Progress and regress.

We had a couple of min family crises and my grad school work got a little intense. Sorry for being MIA for a little. Just when I felt like I had things all organized and figured out. I've been working to catch up on all the little things this summer plus spend some time with family. I know I need to focus more on health and career, but when my little ones are the age they are I feel like that should have been my summer priority, and it was. So glad I did.

But I'm back again. I can't stay away. I've made some progress on some of my goals. I'm back on track to lose weight and gain strength and endurance. I m hammering out a routine. The kids are getting a little older and independent, so I'm looking forward to having a little bit more time to work on my side projects.

See you all soon with more updates.

Science Scenes

I've been working really hard on creating some content for my website and youtube channel. I started these videos a couple of years ago, but never got around to actually going whole hog and producing a lot of them. I know I have miles to go before they get good. But I think I'm doing okay right now. If you are a real person and not a bot, crawler, etc. Give it a look and let me know what you think. I greatly appreciate it.

Episode One: Topics of Conservation. Gene Sequencing and Engineering

Episode 02: 10 Things About Polar Bears

 

Episode 03: A redo of my Natural Selection Video. 

Thank you so much in advance.

-P

Training tumblr

I have created a tumblr for data tracking, workout logs, and motivation/inspiration memes. Check it out ironedutainer.tumblr.com.

If been off schedule a little but am working to get back on track.

I'm baaaaaccckkk.... and rebranding.

I'm back and rebranding.....


Like a comic book villain, I can't be kept locked up forever. So here I am. If you have been following me please update your bookmarks. I changed the blog address to ironedutainer.blogspot.com from Catchityourself.blogspot.com.

Why? Well here is the quote I used to name my blog:


Well, I'm sort of a silly person, and I didn't realize the quote I used was very likely made up out of whole cloth.

You see.... the Constitution of the United states doesn't talk about the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence does. I don't think good ol' Benny Frank (as I liked to call him) would have been so careless as to make that mistake, and I can't find any reliable sources for the quote. The quote was likely made up by someone confused about the documents and misattributed later on.

While I still believe that there is a strong need to challenge yourself to be the best person you can be, and you should rely on others to bring you to your goals, I also want to bring this blog more inline with some of my other projects.

I'n my next post I will talk about what the name Iron Edutainer means and why I chose it.

See you later. Keep building Cathedrals.

-P

Sometimes you just need rest.

Once I get on a role and into a routine, it's very hard for me to stop. There is a lot to be said about forward momentum. That's why replacing good routines with bad routines are necessary.

Also necessary sometimes: giving yourself a break. The key is, to give yourself one only when you really need one. You can't just take a break just because you need an excuse. Yesterday, I kept looking forward to just getting home. My brain was foggy. I craved sugar. My legs were heavy. I was irritated at everything. Each one of these is a symbol of overtraining and needing rest. I could have just sucked it up and gone into the gym, but you know what? Instead, I came home, turned off the devices, and climbed into bed. 

Nine hours later, I felt better than I have in a long time. I was much more effective at work today, and I got a great workout in. Sometimes you need to learn to listen to your body, and throw in the towel. Just make sure you aren't giving into excuses.

See ya soon.

P

Update.

I really should post more again. School year is winding down. It seems like only yesterday we started and I dropped off the face of the earth. I guess I have excuses, but that is all they are. We are now expecting child number two. I have enrolled to a second masters program. It will be time consuming, but it is going to pay off in spades. I hope to learn to be a better science communicator through it. Perhaps I will even relaunch my website and webcomic. 

I have been on a three week roll with my health. No more fast food or gas station stops on the way home. It's been saving 200-800 empty calories a day. I've also started strength training again. 3 days a week in addition to really improving my running base. I'm running four days a week. Two days are at a low mile 80% pace. One day is a low mile easy recovery run, and the last my long run. I'm up to around 18 miles a week. This was an up week. Next week I'll back off a little and allow a little recovery.

I was back up to my all time high, so that was not great, but I'm back down 8 lbs, so I'm one lb lighter than last update. 

I know I can do better. Here's to that! I need to organize my time a little better, and learn to say on a bit more.

Check you all soon,

P

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 Insight at the Super Spartan.

Today I ran the Super Spartan race, and it was tough. The race was about 8 and a half miles with over 15 obstacles.  I made it through though (with the addition of soreness and nicks and cuts all over my body). It was a great fun experience, and I need to make sure that I sign up for next years race and make sure I am in even better shape to run it.

