2011: The Year of Creativity and Adventure

One of the main motivators for taking a break from training this year was that I was getting sick of seeing the same non-triathlon goals on my life list year after year, and never doing anything proactive towards achieving them. It took me a while to accept the fact that it just wasn’t realistic to seriously take on any new hobby – such as practicing photography, playing guitar, taking a pottery class, learning to sail, getting additional scuba diving certifications, or learning web design skills – “off the side of my bike”, as it were. Now that I have made the leap, everyday is full of new and exciting opportunities for learning and creative expression. I am LOVING being a beginner again it’s incredibly fulfilling to be taking on some of these goals I’ve been dreaming about for over 10 years.

I know it’s already February but I strongly believe that it’s never too late for declarations of intent! Thus, I officially declare 2011 to be the Year of Creativity & Adventure! I am soaking up every minute and am eager to observe how I will evolve throughout the year.

Let me know if you have any creative activities or adventures you’re planning this year – I’d love to join you!  Find me on twitter @jodyjwright

The Ups and Downs of Change

I miss looking like a spacewoman-superhero in my racing duds!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the things I miss and the things I don’t miss about training competitively. Here are a few of the things I’ve come up with:

Miss

• Having an impenetrable immune system! During the year I was training for the World Championships, I think I only got sick once. It seemed that because I was constantly challenging my immune system, I was able to fight everything off!
• Getting to look like an astronaut-superhero in my sweet racing duds.
• Spending time with my training buddies at least 3 times a week.
• Having comfortably sore muscles most days.
• Feeling really strong and muscular.
• Planning my training schedule and race schedule for the year, with lots of cool events and trips to look forward to.

Don’t Miss

• Being exhausted most of the time.
• Having zero transition time between activities.
• Having to schedule coffee or dinner dates with friends >3 weeks in advance (because that’s the only way I could fit it in my schedule).
• Huge grocery bills for supplements (sports drink, gels, bars, etc).
• Being tight on cash all of the time because of the expense of training fees, coaching fees, race registrations, new equipment, tune ups, etc.
• Having to rush out of the lab to a training session just when I start getting on a roll with some analyses.
• Spending 50% (or more) of my waking weekend hours training and having to stay in and go to bed early on Fridays and Saturdays.
• Living, eating, breathing, talking triathlon ALL of the time.

(I was tempted to put “a sense of control over my life and schedule” in the “Miss” category, but I think I’m slowing warming up to this going with the flow approach. Maybe I don’t miss it so much after all… freedom and flexibility is turning out to be pretty fun!)

Learning to go with the flow…

 

Flowing Water (c) Richard Brook via Flickr

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. - Lao Tzu

It’s hilarious, actually, that this is the title I chose for this post.  I’ve spent the last three days thrashing and editing, starting over and revising, and generally getting frustrated because I just can’t seem to coherently express anything.  In effect, I’ve been doing everything except going with the flow.

I was trying to write a post about my recent experiences of life without triathlon and how interesting it’s been to observe my own reactions to this foreign lifestyle.  The thing I thought I wanted most out of taking a break was to have a more flexible schedule with evenings and weekends free to do as I please, and that’s what I got.  What I didn’t anticipate was how hard it would be to get used to this freestyle life, to the evenings sitting alone at home while my friends are at the track, to the mornings where I allow myself to sit in bed and read because I don’t feel like running in the rain, to the possibility that I could actually sleep in on the weekend or watch a television show if I so choose.  It’s been so long since I’ve had any element of uncertainty in my schedule that I almost forgot what it’s like to have spare time, or on the flip side, to have plans that rely on people and circumstances outside myself and can be easily derailed.

I’ve realized that one of the aspects I relished most about training was the feeling of control it gave me over my own life.  My training schedule was up to me and it wasn’t going to get cancelled or changed (most of the time) unless I decided it was.  I also realized that continuing to entertain my desire to exercise complete control over my own life is certainly not going to help me evolve as a human to become someone who is flexible, calm, and deals effectively and positively with change.  So as difficult as this phase can be right now and as awkward as I feel bumbling along through it, I’m consciously choosing not going back upstream.  The opportunity for growth is here, in accepting the in-between, the uncertain, the present moment no matter what it brings.

So maybe this is what it looks like to just go with the flow?  I think I’m slowly getting the hang of it.  Baby steps.

Happy Blog-iversary!

January 10th was the 1 year anniversary of The Intersection of Everything. Hooray! While I didn’t reach my goal of writing 100 posts in my first year (I published 77), I am quite happy with the progress I made in the development of my ideas and writing style, as well as in the evolution of the blog’s direction and purpose.  I realized that the primary reasons I enjoy blogging are 1) to practice expressing myself through writing, 2) to reflect on the events and experiences of my day to day life and my numerous and varied interests, and 3) to authentically share my thoughts and experiences with others in the hopes that something might speak to and/or hopefully inspire them.

