It’s hard to believe that I came to Japan 8 years ago this month. Before that I had never lived anywhere except Tulsa, Oklahoma, and in the last 8 years, I’ve only been back home a handful of times.

I miss home, and all my friends and family. All the food, and the thunderstorms in the spring. I miss playing guitar while watching the crazy thunderstorms. I miss puffy taco Wednesdays. Hell, I can’t list all the things that I miss here. It’s just the tip of the iceberg.

After reminiscing a bit, I started to realize how much I’ve done since I’ve been in Japan. I’ve become a teacher, and then been in one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded shortly after. I learned how to live completely on my own. I traveled to Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia. I got married, had a child, and then got divorced (well, started the process anyway). I’ve had to face one of the biggest challenges of my life so far in the courts in Japan. I’ve become a headhunter, and I’ve written a book. I’ve joined groups to learn how to speak in public (I promise I’ll be better if anyone ever needs me to do a best man speech again), and I’ve started doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I’ve been in both the best and worse physical shape since high school. I’ve read more books in a couple years than I have in my whole life (nearly 50 this year alone if you include audio books).

In all of that, the lesson that most stands out to me is persistence. It was one of the things that I never quite had before I came to Japan, and if it’s the only lesson that I learn while I’m here, then my time here will be well worth it. Not to be too cliche, but it’s true that anything worth doing is difficult, and it takes a lot of time. If you give up anytime things get difficult, then you’ll never accomplish anything of value.

That’s what I did before I came to Japan. I did that with all my music instruments, my sports, and even my business. I don’t feel like I ever really engaged myself 100%, and that’s why I never became great at any of them. I was a dilettante (still am really). Persistence pays off in anything you do, but if you really want to find success (at least what I think of as success), you have to learn to stick with the thing you want to be successful at.

Don’t get me wrong. Hobbies are great. It’s good to find things where you can spend some of your time and get some R&R while simultaneously improving some aspect of yourself. You can’t dedicate yourself 100% to every single thing you do. But you can find the one or two things that are the most important things in your life. The things that make you want to wake up in the mornings. And it’s for those things that I am learning persistence.

I didn’t really intend this to become a motivational piece, but rather a reminiscence of the last 8 years, so I’ll stop before I get too high on my persistence soapbox.

I just want everyone to know things are going well and I miss you all!

I love the new year, because it gives you a set time that it’s okay to rethink everything you’re doing and try to figure out what’s next, or even just to question the direction you’re moving in.

Well, anyone who’s known me more than 5 minutes knows that I’m pretty scatterbrained and have so many crazy ideas that I can’t ever get anyone of them finished.

I’ve been working over the last few months to focus. Basically, I’m working to finish something at all times. I have new things that come up, just like I did before, but I’m always prioritizing one project and working towards its completion. That’s new to me, and one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It sounds strange, but I seem to get bored with the last mile. It wasn’t until recently that I heard something that resonated well with me. It was on a Tim Ferriss podcast. I think he quoted someone when he said it, but I can neither remember who he got it from nor can I quote it perfectly,  as I can’t remember the exact podcast to relisten, so I’ll just paraphrase it here. It was something like, “The last 10% is the last 50%” or “The last mile is the last half of a project.” 

Basically, once you’ve made it to what appears to be the end of a project, a lot of people, myself included, tend to relax and end up not finishing up. Personally, I just get bored with what I’m doing. I’ve never been a fan of the tedious, and it seems that finalizing something is the most tedious of all. So, now it’s time to force myself to do the tedious.

The next thing that I’ve been doing a lot of recently is rethinking goals. I remember when I was younger, I learned SMART goals. I can’t remember if it was in high school or university that I learned this concept, but basically, it goes as follows:That

Goals should be SMART which stands for:

• Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
• Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
• Achievable (agreed, attainable).
• Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
• Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).
  • https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/smart-goals.htm

That’s great! And I agree to a certain degree, but a SMART goal doesn’t always help in the long term, which tends to be more abstract, and not bound by a certain period of time or specific details. Of course, it’s important to have as much information as possible when making a goal, but when you’re grasping at straws looking for some kind of direction to move into, it’s difficult to visualize the kinds of goals that will lead you in the direction that you’re interested in moving.

So, to answer that, I started researching, and found what would appear to be the opposite of SMART goals in DUMB goals. These are goals that are much more abstract driven by passion rather than reason and logic (granted, it is built in there, it’s just not going to jump up and slap you in the face.

