Tag Archives: goals

What I learned this week, March 05, 2021

Posted on by Bill Chance

Coping With Intrusive Thoughts

Haunted by a reoccurring thought that freaks you out? Intrusive thoughts are more common than you think.

Tony Cragg’s “Line of Thought” Dallas, Texas

How a ‘beginners’ mindset’ can help you learn anything

Although our ability to easily pick up a new skill declines with age (no shit, Sherlock), harnessing a specific type of mindset can help you learn effectively as an adult.

Collage by James Michael Starr, Carrollton DART station.

The Marvellous Mod World of Sci-Fi Supermarionettes

This, my friends, is the world of my childhood. BTW – Thunderbird 2 was, by far, the coolest.

Actually, of all the Supermarionette shows from when I was a kid – it was Supercar I remember the most.

Time Travel

How to be mediocre and be happy with yourself

In the novel Catch-22, the author Joseph Heller famously wrote: “Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.”

He’d taken a quote by Shakespeare on greatness and turned it on its head.

The implication was clear: mediocrity is a bad thing, to be avoided. Yet most of us go on to live what by most measures are pretty ordinary lives.

So what’s wrong with settling for mediocrity?

Plano, Texas Sometimes you can find interest, maybe beauty, in the simplest and most ordinary of things.

You’re a Bad Listener: Here’s How to Remember What People Say

We come into conversations with our own agendas and low attention spans, but if you want to build better relationships you need to master active listening.

Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Pearl

How to Achieve Your Goals By Creating an Enemy

Art Deco mural from Fair Park in Dallas

What I learned this week, February 5, 2021

Posted on by Bill Chance

What We Learned from Tracking Cycling Deaths for a Year

Louisiana, New York, California, Florida, and Texas were the five deadliest states for cyclists in terms of total fatalities. The latter three have been the most deadly states for cyclists for years, and New York’s fatalities have been on the rise as well—in 2019, it reported 46 cyclist deaths, with 29 in New York City alone. While these three states are also the most populous in the country, Florida and California have among the most cycling deaths per million people, as well. And Louisiana recorded 7.3 cycling deaths per million people, the most of any state. 

Bicycle ‘Second Line New Orleans, Louisiana

Hijacking the Clown Car

The GameStop revolt should serve as a message to those in charge: you are loathed by ordinary Americans who are struggling to get ahead.

Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas

Do These Things After Work Everyday and You Will Achieve Anything You Want in Life

The time before you go to bed is golden, as it exists every single day, and it’s usually completely yours to schedule. What do you want to do with this time? Read? Spend time with your kids? Work on a hobby you’re passionate about? Take advantage of this time.

Travelling Man

The Year in Self-Improvement

The point is to accept that our impulses cannot save us from impermanence, that change and failure and death are inevitable—that stillness, as much as movement, is divine.

Usually, I see the man standing still, but sometimes he’s moving quite a bit.

Fourteen Fascinating and Untranslatable Words

Handy words from other languages with no English equivalent.

I have become a fiend for finding new words to describe subtle things that I can’t think about because I don’t have a word for it. There is one thing in particular… a quality of subtle excellence… that I want to find a word for and am afraid I may have to make one up.

This is a good list even though I already knew a few of them and it doesn’t include nadryv – my new favorite word.

Revenge Bedtime Procrastination… yes, it’s a thing

How to Achieve Your Goals By Creating an Enemy

Anger is a powerful motivator.

What I learned this week, January, 15, 2021

Posted on by Bill Chance
Artwork in the Braindead Brewing Company, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

On Getting Rejected a Lot (and Liking It)

You can (and should) train yourself to sleep on your back

Falling Water Fountain, Dallas Arboretum

The Feynman Technique: The Best Way to Learn Anything

3 Important Life Skills Nobody Ever Taught You

One vendor features tomatoes. The back of his slot is filled with pallets of tomatoes. Lots and lots of tomatoes.f

Gardening Fixes Everything

The Deep Roots of an Italian Song That Sounds Like English—But Is Just Nonsense

 

2020 Goals and Tools

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

― Douglas Adams

Like I said Yesterday – It’s that time of the year again. Most nowadays eschew New Year’s Resolutions. And this year, after the horrible shitshow that was 2020 a lot of people will be happy to survive. However, since I had a few days off work over the holidays and there is nothing to do because of the virus I decided to wax philosophical and make some plans for the upcoming year.

OK, first… my actual goals, more or less:

Weight loss – won’t bore you with this – everybody has this as their #1 goal… pretty much. So there it is.

