Addendum on Yesterday's Post

When I discussed my new exercise plan with my wife yesterday, she reminded me that The Matrix was never intended to be a once-a-day workout. Looks like I had become a little too ambitious.

So instead of what I described yesterday, my plan for this week is to do "The Matrix" workout 3 times this week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The other days will be running-only days, and no change to the described mileage.

I successfully completed the workout yesterday, and it felt really good. My body was a bit shocked by the intensity of the workout - it's been a long time since I've done that much plyometric exercise. It was good for me. A couple of weeks of this sort of thing, and I'll be ready to start increasing intensity and getting creative.

A Small Victory

A big move sure can interrupt the flow of things.

Despite our best intentions, it can be next to impossible to maintain a consistent, challenging routine when there is so much life going on around us. In my case, I started packing and preparing for my move on about May 15^th. From there, my life has been an unyielding state of Go, Go, Go! Obviously, any big move involves some complex logistics and unexpected challenges. Mine has been no different. (I won’t bore you with the gory details, but anyone who has ever made a big move can surely bring you up to speed on the kinds of things that pop up out of nowhere.)

Thankfully, I have arrived at my destination in one piece, without losing any important belongings or damaging any people, places, or things. So there’s that.

The bad news, though, is that I travelled for about a week (including stops along the way), and quickly set up a temporary residence and started working – but have so far been unable to adhere to a consistent and challenging exercise routine. Day by day, I feel a little bit of my strength and endurance slipping away as I lose out on my work-out time in order to battle with rush hour traffic and the ongoing commitments required to establish a more permanent place of residence. When I finally manage to scrape together some spare time, I am unsurprisingly inclined to spend it sleeping, reading, resting, or eating… basically, all those things I wish I were doing while I am rushing to do all the work I have to do.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because I have a sneaky suspicion that I’m not the only person in the world who has ever felt like this before. I imagine some of my faithful readers have often felt this way from time to time. But this is more than just a collective pity party or pessimistic rant.

The Good News

Let me cover a few things that I managed to do right over the course of the past month.

First, I was wise enough to pack my workout gear and a set of resistance bands in an easily accessible bag, and I have been able to run, even if sporadically. More importantly, I have been extremely good at maintaining a daily strength training regimen. While it’s nothing intensive or challenging, it has been enough to keep my body in decent shape and my blood sugar in good control. Here’s the breakdown:

A-Day: Repeat the following four times, with 60 seconds rest between each set

·         40 push-ups (That’s right – I actually increased my number of repetitions)

·         30 bicep curls (with resistance bands)

·         20 flies/lateral raises (with resistance bands)

B-Day: Repeat the following four times, with 60 seconds rest between each set

·         A “Crunch-Thing”

o   50 crunches for the first set

o   40-second right-side plank for the second set

o   40-second left-side plank for the third set

o   50 combined leg-raises/hip-raises for the fourth set

·         30 unweighted squats

·         30 calf-raises

Astute Stationary Waves readers should draw parallels between this daily morning routine and a couple of previous workouts I have written about (most notably “The Matrix” and my evolving A-Day/B-Day routines). This has been a fairly good routine because it’s not quite as challenging as The Matrix, and yet it has been far more challenging than, say, my Winter training regimen. At least in that sense, it has been somewhat of a “best of both worlds” scenario.

Second, as I mentioned above, I have managed to keep my blood sugar under good control. This has been thanks to a few important things: (1) Consistent adherence to daily scheduled mealtimes and bedtime; (2) Basically eliminating rice from my diet altogether; (3) Voluntary and in some cases involuntary portion control during meals; (4) Increasing my long-acting insulin dose; (5) Keeping a close watch on my insulin to ensure that it doesn’t spoil. To that last point, I actually invested in a refrigerated car cooler for the long drive, which I have managed to also leverage during day trips to hot locations. All things considered, while my blood sugar has been a little high over the past month, it hasn’t been nearly as high as is typical for me during disruptions in my routine, and keeping good BG control means I have been able to stay healthy despite my lack of exercise.

Third, and most esoterically, I have been talking about diet, exercise, and diabetes a lot lately. This might seem silly, but I believe that simply keeping my health as a “top-of-mind” issue during the course of a hectic month has done a good job of keeping me mentally on track. And, of course, if you buy into the Stationary Waves philosophy of health and fitness, you already know that the mental game is the most important component in all of this.

When I add it all up, what I’m left with is a bit of a small victory for myself. Considering the situation, I could easily have spun out of control and become very unhealthy. But I managed to keep my head in the game, get some good daily exercise, and keep my blood sugar in a controllable range. That’s worth celebrating.

And Then, As Usual, He Took It Too Far…

Hilariously emblematic of my approach to all things, now that I have experienced some good success, I am hungry for more. I am not yet fully established in my new home, but I have enough of a temporary routine going for myself that today I have embarked on a new fitness regimen.

The hot weather in my new home is a little excessive during the summer – too much for me to be able to engage in any serious marathon training. Thus, I’m sticking to some modest mileage and focusing a bit more on my strength training, especially upper-body training and plyometrics. Moreover, to my chagrin, I have little other choice but to run in the morning rather than the afternoon. In the case, the heat is a bit of a culprit, but the main culprit is the evening after-work traffic. It’s simply too heavy for me to get home in time to run and eat safely, without risking an overnight low.

