Day 160 - San Francisco, CA

Time for the journey to continue!  The next phase begins now.

The rumors you’ve heard are all true.  Stop the presses, call out the national guard, get Justin Beiber on the phone.  I’m finally moving!  After 6 and a half (going on 7) years in San Francisco it’s time for a change.  For right now, the move is temporary (until at least the end of March), but we’ll see how things go.  I’ll be heading up to Bend, Oregon!  Why Bend?  It’s like Austin, but with skiing and whitewater rafting.  Or, it’s like San Francisco, except…uh, well it’s not really like San Francisco at all.  :)  

The plan?  Don’t have one.  OK, not entirely true.  I’ll be attending Central Oregon Community College, working towards a degree in Outdoor Leadership.  What is that, you ask?  Well, it’s a degree that prepares you to lead events outdoors - think whitewater rafting, Outward Bound, corporate getaways, leadership training, rock climbing, etc., etc.  With classes like “Snowshoeing” and “Survival Skills”, I think it’s going to be an amazing experience.  And I have some remote work in tech back here in SF.

I'll have more to say about this move as time goes on - once I get up there I'll be blogging more frequently than I have been lately.  I haven't had much to say in the last few months, but I think that's going to change rapidly as the "fresh air" unrolls thoughts in my mind.  So for those of you who have been looking forward to the way I write when I'm on a roll, just stay tuned.

I do intend to be back in SF from time to time (not least of all to scare up work); I’m actually keeping my apartment for now.  But obviously I won’t be around much.

And I’m leaving soon!  I have a ten-day retreat starting the 10th, and then I go to visit my family in Florida, and then I’m off to Oregon!  So if you want to see me, now is the time.  I’ll be having a little shindig at my place next weekend - Saturday, the 6th.  Bring some libations and maybe some food to grill out and let’s do a proper send-off.

It’s bittersweet leaving SF.  I’ve had a lot of great experiences here but those of you know me well know that I always felt a bit out of place here.  So this is good.  Change is good.

See you all soon!

Love,

Adam

Day 150 - San Francisco, CA

On a Momentous Occasion

Almost every evening, I throw a party for myself.
It's a splendorous event.
I bring all the best food - only things I like to eat.
Sometimes I open a bottle of my best wine.  
    After all, it's a special day.
    Not every day you get to hang out with someone as handsome and charming as me.
I sing, and I dance - though mostly on the inside.
It's quite entertaining.

That may seem lonely to you.  Sometimes, it seems that way to me, too.
But, it turns out I am excellent company:
I'm never too busy to hang out with me.
I return all my calls, I laugh at all my jokes.
I always show up when I say I will.

And, you know what?  I really like me.  I mean, a lot.  I love me, 
    and I like being my best friend.
And - just maybe - that makes me the luckiest man at the party.

Day 132 - San Francisco, CA

This is a little piece I put together to try and get some things off my chest.  I hope you like it.  I call it "400 First Dates".

400 First Dates

Once, you left me in a parking lot, around the corner from Fry’s Electronics.  I told you I cared about you, and you hung up the phone.

Once, you left me in an airport, clutching two tickets to Disney World.  I watched you recede through the doors of the terminal.

Once, you got up from dinner in the middle of the second course and told me you couldn’t do this anymore, that you were seeing someone else.  You left the restaurant without saying another word, and I paid the check and went home.

Sometimes, you actually seemed to care, and those were the worst times.  We’d start to get to know each other, I’d open up a bit.  We’d watch Hercule Poirot until 2am and talk about how hard it was to find somebody and how nobody understood us.  Then, the next day you would tell me what a little shit I was and give me the middle finger in the center of Haight street, outside the grocery store.  I never saw you again.

5 times you were Kimberly.  3 times, Lauren.  You were Julia and Jessica and Amanda and Jill, but you were also Olga, and Tatiana.  Once, I celebrated Chinese New Years with you at a party with some of your friends, but I can’t remember your name.  Once you took me to a festival for the Hindu gods.  Then the next week you drove me up to Tahoe and dumped me at a cabin and told me to take the train home.

Most of the time, we met online, on services with ridiculous names like OKCupid and Match and Coffee Meets Bagel, cutesy names that try to take the sting out of what may be the world’s most dehumanizing process.  Often all I knew about you was words on a glowing screen, and I would have to try to pretend you were real to me.  Most of the time, you didn’t even try to pretend I was real to you.

But we also met at bars, at yoga, through friends, at a party.  Sometimes, we’d go dancing, or go see a movie.  Once I took you to dinner 5 times, just to see if you would ever kiss me.  You never did.

You mocked me openly, you lied to me, you hit me, you screamed at me, called me names and worse.  I took you to the hospital bleeding from your head.  I picked you up in the middle of the night when you were so drunk you left your wallet in a cab.  I followed you around like a puppy and listened when you told me what to do.  Sometimes, you would treat me to a lecture about what miserable awful people men were, right before you swept through my life like a tornado.  You were a fashion model, an accountant, a lawyer, a seamstress.  

Last night, you were a nurse - and you hated your job.  You always, always seemed to hate your job, which is odd because you worked so hard.  Last night you were so tired you could barely even look at me.  You spent the whole time complaining about work and never asked me a single thing about myself.  At least you paid for your own drink.

Sometimes you were tall, sometimes short.  Far too often blonde, but sometimes redhead, brunette, black, purple.  Most of the time you were on the thin side, but certainly sometimes you put on some weight.  

Once you started making beer with me and left me right before we were supposed to bottle it together.  I named it after you and cried a little bit when I drank the last bottle, alone.

Every single time I cared about you.  Every.  Single.  Damn.  Time.  Every time I said I liked you I meant it.  Every time I kept the faith.  I never cheated, I never lashed out, I never played games with you.  I never lied.

Except, maybe, lately, when I told you that I was excited to see you.

Because, you see, the fact is - I ‘m not sure I am excited to see you.  I’m not honestly sure I like you very much anymore.  I’m not sure that I really respect you.  I tried - good god, I tried.  But I can’t look at you anymore without seeing the ghosts of all the rest of you.  It’s too much to take.  I want so badly to believe that this next time, you’ll be nice - that this time will be different.  But over 400 times, it never was.  And it’s so easy to see myself as the victim, and honestly I think I deserve a little bit of that.  But...nothing good lies down that path.  And besides - I know, I know quite well that sometimes, I was to blame.  Sometimes I said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing.  I remember, and regret, every single one.  I can picture every look on your face when I disappointed you, and they all weigh a bit too heavy.

All I ever wanted was to care for you.  To understand you.  To wake up next to you and stroke your hair.  I never wanted you to change, never wanted you to be different.  I just wanted you to like me.

And you never, ever did.

Day 91 - San Francisco, CA

Today I’d like to talk about Meditation.  About a week ago, I had the good fortune to take a job with a company called Calm.com which makes an app that helps people meditate.  So meditation has once again taken a forefront in my life.  I’ve gone back to attending a few meditation groups that I haven’t been to in many, many months, and I’ve started meditating myself.  My boss also gave me a book - 10% Happier by Dan Harris - which I finished this weekend.  So it’s been on my mind.

I’ve always enjoyed meditation.  There’s no question that it’s good for me.  In all the ways that others say, it’s definitely helped me become less reactive, more compassionate, and generally helped me stay on an even keel.

But one question keeps pushing its way to the top, like a nagging younger sibling:

Why aren’t meditators happier?

There are, of course, as many different kinds of meditators as there are different kinds of people.  In San Francisco, though, we have a unique subculture of people - call them Meditators, with a capital “M”.  People Who Meditate.  The Meditaterati.  And, almost universally, I’ve noticed something: they’re generally not people you’d want to spend a night at a bar with.  Now, there are exceptions, of course.  But if you walk into a meditation meeting, you may notice a certain lack of joie de vivre.  Dan Harris, in his book, talks about this.  He’s an ex-skeptic who worked for years as a news anchor, one of the least meditative disciplines I can think of.  And he talks about how, after meditating for a while, he lost a certain amount of his edge.  He became passive.  And he had to fight through that to the other side, rediscover his love of life.

I have a new theory about meditation which may not amuse the more hardcore Buddhists among us, but it matches my experience in life, and it’s based on a quote my Dad always used to say about money: “Money can’t make you happy,” he’d say, “but being broke sure is miserable.”  Well, I have a new quote about meditation: “Mindfulness can’t make you happy, but being mindless sure is miserable.”  That is, meditation to me seems like a necessary part of the equation - but not the full picture.  Meditation is a bit like cleaning your room, or working out at the gym - it brushes away the cobwebs of the unexamined life and leaves room and space for you to fill it back up with what you really *want* to put there, instead of just leftover furniture or whatever happened to be lying around.  If you don’t become aware of your thought stream whizzing past, you have no hope of organizing your life.  But if you become aware of it and just leave it at that - well, you just have a clean room, or a toned midsection.  What are you going to *do* with those things?  

That’s step two.

Day 90 - San Francisco, CA

Today I’d like to talk about Dating.  I specifically capitalized the word, because I’m going to distinguish in a minute between Dating and dating.  I realize this is a topic that may not fascinate everyone.  Some of you will roll your eyes in disgust.  Some of you are lucky enough not to have to worry about this crap anymore.  For those of you, I refer you this article: http://www.buzzfeed.com/ashleyperez/24-things-single-people-are-tired-of-hearing#3ivm1zi which pretty well sums it up.

