The Year of the Bear

I watched Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit with my fiancée recently – what a great movie. Regardless of what they did with extra plotlines and manufactured love interests, it’s still a stirring story. I guess, as Father Mulcahy mentioned in an episode of M*A*S*H* : “You can’t miss when you’ve got great material." A week or so after watching the trilogy, I was facing down a 3-hour mountain bike race that I didn’t feel like I had adequately trained for – at all. I was ready to just not go to the race. Then I remembered The Hobbit.

Hey all, what a week! Sorry I've been gone so long, and I've got a bit of a back-log to fill you in on, so here goes! All the Ups smashed into one. Because bears can do that.

Miles Ran: 3.21 Miles Ridden: 28.7 Approaching the big test: 3-hour race is this Saturday. I'm getting mileage in, but very little elevation. I've got nutrition. Motivation. Trepidation. But also, a plan.

A couple weeks ago – it might have been one, time is funny when you’re planning a wedding – a friend and I were talking about whether or not it was a sin not to take care of your body. Apparently it was a disagreement he and his wife had early on in their marriage (since resolved). We talked about pros and cons for a bit, and I offered this solution: At the end of the day, we can all be better stewards of what we have.

Anytime you set out to do something, set some goal, you can almost count like clockwork on things going wrong – maybe not even going wrong but just not going as smoothly as you imagined it in your head. You may have even geared up for it, planned it out weeks in advance, done all the calculations, given yourself extra time and resources, had it all sewn up and all but in the bag. And then you began to actually execute on that plan, started using your gear and motivation and time and resources, and a day, a week, a month in, said oh, man… It happens – even to bears.

So, the cool thing about the job I have is that it involves a lot of walking. Alone. And only occasionally taking pictures. Which leaves lots of time to think. And plan. And develop scenes for your story. Yep, I’m that kind of lucky guy too. Of course, once you develop the scenes you have to write them down – it’s much harder to get published, according to what I’ve read, if you don’t write down your story.

Sorry I’ve been kinda quiet the last week; I’m still trying to get into a schedule where I can build the habit of writing this blog, as well as my fiction. But I’ve got a new plan in place, and we’ll see how successful it is this week. Because that’s what bears do – or, people who are tenacious about being awesome: they try, fail, try again differently, and repeat as often as necessary.