Daily Life

Are You A Driver Or A Passenger?

Seven months ago, I retired. It’s weird to think that “I’m retired”. That’s something old people do. At the time I didn’t really say anything about it, as it just seemed odd. I wrote something vague about leaving healthcare, but I didn’t mention that was the end of the work phase of my life. I will say that I do not miss working. I’ve held a job of some sort every year of my life since I was thirteen. From paper routes to lifeguarding to working in ski shops and a short order cook. I worked my way up in the tech world from writing manuals to phone support to traveling to do on-site deployment and installations. I moved on to software engineering and managing large tech teams. Eventually I got bored and moved to healthcare. So, it’s fair to say I’ve put my time in. And now I’m done.

So what does this have to do with anything? Well, last night some friends we hadn’t seen in a while asked, “are you loving retirement?” And… I really didn’t have an answer.

When Mrs Troutdog and I decided it was time to be done, I had visions of travel and exploring without the constraints of worrying about the 9-5 routine. I had projects I needed to do, and creative stuff I’ve been thinking about. Finally, unlimited time to cook and get my diet and fitness dialed in.

So, did all that happen? Uh, no. Not exactly. I honestly don’t know where the time went or what I’ve been doing. We had a house remodel going on that consumed time and schedules. The weather this year has been weird, making it a little harder to do outside stuff. I did some motorcycle riding, but not as much as I’d thought I’d do. The creative juices faded a bit. I spent a lot of time reading and napping. In a nutshell I blinked, and half a year went by.

Why did that happen? I realized I’ve been a passenger instead of a driver. As an adult, especially in the midst of your working life, it’s easy to become a slave to your calendar. There’s a contractor coming to the house this afternoon; hockey tickets tomorrow; need to grocery shopping; a friend wants to play golf on Wednesday; I need to clean up the garage a bit; laundry; lawn needs mowing; we have to go to that thing with your sister this weekend. And so on, and so on, and so on. It’s life.

But time marches on and eventually you realize all you’re doing is being reactive to the tasks and events on your calendar. You’re being a passenger in life. You’re not driving the calendar – it’s driving you. I get it when you’re mid-career, you’ve got young kids and juggling the soccer mom/dad thing. It’s hard to do anything other than just get through the day-to-day minutia. But I don’t have that excuse. I literally have unlimited time. I can put anything on my calendar I want.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my life. I’m very fortunate to be in the position I’m in. I’m not bored at all. But it’s clear that I’m not really driving my life right now. I’m just drifting along, enjoying whatever pops up any given day. Maybe after a long work career, that’s enough for some folks. But not me. I want more.

It’s time to climb into the drivers seat and dictate what I want out of my time. Because as the last half-year has demonstrated, time is accelerating at a frightening pace. I can’t control time, but I can control what I do with that time.

How about you? Are you being a driver or a passenger?

Daily Life, Diet, Health

Let’s Go To The Numbers

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. Somehow this blog turned into nothing but writing about my (lack of) health and fitness. I don’t know how that happened and it wasn’t my intention. But for some reason, 90% of my few followers have some connection to the health/nutrition/fitness industry. I don’t get it. Write about some current event or a political issue, and crickets. Write about how many cookies I ate last week, and I get new followers. I find it bizarre. Anyway, clearly you asked for it, so let’s go into excruciating detail about my numbers.

As part of this years revolution (not resolution), I’ll be tracking my weight daily. I want to see how things fluctuate with food and exercise. I use an impedance scale (this one if interested) which provides a number of stats. First off, yes I know they are not a precise tool. The non-weight numbers tend to fluctuate quite a bit from day to day. But as a way to watch trends over time, I think it’s a fine tool.

A side note on interesting observations… I’ve been using the scale on and off for a number of years. Out of curiosity I went back to when I was at my leanest and most cardio-fit (was doing tons of mountain trail running). At that point my body fat was 17.5% and lean muscle mass was 132 lbs. I wasn’t exactly Viking warrior material – more like Chris Froome cyclist physique.

Fast forward to today. Body fat is, well… an embarrassing 26.8% I know, I know, we’re working on it. But here’s the interesting number. I’ve been lifting weights seriously for about four months now. Muscle mass today is at 147.8 lbs. A 15.8 lb gain in lean muscle mass! Now I don’t think that’s a super accurate number, but it has been steadily increasing over the last few months. Given my age and the back issues I’ve had recently, I’ll take muscle mass and core strength improvements over body fat%.

