The Obstacle is the Way (Ryan Holiday)

I just finished listening to the audiobook version of Ryan Holiday’s book ‘The Obstacle is the Way’. This is one of his earlier books I think and serves as an introduction to Stoic philosophy. I have come across the ideas the book contained before, through other reading such as William B. Irvine’s excellent book ‘A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy’ and various podcasts including interviews with Holiday himself, but it was good to have another pass through the principles underlying Stoicism. The specific focus of the book is the idea that obstacles should be viewed as opportunities to develop, grow and find alternative solutions rather than as insurmountable blocks to progress. Overall, I felt that the book went on a bit and that the third section on ‘Will’ has weaker than the preceding ones on ‘Perception’ and ‘Action’,  but overall it was an interesting listen and it held my attention through to the end.

It certainly seems that I am increasingly settling into a Stoic philosophy towards life. Key elements to this are always remembering that there are alternative viewpoints to any situation and that the way that we perceive things occurring around us or to happening to us is to some extent a matter of choice. I think that I am now much more aware of this and much better at catching myself before I react and asking whether there are other ways of perceiving a situation that might illicit different reactions. I am definitely trying to be less attached to thinking and more driven towards action. Perhaps most importantly, I am fully embracing the idea that you should only concern yourself with things over which you have an element of control.

I think that I am probably quite close to the point where I would regard myself as a Stoic (in fact I said as much in a talk I gave yesterday). Coupled to this, I suspect that fairly soon I will start to annoy people around me (or maybe just my family) by trotting out a phrase which seems to have become my new mantra, “there’s ALWAYS a silver lining”, when something doesn’t seem to be going so favourably.

From now on I am going to try to dip into two of the major bases of early Stoic writing – Marcus Aurelius’s ‘Meditations’ and Seneca’s ‘Letters From A Stoic’. I think it is also time for me to revisit William Irvine’s book on the subject.

New Forest Marathon

Yesterday I ran the New Forest Marathon, my 7th marathon and 10th race of at least marathon distance. We had driven across to the New Forest on Saturday evening, not arriving until after 9:30pm, and stayed in an AirBnB room at Lymington. The final part of the journey was interesting because at night the New Forest area is really, really dark which made navigation quite tricky on the minor roads (the directions for the place we were staying were to look for the telegraph pole with two white lines painted on it – quite tricky with just the car headlamps to see by!). Anyway, after a typically restless pre-marathon night, it was up at 6am for pre-race preparation and the drive to the event. Everything went smoothly enough.

Going into this run I had no idea how I was going to do. The last proper long run I had done was the Mendip Marauder 30 miler in early August, 5 weeks ago, and in between I think I had managed one run of 14 miles and one of 11 miles plus some shorter outings. I knew that I was relying on the residual fitness I had from the spring/early summer period and that it was pretty likely that it would be more of a struggle than I hoped. I think I was hoping that I would get into race zone and be inspired by the scenery.

My marathon PB is just under 3:56 which is almost exactly 9 minute mile pace. Consequently, I decided I would aim to start off, for the first 8 miles, trying to average 9:10m/m pace. The plan was that if that went okay I would try to lift myself to 9:00 minute mile pace for the next 8 or so miles then lift it again to 8:50m/m for the next 8 and then see what was left in the tank for the last couple of miles. The first part of the plan went okay. I made it to 8 miles in decent shape and on course despite some very wet conditions underfoot and started to wind the pace up a bit. My average pace came down to 9:08 by about 10/11 miles but I was finding it hard to find the energy to push on. At around mile 12/13 we hit a longish uphill slog. It was not at all steep but it seemed like it was incessantly up and it was also quite windy. My pace dropped first into the 9:40s and then below 10m/m pace. I was grumbling. My brain decided that the course wasn’t fun, the scenery was boring and there was no support to tap into. Around mile 14 I decided that it simply wasn’t going to happen (whatever ‘it’ was) and I grumbled to myself quite a bit more. I decided that I’d be happy to do 10 minute mile pace for the last 10 miles and that would see me to the finish in around 4:15. But it still wasn’t going well and somewhere around mile 17 I even walked a bit on a hill (for a ‘flat’ course there seemed to be a remarkable amount of uphill but that might just have been my head playing tricks on me). As I walked up the hill a younger guy came up alongside me, also walking, and we started talking. He was tackling his first marathon and it soon became apparent to me that he was finding it a bit of a struggle, largely because he was getting a lot of cramps. I gave him a salt tablet, we chatted some more, he stopped to stretch, I waited for him, and soon my race became one of seeing him home.