Cycle equivalent – 3,000 days. Ten miles a day, with a few days off. This is either a real mile on a real bike or an equivalent on my spin bike. I put an odometer on the thing so I can measure it. The spin bike is a little easier than the streets, a little quicker… so be it.

Submit 100 short stories for publication (2 per week). I have well over 100 short stories written. But writing isn’t writing, editing is writing. I will edit… and submit. Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

Publish 2 ebooks of short stories. One tentatively would be 100 Days of Flash… the other 30 Bad Ways to Die.

Write cumulative 300 words of fiction a day. This is about one hour a day of writing. I intend for the cycling goal above to be pretty much every day, while the fiction writing goal to be mostly a weekly thing. 2100 words a week.

…And those are the major goals. I went ahead and jotted some minor goals down, more as ideas.

  • Get up early
  • Read more
  • Listen to more podcasts
  • Stretch
  • Lift weights
  • Mindfulness and Meditation
  • Learn to use Scrivener
  • Walk (an underrated exercise, might add a derivative of this to my cycling totals, maybe)

I have to be careful about daily habits/goals. I can really pile them on and there are only so many hours in the day.

I also made a list of tools that I intend to add to/edit as the year goes on:

  • Planner
  • Daily Record
  • Journal
  • Strava
  • Blog
  • Google Calendar

Themes, Goals, and Records

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.”

― Neil Gaiman

Pond at Fair Park
A pond in Fair Park. The red paths are part of a massive sculpture by Patricia Johanson – I have always loved those red paths running through the water, weeds, and turtles. A neglected jewel in the city.

It’s that time of the year again. Most nowadays eschew New Year’s Resolutions. And this year, after the horrible shitshow that was 2020 a lot of people will be happy to survive. However, since I had a few days off work over the holidays and there is nothing to do because of the virus I decided to wax philosophical and make some plans for the upcoming year.

First – to get these out of the way – A couple of small changes for me this year….

(1) For the last few years I have struggled with using a Bullet Journal as a planning and recording thing – and it didn’t work for me. For this year I have decided to go back to a ringbound planner. I use Steven Covey seven ring traditional size binders (these are half-sheets, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2, or approx. A5) – I have one at work and one at home and one small one that I carry around. I design my own filler pages, print, cut and punch them. I have found that I like to hand draw the filler pages (todo, notes, thoughts, contacts… and such) – it adds a bit of personality, plus I change them as the year goes on (usually print a week at a time).

I will use a fountain pen friendly bound notebook (an EXCEED A5 from Walmart, of all places) as a daily journal and electronic means (Google calendar) for appointments and set events.

I feel good about how this will work out – will keep y’all updated in case you are interested in how it goes.

(2) Making the switch from Map My Ride to Strava to track my bicycling for the year. No real reason – I was happy with MMR. I have become fascinated with the Strava Heatmap.

Instead of RESOLUTIONS, I think of Themes for the year and then place Goals under these themes. I’ll put down my themes today and discuss my Goals tomorrow.

Themes:

  • Health
  • Live Outward
  • Create
  • Tidyness

Health – Ever since my health emergency in New Orleans a year and a half ago I have been struggling. I was doing better for a while but backsliding lately – seeing a new specialist in a few days. Obviously, I have weight and fitness goals, like everyone does, but mine are taking on a new importance.

Live Outward – After the year of Covid isolation I am suffering from loneliness, claustrophobia, and acedia. I think everybody needs to dedicate 2020, especially after the restrictions begin to lift, to reestablish their connections to their fellow man.

Create – for me, that mostly means writing. In 2020 I was able to meet my goal of writing 100 pieces of flash fiction in 100 days and put then on my blog. I have been writing more fiction and keeping it to myself. I have goals for amounts written and stories submitted and publishing attempted. Wish me luck.

Tidyness – I am naturally chaotic and, if I’m going to meet some of my other goals, will need to be more efficient and distraction free. This is more difficult for me than it should be.

So there it is… I’ll post a few discrete goals tomorrow and see what I think about them.

Upping My Bicycle Commuting Game – Part Six – Cycling Goals For the New Year

Posted on by Bill Chance

You should ride for meditation for 1 hour per day – if you’re too busy, then ride for 2 hours

—- Old Zen Saying

My 1987 Cannondale road bike at Trammell Crow Park.

 

I have read that one thing that I can do to help achieve my goals is to share them. This isn’t easy – important goals are, by nature, personal and can be embarrasing. Plus, there’s the problem that nobody else really gives a damn and they (you) will be terribly bored. But by sharing them, against my better judgement, I hope to:

  1. Gain Clarity – I have come to the conclusion that I write primarily not to communicate my ideas but to discover and develop them.
  2. Accountability – Other people, even mysterious eyes on the internet, adds motivation.
  3. Feedback – Someone (you) might have some ideas or suggestions.

