The Unconscious-- Part I: Introduction

[Written in April, 2020]

I'd like to share with you all some of the lightbulb moments I've had over the past six months proceeding from my readings of Carl Jung and Robert Johnson's Inner Work, which translates Jung's theories into practice. Though his theories on the unconscious are a century old, they amazingly still feel groundbreaking. And though I don't pretend to know what trends are on the horizon, I wouldn't be surprised if his ideas make a big comeback in the next few years.

For those of you not familiar with Jung (ie most people), he was a trailblazing Swiss psychiatrist active in the first half of the 20th century who created and popularized such concepts as the collective unconscious, archetypes, introversion, extraversion, and the shadow self. He was a colleague of Freud who eventually split with him once it became clear that Freud had become dogmatically attached to his theories in spite of mounting disconfirming evidence. After the split, in addition to his other foundational work, he developed Freud's concept of the ego into a much more scientific and precise formulation that remains useful to this day.

The most practically useful material that Jung has provided has been his work on the unconscious. He conceived the psyche as being composed of the conscious self (aka the ego), the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious consists of the archetypes and other universal, instinctive thought-patterns that essentially all humans share. The personal unconscious, on the other had, is composed of forgotten, repressed, and subliminal memories, messages, and thoughts from an individual's past. Finally, the ego is the tiny percentage of our psyche that is present in our conscious awareness.

As I have worked through Jung's thought, I've come to realize that the unconscious has been severely neglected by the dominant culture, while the conscious self has assumed even more centrality in recent years by virtue of the popularity of mindfulness meditation. Now, first let me note that I'm a big fan and practitioner of mindfulness meditation. But what I've come to realize over the last six months is that it's not enough. If we are ever to gain a fuller understanding of our minds and resulting behaviors, we must engage with our unconscious in an intentional, substantive way.

This is where dream work and active imagination come in. Dream work may be familiar to you, but

the technique of active imagination probably comes as a foreign concept. Taken together, these are the two most important tools we have to uncover the feelings, memories, and ideas hidden in our unconscious, and will be the focus of parts 2 and 3 of this series. Stay tuned!

How to Garden

Four years of growing vegetables by trial and error may not have taught me enough to write a gardening book, but at least I can write a blog post about it. Here goes!

General pointers:

1. Mulch + cardboard > weeds: Be aggressive at keeping weeds down or they will get out of control. A combination of heavy mulching and cardboard works great.
2. Never let weeds reach their reproductive stage: If you do, you'll be fighting a more difficult battle next year.
3. Dan's 2-day rule: Check on the garden every 2 days. Otherwise, you'll be sorry when your tomato plants have been decimated by caterpillars, your squash penetrated with worms, and weeds are out of control.
4. Make sure your fence is super-solid: There are all sorts of varmits waiting to wreak havok on your lovingly cultivated veggies.
5. Harvest seeds and immediately replant in early August when possible.
6. Save seeds for next year in paper (not plastic) bags, labeled with plant and date.
7. Plant seeds inside in March and transplant them to the garden in mid-May (in zone 6b) when the weather for the next 7 days looks promising.
8. Be ruthless about culling plants that have gone to seed.
9. Always plan what you'll do if something doesn't sprout or gets killed.
10. Fertilize every month: It doesn't pay to be stingy with the fertilizer, especially the first few years.
11. Compost as much as possible.
12. Don't vacation in August: if you do, you'll miss a fifth of your harvest.
13. Grow what you like to eat... and what your rabbits like to eat.
14. Gardening by yourself can be very meditative, but gardening with your spouse is more fun! They can also help you weed when the garden is in danger of being overrun by weeds.

Species-specific pointers:

1. Make sure carrots are planted in loose, rich soil: Otherwise, they get stunted by the hard Carolina clay.
2. Roma tomatoes are the best variety to use for tomato sauce.
3. Interplant basil and tomatoes.
4. Stake asparagus fronds: otherwise, they'll all fall over and take up half your garden.
5. Even if kale looks like it died in the winter, give it until June to come back before you cull it.
6. Expect squash seeds to produce some funky varieties the next year if you have more than one squash variety in your garden. Part of me likes the surprise and figuring out what to do with the hybrid varieties, but there are some varieties (delicata, spaghetti, acorn, butternut, buttercup, summer) that I do really like, so I need to either buy those seeds or an actual squash from the grocery store if I want to make sure I get the type of seeds I want.

