34 things I will do before I turn 34.

I look at my daughter. She is so full of life. So curious. So free. She has a million things to experience. We just celebrated her first birthday. It was great day. I can't believe how much she is picking up, and how many new things she will observe over the next year. 

Me? I'm not getting any younger. The clock is ticking. There is so much I want to accomplish. However, there are also so many responsibilities I have. My career, my wife, my child, my dog, and my house just to name a few. I need to balance both. 

So on the way up to a friends wedding, my wife and I each compiled a list of 34 things we wish to accomplish before we turn 34. Here is mine. Hopefully by posting this, I will be held accountable to my goals. I know that my previous bucket list has sort of fallen by the wayside, although I did achieve some of those goals. I think this time is different. Every day I am getting stronger, smarter, and more organized.

1. Get my blood work and improve my numbers (year over year)

2. Run a spartan sprint. (Already signed up).

3. Lose 10 lbs

4. Lose 20 lbs.

5. Lose 30 lbs.

6. Build a pull up rack and/or training wall.

7. Run a 1/2 marathon or another marathon.

8. Take my family to see my daughters great-grandparent out of state.

9.  Go to six flags fright fest.

10. Go to a Chicago hockey game

11. Pay off health bills (scheduled 2/14)

12. Pay off credit card. 

13. Go ice skating.

14. Run a spartan beast. For the trifecta.

15. Not be late to appointments.

16. Launch a crowd funding campaign.

17. Finish science scenes season 1

18. Update webcomic with no more than 10 delays through the year.

19. Get 5000 blog views

20. Get 10000 blog views.

21. Get garage door fixed.

22. Finish house painting

23. Set budget so we can pay off debt within year and so we have travel money for summer.

24. Build a computer for animations and video/photo editing.

25. Go on a weekend camping and hiking trip trip.

26. Build a muppet style puppet.

27. Rejoin my master's swimming team.

28. Go on a Chicago ghost tour.

29. Visit House on the Rock.

30. Go on a WI brewery tour with the wife.

31. increase my dress tie apparel.

32. One date a month with the wife.

33. Complete 100 push up challenge.

34. Go to a comic convention.

Excuses,excuses.

Alright. I admit I haven't posted on here in too long. I mean its been over a month. Where have I been? Well here are my lame attempts at excuses.

First, remember how I talked about the Super Spartan back in my previous post? Well, it turns out that some where in the order of 5%-10% of the participants developed a pretty severe system allergic reaction type rash. I was one of the lucky ones that won said rash in addition to medal. I don't hold it against the company that puts on these events. Rashes are one of the risks we take running through the woods and swimming through dirty water. Oh well. In fact, rash and all, I enjoyed it so much that I signed up for the Spartan Sprint in Wi. 

Speaking of Wi... After said race my family took a seven hour trip to my family's lake house to spend some time with the fam. I spent a week up there sleeping (lots of antihistamines), itching, and trying to pack as much family time in as possible. I didn't have the time or energy to post.

After I returned from the cabin, I spent another week on meds rid myself of the rash. The steroids keep me jittery during the day, and the antihistamines made me drowsy at night. Neither mental state was conducive to blogging. 

After that we decided we put off some home improvements to the house; trying to complete lots of painting and minor repairs in before we celebrated my daughters birthday. Oh, and we managed to fit in another weekend trip to Wi to celebrate the wedding of a close friend of mine. 

That brings us to this week... I started my full time job as a science teacher for the school year on Tuesday. My nerves were shot and my energy levels completely drained. 

So finally, it's Thursday night after my first week of school, and I am back to blogging. I can't guarentee the frequency of posts I was providing at the beginning of summer, but my goal is to put up at least three posts a week.

So those were my excuses for my absence. And you know what? They were excuses. I could have posted more frequently, meds or no meds, vacations or not. I should have. I just need to work harder and/or smarter. Plenty of people keep blogs on the side. I know I can too. I just need to find the right balance. I know I will. I am building a cathedral.

Personal Update.