But we’re all vain creatures (if we’re honest) and I’m tired of struggling to button my jeans, so the body fat number is important. The official weigh in was Jan 2. Here’s what the numbers show:

Jan 2 food/exercise: several eggs + bacon; string cheese, grapes, a few pretzels; tri-tip, salad; a big piece of cake; went downhill skiing for the day.

Jan 3 weight increased .2 lbs, no change in body fat%.

Jan 3 food/exercise: stuffed bell pepper + cheese/sour cream; plate of Chinese food; big handful of chips; another plate of Chinese food; 1 small piece of chocolate; Split and carried wood up a flight of stairs for 40 minutes, went cross country skiing.

Jan 4 weight increased 2.4 lbs and body fat increased .4%

What the hell? So frustrating. Zero alcohol, nothing crazy calorie-wise (well, cake), was pretty active, and I gain 2+ pounds. This is why people get so frustrated dieting.

Here’s my guess – Because I cut out alcohol, I’ve been pounding fluids. Water, coffee, and 3-4 “vitamin waters”. It doesn’t seem like I’ve voided commensurate with overall fluid intake and I’m sure the Chinese food had tons of sodium. My theory is that most of that weight gain is fluid retention. Maybe? Unfortunately, the scale says my water percentage has actually gone down, so I don’t know what to think.

Obviously, the answer is to go back to tracking calories (I use this app) and map that to the scales data and watch the trend. Once I see a clear trend with calories to weight loss, I can create a bunch of known calorie meals and plan for the week. Remember – revolution, not resolution. Systems, not goals.

Sigh… why is this so hard? I want to go back to my twenties and the steady diet of burgers and nachos just to keep weight on.

Daily Life, Motivation

Resolution Or Revolution?

It’s time for the annual beginning of the year resolutions. I’ve never been a big fan of resolutions. Mostly because I rarely keep them for more than a week. Also, because at my age do I really need to be resolving to eat more tofu to save the planet? No. Tomorrow is not a guarantee. Besides, making resolutions like that are just virtue signaling. Nobody cares.

But every few years I do try to set goals. Take last year. I was bored leading up to the new year and binge watched a bunch of minimalist and productivity YouTube videos. I went on a two-day productivity frenzy getting ready for the new year. I re-re-re-started a bullet journal. I put schedules and workout plans together. I mapped out all the motorcycle and camping trips I wanted to do. I even put a 2022 Goals page together with tracking metrics that I was going to use to measure progress.

I had a lot of fitness goals, some fly-fishing things I wanted to do, motorcycle camping trips, and a bunch of river rafting day trips I planned on doing. You can see that my goals are not terribly intellectual, spiritual, or altruistic. I never claimed to be the sharpest crayon in the box. Anyway, so how many did I accomplish? Zero. Zip. None. Nadda. Whoo hoo! Underachievers of the world, unite!

Interestingly, I’d completely forgotten I’d even set those goals. I stumbled upon them yesterday while I was looking for something else. Clearly, they weren’t terribly memorable or important to me if I didn’t even remember them. It made me think about what I wanted out of this current new year. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there wasn’t any single thing I could come up with. I literally couldn’t come up with a single, burning desire that I wanted to accomplish this year. Not one thing. My god, how uninteresting and shallow of a person does that make me?

Have I turned into one of those boring country rubes with no life desires other than to sit on the porch and watch the traffic go by? Don’t get me wrong, there are things I want to do – ride the motorcycle, get back to making YouTube content, lose weight, work on the house, etc… but I don’t have a driving passion to make them happen. If they happen, great. If not, oh well.

After writing and re-reading that last paragraph, I don’t like what it says about my state of mind. My god, that’s a recipe for complacency and a ticket straight to sitting on the couch, watching ESPN reruns and eating bon-bons. So now what?

I thought about writing down goals again, but I’d just be making stuff up and would be ignoring them in a few weeks as per usual. I really thought about this for some time, and then accidentally stumbled upon one of the definitions of “revolution”.

a forcible overthrow of a social order, in favor of a new system

It reminded me of something cartoonist and writer Scott Adams says, “for success, create systems instead of goals”. For example, wanting to lose ten pounds is a goal. Learning to eat right is a system that substitutes knowledge for willpower.