Dumb goals are:

• Dream-driven
• Uplifting
• Method-friendly
• Behavior triggered
  • https://youtu.be/54aFTZ9POw4 (Great watch/listen if you have 12 minutes to kill)

I finally realized that not all goals can fit into that SMART standard, so I finally stopped banging my head against the wall trying to make it fit, and beating my own self-esteem when I couldn’t meet the timelines that I set for myself, or wasn’t as successful as I had wanted to be, or a speed bump came up and knocked me off course.

So, the last few months, I’ve been reworking my thinking process, and I have come up with the following goals. These are what are driving me, and will be how I frame all my projects into the future. They are ALL career oriented as I’m still not ready to dive into some of the deep personal stuff (especially in such a public way). So here we go:

1. I want to earn one million dollars from a company that I create.
2. I want to write a New York Times best seller.
3. I want to create a podcast that helps hundreds of thousands of people.
4. I want to get paid to speak publicly.

So, I’ll end on a story that really got me into this thought process. For anyone who’s ever seen me as a best man, you know that I’m terrified of speaking or performing in front of people that I know, to the point of anxiety attack. Well, this year, my company was putting on a talent show to showcase the little known talent within the company. About two months before the talent show, I decided that I was going to perform. I didn’t know what, but I knew that I had to do it. There were five other people who signed up to perform, and all of their talents were pretty well known. I was the dark horse. To be honest, it wasn’t up until the final week that I even knew what I was doing. I only knew that I had to do something. I had been practicing the song Desperado on guitar, and was planning to sing it, but in that last week, I decided that it wasn’t much of a holiday party song, so I trashed it with just seven days (actually less than that since at that point as it was a Sunday and the party was on Friday). While trying to figure out what I was going to do, I was listening to a very old story/song called Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie, which if you haven’t invested the twenty minutes to listen to it, I’d highly recommend it. Hell, I’d recommend that you invest another twenty minutes to listen even if you have already heard it.

Well, I’m sure you can see where this is going. I reworked the lyrics, and told a story to the tune of Alice’s Restaurant, and ended up winning third place (I later paid for the success with an anxiety attack, but woke up the next morning still alive, so I consider it a success). After that, I decided that it’s never too late to accomplish your dreams, and that it’s time to get started.

In case you’re interested, one of my coworkers recorded my performance (it’s filled with jokes that only the EWC employees would understand, but you can judge for yourself):

As we ponder and prepare for the year in front of us, it’s always good to take a moment to look back on the previous year for any lessons that we may be able to glean from the experiences we’ve had.

I think the lesson that stands out the most to me is to take care of the people who have taken care of you.

You have played a major role in my life, and have helped me to grow into the person that I am. For that, I will be forever grateful, and hope that I can return that kindness in some way either now or in the future.

So here’s to another new year! I hope you achieve everything that you set your mind to this year. 

I leave you with this little quote from Benjamin Franklin

Be at War with your Vices, at Peace with your Neighbours, and let every New-Year find you a better Man.

Happy new year everyone!

Stay safe!

It seems that this is another “the grass is always greener” topic.

I know that during the holiday season, most people are resolving lose weight at the beginning of the new year, but I’m having the opposite problem, and one of my goals is to get my weight up.

I have been hovering between 130-132 lbs for the last month and can’t seem to push it up any farther than that. I realize that I’m not in a danger zone for my height, but I just feel like I’m too small. To give you a general idea, I’m 20 lbs lighter than I was when I graduated from University, and only 5 lbs heavier than when I graduated high school.

The thing is, I don’t just want to add junk food to my diet. I feel like it would be really easy to just drink 2-3 beers everyday or eat a lot of junk food, but that would defeat the purpose of why I’m doing this (to stay healthy).

Here’s the deal, I’m sticking with a low carb diet, because standard and high carb diets just kill my energy levels. I walk between 7-10 km a day, plus I do some calisthenics and strength training every morning (nothing too strenuous as I’m just getting started with the strength training).

My diet consists of mainly high protein and high fat foods with lots of vegetables. I avoid sugar, bread, and rice generally. This diet has been really good for keeping my energy level up.

I’ve been able to sustain about 2500 calories per day for the most part. About 1000 for breakfast, 500 for lunch, and another 1000 for dinner with a couple snacks that make up any deficits.

My question is, does anyone have any ideas on what healthy low carb options there are that I can add to my diet to supplement my calorie intake?

I’d take this to a health blog, but I’d rather see what the people I know are doing or have done.

I can’t believe that it’s already nearing the end of 2017.

It’s been such a crazy year. So much has happened, and I haven’t even begun to take the time to consider how I’m going to let the events from this year affect my life.

