The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself

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-FDR

Having nonchalantly signed up for Tough Mudder (NB: I didn’t actually yet sign up for it but I said I would so I will), I was initially apprehensive at the idea of a cold ice bath and a bout of electroshock therapy. But I spent a portion of this flight (greetings from 35k feet) actually looking at the event obstacles, both volume and detail, and see that there’s a whole lot of scary in store for my teammates and me.

Tough Mudder is aptly named, and aside from a couple of obstacles that include electrocution, and a couple (or 4) more that include ice baths, there are several that include enclosed spaces, and a few that involve heights. Oh, wonderful. It’s like someone gift-wrapped all of the things that freak me out and handed it over in one giant muddy package.

I can handle bugs, spiders, pretty much any liquid that comes out of an animal (thanks to a small child and a Zoology degree), heights that will kill me, the dark, speed, guns, knives, the unknown, and swimming with sharks. But while ice baths and electrocution are unsavory, confined spaces and heights that will only break a bone or two scare the high holy crap out of me. I have no idea how to train for this, except that this will be 10-12 miles of “suck it up and deal”.

Seemingly unrelated, but totally not, is a book I picked up recently that discusses (among other things) the value of “stuff” vs. the value of “experiences”. The bottom line is that we value the “experience” more than the “stuff” for the same dollar output. “Stuff” doesn’t necessarily make us happier, but “experiences” do; even people who do arduous, un-fun things reflect back on them and value the experience. (Anyone who has given birth or finished a physical event they weren’t really prepared for — cough — can testify to it having been a lot more fun AFTER it’s over).

I’m clinging to this. To be absolutely, perfectly frank, I want to quit this event before it’s even started, because I know not only what it will mean in terms of preparation, but that at some point I’m going to be stuck in a small, enclosed, dark space; I will be cold, I will feel useless, and I will want to quit, and the only reason I won’t is that I’m too stubborn to do so.

Here we go…

An Open Letter to My Personal Trainer, David

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Well David, it’s that time again, where I’ve done something rash and signed up for something I probably shouldn’t do. There’s a timeline involved, and some frankly optimistic requirements; I figured I’d apologize now and get it over with.

You see, I let the Ms.Krieant sign me up for Tough Mudder, and I have a little under 13 weeks to get ready. It has some impressive obstacles, most of which have me scared out of my mind, but as you know once I’ve said I’ll do something, I’ll do it…

…as long as I get to whine a lot about it.

So I realize that up until now your charge has been mostly to try to get me stronger while avoiding the injury of the month; in our short tenure together this has meant occasionally avoiding my knees, my neck, my upper back, my lower back, or my right hip. Now we need to ignore all of that, because I will need all of those parts working and functional.

I also realize that this means that the chattiness of our sessions will have to reduce, that we can no longer freely evaluate others in the gym as you hand me five more pounds of something or have me do 15 more push-ups. It means that you’re likely to give me homework, that I will need to actually do weight work more than twice a week, and that I will be very, very sore these ensuing weeks.

But David, I’m turning 40.

I realize this isn’t much to you — I think 40 hit and flew by for you about a decade ago, not that you’d notice, being an ex-Marine and all. I realize this isn’t much to most of our early-morning compatriots, as I think the average age at the gym at our time of morning is mid-50’s. It isn’t technically even much to me in the sense that I’m not having a huge to-do over it, nor do I want to see black balloons, nor do I think the day after my birthday I will suddenly fall apart or feel older. The fact is, David, I’m tired of having my body feel older now.

Five years ago I entered into a half marathon, having never run, because someone told me I couldn’t do it. (Actually, he laughed and said, “yah, right”). Three years ago I entered into a 2-day, 160-mile bike ride because someone said I wouldn’t want to do it. Last year I did the STP pretty much under the same auspices. And each time, I injured myself either in training or in the event itself. But each time, I did the training without any professional help.

You’re here to fix that, David, because at 40, I’ve decided I’m tired of injuring myself. And this likely means I’ll have to do a lot of things I was heretofore unprepared to do, like go to the gym more than 4 times per week and maybe, actually, you know, stretch. Perhaps even do my regular PT exercises. I have a support group in my friends — one lent a very pertinent book (Supple Leopard, indeed), one gave me tips on how to deal with the electric shocks (or at least a realistic impression of what they’re like). But your job is to make sure I’m ready, and so I really do hope you’ll understand the bullet-pointed list you’re going to get when next we see each other.

I still reserve the right to whine, though.