I don’t doubt that he, Greg, would have finished anyway (perhaps not though), but helping him through that last 9 miles gave me something to focus on and a purpose for the race. We had a great time chatting away, sharing snippets and stories. He was an fund-raising event coordinator for a hospice in Sheffield so it was certainly all in a good cause. A few times he told me to go on ahead if I wanted to but when I checked, he said he was more than happy for me to stick with him and thankful for the support. I don’t think he realised at the time that helping him get to the finish was also helping me do the same! We encountered his parents en route a couple of times and then, finally, in the finish straight his excited girlfriend before we crossed the line together in 4:29:57. My reaction was to shake his hands and say well done. He looked at me and said ‘Can we have a hug?’. It was very sweaty… but also a great moment. We walked through the finish area, said a few last words to each other and parted on our separate ways.

And that was the New Forest Marathon. At one point it was looking like a bit of a disaster really – an ever-slowing, boring and pointless trudge to the finish for a time I would be somewhat disappointed with. But then my little ball of consciousness did its random dance with his little ball of consciousness, like two eddies temporarily swirling together in a stream, and the world came alive. Yes, this was a relatively slow run, yes it was a bit boring from a scenery point of view and yes it was a trudge, but it certainly wasn’t pointless and, I suspect, that shared experience with a random stranger is one that I will look back on with fondness forever.

The only picture I took from the event was when I got home later in the evening. For some reason I seem to have adopted some kind of crazy ‘power pose’, but I’ll share it here anyway:

My Intentions Manifesto

Over the last few years I have been absorbing content from various books and podcasts which has gradually been re-shaping the way that I try to live my life. Amongst this reading and listening has been quite a lot on aspects of productivity, Stoic and eastern philosophy, mindfulness and creativity (to list just the broad topics that come to mind immediately). Recently, I took the step of trying to boil this down to a series of short, simple principles that provide a kind of manifesto for my life. I can’t say that I necessarily always manage to live by these principles, but I have them written down and have them easily accessible so that I can glance through them and remind myself how I want to be. Initially, they changed quite a bit as I iterated them towards a state that I was happy with but the list seemed to settle down at 9 items which I think capture everything I want captured for now. I thought I would share them here. They are expressed not as instructions to myself but as intentions and so I am calling this list my Intentions Manifesto. It goes like this:

I intend to…

… be PRESENT

… be DELIBERATE [1]

… be PLAYFUL [2]

… focus on SINGLE STEPS

… take ACTION

… take the STAIRS [3]

… act with KINDNESS

… keep moving FORWARDS [4]

… leave things BETTER [5]

Notes:
[1] I often come back to the idea that whatever you do you should do it deliberately rather than accidentally.
[2] I loved Mark Rowlands exposition of the importance of play and being playful in his book ‘Running with the Pack’. He (sort of) defined play as being when you deliberately choose to do a task in a manner that makes it harder than it needs to be for no reason other than because you can. I liked that idea.
[3] This comes from Rory Vaden’s book ‘Take the Stairs’ and captures the/his idea that if you tackle the hard stuff now, what follows becomes easier but if you take the easy route now what follows is harder (‘Short-term easy = long-term difficult, short-term difficult = long-term easy’)
[4] I mean keep things/stuff moving forwards at all times not keep physically moving forwards although the latter is also good advice when running a long way!
[5] This comes from a podcast (it might have been The Unmistakable Creative interview with Jim Bunch but I can’t be sure without going back and listening again). Anyway, expressed in a slightly fuller form I mean that it is a good idea to always leave environments in a better state than you find them in. An environment could be the world around me generally but it might also be something small like the bathroom, my office or even my bag.

The Philospher and the Wolf (Mark Rowlands)

This morning I finished reading Mark Rowland’s book ‘The Philosopher and the Wolf’:

I came to this title having last year read his book ‘Running with the Pack’ which blended his experiences running, and especially running with his wolf and dogs, and his work as a philosopher/academic. In that book, a section describing the states of mind that can occur when running long distances in terms of various classic philosophical ideas particularly struck me and it was largely because of that section that I identified TPatW as a future title to read.