Pandemic mode, episode 9

Today marks the end of my news fast-- or at least when I planned to end it. After a glorious two weeks without checking the NY Times, watching CNN at work, or clicking on news articles I didn't have to read, I'm considering stretching the fast out to a month... maybe even six weeks, though that might be stretching it. Then again, it may not be. The last couple weeks have been fabulous. 

After two months of digging, weeding, mulching, and planting, Mindy and I finally reached a rare confluence this week of beautiful weather, no work, and no urgent chores or errands. Undistracted by the news, I discovered the headspace to fully enjoy all sorts of activities and to be more present with Mindy, Eliza, and our friends. The siren call of the smartphone was noticeably less alluring without another Trump bashing or COVID-19 analysis on tap. It certainly helped that we went on a couple hikes and an impromptu excursion to the river-- Eliza's first float trip (all 100 feet of it)! Though she had a major meltdown on one of our hikes, we still managed to have a great time hiking the Viaduct area with the Hogan's and exploring my friend Doug's beautiful new trail up Rich Mountain on the back side of Moses Cone Park. 

Another key: my knee stopped hurting. I was even able to bike 15 miles this morning without a twinge! And it was an absolutely perfect spring day, with rays of morning sunlight filtering through the budding trees, brooks babbling, flowers bursting, birds singing and winging, and the mountain air perfectly cool and clear. I couldn't think of a better way or place to spend a morning.

Though I've hardly read a news article this month, I've still been able to stay superficially current on major events, by way of conversation, podcasts, a few articles texted to me, and overheard snippets of TV. But the greatest unlooked-for discovery has definitely been the pleasing absence of Donald Trump from my life. Like the orb of a demiurge, his glowing, orange presence has so overtaken our news media that the everyday waking consciousness of Americans has been transformed into his image. Many of us are now as defined by outrage, division, disgust, vitriol, and a reckless disregard for truth as the Donald himself. And I imagine that even those who dimly realize the danger can scarcely imagine an offramp to such madness. 

But I'm here to tell you, it starts with something quite simple:

Unplug.

Pandemic mode, episode 8

This editorial in The Atlantic is so good, I will risk coming across as a conduit of other people's opinions to share it with you all. Please read. Thanks to Sam Cox for sharing it with me. It makes just about all of the points I would want to make this week, and then some. 

But what it doesn't delve into is the answer to the deep question Sam raised with me and another good friend Nick Sailer, which is, how do we become good citizens?

In recognition of the start of the ninth week under the cloud of this pandemic, I will attempt to answer this question with reflections on nine quotes I hold dear to my heart:

Quotes 1-3 theme: We must step off the hamster wheel and engage in inner work that results in deep transformation.

1. We live in a machine that is designed to get us to neglect what is important in life. 
-Tim Kasser

This is why I haven't been on social media for 2.5 years and why I am in the midst of a news fast. The tiny hits of dopamine we get from social media, advertising, and most television diverts our precious time, attention, and energy into frivolity. 

2. The farther the outward journey takes you, the deeper the inward journey must be. Only when your roots are deep can your fruits be abundant.

-Henri Nouwen

This is the message of Father Richard Rohr and his Center for Action and Contemplation. That name says it all: we must be transformed by contemplation if we are to have any hope of transforming the world without becoming conformed to its ways.

3. For if one knows himself, he will know God.

-Clement of Alexandria, quoted by Carl Jung

Christians tend to think of God as other, completely neglecting the transformative idea that God is not separate from us-- that we are God's vessels, embodiments of the divine with incredible potential for good.

Quotes 4-6 theme: We must use the clarity we obtain from inner work to make changes in our own life that will feed our continued evolution.

4. Every day of our lives, we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.” -Mignon McLaughlin 

Even if this sounds cliche, it's nevertheless a deep truth. With the clarity achieved from contemplation, we are more likely to see the right path to take amidst the fog of everyday life. And if we choose the right force multipliers, the benefits to us and the world will start exponentially accruing, activating a virtuous cycle. Check out your nearest bookstore to read all about the power of habit, atomic habits, etc. But don't forget to actually apply some of it to your life!