In fact, that ties in directly with the insight that I gained from running the race. If you don't know much about these mud races; they are competitions over very rough terrain with the added challenge of obstacles and lots and lots of muddy water. One of the obstacles of this years Super Spartan obstacles was a sand bag carry. I had to carry a 30 lb sand bag about 100 yards down a steep ravine and then back up the same ravine. It wasn't the hardest challenge but it was hard on me. I threw down the bag, and at that point I realized...

... that sandbag is the exact amount of extra weight I am carrying above my "healthy" weight. This means that I am basically carrying a thirty pound sand bag with me... every hour of every day. Every hour of every night.

It amazes me that I had such a rough time carrying that bag about 200 yards, and I felt such a relief to drop it off. I can only imagine how good it will feel again to drop the 30 lbs of weight I am carrying and get back down to my feel good weight.

This feeling is a great motivator. If you have weight to lose, try this. Try to carry an object that weighs the amount of weight you need to lose for a few hundred yards. Really think about how it is making you feel. The physical act of carrying the weight will stick in your head. I know for me, until the memory fades, it will keep me on track for my diet and exercise
routine.

Thanks for reading. See you soon. Build those cathedrals.

-P

Personal Update - Dreams on their way, and family time.

It's been a crazy week. I've been running around like crazy for almost two weeks. I do not want to get into particulars, as I do not want to fall into excuses for lack of updates.

But I do have positive news. I have made a major stride towards my goals. My website is up and running. You can visit it here: sciencescenes.com.

Everything looks pretty good. I am very proud of the work I put into it, but I still need to generate content. I have scripted the first dozen or so webcomics and am ready to start illustrating them, but I have hit a wall. I just cannot get motivated to push through. After a couple of days of asking myself why, I have determined it is one of the big two excuses... I'm scared. Time to set a goal. I will have my webcomic up and running by Monday July 22nd. Plan on it. On that day I will have a link here for the first Science Scenes comic. My first science scenes blog post is also in the planning stages. I should have that finished before the weekend.

Other than that, I have been working a lot around the house. I finally got the garage all organized and updated. I still want to turn one area into a little workshop, but that is for the future. I have also been spending time with my brothers and my daughter. My uncle-in-law and I worked on putting together one of those playsets for my daughter. It turned out great!

That's all for short term goals and planning. Hopefully I will be back again tomorrow. In the meanwhile, keep on building cathedrals.

See you soon.
-P

Personal Update - Where in the world am I?

Hi all.

Just a quick check in. I will not be able to blog post for another day or two likely. I am currently working on getting my website figured out and launched. Look for an announcement by the end of the week.

I am doing okay with all my other goals. No worries there.

See you soon.
-P

Stuck in a rut? - Volunteer.

When I first graduated college, I was a little lost. I had left the structure and safety of graduate school, where I was surrounded by similarly aged people who held similar interests to me. Once I entered "the real world" I lost a lot of that. Sure, my coworkers were awesome people, but it just wasn't the same.

I had joined Team in Training and met some good people through the program, but an injury prevented me from continuing with the program. For a while I was at a loss. I wasn't meeting people who held similar passions with me. I followed the typical work-home-sleep routine. I had my friends on the weekends, but they were now scattered across the country and some had started the very busy family life. So, they were often away. It could be lonely at times.

One day at lunch, the topic of how to meet new people in your adult life came up. One of my coworkers suggested that I try volunteering somewhere. She had a friend who started volunteering at the Shedd Aquarium and was loving it.

During the conversation, I remembered one of my favorite places as a child, The Field Museum. My late-uncle used to our large brood of cousins there for our weekends. Just the thought of the place brought back sweet nostalgia of exploring the maze-like halls filled with dinosaur bones and exotic creatures and cultures. I think I submitted my application to volunteer that day .

Volunteering fulfilled me in many ways. I felt like a kid again; memorizing dinosaur stats and learning and sharing stories of discovery and science. I met some great people, some who have became life-long friends.

When my old career was up in the air due to a rocky econonmy, volunteering kept me stable. The type of volunteer work I do involves the sharing of information, and led me to my new career in education. By giving myself as a volunteer, I was able to gain so much more. Bankrate.com even included me in an article about using volunteering as a career stepping stone.