A primary goal I had this year is related to fitness – and I’m sure you won’t be surprised to read that it is a cycling mileage goal. The basic goal is ten miles a day. That works out to, what? Three thousand six hundred and sixty (leap year, remember?) miles for the year. That sounds like a long way. I used to have a spreadsheet to track my mileage, but now I use Mapmyride.com.

I do cheat in two ways. I know that sometimes the weather is simply too awful to ride. If I ride my spin bike at home I count one hour as ten miles. That seems fair – ten miles per hour is pretty much how fast I usually ride (though I average a lot less – in the big evil city I spend as much as a third of my time waiting on traffic) plus on the spin bike I never coast. The other cheat is a little more controversial (in my own mind). When I take the bus to work, I have to transfer, usually at the Spring Valley DART station. It’s about 1.3 miles from my office – which I can walk in thirty minutes (if I walk fast). If I do that – walk instead of taking the second bus route – I give myself five miles biking credit. It feels about right, the mile plus walk is about as tiring as five miles on the bike – it takes thirty minutes, so I’m sticking with an hour or so of exercise a day.

Is that fair? It seems OK to me and gives me another option and a little flexibility.

So… Accountability… how did I do in January.

My total in January was 314.02 miles – so I beat my goal by four miles. Good enough.

The breakdown:
31 Bike Rides – 199.02 miles
9 Spin Rides – 90 miles (eight episodes of The Witcher and one hour of watching music videos)
5 Walks – 25 miles

Looking at my Calendar – I had 7 days that I did nothing. That would be another goal – reduce those days.

January Map My Ride, Calendar – Click to Enlarge

One other interesting fact. I thought about a goal of, for the year, riding my bike more miles than driving my car (excluding long trips). I didn’t decide on that goal because it seemed impossible, especially in Dallas.

Well, as I think about January – I drove a car three times, twice to Love Field (once for work, once to pick Candy up) and once to Home Depot (to buy something too big for my bicycle). That’s a total of what? Maybe fifty miles? Everywhere else I went I either cycled, took DART (one other goal of mine for this year was to utilize the bus system – which I have been doing), or rode with someone else driving. I never drove myself to work (not always by choice). So I rode my bike two hundred miles and drove fifty. I didn’t think that was possible, and it probably won’t be for the rest of the year… but there it is.

My bike commute – the bike riding itself – is getting really easy. I told someone that, unless the weather is horrible, usually my bike ride to/from work is the best part of my day. They said, “How many people can say that their commute is the best part of their day.” I nodded, although I thought to myself that a big part of that is how unpleasant the rest of my day is. Unfortunately, changing clothes and such at work is the worst part of my day. My employer blathers on a lot about work/life balance – but it is all bullshit. They make it as difficult as they can to commute without a car.

Also, I have to be careful – when you don’t drive very much and live in a car-obsessed city like Dallas – on a tiny bicycle dodging giant killer hunks of steel that spew toxic fumes in your face even if they miss you or standing by the road waiting for a bus as the traffic roars by inches away –  you begin to hate cars. You begin to hate the people that drive them, especially people that drive fast/aggressively, yak on their phones, and honk their horns. It’s a good opportunity to practice mindfulness and forgiveness.

So, sorry to bore you with my stupid little story – one month down, eleven to go.

Better finish this off and go for a bike ride – get my ten miles in. Don’t want to start February off behind.

Upping My Bicycle Commuting Game – Part 3, A Christmas Present

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I had to ride slow because I was taking my guerrilla route, the one I follow when I assume that everyone in a car is out to get me. My nighttime attitude is, anyone can run you down and get away with it. Why give some drunk the chance to plaster me against a car? That’s why I don’t even own a bike light, or one of those godawful reflective suits. Because if you’ve put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe–to see you, and to give a fuck–you’ve already blown it… We had a nice ride through the darkness. On those bikes we were weak and vulnerable, but invisible, elusive, aware of everything within a two-block radius.”
― Neal Stephenson, Zodiac

 

Santa doesn’t seem to bring me things any more – maybe I haven’t been a good boy – so I tell people what I want for Christmas. And what I want is gift cards.

In this day and age – Amazon gift cards are best.That way I get what I want and I get the fun of figuring out what I’m going to order. Also, a lot of times what I want is too expensive for someone to buy me (such as a new camera), I can save up cards over Christmases and Birthdays until I have what I need.

For this Christmas, I cashed in a gift card and bought a new cycling jacket.

Cycling Jacket

There were myriads to choose from, in all price points, but after a lot of looking I decided on an ARSUXEO Winter Warm UP Thermal Softshell Cycling Jacket. In that crazy internet way things happen now – the next day it was sitting on my porch.