I believe that I may have gone on one of my last Dates this week.  I was hooked up with a woman from a service that I use, called It’s Just Lunch, which has the unenviable task of trying to matchmake with San Francisco adult singles, which is a bit like trying to get Palestinians and Israelis to agree.  This woman - who runs a dating blog, which should have been my first clue that something was amiss - was charming, intelligent, and very attractive.  She had played Belle in a San Francisco production of Beauty and the Beast.  She was poised and interesting, and seemed relatively down to earth.  Our first date was short but pleasant and I liked her laugh, so we agreed to meet for a second date.  I pulled out all (OK, some) of the stops: picked her up in my car, bought a single rose, picked a nice place with live music.  The date seemed to go reasonably well, with a hiccup or two.  But as the night ran on, it became clear that something was missing, and this date would go into the circular file along with all the others before it.  And it’s not like that was just her decision; I felt that way too.  Of course, if she had agreed to a third date I would have said yes (mostly because she was really hot), but even I couldn’t deny that there was definitely something missing.  There was no magic.  We were just two people who were desperately trying to find a reason to not just go home and watch TV.

I have been on over 700 dates in my time in San Francisco over the course of 6+ years.  That is a large number, and I believe it qualifies me to discuss dating in general.  I’ve done OKCupid, Match, eHarmony, It’s Just Lunch, Hinge, How About We, Tinder, Coffee Meets Bagel.  I’ve done it all.  And I think I may be winding that phase of my life to a close.  

Let’s take a second and be clear about what I mean when I use the word Dating (as opposed to dating).  There are a few basic criterion that I will use to define a Date:

1) The two people involved know almost nothing about each other and have no shared real world context. (or have learned everything they think they know about each other online, which - to be honest - is basically the same thing)

2) There is some hope or expectation on both parties’ parts that a romantic relationship of some kind might be in the cards.

3) The meeting - which is happening face-to-face - is for the express purpose of seeing if some kind of romantic relationship might emerge.

I will assert - to the chagrin of all the companies I just named - that under these circumstances, finding any kind of actual love is so incredibly difficult as to be essentially not worth a person’s time.  That is, you would be better off - especially as a man, who has to pay for these things - investing your time and energy elsewhere.  That’s not to say that it never works.  I personally know a few folks who have met the future love of their life on one of these services.  But those are the exceptions that prove the rule.  It’s like saying that, because you know a friend who signed up for a gym and lost a lot of weight, that signing up for a gym is a great way to lose weight.  It’s certainly *correlated*, in some cases, with losing weight.  But there are also plenty of folks who sign up and end up terribly disappointed.

Basically, the problem is this: human affection is something we feel most when we are most at peace with ourselves and our surroundings.  And a Date is almost constructed to make us feel the opposite.  Consider a few things about your typical First Date:

1) Oftentimes, the two people involved are doing something they normally wouldn’t do on their own.  I hardly ever go out to a bar and get a drink with my friends, but most of my First Dates start that way.

2) There is an essential asymmetry born of gender roles that makes both parties mildly uncomfortable.  The man feels a need to take charge, pay for the date, pick a location, etc.  The woman feels a need to be appreciative, show support, follow his lead, etc.

3) Neither party is in comfortable surroundings.  At best, things are fun and vibrant, at worst loud and distracting.

4) There is enormous pressure.  Here is the potential mother/father of your child, future husband/wife, etc.

5) There is absolutely no context.  Much like texting or email, words can get misinterpreted, stories blown out of proportion, small “giveaways” turn into huge issues.

So, if this is true, and if online dating basically just doesn’t work, then what is the alternative?  Well, first, embracing this fact frees up a lot of time and energy.  I spent - until recently - a lot of time checking and re-checking, and a lot of energy and money going on these fruitless first dates.  Second, obviously I have to meet people in other ways.  Essentially, I have to break one of those 3 rules.  Either I have to go on dates with people I already know, or with people with whom I am not actively trying to start a relationship.  Both, I think, have some merit.  I think there’s room for the “friend date”. But the real winner is obviously meeting people “IRL”.  Let’s consider, for example, the reverse of the above, when you meet someone at work:

1) You meet doing something you presumably want to do anyway (even if just for the money).

2) Although gender roles might intrude, there’s less of a sense of immediate asymmetry; nobody is buying anybody dinner.

3) Both parties are on their “home turf”, so to speak.  And usually workplaces are a nice place to have a conversation.

4) There’s no pressure.  You’re there to work anyway.

5) There’s lots of context.  First of all, you both work for the same place, and you know some things about each other, maybe from shared coworkers.  People have vouched for you.

Of course, these things apply as well to meeting through hobbies, or church, or whatever.

I am not so naive as to say that I will never go on a First Date again. The allure is undeniable, especially because - like the lottery - it does pay off, sometimes.  But I increasingly feel like there’s better ways for me to spend my time.

Day 84 - San Francisco, CA

Today I’d like to talk about stress.  Ever since I’ve gotten back into town, it’s a topic that’s been on my mind.  I am happy to be back in San Francisco.  It’s a fun and vibrant place and I have many friends here, and it’s been fun to catch up with them.  But there’s no denying that my stress level has increased dramatically.  The contrast between my life on the road - and my life with my parents in Jacksonville - and my life in San Francisco is, well, stark.  A few days ago I woke up feeling almost sick.  My blood was racing, I could feel my pulse in my ears.  I felt exhausted, and had huge bags under my eyes.  Knowing I was tired, I tried to lay down in bed.  Staring up at the ceiling, wide awake, I could feel my heart racing in my chest.  

There’s one myth I want to clear up about stress.  I’ve been doing meditation and yoga for quite a while now and it’s a topic that I hold near and dear to my heart.  What’s awesome about meditation, and yoga, is that they provide a window into those parts of the brain that create and process stress for us.  But make no mistake - it is a difficult window to access, and it’s often a very narrow channel.  The reason I bring this up is that I think there is a common misconception that we *choose* to be stressed.  I can’t tell you how many times people have told me to just “not worry” about something, or to just “not be so stressed out”.  As I laid awake in that bed, it was acutely clear to me that there was a portion of my brain - call it the mammalian brain, or even the reptilian brain - that was convinced that something terrible was about to happen, on the order of being eaten by a lion.  The absurdity of that conclusion, so obvious to my higher order brain functions, just refused to filter down to the lower levels.  That’s both why meditation and yoga are so important, and also why they’re so difficult.  

I would make the analogy to weight loss.  Clearly exercise and physical activity can be a great and essential way to burn off calories - but it’s so much easier just not to eat them in the first place.  Similarly, stress reduction techniques are a great way to burn off stress - but so much better just not to get stressed out in the first place.  And - and this is the key insight for me - we don’t really control what gets us stressed out.  Try this: sit in a quiet room and tell a friend to sit behind you and wait somewhere between 2 and 5 minutes and then scream in your ear.  Even though you know it’s coming, two things will happen: first, you will be stressed about what you know is coming, and then second, you will jump when it happens.  The parts of our brain responsible for these kinds of reactions are designed biologically to work quickly - so they skip higher order brain functions completely.  They are, in a very real sense, out of our control.  One of the things I struggled with during my yoga training was this notion of the guru who meditates in the middle of a busy highway.  There is this thought in buddhist teaching that one can, and should, be able to be at peace even in the middle of stressful stimuli.  Perhaps the great ones can achieve this; I don’t know.  But I know that for myself - and, I venture, most people reading this blog - that’s an unrealistic goal.  Where you live matters.  What you choose to surround yourself with matters.  If your bedroom is not quiet and dark, you won’t sleep as well.  If your workplace smells funny and your coworkers are loud and irritating, you will become irritable.  It’s just inevitable - like eating more food makes you get fat.  You can bargain with the universe all you like, but the conclusion is inevitable.

Realizing this is ultimately a bit of a relief - but the relief is short-lived.  Knowing this doesn’t absolve us of responsibility for being happy and stress free.  Indeed, it makes it even harder, because it means there are no shortcuts.  Hoping to live an inauthentic life that stresses you out and then just “wash it clean” with things like yoga is no more functional that hoping to eat whatever you want and then become bulimic.  Just like weight loss, there is only one true path, and it’s unfortunately the hard one: to actually live an authentic life that makes you happy.  To choose your surroundings in such a way that they make you feel authentic, loved, comfortable.  Have you noticed how much we talk about stress, but we never really talk about the opposite of stress?  We don’t even really have a word for it.  But I will go with “peace”, because I think it expresses it best.  We have to each find our own personal peace.  The word personal is so important here, because the key - I think - is to have the courage to understand that your personal peace has nothing to do with anyone else’s, and that the journey is deeply individual.  I’m starting to understand that I have to do what’s best for me, and that listening to others for advice about what puts me at peace is a recipe for disaster.

It’s funny what the universe hands you when you look for it.  In the process of writing this blog post, I was checking CNN for the news, and there was an article about the future of Uber, the huge car sharing company worth $17 billion.  I’ll quote directly from the article’s interview with Travis Kalanick, the CEO and founder of Uber:

“Ultimately, Kalanick says if Uber fails, it won’t be due to preexisting barriers or competitors like Lyft.  When asked about the biggest threat to the startup turned multi-billion dollar company, Kalanick replied, ‘I think it’ll be the stress.’”

So, gentle reader, it’s time to re-prioritize.  Put yourself first, listen to your own inner voice, and find your personal peace.  I’ll do the same.  