So that’s it. It’s time for a Revolution. We’re throwing out my old social order and creating a new one. The plan for 2023 is to create systems instead of goals. Routines that make it easier to succeed at the day-to-day. Routines that lead to better habits around health. Routines that make it more likely to plan trips, house tasks, and creative projects. The more I think about it, the more I like it.

The problem with many revolutions is that once you’ve fired up the population and stormed the gates, you hit a “now what?” moment. Do I go throw everything out of the pantry? Mount a huge chalkboard for meal planning in the kitchen? Start blocking out days on the calendar to force myself to plan things? Re-re-re-re-start the bullet journal?

Hmmm… Analysis paralysis. Ok, maybe I don’t know what this is going to look like yet, but I promise change is happening. Stay tuned.

Viva la revoluciĆ³n!

Government

It’s A Conspiracy

Over this past Christmas break, we traveled to a warmer climate to visit the in-laws. It was a lovely trip, but spending time with my in-laws is, well, unique. Think the Costanzas from Seinfeld and you’ll have a pretty good picture of the experience. They’re getting older, so things tend to move at a glacial pace. You’d think I’d have figured this out by now, but for some reason I’m always baffled as to why we can’t get out of the house before 2pm. And you have to be back to the house by 4pm so you can take naps before dinner. Anyway, the end result is that I have plenty of time sitting around the pool… waiting.

To fill my time this trip, I read. I actually lost track of how many books I finished (there was a lot of waiting). Part of the reason I read so many books, is that I went down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. Now I love me a good conspiracy theory. There’s just something about challenging conventional wisdom that appeals to the Contrarian in me.

But to be a good conspiracy theory, it can’t be too wacky. Chemtrails and birds aren’t real are too far-fetched. No, the theory needs to be outside of mainstream thinking, but have just enough facts rooted in reality to make you go “hmmm”. You don’t want to believe, but something in the narrative is just enough that you begin to doubt what you’ve been told.

I started my journey with the Kennedy assassination. First off, it’s weird that the government won’t declassify anything other than rehashed Warren commission stuff. That by itself is enough to make you go “hmmm”. The more I read, I’d think “no, that couldn’t be”. I’d do a little independent research and sure enough a certain person was verifiably there or involved in some way. It was an awesome trip down a weird rabbit hole. And you know it was a good conspiracy theory when you then start thinking, well if that could have happened, what else could be covered up? Boom. Next thing you know I’m four books into big brother controlling my thoughts and the CCP monitoring my activities through my smart refrigerator. I loved it!

Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory. That’s why we’re so susceptible to ads and YouTube thumbnails that start with “Nobody knows this one trick to…” or “The secret Costco price strategy…” and “Lose weight by eating this little-known food…” We all want to be in on the secret.

But after my multi-day reading frenzy, I don’t know if I want to learn about any more conspiracies. Because if they’re even partially true – it’s disturbing, and kind of depressing. I WANT to believe that the world is fair and that everyone plays by the rules. I want to believe that evil cabals only exist in the movies. Otherwise, it means that us little guys are suckers and just pawns in a game that’s rigged.

I think it’s time for me to step away from the conspiracy theory genre. Maybe I’ll go find a good spy thriller or a whodunit mystery. Meanwhile, you’ll have to excuse me for a bit – I need to cover all the cameras and speakers in my house with black tape. With the research I did, I’m positive I’m now on some sort of government watch-list. Should I suddenly disappear, please know that I have no desire to Epstein or Mcafee myself.

P.S. birds aren’t real

Diet, Health

I Have To Take A Test?

Humans, by nature, are procrastinators. We generally don’t have a good grasp on large-scale time, so it’s easy to put things off. I’ll start my diet on Monday. Yeah, I know I should probably start tracking my blood pressure. I haven’t gone to a doctor in a long time, but I’m just so busy right now. We all do it. Things that aren’t an immediate concern are easy to put off. Next thing you know, months (or years) have gone by. You just don’t think about it, until something bad happens.