I spent the bulk of today beginning my challenge of organization. Today the Mrs. and I tackled the garage and backyard. This was quite the challenge, my extra deep "man cave" of a garage has turned into the dumping ground for too-big/too-small baby supplies, clothes, and toys, and has not been organized since the girl's birth 10+ months ago.
The yard looked like we scattered hay an inch deep out there. The rains here in Illinois have cause my grass to grow at an accelerated pace, and it has proved to be too much for my mulching mower. It takes a long time to rake up all the grass clippings in my yard. But we have made progress. The yard is looking much better and is pretty much done, and I have made progress on the garage. I'm hoping to have it cleared out by the July Fourth weekend for some gaming.

I have also started the 21 day challenge of happiness from yesterday, but prefer to keep that private.

Today is going to be just a catch up-keep up day.

-P
Day of organization 01/30 (Spend at least 2 hours organizing and cleaning).
Day of happiness 01/21

How to Be Succesful: Rewiring Your Brain to Be Happy in 5 Steps.

Yet another Life-Hack TED talk from Netflix. This one is Shawn Achor's talk about The Happy Secret to Better Work. Watch the video here:

Shawn's premise is this: You can't become happy by achieving success, but must instead be happy in order to achieve success. If you define happiness by your successes you will always push your definition of success one step higher, and therefor happiness will always be on the horizon. Instead, train yourself to become happy, and you will have an easier time at school, work and in your social life. This will lead to success.

This video hits hard for me. I've been know to be negative about the future, and Shawn is right if you base happiness on successes you will always be hunting for the next slightly bigger, slightly better success to hang your happiness on.

Shawn claims that you can rewire your brain by doing 5 things for at least 21 days. Here are those five things.

1. Write down three Gratitudes - Find three things that you are grateful for each day. Finding three new things each day will train your brain to find the positives in life. We often focus on the negatives; which lead to stress and disappointment.

2. Journal about good thing that happened to you in the past 24 hours. Once again, journaling will help you focus on the positive.

3. Exercise - Increases the efficiency of your circulatory and respiratory system which feed your brain all the nutrients and oxygen it needs. It also causes your brain to release positive feeling chemicals.

4. Meditate- In our go go go society it is important to train your brain to focus. Find a quiet space and do nothing for a short period of time. I have seen articles and talks suggest a minimum of 10 minutes. I will expand upon this in a future blog post.

5. Random Acts of Kindness - Each day write a letter or e-mail to someone in your social group praising them or letting them know how much they mean to you.

If you do this for at least 21 days Sahwn believes your brain will begin to adapt and feel happier, and a happy brain means increased motivation and activity. Give it a try.

PS: Even though my 30 days of creation challenge is done, I am going  to continue to blog once or twice a day for the duration of the summer. Tomorrow I will start two new challenges. Challenge one: 21 days of happiness (adapted from Mr. Achor's talk). Challenge two: 30 days of organization.

So, I will see you all tomorrow. Build those cathedrals.

-P

Steps to Becoming a Better Man (Part 2) - Does this help you reach your goals?

So, one question I have been asking myself a lot this summer is "Is this action bringing me closer to my goals?"

If not, I try not to do it. Now, I am not perfect and do give in to temptation, but I have forgone many non-goal tasks and replaced them with more productive actions.

For example, my PS3 has not been turned on in over a month. Sometimes I miss it, but I know I get obsessed with video games. I know if I start a game, I will have to keep playing over and over until I get that platinum trophy. So I don't. At first it was hard, but I kept busy. Now that I am seeing success (weight loss, more energy, and successful fundraising and race running) I realize that the pros much outweigh the cons. Those 20+ hours a week that I used to spend chasing virtual shinnies, have been replaced with accomplishment.

Does this mean I will never play a video game again? No. I do boot up Candy Crush and Temple Run when I have a down moment, and I have a feeling that Batman: Arkham Origins and Kingdom Hearts 1.5: HD remix will suck up a lot of time in the future. But I will be aware of how much time these actions are taking and will try my best to schedule them into my downtime rather than letting these actions interfere with my goals.

