funny’ thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn’t. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing itself. I grok it is a bravery . . . and a sharing… against pain and sorrow and defeat.”

I needed that.  Maybe others can function with the kind of pressures that come from needing to know that I’ll succeed on this, but I can’t.  I want to do well, and I intend to do as well as I can.  But at the end of the day, it’ll be okay.  If I raise my GPA enough to keep my scholarship, that will be wonderful.  If I don’t, I’ll survive that, too, because in 10 years, it’s not going to matter what grade I got on Royce’s exam.  If it’s worth remembering at all, it’ll be a funny story I tell to my kids or some poor soul starting out in law school.  What will matter is that I got through it, and the people that helped me do that.

Two years living alone is apparently too long.

This is why I could never join a monastery, even though Joe and Julie both went to great lengths to try to convince me of their merits (now that I think about it, Joe was married at the time, and Julie is married now.  Maybe not the best monastery concept salespeople.).  I’m closing in on the last month of living by myself, and I’m starting to lose my mind.  It’s only a matter of time until I start talking to appliances.  Chances are, this will only get worse as finals loom.  Maybe not.  I’ll probably be spending more time in the library trying desperately to prepare myself.

Point is, I’m looking forward to next year, when I’ll have a roommate again and can get a dog.  And to this summer, when I won’t be taking law classes.

That really got out of hand quickly.

I didn’t originally intend to disregard this blog for a 4 month period, but things got out of hand.  Luckily, I have an elderly friend who reminded me to update it.

I am, in fact, still alive.  Things are pretty crazy, what with, you know, law school, but I’m surviving.  I’ve started lifting again, so I may start posting along those lines again soon, and I’m also working toward recording a full length album, which I’m guessing will happen this summer.

It looks like I’m going to be in Independence this summer working for the Independence Economic Development Corporation, which I’m very excited about, as it’ll be the first opportunity I’ve had to work directly applying all the things I’ve learned about economic development.  I might even post some things along those lines.

For now, though, I’m spending a majority of my time trying to get an appellate brief written before spring break and fishing, which I am looking forward to with a sometimes overwhelming zeal.

You wanna be part of something that you can’t fight?

So I’ve failed miserably at keeping up with blog posts.  I just looked, at the last time I posted was the end of September.  It’s now the end of November (ish), and I’m just now posting again.  I also haven’t kept up well on working out.  Too busy/tired/stressed, which means I probably would have benefited from manning up and doing it.

Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to write about.  I wanted to write about Powerman 5000.

See, I just got back from a Powerman 5000 concert.  My friend Bri and I went, because she and I went to see them at the Blue Note 4 years ago, when we were both in Jeff City working at the Capitol building.

It’s funny, that concert was a huge blast, but the way I always end up describing it to people is “way more fun than it had any right to be.”  Which is a cop-out.  Really, what that means is, “I love Powerman 5000 shows, but I want it to seem like it’s ironic so it doesn’t have a detrimental effect on my reputation.”  Well, to hell with that.  Powerman 5000 is a great band, whether you think so or not.

See, here’s the thing:  I know they’re really schtick-y.  I know their music isn’t terribly complicated or technically impressive (although they have a new guitar player who seems to know his way around the instrument).  I know the lyrics are largely pretty inane.  I also don’t care, because sometimes being loud and singing songs about space robots is just a hell of a good time, if you let it be.

The way I see it is, you have basically two options.  You can sit back and say things like “this is ridiculous,” or “this is cheesy and stupid,” or you can buy in.  You can suspend your disbelief.  You know what happens when you do that?  You have a really good time.  Especially when the people around you are doing the same thing.

It’s not just about Powerman 5000.  It’s about plenty of other things – music, movies, games, culture, literature – pretty much everything.  Just buy in.  Don’t be a critic.  It’ll make you cynical.  And liking things that are a little silly (or extremely silly, for that matter) doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate things that aren’t.

