I suck, I lost

Ok not really; especially on the post directly after talking about the power of words to build us up.

The results came in and the winner was not me…or the guy I thought should have won…or any of the other speeches/speakers that I really liked.  But I also was not the judge nor was I offering a scholarship so needless to say it wasn’t my call.

It is very hard to get better with victory.  Sports illustrates this so well in that there are so few professional teams that repeat and win championships in consecutive years.  It is through loss and defeat that teams get better, grow, and ultimately learn how to win.  It is a process that has been repeated in sports, business, love, and politics.  So I’ll take my setback and build from it, but what did I learn?

I’m still pretty good

i am far, far from being good-good, but I’ve still got some talent when the lights are turned on.  I’m seriously not polished and that’s ok, because I haven’t been working on it in years, but with limited time I put something together that resonated with people.  Ultimately speakers have to do just that, we will always be hyper critical of each other and ourselves, but when your 9th grade history teacher hears it and likes it, you know you’ve done something right.

I can reach people

Three minutes is an impossibly short amount of time to craft a message.  Eight days to create said message is also incredibly short.  I wish I could publish some of the things that were sent to me privately about the speech.  You can see the response on my Facebook wall.  It is a very small sample size and most of the people who viewed it know me and care about me, but they were not required to give input.  The best part is the people who don’t already love me, that found a way to reach out to me and say a kind word.

I’ve got to be my number one fan

I have a ton of people who love me and support me.  It is impossible to succeed at anything without support.  But I’m not going to be able to convince people who don’t love me to love me until I love me…the most.  I’ve never lacked in confidence, but conviction and belief are a different part of the equation.  The fan line has to begin directly behind me.

Keep writing

I’ve got to keep at it, it is an art.  Writing blog posts, writing short speeches, and writing bigger things.  I’ve got to use the inspiration in my mind and put it out there.  As a 1b to this, I’ve got to produce stuff and put it on social media.  People that don’t love me aren’t going to find me if I just sit in my living room talking to myself.

Find a mentor

This is old business logic.  Find someone who is further along than you and learn from them.  If I actually want to do something with this little bit of skill I have, I’m going to have to have someone directly help me.  There are no shortcuts to the top.

I’ve got a ton of ideas.  Some are motivational, some are about fitness and weight loss, some are directional, and some are just fun.  I really don’t know what to do next…but I’ll do something; I promise.

Ciao

SK

Ps…Here’s the winner

Do you remember?

I will go out on a limb and say that most, if not all, of us has a great moment we look back on where we were “in pretty good shape”.  It may have been playing sports in high school or when you completed a race in your 20s or after a biggest loser challenge at work in your 30s.  There’s some cool memory you have where you felt pretty good about who was looking at you in the mirror.

Mine was in my 20s and playing pick up basketball ALL THE TIME.  There is zero exaggeration in all the time.  I was probably on some kind of basketball court five days a week.  I played basketball instead of going out.  I wasn’t really trying to be in shape, we were just having fun and the by-product was I could run and jump and had a little bit of stamina and strength, pretty freaking awesome.

Fast forward from that happy picture you have in the full length mirror to the pictures you take now that are just of your increasingly round-ish face.  I was trying to think the other day when I got fat.  As with most things it is a slow and arduous process to reach the rotund physique that I created in my soon to be 41-year-old body.  I do recall a moment though when I was getting out of the shower and realized that my fat rolls on my back were now touching each other (sexy imagery I know).

Being sloppy was pretty fun though, aside from the aches, pains, shortness of breath, and ice packs.  I just ate and slept and ate some more.  I was lucky enough that my fat-boy was still able to be a fairly active dude.  Those good genetics allowed me to just keep on keeping on with my life because “it wasn’t that bad”.

I remember being smaller, but I really don’t remember what it felt like to be “in good shape”.

