these days - various and sundry

I worked out pretty well all this past week, going to the gym every day but Friday. On Friday, I played basketball with the ward team. After playing the game, I refereed the following game and put in a little more running there as well. The workouts were alternatively great, filled with energy or hard, filled with work and a lot of effort. Both kinds of workouts were useful though in telling me where I stood physically.

In the coming week, I plan on putting a little more time into running, building on last week's. I will have 2-3 easy runs of 3-4 miles, 1 interval day (1/4 miles with 1/4 rests), a tempo run and a longer distance run on Saturday. I hope to play a little basketball with the ward on Friday.

Good news for me with respect to one of my goals; I stepped on the scale during the week and was down 2 pounds. Some of that could be fluid loss right after the run that day (I was pretty sweatty) but I'm going to claim it as progress. That would mean that I have 10 pounds to go and 10 and 1/2 months to get there (very do-able). I think part of the progress in the first month and week of the year is also due to not eating as many sweet things when I see them. The other part is the exercise starting to kick in (metabolism making a slow change)

I finished a book I had checked out at Christmas, Invisible Armies. The tense in which it was written was unusual (present and inconsistent) but the story moved well and there were many twists and turns to keep me interested to the very end (really, the last page). It is written by Jon Evans. When I originally checked it out, my oldest daughter read it, liked it and recommended that I read it. I'm glad I did. I'm now reading Act of Treason by Vince Flynn. I read another book by Flynn, Consent to Kill and really liked it. I recommend it to anyone who likes relatively fast paced, spy/international thriller kinds of books.

On Saturday, I also had the chance to work on a writing project and made some really good progress, getting closer to my goal there.

Over the past week and one half I have also gone through a large challenge and change in my work life that was almost a complete surprise. It was a shock to my system (and unfortunately added to the stress that my lovely wife had to deal with) and there were several moments of self doubt, worry and plenty of prayer. Over the last few days, however, I have had several successes in the new situation and I can see where I can find many, many more similar successes. I have had more than one colleague whom I respect tell me privately that they thought I should have made the change a long time ago (they thought I had a lot more talent than I was able to offer in the previous role). Through it all, my lovely wife has been 100% supportive as have my daughters and my relatives who knew about the change. My thanks to them and to my Heavenly Father for knowing who I am, what I can do, where I need to improve (everywhere; okay, maybe not in playing marbles).

Interestingly, and in a slightly parallel universe, a few months ago, I was called and accepted a Stake Music calling. Before that I was the Ward choir director and music chair. I loved choir practice and putting together songs to sing; at Christmas, Easter, July 4th. After receiving the Stake calling, I kind of forgot about being released from the ward role and then it happened (~November). It was a hard thing to give up seeing the choir's smiling faces each Sunday and putting together musical numbers for Sacrament meeting. It was heartwarming that several members of the ward and members of the choir stopped me in the hall and told me how much they appreciated what I had done.

The two events above are examples of change in my life (one small and one a little bigger and immediately impactful). But, in both cases, with the change, I will be able to look at things from a different perspective and use talents that I haven't used for a while or develop new ones. Further, relating them back to progress made in any field but particularly in physical development, if you continue to do the exercises over and over, you will get the same results over and over (see definition of crazy - Albert Einstein). It is only when we change our focus and efforts that we can make a change of direction, to new strengths, new abilities and new levels of endurance.

I am a lucky man to have the opportunities I have had in the past and the opportunities I have now.

May you and yours have a good change in your life, and have a good one. KipK