5. Beware the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world. - Ben Okri

This idea grows out of the work of Carl Jung, who has deeply influenced me over the last 9 months. Every memory we make and action we take is imprinted into our brain. Anatomically, this process consists of forging new synapses, reinforcing established ones, and altering neurochemical and receptor makeup. But psychologically, it consists of creating memories which eventually become partially forgotten or repressed, but whose signature remains, and returns to us in obsessions, compulsions, anxieties, and dreams-- the stories our brains create out of the raw material of our experiences. Few things imprint our neurology as deeply as narrative, whether the stories we tell about ourselves, others, or the stories others tell. Our lives, and the entire course of human history, turn on the stories we tell.

6. It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. Obviously those two modes of thought are in some tension. But if you are able to exercise only one of these modes, whichever one it is, you’re in deep trouble. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything new. You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. But every now and then, maybe once in a hundred cases, a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and progress. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones. If all ideas have equal validity then you are lost, because then, it seems to me, no ideas have any validity at all. Some ideas are better than others. The machinery for distinguishing them is an essential tool in dealing with the world and especially in dealing with the future. And it is precisely the mix of these two modes of thought that is central to the success of science." -Carl Sagan

An essential aspect of the evolution of our minds is the development of a sophisticated web of mental models that work together to separate truth from fiction. We need a well-calibrated "Belief Bouncer" to keep us on the right track, out of ideological echo chambers, and open to true revelation.

Quotes 7-9 theme: We must not wait for a perfect opportunity to arise, but instead engage in thoughtful action wherever we are.

7. The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves and wise people so full of doubts.” -Bertrand Russell

Doubt and error are unavoidable, recurring stages in everyone's journey. But we must not let that prevent us from acting out of core convictions that have been honed by habitual reflection. As Brett McKay likes to put it, "Get Action." The flip side of this, of course, is that fools reliably fall prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect, overestimating their ability and making other people's lives worse-- cf Jared Kushner.

8. We want to have certainties and no doubt — results and no experiments — without even seeing that certainties can arise only through doubt and results only through experiment. -Carl Jung

Like Steve Jobs liked to say, it takes a lot of hard work to make things simple, whether that's an object like the iPhone or the way one thinks about a particular topic. But we should always try to maintain the mindset of a scientist in our search for truth, and not be distracted by our primitive need for security, certainty, and comfort.

9. Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action. -Napoleon Hill

Part of what makes us human is our ability to plan. And the better planner a person is, the more awesome their life generally becomes. Conversely, those who live only for the moment mostly end in ruin. Just read Proverbs! But occasionally, they still end up as president of the United States-- so we're also subject to good fortune and bad luck! Just read Job! Nevertheless, our obligation-- and the only rational course of action-- is to accumulate AND APPLY as much knowledge as possible. 

Well, it seems impossible for me to get through a blog post without highlighting at least one of Trump's endless faults. But I hope that these reflections have helped calibrate you all to a deeper perspective, beyond the perturbations of the daily news cycle-- one that is defined by gratitude, humility, wisdom, self-knowledge, and conviction. And on this Mother's Day, may you find time to truly appreciate and enjoy the one(s) who have given the most to help you reach that pinnacle of human development.

Be well.

Pandemic mode, episode 7

The best thing I read this week was one of today's Op-Eds in the New York Times. It only takes a few minutes to read, so please check it out. It's a fitting last bit of news media for me before I start a 2-week news fast tomorrow. In case you don't have time to read it, I'll quote a few paragraphs that particularly struck me: 

     “This is history right in front of us,” Garrett said. “Did we go ‘back to normal’ after 9/11? No. We created a whole new normal. We securitized the United States. We turned into an antiterror state. And it affected everything. We couldn’t go into a building without showing ID and walking through a metal detector, and couldn’t get on airplanes the same way ever again. That’s what’s going to happen with this.” 

     Not the metal detectors, but a seismic shift in what we expect, in what we endure, in how we adapt. 

     Maybe in political engagement, too, Garrett said.

     If America enters the next wave of coronavirus infections “with the wealthy having gotten somehow wealthier off this pandemic by hedging, by shorting, by doing all the nasty things that they do, and we come out of our rabbit holes and realize, ‘Oh, my God, it’s not just that everyone I love is unemployed or underemployed and can’t make their maintenance or their mortgage payments or their rent payments, but now all of a sudden those jerks that were flying around in private helicopters are now flying on private personal jets and they own an island that they go to and they don’t care whether or not our streets are safe,’ then I think we could have massive political disruption.”