In a few weeks, I’ll have established regular gym access and a few good running routes. Until then, my “Week 1” shall be as follows:

Monday:

·         Morning:

o   4-mile easy run

·         Evening:

o   The Matrix – That’s right, folks. It’s back, and badder than ever.

Tuesday:

·         Morning:

o   5-mile run

·         Evening:

o   The Matrix

Wednesday:

·         Morning:

o   5-mile run

·         Evening:

o   The Matrix

Thursday:

·         Morning:

o   5-mile fartlek run

·         Evening:

o   The Matrix

Friday:

·         Morning:

o   4-mile easy run

·         Evening:

o   The Matrix

Saturday:

·         7-8 mile trail run

I’ll start with that for the next week or two, then start building toward a bit more mileage, and an alternating strength training / plyometrics A-Day/B-Day regimen. It’s the only way to beat the heat.

Movie Review: Prometheus

Last night, I had the pleasure of watching Ridley Scott's newest movie, Prometheus.

I had some trepidation going in. Most of what I had read in terms of movie reviews was predominantly negative. For example, the website where I check movie times (Cinemaclock.com) had a viewer rating of 6.0/10.0; Rotten Tomatoes has it assessed at 74%. Many of the various reviews I had read on the internet had shared a unanimous assessment of the movie: visually impressive, but ultimately disappointing.

I couldn't disagree more. I loved this movie. It was everything I hoped it would be.

Perhaps the disconnect here is rooted in the fact that different people are drawn to the various Alien movies for different reasons. The original film, Alien, is an unquestionable piece of classic cinema, one of the great movies hailed as iconic of both science fiction and horror film-making, and often touted as a feminist triumph, thanks to Sigourney Weaver's brilliant performances. But there is much to that movie. Not only did it give birth to the modern "science-fiction/horror" genre, it also created a visual template for what aliens might look like and how they might behave. (This impact can be seen in dozens of copycat movies and video games, perhaps most obviously in the "Contra" video game series, but also in games such as the "Metroid" series, and innumerable low-budget alien films.) Alien cut the mold. It had such wide appeal that it must surely mean millions of different things to the millions of people who love that movie.

Any sequel to a movie of such far-reaching significance is sure to disappoint anyone who doesn't share the same vision of the original movie as the film-makers themselves. Aliens, the first sequel, disappointed many. Alien 3 disappointed many more. Alien: Resurrection disappointed even more people. Nevertheless, the films have a strong following, a bit too sizable to be considered "cult." These movies never disappoint when it comes to the bread-and-butter of a great Alien movie: Plenty of gore, suspense, violence, doom, special effects, and brilliant performances by actors who haven't quite broken into blockbuster movies just yet.

The film franchise has always been a bit light on back-story and plot intricacies. The franchise has always left a great deal of loose ends hanging. Where many critics pan the Alien film franchise in this department, I consider it one of the major strengths. Great horror films remain mysterious, right to the end. Great franchises leave you with a desire to see more. Leave the mythos-building to the comic-con junkies; the rest of us don't want these kinds of movies to expand into an extensive Marvel Universe. We want gross and terrifying aliens, and lots of them. We want death and destruction.

Put another way, the reason I personally love the Alien franchise is not for its complex story-telling, but rather for its aesthetic. These are dark, gloomy movies in which the aliens always win, but for a strong and solitary character whose emotional desire to survive is too strong to be defeated by a greasy monster.

Prometheus delivers on all accounts.

True, as a prequel to the franchise, one goes into the movie expecting answers, back-story, and mythology. To provide these things would be satisfying indeed for the comic-con crowd. But it would also be a major violation of the Alien aesthetic. Instead, Scott stays true to his artistic creation, brilliantly crafting the same sort of cinematic landscape the other movies has. Like the others, it starts out hopeful and soon becomes dreadful. Like the others, there are no real winners.

But the movie also adds some great new elements, namely new aliens. Unlike some of the previous films in the franchise, there is also an additional level of conflict in the story: It's no longer (wo)man vs. beast, it is now also (wo)man vs. man, (wo)man vs. self, and (wo)man vs. beast.

The icing on the cake here are the great performances by Michael Fassbender and Guy Pearce. Fassbender is clearly a rising star, and he delivers a character that simply steals the show. Pearce has long been a favorite actor of mine, and his performance is simply jaw-dropping. Many people less familiar with his work may not even recognize him. He plays his character so differently than his characters have been in the past that he steals every scene in which he plays.

He also delivers what is perhaps the greatest moment in the movie: "There is nothing," to which Fassbender's "David" character delivers and equally show-stopping reply.

For fans of the Alien franchise, it is tough to see where this movie goes wrong. I give it full marks on all accounts. Highly recommended!

You Can't Always Get What You Want

Why do people have such ridiculous reactions to desires like food, etc.? It seemingly can't just be that pizza is delicious and people like to eat delicious things. It has to be that pizza is impossible to say no to, so therefore you have to keep it away from you at all costs! It's bizarre.

When people eat sweets in front of me, they often act like they feel sorry for me because I "have to sit there and watch" them eat sweets without being able to eat them myself. I honestly don't understand why people think like this. I don't care if they eat sweets, and I would love to have some sweets myself, but I'm not tortured by it. It's just sweets.