I remember the feeling of getting excited about a buffet

I remember the mouth-watering goodness of birthday cake

I remember eating a third plate in one sitting of a holiday meal

But I don’t recall what if felt like to actually be fairly fit…that’s pretty sad.

I remember someone telling me once that while recovering from alcoholism he had to create “new tapes” that would play in his head.  He had to create new responses for the situations his entire life that had previously been to take a drink.  I want some new healthy tapes too.  I’d like to know what waking up and craving green smoothies instead of chicken biscuits feels like.  Maybe I can automatically enjoy an apple the way I’ve enjoyed a Twix my entire life.

Reset

Restart

Re-live

Timehop is a pretty cool app that goes back into your social media archive and shows you what you posted in previous years.  There has been tons of cool stuff but something I have also realized

DUDE I’VE BEEN FAT A LONG TIME

and I’ve been putting it out there a long time and I’ve been fighting it a long time.

Finding that 20 something basketball kid isn’t about a resolution or a plan or a program.  That kid didn’t have any of that.  He just played and lived.  That kid didn’t eat great but that kid also knew that if he wanted to be able to not suck on the court that night I couldn’t destroy five trips back through the buffet line either.

Reset

Restart

Re-live

Making new memories takes time and most of us hate that part so we’d rather just keep pulling up the mental VCR on the old memories that are comfortable and safe.  Gang you can’t find a VHS tape now to save your life, yet you won’t upgrade your mental Beta tapes for fear of losing something special.  I think it is a good day to try this fancy new HD life guys…come on, you’ve got nothing to lose.

Ciao

SK

Ice, Ice Baby

Unless you have been under a rock the past few weeks, I’m guessing that you have either seen or actually dumped a bucket of ice water on your head as part of the ALS Ice Bucket challenge.  It has been an amazing example in what happens when the internet is good and something goes viral.  I donated, but I didn’t dump the water.

I love when people get motivated and involved, but unfortunately it is usually Haley’s comet and doesn’t become a lifestyle.  I wonder if people will match their donations and fervor next year when there are no videos and no challenges?

Most of my life has been an ALS challenge.  I get moved and motivated and I make some great change or have some outward expression of change, but unfortunately it was about as long as these videos.  Real change is progress and not viral.  There are no viral campaigns for sensible diet and exercise.  There is not a get an education video challenge anywhere that includes 90 seconds of someone reading Beowulf.  Some things just take time.

I hope this outpouring of funding directly leads to a cure.  That is something permanent.  I’m shooting for something permanent personally.  Part of the process is writing, part of it is planning, but the bulk of it is doing.

Happy Friday everyone…you can thank me later

 

Ciao

 

SK

The interweb?!?

A couple of weeks ago I was going to order a pizza.  We were at basketball practice and I was working a backup (read non smart) phone.  So I went in the gym office and took a trip back to the early 90’s and used their telephone book to look up the number.  It took me forever to find the number.  I was in the yellow, white, business white, and coupon sections trying to find the Domino’s number, which made me think…

Does anyone remember what life was like before the internet?  Have you thought about it recently?

Normally I would pull out my droid x, google the number, and voila pizza.  I read my bible online.  I Facebook, I tweet, I blog, I read blogs, I look up recipes, I book flights, I pay my bills, I keep task lists, and I do life online.  It is easy and convenient.  I keep up with friends and family across the country as though they are in my neighborhood.  I have access to virtually everything short of the bathroom.

Is all this a good thing though?

I think about my son’s generation.  Will they have a clue of how to actually hold a conversation or go out on a date.  Or will it be a series of texts, tweets, Facebook page posts, and emails and magically babies are popping out.  Typing and keyword determining is a much more important skill than cursive and eye contact.

I like talking and communicating.  There is something great about being with someone and learning about their world.  Seeing their eyes blink or hearing a laugh.  Those emotions just aren’t conveyed the same way with LOL’s and OMG’s.

