MY FIRST FIFTY

Lesson from my first half century on earth.

Sunday morning.

Riding up Woods Gulch a few days ago I was thinking about the things I hold to be important in the life. Things that help with the day to days of living. That make life better, more fulfilling. And while certain forms of work over the years have been more or less fulfilling than others, it is not necessarily work that leads to the richness of life, nor that hinders it. Good work certainly helps, but even good work requires more. You can have a great job, a dream job in fact, and still feel unfulfilled as a human. Conversely you can have a boring and “normal” job, and be incredibly happy in the large sense with life, living the best life.

[1. Sleep. 2. Nutrition. 3 Sunlight. 4. Efforts/Exercise. 5. Reading/writing. 6. Friendships. 7. Cold water. 8. Time outside. 9. Learning]

People chase the big things in life because they are easy targets. They see people with the big things and assume those things are going to fulfill them, make them happy. But here on the doorway of completing my first fifty years on earth I can say with certainty, fulfillment and satisfaction in life come from the small things. Fulfillment in life is also grander than what most think of as happiness, which in the small sense is just a passing emotion, though I sometimes refer to it in the larger sense.

So what are those things, the things that bring some happiness and a larger picture of fulfillment?

Money is the obvious one people often seem to point to, look to, first. People look at tit no matter how much or little they have. Money is a trickser this way, a cunning aspect of life and is best dealt with at arms length and with caution. It ought to come with a warning sign. Beware. It can easily become an excuse to those that don’t have it and who buffer their own shortcomings by internally and externally referring to “if I just had more I’d be happy” or “it would be easy, if…” And meanwhile, those with it tread often closely to “I just want/need a little more.”

Money is a tool. A tool for life, not happiness. Not satisfaction. Not fulfillment. It a thing. Not an end. You need X amount to live. How you acquire that base amount will neither make you happy nor unhappy. That is internal, and on you. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard on money is to work on acquiring your base needs with a job with people you like to be around. When you are young this can require some movement. Move on respectfully. Don’t burn bridges. Life is long enough that people often circle, even unexpectedly, back into your life later. Also recognize that sometimes you will need to leave a job “you like” with people you like, for a job you don’t know about, or even perhaps think you won’t like, with people you don’t know if you like, so that you can make more money. It can be scary. But often it can work out wonderfully. You sometimes have to step into the unknown and take some risks. Its a step towards a better life.

I got by with mostly very fun jobs until we had our first kid. Then I took a job I didn’t want because I needed more money. How did I know? Simple math. I wanted to be able to provide my daughter with X things and X opportunities and to do so I needed to make more money. I wasn’t chasing happiness. I was chasing opportunity. And it honestly scared the shit out of me because I thought I was giving up on a part of my soul that had always enjoyed the free nature of low hanging jobs, typically in the forest and outside with not much commitment. So I took a job that from the outside appeared “soul crushing” and it was anything but that. Not long afterwards I realized I was working with great & kind people. I was good at things I never imagined I’d be good at. Things I didn’t even know about, skills I didn’t know existed. I built a reputation in an arena. A good reputation. And these skills and relationships literally opened the door to being able to five years later open my own business that would become successful as a direct result of what I learned in taking this “souless” job. It never would have happened without taking an uncomfortable step into the uncomfortable job.

Don’t tie money to happiness or fulfillment. Just do the jobs required to take care of your needs. Learn what you can. Do your best. Build good relationships.

Think about your needs, evaluate what is important to really have, cut what you don’t need, and assess the amount of true money you actually need then work on getting it. Be willing to work - which is hard - and do things that you didn’t think you’d ever be able to do or even choose to do. In this vein the money will work itself out. It might require moving. It might require meeting new people. It will be ok.

But enough on money. Its not about money after all. Say it ten times…”Money does not buy happiness.” It can buy stability. It can be a good thing. But it’s not happiness.

Things I strive for to make life better:

1. SLEEP. Good sleep. 7-8 hours/night. There is a stupid saying “sleep when you die.” I don’t buy it. Bad sleep is guaranteed to bring death sooner. There is more than enough science to back this up. But good sleep doesn’t come by accident. You have to set yourself up for it.