Day 75 - San Francisco, CA

I’m home!  I pedaled like a boss from the SFO airport with one backpack on my back and another - loaded down with treasures - on my front.  As I sit here typing on the floor of my apartment in San Francisco - the city I ostensibly live in - I find myself updating my blog.  There are so many things that I could - and will - write about.  But in this moment, it feels like the most important thing is to write about the blog itself - why I wrote one, why I stopped writing one for the last week or so.  It happens that I have the window open with the original plan for my trip sitting right next to me, and it’s amazing that the trip I planned out turned out both exactly as I had planned, and completely different from what I had imagined.  Similarly, I feel in some ways that nothing has changed, and yet in another sense I feel like everything has changed.

But first of all, the blog.  First things first: I am not intending on abandoning the blog.  For one, it will always be the way that I will keep up with home and others when I’m on road trips, especially athletic ones.  Like I mentioned, I’ve started to see my bike trip as a lifelong endeavor, so the blog will be also.  But in addition to that, I think I will be blogging from San Francisco as well.  Perhaps not quite as often, but whenever I have something interesting to say.  When I first started the blog, I had a couple of decisions to make, and one of those was whether the blog would be more about what was happening to me, or more about how I felt about it.  That is, was it a travelogue, or a journal.  I decided to split the difference, Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance-style, assuming that the events around me would influence my philosophical bent.  And that worked out great, so I’ll stick with it, although it may become more philosophical when I’m at home, and more travelogue when I’m, well, traveling.  

It’s interesting - to me, anyway - to think about why I stopped blogging for the last week or so.  It isn’t, precisely, that nothing interesting or worth writing about has been happening to me.  But it’s arguably the case that I just haven’t been in the right frame of mind to be reflective about those things.  That is, on the bike, I had a lot of time to really think about thinking - to lead the examined life, as it were.  So meaningful thoughts - thoughts I was proud of, and proud to share - bubbled up to the surface.  At home with my family, I fell back into a routine.  It isn’t precisely that I was too busy, it’s more that I was moving from one task to another without really examining what I was doing or thinking too hard about it from a philosophical point of view.  Get up, go to McDonalds, study, chat with Jamie, head home and shower, have lunch with my family, go to the gym, etc., etc.

I don’t know if this is good, or bad, or just *is*.  I think I’m inclined for the latter.  I do see the danger in being like that all the time - which is how I used to live, and how many people live, simply bouncing from thing to thing, head down all the time.  Too much of that seems bad.  But I also think that too much introspection can turn into navel-gazing.  Freud is erroneously attributed to have said “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” and I would say that sometimes a trip to McDonalds is just a trip to McDonalds, no real larger philosophical purpose.  You never know when life will hand you an important lesson.  So, in that vein, it seems like forcing myself to blog everyday isn’t the most helpful thing, any more than a strict diet.  But if I go too long without blogging, that’s a sign to myself that I’m not stopping to think about life as much as perhaps I should or would like to.  As much as I like communicating with everyone, the blog in that sense is really more of a tool for me, to ensure that I’m actually *living* my life, and not just sleepwalking through it.

So to make a short story long - I’m done, and I’m not done.  But I’m back!

Day 68 - Tokoma Estates, FL (101.5 miles)

I don’t remember who it was - I think it was one of the sports writer I used to read - but some writer I knew used to say “here are the things I think I think today”.  I like that phrase.  So, as I sit here in my tent, here are some things I think I think today, in no particular order:

It’s really awesome to get back on the bike.  I felt a sense of clarity almost immediately, like a fog lifting.  

I’m nervous about getting back to SF; part of me is definitely looking forward to it, but on the other hand I know there are so many things confused there - my anxiety level is going to go back up if I don’t watch it.

100 miles on flat ground is completely different than 100 miles with climbing or rolling terrain.

The River Grille on the Tokoma near where I’m staying tonight makes the tied-for-first-best fish sandwich I have ever eaten in my entire life.  It is tied with Seafood Kitchen, near my parents’ place, and if you know me, you realize what an amazing statement that is.  It’s like watching somebody swing a bat and comparing them to Ted Williams.  On a related note, the guy at the front desk at the Tokoma State Park knows how to pick restaurants.

I know I’ve said this before, but yeah, mosquitoes.  Hate ‘em.

It’s clear to me - and again, this this is not new - that, in life, there are things you want to do, and then are things that you want to want to do, and they are not the same.  I’m not saying that things you want to want to do never happen - sometimes you summon up enough will power and power through.  But I think the 80/20 rule applies here: I suspect most people of average willpower get 80% of the things they want to do done, and 20% of the things they want to want to do.  So, with no further ado, here are some things I want to do, want to want to do, and just plain don’t want to do:

I want to ride a bicycle 80-100 miles per day.

I want to want to go to a gym and lift weights.

I don’t want to starve myself.

I want to build cool iPhone stuff.

I want to want to build boring iPhone stuff and make a lot of money doing it.

I don’t want to build other boring stuff.

I want to be a personal trainer.

I want to want to be in amazingly good personal trainer shape.

I don’t want to sit at a desk all day.

I want to live in an uncluttered house.

I want to want to throw out all my existing crap.

I don’t want to buy any more crap.

Day 64 - Jacksonville Beach, FL

On the road again!  Tomorrow I’m headed out to ride around Florida.  As I get ready to leave, I’m thinking about the time I spent with my family.  I do love my parents.  They’re very good to me, as best as they can.  They can’t solve the problems I have in my life, and the last few days I’ve been antsy, feeling cooped up, because I felt like I couldn’t make any progress on my life, on the things I want to get done.  I’ve always been a very future-oriented person, and for the moment I really had to just sit and do nothing, and that’s not my forte.  I’ve been studying for the CPT exam, and getting some exercise, and looking for a job, but other than that not much is going on.  It’s time to start heading back - but before I do, a brief biking and Mickey Mouse interlude sounds pretty good!

Yesterday I purchased my return ticket to San Francisco.  In honor of this momentous occasion, I started thinking about all my goals for being back in the city.  There are certainly reasons why I could focus on the negative today, but I think I want to keep things positive and forward-looking.  This list is as much for me as it is for you, gentle reader!

- Create a final, edited video from my GoPro footage, photos and GPS data.  I have a vision in mind of a 5-10 minute multimedia video.  This will involved learning Final Cut Pro, and I have someone I met who is willing to help me out with that.

- Run a set of urban races.  I’ve had a dream for years of putting together a set of digital “photo races”, where you have to solve problems and travel to destinations around San Francisco.  I used to participate in those when I was in college, and then later in Austin, through an organization called Midnight Madness.  I’m in the middle of writing an app which would serve as the backbone of the race, and the clues.  Then I have to advertise, etc.  I’d probably run it through the auspices of the Geek Love meetup that I own.

- Get a job as an iOS engineer.  Obviously I have to pay the bills, and I still love mobile development.  I’d like to find something I can actually believe it - something with design sense, a product I would actually use.

- Get in mind-blowingly good shape.  I really want to blow my personal fitness out to the level where I look the part of a fitness instructor.

- Get good at rock climbing.

- Restart my private pilots license.

- Finish the NASM CPT, Certified Personal Trainer course.

- Finish my 500 hr yoga certification, the RYT-500 cert.

- Get a job at a gym, teaching group classes, doing personal training, or just working the gym.  At first this will be something that I’m just doing on the side, although someday I hope it may turn into a full-time career.

- Continue to work on Squarcity and turn it into something I can be proud of.  If that sounds a bit vague it’s because I’m not sure exactly how to proceed next with it, but that’s the first goal, is to figure that out.

- Reduce my profile.  That means own less stuff.  I’m going to make some tough decisions about my car, scooter, and personal possessions.

- 10 Day Meditation class.  This is going to be a doozy, but I want to power through it!

Day 63 - Jacksonville Beach, FL

Love.  Love love love love looooooove.  Today I want to write about love.  Being out, on my own, I've had a lot of time to think about things and get some perspective on my own life.  Yes, it's been a lot of self-centered navel-gazing, and yes, I'm looking forward to caring about people other than myself for a while.  But it's been pretty helpful, just to clean out the cobwebs in my brain.  Two nights ago I met up with an old friend from high school, Bob, and after talking about things like jobs and high school the conversation inevitable turned to women and relationships.  His relationship life has been remarkable like mine, especially the last 6 years or so.  That was comforting to hear; sometimes I feel like I'm the only one with my problems, but of course that's not true.  He dated a crazy person, has been single for a long time, and has a lot of the same observations about dating - and especially online dating - that I do.  (By the way, ladies, he's an awesome guy, tall, attractive, and super smart, so if, you know, you like that sort of thing, feel free to hit me up :).  

A friend of mine on Facebook posted an article today that I just finished reading.  I don't agree 100% with everything that the guy wrote, but he does a good job of summarizing some of the thoughts I've been coming around to over the last few years.  I'll put the link here - http://markmanson.net/love/ - but don't feel like you have to read it to understand what I'm about to write.  If you like what I write here you can read it when you're done.  

