Happiness and Whole Foods Coffee....

There's nothing like a bunch of yoke carries and back squats to get the testosterone flowing. Right now I just really want to push an Escalade up a hill. Thanks Erin!

Expanding on what I wrote the other day, I was thinking about the times in my life which I felt the most alive. I'm thinking of one time in particular. It was Fall 2000. What made that time so special for me?

Well, it wasn't the money I was making--barely enough for a single guy to live on. The car I was driving was a 1991 Honda Civic with 150,000 miles and no power steering and no air conditioning. I had just enough money to pay for rent, food, and if I budgeted well, a beer every now and then and a jar of protein powder--the good kind. My younger sister and most of my friends from school--both high school and college--were working and were making money, a lot more than I was making at the time. I was broke.

And no, I wasn't even dating someone at the time. And yet, still, I was really really happy.

Anyway, that fall I was finishing up my last year in graduate school and I was writing my thesis. What a crazy time it was! Besides making next to nothing, I was working 70-hour weeks. My days consisted of coming into the office at 9, staying until 5, leaving go home to eat and then to work out at the university gym, and then coming back at 9 and staying until 1. I worked on Saturdays and Sundays too.

If I was working so hard and had no money then, no life, and no girl, then why was I so happy? I was working hard on a project was I totally engrossed in. My thesis was on an esoteric topic that someone wouldn't care about if they weren't a mathematician, but that didn't really matter. It represented all I ever wanted to do at the time, which was to make a contribution to science. To be the first to figure something out. I was doing exactly that. And so I worked my ass off to make sure that it turned out as great as it possibly could.

And there were also the relationships that came from all this. My friends in graduate school who were working alongside me on their projects. I love the joking around, the endless discussions, and the occasional leaving to go get a beer. Working with my advisor Rao. See he and I are both really stubborn, and we clashed sometimes. But I think that this conflict only added to everything. I loved working with Rao on this.

Thanks to email, I even had colleagues on different continents!

There is also something about trying and working really really hard to get something, having no success at it, and then suddenly, at the most unexpected moment, it just finally comes together. Maybe it's what they say about we human beings being suckers for variable reinforcement, but I was sucked in. You never know when inspiration would kick in, and I kept working for it. I had that happen a bunch of times during that fall. Once when I was home in Rhode Island running on the beach in Westerly on the sunday during Labor Day Weekend. I was scribbling out my equations in the sand like a madman. A couple other times that fall, sent out a few adrenaline-fueled emails at 2:30 in the morning. My European colleagues would be reading what I wrote over their morning coffee I suppose.

No, all this was not a sustainable nor was it a healthful lifestyle, long-term. Spend all of your time focused on one thing for too long a period and eventually it will hurt you (e.g., burn-out). I just couldn't keep up that pace forever. I couldn't go back to that life today. At least, not totally. But for the time being, it was perfect. I was pursuing my passion.

Anyway, I feel some of this working out now. Some. I might never compete in the Games in July, but still, this is all making me grow as a person, physically and mentally. How I am doing something I am excited about. When I started CrossFit, I couldn't do a muscle-up, and now I can do several strict. And CrossFit has led to this blog. Which has led to me understanding myself better and hopefully, to write something that serves you reading this.

And there are the relationships that have come from CrossFit. I have gotten to become friends with some awesome people whom I never would have met otherwise. There is something about going through something so physically challenging that bonds people together. I'm hoping by this time next year to become an instructor myself. I want to lead other people through that physical transformation.


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On a lighter note, Whole Foods coffee tastes really good cold. I got myself a large hot coffee last night--don't ask why--but then I decided that it would be better if I didn't drink it. So I absentmindedly left the cup in the center console of my car. When I sipped it the next morning it tasted really good. Like really strong, good, ice coffee.