Someone we know recently had a family member whose husband suffered a massive heart attack right in front of her. It must have been an awful experience. He was only a few years older than me. I’ll be honest, it sort of freaked me out. To be what I consider still relatively young and have something like that happen. How did he not know he was at risk? The answer is that most of us don’t. My floor at the hospital was neuroscience. A large portion of our patients were stroke victims. And a very large portion of those patients either had no idea they were at risk, or probably knew and chose not to take corrective action. I get it – we’re procrastinators. We can always start tomorrow. I’ve got plenty of time.

There’s a screening test I’d been planning on taking for a while but kept putting off. It’s the coronary artery calcium scan. It shows how much plaque buildup you have in your arteries. The score you get gives you an idea of where you risk factor falls as a percentile based upon your age. Typical numbers range from zero to 400, although it’s not uncommon to see numbers in the 1,000’s. With your score you can make decisions with your doctor about risk factors and medication and lifestyle changes needed to best manage your lifelong risk. This is a pretty good video to describe the test a bit more.

Anyway, I’d been planning on getting the test and actually had a referral set up from my doctor and then virus which shall not be named hit and everything shut down. And I promptly forgot about the test. That is, until I heard about the guy having the heart attack last week. Convinced my arteries were already completely occluded, I called my doctor and got the referral right away.

The test is an easy and non-invasive CT scan (a fancy Xray). 15 minutes. If insurance doesn’t cover it, it’s not expensive – $150 to $300. The odd thing is that very few general practitioners will prescribe it as a general screening tool unless you’re already in a high-risk category. You almost always have to ask for it. It makes no sense. We have a cheap, non-invasive screening tool available, why not use it? I suppose just prescribing statins to everyone based upon cholesterol ratios is easier. Whatever.

Anyway, I got my test done. And by that afternoon I had the results. Perfect. A score of zero. No evidence of plaque buildup. Whew! I can continue to eat bacon. Because I’m older and not exactly a life-long marathon runner, I was convinced for some reason that my results were going to come back and show significant blockage. I don’t know why I was so sure of it. It must be the realization that I am aging. I’m drifting towards that age when bad things start happening to people. Very morbid, I know.

But all is good. I’ve been working hard in the gym and seeing improvement. Ski season started and my fitness is better at this early stage than it’s been in a while. I’m pleased. Except the diet. I just can’t seem to bust through that mental blockage. I blame it on hockey. Our local ECHL team has a deal where if they score 4 goals everyone in the stadium gets a coupon for a free Jumbo Jack. This season we’ve been winning a lot, and by large margins. Let’s just say I have more free Jumbo Jack coupons than I need. And the last thing I need to do is be eating Jumbo Jacks. The struggle is real, people.

Diet, Health

I Figured It Out

I’m not positive, but I think I figured out why I can’t lose weight. Take a look at my food journal and see if you can spot the problem:

06:25 Wake up and make first cup of coffee. Have inner dialog resolving not to eat until after working out.

07:15 Have second cup of coffee. Decide it’s too cold to workout, may as well eat. Make a small breakfast burrito. NARRATOR: The burrito was not small. Two eggs became three (didn’t want to leave an odd number of eggs in the carton), one portion of sausage became two, a small handful of cheese became three, and all topped with avocado. The burrito was, in fact so large it couldn’t be completely rolled up.

11:20 Workout complete, must eat protein. Two hard boiled eggs, avocado, string cheese, and one or possibly four handfuls of crackers.

12:45 Staring at the pantry. Open the fridge. Back to pantry. Leave with more crackers and string cheese.

2:30 Back in front of pantry. Makes bag of popcorn. Resolves not to drink alcohol tonight, and only eat a small dinner portion.

5:30 Find myself with a cocktail in hand, unclear how that happened. Resolve to drink water with dinner.

6:45 Discovers we forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer, so we’ll have to go out for dinner. Resolves to order only a salad. NARRATOR: The actual order was a burger, fries, and a side of ranch. It’s also possible two beers were consumed.

10:45 Standing in front of the pantry again. Nothing looks appetizing, so one last cocktail before bed.

11:50 Laying in bed. Ok, ok, ok. Tomorrow is a new day. We’re eating CLEAN all day. Promise.

Did you spot the problem? Clearly it was the crackers. No more crackers! I’m throwing them all away tomorrow. Crackers raise my blood sugar and cause inflammation. I’m fairly sure that’s why I’m not dropping weight. NARRATOR: He did not, in fact, throw away the crackers.