The start of the article focuses on Lennon's line that "all you need is love".  When I was younger, and even as a young adult, I genuinely believed this.  My parents used to say that "your relationship is the most important thing in your life".  I took that to heart; I thought that if you had an awesome romantic relationship, then your life - no matter what else might be true - would ultimately be rewarding.  And, conversely, if you did not, then whatever you did as a single person would ultimately feel hollow and empty.  To some extent, I still feel that way; I don't think that a life spent without someone to be in a relationship with would feel fulfilling.  But I've started to see how damaging that concept can be when taken to an extreme, and how it doesn't work as a baseline philosophy for life.  In simpler terms, the relationship isn't where you *start* solving your problems, it's where you *end up* after you solve your problems.  In some ways, it isn't the solution, it's the reward.  Let me explain what I mean.  There's a good line in the article that "a loving relationship is supposed to supplement our individual identity" (emphasis included).  This is a powerful realization.  To some of you this will be obvious, but it wasn't obvious at all to me.  When I moved to San Francisco, I was fresh off of my divorce, and I really thought that my next relationship was going to be the solution to my problems, the linchpin of my life.  I put a lot of weight on finding an awesome woman.  Her beauty would solve my self-confidence issues about my body ("if I'm with a woman this hot, I must be attractive").  Her devotion to me would solve my self-confidence issues about my social skills ("if I bagged a woman this interesting and devoted to me, I must be an interesting person").  Her income and financial expertise would solve my economic problems.  Her desire for kids would solve my family problems.  Etc, etc.  Basically, she was going to fix me.

Perhaps it will not shock you to find that didn't work.  I met - and "bagged" - a series of women, many of whom were very attractive, and most of whom were very cool people in many ways.  But I kept being disappointed by how confused they were.  How they didn't seem to want to just spend all their time with me.  How they hated their jobs, or their bodies, or their family.  Totally ignoring the fact that I hated my body, my job, and sometimes even my family.  Why weren't they perfect?  Why did they get depressed?  How come I wasn't meeting the normal ones?  I went down these various cul-de-sacs: at one point I thought it was because I wasn't attractive enough.  For a while I thought it was because I didn't have good enough "dating skills" (whatever that means).  For a time I became focused on fixing women.  Then, for a while, I became convinced by friends that the problem was that I was dating women who were too attractive (as if unattractive people have fewer problems).  Finally, I came around to the idea that maybe there was something wrong with me - but of course, I approached it childishly and far too extreme.  First I thought I needed to be perfect - fancy car, fancy apartment.  Then I swung the other way - I needed to be perfectly happy with my life, and then the perfectly happy women would recognize that in me and flock to my side.  I stopped working for a while and focused on just having fun.  I worked out.  I stopped working out.  I bought fancy clothes.  I bought workout clothes.  I hired a photographer.  I didn't like her pictures so I hired another one.  I hired a matchmaker and a wardrobe consultant and got $50 haircuts.  After all, I figured, this was the most important thing in my life. I needed to get this right.  It was worth it; worth all the money in my bank, worth all the time in my day, worth all the thought in my mind.  It was the only thing that mattered.

"Love is all you need".

I have no idea what Lennon meant by that sentence.  He was a bit of a Buddhist, so what he may have meant was that "love", i.e. internal peace, compassion for your fellow man, etc. is all the world really needs.  He may have meant that material possessions won't make you happy.  In these senses, I might agree with him.  But what popular culture has latched on to is "Romantic love is all you need - so sacrifice everything to make it happen, and oh by the way if you don't get it, you have failed".  Quick - name a movie where the hero neither has a romantic interest nor develops one over the course of the movie (Jean Claude Van Damme movies don't count).  Romance is a key element of almost every story told.  If a character in a movie is single, the immediate assumption on the audience's part is that, at some point, a romantic interest will emerge.  

Relationship - affection, companionship - are still incredibly important to me.  But I'm not super sure that "love" really is.  It certainly is not "all I need".  If I was miserable in my life but had an amazing person by my side - well, actually, I think what I'm realizing is that if I'm miserable in my life, I won't have an amazing person by my side.  Amazing people are the reward for not being miserable.  Maybe that statement seems cold, and callous.  I'm not suggesting that a relationship should be dependent on being awesome.  I'm not suggesting that I would cut and run the first time my significant other had some kind of problem, like that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine dumps the guy because he gets in a car accident.  Obviously there has to be a balance; that's what commitment means.  But what I want to see is that the other person "has their shit together"; is actively trying to make a positive life for themselves, without my assistance needed.  The bible says that "God helps those that help themselves", and I think that's true for relationships.  And, of course, that means that has to be true for me, as well.  I have to have my shit together.  Then, and only then, does love become the final piece of the puzzle.

Day 62 - Jacksonville Beach, FL

This morning, I went powered hang gliding.  That’s kind of like a cross between a plane and a hang glider, or like a hang glider with an engine on it.  I really enjoyed it.  Compared to a plane, it had a simplicity to it that I found really nice.  I guess it was a little like when I first sat down on my scooter; I said “this is it”.  Of course it’s not that simple; the thing costs $60k brand new, and of course you have to get a pilot’s license.  Once, a few years back, I started getting my pilot’s license, but a combination of money and time made me have to give up on that.

Actually, that sentence is a little bit of a polite fiction.  Certainly money was an issue; at the time I was doing the pilot’s license, I was way overextended financially.  And time was a problem; I was trying to do it out in Concord to save money, and that was quite a commute.  But if I was being honest, there’s another factor that eventually fed into me stopping.  That factor - that thing - is a thing that I don’t really have a name for.  Some people would call it “depression”.  And that probably has an element of truth to it.  But that word is so overloaded these days.  When people think of depression, they think of sad people sitting in blue rooms on TV commercials for Prozac or some such.  The thing is, depression - or whatever you want to call it - comes on a total spectrum.  Of course there’s the “woe is me I am worthless” style of depression.  I’ve felt that way from time to time.  But then there’s the day-to-day thing.  The feeling you get at 4 pm in the afternoon at your desk, for example.  Lethargy.  Sloth.  The Oatmeal - one of my favorite webcomics - calls it The Blerch, and designed a whole character, a sort of lumpy fat couch cushion kind of guy that says things like “you can have one more cookie”.  To me, that feeling sits on the same spectrum as depression.  It’s sorta the same thing, just less so.  And I’ve spent a lot of my life fighting against that feeling.  I hate that feeling.  And, yes, I use the word “hate” deliberately.  It’s my worst enemy.  It comes on me when I least expect it.  Certain things seems to exacerbate it - not sleeping enough, of course, or not sleeping well.  Drinking too much alcohol, or too much caffeine.  Having it be way too hot out has been part of the problem this week.  Not getting enough exercise.  A lot of the things I enjoy in life are a direct response to this.  I like sleeping, and drinking water, and exercising, because they make that feeling go away.  This week I’ve had a hard time with this because of the change in environment, and because I’m not getting enough exercise, etc. etc.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that finding out how to keep that feeling at bay is the most important thing I will do with the rest of my life.  Why does it make me so angry?  Because, deep down, I am a really optimistic and energetic guy about life.  I have a lot of things I want to get done.  Become a personal trainer, run the Boston marathon, meet a beautiful woman and have two kids and, yes, learn to fly a powered hang glider.

A programming note: my next journey, Phase III, is going to start on the 26th or 27th and take me from Jacksonville to Melbourne Beach, then Orlando, then back to Jacksonville, for a total of about 450 miles!

Day 61 - Jacksonville Beach, FL

Yoga.  Since I’ve arrived in one place, I’ve returned to my yoga practice.  In doing so, I’ve rediscovered both what I love about yoga (almost all of it) and what occasionally irritates me about specific studios/teachers.  In an effort to both vent some steam, and to hopefully make a contribution to the community, I’ve started thinking about what a baseline for expectation setting should be for a yoga class.  Right now yoga is very free form and self-regulated - which is both great and also a little bit scary.  It means that, especially when traveling, there really is no way to know what you’re getting into with a new yoga studio.  For those of us that might be a little bit nervous or introverted about new places, that can be especially intimidating.

So, what I’d like to do is present the following as a starting point (not an end point) for discussion.  Let me know what you think - did I miss something?  Am I being too anal about something?  Does something here not belong?  

Code of Rights & Responsibilities For Yoga Students:

- I have the right to the sanctity of my person.

- I have the right to respect for my practice.

- I have the right to take care of my physical needs.

- I have the right to have class start and end on time.

- I have the right to a clean and safe practice space.

- My practice is not for the satisfaction of the instructor’s ego.

- I have the responsibility to allow other students to practice without distraction.

- I have the responsibility to respect the integrity of the studio and the instructor’s practice.

- I have the responsibility to be on time and prepared.

Further elaboration:

- I have the right to the sanctity of my person.

    This means that touching should be an opt-in activity.  This goes as well for equipment.  Instructors - and certainly fellow students - should ask before moving mats, towels, water bottles.  Touch - for adjustment or any other reason - should be “opt-in”, or at least there should be an easy and clear way to “opt out” (tokens on mats seems to work well).  And, certainly, inappropriate touch is always, well, inappropriate.

- I have the right to respect for my practice.

    This means that a person’s practice is their own and should be treated with respect.  That means no public shaming or negative comments about someone’s practice.  It also means that - as long as it’s done with respect - a student’s personal beliefs about their practice should be respected.  It also means that modification is always allowed.  Nobody knows a person’s body better than that person.

- I have the right to take care of my physical needs.

    This means I can drink water when I like, use the bathroom if I need to, and leave class if there is an emergency or a biological need to do so.  Refusing water, kidnapping students, and disallowing use of the bathroom are dehumanizing and have no place in a yoga classroom.

- I have the right to have class start and end on time.

    We all have lives outside of class, and it’s just plain disrespectful to not be able to plan in advance how a class will go.  If a teacher or studio really does not want to begin and end classes on time, they need to be very clear about that in advance, and allow students to leave early if necessary.

- I have the right to a clean and safe practice space.

    This should be obvious.

- My practice is not for the satisfaction of the instructor’s ego.

