Ditching the Prevent Defense

Lately, I have been a little bored with my life. Not in the “chuck it all, have an affair, buy a sports car” kind of way. And certainly not in the “murder someone, use his body to fake my own death, burn down the house to char the body beyond identification, move to the Andes of Peru, learn Quechua, and make a new start” kind of way.

More in the “everything is going alright, my job is good, my marriage ain’t perfect but it’s okay” kind of way. It’s the kind of boredom that feels like a low-level cold. You know the kind where nothing’s really wrong, but nothing’s really great, either. There’s no fever, no aches or pains—just an occasional cough and a feeling that I maybe don’t have as much energy as I used to.

In the past, if this feeling persisted I would just move. This feeling is what led me to join the Peace Corps in 1987. It’s what led me to move to Maine in 1991. And it’s why I moved to Montana in 1993.

After that particular move, life became fairly eventful for a long period of years. I met my wife and got married in 1996. We moved across the country and I started a new career as a classroom teacher in 1997. In 2000 we had a child. In 2003 we moved again to a new state and started new jobs. Life, and its changes, just kept coming.

And now, here it is almost eight years later and I haven’t had any huge changes in quite a while. I like my job. I teach at a progressive school with great kids and a ton of freedom. I like my daughter a lot. She is an amazing kid who surprises me all the time with her humor and her insights. I like my wife. She makes me laugh and keeps me on my toes. And she wants the best for me.

But in spite of all this adequateness, I feel like I have stopped growing. I fear I have stopped changing—maybe, in fact, BECAUSE of all this adequateness. There has not been any one thing that has been terrible, so therefore there hasn’t been any big motivation for me, (with my tendency to avoid changes), to shake anything up too much.


It feels like I am a football team with a small lead early in the third quarter. I have slipped into a prevent defense rather than sticking with the strategy that has gotten me the lead. My motivation has shifted slowly—almost imperceptibly—away from winning the game and toward not losing the game. It’s a small shift, but one that in the end changes everything. Instead of going at life, I am sitting back and reacting as life comes at me. Instead of seeking out new and challenging experiences, I am consolidating my gains and letting life happen around me.

I have I heard it said that “there are no boring things, just boring people.” And I am realizing that, for many reasons—(including, but not limited to, the fear of job burn-out, the fear of losing a good partner, and the fear of being BORING)—I need to make some changes. You know, that’s not really right. I mostly need to get back to my original self before I took on all these responsibilities and “shoulds” and stopped simply living. So, this winter has become the season for me to face this boredom head-on and let my team just play the game that got them the lead to start with.

My Life As A Movie

I am in Atlantic City for a quick overnight trip. I am staying at the Showboat Casino Hotel and when I wake up in the morning I will have a cup of coffee from the Starbucks in the lobby, walk a mile to Boardwalk Hall, and then run 13.1 miles as fast as my body will let me.

Tonight I was out on the Boardwalk, walking from my “free” pre-race dinner at Bally’s back to my room when I heard the first few notes of a song I knew well from my freshman year of high school in 1979. It was Donna Summer’s song “Bad Girls” and because I was in a hurry to get back to the hotel my steps matched exactly the quick disco beat that propelled the song to number one on the charts all those years ago. The music was coming from speakers arrayed along the façade of a long block of tattoo studios, massage parlors, funnel cake purveyors, and knickknack emporia.

As I walked to the beat, I suddenly had the feeling that I was in a movie. It was a long tracking shot taken from Boardwalk-level and the camera followed me as I pounded down the wooden walkway past all the storefronts, weaving my way around all the other people out on the Boardwalk on a chilly fall night. In the movie it was obvious I was different from all the other people out on the boards. There was my pace to set me apart, but also the glint in my eye, the snazzy brown felt fedora on my head, my purple Converse high tops, and the unblinking focus of the camera itself.