I don't care. I would also like to buy a brand new Jaguar convertible and drive it from the tip of Alaska all the way down to the tip of Argentina. I would like to sell three certified platinum albums and tour the world a few times. I'd like to invent a cure for cancer and write a world famous economic treatise. I'd like to travel throughout outer space.

There are hundreds of things I want, but cannot have. On that list, food ranks pretty low. 

But more importantly, I am comfortable with the fact that I might not ever be able to have some of the most coveted items on that list. Why on earth would it torture me that I cannot have some things that I really, really want? Are people that uncomfortable with things they can't have?  Are we all four-year-olds?

Book Review: A History of Bangladesh

Just prior to leaving Ottawa, I picked up three new books from Chapters, one of which being A History of Bangladesh, by Willem van Schendel. The book is written with pleasant, very approachable prose uncharacteristic of most non-fiction books. Therefore, not surprisingly, I finished it quickly. It was an excellent book.

Van Schendel's Bangladesh

One of the most important aspects of this book was the degree to which the author's own views were inserted at every corner. Ordinarily, I would count such editorializing against the book, but in this case, van Schendel has come to some of the same conclusions about the country of Bangladesh that I have myself. Nonetheless, I had a great deal to learn about the Bengali delta, its people, and its culture, and van Schendel's book provides a fascinating look into the little-understood early history of the region.

According to van Schendel, ancient Bengal ("ancient" is my word, not the author's - we're talking about the period corresponding to the ancient Greek and Roman empires) was an important hub of economic activity. Its people produced an enormous and highly valued agricultural output, including cash crops before such things were understood as "cash crops," and also legendary textiles. 

More importantly, however, the Bengali delta was a crossroads of trade, providing a bridge between the European, Persian, and Indian kingdoms of the West and the Far East kingdoms of the East. Situated right on the coast, immediately between the two most active trade regions of the globe at that time, the Bengali people may have been the world's original "merchant class," or at least such is the picture painted by van Schendel.

What fascinates me most about this picture is that it seems to lend a window into the modern history of the people of Bangladesh. Like all regions of the world, the merchant class is always scoffed-at and hated by would-be rulers. Van Schendel indicates that even the earliest written descriptions of Bangladesh are highly critical and dismissive of its culture. My explanation is that emperors did as they do now: denigrate anyone they wish to own.

And own Bangladesh they did. The Mughals, the Indians, the Dutch, the French, and the British... Empires the world over tried to harness the raw creative economic power of Bangladesh - tried and failed. The second component of van Schendel's picture of Bangladesh is his account of how every major empire throughout history has done its best to keep the people of Bangladesh under a boot heel while they, the would-be emperors, attempt to reap the riches of the region.

This unfortunate historical fact is, according to van Schendel, the main reason why Bangladeshi poverty persists to this day. It is a country that was prevented from developing its agricultural technology by the reigning British who merely wished to produce large cash crops using cheap labor-intensive farming methods. It is a country that was prevented from developing its industrial technology by the Pakistani government's pursuit of foreign aid for "traditional" output.

Again and again, van Schendel's Bangladesh has endured colonialism and political in-fighting among competing ruling minorities, to the detriment of the Bangladeshi people at large. But it is not all bad news. Perhaps the most important lesson van Schendel provides us with is the fact that, despite the worst kind of political catastrophes, the heart and soul of the Bangladeshi people remains true to itself, resilient and unconquerable. 

On Our Supposed "Digital" World

Since the original proliferation of the internet in the 1990s, we have been inundated by the mantra-bordering-on-maintenance-rehearsal that we live digital lives in a digital world. The internet has purportedly revolutionized our lives in countless ways that the world has supposedly only begun to understand.

I would suggest that the triumph of information technology, however, has been greatly overstated. Here, I make my case.

Electronic and Paper Forms
The urge to convert all information to electronic form is said to be well underway, and for the most part this is true. However, the primary argument for further conversion is - in my opinion - far off base.

Electronic forms are said to eliminate waste and increase efficiency. Were electronic forms to be used exclusively, this would certainly be true. In actuality, though, for nearly every electronic form we encounter in our daily lives, we see a corresponding paper form.

In the case of sales receipts, for example, electronic forms have accomplished nothing with regard to the elimination of paper-based data. Every electronic point-of-sale record produces at least one receipt - and often times produces two or three instances of the same point-of-sale datum, all in addition to the electronic data. Pay with a credit card at your next trip to a restaurant, and you will see exactly what I mean.

More comically, I was recently at a business that adamantly insisted that I enter all of my personal information into their electronic records. After I did this, I had to complete a handwritten paper form indicating that I had completed the electronic form. In this case a paper form was clearly eliminated by an electronic one, and then an entirely new paper form was created for a need that didn't exist prior to the existence of the electronic form.

What, then, has electronic data accomplished in the realm of fillable forms?

Digital Identities
More interesting than data efficiency, though, is the twenty-first century concept of a "digital identity." Rather, this is a series of concepts.