It helps to have your goals written down and to review them frequently. Start with baby steps. With each success you will want more success. You will find yourself craving positive action and forgoing neutral or negative time sucks.

See you all tomorrow. Build those cathedrals.

-P
Day 27/30

How to overcome anxiety a little at a time.

The next 30 day challenge will be an organization challenge. Since summer break is here, I decided to put some things in order, so I can hit the ground running.

It's amazing how much anxiety comes from having an overwhelming amount of material to look at. One place that I have a ton of material that stresses me out every time is... my e-mail inbox.

My goal today was to look at the two e-mail accounts that had the largest backlog of e-mails. One e-mail account had over 800 unread messages. The other account had all messages read, but had 1000+ e-mails to sort through.

I first organized the e-mail by sender. Any e-mail that came from a newsletter or advertisement, instantly went in the recycling folder. Any e-mail from a social contact over two weeks, I deleted. The only e-mails I saved were:
1.) E-mails planning an event. And I only saved the most recent e-mails of these.
2.) E-mails that were receipts for purchases less than 3 months went in a folder.
3.) E-mails that were notifications for joining a website, forum, or physical membership. (I only save one as a reminder) - all e-mails went into a single folder.
4.) E-mails that were responded too, but were waiting for a response.

After two and one half hours. I am now at inbox zero for these two accounts. Some of the side folders need to be reorganized, but this will be accomplished during the next 30 day challenge.

I can feel the weight lifted off my shoulders. Give it a try.

-P

Day 26/30

What's this about a Spartan Race?

So. With yesterday's success behind us, Just 3 Guys look forward to another race. The Warrior Dash was a fun 3.1 mile trot, but we want challenge. Next on the list, The Super Spartan: an 8-9 mile obstacle course run. This time too, if we can't complete an obstacle: Mandatory Burpees!

I've got about 5 weeks left to train for it. I've cleared my summer schedule with my wife, and will be waking up first thing in the morning four times a week to increase my mileage to around ten miles. I am still working on adding a body weight workout 3-4 times a week and will be adding a daily (less Sunday) burpee routine.

Hopefully a little adjustments to my diet and the near daily workouts will help me lean out for this race. If the training goes well I have two more obsticle races to run. This will bring my total up to four races! Lets see if I can find some 5 and 10 k's in there to come closer to my 2013 goal!

-See you all tomorrow.
P

Day 25/30

Competing Against Myself - "You Run Marathons"

Tomorrow I am going to run the Warrior Dash in honor of St. Jude's.

Here is another story about how I kept putting off this whole get your life together thing.

In 2007, I ran a marathon, and I signed up for another. About halfway through training for my second, I got an injury which prevented me from competing in it. After that, I stopped training. I don't know why.

In 2010, I signed up for the Warrior Dash because, hey, why not? It sounded fun and challenging and so I started training. Not really. I ran on and off for a couple of weeks. Then nothing.

When I arrived, it turned out my brother and his friend were also running the race. They showed up in full zombie viking attire (even won the costume contest that night). I didn't even take advantage of dressing up and having fun with it.

I just ran the race. I stayed right behind my brother's friend for the first third of the race. Then I overtook him after a mud pit incident. He was hot on my trail for the next third of the race. For the final third of the race, we swapped positions for about 5 minutes. I was giving it everything to keep up with him. I'm in running attire. He's in furs and carrying a giant cardboard hammer on a broom stick. Except for the costume, he... he looked fine. Finally, he looked at me, grinned and said, "C'mon PJ. You run marathons. I can't beat you." He then kicked it up a notch. I tried to keep up, but the lactic acid was burning and I couldn't keep pace. He finished about a minute ahead of me. "Wow. I can't believe I beat you!" He patted me on the back. "Sorry." I shrugged it off, but decided next year I would beat him.

The next year... I am ashamed to say I walked the race. The year after that, I didn't even go. This year, I started training too late. I let life get in my way. But momentum is on my side. For the next 12 months I am going to train to beat my old self. PJ runs marathons. I can too. I build catherdrals.

