The Winds of Change

This blog has gone through some changes over the last year . It started out as a place to for my to track my day to day battle with weight loss, to find support, and to have accountability.

After a few months it became my own personal beginner triathlete forum where I got support for racing and training. Over the last few months between my personal life and my training it has become sporadic posts with whats been up and monthly race reports.

I have been trying to make some changes in my life and career since May and the end of my "official" and planned season brings an increase in time to train the rest of my life. I enjoy my training. Exercise has always made me happy- before I was ever on the high school track team, before college summers spent running 10 milers, before now; I used to just go run when I was upset or overwhelmed. Today, my training in part still does that. When doing any other swim workout other than a long swim, I think about nothing but swimming. When I run my mind becomes cleared off all external stresses. When I am on long rides I often zone out and pray. The only problem with this is upon my return I am catapulted back into real life. Sometimes it feels like being slammed into a wall upon my return.

I have decided to put concentrated work into training the rest of my life. I am sure it is clear through some of my posts that I battle with depression from time to time, sometimes very deep. It is spawned by long term effects of events in my life. I am going to TRY to take charge of these things and make changes.

If I was able to take charge of my health and fitness I feel I should be able to take charge of this too. I am planning to begin using this blog as a medium for brainstorming and hopefully to get feedback from my fitness friends. I have no real friends here in my area as all I have done since moving here is go to work. My work tends toward being filled with people who want to have misery for their own company; I do not want to speak to them about many of these topics. I feel that having a Jedi council of the bloggers I have had some my longer relationships with will be of great help. I know that this direction will lose followers and also attract some negative feedback from those who do not understand what I have gone through or agree with the changes I want to make. I thank all of my true friends for the feedback in advance.

I realized that much of my personal turmoil stem from my career and the life style it forced. The truth is I hate working for with inmates and I loathe the criminal justice system. When I was in school all of the CSI shows  made everything look so sexy. Truth is it is not, and it a very small percentage of people who get the really cool jobs and I have come to the conclusion most of the people in these positions probably had some combination of upper middle class up bringing, a special skill, political or family connections, and good credit. Unlike TV ex-strippers and ex-cons do not get these jobs.

I have been reading many lifestyle and business blogs lately, many of them very extreme, and am going to try my hand at some of their concepts. It is my goal to be content with 90% of my life.