First, "digital identity" refers to an individual's cultivated persona on various social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Blogger, and so forth. My own personal digital identity (in this usage) is found at the bottom of my blog and on my Google+ profile. My Facebook profile offers additional insight into this "identity." This identity consists of how I think I want to be seen by others who may read what I have to say. It is one part narcissism, one part navel-gazing, and one part personal opinion. People spend a lot of time cultivating this identity of theirs, even in some cases paying others to help them develop it.

Second, "digital identity" refers to the collection of personal data housed in official databases we need in order to function in modern society. This includes such "exciting" information as your legal name, address, phone number(s), social security numbers, tax IDs and other official government and credit agency numbers. On the surface, this stuff is extremely uninteresting.

However, as soon as one crosses an international border, this "digital identity" proves itself to be of paramount importance. Without government numbers, we have no credit history, no legal records of existence, no traceable location. In a legal sense, we nearly cease to exist without them.

Furthermore, this lack of existence generates punishment when ultimately discovered. See what happens when you try to work or acquire a loan without a social security number. You may find employment, even for an extended period of time, and you'll be just fine. As soon as the "problem" is discovered, however, you are threatened with heavy fines and legal actions that frankly cannot be carried out unless the "problem" is corrected.

It is fascinating to note that an absence of this second kind of "digital identity" allows a person more freedom and less punishment than its existence - all the way to the point that all of society's potential punishments require the official sanction of a random string of digits. Still, without these digits, we are denied access to many of the finer things of life: cars, houses, extremely high incomes, investments, and so on.

Organic Code
Perpetuation of information technology perpetuates a new philosophical question: What exactly is life? Centuries ago, it was a straight-forward question. We were born, we worked for food, shelter, family, we grew old, and we lived on in the memories of our loved ones. Today, websites display the total creative output of people long dead, exactly as it was when it was first produced. We no longer live an organic life consisting of our person and our deeds, and the memories of those we touched. Life is more than that.

Today, life is an endless stream of data generated at birth and following us around for the rest of our lives. It records our economic transactions, our school attendance (or lack thereof), our interaction with The State and with the various community groups with which we associate, and our willful choice to generate data of our own (by blogging, for example) and insert it into stream of analyze-able data.

But of course our consciousness is not the data-trail we leave by interacting with the electronic universe. Maybe in some poetic and metaphorical sense of it, we have always left a debris of data in our wake as we interacted with the universe. But the literal truth of the matter is that we still live inside our own physical, organic heads.

My prediction for the future is that, as time goes on, the more successful human beings will be those who best recognize that true existence is organic, not electronic at all. Such people will be best able to navigate or manipulate their data trail in the "digital" world, and who will prove most successful at face-to-face (i.e. human) interaction.

I could be wrong, of course, but that's how I see it today.

Running in the Heat

Not long ago (near the beginning of Winter, to be exact), I provided some suggestions for how to make the most of winter training. I'll briefly recap those suggestions now:

1. Make the morning workout a habit.
2. Run anyway.
3. Leave the record-setting for summer.
4. Be proud of yourself.

Now, six months later, it's time to think about running in the summer heat.

Summer presents the challenge of staying cool and managing a good workout despite your body's probable over-heating and dehydration. In both of these cases, you will find your muscles feeling sluggish and burning. Depending on exactly when and where you run, the sun's relentlessly beating down on you will alone be a formidable obstacle to getting a decent workout in. In fact, you may actually find that your times start to get slower (even much slower) as you struggle to cope with the heat.

Having recently departed from Ottawa and relocated to the southern USA, I have been experiencing a double-dose of challenge in this area. Not only is it hot because it's summertime, it's hot because it's a far hotter climate. So, as you struggle through the summer heat, take heart that you at least don't have to deal with the kind of change that people like myself do!

Suggestion 1: Hydrate

This is not so much a suggestion as an absolute requirement. I'm not one to hound others about hydration (I leave that to the personal trainers), but without proper hydration you'll be looking at any combination of the following:

• Constantly sore, burning muscles
• Overall physical weakness
• Dizziness
• Sun sickness
• Heatstroke
• Electrolyte imbalance
• A trip to the emergency room

That last one may sound a little extreme to some, but facts are facts, kids. Once the temperature gets up into the 80s and above, the temperature is high enough to not only ruin your workout, but also your week. Don't take any chances.

My aunt suggests drinking a glass of water every hour on the hour. That certainly works, and is easy to do while you're at work. If you find yourself out-and-about for a few hours, bring along a water bottle. It may seem like a hassle, but if you're wearing a LiveStrong bracelet, people will recognize you as a fitness badass, and it'll all be worth it.

Suggestion 2: Start Small

You may find it a little frustrating to have to decrease your miles now that you're finally getting some good mileage in, but if you find yourself running sluggishly now that it's hot out, backing off can be a good option for you.

I recommend approaching this the same way I always suggest people approach mileage: Start with something you know you can do, and build from there. For example, if you were running 10km every day in the spring, back down to 8km/day for one week, then add another km/day the following week. Within two weeks, you'll be right back where you were, and feeling less sluggish.

The point here is that you need to acclimate to the heat. Back off a little and do something manageable, then work back up. There's no shame in that, particularly if it enables you to keep your pace high and avoid getting discouraged by slow workout paces.