Welcome to Scottsdale

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It had been a few visits here for me before I realized that Scottsdale is, in fact, its own city. The sprawl that is Phoenix stretches out for miles; if you fly in at night you are treated to a truly awe-inspiring stretch of lights. As “Scottsdale” is only 30 minutes from the airport, I had always taken it for granted that it was but a neighborhood. Soon however you notice signs that say “City of Scottsdale” and eventually, the “Welcome to Scottsdale” signs along the wide, clean freeways.

My parents moved here 3 years ago, after having lived in Washington for nearly 25 years. This place is as dry and hot as my adopted state is wet and cold: most of the year it is, and some of the year it isn’t. This time of year, it’s very, very hot. Two nights ago, the “low” was 92 degrees.

This temporal extremity leans to some specialized behaviors: stores and shops all have their AC up full-bore, so walking out of 110 degree heat into 70 degrees is a bit jolting. My mother ordered hot tea with lunch because the restaurant was so cold. Women wear sleeveless shirts or dresses, and shorts or capris or skirts; when they leave the car they reach first for their shades and the windshield shade, and second for a little sweater or wrap for once they enter the store. I’ve seen it. It’s real.

In Washington, after it rains, things smell fresh and woodsy; in Scottsdale, after it rains… I can’t quite describe it. It’s a vaguely grassy, musty smell. It’s not wholly unpleasant once you’re used to it. And when the sun comes out again, your first inclination (as a Washingtonian) is to run right out and enjoy it, after all, you’re looking through large picture windows at sunshine dappling on the pool, and hummingbirds flitting about. You open the door, go outside, and your face starts to flake off.

I will say this: the climate, however hot, does great things for acne, and hair that won’t behave. I can let my hair air-dry here without getting massive frizz. And thus far I haven’t gotten completely burnt. Or not much. Playing in a backyard pool for hours that is naturally at 90 degrees isn’t bad, either.

If you’re looking to visit Scottsdale and/or Phoenix in summer, I do recommend the following:

1. Pack a light windbreaker. It’s monsoon season, and so it “rains”. If you’re a Washingtonian you don’t probably care much about rain, but others seem to, so it makes them feel better when you have a light jacket.

2. Sunscreen. Spray-on, waterproof, and use it repeatedly.

3. Phoenix (and Scottsdale) have many GREAT museums (including the Heard, the Art museum, the Natural History museum…) and a wonderful zoo. It’s not just golf and desert hikes and great Mexican food.

4. Water. Drink lots and lots and lots and lots of water. Not from the tap. The water here is killer hard, so most houses/establishments have water softeners, which make the water taste like ass. So get bottled, or filtered water. No, I don’t know what ass really tastes like, so let’s just say I *imagine* that’s what it tastes like. Just read it as unpleasant.

5. The freeways here are wide, languid, flat things with lots of other people on them, who (for the most part) drive reasonably. But motorcyclists don’t have to wear helmets and they don’t always drive “reasonably” here. If you rent a car, note that, and also note that no matter how cool it seems outside, a shady parking spot will be worth a little bit of a walk.

6. If you play outside, or run outside (I don’t in the summer, the ‘rents have a treadmill), do it early and remember the altitude. Scottsdale is 632m (about 2000 feet), unlike my hometown of Sammamish, which is 9m (30 feet). It makes a huge difference in your cardio.

And, as you leave, note that the Phoenix Airport is truly crazily laid out, so if you have to return a rental car plan some extra time (especially as it’s a 20-minute shuttle ride from the rental car facility to the actual airport). If someone is dropping you off,  you need to know what terminal you’re at well in advance of airport arrival (or you will miss your terminal and do that never-ending-drive-around-the-airport-thing).  Finally, the TSA area has a dedicated family-friendly line — and they don’t care if your kid is 10. Just sayin’.

Floating Along

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I am, once again, at the airport. Can I just say how refreshing it was to NOT have an instant sense of direction once clearing security? I have a whole new world opened to me, and it’s a weird one. Item one: I checked email two hours after leaving on vacation and no work urgency or email had appeared! (What is this alternate universe I have travelled to?).

No, this is a welcome weird; I am semi-secure in the knowledge that nothing really truly awfully bad can happen, that my company can survive without me, and yet my (brief) absence will not convince them they should get rid of me. Nonetheless I am travelling with two laptops, which means I’ll be totally buff when I return.

Like every vacation, I have a laundry list of things I’m going to do (that I probably will not complete). Like every vacation, I have forgotten something (although the kindly Editor dropped by work earlier today and delivered my knitting, which was the item forgotten). Like every vacation, the boychild and I went to Anthony’s for pre-flight. Like every vacation, I am looking forward to in-flight WiFi.