For me, drinking alcohol results in bad sleep, so I’ve cut way back on drinking. You have to pay attention to what works and doesn’t work for you as individual. For me giving up drinking is a small price to pay for something I prefer, a good nights rest. Screen time before bed, thinking about work as I got to bed, unresolved conflict all result in bad sleep, so are things I try to avoid. Sleep is an arena for the mind to unwind, so I try to go there as peacefully as possible. If I watch a show before sleep I watch something funny or relatively peaceful, that does not tap into inner angst or anxiety. I don’t think about work. Challenges will never be fixed as you go to sleep so I put those things out of mind until I wake up with a clear mind. I will meditate on writing puzzles I’ve encountered as thinking about those things in sleep also help me solve any issues.

As I get ready to sleep I give myself a few solid deep clear breaths of air. I sleep with the window open, I close my eyes, clear my mind, and rest. Good sleep, a thing I didn’t get for years has become a pillar for my life. Now I guard it. I nurture it.

2. NUTRITION: I’m lucky enough to have a wife who has helped foster this over the years, but it’s really not complicated. “You are what you eat” and “food is thy medicine” are the only two things you need to remember. Good food is not only good for the soul, but for the mind and body. I try to eat unprocessed whole foods. I try to keep sugar to a minimum. I try to not over eat. I don’t eat before sleep. And I basically keep my food window to roughly an eight hour window during the day allowing my body 16 hours of not having to deal with digestion. Again, I avoid alcohol except for occasional and minimal quantities. Greens and fruits for snacks. Lots of beans and nuts.

Eating well reads the brain. Better food, better thoughts. And as you learn more about food you learn more about the world, about plants, animals, food systems, farm systems, your body, and how all these things work. This learning is one of the very foundations to a good life. The act of learning is incredibly satisfying and when it’s applied to your own body, incredibly valuable. Whatever you think you may or may not know about food, or anything for that matter, there is always more to learn. You’ll change your mind. You’ll go back on things. You’ll evolve. Food and nutrition is a fascinating topic to learn about. How the body ingests and digests is equally intriguing. And all these systems from sleep to exercise to mental output, they are all tied directly together. Good information + good food = better mind and body.

Let’s skip to number 4 - We’ll come back to 3 with number 8…

EFFORT & EXERCISE. It’s simple. Do hard things. Push yourself. Do things that challenge you. If 10 pushups are hard, strive for 25. If running a mile is hard, strive to do 2. At a bare minimum walk somewhere every single day. Take the time to do it, no matter what.

Here again, everything is incredibly interconnected. When we move our bodies and get blood flowing we tap into part of our brain that otherwise isn’t tapped. My best ideas come while I’m running, walking, riding my bike or doing something akin, where I’m exerting effort in motion. And while weight lifting and strength training very much have their place in my routine and long term approach to life, it is movement exercises that lead the mind. Everyday they bring challenge, motivation, ideas, clarity and peace to my body and brain. They literally make my day better, make me better, make life better. Humans are made to move. No excuses. When the kids were just babies we prioritized (and found used) a very good outdoor jogging stroller and I’d run or walk 1-2 hours throughout the year including the coldest months of the Montana winter, baby wrapped in down and wool. These cold weather walks were some of the most memorable and peaceful moments of the child rearing year… babies, children, kids, and adults all benefit from being outdoors, no matter the time of year or weather.

As we were busy building our coffee business I prioritized biking to work every day. In the early years this was about 4 miles, so doable year round, with studded snow tires for winter. With two babies and a business to get off the ground, all the while working full time with my still existing job in wine I’d often leave home around 5 AM in the dark. In the winter this meant slush, snow, ice, and whatever wind and precipitation the day brought. In my 20’s I’d benefited greatly from big adventures in the mountains, desert, traveling the world. But in these years my desire for something more extreme was limited. Riding my bike to work during the biggest of snowstorms in the early dark, or on my way home late at night offered a taste of the extreme I craved. When I got to work, mind crystal clear and awake, and then again going home that ride would clear the clutter as I passed up the river and climbed the hill taking me home. In a very real way I hold that bike forever with nostalgia as it was a tool for clearing my mind, helping me have time to process the many different and busy aspects of life I was juggling. It made me a better dad. A better husband, and was a brief, but fun part of the day. Was it easy? Only in the summer.

On one winter morning, 5 AM, in the snow in the dark I suddenly found myself confused as I flew abruptly over my handle bars. It was snowing heavy, large wet flakes, but with my thin studded tires I had good traction and the ride was peacefully slow, the early morning streets still unplowed and trackless. But now I was laying in the snow. I had not seen through the heavy snow, my headlight only able to penetrate so far, the large tree that had fallen over the road. I lay tangled with my bike feeling a bit broken, and very confused, slowly assessing, did I hit my head? No. Is my back ok? Yes. Where am I hurt. My chest was pounding with pain. I’d for sure broken a few ribs. And my wrist… stiff. Maybe broken. A severe and sharp pain. Snow accumulating quickly on me, so I stood, and tried to assess my bike in the broken darkness. My bike seemed ok. I was closer to work than home so I pulled the tree off the road as best I could with one arm, and limped my way on the bike slowly to work.