That being said, I don’t expect you to like the same things I do.  I do expect you to respect that I do like those things.  So when I talk about how great Powerman 5000 is, you can express disbelief.  But don’t be an ass about it.

And seriously, let go.  You’re not that cool.  No one is. Stop trying so hard and just enjoy yourself a little bit.

I think xkcd really summed it up well:

Workout Summary, 9.20.10-9.30.10

I fail at updating lately.  I guess I am in law school.  That’s an excuse, right?  This one’s going to be a doozy, cause it covers two weeks worth of workouts.  All after the break.

Workout Summary, 9.12.10-9.18.10

Monday

• Tabata of thrusters, 60 lbs.

Wednesday

• Weight – 260 lbs.
• Squat – 260 lbs.
• Bench – 160 lbs.
• Push-ups
• Reverse Crunches

Friday

• 2 hours of pick-up basketball

Saturday

• Squats – 265 lbs.
• Overheads – 100 lbs.
• Deadlifts – 265 lbs.
• Prone Bridges – 3×30 seconds

I forgot to weigh in on Monday, so it’s on Wednesday instead.  But I’m at 260 lbs, which is exciting.  Other than that, not much going on.  I keep wanting to write more substantive posts on this, but law school is sufficiently crazy that I just don’t have the motivation or energy.

That being said, I really love law school.  I spent some time this afternoon doing an outline of the beginning section of Torts (hands down, the earliest I’ve ever started studying for a class.  Not even close), and when I was done, I just had this moment where I realized all the things I’ve learned, and it was an incredibly satisfying experience.

Workout Summary, 9.6.10-9.12.10

Didn’t get an update in last week.  Oops.

Wednesday:

• Weight – 264 lbs.
• Squat – 250 lbs.
• Bench – 150 lbs.
• Push-ups – 15, 5, 4
• Reverse Crunches – 3×12
• Flag Football Game

Friday:

• Basketball – shooting around, 1.5 hours

Saturday:

• Squat – 255 lbs.
• Overhead – 95 lbs.
• Deadlift – 255 lbs.
• Prone Bridges – 3×30 seconds

Sunday:

• Attempted bike riding, 1 hour

Crazy week.  I didn’t get a workout in Monday, since it was Labor Day and I was in transit.  I also wasn’t very disciplined with my eating over the weekend, but I still managed to lose a couple of pounds.  At this point, I’d be pretty satisfied with a consistent weekly weight loss between 2 and 4 lbs.

Workouts went really well.  This was the last week of slow reps, so we’ll see how it goes going back to hard lifting this week, hopefully this’ll be the trigger to finally get me past my plateau.  I did jump the numbers a little faster than normal this week, but I think I ended up at a good level.  I’m going to continue increasing by 5 lbs. per workout, then when I shift back to slow reps, I’ll drop back to where I started the hard reps.  So, I’ll start fast reps of squats this Wednesday at 260 lbs., I’ll increase by 5 lbs. per workout for 3 weeks, which will get me to 290 lbs. (barring failure, which is by no means guaranteed), then at the end of 3 weeks, I’ll drop back to 260 lbs. and go back to the slow reps.  We’ll see what happens.

Additionally, I’m getting some extracurricular activity now.  I joined my law section’s flag football team, I’m attempting to play basketball every Friday afternoon, and I’m determined to learn how to ride a bike, so that should add even a little additional calorie-burning activity.

For lifting, my main goals at this point are to get my 5×5 max up to 300 lbs. on squats, and to 200 lbs. on bench by the end of the semester.  As far as my weight loss goals, the next goal is to make the weight on my driver’s license right, which is to say I want to get down to 250 lbs, which I’m shooting for by the first of November (which is when I should hit 250 lbs. if I lose 2 lbs. per week.  I wouldn’t object to it happening sooner).

Workout Summary, 8.22.10-8.28.10

Workout schedule wasn’t what I think is going to be the standard for the semester due to not being in town Monday morning, but I got 3 workouts in.