Through my first year of blogging I also gained a wealth of experience in dealing with myself, in learning what motivates me to write and what causes me to get stuck in my tracks.  For example, I found the 30 day blog challenge I took on in March to be ineffective because I had difficulty setting aside enough time to write a quality post every single day, resulting in a lot of posts that were of mediocre quality and didn’t give me much sense of fulfilment or enjoyment in writing them. To compensate, in October’s Gratitober challenge, I created a caveat that I could back date posts if I didn’t have time to write a solid one each day. This definitely helped create the space to focus on high quality writing. However, I got stuck on a few tricky topics at the end of the month and got so hung up about honouring my word to finish the challenge that I ended up not blogging for nearly two months because I was so attached to completing that I didn’t want to publish anything unless it was about Gratitude. (I know- it’s a little ridiculous, but what can I say? We’re all a little weird in our own ways.)

I also confronted a lot of opinions and ideas about how one should go about responsibly creating one’s digital tattoo.  How personal do I want to be in this environment?  How personal is TOO personal, for me?  What will people (i.e. my parents, friends, colleagues, students) think about me if they read what I write?  What will I think about what I have inscribed in digital ink, 1, 5, or 10 years from now?  I found a lot of these questions to be incredibly challenging to answer and in many cases I allowed the opinions of other bloggers I admire to speak for me while I found my own footing, my own confidence, and my own voice.  While I believe that there is definitely a place for private journaling and reflection and that some issues are best processed offline, I feel that in many cases I’ve been less than authentic so far in my musings on this blog.  This realization really hit home when I found out that my most read post of 2010 was the one I was most hesitant to publish (My bike = My sanity) because it reflected most honestly what was REALLY going on for me in my life that day.

I realized close to the end of the year that I have barely blogged at all about one of the topics that is most important to me and about which I am hugely passionate – education.  Upon reflection as to why this was the case, I realized that I care so much about making an impact in the field of education that I was afraid to start writing about it – afraid that I don’t yet know what I’m talking about and that I’ll make a fool of myself with my juvenile musings.  I subconsciously decided that I had to wait until I had something really ground breaking to say or had mapped out some kind of grand scheme for how I intend to transform higher education before I could write anything about it publicly.  Clearly, I could have been waiting a LONG time!  As we all know, the only way to get your foot in the door with a new endeavour is to stick it out there in the first place, not to mention that the best way to develop your ideas is to start getting them out there in the world and connecting with real people to bounce them off of.  Thus, in 2011 I promise you’ll hear a lot more about education (and any other elusive topics I’ve been pretending I need to “figure out” before I’m allowed to voice an opinion) – and if you’re not hearing enough then please give me a swift (digital) kick in the pants!

And so, after a fantastic and challenging first year at The Intersection of Everything I feel that things are starting to come together and I’m very excited about what 2011 will bring.  Thank you for reading – your encouragement and dialogue mean very much and contribute greatly to my experience and learning!  Happy 2011!

Happy 2011!

 

 

 

I Love Technology!

Hello World! I’ve been buried in a sea of research papers, drafts, and Adobe Illustrator files of late while working on a review paper my supervisor and I are writing for Nature Reviews Microbiology. I’ve certainly been missing my regular blog writing though and will try my best to be more regular over the next few weeks while we finish up this review (and get ready for a two week Christmas vacation in Paris!). I have 4 posts left to honourably complete my Gratitober promise, so here goes!

Today, I am grateful for technology! The incredible technologies we have access to and the massive impact these tools have on the way we live our lives blows me away on a regular basis. I will use a brief story of my day today to illustrate several examples of technologies affecting my life.

This morning the SleepCycle app on my iPhone 4 woke me up at precisely 5:39am, just as I was coming out of my last cycle of deep sleep. The app uses the motion sensor in the phone to detect your movements in bed (when you’re moving, you’re no longer in deep sleep) and wakes you up at the optimal time within a 30 minute window preceding the time you need to be up. I was fresh and ready to go to yoga!

SleepCycle Sleep Graph

While I was drinking my morning shake and reading the news (online, of course) I learned that antimatter was recently captured in a scientific breakthrough at CERN. An international team of 42 scientists (including 15 Canadians!) trapped 38 antihydrogen atoms for a fraction of a second. Even though I have a hard time wrapping my head around the whole concept of antimatter most of the time, it still seems crazy to me that humans have been able to successfully create something that was once merely a topic of science fiction -antimatter provided fuel for the Starship Enterprise of Star Trek and was also stolen by villains in a plot to blow up the Vatican in Dan Brown’s book Angels & Demons.

Antimatter

During the day I was able to converse with Costa (who still lives in Kelowna) via FaceTime. I can still remember the day my parents got a Vista350 home telephone back in the 90’s which was our first phone with a call display. I recall thinking it was so new age, and wondering if I would live to see the day we’d actually be able to SEE each other while we were talking! It seemed as far fetched to me then as teleporting still seems now – so does that mean we’ll be teleporting in less than 20 years?? Sweet!