Suggestion 3: Don't Hide from the Heat

Running when it's hot is a skill that - if developed - gives you an edge over your competitors. Not every race features ideal weather conditions. You trained well during the winter and managed to learn how to run in the cold. Now it's time to train through the heat.

If you think that you "just can't do it," consider the fact that every year thousands of runners like you flock to the Sahara Desert to run the Marathon des Sables. They can do it. So can you.

Suggestion 4: Sunglasses

Sunglasses don't just make you look cool. They protect your eyes from the scorching sun, and from flying insects who like to think that those two moist orbs on your face are extremely interesting, and possibly tasty. There also seems to be a psychological benefit to wearing shades in that it feels a less hot when it seems a little darker. (Maybe it's just me?)

Suggestion 5: Get Off the Road and Onto the Trails

Trails are often lined with trees, which offer much-needed shade. They can also be found near water, which cools the air a bit. (Be careful of the increased brightness caused by water - you'll need some good sunscreen!) An added benefit here is that the ground on trails is softer and will therefore be much easier on your muscles and joints than the pavement would be.

Well, those are a few minor suggestions to get you started, anyway. If you have additional tips, feel free to share them in the comments below.

Album Review: Big Wreck's "Albatross"

About two months ago, Canadian hard rock band Big Wreck returned with a new album: Albatross.

Big Wreck's first album appeared way back in 1997 with a debut album called In Loving Memory Of.... That album boasted their only two "radio-recognizable" hits - "The Oaf," and "That Song." For people who were still interested in hard rock during the late 90s, "The Oaf" is a familiar song, although not a mega-hit. "That Song" was, however, their most successful single, particularly in Canada. In Loving Memory Of... went on to double-platinum certification.

Later, Big Wreck released The Pleasure and the Greed, which I thought was an absolutely phenomenal album full of well-written songs, amazing vocal performances, and hard-hitting, hard-rocking songs that contained a maturity and intelligence not found in mainstream music since the 1996 demise of Soundgarden. Somehow, Big Wreck's press story was one of reformed prog-rockers who hung up their chops in the name of great songwriting. The story never quite seemed to fit. The band was obviously a southern-rock-inflected grunge band. Progressive rock had little to do with it.

Like all good things the 90s gave us, Big Wreck eventually faded away into obscurity, while frontman Ian Thornley released a successful-in-Canada solo album entitled Come Again, and a much-less-successful follow up called Tiny Pictures. While both of these albums contained very strong songwriting and respectable vocal performances, they tended to alienate Ian Thornley's core fan base of hard-rock fans because they were softer and more pop-oriented than Big Wreck's two albums had been.

Eventually Ian Thornley reconnected with Big Wreck bandmate Brian Doherty, found a 3rd guitarist and a new rhythm section, and recorded and released Albatross, billing it as Big Wreck's return to form.

Frankly, the album is not exactly a return to form. While elements of southern rock and groove are still present in the new album, Albatross is at long last evidence of Big Wreck's progressive rock roots. For one thing, Ian Thornley actually shreds on the album - something unheard of on his previous releases.

If lengthy, extended guitar solos aren't progressive rock, then what is? Odd time signatures, of course! Although they are hidden behind extremely tight songwriting, Albatross hosts some odd time signatures as well. Not to mention the presence of double-neck guitar parts and dense vocal harmonies. Albatross is undeniably progressive in execution.

Still, Ian Thornley's incredible vocal prowess gives him the ability to "sing the phonebook." That is, Thornley has always been able to make simple, unassuming melodies sound incredible with his strong vocal performances. Albatross is no different. Rather than becoming bogged-down in prog-rock indulgences, the album instead deftly inserts progressive elements into a sonic core of tight, blues-based songwriting.

The overall result is an album that is both dense and accessible. To my ears, it sounds as though Ian Thornley has finally managed to capture his musical essence free of external pressures and simply make music for the sake of making music.

Albatross may not necessarily be Ian Thornley's masterpiece. Perhaps the best is yet to come. But for my money, this latest album is the closest Thornley has come to-date to crafting his magnum opus. I give it full marks.

The Importance of Being An Optimist

Everyone experiences ups and downs in life. It is unavoidable. There has never yet lived a man, woman, or child, who did not experience their own share of fortunes both good and bad. What makes one person an optimist and another person a pessimist? In my experience, the difference is attitude.

"I'm Not a Pessimist, I'm a Realist."
That phrase is the calling card of every pessimist in the world. None of them perceive their negative expectations as being genuinely negative. Instead, they see their perspective as being one of deft anticipation of future risks. Life is to be mitigated against. Things will not be optimal, therefore it is best to reduce expectations to the point that sub-optimality can be accommodated.

Before we probe this further, we should take some time to establish an agreement. We all agree - most of us, anyway - that having a negative attitude is a bad thing. They don't call them "bad attitudes" for nothing. While every pessimist would stop short of describing their own attitudes as bad, even the world's most insufferable pessimist will agree that having a bad attitude is a bad thing.

So when does pessimism cross the line and become a bad attitude? More to the point, is pessimism ever anything other than a bad attitude?

Perhaps "realism" is nothing more than the last bastion of a pessimist. Perhaps pessimism itself is the problem. Not convinced? Let's take a closer look.