I cannot sit still. I really can’t. I noticed it a few years back, and it was again brought to my attention when the Brit was in a meeting with me a year back. It has peaked since: hour-long meetings in conference rooms either must include my laptop so I can multitask *or* folks need to suspend their seismographs, because the leg or the hand or the pencil or the anything else will be rhythmically moving to the sound of whatever song is in the head.  So sitting on a plane for three hours is going to be less than pleasant. For those of you recommending wine: thought of that. But I’m going to 110-degree weather, and so dehydrating myself on purpose seems a bit stupid.

In four days I will return, and will have to text my PT and tell him about signing up for Tough Mudder, and will have to acclimatize myself to the notion that in 3 months I need to train myself to 1. withstand electric shocks, or at least grit my teeth over them, and 2. be able to pull myself up (all of myself) (by my own hands) (several times). Up until now the directive for the trainer has been much more mellow, much more “hey can you make sure you don’t re-break the parts of me that are broken?” and more “I have this specific set of criteria I must meet in 12 weeks.”

But until then I’m on vacation. Leave a message!

AGAIN with the Injury

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Point of clarification: I have NOT entered into any major sporting event (yet) (I may or may not have been conned into doing Tough Mudder thanks to Ms. Krieant), I have done nothing out of the usual in workouts lately, and yet I’ve managed to muss up my hip flexor. This doesn’t take any particular talent, other than having a crap-tastic lower back, because (fun fact) the hip flexor runs from your lower back and wraps around the front, down into your inner thigh. F-ing with your hip flexor feels rather like having a pulled muscle right where the cut of your leg is, and I can tell you from personal experience it 1. doesn’t go away after a few days (we’re working on two weeks, here) and 2. it is really awful to get PT for it.

Mind you, my PT is for my lower back (hello, arthritis, so very wonderful to see you there too) but suddenly that felt fine and this other area started hurting. As I associate visiting the PT with a massive amount of whining, I added that in for good measure, and Dr. Dan arched an eyebrow (never, ever a good sign) and started asking questions. Since the 3 people you should never lie to are your doctor, your lawyer, and your self, I told the truth… and found myself lying back on the table and having him digging his hands into my pelvis.

I am not exaggerating.

Because your psoas (aka, hip flexor) is so buried and deep, the only way to get it to chill the *F* out is to dig in between your gut and your hip bone, quite deep, while extending and contracting the affected leg. This feels appallingly like having someone dig into your pelvis to clean out the inside of the bone, much like you take a spoon to the inside of pumpkin mash when making Jack-o-lanterns. It doesn’t SCREAMING hurt, but it is one of the least pleasant things I’ve let another human being do to me.

Today was my second session in PT for this (actually, for the lower back facets issue but apparently this gets grouped under that) and I can walk without limping but I’m still not allowed to run. This weekend I’m off to cub scout camp so we’ll see if a Hobbly Mom is okay.

Advil, take me away…

Summer

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School is OUT! I fondly remember, as a child, waiting anxiously for this day to come, and revelling in the ten (or was it twelve?) weeks of summer. Summer, in my case, was summer camp, at the local YMCA. This was in California, and so I spent every day in the pool, if we weren’t going to Disneyland, Magic Mountain, Knot’s Berry Farm, or into the mountains to hike. Every summer I got a wicked burn, then a wicked tan (for those who know me today: yes, it is possible. I have proof.) At the end of camp in 4th grade I broke my arm skateboarding, at the end of camp in 6th grade I had a “boyfriend”. We held hands.

School seemed an interminable period of judgement, testing, studying, and BORING things. Fun fact: I like learning now, I did NOT like learning then. I have dozens of saved report cards from my formative years informing my parents that “Bobbie could do so much better if she just applied herself.”

When I hit 28, I was in full-on baby-mania. Actually, that’s not quite accurate, I was in “have a kid, change my life” mania. It wasn’t just the “baby” I wanted; I wanted the 9-year-old telling me he forgot he needs to bring 2 dozen cupcakes (the morning he needs to bring them). I wanted the cramming for the SAT’s, and the first trip to Disneyland, and reading books goodnight. And I felt sure that when I had a child, what with my academic-leaning parents, I too would become an academic-leaning parent and come to see the value of school.

It is therefore with a mixture of embarrassment and wonder that I report that while I do truly cherish the value of school, and I am that academic parent (that was me, putting my kid in tutoring), I also could not wait for summer. Because it meant a reprieve.

A reprieve from parent-teacher conferences, from enforcing homework revisions, from watching the frustration on his face when he didn’t get a concept or (in the long tradition of my family line) didn’t get it exactly perfect the first time. (He carries that trait to everything, skateboarding and electric guitar have been recent lessons in “no one is perfect the first time”). It’s a reprieve from emails from the teacher, from looking for lost hoodies in the Lost and Found, from waiting for the June Box (items taken by the teacher go into a box and are retrieved… in June), from nights filled with homework, projects, and the dutiful requirements of school.