I allowed myself to live in the feeling of being in a movie for a few moments and then came back to my senses and started to think about just what sort of a movie my life would make, anyway. The scene I was just in felt like something from one of the Ocean’s Eleven films. But even just a few seconds’ thought was enough to make me laugh at that idea. Lately, my life is certainly NOT a cleverly plotted, quickly paced caper film. In fact, the more I thought about my life as a movie, the more alone and depressed I felt. A movie of my life lately would be whatever the opposite of an action movie is…an inaction movie? An anti-thriller?

This hasn’t always been the case. When I was 17 I gave myself a birthday present. It was a jump out of an airplane and it was how I celebrated my 18th birthday. When I was 21 I joined the Peace Corps and moved to Yemen, where I learned Arabic, lived in my own apartment, taught in a Yemeni school, and hitchhiked all over the country. When I was 23 I took a two-month road trip all over America, visiting 22 states and driving over 10,000 miles. When I was 28 I moved to Billings, Montana on a whim because I got tired of driving and found a job and an apartment there my first day in town. At the time, everything I owned fit in my 1970 Plymouth Valiant named “Fuad”. When I was 30 I met Erica and within a few months we knew we would be married. After our wedding we took a six-week honeymoon in Portugal without any real plan about where we would go and what we would do.

Now, I am soon to be 45 years old and I have not done much of anything lately that I would call adventurous. I know I am still that same person who was so willing to put himself in new places and try new things, but an outside observer, (or say, a cameraman following me down the Boardwalk), would have precious little evidence of that adventurous spirit in me. Erica is starting to wonder if maybe it was all just an elaborate case of false advertising.


Which brings me back around to why I am in Atlantic City tonight. Last fall I started to get inklings of this dissatisfaction with myself and my unwillingness to put myself out in the world. I decided to set myself a huge challenge. I decided to run a half marathon in each of the 50 United States. If I finish the Atlantic City Half Marathon tomorrow morning, that will make 6 states under my belt.

Back in August I went to Montreal and spent a week doing only what strangers said I should do with my time there. It turned out to be a great week. While there I literally felt ten years younger. And now that I think about it, I am certain that feeling of being younger was a direct result of getting back in touch with that part of me that craves new places, new challenges, and new experiences.

So, as I run my 13.1 miles tomorrow I am going to spend a lot of that time playing with ideas, thinking of challenges, and trying to tap into the spirit of playing at life that I used to have all the time.

I also want to invite you to send me ideas and suggest new situations and challenges that might allow the adventurous me to wake up and come out and play again. Maybe we can turn my life from “Remains of the Day” to something a little more exciting and worth watching.

Reach the Beach, 2009

            Two years ago this week I drove up to Hampton Beach, New Hampshire with my daughter so we could watch Erica and her eleven teammates finish their 200 mile Reach the Beach Relay Race.  I was not on the team because I had not been running much, due to two herniated discs in my lower back.  I was happy for them as they crossed the line as a group, but inside I felt entirely lame and left out.  I vowed in the van on the way home the next morning that I would work myself into the best shape of my life and then I would be in the race the next year, not clapping from the sidelines.

            Last September, I was indeed a member of the Rosie Ruiz Fan Club  relay team as my  teammate Aisling Colon crossed the finish line, bringing our team in in 28 hours, 23 minutes,  and some odd seconds. This was an hour faster than the year before, when the team ran an average 8 minutes and 33 seconds per mile for over 200 miles.

           It felt really good to be part of such a demanding undertaking—no sleep, no showers, no stopping for food—and it was so much fun that it ensured I would once again run the race this year.

            In the interim, I have decided I need to run a half marathon every three months in order to fight time’s and gravity’s ravages.  So, as this year’s Reach the Beach approaches, I am probably now in much better shape than I was for last year’s race.  And I am growing more and more excited day by day.  I just now finished a slow four-mile run as my daughter Isabel practiced her balance beam routine and her backflips and as I ran down the Farmington Canal trail for the hundredth time in the past year it struck me that one week from right NOW I will be running my first leg of the relay. 

It feels good to be excited about something.  It reminds me of the value of trying hard things with other people.  I will let you now how it goes when we get back next Sunday.

 

                                                     Rosie Ruiz Fan Club 2008