     “Just as we come out of our holes and see what 25 percent unemployment looks like,” she said, “we may also see what collective rage looks like.”

This is the kind of shift I am attempting to think through in this blog series. Though each week's news items can be important, I'm much more interested in the seismic activity happening miles below society's surface than the direction of each day's political wind.

We're all trying to see the silver lining to this crisis, and that's good and necessary. But as a society, we aren't giving enough thought to what the worst-case scenarios are over the next few years, and what we should be doing now to both prevent and prepare for them.

Getting "back to normal" is a fantasy, as the editorial indicates. Sure, most people will eventually be able to go back to work, although local disease transmission will ramp up at various points over the next couple years and we'll have to close down shop again. Each time we have to do that, damage will accumulate-- and not just economic damage, either. The societal changes that will result will be with us for a very long time.

For one, the ever-deepening tribalism defining left versus right, cosmopolitan versus parochial, secular versus fundamentalist, will deepen, just when it seemed we couldn't become any more fractured. Brother will turn against brother and father turn against son. Violence-- especially gun violence-- will continue to increase. And more and more walls will keep going up.

Donald Trump ("the most incompetent, foolhardy buffoon imaginable") completely lacks the cognitive flexibility to adapt to this novel, very unusual reality. Unfortunately, he's surrounded himself with like-minded egotistical sycophants. So I have exactly no hope that the federal government will take any significant appropriate action until at least January 2021. And this reality has magnified what would have otherwise been a manageable problem.

That problem is that many people cling to the hope that everything will just go back to the way it was in a couple months or a couple years. And Donald Trump has fed that fantasy until it seems like an inevitable reality to the people he holds under his sway. Just around the corner, very soon, we'll have all the testing we'll need, a vaccine, a magical cure. Heck, it might already be in every household's cleaning closet, just waiting to be discovered by Trump's "very stable genius."

I reiterate: there are no easy outs, no deus ex machina, no going back to the way things were. 

Take it from me: I live in a county where there has still been no local coronavirus transmission. And after two months, it's tempting to believe that Watauga County is somehow exempt from the epidemiological reality of the rest of the world. But it's not. COVID-19 is coming for us, too-- it's just taking longer to get here. 

The pandemic is becoming, in many ways, a war of attrition. The most mentally strong individuals, groups, communities, states, and nations will weather the storm the best. Wartime nations like South Korea, Israel, and Taiwan are killing it because they are not operating under the decadent nostrum that everything you want is just a click and a 2-day wait away. Important, meaningful, and necessary things take time, effort, perseverance, grit, resolve, and patience. You must constantly be strengthening your spirit with solitude and discomfort, and feeding your soul with silence and love if you are going to be able to resist the siren call-- the desire to go "back to normal," in this case. 

Weak-willed and feeble-minded hordes are already storming the gates to make everything normal again, to make America great again... again. We are undergoing a national stress test in which the real women and men are being separated from the girls and boys. So if you're wavering, tempted to believe this all has been an uncomfortable dream we're about to wake up from-- don't. Push through the denial and bargaining stages of grief. If you're despairing, do what you need to do to find solace. If you're angry, dig into that feeling until you come out the other side. Beyond all that lies acceptance: not passive acceptance, mind you, but the aequinimitas of the enlightened sage that recognizes the things one can't change while maintaining the wisdom, strength, and will to change the things one can.

No matter who or where you are, there are plenty of things you can and should do. So do them.

Keep love alive. And stay strong. We have a very long road ahead of us.

Pandemic mode, episode 6

First, the haps:

-Neuse Correctional in Goldsboro, NC made national headlines after 465 (and counting) inmates tested positive for the virus. A number of other prisons, nursing homes, and factories (especially meat-processing plants) across the country also reported major outbreaks, increasingly in rural areas.

-Georgia, South Carolina, and Oklahoma were the first states to dip their toes into the hazardous waters of relaxing restrictions this week. This, while many states including Georgia are still seeing a rise in new cases and testing capacity remains inadequate across the entire country, raising concerns about the inability to detect new hotspots before they get out of control.