I have grand ambitions on bike commuting in 2020. I need to lose weight, up my fitness, and we’re short a car – so it’s on the bike to work I go. The ride is getting easy enough that the actual bike riding part in the best part of my day (the getting ready and changing clothes at work is the worst). Dealing with weather is tough – and even here in Texas, there are cold, windy days in the winter time. I’ve had a few days of riding around the ‘hood, and a couple of commutes in already.

The jacket works great. The key to getting in miles when the weather is whipsawing around is to layer effectively. I can go three or four layers under this thing, and peel some off if the sun comes out and the day warms. The jacket has some areas that let in the breeze – I can feel it when it is really cold, but necessary to evaporate out the sweat.

The best part is the visibility. That geeky green-yellow color is a lifesaver at dusk and dawn in Dallas rush-hour traffic.

So it’s time to charge my lights for tomorrow, make sure my tires are good, and get some sleep. Dawn comes early.

Upping My Bicycle Commuting Game – Part 2, Cockpit Storage

Posted on by Bill Chance

“To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.”
― George Bernard Shaw

As I worked on commuting the 5 miles to work on a regular basis – I realized I needed storage attached to my handlebars to keep some stuff that I could reach without getting off my bike.

First, and most important, I needed a place to keep my badge. I work on the big Texas Instruments campus at Hwy75 and 635 (though I don’t actually work for Texas Instruments) on a little peninsula of Dallas sticking up into Richardson, Texas. I need a badge as I ride past the security gate to get onto the campus. I can’t really ride the whole way with the thing banging around on my neck (for safety and comfort) so I would stop a block short of the gate, dig around in my pack or panniers and put my badge on. Although the quick rest was good (help my heart slow down and a little less sweat) I didn’t like wasting all that time looking for my badge mixed in with all the rest of the stuff. I realized I needed something small on my handlebars to keep my badge.

Also, after trying a lot of lights, I prefer some knockoff lights with a USB on the end that I run from portable cell phone battery packs. They are cheap and I can carry extras as backup. But I needed something on my bars to carry the battery. I had been running the wires all the way to the bag on the back of my bike and it kept getting caught on stuff. Finally, I wanted a place to keep my phone and wallet that I could keep my eyes on. Peace of mind, you know.

My cockpit is crowded with lights, bell, plus interrupter brake levers and a standard handlebar bag would take up too much space. So I started looking around and asking other cycling commuters that I know what they use. They all recommended a feed bag style of stem bag.

Feed Bag Cycling Pouch

These looked useful and I was leaning this way. However – I didn’t like the shape – they seem designed for a water bottle and I already have three cages on my bike. What I wanted to store was flat in shape. Also, these seemed a bit pricey (I know, you get what you pay for… I am horribly cheap) – so I held off and kept looking.

After looking around I came cross these things – Toughbuilt Fastener Bag – Heavy Duty Mesh Window, Hanging Grommets

Toughbuilt Fastener Bags

These were inexpensive – 3 for around twelve bucks. I knew they’d be strong and well made. People (carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc.) that use these things don’t fuck around with stuff that breaks. Plus they were flat in shape, you could see into them, and had a stout metal grommet. So I bought some.

When they arrived I mounted one on the stem of my bike with a carabiner clip and an old bracket from a bike reflector that I had laying around. It worked great.

Toughbuilt Fastener Pouch on the stem of my commuting bike. It holds a battery pack, my badge, and usually my wallet and phone.

I know that my love for cheap gadgets and using things not for their original purpose is often self-defeating – but this is perfect – just big enough and it moves sideways through the wind without much resistance. I can keep an eye on my badge, phone, and wallet while I ride and get my badge out when I need it. In hot weather I keep a small paper towel in there too to wipe sweat or clean my glasses while waiting at a stop light. I’ve learned that with bike commuting – when you have to get out that door every morning – it isn’t only about what you carry – it’s about how you organize it.

These little indestructible pouches are a big help with the small things.

Upping My Bicycle Commuting Game – Part 1, Overview

Posted on by Bill Chance

Looking back over old journal entries I realized it has been over seven years since I first rode my bike to work:

I Need a Victory

Not long after that I wrote a detailed description of my ride home from work (at that time I was only commuting one way):

My Commute Home from Work

Over that vast span of time I have been up and down on the bike commuting… mostly down. However, lately, to aid in recovery from my sickness this summer and because of various things we now have three people at home with only two cars, I have been bike commuting more and more. Things have changed a lot since 2012 – I am riding a different bike now (a vintage Cannondale 1987 touring bike) and have recently done some serious route tweaking….