Motivation

It’s All About The Effort

I’m sitting here with my legs quivering and on fire. My damaged back is going to bark at me the rest of the day. Why? I went mountain biking early this morning. Now wait, you might say if you’ve been a long-time reader… this guy writes all the time about going for a ride. What’s the deal? The difference is that I rode with my new next-door neighbor. He’s much younger and in good shape. I thought I’d be fine since I do ride from time to time. I was wrong.

It turns out you are a horrible judge of your own level of effort. Since I have the freedom to ride during the week, more often than not I’m riding solo. The other folks I ride with are of equal strength and conditioning. So when I’m cranking along, I think I’m putting out max effort. I’m breathing hard and it feels like I’m pushing it. But if you don’t have any way to actually measure or compare your effort, you never really know.

To keep up on this ride, I was pretty much red-lined the entire way. There was no conversation… I was too busy trying to suck in air. Same thing on the downhill. I thought I was a reasonably fast rider, but I couldn’t keep up with him going down. Here’s the interesting part. While I was working 10x as hard as he was, I generally kept up. So, I have the ability. Why haven’t I been riding at that level all along?

I think that’s what separates truly elite athletes from the rest of us. They have the ability to push themselves to their true limit day in and day out. Most of the rest of us quit way before that. It’s hard, it hurts, and we don’t really know what our actual limit is. I’ve noticed the same thing in my attempts at lifting weights. During our recent vacation, the resort gym didn’t have the same weight kettlebell as I’ve been using. So, I grabbed that bigger kettlebell and managed to do the same workout. At home, I would have been convinced that it was too heavy and hard. Why?

Clearly, I’ve been sandbagging myself and didn’t really know it. The new goal is now to make sure every workout leaves me in a quivering puddle on the floor. I will push weights to actual failure. I will ride at redline as much as possible.

Because what could go wrong? It’s not like I’m an old dude with a bad shoulder and damaged back. It’s not like I’m setting myself up for overuse injuries or anything, right?

Sitting here with my quads on fire, maybe I’ll just get an E-bike instead. Motor assist sounds pretty good right now.

Daily Life

I Got Scammed

As a registered Contrarian, I tend to be suspicious of everything until I verify it myself. I don’t click on links in emails. I have yet to supply my banking information to a Nigerian prince to share the sum of $3,001,287 dollars US. I don’t believe anything politicians tell me. I don’t use public Wi-Fi. In short, I’m not a very trusting person. And yet, I managed to fall for a scam. The worst part? I went in knowing they were trying to sell me something.

Let me explain. We own a timeshare in Mexico. We bought it thirteen years ago. It’s a long story as to how we ended up with a timeshare, but all-in-all we’ve enjoyed it. Every single time we go, we get the hardcore push to attend a “members update”. There is no update. It’s a play to upsell more points or status level to you. We went a few times to get the free drink tickets they bribe you with, but generally I refuse to attend.

I don’t remember how I got talked into going this time, but somehow I found myself in the hotel lobby with Mrs. Troutdog and the couple who came to Mexico with us. Things did not go well straight out of the gate. The “coordinator” insisted we had to listen to the presentation separately from the other couple. We said no. She insisted. We said no. Off the coordinator went to discuss with someone in another room. She came back and said they’d make a special exception this time. Next, they wanted a credit card from each of us to “verify ID”. We all said no. She insisted. We all said no. She insisted. We all said no. Finally, she reluctantly agreed and took us to meet our sales guys.

It’s at this point a smarter man would have walked out. I am clearly not a smart man. But at the time I was convinced I was far too smart to believe any of the nonsense they were about to dish out. Off we went to get a tour of the penthouse unit. Our sales guys were straight out of used car sales finishing school. One of them was convinced he was Don Johnson from Miami Vice – he wore a silver suit with ridiculous black Vans sneakers and had his hair slicked back. The other guy spent his time telling us he was a very successful real estate developer and builder and was just here as a favor to his friend the VP of sales. Mmmm, right.

We listened to these two goons babble about real estate prices, the shortage of hotel rooms, and room rates for quite a while. At the time I wasn’t clear on why they were telling us this. Then the heavy came in. He had copies of our original contracts along with a few other documents. I’ll spare you the details, but he basically said due to a loophole in the contract he was obligated to offer us the option to purchase a huge number of points at an unheard-of price. The company would be taking a huge hit, but legally he had to give us the option.