I read somewhere, on the internet of course, about people doing technology fasts and unplugging their lives for weeks at a time.  Now I’m not quite ready to call my computer the devil but I do think there is a lot of value in doing life the old-fashioned way from time to time and not relying so much on Dr. Google to diagnose your back pain or Mr. Wiki to tell you about the 15th president.  I like that I can hit Pandora and get a never-ending playlist of tunes that go from Tribe Called Quest, to Colt Ford, to Bon Jovi, to Rick Ross.

So maybe I’ll just effort easing back on the internet.  I don’t even know if we have an actual phone book in the house but if we do I seriously need to brush up on my skills in the event of an apocalypse.

 

Ciao

 

SK

Mustard juice, ewwwwww!

So tonight for dinner I made a patty melt.  Anyone that knows me in real life realizes that I am a horrible cook.  I try to keep it really simple.  So how difficult can a cheeseburger with onions really be.  Another one of my food issues is that I take a lot of care in place my condiments.  They need to go in a specific order and look a specific way (I know, I hear the OCD phone ringing).  So as I was preparing my sandwich I reached for some spicy brown mustard and as I squeezed I got the worst thing ever…

MUSTARD JUICE 😦

That yucky mustard water substance that does nothing but make the bread wet.  It took me a moment to regroup, shake the bottle, brush the water off, and continue my dinner.  A perfectly good sandwich was almost ruined by a little wet surprise.  I hate it when that happens.

I guess this isn’t really about the mustard or the mustard juice or the meal at all.  Really it is just a metaphor of disappointment.  I was so excited to bite into my patty melt.  It looked good and I was hungry and then all of a sudden it wasn’t quite as good anymore because it was wet instead of properly condimented.  Now I did eat it and it was good but for that snapshot in time, I was down.

I think we all have those snapshots a lot more often than we choose to recognize.  Whether it is when your team looses (and lately that has been waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much) or actually something serious concerning a family member or your job, we face these disappointments all the time.  Now most of us don’t really have time to reflect and deal with them.  When you are sad you missed a two-day sale at Kohl’s and your shirt just went up five dollars you still have to get the groceries, clean the bathroom, and get to the lunch appointment on time.  Dwelling on the missed sale is probably inappropriate and a waste of time.  But are we desensitizing ourselves to being down and sad.

I know that I hate sad.  A big part of my personal struggles revolve around covering up my sadness.  I have drowned myself in partying, work, and fantasy sports over the years to help “medicate” my sad.  I have heard more than a few times in life “why can’t you just sit in it?”.  It is very hard for me to just be in a funk.  So rather than be funky, there are so many times in my life that I have chosen to gloss over the emotion.  This is a great way to deal with things except for the fact that I’m not really dealing with things.  And not dealing with things has a way of a) making them get bigger and b) having them continue to occur.  So instead of making things better a lot of times I make things worse.

When I was younger a UGA football loss would be devastating.  I would be sad, mad, frustrated, and upset.  For some reason I thought the best way to deal with this disappointment was to find my way to the bottom of a bottle many times and drown my sorrows.  As info, it doesn’t work.  The first problem is that I had absolutely nothing to do with the game outcome and was taking it as if I made the fumble.  The second problem was that my team will always loose again at some point.  My process for dealing with the pain was quite flawed.

Now I don’t think that the losses bother me less now that I’m older, but with a little wisdom and perspective I no longer fish for victories in the bottom of a pitcher of beer.  I make Facebook posts and call the sports talk radio station and vent with friends.  Small steps but steps that allow me to get out of me that which drives me to make bad decisions in response to college kids missing a field goal.

This is a small and somewhat silly example but it is similar to how I have dealt with many things in my life.  I have also noticed many of my friends and family coping with things in their own ways to get over the hurt.  Some drink, some smoke, some run, some surf the web, and some read.  Non of these items by themselves are bad but so many of us do them rather than “just sit in it”.

So how about this for an open forum…

If you are sitting in something, feel free to post it.  You can go anonymous if you like, but feel free to put it out there.  It may just be the first step in easing the pain.  And I’ll go first (but you will have to read the comments to see what I said).