So if you feel like your life is at a standstill... try volunteering. Contact institutions who are in line with your passions and skills and see if they could use a hand. You will learn new skills, rekindle old excitements, and meet like-minded people. Give it a try. Whats the worst that could happen?

See you all tomorrow.
-P

Personal Update and a Little Sarcastic Motivation

It's been a busy couple of days. I am still getting the schedule for the summer together and finding a strategy that will continue to work during the school year. My list of blog posts to write has grown over the past couple of days, and I have taken to writing them down in my iPad which I carry around with me at all times.

I haven't had time to fully write them yet. Yesterday we made a 4 hour round trip to celebrate my wive's nephew's birthday and today we took a trip to my mother's to visit with my grandparents who are in town. So I haven't been on top of my blogging or social media.

But, I still want to get a post in, and there are many other aspects of my life that are going well. For example, I was able to run for 50 minutes straight this morning. This is pretty specatacular because it is the first time I ran that long in over two years. I am feeling stronger, faster, better and more motivated.

Speaking of motivation, as I was brainstorming ideas for blog posts I remembered an episode of Weird Things podcast where they were talking about an article from the Onion that had been making the rounds of acedemia. I remember listening to the episode back in April on one of my runs (that were actually more walking than running at the time), and I immediately went home and looked up the article.

Here it is. It's the most motivational piece of writing I have read in a long time. It's spot on to how I felt about life at the time, and somewhat still explains why I am doing a lot of the activities I am doing right now.

I don't want my passions to take second stage to the motions of life. I want my passions to drive me. I want to look back on my life at the end, and have many more memories of "That was awesome!" than "I wish I would have...".

In a way, this silly Onion article put me on the path of doing the blog, purchasing web domains, and working on various other projects. Read the article, and if it motivates you take action. Learn, Try, Grow, Do.

See you tomorrow.
-P

Personal Update

I have a list of topics to write about, but I thought I'd save them for a later day. Today was the 'Hawks Stanley Cup Ralley and I've been on daddy duty all day. So Instead, it's time for another personal update.

I'm doing pretty well on my 21 days of happiness challenge. I've been journaling my gratitude and my 24 hour successes and reached out to friends I haven't talked to in a while. 

My 30 day of organization challenge has fallen apart, and I took two days catching up on reading while fighting the weather to get the outdoor chores done. I guess that would make it a partial fail. I am getting back on task with organizing. Tomorrow night I am going to tackle the book shelves and filing.

I've been keeping up with the Nerd Fitness challenge. My soda intake started to peak again, but I haven't had one since yesterday, and for the few days before yesterday I kept the amount of soda intake relatively low.

I have been running four days a week in preparation for the Spartan coming up. I do need to increase the body weight workouts. I am feeling stronger and faster... and unfortunately more tired and sore. I'm not as young as I used to be. Tomorrow is another long run. I am hoping to increase my run time to 50 minutes.

And that about wraps it up for today. See you all tomorrow.

-P

Things to do - Communicate Appointments With Your Family Using Google Calenders.

Yesterday, as part of my organization challenge, my wife and I created a shared calendar using Google Calendars.

It's a great communication tool. Hopefully this will help alleviate problems due to my absent-mindedness and our very busy schedules. Google Calendars is great because either one of us can edit the calender, and we can sync them from our smart phones or tablets. She can even create a honey-do list to keep me on task.

In order to create a shared google calendar, all parties must have a google account. I highly suggest you sign up for one. They're free now. Just go to www.google.com and click on the upper right hand corner. You can use a previously existing e-mail, but I prefer to create a brand new g-mail account. By creating an account, you will have access to not only the calendar, but also YouTube, G-mail, google drive, and many many more google applications.

 

In order to sync a calender, the first thing you need to do is sign into google and click on calendars. Once there, you can create a new calendar .

Name your calendar whatever you wish. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page. Once there, you can add people to your calender under the "Share with specific people" option. If you want the other parties to be able to add and edit event then I suggest you move to the drop down menu and give them the option to "Make changes and edit sharing". Just in case.

After that, just click on the time you have an appointment, and add follow the directions to add that event to the calender. You can even add non-date specific tasks. You and your family can now keep each other in the loop for all your important events. It makes forgetting anniversaries a thing of the past.

See you tomorrow. Build those cathedrals.

-P

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