This is a one-time deal. Walk out of the room and it won’t be offered again.

The way he presented the contract loophole was so well done… I thought it was real. It was an opportunity to rent out multiple weeks of rooms and make passive income with virtually no effort on our part. After hearing and seeing the going room rates, this really seemed like a way to make some money. I mean, they had contracts and legal looking documents. It had to be legit.

He left us alone in the room to talk amongst ourselves. We went back and forth, unable to decide if it was real or not. It was a lot of money to buy in and none of us wanted to make a snap decision. He came back and said something that was so off-putting, we got up and walked out. His words were, “I’m leaving in twenty minutes because I have to go buy seven Rolex watches for my team. When I leave, the offer is off the table.” Really? Who says something like that?

We spent the remaining vacation days enjoying fruity drinks at the pool and eating too much excellent food. While I was happy we walked away, I was still 60-ish percent convinced it had been a legitimate offer.

Once home, Mrs. Troutdog found an owners group on Facebook. There it was in black and white. A total scam. Multiple other people had received some variation of the same pitch. I was shocked that a large and fairly reputable company would stoop to something so slimy and blatantly deceitful. Because I honestly didn’t believe a corporation would go to those lengths to scam people out of money, I mostly believed the pitch. Sure, I expected some hard sales attempts to get us to upgrade to a bigger unit or something, but not outright deception.

Shame on me. I’ve lost some Contrarian points over this one. I’m shocked I got pulled in by the story. And sadly, I’m now even more distrustful of other humans. How do people like that look at themselves in the mirror? I guess all you can do is hope the karma bus is waiting around the corner for them.

Meanwhile, it turns out a week of drinking, nachos, and extravagant dinners is not good for your diet. Who knew? I guess I better hit the gym. I may go for run on the treadmill for an hour. Or twenty.

Daily Life

Bro, Do You Even Bidet?

I’ve been out of the country for a week and missed all the election fun. I’m sure you’ve been waiting breathlessly for my brilliant analysis of the shenanigans. This is not that. Instead, we’re going to talk about an extremely important topic – Bidet vs. Toilet.

As I said, while it’s been snowing back at home, I’ve been on a beach for the last week consuming far too many watered-down drinks and eating large volumes of chips and guacamole. Upon arriving and checking into our room I was delighted to discover that the toilet was a fancy electronic bidet. I’ve never had the pleasure of using one and was excited to discover a whole new world. I’ve read several condescending articles from Europeans on what Neanderthals us Americas are for still using dry paper to clean up after doing our business. Actually I think it was just the French, but the point remains. How do you expect to get clean just using dry paper?

Needless to say, I was looking forward to this new experience. The next morning arrived, and I was ready. This contraption was very high end. All electronic with a wall-mounted control pad. Upon lifting the lid, a helpful light illumined the bowl. I sat down and began the process. First observation – the seat was heated! That’s luxury. Except pretty soon my butt was sweating. The seat kept getting hotter and the perspiration was… well, you get the picture. I was a little worried I was going to slide off the seat. I couldn’t find any controls to turn down the heat. No matter, I soldiered on.

After completing the, ehh, uhm, err, deposit shall we say, it was time for the waterworks. Examining the control panel there were helpful pictographs describing what each button did. I pushed the one that seemed rearward facing. The water was warm and not the worst sensation in the world. I sat there enjoying rinse mode. And sat there. And waited. I couldn’t tell if it was going to shut off by itself or if I had to do it, so I just started hitting buttons. Front wash, power wash, pulsating, rain shower, jet stream… I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do, but I had a regular carwash going on down there.

Finally, I figured it was as good as it was going to get and managed to shut it down. I found a button that looked like wind. Basically, it’s hairdryer mode. So I sat. And sat. And waited. Maybe I’d spent too long in carwash mode, because hairdryer mode just wasn’t really drying out the parts. I gave up and had to do some additional manual drying.

Perhaps I did this wrong. I think maybe you’re supposed to flush before commencing with carwash mode? When I stood up the helpful light came on and highlighted the general mess in the bowl that I didn’t really need to see. I had a little trouble walking because it turns out I’d been sitting there trying to figure out the process for so long that my legs had fallen asleep. And my butt was still sweating. It took a bit to recover and return to normal.