By the time the end of August rolls around I will revert to the feelings of my youth and delight in back-to-school shopping, even if my son doesn’t. I will feel re-invigorated and redouble my PTA efforts, all the more excited as this is our last grade school year (and I’m chairing the Science Fair). I will be all excited again.  And the boy… the boy will have had ten weeks of fun, and sun; he will have a wicked tan (bless his Father for giving him better skin than I had, the kid does not burn). Even he will be looking forward to school and seeing his friends on a more regular basis, if not the excitement that being a 5th grader (and therefore, top of the heap) brings.

But here we are excited and grateful, officially, for summer.

Dabble, Dabble, Toil and Babble

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“Your biggest problem”, he stated flatly, “is you’re a dabbler. You don’t specialize in anything. You are not going to succeed because you do not focus on a given talent; you just dabble in this and that.”

This was actually stated, to me, in a 1:1 with my boss at the time. He was a financial services guru and I was his personal and executive assistant, so assigned because I was technically inclined and could type fast. In short, I was good enough to be his e&pa because I dabbled.

Despite initial reaction, this was meant to be a positive speech: it was going to Incite Me To Action and I was going to Make Something Of Myself. Instead, I quit the job, moved back home, and dabbled some more.

I dabbled my way into SQL.

Then I dabbled my way into ASP.Net. Then I dabbled into VB.Net.

Then I dabbled into SQL some more, and into project management. And the dabbling continued, through business development, communications, operations, and back into development (but C# this time).

“Which one of your degrees does this job come from?” wondered my stepmom one night in Spring when I told them I had acquired this one. “None of them!” my dad said wryly.

My old boss is correct: I am a dabbler. None of the things I have done, have I truly specialized in. There are better people at SQL out there than I am, there are certainly better people at .Net and BusDev. But there are damned few who can speak those languages and are willing to translate them, painfully, carefully into shiny PowerPoints and ROI-laden SWAT analyses.

A few months back I had my midlife crisis, it lasted 36 hours and was of the vein  of “what am I DOING with my life? Where will I go next?” And I realized that every other time in my life I’d been faced with that question things unquestionably got better, more exciting, and more rewarding.

I have friends who went to college for what they ended up being in life, they seem happy and fulfilled. I have friends who picked a field and stuck with it, and will have a decent retirement to speak for it. My own parents offer four different examples of picking a road and trotting down it come hell or high water and they’ve all done fine.

I do not believe, though, that diminishes any success by a diagonal route.

Phoning It In

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I’m freely admitting here that I’m phoning this one in: life, and work, have taken over as is wont to do with a new job, and summer approaching. The sun gets early and so do I, I am proudly Foursquare mayor of my gym and I sleep better now that I have in six years. Work is intense and yet has finite boundaries, home is satisfying although I do admit that this school year it feels a bit like I’m limping to the finish (to quote a Facebook friend).

This sounds pitifully like a synopsized email to my mother: I’m alive, I’m happy, I’m sorry I haven’t written, I’m just really busy, and it’s all good. As I have two plane trips spaced at one-month intervals coming up, I hope to have a new rant up soon. Ideas for said rant include:

1. Wow, people in Seattle have no idea how to drive at all once change is instantiated.

2. I may become a shoe fanatic. I bought new shoes that happened to be high heels and I’m really, really enjoying them.

3. Gardening is frustrating if you resolve to do it without chemicals.

4. I have no problem turning 40, the fact that my son is already 10 is scary.

5. I am a dabbler, and despite the best advice of many I think I’m succeeding.

There was a time in my life where I blogged because the volume of drama necessitated it; there is no drama and unfortunately there’s not much I can add in terms of overall social commentary that I feel has to be imparted RIGHT NOW. This is a good position to be in.

Owning Your Data

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I realize I’m terribly late to this party. I’m not even fashionably late, I’m “you arrived just as the caterers were cleaning up and the hostess had taken off her shoes” late. I’ve been busy (as, I think, I’ve amply covered).

However, I really must say a word or two about Reinhart and Rogoff.

For those who don’t follow economics or kinda remember they heard about it but aren’t sure what the big hullabaloo is, I recommend you google it; look for the Economist, the Guardian, and the Atlantic non-editorial resources to start. There’s a few. Then you can go off to the editorials for dessert. For those who don’t want to google, here’s the Twitter version: Two economists present a work in which they suggest that there is a deep drop off in economic performance without austerity measures. Essentially they said that when debt is high, growth slows to a grinding halt; the graph they presented roughly resembled the cliffs of Dover.

