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I Have Good Veins

12/22/2017 by John Leave a Comment

As long as I can remember, I have been afraid of having blood taken out of my arm. A finger prick sample, no problem, but the mere thought of having that needle close to the crook of my arm would send waves of apprehension coursing through me. I had to give blood once when I was a child, but I don’t remember the details. I must have been sick. Why else would you need to take blood from a little kid? What I do remember is that it took several sticks (from more than one person) before the job was done. I remember someone telling me that I had “rolly” veins, meaning veins that liked to dart out-of-the-way as the needle was approaching them.

So that is who I have been, the person with rolly veins for the last 40 odd years of my life. I have never donated blood in times of need, and I avoid getting blood work done if possible. Recently, everything changed.

I went to get some routine blood work done that I could not avoid. I told the lab tech about my rolly veins after she was well into her process and she said that I had great veins. This surprised me. So I am not the person with rolly veins? But I had spent so much energy being that person. So much anxiety, so much worry and avoidance, all for something that was not true, or was true no longer. Suddenly, giving blood held no terror for me.

I let someone else’s words define who I was for most of my life. Someone else’s opinion. And so the tale was written: the story of John with the rolly veins and that’s the narrative I lived. All it took was a different point of view to rewrite that story. So I ask myself, how much time do I spend living out stories that are not of my choosing or that are based on inaccurate information? How easy would it be to rewrite those tales?

Our lives are a collection of interwoven narratives, screenplays we act out as we go through our days. We should be asking ourselves which of these storylines are serving us and who wrote them? When we find that one or many of these scripts are not contributing to our well-being, it’s time to write a new story.

Based on a journal entry from 3.18.15

Goodbye Portland

12/16/2017 by John Leave a Comment

Outside the window I see the lights of a plane climbing into the orange-tinted dawn sky. In just a few days as the sun rises over the Blue Ridge Mountains, we will be on a plane descending, coming back to Asheville again and the closest thing to home we have. Soon it will be time to gather the detritus we have scattered throughout the corners of this house and wonder how much of it we really need before we stuff it into a bag to haul back across the country. We’ll be leaving here with more stuff than we brought. How does that always happen? But the important things we will bring back with us are memories. Below are just a few.

View of Portland from the Sellwood Bridge

This was a view I got a lot of while running around Portland.

Matcha Latte from the Rain or Shine Coffee House

The Northwest may be known for its coffee culture, but while here I developed a strong taste for matcha lattes.

My brother-in-law and friend playing guitar while on a rafting trip on the Deschutes River

I got to get out on the Deschutes twice this fall. One of the highlights of river trips is getting to hear my brother-in-law and his friends playing guitar in such beautiful theaters.

Mary and I at Cannon Beach on a beautiful fall day.

Out hiking with Mount Hood in the background.

We’ve had some great weather this fall and we’ve tried to take advantage of it by getting outdoors as much as possible.

The Resistance

12/08/2017 by John Leave a Comment

It’s Saturday morning and I’m supposed to do a long run, but the resistance is whispering loudly in my ears this morning. It would be so easy to just get comfortable on the couch with a warm beverage and a glowing screen that promises hours of mindless distraction. What’s harder is remembering why I want/need to go running when I’m not even getting ready for anything in particular. I know the answer is that I need to be consistent in “getting ready to get ready”, but that doesn’t make it any easier to actually do it.

It’s wet out there and I wish the trails were closer. But these are just excuses. I could do it tomorrow, but that’s just putting it off. It is all about my resistance to doing what I know is best for me, the resistance against doing what is difficult or uncomfortable. I resisted getting out of bed this morning. I resisted the idea of meditating for a full 30 minutes, and now I’m resisting going out for more than a short jog around the block. What is easy for me is rarely the right thing for me to be doing.

Today, it’s a long run I am avoiding. Tomorrow it might be starting work on redesigning my website. The resistance is relentless. It halts me in my tracks and won’t let go. Unless I push back. Unless I remind myself that although resistance wants me to be comfortable, that does not make it my friend. On the contrary, whatever resistance tells me I should not be doing is probably exactly what I should do.

I guess it’s time to put on my shoes and go for that run.

Based on the ideas of Steven Pressfield as articulated in his book Do The Work