-The West Coast states, which took the first aggressive social distancing measures (which are all still in place), have been the only states to not just flatten, but bend the "curve" of new cases downward.

-Confirmed US cases are just under 1 million and deaths right at 50,000-- with the true case count certainly in the several-million range accounting for inadequate testing.

-Far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro continues to minimize the impact of the coronavirus, and his country has only developed the capacity to test a mere 6,700 people per day. Meanwhile, hospitals and morgues there are starting to overflow. The only conceivable near-term scenario is a fate worse than Italy's, even if the country were to magically get their act together this week-- which appears unlikely.

-Testing continues to lag throughout much of the rest of the world. But whatever the numbers may show, it's a fact that the virus is making its presence more felt in developing countries, and that the worst is definitely still to come for the poorest nations.


On the political front:

-Trump's public musings about injecting people with bleach, instilling it into their lungs, and opening up their bodies to expose the virus to UV light prompted a huge backlash from across the political spectrum. The embarrassing episode appears to have finally put an end to his nightly 2-hour televised "briefings." Which is the best news I've heard in weeks.

-As the weeks turn into months, Trump's inadequacies have become only more obvious. The brief and anemic bump in support he received in March has already evaporated, leaving his support back at his baseline of 43%, and below 50% in all the swing states he needs to stay in office. Progressives are starting to truly hope against hope that this year's election will be a good one, while preparing for the worst tactics of voter suppression that Republicans can muster.


And on the home front:

-Eliza rolled from front to back for the first time this week, and continues to increase the complexity and frequency of her vocalizations. She's going to be a talker!

-Mindy and I had stone steps put into our side gardens this week, and they look great. The gardens are taking nearly all of our free time, but that's been a nice stress reliever. Photos coming soon.

-My knee is feeling better, but I haven't tried to run yet. I'll probably start moving that direction in another week.


Stay patient, everyone-- as you all know, we aren't through this by any stretch of the imagination. But despite all the bad news, good things still happen every day.

Be well.

Pandemic mode, episode 5

This week's biggest stories involved the protests against shelter-in-place orders in several state capitals (including N.C), which Trump tweeted his support for despite the recommendations from his administration that those orders not yet be rescinded. I think most people recognize these protesters (some of whom intentionally disregarded physical distancing ordinances) are idiots. But the numbers are starting to bear out that significant numbers of people are not taking physical distancing seriously enough. For one, N.C.'s number of new cases per week actually increased last week despite my hope last week that it was plateauing. And similar things are happening in many other places around the country, urban, suburban, and rural. Though case numbers are not exploding most places, the R-naught is still above 1 in many locales-- and we STILL don't have enough testing capacity to know even a ballpark figure on numbers of true cases. Though officially around 730,000, I'd bet that well over 2 million have actually contracted the virus.

Which brings me to the question: when to relax restrictions. The biggest limitation in our ability to relax restrictions is our testing incapacity. Hotspots will be missed for too long if we open up in the next few weeks before we have the ability to test enough people with enough frequency. And since new cases are still increasing week-to-week in many parts of the country even with our current restrictions, there's no question that many locales will see a major surge in new cases if enough people stop physical distancing. So in my mind, most of us have another month of this before we can even think about turning the lights back on.

I'd also like to offer my thoughts on the initial $2.2 trillion stimulus package, and the upcoming packages that are currently held up in Congress. Firstly, it's startling how quickly we burned through that much money. It's also frustrating that so much went to corrupt big business, and that basically no strings were attached-- but I get that they just wanted to get the money out the door to avoid widespread bankruptcies. The Community Care Clinic and several of my friends have benefitted from the relief package, so even though my job hasn't been hit, the stimulus does hit pretty close to home. Hopefully the next bill(s) will be more small-business- and environmentally- friendly. And it seems obvious that people and businesses will need much more money from the federal government over the coming months to keep the lights on and food on the table.

It's remarkable that Republicans have been so willing to pass large stimulus packages this time around after rebuffing Obama for additional aid after the initial $1 trillion package was passed in 2009. The obvious reason for the difference is that they wanted Obama to look responsible for a shaky recovery, while they certainly want to give the economy every chance to get back on track by November for political reasons (ie to effect Trump's reelection and Republican congressional victories). It's also remarkable that there are essentially no public voices condemning the aid, except probably a few hard-core libertarians. This belies the libertarian case for pure free markets. If we didn't have a government that could send out checks right now, the entire economy would crash and burn, with an enormous human toll. Much as my former self hates to say it, we desperately need the government right now. Although we will have to pay the price in the future.