The accident required x-rays. I had broken ribs, but not my wrist, merely sprained it enough to make roasting coffee miserable for a few weeks. Lifting the kids with my ribs was painful. But I never regretted it. We are built for challenges. Pain shoots injections of growth into the mind. We evolved to step up and into pain and challenge and thrive in hardship. We can endure far more pain than society would lead us to believe.

Over the years I’ve redefined my definition and relationship with pain. Pain is not a negative. It’s simply a signal. When we reframe it away from being a thing to be avoided but simply as a signal that helps us hone in where were are and what is going on immediately around us we can quickly build a new relationship with it.

Pain can help us build ourselves better. And it’s good to know our edge. I find it in running and biking and during exercise with frequency. I find it in cold water. It is a friend who helps me push harder, dig deeper, go further.

Many who are unfamiliar with it are afraid of it. People run from it, fear it. All without reason. Pain is a very powerful signal and tool in our lives and when we don’t run from, don’t avoid it, it can help us grow tremendously past benchmarks we would never otherwise overcome.

Here could be a good place to look at #7 COLD WATER, but in a moment. Just a little more on pain. And the practical ways it can lead us.

One of my first true embraces of pain came from a prolo treatment for a back injury I sustained in my 20’s. I had been building cabins down in the Bitterroot valley and one wintery morning, being the new guy, I was sent up atop a 12 foot frost covered wall with a chainsaw. In a split second trying to step down the log, something easy when it’s dry, but I’d not realized how slick it had become overnight, I fell, throwing the chainsaw over the back as I slipped headfirst down the front landing buffered by a very large fat man who was working below me. Luckily it did not injure him, but after going home I was unable to work, let alone walk for weeks. Slowly my back recovered. I quit that job and did other things, but the deep connectivity of my back was set into a deep cycle of pain that erupted unexpectedly in bursts, and lingered in a dull state the rest of the time. I have a high threshold for pain, and am not really into pharmaceuticals, so I just lived with it, occasionally going to a chiropractor after a doctor had told me I would just have to deal with it.

At 40, with little kids and still getting our bearings with the business, only about a year before going full time in coffee, at 4:50 am one morning in the bathroom while quietly dressing so as to not wake the family I realize I am unable to put my socks on without sitting down because of the pain in my back. What the fuck, I wondered aloud… I’m 40, relatively fit in that I stretch, exercise, can run 10-15 miles. I bike to and from work every day, but I have these pain so strong that I can’t put my socks on without sitting down. This is unacceptable.

I began talking to my wife about it. Slowly I venture into yoga, which is great but did not help this particular injury. I try physical therapy which seems promising but doesn’t end up helping with anything but spending money. Minor improvements. I tried a chiropractor. No help other than minor initial relief. I begin losing hope. Is this how we get old suddenly. I was unwilling to accept this premise. But a friend of Ella’s suggests prolo therapy. From the sound of it someone sticks a very long needle into you, irritates the damaged area and helps trigger a scar building reaction, thus making your joints stronger. And very painful we were told. We set an appointment. Well, my wife did. I was in “whatever” mode, a terrible place to be.

The doctor told me it would be incredibly unpleasant. But from the beginning I had an initial trust when he told me could in no uncertain terms make this injury better. 100% better. He didn’t even hesitate. But it would hurt. Sign me up.

I laid on my stomach for the first treatment. He showed me the needle, a viciously long, exaggeratedly so in fact. I asked him where it was going? Lower back. How could it possibly go in that far without sticking through me entirely. It was to be angled back towards my s.i. joint. I took a deep, slow breath and as he pushed the needle in I could feel it going deep inside my back in a sharp, pressing intensity. A pain where I’d never felt anything before. I could feel blood surging around my body, waking me up. With my breath I took it in. This is the feeling of something doing good to the body. I embraced it. I actually quite loved it. It was pain, but it was a release into the piercing nerves of the whole thing. There was nothing negative about it. I felt wrapped around the pain. Embraced in. I breathed slowly with relish.