-P
Creativity Challenge 23/30 - Almost there.

How can I have the energy to do it?

I am feeling a little burnt out, to be honest. Creating content every day is more difficult that I thought. However, I have noticed that even though I am feeling a little down right now, my energy is a lot higher than it usually is. I can't believe I have made it 22 days into this challenge. That would be a C at this point. I usually give up after day 7 or so.

Here's why I think that my energy is doing well.

1. I have been sleeping 6-8 hours a night.
2. I have decreased the amount of fast food I was eating, and am weaning down to a drink or two of soda.
3. I have been working out 4-5 times a week.
4. I have found some success.

These four things are the same items that every self-help guru on the planet tells you will give you energy. And "a-durh" It works! There's a reason these people tell you these things, so you do them, it works, and you think they are miracle workers.

This is all it takes. Try the first 3, and the last one will come. It's a self sustaining cycle. Try it and let me know how it goes. For now I am going to rest. I have a rough couple of days coming up.

-P
Day 22/30 :0D

I failed... and how that's awesome.

Special post.

I failed. Big time. And it's awesome. Here's why. Today I tried to work through a body weight workout in a book that I have: You Are You Own Gym by Mark Lauren. It's the same workout that I tried about a year and a half ago. I remember being sore from it, but I completed it with no problem last time.

Tonight was different. I barely made it half way through the workout. My muscles are so weak. I am so out of shape. I am discouraged, but you know what? I didn't let myself down. I'm not scared. I tried it and I failed.

So instead of harping on myself for letting myself get this out of shape, I am encouraged to try again. I am going to let my muscles heal. I bet I am going to be experiencing some DOMS (delayed onset muscle sorness) tomorrow or thurs. Some ice and some stretching should help.

Tomorrow I will run then work out some other muscles from a workout in this book. It's going to suck. But thats okay. Next week when I try this same workout, I will be slightly better. Maybe I won't physically notice an improvement, but I sure feel a mental improvement already.

-P

How to turn your life around - Plan Your Summer Break

Summer of Awesome Sweetness:

I am a teacher, so I get my summers off just like my students. I like working on projects during the summer. Sometimes I work longer and harder during the summer than at times during the school year. Usually, I just spin my wheels and picking up knowledge for knowledges sake. I realize now that it helps to have a plan. So here are the plans.

Goal One: Sign up for more races!

If I don’t, I will not meet my goal to run 10 races by the end of the year. Right now I have 2/10.
Suggestions for races in the Midwest are more than welcome. In order to do this I need to make sure that I keep up with training and working out. I am going to continue running four days a week, and add on resistance training tonight.
 
Goal Two: Challenge of Organization
Once I complete my Blogging challenge in two weeks, I will begin this challenge. What will I be doing? Going through all my hard drives and organizing the files. Organize and coordinate clothes, DVDs, CDs, books. Clean out the closets. Load up bags and bags to be taken to good will and the recycling center. Turn the garage and laundry rooms into studios.
 
Continue to Create:
This summer I am going to finish uploading my website. I am will post interesting blog posts and personal updates on my quest to be a better person. I am going to upload my science themed webcomic to the website, and help students worldwide through it. I am going to finish additional episodes of my webseries “Science Scenes” for students, teachers and educators everywhere.
 
Get in the Water: I need to scuba dive over the summer. It is on my 2013 bucket list.

Search out the next big things: In 2005, I wrote a thesis, In 2006 I started my first real career as a scientist. In 2007, I ran a marathon. In 2008, I went to Italy. In 2009, I went back to school and changed careers. In 2010 … well that was a year of change and preparation so it can be excused. In 2011, I got married and bought a house. In 2012, we had a baby. I want adventures. I want new things. Ramping this blog up is something, but I want more. I have some things in the works. Once school ends I will post more.

See you all tomorrow. Keep up the good work.