And it was wrong.

Because of an Excel spreadsheet formula error.

Normally this wouldn’t be awful. Anyone, and I do mean anyone, who has used Excel to convey data (or volumes of analysis) has made that spreadsheet error, and it can be as simple as not properly conveying a Sum formula, or as complex as messing up your Vlookup in your nested IF statement. Excel has been bastardized over the years into an analytics function (by courtesy of default in that it’s on nearly every machine) that it really can’t fully accommodate without failsafes; EVERYONE makes an Excel error.

Reinhart and Rogoff’s mistake is NOT that they made a spreadsheet formula error. And, contrary to the article above I linked to, it’s only partially that they did not peer review.

It was governments’ (plural, many, varied) mistake to use it to shape policy.

Lookit, suppose I told you that, according to my Excel spreadsheet, you were very likely to die from dehydration if you didn’t eradicate all but 0.4 grams of salt per day from your diet. For perspective, the average diet has about 5 times that. You would very rightly look to other studies, other data, other sources of information. You’d poll your neighbors. You’d check with friends. You’d do your due diligence before you used my say-so, no matter how shiny my Excel spreadsheet, or even how shiny my MD would be (this is fiction, after all).  Plenty of people are told by their doctor to lose 10lbs because it will make a difference in the long run, and plenty of people seem to blithely ignore it because they don’t have corresponding (personal, attributable, anecdotal) data.

So why, why, why did any government, financial body, fiscal institution leap on the screeching panic train when R&R’s study hit?  Why did no one look to a 2nd opinion, a different study; why didn’t they check the data for themselves before subjecting their economies to the fiscal equivalent of a rectal exam?

I have been in data now for 15 years. It’s not a long time in the scheme of things, but it’s something I’m known to be passionate about. I can go on and on about how data works, or doesn’t; what you can derive from it; how data *is* integrity if done right. Any form of analytic reporting that is worth its salt has been tested, peer-reviewed, and validated against two or three other methods before it is used in a practical space. At Expedia, at one point, I managed 500 ad-hoc requests per month, and each of those was eyeballed against existing reporting and a decent sense-check before being used to cut deals (or not).

Now, please understand: R&R screwed up. And, apart from their formula error, they insist the outcome is the same (and it is, but it’s the equivalent of saying “ok it’s not a steep drop off anymore, more of a speedbump, but still it’s a delta!!”). This is the foible of the data monkey; again, something we’ve all been prey to. But not all of us have done it to the culpability of large (and small) governments, and most of us have learned to admit when we’re wrong. That is the crux of it: if no one is perfect, no data is perfect, to pretend yours is against evidence to the contrary is specious at best and negligent at worst.

I argue though that the more egregious mistake is to *follow* that data without validation. To quote Ben Kenobi: “Who’s more foolish, the fool, or the fool that follows him?”

Typing

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It’s my “me” night — the boy is with his father, the man is with his brother, and I am home watching a James Bond movie. It’s “Thunderball”, released in 1965; at this time in history my father had been in the country 1 year, I do not believe he had as yet met my mother, and I was -8 years old.

All of the women are decorative, deadly, or both. Any one of them who was competent and even remotely personable was a secretary. The only two remainders were a deadly assassin (ultimately, and inevitably, poor in her job) and the clueless, innocent heroine.

When I was in 8th grade, typing was a requirement for everyone, but you had to do it on an IBM Selectric that was only slightly quieter than a beehive. Typing had time-tests as well as visual tests — you could NOT type the volume in the time if you hesitated to look at the keyboard. I had managed to multi-task and eyeball the keyboard through the first quarter, so my second quarter C’s were not welcome at home. (In point of fact, C’s were never welcome at home, but A’s that went to C’s were very much not ok). My grades came home and my parents acted.

My stepmother grabbed a sheet of blue, circle-shaped stickers. And covered every key in the keyboard of the computer my brother and I used. It was torturous. But I learned to type.

Not to become a secretary.

Seventeen years ago I took a couple of classes at the local community college to learn how to program websites — I was a “web developer” when everybody was, it founded a slightly profitable side business. In 2000 I took classes in DB development, by 2003 I had argued my way into a dev job. In 2004 I got the dream job, at Expedia, to do development in their Reporting group. By 2010 the good jobs had moved to Geneva and I had to find other pursuit. By 2013, I had tired of “other pursuit”.

Today I find myself with two keyboards, two machines, a multitude of projects and lots of things to build. I type a lot these days. But I’m not a secretary.