This last Monday I put in a little over 12 miles on the treadmill and worked up a good sweat. My cotton Tee was soaked front and back, and had to weigh three pounds more than when I started my run. The last 4 years I have been told over and over don’t wear cotton shirts to run in, for that same period I have not heeded such advice. This week it was a painful experience. When filled with salty sweat, cotton tees will scratch to the point of bleeding two particular sensitive places on your chest. I truly believe now that such sweat soaked blood stained shirts are the cause for most of the swearing heard coming from the men’s showers.
I am very proud of last year’s work. I made a number of resolutions that met with some success, granted the ones I found pleasurable were the first to get finished, the ones I could do that helped me postpone the more difficult ones came second, and there were a handful that I was unable to complete even though I gave them a college try. For some I lacked something, not enough time, not the right tools, and for a couple I discovered that I currently lacked the skill set. Lastly there were a few I ignored, likely within a few hours of my resolution, you could say I wasn’t so resolute about.
This year I will carry over a few “incompletes” which I will attempt again this year, much like a college student who was surprised at the work load, or more likely found that lofty goals sometimes require the sacrifice of some other activity such as sleep. Not failures, just incomplete.
One of my new resolutions this year though is to learn, to continue my education all areas of my life. Not the type of education you find in a lecture or book, but to learn from the tasks I undertake, from the activities I participate in, from my work, and in my worship. I want to educate myself in both my failures and successes. My goal is to learn and apply 52 new things, one each week, and document that learning experience. Knowledge is good but applying knowledge shows wisdom. At the end of 2013 I want to have collected 52 gems of wisdom from various experiences, and reduce these to 52 sentences, proverbs, and more importantly to have made each a part of my life, to enact changes in my behavior.
My proverb 1…
Happy is the wise long distance runner, he has never cried,
for he runs with chest bare, in tech tee, or coated with body glide.
David