-P

Creative Challenge 13/30

Nerd Fitness: 6 week challenge

So, as I have posted before, I am a huge fan of what the Steve and friends have going on over at Nerdfitness.

Every six weeks they have a 6-week challenge. I have been meaning to join one for months, but just never got around to it. (You know what they say about good intentions.)

I'm going to crush this challenge!

Here are my goals:
Fitness:
1. Run 4 times a week - I am training for various mud run races this summer and love my long runs. I have just gotten back into it, and have made an arrangments with my wife to have days set aside for running.
2. Do a body weight work out at least 2 times a week - I have a workout planned, I just haven't started.

Diet:
1. No more than 20oz. of soda daily. (I am currently downing 1-2 liters a day!) Cutting down to 20 oz. will be a challenge, but I have done it in the past. Going cold turkey doesn't work for me. I need to cut back for a couple weeks. If I can do this for a couple of weeks, I will cut back even more; eventually weaning myself down to 0 oz.
2. No more junk food detours on the way to and from work.

Level Up my life:
1. Continue blogging on my blogspot account. http://catchityourself.blogspot.com/
(At least 3 times a week). I am currently running a 30 day challenge to blog once a day and am on day 12/30
2. Set up my science education website - I just registered the domain less than a week ago and am waiting for the domain to be transfered to my hosting company.

That's it for now.

Thanks for coming by!

-P Challenge 12/30

2013 Goal Reached - and Sunday Rewards.

Great news on the awesome front! Back in February, I listed some of my goals for 2013. One of my goals was to raise $1000 for a charity. The charity I chose was St. Jude's Children's research hospital. This hospital holds a special place in my family because a cousin credits this organization with saving her life.

She was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor when she was a child. Because of St. Jude, her family was able to afford cutting edge treatments and travel expenses. This charity made a difference. Through their treatments, my cousin beat a 6 months-to-live diagnosis and has been in remission for nearly two decades!

With the help of my family and friends I have been able to raise $1220 for charity! I can scratch this off my 2013 list, but I'm not done yet. The race is not for another two weeks, so I still have time to destroy this goal even more!


Also, I have slipped in keeping score for my motivation game, but I did record enough experience points to be able to draw a card today. My win? A motivational quote. I almost have enough for another card next week. Only drawing once gives me more motivation to record my xp this week.

"You know the rule ... if you are falling - dive" - Joseph Campbell
 

Keep up the good work. See you again tomorrow.

-P
Creativity Challenge 10/30 (33%)

My new motivation game.

I can't take credit for this idea. I got it from listening to the iProcrastinate podcast. Here's what I did. I took 45 note cards. On thirty of them I wrote down motivational quotes. One 15 I wrote prizes. 5 cards had prizes like "Spend two guilt free hours playing video games." or "Spend a night watching Netflix without worry." Five of them had prizes with a value of about $5-15, and the remaining five had prizes of items I really want with values over $15.

Now every Sunday I will give myself experience points based on the things I do. For example; if I don't spend money on junk in the morning I give myself 50 xp. If I don't spend it on junk twice a day I give myself 150 xp and if I don't buy junk at all I give myself 300 xp.  I also give myself 200 xp for every time I run in a week and a bonus 200 xp if I run all four times a week.

I make these mini-challenges so that on a perfect week I can earn 5,000 xp. For every 1,000 xp I draw a card at random. If I win a prize then I have to get the prize within the next 24 hours.

So far I've only drawn quotes last week (3 of them). Next week I am hoping for a prize.

-P

As far as the spending on junk challenge. I had a bad day yesterday, so I am back at 01/30.
I know I didn't post yesterday, but I am going to post twice today, plus I had a very productive creative day. Please stay tuned to this blog for a future post about what I have been working on in the past couple of days.

Creativity challenge: 06/30
Fiscal Responsiblity challenge: 01/30

What to do when you don't want to do it?

So it's no lie, and I am not ashamed to admit that I get a lot of inspiration from sites like Nerdfitness. So the other day, I was going through the archives over there. (Don't judge. It's the end of a school year, and there is way too much going on at work), and I noticed the post about Doing it Now.