    Yoga class is not about the teacher’s ego.  Ideally it is also not about the student’s ego, but that is a personal journey for the student.  When the instructor makes it about being “right” or having the student “listen” or “obey” or “understand”, they use their ego to injure.

- I have the responsibility to allow other students to practice without distraction.

    This means that the exercise of my rights must impinge as little as humanly possible on the rights of other students to practice.  If I have to leave, or get a drink of water, I must do so with as little disruption as possible.  Modifications and deviations from the class practice should always be as minimal as possible to enable practice, and should always be done without disturbing other students (e.g., no grandstanding with inversions when the rest of the class in is child’s pose).

- I have the responsibility to respect the integrity of the studio and the instructor’s practice.

    I have arrived at this class to receive the benefit of the instruction of the studio.  If I disagree with the studio or instructor, I have the right to do so, but in as respectful a manner as possible.  The studio has the right to enforce policies.  And if I regularly disagree with the studio or instructor, I need to resolve that conflict quickly and quietly, or choose a different studio/instructor.

- I have the responsibility to be on time and prepared.

    This one is obvious.  Prepared means both physically (clean, dressed appropriately, mat, towel) and mentally. (no cell phones, no chatting)

What do you think?

Days 53-60 (Jacksonville Beach, FL)

Trip Midmortem.  My apologies for not posting for a while.  I was catching up with family and getting some sleep, getting back into my yoga practice.  It’s interesting to transition from being on the road to being here, “resting” (even though I’ve been active), and at some point I will write about the philosophical implications of that.  But right now what I want to do is a recap of my trip.  When I was in the games industry we used to call that a “postmortem”, but I hate that term because it implies that the patient died.  I’d prefer to think that my trip is not yet over - in fact, may never be over.  So, “midmortem”.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that the trip was one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time.  I loved it, and I plan on doing more things like it.  But here’s some more information about what went well and didn’t, particularly for those of you who might be thinking of doing something like this in the future:

Favorite Piece of Equipment: eTrex 10.  That’s my GPS unit.  Built like a tank, worked 100% of the time.  At one point it even fell off my bike and sat on the road while I - not realizing it was gone - ate breakfast.  When I went looking for it - easier because it’s bright yellow - it was still ticking along.  It got rained on heavily, thrown into bags, and it worked flawlessly.  And having it use AA batteries was huge.  So, the larger lesson is: when you take a trip like this, choose equipment for reliability, not for performance.  Who cares if the screen is huge and colorful if the battery is dead?

Runner Up: Lululemon Cruiser 2.0 Backpack.  The more I learn about Lululemon, the deeper my respect for them grows.  This backpack - which was designed to take you and your yoga mat to class - was my primary workhorse all the way across the country.  I hung straps off of it to carry my tent, sleeping bag, radio, etc., etc. - about 40 pounds of equipment.  At the very end of the trip, it started to rip along the weight bearing parts near the top.  So Lululemon *gave me a free bag*.  *And* let me keep the old one.  *And* took notes and pictures to send to their product department, so they could improve the next iteration of the bag.  Also, this bag is really well designed.  The compartments make a ton of sense and are easy to access.  The larger lesson here is: pick a bag that you like.  Arguably the bag you use - or panniers, or whatever - is the most important choice you’ll make for the whole trip.

Least Favorite Piece of Equipment: Rear Tire (manufacturer unknown).  In the middle of the trip, I ended up having some trouble with my rear tire.  Because I was carrying a backpack, the load on the two tires was uneven, and I ended up wearing out my rear tire.  It happened in a really inopportune place, so I had to go out of my way to a bike shop in a tourist town.  They talked me into buying more of a “touring tire”.  That thing was a piece of crap, and it lasted less than 400 miles before I had to replace it (and it was a huge hassle the whole time).  I went with the original brand I had - Randonneur - and have had no problems since.  To be fair, I think the issue was that the tire they sold me just wasn’t the right tire for my bike, since I had a carbon racing frame.  So the larger lesson here is: stick with what you know, and don’t make changes midstream.  And also: equipment has to work together.  If you have a racing bike, use racing tires.  If you have a touring bike, use touring tires.

Favorite Part of the Country: Western Oregon, hands down.  In fact the whole Pacific Northwest was the best, from the coast of Oregon through Missoula.  Partly I think that has to do with being on the Transamerica trail: everyone was prepared for me (us, really) and happy to see me.  Also I just think people are super friendly up there - but friendly in a genuine way.  I had no problem finding places to stay, and everything was inexpensive.  There were fun stops to make along the way, as well, and the weather was great.

Least Favorite Part of the Country: The north shore of Lake Erie, in Canada.  On the surface, this seems like a great part of the world to bike through: flat, straight, easy bike paths, along a lake.  But the people are just not ready for cyclists.  There’s nowhere to camp, and no motels.  Food is expensive and scarce, and water even more so.  It’s a very touristy area, but high-end bed-and-breakfast tourists, and they have nothing in common with cyclists.  And the Canadian mentality was very British - polite, and friendly enough, but not terribly interested in being helpful.  Several times I encountered situations that people in Oregon would have bent the rules for, but in Canada it was just “this is the way it is”.  With a smile on their face, but still.  For example, I would totally “stealth camp” in Idaho or Montana (that means just pitching your tent any old place), but I would never do that in Canada.

Roads Most In Need of Maintenance: Northern Ohio, on the south shore of Lake Erie, west of Cleveland, has the worst roads I’ve ever seen.  There was one road - Quarry Road - that looked like maybe the quarry was actually mining *the road*.  There was more hole than road, no exaggeration.  At one point I almost thought that, for the first time in 2400 miles, I might have to get off my bike.  It was super terrible!

The One Time I Actually Thought I Might Die: 101 North, in California, right at the beginning of my trip.  I learned a lesson that day: stick to the ACA maps if you can, and do not think you can ever ride on interstates, or major highways.  Because you can’t.  I had a semi come within 18 inches of my ear, and that is not a fun experience.

Best Memory: It’s a tie, between the Oregon Country Fair and dipping my toes in a river in Swisshome, OR.

Memory With The Most Potential For Growth: Changing my tire on the road outside Whitebird.

Thing I Wish I’d Known Before I Left: I wish I had put a bit more time into planning my stops, where I would stay overnight.  Through Oregon/Idaho/Montana, being spontaneous worked out fine, but in California, and around Lake Erie, it was less suitable.  I think if you stick to the Transamerica during the high season, you’re probably OK just winging it because there are so many services.  But if you’re off route or off season, planning ahead would be better.  A lot of times I missed out on Warmshowers/Couchsurfing/etc. because I didn’t give people enough warning, and a few days got kind of stressful when I didn’t know where I was staying that night.

Thing That Everyone Told Me Would Suck But Honestly It Didn’t: Riding with a backpack.  I’m not saying I recommend it; I don’t. But in a pinch, it worked fine.  The dire consequences everyone said I would experience just didn’t materialize.  Honestly the biggest problem was the uneven weight distribution, which tended to wear down my rear tire.  But tires wear out anyway; that’s always going to be an issue.

Favorite Takeaway:  It’s a tie, really, between the people I met, and the way I felt at the end of a long day of riding.  It was great to restore my faith in other people, and it was arguable even better to restore some faith in myself.

Day 52 - Jacksonville, FL

Funny Sign Day!! Things have been getting a bit too serious around here lately, and plus today is just a travel day, taken up with logistics n' such, so I decided to do something fun.  When I'm traveling, I often like to take pictures of signs that strike my fancy.  Here's a collection of fun pictures from my travels!

Sounds like one of those superpowers they give you on an improv comedy show.  "Somewhere...a barn needs painting! Awaaaaay!"

Or...well, you know.

The Last Best Place...For Savings!

Please bring soup.  Or jello.

Is...to be old?

Yes sir.  Wouldn't dream of it, sir.

I think you have a future in NOW.

At first I thought a decimal point was missing.  But no.  The fine is over $6000.

I'm glad he clarified that.

Oh, right, because they...wait, never mind.

more later! 

"Jeb, take out the trash!"  "Cain't, Ma, it's still on fire"

Day 51 - Buffalo, NY (93.91 mi)

I really didn’t want to write about Robin Williams today.  Of course, there’s the obvious reasons: I wish he wasn’t dead.  But, also, selfishly, today was supposed to be a day for me to celebrate.  But life doesn’t always work the way that you want, and the time is right to talk about this, while it’s still on people’s minds.  I can’t imagine what exactly Robin was thinking.  Nobody can ever really know exactly what is going on in another person’s mind.  And I would never suggest that he wasn’t getting help.  By all accounts, he had family that loved him, he was getting therapy - there was a support system around him.  And yet, this funny, talented, well-loved, rich man tied a belt to a door and hung himself - which I hear is quite painful and an awful way to die - rather than live one more day.  There are all sorts of terrible things about this.  But I’ve gotten the advice in the past that, as a writer, you’re most powerful when you write what you know, so I want to write about how, in particular, this terribleness intersects with my own life.

I’ve battled depression.  Most of my depression comes from anxiety, as opposed to the other way around.  I get so worried about things - whether I’m a good person, whether I’m doing a good job, why I’m single, etc., etc. - that I get depressed about it.  Some people go the other way; they get so down that it makes them anxious.  Anyway - I digress.  There have been two really low times in my life (from a mental health standpoint).  One was while I was still married, and I knew my marriage was wrong - or at least my life was wrong - and didn’t know what to do about it.  I was super lucky that time - I had someone around me (namely, my ex-wife Sarah) who really cared about me, and honestly listened.  The second time through, it was after my divorce, in San Francisco.  The first year or two went by fairly we’ll because I was still numb, but when the full weight of being single crashed in on me, I got pretty down.  And the thing about that time was, I found out who my true friends were - and I didn’t have any.