Ciao

SK

25 things

Last January there was a Facebook phenomenon called “25 things”.  The basic idea was for you to write 25 random things about yourself and publish them to the Facebook world.  It was a super neat exercise.  I learned so many deep things about my friends and many random funny things.  People are fascinating.  And these are just the people in my life.  My friends have traveled the world, delivered babies, met famous people, and seen remarkable things.

So as an exercise I decided to reread my 25 things and see what I could learn about myself:

1. It took me way too long to realize what is really important in life

• This one hurts because I’m living the results of missing the boat for so long.  I’m glad I am finally getting some perspective, but I look at all the wasted years and just shake my head.

2. I love public speaking and wish I could do it for a living.

• This is still true.  I have recently pulled a lot of my books about “the business” of professional speaking.  I have a lot of natural talent, but that is far from enough to make a living doing it.

3. I never thought I would ever coach Seaver in a sport, but I have found that there are few things more enjoyable than being around him and his friends learning a sport.

• If you have been around this blog at all, you know how much I love those kids.  I have also found that it is the purest form of service and entertainment for me

4. I am great at starting things, but not as good at finishing them.

• Still an issue.  I am actively working on this.

5. I am sad I didn’t have a “normal” family when I grew up

• I have realized over the last year and a half, how hard this really effected me.  It really messed with my wiring.  The good thing is I have really gotten closer to my brothers over the last year.  I can’t imagine what it would have been like if we had started on a good note.

6. I am so much better off than I deserve

• Amen!  My God is a good God and has my back.

7. I didn’t think I would like FB, but it has really reminded me of how many great people I have in my life.

• See my note on thing number 6

8. My wife makes me laugh all the time.

• She is now my ex-wife, but she still makes me laugh a lot

9. I have an addictive personality and constantly have to work to stay on track.

• One day at a time.  It works if you work it.

10. My two dogs are angels on earth, Thanks God

• One of those dogs has gone to heaven to be with God.  That was a hard decision to make to put him down.  The other dog was sad but he now has a little puppy to keep him young along his side

11. I can’t remember my mom or dad ever saying they loved me.

• I can safely say that I still don’t remember if they said it, but I have forgiven them.

12. I am a very picky eater and have rules for most things I do eat.

• It sucks being a picky eater, but it still hasn’t kept me from being a little too heavy.

13. I wear a mouthpiece at night so I don’t snore.

• Still true

14. In my allegiance hierarchy it is UGA then FSU

• Glory, glory to old Georgia!

15. I wish I had played football in HS

• Watching Seaver play and love the game is a pretty good plan b though 😉

16. Before I get to old, I want to do one more step show with my KKPsi crew

• Come on fellas, let’s make it happen!

17. Right now my favorite artists are Sugarland and Jay-Z, I continue to confuse myself

• Current confusion is the new Eminem and Lady A

18. It’s hard for me to really trust someone.

• Still hard, but I think I finally realize that I WANT to trust people.

19. I still hang out with my core crew from my childhood

• MOFO fellas!  I love you guys

20. I have 0 style

• Nope, not smooth at all.

21. I can’t believe that my “church home” is rock and roll and video screens

• AthensChurch is the bomb ya’ll!  Come get your Jesus on!

22. My wife is the best thing in my life

• She gave me the most amazing little boy ever, even in divorce she’s an amazing woman.

23. I have a fear of not being successful

• I constantly battle feeling like I’m a failure.  I need more perspective as to what I am really doing.

24. Seaver is perfect

• Still perfect, just smarter, taller, faster, sweeter, and funnier!

25. Since my surgery I have a new appreciation for just being able to go out and play

• I also have an appreciation for how easy it is to get hurt (which reminds me, I need to go stretch).

Facebook people, go read yours again and see what you learn about where you were and where you are now.

Ciao

SK