I’ve read more this year than I think I have any single year previously. I have probably read more than 20 books this year. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but considering that I’ve very rarely completed one book a month previously, I’ve not only increased the amount of time I’m dedicating to reading, but also an increase in speed. I hope the comprehension is also improving as well. 

I love the Kindle. Don’t get me wrong. I adore books. There’s something to be said about flipping through the pages of an old book. Smelling that dank book smell as you turn pages that may not have been touched in more than a decade. Feeling the texture of the paper between your fingers as you hold the pages open and cherish each printed letter. There are few things in life better than that, but living in Japan, getting access to the books that I want to read is not always as simple as I’d like for it to be, at least not always at a reasonable price. Plus there are so many free classics available for the Kindle, it makes it so much easier to read the things that I should have been read long ago.

Since my last post, I’ve been able to read a couple that I’ve wanted to for a while. The big one was The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I can’t really say that I liked it. I appreciated it for the piece of history that it captured, but was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever read. I felt emotionally numb at about half way through. By the end of the book, I just felt dead… and then that ending… I can’t really think of much good to say about it. It was well written though. 

A good short read was the Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson. It was very to the point and basically just listed out all of his accomplishments (which there were many).

I’ve also made it a good deal of the way through the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, which, while being a pretty dense read, is giving me a lot of insight into areas of my own life. For example, he had an amazing system for improving his own writing style. I believe that it is something that I’m going to emulate, as writing is beginning to play a more prominent role in my life. Let me know if it’s something that interests you as I can point you to a few resources that explain his system pretty well.

Anyway, aside from the reading, I’ve pretty much just been trying to turn every aspect of my life around. I’m exercising daily, eating at least two and a half full meals a day. I’m trying to eat between 2,500-3,000 calories a day so that I can put on some weight. I started tracking everything about a month ago when I realized that I had made it down to 128.5 pounds. Yeah, that’s roughly the same size I was in high school. I was not, at any time, attempting to lose weight, but with all the stuff going on, I just didn’t eat as much as was necessary to maintain a healthy level, and everyone knows how stress affects people differently. In the last month, I’ve put on 5 pounds, and I’m not going to stop until I’ve hit at least 140. It’s an arbitrary number, but it would put me safely in the middle of the healthy weight levels for my height.

If you have an Android phone and you’re curious about the tools I’m using to keep forward progress, here’s a list:

• Google Fit – Brings everything together to summarize all my activities. Good for a basic overview of fitness.
• Lose It! – Calorie Counter – While it’s targeted at people trying to lose weight, it’s still a decent way to track calories and meals in general. It includes a pretty good database of foods that you can use by just scanning the barcode. It’s not perfect, but it does a good job.
• Water Drink Reminder – This is for tracking my liquids. I noticed that in the summer, I was getting a little dehydrated, so I decided to use this as a brief reminder to drink more water. Now I’m averaging around 3 liters of liquids a day.
• Pebble – Despite being out of business, my Pebble is still going strong. I use it as a step and sleep counter. It’s not perfect, but it’s consistent. 
• 30 Day Fitness Challenge – Workout at Home – If you’re not used to exercising, then I recommend something to ease you into it. I have a personal trainer who designed a very thorough workout plan for me, but it was a little intense to get started, so I’ve been using this for just about a month. It’s designed around exercises that you can do at home with no equipment (although I would recommend a yoga mat to keep you off that cold floor in the morning).
• Calm – Meditate, Sleep, Relax – I think this has been the single most helpful app I’ve downloaded. I’ve been meditating for about three months now, between 5-20 minutes everyday. I do it right after waking up, and it really helps to get my mind in a clear state. It lightens the load before packing the daily tasks on.

But it doesn’t matter how good the tools you have are if you don’t use them. I’ve really been disciplining myself lately and holding myself accountable. I plan out my goals for the day in the morning or the night before and prioritize them. I make sure that I get most of the things knocked off my list everyday. I keep track of that with a pretty amazing to do list app called Todoist: To-do lists for task management & errands and also use Coach.me – Instant Coaching for some of the reminders.

(By the way, sorry to my iOS friends, you’re just gonna have to search the app store yourself because I’m not in the Apple ecosystem at all)

I would go more into depth on some of the things that I’m tracking and how I’m doing it, but this post has already begun to reach short story length, so I think I’ll leave it at that, and continue on in a separate post, or if you’re really interested, I can make a special page for this kind of stuff.

Anyway, until next time.

Toodles!