It’s become en vogue to talk about mental illness, and the stigma that surrounds it.  And that’s a good thing; I’m glad people are talking about it.  But the thing is, when most people talk about it, what they mean is “Mental Illness”, with a capital M and I.  And when they say “talk about it”, what they mean is “admit that it exists and then get help from a professional.”  And, of course, that’s a great start.  But Mental Illness often starts with mental illness.  That is - and i can speak from experience - some mental illness, maybe even most, starts with simple feelings; feelings of hopelessness, feelings of anxiety.  Feeling misunderstood.  It can be as simple as what we call “having a bad day” for a few days in a row, and not being sure why.  Sometimes you just want somebody to talk to.  This has been well-documented elsewhere, but in “the old days” we all had support structures around.  Extended families, groups of friends.  Lives lived in small towns, where you saw the same people over and over again.  These days, we have grab-bags of acquaintances and Facebook friends - and I’ll tell you, when the chips are down, that doesn’t mean shit.

As lives go, mine is more filled with bullshit than most.  What I mean by that is, I live in San Francisco, I date regularly - with high standards for physical attractiveness - I spend most of my time around late-20 and early-30-somethings, and I change jobs and apartments regularly.  That means I spend a lot of my time in situations with people who I don’t know at all, or barely know, and I’m often trying to impress those people - to date me, sleep with me, give me a job, let me live in their apartment, or just like me.  And, as a result, I’m under constant pressure to present a version of myself that is devoid of anything negative or sad.  It’s not just a matter of avoiding mention of Mental Illness; you can’t even mention mental illness.  You can’t have a bad day.  If you do, you better keep it to yourself, because nobody wants to hear it.  Try going on a date and mentioning that you’ve been feeling trapped at your job, or you had a frustrating day, or even that you’re not crazy about your roommate.  Immediate shutdown.  But…why?  Why is that?  Do we really want to select for people who can pretend well?  Do we really believe that there are people out there that never have bad days?  Is that the number one most important thing in a future mate, is that they never have any negative thoughts?  

Now, there are those who will say that a date, or a job interview, or a new apartment search, are not the right times or places to express your inner demons; that those things are best saved for family, or best friends, or such.  But there are a few problems with that theory.  One problem: we don’t have those things anymore.  Rare is the person who has the kind of support network people used to enjoy.  Parents are often overwhelmed and busy, and friends are as often a Playstation 3.  We live isolated, urban lives behind computer screens.  But also, I can’t help but feel that this approach is fundamentally wrong headed.  How are we supposed to live authentic lives when we have to keep putting on a mask when the chips are down?

Imagine a bit of a mental experiment.  Imagine you bought a ticket to watch Robin Williams do stand up comedy.  Maybe it’s a date, or you’re going out with your wife/husband, or a group of friends.  Robin comes out, maybe does a joke or too, and then he stops.  When he starts up again, he starts talking about how nervous he gets before going on stage.  He talks about how he did cocaine the day before, and he’s honestly feeling a bit nervous because he isn’t sure his wife really loves him.  You keep waiting for the joke to come, but time passes, and he’s still talking, and it’s starting to become clear: he isn’t joking.  You start to get a bit uncomfortable.  You look at your date/wife/friend and make a bit of a wan smile.  People in the audience are getting antsy.

This isn’t really a completely hypothetical situation: this is exactly what Dave Chappelle did, a few years back, when he dropped out of the comedy scene.

People wanted Robin Williams to be funny.  To make them laugh.  If he had “been himself”, then his career would never have gone anywhere.  It’s possible - although unlikely - that given all of his fame, if he had come out about his issues, people would have supported him.  But back when he was getting started, back when nobody knew his name, no-one cared.  And so, I’m sure part of him learned to push all the real Robin down, deep inside, and bring out the Funny Robin.  People liked Funny Robin.  And by the time it was time to let out Un-Funny Robin, it was too late.

You see, I am fundamentally an optimist about life and people, despite the many things that have happened to me.  I enjoy life, and I love being me - sometimes.  But only a fool would claim that every day is amazing, and only a stone statue has never felt depressed, or anxious, or angry.  Those are real feelings.  And when we discourage those feelings, when we invalidate the expression of those feelings, what we really do is de-humanize people.

There’s an article from Rolling Stone on the wall at the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame about an interview with Bill Clinton.  Near the end of the article, the writer remarks that Clinton seemed to drop his facade and became genuinely angry about something in public policy (I don’t recall what it was).  The writer remarked that was the part he liked best; the *real* Bill Clinton, passionate and angry.  But that sentiment is rare, and reserved for Presidents, CEOs and rock stars.  For most of us, we’re supposed to go quietly into that great night, not a single hair out of place, and never an unkind thought.

Well, forget it.  I want to know people - really know them - and I want people in my life who want to know me - really know me.  I won’t settle for any less, and you shouldn’t either.  So the next time you express a genuine feeling and the person across the table doesn’t want to give you that date/job/apartment, it’s their loss.  And the next time somebody tells you they’re having a bad day, nod and say “I’m always here to talk if you need someone to listen.”

I wish more people had done that with Robin.

Epilogue: Finished!  Phase II: complete!  

I finished!  There’s something that feels a bit magical about this phase being finished.  When I got to Missoula, it was amazing.  But it still felt a bit like a one-off thing - magical, both in an awesome way, but also in a “is this a fluke?” kind of way.  But now I’ve gone on *two* long bike rides, and as we all know, two is a pattern!  

Certainly this trip was not as “good” as the last one.  That trip was one of the best - maybe *the* best - month of my life.  This trip felt more like just a really cool athletic challenge.  I didn’t meet nearly as many cool people - with a couple of notable exceptions - and I think Canada just wasn’t my vibe.  Even though the riding was “easier” (less hills, less hot weather), somehow it felt more monotonous and less spiritual.  But, still, a bad day riding beats a good day working!  I can’t wait for Phase III: Florida Edition!

Day 50 - North East, PA (60.2 mi)

Kurt Cobain was on my mind today.  That’s certainly because of the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame yesterday, although perhaps also because of the weather today, which admittedly was downbeat, maybe even a bit Seattle-y and Nirvana-y.  [Editor’s note: I wrote this before Robin Williams’ suicide, but that seems particularly relevant now, and I’m going to talk about it in my next post.] Mother Nature’s final attempt to keep me from finishing my loop around the lake.  Anyway, Nirvana is one of the headlining exhibits in the downstairs area, and obviously they talk a lot about Kurt, and how he committed suicide at 27.  In the gift shop they had a book of reproductions of some of his personal journals, that I guess his wife gave to fans after he died.  It’s a mish-mash of things, presented without comment, which makes it even more powerful - just the papers he happened to have lying around when he died, I suppose.  What struck me about them was how *normal* many of them are.  Childishly incomplete shopping lists, abortive attempts at keeping a budget of some kind.  I was surprised to feel a sense of kinship with him.

Now - make no mistake - it would be easier to make a list of the things that Kurt Cobain and I do *not* share in common than those we do.  For one, I’ve never felt suicidal.  I’ve never been in a grunge band (although sometimes I kinda wish I had).  I’ve never been famous, never lived in Seattle, never been married to Courtney Love.  Believe it or not, I’m actually a pretty optimistic guy who’s relatively cheerful - at least on the inside.  But I think at some level we both share two things: we both feel misunderstood, and we both wish we could be “normal” sometimes, whatever that is.  The journals I read in that shop are not the memoirs of a man who wanted to live apart from society, like Ted Kaczynski, or Marilyn Manson.  They are the journals of a man who desperately wanted to be able to be normal, and go to the grocery store, etc., but just couldn’t quite seem to do it.  And I get that, because I’m often in situations where I *know* what “normal” people would do, I can visualize “normal”, and yet I just can’t quite get there.  I was having a conversation with my Dad earlier today and was struck by something he said; we were talking about where I would stay tonight, and I was saying that I could get a hotel but it would be expensive, or I could try to go on warmshowers/craigslist/etc. and try to find someone to let me stay at their place (or I could cheap out and camp in the rain).  He said - quite logically - that I should try to find someone to let me stay at their place, and I was trying to explain that was going to be hard for me, because I was in a really lousy (or at least introverted) mood, and I knew it would be hard to interact with people.  He advised me to just put on my “happy face”, and I said it was in my other pair of pants - and then he said - not in a mean way, but just as a matter of fact - that I would “have to suffer the consequences of being you.”

