Waiting 'til it hurts

I've been having problems with my back for the past two years.  Initiated by years of computer work and stress, the pain can often get to the point where I am nauseous and have a headache that simply won't go away.

The funny thing is that I know the solution: do my stretches regularly and exercise to strengthen my core.  

But I wait.  I don't do my stretches or strengthen my core.  I live counting on the fact that I feel good now, so I'll feel good later.  When the pain comes, I then get frustrated and angry, wondering why I am 'chosen' the be the one in so much pain.   

I'd like to say that my back pain is the only case of this controlled ignorant invincibility.  It isn't.

I've realized lately that, in so many things, I change only when it hurts.  I get up in the morning, make my coffee, and then choose to watch TV during breakfast over reading my bible because 'I'm okay today'.  I then work all day, never stopping to pray or rest to hear God because today is a good day and I 'don't need him' or am 'okay on my own.'

Then I break.  It's been building the whole time--pangs of fear, pride, anger or whatever, that show up throughout each hour. And it wasn't painful, so I didn't notice it, never mind talk to God about it.  

I'm realizing that that there are prompts in my day that I ignore: prompts that say "all is not well in this moment."  I need to listen to those prompts because that is God in me saying, "hey, you need me now....not just later."  

It's time to do those stretches now, to strengthen my core when it doesn't hurt, no matter how inconvenient it feels at the time.  Sure, that doesn't mean I can avoid pain altogether.  But it does mean that God is in everything, trying to give me what I need in every instance, even when I ignore him.

I know this is a lesson I'll spend the rest of my life trying to learn.

Branding Alberta

This must've been a fun, but hard, branding project:

I think it is spot on.  The orange colour reminds me of the golden wheat fields and somehow fits Alberta's western flair.  The script is active, yet not too feminine for such a stereotypically masculine province.  And the tagline is so true to the spirit of Albertan life.  In classic "go big or go home" gusto, the provincial government is spending $25 million dollars for the project.  

As a former Calgarian, I just might salute the initiative and go put on my cowboy hat.

Official Royalty

Have you played today?

I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to child psychology.  I find it fascinating.  My love for it all started when I read a book about the impact of no-fault divorce legislation on children.  The book covered the results of a study of a controlled group of kids of divorced parents over the course of 25 years.  It also compared those results with that of children who grew up with unhappy parents that stay together.  

A great new documentary, called "The Lost Adventures of Childhood", covers the role and impact of play - both free and structured - on child development.  It's pretty amazing.  

Free play (without parents, engaged supervisors, rules or structure) allows children to be themselves, take risks, experience uncertainty, get hurt, learn cooperation, be creative and try new things.  Structured play, when the only type of play in a child's life, has been so organized that it is maturing children too early. This includes organized sport and clubs that are so intensive that it emulates the responsibilities of an adult. This creates followers rather than leaders, forces children to be the same or risk losing out, and stunts their ability to succeed later in life.  

I remember playing freely as a kid all the time.  In fact, many of us who did likely have dozens of stories that are retold by their parents today about how we played.  Stories that are funny now because they are uncannily similar to who we are today.  My family's unfinished basement, in fact, became three businesses over the span of two weeks when I was home from school recovering from an appendectomy.  A grocery store, a bank and a law firm.  I made my sister into the stock girl, customer or client and played for hours.  Bossy, enterprising, creative and oddly organized.  Sound familiar?

Check out the documentary if you can. I can't find when it is showing again, but hopefully it will reappear.  And, more importantly, don't get sucked into everything that modern child rearing is today.  Some of its structure is good, of course.  But a lot of it isn't.  When you have kids, let them be....kids.  I feel lucky that my parents did.

Good News

No - no new job yet.  But one of my favorite--and thought no longer--Vancouver events is back.

AND we've got a new radio station coming our way.  

It's great to see some commercial growth happening when so many companies are feeling the pinch...or, if I may, the punch.

Ya gotta love it...

Ya gotta love the social media revolution.  I've been debating the merits of this new medium with friends a lot lately.  I've decided that, when you are a smart and responsible person that watches the potential disadvantages, there really aren't many downfalls to it....especially when you are job hunting.

I've been featured on a acquaintance's blog this past week.  Catherine Ducharme leads Outsidein Communications--a strategic brand and communications company.  Thanks to Peter Reek, I met Catherine for about 10 seconds once and saved her business card.  I've always admired her from afar and watched what projects she led.  She then got my networking, do-you-know-of-any-job-opportunities e-mail, and suddenly she's helping me out and I'm helping her out.  Her "employer branding" blog now uses me as an example of today's job seeker.  While I am that 20-something person for only 37 more days, I hope that I'll always be a smart and savvy professional, and I'm eternally thankful for the nod and the help.  

Ya also gotta love the "shout out" encouraging strangers that pop up every so often.  I've just returned from my late afternoon run.  About 20 feet from leaving my apartment to start, a woman passed me on the sidewalk.  She saw my running attire and shouted, "Good! Yes!"  I laughed out loud because I am usually that "weird" person.  I often don't usually have the guts to shout it out.  I liked it so much that maybe I'll just have the guts next time.

When there is so much not to love right now--the economy, the street violence and those tax forms on your desk--it's sweet to love the simple things. Not as a pep talk in the hopes of drumming up warm fuzzies.  But rather to love and express the little things you really feel lift your spirits.  Ya gotta love it.

The Extremes

I've always been an extreme person.  I'm either blissfully happy or completely depressed.  I either clean my whole apartment or I don't clean it at all.  I love a job or I hate it.  I either love you or would rather not know you at all.  I either relish the fact that I'm an extreme person or deny it completely.  

The funny thing is that I've also always been fascinated by dichotomy's, and often find peace in believing they are true.  If one were to look at this blog or my journals over the years they would see that I use the word dichotomy a lot--usually when I've had a revelation of some kind.  Which makes life damn confusing.  I'm an extremist in a grey world.  

An extremist in the non-fundamental, anti-unibomber, ticked-off-at-Pat Robertson kind of way that is. 

One of my favorite quotes:

"And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength.  Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter." (John Milton's "Areopagitica", 1644)

Truth and lies are extremes, but they have to both exist in their extremes in order to have any value, or, ironically, truth to their existence.

My write-up in my university yearbook summed up the dichotomy's of lessons learned:

Wait on God, go with your gut

Be independent, permit vulnerability

Say yes, set boundaries

Take risks, we are all just people

Choose joy, live honestly

Confidence determines opportunity, humility breathes freedom

Rest.

I have come to a few conclusions that will spur on to more conclusions, as conclusions always do.

I've been studying the topic of pain lately.  It's biology, how it interplay's with pleasure and how God interacts with it.  I've concluded that pain is necessary for pleasure, that we can't avoid pain and that I spend most of my time trying to avoid it or fearing I won't be able to.  I'm still 0.1% into this study, but so far I really do believe that pain has to be reality in order for pleasure to be reality.  I can't live in either extreme.  I actually am forced to live with both.  A dichotomy I'm not thankful for yet, but know is true.  

After all:

"What is it, therefore, that goes on within the would, since it takes greater delight in things that it loves are found are found or restored to it than if it had always possessed them?"  (Augustine's Confessions)