Exhaustion and a bit of why.

I get tired. Really tired. Add in the fact that I am, by nature, a lazy person, and you would not be surprised to see me sleeping most of the time. I work very hard and outside most of the time. My job requires that I am ready to do trig in the worst places. I work out trigonometric and geometric problems after hiking a mile with fifty pounds of equipment on my back. In ninety degree heat. With snakes and spiders aplenty. So I laid about as much as I could.
Then my Dad got cancer in his pancreas and I was developing emphysema from smoking. Add in the fact that we had just had to send my mother to live with my older brother due to her Alzheimer's and it just was a bit hard on me. I began to question if I would live as long as my folks, and what horrors would arise. Not to mention I slept to avoid as much as I could. It just wasn't getting any better. I watched my mother ,rather than fight her disease and try to be with her family, fill out mail-in sweepstakes after sweepstakes. She still tries to do them, but she no longer has a checking account to send them money. My father had a major surgery and months of chemotherapy. Now he sits on his couch and bemoans having nothing he can do because he's too weak. And through all this, my job went away because of incompetent supervisors,and a general lack of interest in keeping employees. We are always the first thing to be shrunk and cut to make budgets at that company.
So as all this was happening my son was growing from a baby to a boy. I love to play with him, but he was running me into the ground. I was too old and tired. So I chose to be different. I started the Couch to Five-K Program. After nine weeks, I was running 3.1 miles in just around twenty-seven minutes. I did this wearing Vibram FiveFingers, and I really enjoyed it. But when I was done training, I got tired again. I watched my Dad wasting away. I watched my Mom get more and more crazy. So I set a goal for myself, I would complete triathlon training and I might enter an Olympic distance triathlon. All this, so I can enjoy hearing my son call me Papa for the next seventy-four years.

As if I needed more to read.

I have finished reading my triathlon book and I am using it as a guide for my workouts. In the book, there are two weeks of "adaption training". I am making it three weeks. I will be adding an additional week to each of the workout steps. Hate to make it longer, but until I find a dojo  it's going to have to do. I got a book that is recommended in Harr's. The Stretch Book is a nicer way to warm up than just a jog. So as the introduction asks, I am giving this book twenty-one days. There are fifty-nine stretches in this book, I only have to do forty-seven. So not so bad.
On the home front, we are adding more and more vegetables to our diet. I'll dial down the meat when we reach a good balance. Still it is nice to have more flavors in our meals. Tonight I am making pork tenderloin with sauteed spinach topped with a homemade vinaigrette. Amazingly, my two year old will eat some of it.
Cheers

Time for a new start.

Hello, my name is Zac Carey. The purpose of this journal is to keep a record of my attempt at self improvement. It isn't just my body that I am going to attempt to improve but also my mind and life skills. So I have broken this down into a few areas:

1. Body: this will actually be the easiest. I have always been "rail-thin" so it is a matter of building some muscle and endurance. Sports are to be: running, biking, swimming, canoeing/kayaking, and Aikido.
2. Mind: this is the harder one and hopefully the physical training will help with the discipline to follow through. I need to expand my knowledge in my profession, family, and home. Profession is easy, I can read some tutorials and practice my craft with the basic tools. Family is a little harder. This one involves nutrition, time management, and working towards my ideals. Home is probably going to be the hardest of them all. It requires learning several things that just don't normally interest me. Car repair, plumbing, gardening, landscape design, drywall...... it just goes on and on. Bleh.
3. Soul: church is there, but there is so much more to it than all that. To really embrace the soul, you must realize something: the body is in the soul. Our souls are the reflection of our actions and beliefs off the world around us. So here I come local politics, schools, and conservationists.

So there you have it. I am going to try to be the absolute best. I am going to try to live by "the courage of my convictions."