I immediately understood what he meant, and that’s something that I think Kurt Cobain would have understood.  It’s a good way of describing how I feel, a lot of the time.  I feel a powerful sense that I have to suffer the consequences of being me.  And it’s a really striking phrase, because of course, I can’t *be* anybody but me, and yet for some reason, society consistently wants me to.  Suddenly the lyrics to Smells Like Teen Spirit popped into my head:

I feel stupid, and contagious

Here we are now, entertain us…

A denial, A denial, A denial, A denial

I’m particularly struck by the word “contagious”. As with any great art, we could debate what he meant by that word; I’m sure there’s a thousand possibilities.  For me, what I get out of it, is that people always want you to be like them, and reward you for thinking like them, or at least pretending to.  Combine that with the next line, and I’m suddenly reminded of how people always want you to join them in whatever opinion or thought they have.  A lot of people have used the word “intense” to describe me, and even though I don’t really like that word, I’ll admit that it fits, and I think one of the reasons is that I just am not willing to sit around and do nothing, or feel nothing.  A lot of times, like on dates, or with coworkers, people want to talk about stuff like Game of Thrones.  I don’t particularly want to talk about Game of Thrones.  And that never goes over well.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten the advice - especially with dating - to just stick to really banal topics, avoid discussing anything important, stay neutral, make small talk, shoot the shit - and I just can’t do it.  I don’t like that stuff.  I’m exaggerating, of course - I have lots of meaningless hobbies, and at *times* I enjoy small talk.  I like YouTube.  But by and large, I like to really get into the meat of things.  To figure out what the heck we’re doing here, and why, and what we should do about it.  I’m intense, basically.  And people don’t like it.  They don’t want to think that hard.  A denial.

I would say there are maybe only 2 or 3 people on this entire planet that I feel like have ever really gotten who I am, and understood me.  Maybe 4, at a stretch.  And that sounds like a really angst-y thing to say, but I guess what I mean, concretely, is that people’s vision of me; who I am, what I value - is often out of wack - sometimes *way* out of wack - with what *I* think I am, and what I think I value.

In other words, people think I’m an intelligent, dark, intense, smart, argumentative and talented engineer, who’s a little bitter, more than a little depressed, reasonably attractive and funny.  But *I* think of myself as an intelligent, athletic, child-like artist, who is pretty intense, reasonably talented, relatively funny and fairly cheerful and calm.  It has become clear that I am the only person on the entire planet who thinks of me that way.  When I meet someone who also sees that inside of me, they will become very important in my life.  :)

Day 49 - Geneva-On-The-Lake, OH (77.4 mi)

Music!  Let’s talk about music today.  I stopped by the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland on my way out of town.  I had been planning on being there for only an hour or so, but I actually found the place to be pretty awesome so I stuck around for the better part of the day.  Yes, it’s a bit touristy, but the natural power of the music can’t hide, and the smartest thing they do is basically just put you in front of some awesome artists doing their thing as often as possible.  There’s a bunch of displays and memorabilia, but I spent most of my time watching various compilations they put together, including awesome ones about early influences on rock, Elvis, and the modern phenomenon of music festivals.  Music has been a completely underrated part of my life.  And it’s important to me to fix that.  Oh, I’ve always enjoyed music in my own way, mostly by listening to the same things over and over again.  But I’m never taken a systematic approach to music appreciation.  And even more importantly, I’ve gotten out of the habit of *playing* music.  And I want to address both of those things.  The fact is that I would rather make mediocre music, be a mediocre athlete, and a mediocre theater actor, then simply miss out on those things.  I’m OK with sucking, and that’s a big shift in my life.  I need to do these things, even if it’s only for myself.  I need to do them for the sheer joy of doing them.  Even if nobody ever listens.

There’s something awesome about lying in your own pitched tent.  It’s fun to construct your own little hidey-hole.  I like the enclosed feeling, too.  I imagine it’s a bit like the way dog behaviorists describe a dog’s reaction to its cage.  It reduces anxiety to be in this little space.  My whole world consists of the possessions I have with me, which fit in a little pile in the corner.  That’s nice.  Tidy.

Today I had another one of those interactions that my life seems to have become famous for; the full-on social anxiety kind.  This one almost came to blows (its a boring story but it involved overbooking hostel beds).  What made it interesting and unique, though, was that I was acutely aware that the other person was the more nervous of the two of us.  In a weird way I felt like that was kind of a milestone for me.  I actually came away relatively pleased with the progress I’ve made and proud of the way I acted.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a C+ kind of encounter.  But considering I’m a bit of a D- student when it comes to these things, I feel like it was a step in the right direction.   I stood up for myself, there were no lasting negative consequences, and while I don’t think I made a friend, at least I’m not ashamed of how it went.  I’m just not that good at dealing with other people in situations like these, and I suspect I never really will be.  But it’s clear - and this is no big surprise, since I suspect it’s true for almost everyone - my poor performance in stressful situations is directly related to my overall anxiety level, often about totally unrelated things.  It’s like my life is one big example of those coffee mugs that say “don’t talk to me before I’ve had 3 cups”.  It’s like, “don’t talk to me until I figure my life out and exercise for at least 2 hours”.

I had a bad evening tonight.  Partly it was my own fault, partly circumstance, part bad luck, but I found myself wandering the back woods of northern Ohio at 11:45 PM, with my battery light fading, on dark two-lane country roads.  At one point a car came up behind me and I tried to get off the road and instead ended up face down in a ditch.  A lot of thoughts went through my head, most of them unproductive.  But the one I always come back to is that I’m not terribly sure if anyone would really care if something bad happened to me out there.  A few people would be mildly sad, sure, but I’m pretty alone in this life, or at least it feels that way.  I realize that, devoid of my mental context, that statement might seem pretty self-serving and self-pitying, but it isn’t, not really.  I don’t feel bad about that fact.  It’s true that my life hasn’t worked out the way I wanted.  I wanted a relationship - still do.  Sure, in the immediate sense, I chose to ride my bike around the country alone, but I’ve made no secret of the fact that, if I had my preference, I’d be living with a wife and maybe even a kid, in a house near SF or Austin or someplace cool like that, huge family Christmases, tons of relatives, that sort of thing.  But that didn’t happen, and the resentment I feel about that - while it’s still there someplace - no longer has the fire to it that it used to.  I just can’t get all that worked up about it anymore; that emotion seems to have burned itself out.  Life is about the now, the moment, and I’m enjoying my life the way it’s been dished up to me, single, alone, biking through the dark and lonely woods of Ohio, one moment face to the wind, next face to the dirt, but then, in the next, face to the sun.  That’s pretty great.

Day 48 - Cleveland, OH (about 82 miles)

I want to talk about Golden Corral.  Partly that’s because I went there today, but partly it’s because I see it as a metaphor.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.   Today was my triumphant return to the United States of America.  (Yes, technically I visited when I swung by Detroit, but that was just a preview; now I’m back for good).  I was supposed to cycle through a bunch of lakeside Northern Ohio bedroom communities, but route 6 just wasn’t doing it for me, and for no good reason, I started googling buffet restaurants, and found a Golden Corral (!) about 20 miles away, and about 10 miles off route.  Now, 99.9% of people - and probably 100% of touring cyclists - would’ve ridden right past Elyrie, OH without a second thought.  But not me - 10 minutes later I was winding my way through suburbs on that unique sort of trip that happens when you let Google Maps plan your life.(An aside: Google amuses me.  If I thinks it can save you 1 minute or one tenth of a mile, it will literally take you down the garden path.  Today I rode through a gated apartment complex, presumably because it was the straightest line between my two points). 

An aside to tell a story or two.  As I was biking through the suburbs, I stopped to take a picture.  And while I stopped, I heard a voice off to my right.  A kid was sitting on the stoop.  He looked the way I *thought* I looked in high school; kind of disheveled and a bit too heavy.  He asked how long I'd been riding, and I told him, and he said "Hoooooly Cow."  I felt good.  But I also felt for him.  I hope he goes on an adventure of his own.  A second story: as I was walking unlocking my bike in front of the Golden Corral, a man came up and said "Wow!  You've got it figured out!"  "How so?" I said.  "You ride up to the restaurant so you don't end up looking like the rest of us!  Ha ha ha!"  :(  :(.

Anyway, an hour or two later, I had a plate of catfish, green bean casserole, and endless cookies and admittedly mediocre pie - lined up as far as the hungry eye could see. It was terrible - both in the literal sense and the poetic sense, as in a Grand, Terrible Brightness that forced me to look away.  I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate than with this uniquely American thing.  I’ve travelled to other cities around the world, and I can’t think of a single one that could hold a Golden Corral.  In no other society on earth could you charge $15 for all the food a person could possibly eat, and still make money.  Whether that’s a good thing or bad is very much open to debate, but as an engineer and as a poet, I have to admire the breathtaking hubris made real.  It's likely that I was the only person in that whole place that - nutritionally - was even close to needing to be there, and I probably don't even qualify.  Like the Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Corral is a fierce and terrible dream that should never have been true, but is.  And it is delicious, and it will always remind me of home.

Change of topic.  I have a friend - many of them, actually, but there’s one in particular that I’m thinking about right now - that I understand very well.  I have a lot of insight into her and her life.  I think I understand her a lot better than she even thinks, and certainly a lot better than I let on.  The irony of my life is that I’ve been told on a number of occasions that I’m actually very perceptive, emotionally.  Of course, I am certainly wrong sometimes, but the fact remains - and I say this without ego - I’m not wrong often.  But the problem is, I don’t know what to do with that knowledge.  When I was younger, I would have been very open and straightforward with those opinions and thoughts and that understanding.  I’ve always been a believer in honesty and communication.  Sadly, it just hasn’t worked out - certainly not in my favor, but also not in theirs.  Whatever the reason - be it that I’m not a good communicator, or that I’m not the right vehicle for the message, or it’s just none of my damn business, or that my timing is bad, or all of the above and more, when I try to use what I feel or think I know to try to help others, it (just about) always backfires, and ends up making them - and myself - upset.  So the temptation is there to just back off, to do nothing.  But that feels so lousy.  It feels inauthentic, cowardly.  It’s stressful.  One of the things I tried to do to get out of this conundrum - damned if you do, damned if you don’t - is to become a better communicator.  And I do think I’ve made some small amount of progress.  But nowhere near enough, and nowhere near fast enough.  All the classes in Non Violent Communication, the meditation, the yoga - it’s helped a little, but it hasn’t really addressed the core problem; I’m basically a truth-teller, and people don’t want to know the truth.  And I get that; they’re not wrong.  I see that in my own life, when people tell me truth I’m not ready for.  Truth that isn’t presented in a useful and compassionate way, truth that isn’t given with love, in the right time, is just bluntness.  Being right doesn’t absolve you of the need to be kind.  I know that, I see that, I agree with that, which is why I keep things to myself.  But that - while it may make it easier to make and keep friends - ultimately makes me very sad.  Like a greyhound that can’t race, I feel cooped up, like I’m wasting the better part of me.  And it breeds isolation, inward thinking, lack of compassion.  It makes me feel alone.  And I don’t like that feeling.  But I don’t like anger and losing friends either.  I don’t know; I think there’s an answer here, but I’m not sure yet what it is.

