TAHOE CITY, Calif. — Well I apologize for the lag in posts but admittedly it’s been a busy few weeks.  Tuesday was my last day at my old job before I start a new one Monday.  My intention is to keep the topics on this blog entirely separate from my day job, so I’ll be as brief as possible about this but I have to say I have already received seven welcome notes from my new teammates and I absolutely cannot wait to start on Monday.  (And I should also insert here the standard disclaimer: the opinions expressed on this blog are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of either my current or past employers).

I was actually very close to not writing this post today because I have intentionally made this into an extended detox weekend from any kind of work obligations or deadlines.  A blog post was simply another bit of added pressure, but I sat down this evening overlooking the twilight on Lake Tahoe feeling like I had to write.  So I am.

And this is as it should be.  Recently I’ve had an internal battle that I will call the “Happiness Battle.”  What is the Happiness Battle?  It’s the constant internal recitation of some form of “if I only had X, then I would really be happy.”  Sound familiar?  If so, you’re not alone.

Admittedly, I’ve played this game as long as I can remember.  “X” could be a job, any of a variety of material possessions, or even something perhaps more ostensibly meaningful like a personal relationship.  My knee injury has caused the most acute and most recent instance of it for me: “Everything’s great, if only that would heal and I could run 100 percent then everything would be perfect.”

But life doesn’t work that way.  If you’re seeking external validation for your happiness, you’re never going to find it. No matter how honorable the wished source of your happiness may be.

This is a lesson that it has taken me a long time to learn.  I’ve lived a blessed life so far but I’ve also happened to live in a number of places where “keeping up with the Joneses” is a way of life.  I wanted a better car, a better place to live, a better job, a better this or that.  Surely enough, however, once I upgraded in one of these areas, a new golden gizmo presented itself.

This is a vicious cycle that will eat you alive if you let it.  You’ll never be content, period. As a runner, this has meant for me preparing for the possibility that I might not be able to run like I hope to again.  I don’t expect this to happen, but I have to be prepared for that possibility.

How do I prepare for it?  I realize that my happiness (or inner peace, or contentment, or however you’d like to define it) has its source entirely within me.  It doesn’t come from running, even though that is something I enjoy doing.  It doesn’t come from my family, even though we are very close.  Instead of looking to others or to some assortment of inanimate objects to fill me with happiness, I take care of it instead.  And you know what the crazy thing is?  As soon as I decided on this, I had several immediate breakthroughs.  I landed the amazing new job.  I made some enormous leaps forward on my knee recovery and am now able to run up to 20 minutes.  A friend happened to be moving out of his apartment and the timing was perfect so I grabbed it.  Now my commute will be 20 minutes where it used to be more than 60.

Isn’t it amazing how all this works?  I could go on, there are other recent examples in my life to cite but I think I’ve made my point.  This is one of the hardest lessons to learn and some people learn it early; some never learn it.  I wish I would have learned it earlier.  But if you’re struggling with something right now that you feel is holding you back, let it go. Don’t let it control your happiness.  In fact, once you take control and decide to be happy no matter what happens, you’ll be amazed at the happiness-inciting breakthroughs that will suddenly come your way.

BONUS MATERIAL: I’ve been a mini road trip machine of late (scouting potential future racing locations!) and intended to do some travelogue-ing but in the meantime I have photos to share.  The first set below is from Eureka, Calif. (and the drive there and back), a town about 250 miles north of San Francisco on the Pacific Coast.  I had no idea what to expect there but my two cents on the place is that it has a very coastal Carolina feel but with a northern California hippie twist and visible mountains in the distance.  The second set is from today’s Tahoe excursion and includes a few of my Jeep in its “natural” habitat.  You might also notice that I’m a train nut…

Until next time!

Eureka, California:

Tahoe/Truckee, California:

Stock photos by flickrized and lilit.

ABOARD DELTA FLIGHT 2109 OVER NEBRASKA – Ha!  I’ve always wanted to write a dateline like that.

Yes, I am actually aboard a Delta plane, taking advantage of their newly installed in-flight WiFi.  To be honest, I have always viewed flights (especially my relatively frequent SFO-DTW and SFO-EWR jaunts) as a nice respite from the connected world.  But this is actually pretty cool.

I am, however, suffering from bad battery planning so I will need to make this relatively brief.  I’m in-flight because I went home to Michigan for a quick weekend and spent time with my parents and my brother and sister-in-law.  Over three days we watched two Detroit sporting events, one screening of The Hangover (a fine Phil/Kevin/Becky tradition), took two walks at Metro Beach Metropark on the shore of Lake St. Clair with Mom, Dad, and Truman, consumed one giant oven-baked blueberry pancake at The Pantry, made one requisite stop at Tim Horton’s, and played precisely 346 games of Scrabble.

I also shared the details of my aforementioned goals with my parents and Kevin and Becky, so now they’re out.  Well, almost .  They will be coming soon, I promise.

I wanted to share some thoughts on simplicity in what I hope will be an appropriately brief post.

When I was younger, I used to plaster my bedroom walls and shelves with Stuff.  Every open space needed to be occupied by one of my many prized possessions.  What were these things?  Well, nothing especially valuable – a number of books, knick-knacks that I collected from all over the place, tacky posters, awards that I had won.  I never had a lot of expensive material things growing up so the things that I did have I was keen to show off.  The rest of my parents’ house was (and still is) entirely clear of clutter – what I would describe as Spartan.  I couldn’t stand it.

I can stand it now.

As I get older, I find myself becoming refreshingly less and less consumed with the accumulation of Stuff.  Partly this has come from my reading of Dave Ramsey.  Some of it has come from JD Roth at Get Rich Slowly (see: The Tyranny of Stuff).  But mostly, it’s come from an honest evaluation of the things over the past 30 years that have always meant the most to me.

These meaningful “things” have never actually been things.  They have always been people and experiences.

I have two large bookcases full of books whose spines I stare at day after day.  I have probably read about 40 percent of them.  Every time I have moved for the last three times (from New Jersey to Michigan, from Michigan to California, and then within the Bay Area), I have thrown away approximately half of what I own.  I now lug around approximately 13 percent of the possessions I had five years ago and yet I still want to get rid of more.

There’s nothing wrong with having a lot of possessions.  I’m an admitted gadget junkie and book lover and someday I would like to have a decent-sized personal library.  But the pursuit of possessions for the past eight years since leaving college has left me personally feeling empty.  I’ve sacrificed a lot of other experiences in order to spend hard-earned resources on items that I may use once or twice and that will then simply sit around my place as badly depreciating souvenirs.  My new focus will be on experiences that will bring me fulfillment and have true meaning for me.  This, in fact, is a crucial tenet behind one of my new goals.

So take a step back and look around your home, wherever that may be.  There’s more to life than Stuff.  Figure out what this is for you, and pursue it.  You won’t regret it.

Photo by austinevan.