Positive Versus Negative Narratives
As an optimist, it is important to me that I craft a positive narrative for every future expectation. Pessimists, on the other hand, are not people who lack hope. Instead, they tend to be people whose default narrative for future events is a negative one.

Consider the following: Let's move to a new country.

This is a "future event" pulled from the pages of my own recent experiences. Moving to a new country is a major life event, involving many different dependent factors that must all be organized and executed to reasonable sufficiency. When embarking on such a series of tasks, a pessimist is not someone who merely throws up his/her hands and proclaims, "What's the point? Everything will fail anyway!"

No, a pessimist rather becomes worried about all the many ways the project can fail. Perhaps the movers will be too expensive, or too ill-equipped to handle the job. Perhaps finding a place to live from across a very long distance is too daunting. Perhaps lack of domestic credit history will undermine all efforts to establish oneself.

An optimist sees all these same problems, but rather than being worried by them, the optimist reasons that such obstacles have been overcome by others in similar situations, and can therefore be overcome by the optimist himself/herself. While a pessimist may wrongly proclaim this to be the optimist's "naivete," what actually makes the key difference here is the presence of worry.

An optimist refuses to worry about bad things that haven't yet occurred; a pessimist refuses to believe that good things happen until they actually do occur.

Because the optimist is more skeptical of negative outcomes than positive ones, the optimist quickly constructs a series of positive narratives surrounding future events. When something goes wrong, the optimist quickly generates a new set of positive narratives based on the new circumstances.

The pessimist does the exact opposite. The pessimist is skeptical of positive outcomes, and so quickly constructs a set of negative narratives. When things go right for the pessimist, he/she readjusts to the new data by crafting more negative narratives expressing the expectation that his/her luck is soon to change.

Conclusion
Both the pessimist and the optimist see the world as it truly is. The pessimist is simply more skeptical of positive outcomes than negative ones, skeptical to the point that all future expectations carry a negative narrative. Is this an obstacle to the pessimist's life?

Well, let me ask you this: How much do you think you'll accomplish in life if you don't think you will accomplish much in life? Pessimism isn't merely a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is a tautology.

I'd call that having a bad attitude.

An optimist, on the other hand, is so skeptical of negative outcomes that he/she takes all bad news as a statistical aberration, one that is unlikely to be repeated. An optimist believes that things will pan out well, and therefore easily sees many different ways to take advantage of the circumstances - even when the circumstances are bleak. Optimists don't merely find the silver lining in the storm clouds, they see every new situation as potentially advantageous.

How much do you think you'll accomplish in life if you cannot help but think of ways to profit from any situation you come across?

It takes a little mental training, but once you get the hang of it, optimism is a guiding light.

Goodbye, Canada

Tomorrow morning I start a long journey to my new home, back in the United States of America.

I suppose the rabid Stationary Waves readers among us will primarily be interested in the fact that this will by necessity involve a small lull in posting. I hope to keep it up, but will at the mercy of the available internet connections I access along the way. I intend to take some pictures of my journey, because I enjoy the slow evolution of visual landscapes that unfold over the course of thousands of miles of driving. Hopefully, I can include some pictorial evidence of this as I drive. No promises, though.

It's Victoria Day today. Let's talk about Canada.

Canada
I arrived in Canada in the summer of 2003. I Mother Earth's "Quicksilver Meat Dream" album had just come out, Paul Martin was Prime Minister. I didn't really understand what was going on in Canadian politics. The westward shift of Canadian culture hadn't quite yet begun, but you could see it coming.

I remember driving north to the Canadian border crossing at Coutts, Alberta. Montana is such a sparsely populated corner of the world, that as I reached the border near sundown it really felt as though I was driving off the end of the Earth. But when I crossed into a new country, I found that the universe still existed up here.

But it was definitely a parallel universe. Traffic signals were horizontal rather than vertical. Mexican food mysteriously disappeared. Prices were higher, incomes were lower. The weather was warm, but the sun was strangely dimmer, and the sky a paler shade of blue.

For people outside of North America, it may seem odd that there is a large cultural divide between Canada and the United States. Truthfully speaking, for most Americans it is incomprehensible that Canada has such a unique culture. This is, by the way, the reason Americans spend so much time joking about "the 51st state." They genuinely feel that there is little difference between themselves and their Canadian brothers and sisters. Canadians, however, feel otherwise.

The Canadian perspective on Americans very much reminds me of a middle sibling endlessly living in the shadow of the "mature" oldest child and the "cute" youngest child. It is classic Jan Brady syndrome; with no real identity of her own, she was forever tortured by her role as 2nd fiddle to Marsha.

Canada's day may very well come some day, but their culture is one collective sneer at their cruder and more successful southern neighbors. I say this without judgement, as a statement of fact.

That sneer has been pointed at me nearly every day for the past nine years. For as much as can be said about comparative systems, what I most look forward to about going back to the United States is not having to feel that sneer levied against me every time I step out my own front door.

The United States
Meanwhile, nine years is a long time to be away from home. In these particular past nine years, my country has changed significantly. I don't really know what to expect when I get there.

Well, that's not true. I've been back many times, and every time I go, I feel an undeniable sense of familiarity. It's a place where, at the least, my jokes are better understood. With a decent job and some good hobbies, I have a lot to look forward to. You may have also noticed that real estate prices took a slide recently. I hope to make the most of those comparatively lower prices.