Day 47 - Kingsville, ON (34.6 mi)

A variety of odd topics come to mind.  Spending a good part of the last 48 hours in Detroit and Windsor, the question occurred to me: if I had to live in one or the other, which one would I pick?  Which one would you pick?  To make the comparison fair, I’ll tell you a bit more about Windsor.  It’s a city of about 300,000 people, but you’d never know it.  It has the feeling of a huge pile of suburbs all strung together.  There are a lot of Tim Hortons and shopping malls.  I drove through some nice neighborhoods, but I would never describe Windsor as wealthy or beautiful.  It’s solidly middle class, maybe a bit lower middle.  The closest I can think of is maybe some sort of Midwest suburb, like Hoffman Estates, where my ex’s family lived.  Detroit, of course, I assume you know.

Have you thought about it?  The real answer of course, for me, is that I wouldn’t live in either one.  That’s mostly due to the winters, which are pretty nasty in both cases.  But if I had to pick, I’d pick Detroit.  On the surface of it, Windsor has a lot of advantages.  Certainly the crime rate is way lower.  It’s marginally prettier (in its own way), there are very few weedy empty lots.  Day to day life would undoubtedly be easier.  And maybe that’s the problem.  A town like Windsor poses now challenges, and also very few opportunities for growth.  This is a place whose motto is “Windsor: The Place To Be”.  (Windsor: It’s A Place You Can Exist In).  In a very real way there’s basically nothing there.  It’s like a womb for adults (I’m exaggerating here for effect, but just go with it).  Life could easily consist of commuting, Applebee’s, meeting friends for drinks at a mildly edgy bar, etc., etc.  It doesn’t have the outdoors advantages of a place like Bend, it doesn’t have the grunge of a place like Austin or Eugene, it doesn’t have the whimsy of San Francisco.  It’s just - like Houston, where I went to school - a big pile of people who all happen to live next to each other.  Detroit, on the other hand, is a problem.  And part of me likes problems.  I’m not saying I would enjoy having to keep an eye on my wallet.  But things are *happening* in Detroit - or at least, they might be.  I saw people planting community gardens, starting new businesses.  Perhaps it’s an illusion of progress, but it’s a nice illusion.

Topic change: At first, I was a little bit bummed that I (sorta kinda) “quit” the trip across the country.  I knew it was the right thing to do, but it still felt like a defeat of sorts.  But the other day a thought occurred to me that really made me smile, and I can’t shake it, so I’m sharing it.  By structuring the trip the way that I am now - divided into a bunch of smaller trips - the awesome part is that the trip really never has to be over!  Structured the way it was before, there was an end - dip my bike in the atlantic ocean, then go back to my “real life” - play time is over.  But in the new paradigm, it’s more of a bunch of smaller trips.  First from San Francisco to Missoula, then around Lake Erie - next up is biking from Jax to Melbourne Beach to Orlando and back to Jacksonville.  And it doesn’t have to stop there - and it won’t.  I’m enjoying this too much not to do it again and again.  I’ve now got thoughts about doing the AIDS Life Cycle, the RSVP (Ride from Seattle to Vancouver to Party), the reverse trip from Virginia to Missoula next summer, RAGBRAI, etc., etc.  

The other cool thing about that thought was that it occurred to me that nobody - likely in the world - has ever done the exact trip that I’m doing.  It’s my trip.  Combined with the previous thought, I realized that my whole life could be mine - uniquely mine, a journey all to myself.  And that thought made me inexpressibly happy.

One of the things that this trip has made clear for me is that I really enjoy exercise, the outdoors, and motion.  So I’ve been making a list of things I want to get into - or more into, as the case may be.  Surfing, rock climbing, sailing, snowboarding, etc., etc.  The more extreme the better.  That’s a priority for me, once I return to “the real world”.  I recently signed up for a course to become a Certified Personal Trainer, which is part of a long arc of a switch to physically-based employment, that of course I’ve been talking about here for a while now. 

Day 46 - Detroit, MI (39.5 mi)

If anyone ever asks you if they should try to ride a bike from Canada into Detroit, the answer is “no”.  :)  A nice woman along the way showed me a map of my trip and I could see that I was only about 30 miles away from the city.  My philosophy on this trip has been twofold: 1) When in doubt, do stuff and 2) Things will work out.  So, without thinking about it too hard, I turned the handlebars towards Detroit.  I figured, when am I going to go to Detroit?  And - not to give away the ending - in the end I think everything is going to be OK.  But - whew - what a journey!

If you bike into Windsor, which is just on the other side of a very small river from Detroit, you would imagine you can somehow get over to the U.S.  My first thought was the Ambassador Bridge - but they don’t allow cyclists or pedestrians, and there is no public transit over the bridge.  My second thought was the tunnel - but again, no cyclists allowed, no pedestrians.  And lest you imagine some sort of mad dash without getting caught, the problem is that the other end of the tunnel is Customs and DHS - not people you want to mess around with.  Now, it turns out there is a bus that the city of Windsor - begrudgingly - runs through the tunnel.  But you’re not allowed to take a bike on it.  So, yeah.  For the first time in my whole trip, I was actually, legitimately stuck.  So I ended up taking my bike apart, locking the frame to a pole outside the bus station, and carrying everything - wheels, seat, pannier, etc. - on the bike, and then a mile and a half walk into Detroit.

I wish I could honestly claim that things are looking’ up for ol’ Detroit.  In a way I suppose they are; the neighborhood I stayed in shows some clear signs of gentrification.  The hostel I was in is a great example.  And next door to the hostel - in a weedy empty lot with fake plastic flamingos - some folks were running a semi-permanent food cart out of an airstream trailer, complete with a bonfire out front.  It was honestly kind of awesome, and the weather has been amazing here.  But on the flip side, at least half the lots are empty and broken-down, and the sidewalks all torn up, and the White Castle still has bulletproof glass between you and the waiters.  One of the people I talked to called it a “work in progress”, which seems about right.

At the hostel, I met a really cool woman named Taylor, who in addition to being exceptionally attractive, also had a degree from Columbia in Biotech, and generally was one of those people that it’s hard not to envy.  But the thing that really made me interested was that, despite all the things she *could* be doing - and most likely would be doing, if she lived in SF - what she actually was doing was working as the Executive Director of this hostel (which basically just means she changed all the sheets!).  The reason I mention this is because I found myself really envious of her life - partially in a bad, jealousy-centric way, but also partly in a positive, inspiring way.  I think meeting people like her crystallizes thoughts in my head, which are still a little amorphous, but are leading me to form different goals and metrics for how to live my life.  She travels the world all the time, making tons of friends, checking out music festivals, and generally just doing one amazing thing after another.  And that’s appealing.  Yes, I want to settle down, have kids, all of that - but in the meantime, since that’s not working out, I want to *live*.  I want everyday to be awesome, and I used to think that was unrealistic, but now I’m less sure.  Maybe making a choice to prioritize awesomeness is actually an option, and a good option.  Concretely, that looks like this:

1) De-emphasize money.  Money is obviously important as a tool to get things done, but it’s clear to me that I don’t care about it intrinsically.  I don’t want to be rich.

2) Avoid owning things.  Things are a problem.  They cost money, they deflect your attention, and they weigh you down.  Of course, a few things are worth owning.  I’m not sure exactly what the criteria for owning something should be, but my guess is that it’s something about enabling experiences.  That is, everything I own should be something which is first of all a quality, reliable thing, and secondly something that enables an experience.  So a surfboard might qualify, but a collection of knick knacks definitely wouldn’t.

3) Meet and make friends with as many people as humanly possible.  People are the answer because they unlock awesome things.  They let you stay places for free, they get you backstage at concerts, they show you the ropes in new towns or new professions.  People are the key.

4) Do what you love, no matter the consequences.  For me, that means being active - being outside, getting exercise.  Whatever I do for a living is going to have to involve those things.  Ski instructor, fitness instructor, yoga teacher, whitewater tour guide - I don’t know what it will be, but something like that.

5) When in doubt, slap a smile on and fake it a little bit.  Nobody wants to listen to a grump.  Try as hard as possible to actually be happy, but because sometimes that won’t work out, fake it when you have to.

6) Learn skills that people care about.  Writing, making music, teaching skills like skiing, yoga, etc.  Being able to offer people something concrete and positive opens doors.

7) Stick to people-oriented activities.  Concretely, that means no sitting on computers in dark rooms.  It means being out and about with people, meeting people, talking to people, getting over my social anxiety.