Over the year I had to go back in for several more treatments. Each time I enjoyed it more, and began to realize it was going to come to an end, and I wouldn’t get that shot of pain. But slowly it did heal my back. Slowly, throughout the weeks and months my entire stature changed. My ability to lean over. To pick things up. To not think about my back and have that mental space free for other things.

And the pain I’d felt I recognized now as an edge, worth pushing into for the sake of building, not just healing, but for improving.

A few years now later I found cold swimming. Here is the segway - cold water, unlike untying else I’ve found, offers that edge, that push, that intensity that is so all encompassing that it envelopes you.

I came about it by chance. Hot summer days I love to run. I’ve always loved the extremes, in the winter going running when it is -15F and windy. In the summer, pushing a little further and farther when it’s 100F. I guess in this regard I’ve always loved to push out towards the perimeter.

Near my house is a small creek. After my runs in the summer I’d jump in, shoes and all, and just lay for a cool down, seemingly even more refreshing by jumping in shoes and all.

But that summer, as it turned to fall, (this was just over two years ago) I had made a solid routine of this. Push the run. Create the reward for the end. Also no need to shower as I’d cooled down and rinsed off in the creek. Bonus. Fall began as it always does in early September and the days cooled to the point where I didn’t necessarily need the cool down, but I continued to jump in the creek aways. On cooler and cooler days it felt counterintuitive but I kept doing it. The water began feeling more invigorating that refreshing. The leaves began to turn in October. I’d run. I’d jump in. I vividly recall asking myself, “What if I just keep doing this? How long does this work? What if I go all winter?”

I’d listed to some podcasts with Andrew Huberman at this point and knew there were supposed health reasons to cold plunge. But I didn’t feel like filling a bath at the house, or cold showering. I wanted to come to the creek, even if it took a walk or ride, and be in the creek. The creek just as much as the cold was the reason.

By November I began to detach the cold from my run. I’d overworked my achilles in the fall and running felt no great but swimming in the creek did, and seemed to help the achilles. And too, the times I did run and swim, I began to get very cold inside the shorts on my wet way home… So I started taking a towel. It was November. The weather was freezing. My swims were brief, 30 seconds. 45 seconds. I watched a few videos of Wim Hoff and realized I was capable of much more. I wasn’t breathing into it. I wasn’t embracing it, but fighting it. I needed to lean in like with the long needles. Like the hot summer run. I started focusing on just keeping calm, embracing the nature around me, not worrying about the cold or how it would affect me. Quickly I began staying in longer, two minutes, then three. According to Huberman around 3 minutes is when the maximum benefit sets in. I can live with that. As the temps got colder and colder I slowly altered my methods. By mid winter outside temps were below 0F and I still swam, finding small cracks in the ice where I could lay down. I wear wool socks in the water as sometimes my toes have to stick out, and that little layer of wool helps fight the frozen air as I get to the edge and dry off, re-layering before I bike back home. I’m about a five minute bike ride from where I typically swim, so on the coldest days I have to not only consider the swim itself, but the getting there and back without frost bite. The body is incredibly well equipped to deal with cold, but when it’s -15F frost bite is a very real consideration.

So what is the mark? It’s a threshold. Pushing past the part of your mind that tells you that you can’t do something. You can. Getting in cold water the first 15 seconds is always the hardest. The second point seems to come around 1.5 minutes, but by three I’m calm. I just breath slowly the whole time, and it helps push past the points.

But what is the point? While I love the challenge, and that is certainly part of it, and while there are well documented health benefits, and that is part of it, for me the ultimate benefit comes from the daily reset, mentally and physically, and following a discipline that I know will benefit me. It is absolutely invigorating. It is absolute wakefulness. It leads to being more alert and awake than any other thing I’ve found. Brain fog vanishes in moments. Clarity comes in the extreme. What is really important and what is not is sorted out immediately. And it is a way to witness the natural world in a way unlike I’ve ever otherwise done, a complete and genuine submersion every day of the year into a small microcosm that otherwise I was getting a walking glance at.

At this point a few years later this daily challenge is still a challenge but one I hold close and dear. It requires discipline which is an important trait to foster in one’s self. All good habits require discipline and good habits, built through routine are exactly what carry us through the challenging times. When our road becomes rocky, gif we have good habits built into our day, we will continue them and they carry us through the difficult stuff. Without them we are more prone to fall apart.