Higher incomes, lower tax rates, lower prices, better opportunities. I have written a lot about the inferiority of the Canadian health care system. My most vehement critics will be happy to know that I don't just blather on endlessly about this stuff; I actually put my money where my mouth is. While I had one or two decent health care practitioners up here, I found the system as whole to be a total failure. For the sake of my own health, I am excited to return to a place where quality health care is offered on the market to a willing buyer.

Furthermore, to my great benefit, I happen to be moving to a place with an incredible music scene. Hopefully I can make the most of that.

Good Bye
I suppose this post was mostly just a bit of navel-gazing. I wanted to write down my thoughts as I thought them, one day before returning home. I can't wait to get back to the USA. I can't wait to get started on the next chapter of my new life.

When I return, I hope to return with some new music, a new site layout/design, and more useful blog posts. In the meantime, hang in there. I'll try to remain relevant in the interim. ;)

Some Links

Good news for Ryan's biggest "vice."

Gub's scientists explain that there is no reason whatsoever why hobos eat chips and Mountain Dew rather than fresh vegetables.

Bryan Caplan on why laws are mostly arbitrary.

Tornados and earthquakes, too, but I hear the food there is excellent.

Guitar Exercise of the Week

Stationary Waves reader ZK has been asking me to put together my long-ago promised second sweep-picking exercise, and I have finally gotten around to it.

This is a long exercise. Unlike the previous exercises, this one is more of a true etude, designed to be both musical and rigorous. There is no easy way to go about this, and nothing I can tell you to help speed it up. Pay attention to the pickstroke indicators so that you get the sweeps correct.

The denser arpeggios will sound jarring and dissonant when played at slow speeds, which should give you plenty of incentive to get them up to higher speeds more quickly.

As a final note, I had to break the exercise into five separate jpegs. I apologize for that.

Without further ado, here is "Study #1."

Somewhat Disconcerting

Another Stationary Waves Milestone
Happy 30,000 to me
Happy 30,000 to me
I'll do nearly anything
For a nominal feeeee!

And In Other News
I have been getting blog hits from the Google search string "brainwashing yourself for good."

Not exactly the audience I intended to draw, but I'll take it!

What Is The Point?

Bangla Word of the Day:
লাভ: [labh] n. - Point, purpose, etc.


Note that there is no inherent vowel sound after the "bh" consonant at the end of the word. Bangalis will often say "Labh ki?" which means, "What's the point?" It has the same connotation that it  has in English, meaning that it is frequently used as an expression of exasperation or hopelessness. While it's not a particularly optimistic thing to say, it's still a pretty handy phrase. 


No Really, What Is The Point?
Yesterday, I spent some time discussing the virtues of competition and self-improvement. In that post, I wrote:

This isn't because a person is always inadequate and needs to reach a "better place." Fitness gurus, coaches, self-help advisers and others often get this one wrong. It's not because your life sucks that you want your life to be better. If a person tries and tries and never improves, that person isn't a "failure," and I wouldn't automatically assume that such a person is unhappy or dissatisfied.

In hindsight, I realize that I may have glossed over the most important aspect of the matter, for this paragraph as a stand-alone statement is wholly unsatisfying.


So the question is posed: Why should we chase these dreams of self-improvement? Really, why should we undertake all this effort to try to make ourselves better people rather than simply accepting ourselves as we are living our lives accordingly? If you're not going to win a race, what is the point of trying to be competitive? If you're not going to be a rock star, why write songs and arrange for live performances? Why not just be happy with what life has given you and learn to exist as such?


In short, why bother?


It's a challenging question, one that I will attempt to answer here, at least partially.


External Influences On Self-Improvement
We in North American culture tend to focus - negatively - on the negative influences driving us to attempt to "fix ourselves." We have developed all sorts of epithets for these influences: "the rat-race," "our image-obsessed culture," "consumerism," "keeping up with the Joneses," and so on. Our communities both large and small exert an enormous amount of pressure on us to conform and fit in with the prevailing standards of the day.


I think we intuitively and universally know such pressures to be an unequivocal negative. None of us should feel like failures if we don't have a nice car like the family down the street, or as big a house, or as trim a waistline, or as high an income, or as high a standing in the community. People waste whole lifetimes chasing social status and seeking approval from others.


The reason this is a losing game is that no matter how much stuff you acquire, no matter how much status you have among your fellow men, there will always be critics trying to chop you back down to size. Even the epithets I mentioned two paragraphs ago were developed to try to diminish those people who have excelled the most at acquiring possessions, looking beautiful, having neat stuff, and earning lots of money.


If you're trying to please all these people, you just can't win.


But there are other external influences out there, too - positive ones.


Take for example the man driven to earn fabulous riches so that he can guarantee that his children have every convenience throughout their lifetimes. A very productive person in a free society can often earn so much wealth that his/her children and even grandchildren can live comfortably throughout their whole lives. Such an endeavor is a labor of love, and none of us could reasonably call this person's motives into question.


This is especially true since we are all so influenced, even if to a lesser degree. Our desire to leave our children with a better chance than we had is one of the most natural and fundamental of desires. Perhaps it is not even unique to human beings alone.