I am really not a dog person. In fact I am not much of an animals person. I am certainly not be the sort of person who might think that it would be good, fun, sensible, practical or reasonable to have a wolf around the house. But I certainly AM interested in philosophy, at least I increasingly find myself thinking that it is a subject that I really would like to pursue in more depth. Consequently, I came to TPatW in search of more of Rowlands’s wonderful exposition of philosophical ideas and not out of an interest in the wolf!

Anyway, once again I really enjoyed Rowlands’s writing – the mix of cautious autobiography, education and philosophical musing – and am more convinced than ever that I need to try to find some kind of structured introduction to philosophy to work through. Rowlands uses his observations of the wolf (Brenin) and the intertwining of their lives and actions to draw out some profound messages about what it is to be a human (and a wolf) and ends up arguing that the meaning of life is not to be found in possession or in purpose but in the ‘higher moments’ (moments where we dig in and carry on regardless of the adversity that we face [my definition]) that lie scattered along the timeline of life. Rowlands describes these moments as ones where we shout “F**k You” to the Gods and it is clear that by choosing to melt part of his existence with the life of Brenin, he was doing just that.

Captain Ultra and the See-Saw of Vulnerability

I mentioned in my entry yesterday that I am running the New Forest Marathon on Sunday and with that in mind this seemed like a good time to post a short cartoon strip that I wrote a few months ago, prior to tackling my first 50 mile ultramarathon. The cartoon was inspired by an episode of the Train Runner Nation podcast which discussed how prior to a big event it can seem that you are loading up more and more issues and stresses relating to the run which weigh you down and can make a successful outcome seem impossible. When running the event, if self-doubt creeps in, you may never reach the point where you can overcome this adverse load and a DNF (Did Not Finish) may result. The knack is to keep believing and digging into your inner strength beyond the point that you thought possible until a pivot point is reached when the balance tips and the adverse load smashes down and the race is beaten. As I listened to the podcast on my way home from work, I really liked the visual analogy that was developed, and so I drew out my cartoon almost as soon as I arrived home – it was great fun to produce, and, from my limited experience, does capture the reality of preparing for and completing an endurance event pretty well.

Task Carnage

Last week I was on holiday and, therefore, away from work. In the two preceding weeks I felt that I had worked very efficiently and effectively, pushing forward quite a few projects and starting to establish some interesting ways of structuring some parts of my activity. I spent a good chunk of time before I went away setting things up ready for my return, for example deciding what I was going to do each day this week in what I thought was a sensible, achievable manner.

I returned to work yesterday with ~90 emails to wade through. Some of these were trivial – bits of information that I didn’t need to act on or store anywhere, although even these took a certain amount of time and bandwidth to process. Others required my attention, authorizing payments, forwarding timetabling requests, chasing assessment marks etc. I had one 1 hour meeting scheduled in the afternoon – it became a 1.5 hour meeting. Today I had two meetings scheduled – essentially the whole morning. I have further meetings scheduled for Wednesday (2 hours) and Friday (2 hours plus, now, another 2 hours or so…). I quickly realized that my best laid plans for this week needed to be completely scrapped – there was simply top much ‘stuff’ shouting for my urgent attention to have the luxury of getting on with the work that I planned and wanted (and needed) to do, for example starting to prepare for the new academic year’s teaching in less than 3 weeks’ time… So the plan has been almost entirely erased from my whiteboard, the tasks I had scheduled for myself have been unscheduled, the programme of ‘nudge’ tasks I had laid out (office improvements, alumni database) has been shelved for now.

With a bit of luck I can get my head down tomorrow, work through all of the new ‘stuff’ and emerge on Thursday with a clearer space to set about things afresh. I certainly need to start thinking about next year’s teaching soon. Just to add a little more stress to the current situation, I have an abnormal weekend ahead which involves traveling to and from the New Forest to run the New Forest Marathon on Sunday morning. If the weather is good then it ought to be an enjoyable and uplifting run in some great surroundings. But one thing is certain, it won’t leave me feeling refreshed and full of energy ready for the week ahead!