The video comes from The Art of Manliness. It has helped me immensely. Go on over there and check out the post. HERE. I linked it for you. You are welcome. If you are lazy here is the video embedded from YouTube

Following this advice has greatly helped. Just the other day I finally got around to grading papers which were just weighing on my soul. It felt so good to get them done. I should have done them right away. It only took 45 minutes and added days of stress hormones to my body.

After this experience, I have been following the advice of the video. Whenever I don't want to do something, I hear Arnold's voice in my head. "Do it Now!" My stress levels have gone down. I feel better about myself and because of that, I can already see I am being more successful.

30 day Challenge: 02/30 - Challenge of Creation
02/30 Challenge of Fiscal Responsibility.

30 Day Challenge: TED talk.

So here I am again. Tired. Pushed around. A little burnt out. But here. My dreams are killing me. I have too much inside that just needs to get out.

I just wanted to link to this TED talk. I think it might help me. Maybe it will help you too.

So here is my first 30 day challenge. I am going to pick two. I know that picking two will make it that much harder to complete. However, I need to do both of these.

30 Days of Creation - For the next 30 days I will do  the following (today counts): I will create content. I will practice producing my thoughts. I will post 30 (29 now) new blog posts or 4 panel webcomics to be posted in the future.

30 Days of Fiscal Responsibility - For the next 30 days I will not spend money friviously. This includes junk food, soda, and impulse buys. I will pay my bills on time. I will donate the remaining funds to my fundraiser by this weekend.

Day 01/30

Challenge 007: Plan a Birthday

I hate planning things. My wife hates that I hate planning things. I always worry about not having the perfect outcome, so I waffle on the details until the time to plan has passed and the event falls apart or never becomes.

In honor of my wife, I decided to plan her birthday this year. Today I made plans to go to a restaurant, and ordered flowers sent to her work through an online flower company near her work.

On Friday I made reservations for her friends, family, and ourselves to go to dinner and then follow that up with a ghost tour. I did need her help making sure that she would enjoy the events, and I did hit up her friends for advice, so I cannot give myself the most XP points available. But I am planning. It makes me nervous, but the follow through is important. I believe by following through, I can improve my success rates in my challenges.

XP for succesful outing: 50 XP

Challenge 006: Join the Rebellion

I said it before. I am a big fan of Nerd Fitness. It's time to gain social accountability.So I am going to join the Nerd Fitness Rebellion.

XP: 25

Challenge 005: Make 7 Yours.

Before I move into today's challenge. A quick update on the last challenge. It turns out that the marathon training book was little too intense for my current level of fitness, so I decided to tone it down for the time being and look for a different training program. In the meanwhile I am going to build my endurance by running four times a week for 30 minutes, and then a long run on the weekend where I increase my mileage. So far so good. I am two runs into this week, and while I am tired and a little sore, I am in great spirits.

Speaking of tired; on to my next challenge. Studies say that for optimum performance a person needs 7-9 hours of sleep each night. So that is what I am going to do.

Challenge 005: Get at least seven and no more than nine hours of sleep a night.
XP Reward: 10 XP per day.

To achieve this I need to reorganize my day and prioritize. I will actually need to schedule sleep. I started this challenge on Sunday and will have a full week by this weeks rewards day.

Challenge 003: King Me

About four years ago I got addicted to LOST (was a completely whelemed by the finale). During the seasons I got completely wrapped up in the mysteries, clues, and refferences.

I decided to read every book that Sawyer was reading. Good thing I did, because that led me to my favorite book of all time, Watership Down.

Eventually, that led me to discover The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Wow. Was I blown away. I had read The Stand in high school around the time the miniseries came out, and while I loved the book, I never pursued King beyond that. Until The Dark Tower.

So about a year ago, I decided to read every single book Stephen King ever wrote. I am a little over 1/3 of the way through the list. So for the duration of this challenge, every time I read a Stephen King book for the first time, that is 50 XP in my account.