So in the end, what did I think? Perhaps I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out, but I’ll stick to the regular toilet from now on. It seemed like a lot of effort, buttons, and steps to assist with something I’ve been doing all my life. I’m not sure I want a coach or need to watch a YouTube video on how to properly use the toilet. You can’t always teach an old dog new tricks. I’ll stick with what I know.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re disappointed. I’m a modern-day renaissance man. A man of many talents and skills, with superior intellect. You wanted the glowing review of the bidet so you could justify running out and getting one for yourself. I hate to crush your dreams, but I just can’t sign on to camp bidet. I’m sure the sophisticated folks see me as one step above still using a corncob, but it is what it is.

The final irony is that because I had to look up how to spell bidet… I will now have to endure non-stop bidet ads on Facebook and Instagram for the next month.

Daily Life, Motivation

It’s All About The Training

At the end of the day, we do what we’re trained to do. This applies to everything. When the moment matters, the amygdala portion of the brain takes over and initiates the fight or flight response. The body will fall back to rote muscle memory. If you didn’t train for that scenario, you’ll freeze or do something illogical. Training means exactly that – physically repeating and practicing something. Just reading about a subject and assuming you’ll know what to do is NOT the same thing. This was vividly demonstrated to me last night.

Without opening up a can of worms on a controversial subject, let’s just say that I believe in one’s right to arm themselves to protect hearth and home. I own a number of guns and regularly practice with them (well, before ammo prices skyrocketed). I feel like I am at least minimally proficient and able to handle firearms safely. I am ready to defend myself, my family, and my home should the need arise. All is good, right?

That belief was tested last night. At 2:30 in the morning, Mrs. Troutdog woke me from a sound sleep with the words nobody wants to hear in the middle of the night – “There’s someone standing at the door!”

It was time for my training and preparedness to kick in. So, what did I do? I grabbed a t-shirt and ran to the front door in my underwear. Did I get the gun first? No. Did I even think about the gun? No. Did I grab my phone? No. I looked out the window and had a moment of confusion thinking it was my nephew, who lives in another state, standing on my porch. And then I just yelled, “what do you want?” And then I remember the thought that went through my head… I’d put my t-shirt on backwards. Seriously, that’s what I was thinking about.

When survival mode was needed, I pretty much blanked out on everything. I’ve watched and read a bunch of survival, shooting, and self-defense stuff. In my head I thought I knew exactly how to respond. But because I’d never actually physically practiced or gone through the motions, I had no actual muscle memory to fall back on. I stood there in my underwear contemplating my backwards t-shirt.

Fortunately, it ended up being just a really drunk guy who was at the wrong house. He was so drunk he could barely stand and kept dropping his cell phone. He mumbled sorry and stumbled off into the night. And then I remembered all the things I probably should have done.

The point of this is not some lecture on home defense. It’s training – for any subject. Unless you physically practice something, the odds of you performing well when needed are slim. Driving in the snow. Reading a map when you think you’re lost. CPR. Deadlifts. Cleans. Heavy club swings. Public speaking. Fighting. Self-defense. You cannot simply watch a YouTube video on any of these things and think you’ll be able to do them when needed.

It was a good lesson for me. As an RN, I’ve spent more time than I can count in stressful scenarios. Traumas, bleeding, codes, CPR. Been there, done that. We practice and have to be re-certified every year on those skills. As a result, in those scenarios I’m pretty calm. It doesn’t mean I’ll aways do the right thing, but I have a better than average chance of keeping the thinking part of the brain going and making better decisions. Because of that, I assumed that I’d behave the same in all emergency situations. Clearly, I was wrong.

So now I have to think about my training. I need to create an actual plan for when something goes bump in the night and practice that plan. And then practice some more. You should do the same for whatever things in life you THINK you know what to do. Until you create that muscle memory, you have no idea what your brain will fall back to. It might be worrying about your t-shirt being backwards as your house burns down around you.

P.S. My dog is fired. I have an 80-pound dog who spends his days barking fiercely at anything that moves. The mailman is his mortal enemy. What did this fierce protector do through this whole scenario? Nothing. He slept. Never got out of bed. He will not be getting any treats today.