Vendee Sunset

I had a week off from writing on this blog last week because I was on holiday with my family near Saint-Jean-de-Monts in the Vendee region of France. It’s an area that we have visited before and the intention was simply to have a few days away not rushing about visiting places but reading books, relaxing on the beach or by the pool and just doing simple things. When we arrived at 9pm on the Sunday evening after a very smooth ferry crossing from Plymouth to Roscoff and a 4.5 hour drive southwards, the temperature was still over 30 degrees Celsius, but for the rest of the week it was considerably cooler than this with sunny days interspersed with cloudier ones with some rain midweek. We went to the beach a couple of times, swam in the sea (just the once), played on the excellent mini-golf courses near to the site we were staying at, spent quite a lot of time in French supermarkets, did a couple of runs including an 11 mile one and had a few evening trips to wander along the beach/waterfront in various places.

On the Monday night we walked to the local beach (Plage de Paree de Jonc) and caught a most wonderful sunset which I just about managed to capture the glory of. I think I will leave my best picture of it to do the talking here…

What Audience?

I have been writing daily (weekday) entries on this blog now for a couple of weeks, trying to stick to a routine and add something (anything) each day. I’ve not announced this to anyone and I don’t actively promote this blog anywhere and so it is unlikely that anyone I know realizes that I am doing this. If they did know, I think I would probably be asked questions such as ‘Why?’ and ‘Who are you writing for?’. They are not bad questions, and, in essence, they can be summed up by the title of this post: ‘What Audience?’. This could mean who is the audience (intended or otherwise) or it could be meant perhaps disparagingly as a comment that there is actually no audience. At the moment, the latter statement is pretty much true, although I was surprised that the two entries I wrote about running WERE picked up by people out there.

When I consider the question, my own answer is that there is NO intended audience and I really care little about whether there will ever be one. When I used to write on this blog I think I had an idea that I might have some interesting things to communicate and that there might actually be people out there who would appreciate them. Now, whilst I acknowledge that this MIGHT be true, that is not my driver. Basically, I just want to write, and making a decision to try to add something regularly to this blog is simply a way of forcing myself to sit down each day for 15-20 minutes, tap away at the keyboard, and write. If it turns out that I write something interesting then all the better.

So my audience is myself. I am now quite happy adding to this blog just for 1) the writing discipline that it is helping to build and 2) as a way of pulling together random threads in my head. If you are reading this blog then great, if you are enjoying reading it or finding it interesting then double great. I am enjoying writing it and building the site generally.

Running lists added

I have just added a couple of new Lists called ‘Running (Daily)’ and ‘Running (Monthly)’ to this site, accessible via the links at the top or on the sidebar. The intention is to keep a very simple visual record of my running activity capturing when and how far I run (or don’t run) each day on the daily list and month-by-month totals on the monthly one. Keeping this (the daily summary) up-to-date may not last long and it might turn out that I don’t like this addition but I will try to give it a fair crack. Ultimately it would be nice to go back in time with this but that would be quite a lot of effort. For now the monthly summary will have to suffice for the historic record.

The Language of Spirit

Inspired by a recommendation from Austin Kleon (e.g. see this blog post) I ordered a copy of The Language of Spirit by Jan Swafford and when I got home yesterday evening it was waiting for me to open.

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As I think I mentioned in an entry last week, I grew up on a diet of Classical music both as a listener and as a performer and throughout my teens and well into my 20s I routinely listened to Classical works, mainly from the period 1830 through to 1930. I was (am) a particular fan of the Romantic period – Brahms, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Borodin, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Nielsen and a host of other – pieces that my mother often referred to as ‘troubled’ music. But in the last 25 years or so I have not listened to Classical music much. In fact I have not listened to any music much (properly).

Looking through the book I find myself ridiculously excited to reconnected with so many old favourites and, I am sure, to discover some new ones. The book is arranged as short chapters each giving a brief overview of the life and works of a different composer and presented in essentially chronological order. In each chapter there are recommendations for works to listen to and glancing through I could see a lot that I knew but also a lot that I didn’t. I am pondering the idea of reading the book slowly, progressing through the composers in date order and listening to each and every work that is highlighted. This is a project that could take a long time and I might get frustrated by the time it takes me to get through to my (currently) preferred era, but it seems to me that if I want to give myself a really thorough re-grounding in this musical world it makes sense to follow its development in a logical fashion. Also, if I don’t adopt some kind of methodical/disciplined approach then I think I will just cherry-pick works I know well and then I will potentially miss out on a lot of what this journey might have to offer. We will see.