My 30 year old touring bike in The Cedars, Dallas, Texas

As a matter of fact, my two main bikes from 2012 – a Yokota Mountain Bike, and a vintage 1986 Raleigh Technium – have both been broken in the meantime and replaced.

My Technium on Winfrey Point, White Rock Lake. Dallas, Texas. Look carefully and you can see a guy on a unicycle.

Adios Technium

The ponds at Huffhines Park along my bike commute route. This is my old, long gone, Yokota mountain bike converted into a commuter.

Craigslist Commuter

My goal for 2020 is 3,000 miles – my commute is five miles each way – so if I commute every day for 300 workdays I’ll hit my goal. I won’t be able to commute by bike every day (weather, laziness, I often need to drive to other sites for work) so I will have to ride extra on the weekend and in the evening, plus I will count an hour on the spin bike as ten miles.

Like I mentioned, I have been doing some serious route tweaking – mostly for safety purposes. I’ll write later about what I’ve learned about bike safety riding daily in big city traffic – some of it is counter-intuitive. I was a bit peeved that, after working on my route, it turned out to be something like 4.95 miles each way… and that is less than my 10 miles per day goal. So I tweaked it a little more to add a couple tenths of a mile. I know that’s nuts – but a goal is a goal.

Here’s my current route home from the Texas Instruments campus to East Richardson – I’m pretty happy with it.

My bicycle commuting route home from work – 5 miles from the Texas Instruments campus at 75 & 635 to East Richardson

 

I’ll have to duplicate my 2012 entry and document my route. I can’t take photos on my commute – it’s dark now both ways – so maybe I’ll ride the route this weekend and take some pictures, then write it up.

Summers are tough, it is so hot here and I don’t have a shower available at work. I arrive drenched in sweat and have to towel off and change clothes in a handicap stall – not a lot of fun. The key is to get up really early, before dawn, and take my time.

Now, though, is another kind of problem. I hate being cold. But I’ve been working on my cold-weather gear, my layers. This morning it was right around freezing, which is pretty cold for Texas. I was nervous last night, I have ridden in the cold before, but never commuted in these temperatures. When I went out of the garage the ground was rimed with frost and clouds of vapor pulsed out of my mouth. I glanced at my car as I clipped in my pedals and noticed the glass was covered with ice.

At least when you bike commute in the cold, you don’t have to scrape your windshield.

As it turned out, I did fine. I was wearing multiple layers of various kinds of clothing and once I was moving and working I warmed up and was comfortable. Changing into my work clothes (and back again for the ride home) was a pain, but it is what it is.

This time of year I’m riding home in the pitch dark (on my trip in the sun is just beginning to peak over the horizon). Today was bad because there was some kind of wreck at Beltline and Greenville and traffic was spilling out onto all the neighborhood roads – the drivers were in a bad mood – angry and fast. That makes for much unpleasantness when you are on a tiny unprotected and vulnerable bicycle.

But I made it home, checked the forecast (cold again) and set out my gear for tomorrow morning. Another day, another ten miles.

Choose Which Poison

Posted on by Bill Chance

“You’re going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don’t do. You don’t get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you’re going to take. That’s it.”
― Jordan B. Peterson

Bolivar Peninsula, Texas

I am working on a list of “Bill’s Rules” – hopefully coming up with a list of useful, yet pithy, statements that I, more or less, came up with on my own. I’m up to four, but have serious doubts about the fourth – probably goin’ to give that one up.

At any rate, Numero Uno:

The key to creativity and innovation is to embrace failure

This seems obvious at first – of course if you are to be creative and innovative you have to be willing to fail. What I’m saying goes beyond that – you have to embrace failure. You have to crave failure. You have to have failure as your primary goal.

To illustrate, I’ll give an example from that white-hot furnace meant to burn away all and any trace of creativity and innovation (and joy, and human-ess, and anything else worthwhile) – the world of the modern giant corporation. It is a world of metrics, and goals, and people scurrying like ants to meet those metrics… and the world be dammed. Not meeting goal, having that dreaded red box on the monthly PowerPoint metric presentation – projected on that screen in that sterile conference room – , is the worse thing in the world and a source of executive shame.

And they don’t understand why other companies (usually very small) always come up with the new ideas.

Here’s my idea – everyone should have on their annual review goal list – “I will initiate at least six major projects in the coming year that will fail… preferably fail in a spectacular and embarrassing manner.”

That would spur some creativity and innovation. And what happens if your projects all succeed in wild and unpredictable ways? Well, you weren’t innovative and creative enough – if you manage to hold on to your job you better try harder next year.