So this is one external influence on self-improvement. Another example might be an overweight parent or family member who successfully turns his/her health around in order to inspire his/her family not to make the same mistake. YouTube is replete with videos of amazing transformations, often posted by the very family members who were intended to be inspired. 


We've all seen the reality TV shows, showing people who take on unique and difficult challenges so that they can demonstrate to their friends and family that amazing things are possible in life if we set our sights on achieving them. 


Again, such motives are fundamentally external in nature. The driving force is not the person improving and achieving, but an intended spectator. I am not so sure that any of us would suggest this kind of external motivation is negative. But what is the difference between the "negative" and the "positive" external influences?


I would argue that the fundamental difference is specificity. 


If you spend your time trying to please a nebulous mass of people - a "community" or "people in general," for example - then you cannot hope to succeed, because there is always some fraction of any given population who want to see the exact opposite of what you intend to do. For everyone who will appreciate that you earned a raise, there is someone who will resent you or criticize your "materialistic" goals.


On the other hand, if you identify particular individuals whose approval you would like to win for noble reasons - your children, so that they may live a better life, or recipients of a local charity that matters to you, for example - then suddenly the goal is entirely within your reach.


You can't please everyone, but you can please someone. If that "someone" happens to matter a great deal to you and is worth pleasing, then such an external influence can be a powerful motivational factor that can inspire you to achieving great things.


Internal Influences on Self-Improvement
Of course, you can also waste a lifetime trying to win the approval of a loved one, too. A great many of us still suffer from the demons of our childhood, in which we feel we could never live up to the expectations of a few people we admired, from which we desperately wanted approval. If you realize that you may not ever get that approval - or even if you don't - you'll need more to keep you going in life than the approval of others. 


That is to say, external factors are important, but insufficient. Human satisfaction requires our own internal sense of worth. We need some internal influences to work their magic on us.


Here's where things get dicey. Just as we see that many external influences are highly negative, so our internal motivations can be similarly dangerous. An unattainable desire for beauty can lead a person toward many different kinds of personal deformity (plastic surgery, eating disorders, and the like). An overwhelming appetite for the finer things in life can take us down the slippery slope of intemperate greed. A quest for glory can become an unquenchable thirst for power.


Because we all spend so much time in our heads, it is far too easy to see the problems associated with personal motivations toward greatness. Our moral and ethical systems reinforce the level of importance we attach to these problems, too. Nearly all the world's major religions vehemently condemn "greed" and "vanity," and declare that we should not waste our time on such "worldly" endeavors, but should double up our efforts with respect to the external influences on self-improvement.


But as we saw above, returning to an externally focused sense of motivation is not a panacea. There are problems with relying too much on such things.


The fact of the matter is, you need some positive internal influences to maintain your mental health, and so I repeat: human satisfaction requires our own internal sense of worth.


Identifying Your Values
One of my favorite Ayn Rand quotes is this one: 

Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.

I cannot seem to source it. It has been floating around on the internet for a long time, and although I have read similar quotes throughout her work, I've never come across this one in writing. There is a wealth of wisdom in this quote, so I'd like to break it down into its most important concepts.

1. Humans deserve to be happy. You may not have met anyone who deliberately suffers because that person believes that only suffering is noble, but I have met plenty such people. It is sad, because these people often never come to terms with the fact that happiness is an achievable state of being, and that each one of us deserves it.
2. "Mindless self-indulgence," is not ethical, and is not the point. Ayn Rand was not a "do what you please" kind of a thinker. As a result, while she never (to my knowledge) wrote explicitly about temperance, there is a hefty implication of temperance throughout her work. Happiness, according to Rand, is not just cheap thrills and quick-fixes. Happiness is a lifelong endeavor to make yourself deeply satisfied in accordance with the things you actually value (in the long run).
3. Happiness comes from achieving your values. Whatever you truly value, that is what will make you happy. It's different for everyone. But everyone has something (or many things) that they value, and only those through those values will a person become happy.

So with respect to discovering your "internal influences for self-improvement," we are not really talking about latching onto some shallow motivational factor like, "I have to do a good job," or "I want to look good for the party." Instead, we are talking about the fundamentals. The philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Sorry. I know some of you didn't want to read that.

For ethical eudaimonists like myself, "the things we value" are virtues. We identify character traits that serve somewhat like "ideals." We're not perfect, but obviously, the more virtuous we are, the happier we become. Please note, the purpose here is not to be "as close to perfect as possible," but rather to have a concept in mind that describes what would make us happiest in any given situation. Once you get away from the specter of "perfection," it is actually more like guiding principles.

Conclusion

We have seen that the point of all this self-improvement stuff is to align our personal goals with the internal and external motivational factors we encounter every day. We have also seen that both kinds of factors can be either positive and negative, and that it is probably only healthy to focus on the good ones.

Hopefully, we have also managed to identify that the whole point of all of this is achieving a fundamental sense of human happiness. As a result, we have to identify some core values that we hold, so that we can align our endeavors to those values. 

Nonetheless, I have spent a little time discussing motivational factors and self-improvement, and still feel I have covered the topic inadequately. In a future post, I would like to provide some real-world examples of internal and virtue-centric motivation at work.

Stay tuned. I promise not to keep you waiting too long!