My 2015 New Year's Resolutions

Every year I make the effort to come up with resolutions for myself and ways in which I can meet them.  2014 was a good year for my resolutions and I made progress in all of them, check my last post for my review.  I tried last year to use my calendar to remind me to check my resolutions once a month; however, I failed to do this carefully, so I will try a new way to do this using the site futureme that allows you to send an email to yourself in the future - https://www.futureme.org.  Try it out, cool stuff!  Now, to my resolutions!

#1 - Try to Keep Anxiety and Stress in Check - If you know me, you know that sometimes I can be a little high strung, stressed out, and worry about everything.  I would like to look for ways to self regulate my stress.   Not sure the solution, but probably monitoring when I am stressed would help, trying some yoga, and other stress relief exercises.  My goal is to have less "stress" days each month, which I will monitor on my calendar.

#2 - Compete in one bike race event in 2015 - Six marathons and many more sprint triathlons have given me the "competitive" bug.  After my knee surgery in July, my running days have come to an end; however, I have taken up biking!  So, I have the goal to race in at least one event this year or maybe participate in one of the half-century or century rides around the island.

#3 - Beach time - we live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, yet, life gets the best of us and many times we don't get to the beach on a regular basis.  My resolution is to go to the beach at least three times a month.  I am hoping for more, but I will set the goal low and adjust as needed.

This year, I have decided to focus on my personal life, I have professional goals for the new year as well, but I am not going to list those here.  I am going to look for ways to have technology help me achieve all my goals.

I wish all of you the best in your own new year's resolutions.  If nothing else, it is an opportunity to take a look at your life and reflect.


Happy New Year!
-Mike :-)

2014 Resolutions in review.

The annual time in my life when I review my resolutions and create new ones.  Let's look back:

My Resolutions for 2014:

#1 - Become more organized - At work and at home, I let the piles of paperwork and other unnecessary things gather around me.  Instead of putting things aside to do later, my resolution is to try and deal with it at the moment.  In this way, I will cut down on the clutter around me and leave a cleaner life!  (I never said my resolutions were easy!) ----  Not bad on this one, I did plan time at least once a month to go through the clutter.  And, I have tried to make more things electronic so that I can organize them that way.

#2 - Re-Invent my exercise life - As many of you know, massive knee injuries in 2013 left me with the reality that after 3,700 miles of running, I will have to find a new way to exercise or I will end up using a cane for the rest of my life.  I know that I enjoy biking, weight lifting, and surfing, but I must add in other non-impact exercises like swimming into my routine.  ---- I had knee surgery in July and I was back to exercising soon after that.  I have been biking a lot as a replacement to the running and have made the switch, putting in more than 100 miles on the bike in November.  While I still miss running desperately, I am trying to make the change.

#3 - Focus on professional growth - I was elected as President of HSTE (Hawaii Society of Technology in Education) and I will be traveling to two conferences this year as part of this leadership.  I need to spend some time focusing on my growth as a technology leader and helping to grow my organization.  --- This was a great year for the HSTE organization and I am proud of the work I accomplished in leading it.  There is still more for me to do in this organization, but I am glad it went well and I survived. 

#4 - Family time - This one is a carry over from 2013 and it is still so important to me.  My daughters are growing up fast and I need to find time and ways to enjoy spending time with them and Suzy.  It will be tougher this year with being gone to conferences off-island, but it can be as easy as shutting the laptop and playing Wii with them. ----- Success on this one as well, returning to the classroom in the fall, I found I had a little more time in the evenings to spend with family.  I still want to continue with this one, but overall it was an improvement!

It seems this year, my resolutions are not as measurable as in previous years.  It will be tough to figure out if I actually have "met" them at the end of 2014; however, they are what I need at this time as I look to the new year!

OCD, no, not that one!

Many of you have asked about my knee and the challenges I have faced.  After completing 6 marathons over the past four years and running more than 3,700 miles, I hit a major snag.  I was on a short run in October 2013 and I stopped to tie my shoe on a bench, when I put my foot down to start running again, I had a huge amount of pain in my knee.  It was so intense, I almost couldn't make it back home.  After begging three doctors for help, they finally agreed to an MRI.   Here is what they found (below).  The black area highlighted in the picture by the yellow arrow is the end of my femur bone.  The femur bone is the inside bone that comes down to your knee. It is critical because this is where most of the weight of your body is centered at the knee.  The sports doctor now understood why I was in so much pain.

The MRI revealed what is called OCD, not the one you are thinking.  This one refers to Osteochondritis Dissecans (OCD).  Here is a pretty good website about what it is:  http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/89718-overview.  In summary, this is a rare condition in which blood flow to the bone is disrupted for some reason usually resulting in part of the bone and underlying cartilage dying.

Over the summer, I tried the easiest of surgical solutions, which is called "micro-drilling".  In this procedure, the surgeon uses a needle to poke holes in the damaged part of the bone with the goal of getting blood flowing and hoping that it forms a harder shell over the bone area.  The procedure is much more successful in younger patients where their bones are still growing and shaping.  In older patients, like me, there is only about a 40% chance of it being successful.  However, since it is the easiest of solutions, it is the first step.  The biggest problem with this procedure is that you can't put any weight on the leg for 4-6 weeks.   So, needless to say, it has been a long, difficult summer trying to move around on crutches and hopping around.

Now, the bad news.  I have been told by three doctors already that even if this procedure works, all it will do is lessen the pain; however, it will never give me the strength I need to run again.  The other surgical options were much more invasive involving either trying to put in part of a bone from a cadaver in the gap to actually cutting my shin bone and adding screws so that the weight of my leg would be displaced to my other bone away from the femur.  However, neither of these will actually allow me to run again.

If you read this and have heard of any miracle doctors, please send them my way.  I will be able to  bike and swim soon, but it is not the same.  I want to run again!

The One That Got Away - no worries ...

Riding my bike this week, my music shuffled to Katy Perry's "The One That Got Away". 

Here is just a few of the lyrics:
In another life
I would be your girl
We'd keep all our promises
Be us against the world

In another life
I would make you stay
So I don't have to say
You were the one that got away
The one that got away

The song makes me think back to some of the choices I have made in my life.  At each of those times, I knew that I was making a monumental decision, a decision that would forever alter my future.  Do I join the Army?  Do I re-enlist and go to Officer School or get out and go back to college?  Do I stay with this girl or break up?  Do I move to Hawaii or stay in Colorado?  Do I take this job or keep looking?  Do I help start a new business or stay at my current job?  

I always wondered about these things, the regrets and the questions, but then I read Richard Bach's book "One".  This book explores the idea of him traveling to visit other "threads" of his life to meet his other self.  What made me so interested in the book was his idea that every decision we make creates new "threads" of our lives.  In one thread, I stayed in the Army and did become an officer and that is one of my universes; in another, I continued in school and never even joined the Army.  For me, it meant that I no longer had to regret decisions I had made, because somewhere out there I had a thread that continued on with my other decision.  I would never have to regret the "one that got away" because in some universe with some thread, I stayed.

So, if you are still with me, I suggest to you that you don't have to fret on the decisions you have made or the "one that got away", because somewhere out there, that thread continued.  

No worries ...

-Mike :-)