It's simply cruel that Trump (who still has no coherent plan to face this crisis and whose approach has been to assume that nature will simply bend to his will, then blame everyone else when things go poorly) is in charge of said government, rather than someone like Elizabeth Warren who came up with a very impressive plan back in JANUARY. If we could roll the tape back to January and put her in charge, literally thousands of dead Americans would be alive today, billions of dollars would have been saved, and we would not be facing many more weeks of physical distancing. Once you read her plan, you'll realize that what I just claimed is as close to a fact as one can get in the realm of hypotheticals. The inadequacy and incompetence of the Trump administration's response remains staggering, and it's not getting any better with time.

Politically, Trump disastrous response to the pandemic has the significant potential silver lining of making him less likely to be reelected in November. Millions of people and the economy as a whole will almost certainly still be suffering no matter how many bills get passed. And the economy in the 6 months leading up to an election is the most important factor in whether a president gets reelected. I hate to get my hopes up about the Senate flipping to Democrat, but I am saying there's more of a chance for that, too. If someone like Corey Booker rather than Joe Biden was the nominee, I'd feel even better about the chances of those things coming to pass.

Stepping off my political soapbox... it's been a nice week around here. I had the whole week off, spent a lot of quality time with the baby, and Mindy and I got a lot done around the house. The vegetable garden is getting off to a good start, the mulch is getting spread, and we are having rock steps put into our side gardens, which has been one of Mindy's dreams since we moved into the house. We've enjoyed watching Boone UMC's live-streamed services every Sunday, and are keeping up with people pretty well with phone calls and video chats. Things have settled into a rhythm. And I've had a little time to literally dream and engage in a few Active Imagination sessions-- more of that to come shortly! 

Stay well, stay calm, and keep up that physical distancing.

Training update

As you can tell from the graph above, I spent the winter upping my running game and neglecting the bike, in preparation for the "Mortimer 100" relay running race on March 14th. Leading up to the race, I was feeling fit and had high hopes for my performance. But one thing I had noticed during my runs was that my iliotibial (IT) bands would consistently start hurting right around the 6 mile mark on runs-- which is what I limited my running distance to. Unfortunately, I was assigned three 7-mile sections of the race.

Sure enough, my IT bands started hurting with about half a mile left on my first leg. Despite massaging them as much as I could during my rest, they started back shortly after I started my second leg, and got worse... and worse... and worse. After alternatively walking and jogging for a couple miles, I threw in the towel. It just wasn't meant to be.

Though it was bad enough that I had to have other runners finish my portions of the race, the right knee pain I have experienced over the past month since the race has been much worse. I seem to have developed a moderate to severe case of patellofemoral pain syndrome, and am unable to run or do many of the other exercises I like to do. Fortunately, I've still been able to bike some, which has ticked up in the past month as you can see. I've also started doing daily rehab exercises to strengthen my quads, which I'm convinced is the underlying issue. But with the amount of pain I'm still experiencing, I anticipate it will be at least another month before I can start running again. I'm just going to have to be patient!

Taking my injury into account, and considering that triathlons may be cancelled anyway this year because of COVID-19, I've transitioned to thinking of this year as a rebuilding year. I'm going to rehab the heck out of my legs, and be stronger than ever this time next year. My IT bands have plagued me since high school, so I know that getting my legs stronger is not going to be a quick process. But if I'm ever going to complete a half-ironman, half-marathon, relay race, or any other long-distance running, I'm going to have to put forth the effort to get beyond this limitation.

Am I a little disappointed? Sure. But I'm also thankful that the relay race brought to my attention a nagging issue I would have needed to address sooner or later anyway... and that I hadn't yet signed up for any races or even purchased my yearly USAT membership yet. Plus, cutting back on triathlon training opens my schedule up for more kayaking!

I do wish I could still swim, especially on workdays, but it looks like the river is my only option until local pools open up again. As with many things over the past month, I've had to be flexible and adapt! And with this issue, I mean that quite literally.

Hopefully in another 16 weeks, I'll have good news about my leg. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to finish a sprint triathlon later in the year. Time will tell! Be well, everyone.