The cold water is a stressor. And if we work through it calmly, that lesson is carries over to much of the rest of our lives. Challenges arise and we are habituated to dealing with them with calm, deep breaths, embracing what is around us, no matter the pain, because the pain as much as anything else is helping us grow, get stronger, improve. Our bodies learn to react and deal with the other inevitable stressors of life. The cold taught me this, and continues to daily. And I just fucking love getting in the creek every day of the year. I feel wildly grateful and lucky to have it as an option.

And there is another aspect at work here, showing that all these points are interconnected. #7 - Cold with #3 Sunlight, and #8 Outside.

My cold dip requires 1/2 mile walk or bike to to the creek. Time outside with my dog, with neighbors, with trees, and the changing seasons. Watching the seasons pass, saying hi to neighbors, and their dogs, witnessing the transitions of insects, flora & fauna, not only is it enjoyable but makes me more curious. Curiosity leads to questions, questions lead to learning. Sunlight in the eyes is important in it’s own regard to setting our circadian rhythms, which effects our sleep, etc. and so on.  Time outside means better connections to our real world environment, community, ad better sleep. All points connected. All of life connected. We are physical entities born around being in the natural world. The technologies of our time tend to push us towards stagnation and isolation, attempting to replace our movement through physical space and time by setting us before pixels of light when in the end aren’t all bad in of themselves, but become unhealthy when we lose our physical motion and interaction with the world. We need motion. We need touch. Touch of plants, animals, human beings. We need to hear bird song, the footsteps of animals, the voices of others. We need the bright sun in our eyes and on our faces, the glowing reflection of the moon, the cold breeze, the immersion into cold waters, the glistening of frost and the stars. These are the touchstones of life. Our electronic devices tend to offer only illusions and allusions to these things, trying to mimic reality with mere reflections and projections, but the real world is more important. Much more important.

For me, in these first 50 years I’ve come to realize I need these nine components far more than I need my phone or computer. I need the real world with real people and real animals and plants. Interesting, moving through it with the inventible pleasure and pains is the beauty of life. No two days ever the same, even when I go through the same routines in the same places.

The rule fulfillment and joys of life come from being willing to experience it all, learning to breath through it, to keep going, embracing it, challenges and all. Accepting the challenges as just part of it. Embrace the pain, the love, the joy, the push, the struggle, the cold, the hot. Seasons of life change. Enjoy the seasons and differences. Friendships and relationships evolve. People come into your life, leaves fall, water freezes, springs thaws. Life is happening in this continual movement forwards. The cold matter teaches me that all I can really do is what is around me. When I’m in 33F water, the air -17F, I’m not worried or even thinking of anything beyond what is immediately around me. I’m not worried about Africa. Africa doesn’t even know I exist. It’s just me and my immediate surroundings. I focus my breathing to stay calm. I assess my toes and fingers. I breath slow but steady to stay warm. I keep the engine going strong without revving too hard. Calm. Steady. Toes, you good? Thumbs? (My thumbs get very cold for some reason!)

I can feel my body’s furnace running strong. It knows better than me how to keep warm. When I crawl out of the water I’m focused. I dry off and cover up, not panicking but with decision. After I’m wrapped back in my warm layers I pause and take in the scene even if just a few more seconds. My eye brows usually frozen along with the hair sticking out from under my hat and hood. Bitter winter cold is incredibly beautiful. The winter air holds the light different and the colors are unlike any other time of year. At -17F I rarely see another human out, let alone anywhere near the creek. The world is mine. It is absolutely intense and beautiful. I absorb as much as I can. I feel grateful and thankful to some hidden unknown because the connection feels strong to something even if I don’t know what it is? Isn’t that how mystery is supposed to be? Its a beautiful unknown. Pretending we understand it all takes away from the magic of it, and besides, we don’t know it all. This bitter cold outside is as much a part of my home as the inside where I’ll warm up. The whole place is home.

Being outside, taking care of ourselves, being involved in our lives as conscious and conscientious beings is how we rind connections to life, how we drive happiness, joy, fulfillment beyond the basic emotions of elation and gratification. I absolutely feel lucky about the first fifty years I’ve gotten on this planet and truly hope I get to experience another 50 beyond. I have so many things I’m curious about, things I still want to discover and see. So many things to learn, to get better at, to photograph, to write and simply to take in… forests, deserts, and mountainscapes… This planet… What a time to be alive on earth. I genuinely love it. With some luck these words I put in my journal can help maybe even just one find some clarity and inspiration some day. I write them regardless because my brain doesn’t know how to not write words down. Writing words is like laying out a map for myself… or even like drawing a picture… I require worlds on page to improve my own understanding. Cheers to half a century learning and another still to come.