While I was waiting for a prescription to be filled at the drug store tonight, I heard a song I really like but could not for the life of me remember what it was. No problem – I just asked Shazam on my iPhone, and had the name of the song and the artist in 20 seconds. Now if only Pandora was available in Canada I could have had a whole new playlist of a similar genre within another 20 seconds! Here’s the song I was listening to by the Brazilian rock band CSS…

At my evening DSLR photography class, we went on a field trip to Granville Island to practice taking night photos. I was able to shoot hundreds of photos and to get instant feedback from my LCD screen which helped me to learn quickly and adjust my photos as necessary. I can only imagine how much money and time I would have spent learning from scratch on a film camera (apologies to the hard cores out there – I LOVE film photography, but I would rather try it out now that I have a tiny bit of an idea of what I’m doing!)

Granville Island Park at Night

What are the technologies and tools you use regularly? How do they impact the quality of your day to day life?

Conscious Consumption

(I know it’s already November but I committed to writing one Gratitober post for each day in October and I still have a few more to catch up!)

Today I am grateful for innovative entrepreneurs and companies that create opportunities for consumers to purchase consciously and responsibly. This weekend I purchased a pair of TOMS shoes. Not only are they incredibly comfortable and totally funky looking, I also get to give a gift by purchasing them. You see, TOMS was founded on the simple premise: with every pair you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need (One for One). The TOMS mission transforms customers into benefactors which allows the company to grow into a sustainable business rather than relying on fundraising for support, and helps increase consumer awareness as well. Oh, and did I mention that wearing TOMS feels like your walking around in your comfiest slippers all day?

To read more about the TOMS movement please visit their website. Some other socially and environmentally responsible companies I’m stoked on right now include:
- Choices Market
- Patagonia
- El Naturalista
- Mountain Equipment Co-op
- Saltspring Island Coffee
- Ethical Bean
- Peak of Catering (**This innovative catering company is one of the first I’ve seen to insist on using dish-ware and REAL mugs and classes for serving- woo!!!)
- Local farmers markets in every town

What are your favourite conscious and responsible companies to purchase from, and why?

La famille!

Today I am grateful for family. I know for a fact I’ve been avoiding writing about this one because it seems like such an overwhelmingly impossible and gargantuan task to adequately express the depth and breadth of gratitude I feel for my family. It would take volumes to cover all of the reasons I’m grateful for each individual in my family and the contributions they’ve each made to my life. But challenges have never stopped me from trying before, and you’ve gotta start somewhere, right?

Yesterday after the meeting in Palo Alto wrapped up I took the train into San Francisco to visit my cousin Chris and his wonderful wife Hilleary. I haven’t seen them since their wedding in SF two years ago, and it was a welcome and much needed reunion.

A bit of history.
I have a pretty small family. My younger brother (Sandy) and I have only 5 cousins – 3 on my mom’s side and 2 on my dad’s side. We are by far the youngest, thus, growing up our cousins carried us around on their shoulders and played games with us, but it wasn’t until Sandy and I had reached university that we were close enough in life experience to our cousins to develop meaningful relationships with them. It was delightful to realize that my cousins (and uncles and aunts) were all super rad people with similar interests and outlooks on life who I would have been friends with whether or not we happened to share genealogy. What an amazing gift, to share family history, stories, and memories with such cool and inspiring people!

Back to Chris and Hilleary (C&H). C&H are just flat-out, awesome. They are both outgoing and adventurous, and have unbelievable stories of travel and involvement in all kinds of activities and sports including surfing, sailing, biking (mountain, road, dirt), kiteboarding, hiking, back-country skiing, you name it! They’re also incredibly well read and worldly and I can always count on them for engaging discussion on current issues, recent TED talks, or technology, among many other things. Oh and did I mention they love food and wine? I seriously can’t believe how lucky I am to be related to these amazing humans.

As well as being fun and interesting as individuals, C&H are one of those couples that would make a perpetual bachelor/bachelorette think twice about what they might be missing out on – they are the epitome of a team, are obviously madly in love, and always seem to be smiling and having fun. In fact, C&H’s relationship has been a real source of inspiration for me and helped me find the courage to leave a relationship in which I was settling, and stick it out and believe the right one would come along. Of course, it did. My relationship with Costa is one of the greatest gifts in my life (another challenging Gratitober post for another day!), so I have a lot to thank them for.

I had a fantastic visit this weekend with C&H full of great laughs, great scenery, and great food, and while short, it allowed us to reconnect, catch up on each other’s lives, and propose plans to get together in the future. (Costa and I are dying to drive down the coast from Vancouver to SF and do some cycling and beer & wine tasting along the way and will plan to stay with C&H). It was also a great reminder that no matter how far away my family might be and however infrequently we might see each other IRL, they are always there for me, and I for them.

This visit also reminded me that underneath the surface, we (everyone) are all going through the same processes, facing similar challenges in our lives and struggling to overcome them. How do we fully express ourselves and our individual gifts and creativity in the world? How do we define success and happiness, really? What does “balance” mean, and how best do we achieve or strive for it? How do we make a difference and create meaning in our lives and the lives of others? This visit reminded me that the greatest gift we can give to our friends, families and to ourselves is to share authentically about our lives – our challenges, losses, victories, thoughts, and feelings. All of it. The sense of connection and love that is possible through such dialogue is indescribable and is truly the stuff of life.

Thanks Chris, Hilleary & puppy MacKay for a wonderful visit in your beautiful new home – it was just what I needed. I love you guys and can’t wait to see you again soon!!