Obama is not a post-racial candidate, and as long as minority students in our country , particularly those from low-income neighborhoods, see themselves as disadvantaged, his role as commander-in-cheif will be inextricable from his identity as a black man. The way post-racial is currently defined has to do with how dominant – white – society views his racial status to impact his ability to become elected. It’s clear that Obama will win, and it’s even fairly clear that the Bradley effect has had little impact on voter sentiment (though we will of course need to wait for the final results to come in before rendering a verdict). Yet as long as a poor black kid in Mississippi finds inspiration in Obama, we have to acknowledge a disparity in the perception of opportunity for success that heretofore existed.
Here is a great article from the Oregonian:
http://www.oregonlive.com/commentary/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1224888914103980.xml&coll=7
So today is one of those funny days when you do a lot of different things but you don’t necessarily feel that you’ve accomplished a whole lot. Like you’ve spent a lot of time in front of the computer, looking at emails, writing emails, figuring out your to do list and then looking at the clock later on in the afternoon, and just thinking “hmmm…. how did the day get to be where it’s at, and I’ve got so little done?”
On the flipside, I actually spent a lot of my day figuring out how to be more productive. For those who know me, this makes a lot of sense. In meetings during college, my friends and colleagues used to mock me by crying “efficiency!” when I’d move to make a decision. So let’s just say I have a thing about doing as much as possible in as little time as possible, which is funny, because I still seem to end up wasting so much of it.
At any rate, I’d encourage anyone who’s interested in maximizing their productivity to do several things:
1) Use a calendar, like gCal. If you don’t do this, may God have mercy on your soul. I used to think I could remember everything I had to do, and then I started using a calendar, and it was like having another brain, like a brachiosaurus.
2) Check out www.rememberthemilk.com. Great productivity tool, with good iGoogle implementation. I like the fact that it lets you subdivide into multiple categories, that it let’s you set deadlines (unlike Google’s crappy task plugin for iGoogle). Unfortunately, I think their UI is somewhat cumbersome, with a lot of extra steps to enter a task, and there’s no way to see tasks that are neither immediately due nor have no timeline. Really, Google needs to create their own freaking to do list. That would solve all this.
3) Check out www.mint.com for some great online financial software. The beauty of this web app is that it doesn’t pin your finances to one computer, which is an experience I had with quicken. Nor does it require you to enter 5,393 passwords to access your financial info. You can log on anywhere and see all of your account information in no time. It also finds ways for you to save money, helps you figure out a budget, and tracks your investments. Though not as feature rich as Quicken (you can’t bill pay using mint, for example) it’s great for most casual users.
I’ve been doing a lot of prepwork for Teach for America in order to do some phone selection for them, and after reading about how to select for highly organized people, I’ve discovered that my own organization skills are not what I thought they were.
My old organizational goal: Don’t drop the ball. (This was neither proactive nor effective)
My new organizational goals: Use calendaring, and a date-and-priority-driven to do list in order to work ahead of schedule and save time.
After a day or two of pounding through these things, I’m feeling much more organized, and looking at my to-do list with less a feeling a dread, and more a feeling of surprise – “wow, I can’t believe I have so little to do!” It’s great.
Japan recently instituted a law requiring companies and local governments to measure the waist of their adult employees.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/how-does-your-waist-measure-up/
Here is an interesting article about students surveyed in Germany, many of whom believed they were too fat, even though they were a normal weight.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/many-normal-weight-teens-feel-fat/
Intervals in central park at 5:45 in the morning, baby! Nothing gets you ready for the day like sucking air while the rest of the world is sleeping. It had just rained this morning, and it was already 50+ degrees at 4:30 am. Perfect weather for a ride. I layered down for the first time in months, hopped on my bike, and undertook 1.5 hours of just grueling intervals.
I’m having a lot of trouble tranferring power on the flats. I happen to have a great strength-to-weight ratio, so I do really well on hills, but I get hammered on flats, where I lack a lot of brute strength to mash high gears.
Ah, we’re working on it, right?
An interesting article on bonking found in Runner’s World. It doesn’t address how to not bonk so much as it talks about the nutritional battle over how to avoid it.
It’s hard when you decide that you’re going to do something and then you end up not doing it. Really hard. I decided months and months ago that I was going to use my time over spring break to ride my bicycle down to Washington DC. It is now the Thursday of my supposed trip, and I’m still sitting on my ass in my apartment. This is not what I had envisioned.
I have a ton of stuff I need to do here – namely, applying for jobs. In reality, this is not work that should take more than a couple of hours. I have to write some cover letters and get them sent off. I’ve been saying for weeks that this is something that must be done, and I’ve never put the time together in order to make it happen. I’ve made choices in the past, like prioritizing the last training camp over job stuff, which had the net effect of putting my now interests over my delayed interest. It seems those choices are coming back to bite me in the ass. The problem with that kind of decision-making is that it can create a situation where you don’t do what you really want to do, but you also don’t get the opportunity to do the things that you need to do.
I have opportunities going forward, this is true. It may be possible to put together this trip for the summer time, in order to give myself some more time to plan and make sure that it’s all good before I leave. However, the question is still whether I’ve done something good for myself here and now, whether I can live wholesomely with my response to a difficult situation. I’ve spent a lot of time in my life skirting conflict or saying that I don’t want to do something in order to focus on “getting something done” or doing what’s expected of me – I’ve created a dearth of “me opportunities” that in their primarily self-serving aspect, enhance my character and make a happier person. Sometimes being happy means being selfish, and maybe sometimes that’s ok.
I’m waffling. I’ve wanted to go, I’m nervous, and so I’m calling it off, but now I want to go even more badly.
It’s too late in the day to go now – there’s too much potential for mishaps and getting lost from riding in the dark.
I really feel like I’m letting myself down. Next time I try and do a trip like this, I need to plan it so that it works out and I’m not scrambling at the last minute to get things together. The route, the accommodations, these were things I should’ve thought about many weeks ago, and planned for, so that I didn’t have a situation like this.
I’ve been planning this trip for forever. It’s something that’s second only to my job and my Ironman, in terms of number of people I’ve talked to and how much of myself and my identity I’ve invested in the trip.
Like Randy Pausch says in his “last lecture” – brick walls are there for a reason: so we can prove how badly we want things. I could scale this wall right now and head out on the road with my bicycle. That’s the whole allure of this trip – that in just setting out, I’m putting the worries and concerns of my everyday life away, and getting in touch with my truer side.
I feel really bad.
An interesting article in the New York Times discussing how steroid usage, contrary to popular belief, has been prevalent for decades.
On my Saturday night and Sunday workouts (#16 and #17) I used some of my mom’s Accelerade, and mixed it into my 1.5 L water bottle. MY GOD it made a difference. I’m used to feeling pretty drained at the end of a 1.5 – 2 hr workout, but I felt like a million bucks. Especially on my Sunday workout, the added calories in the drink carried all the way through my weight lifting, which is often a time when I start feeling like Sisyphus when he first wakes up – “oh shit, I have to do this AGAIN? NOW?” I legitimately felt powered up, however. This was an important discovery to make at the beginning of my training, and I will have to continue investigating other, potentially superior alternatives.
Yoga baby! I followed the first 30 minutes of a yoga video I found downstairs in the TV room. It was great for me, an almost complete yoga novice, to get some detailed instruction on the basics. I found the instruction a welcome break from the normal routine, and felt energized and refreshed by the demands of the poses. I would love to have a personal yoga instructor, just for rest days.
I really want to do Pilates, too. I’ll have to work on that.
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