Happy Monday | Date Me Docs | Core Values (again)
Dear Muir Rock Family,
Happy Monday!
Lots of fun and character building stuff going on in life, starting off with a beautiful Sunday to celebrate my Dad’s birthday at Edwin and Alex’s house:
These family events are always fun, especially with Emilyn around to help coordinate. She’s also staying at my house for the week and has found everything possible to “fix” around my house. All good. Teri trained me well to just be happy and let go of stuff I’m not good at. Eric and Alex also did a great job at the Long Beach Half Marathon. Wish I could have done the race with them.
Also what was fun was hanging out with Edwin and Alex’s dog, Lucy. She reminds me of Mustard, pretty chill and doesn’t need to go crazy at random times like Mayo does. Here’s Lucy in action:
Why…is Lucy…wagging her tail on my face?
Ironman California - 3 weeks away….
As some of you know, this “Muir Rock” website is all about encouraging everyone on the values of Humility, Patience and Perseverance. They are great values to help us all do hard things, just like Teri did while she was here on earth. Of course, most of the lessons on this comes from my previous time with Teri:
Another rerun from last year: Here is Teri not being humble about my awesome Halloween costume
How am I living out these values now? Well I was just relaxing in bed on Saturday night, happy to complete a long week of training and extra lap around the lake…now just minding my own business…only to notice that my left Achilles was starting to bother me…
Really?!? 3 weeks before the race? After telling a bunch of people and all you readers all week that one of my biggest “problems” is to find rest days since I always want to train. This is awful…
Advil that evening and the next day didn’t seem to help. Not good.
Some of you are like, “Erwin, welcome to your 40s” and aren’t too surprised. I get it. This whole thing is very humbling since I hear about people getting injured all the time and I don’t get why it’s so difficult for people to stay injury free. Secretly I’ve been judging people since I know better than them if I can do all this training and not have any issues.
I was in denial at first. Actually I still am. I was hoping to wake up the next day and it’s all gone. I actually thought, was this just a dream?! Nope. What about on Monday morning? A little better but still there. What about now? It’s better and I can’t really tell, but now I’m scared to even try running on it…
Hopefully tomorrow morning this will be past us and we can all move on with life.
I also started yoga about a week ago as an “insurance policy” for all my training and have attended a class almost every day. Nothing to do with potentially meeting new people…. With all the running and biking I’m doing, yoga should help keep me flexible and prevent injury. Now I’m confused. Was it the yoga that caused all of this??
Side note: The best parts of my day involves going to Yoga Sculpt and seeing the macho guys bring in super heavy weights. For reference, I use 5 and 10 lb weights but some guys bring in 25 and even 45 lb weights. Crazy. Maybe I did this once back in the day and learned my lesson, I forgot. Then when we start using weights in class, the macho guys realized they messed up and end up putting them down.
Then they start doing their own thing, or they just start swinging the weights and throw their form out the window. Or they just rest. I don’t get it. I secretly wish I could just throw them out the window. Maybe I could if I used heavier weights…
Anyways if you want to come with me, let me know, I have two buddy passes a month. It’s SO much fun.
Anyways, back to the story of my life… my “plan” to hit the next 2 weeks really hard with training is out the window. I am humbled. Sorry for judging all my friends and readers about their respective injuries. I’ll just take things one day at a time, listen to my body, and see how things go, up until race day. At least I can focus on getting more sleep as well, and I guess my diet.
Date Me Docs - Good idea?
Bonus content for today, stuff no one seems to agree with me on….
At work and with most of life, I’m very “outcomes” focused. I try to start with a clear goal, like doing an Ironman triathlon. Why bother with such a long race? Well, signing up for a race sort of forces someone undisciplined like me (2.5 GPA in college) to get their act together with endurance training in three areas. If I don’t put the work in, I’ll really pay for it on race day or just not even show up, wasting over $1000 (race fee). I really don’t like wasting money. Unless it’s food after a long walk:
When it comes to dating, I used to be this way, especially because I was so focused on getting married and reaping the benefits of marriage: companionship, physical intimacy, carpooling, having kids, shared chores/cooking, etc…
I would say that being so focused on this in my 20s and 30s probably led to getting married a bit later in life (relative to my friends). I can write two books in life that should do really well: The life of Terwin and How to get Friendzoned. My theory is that I probably just scared lots of people away when I was interested in them. Don’t laugh if you’re one of them and you’re reading this now. Looking back at life, I am so happy about all the people I dated and then eventually marrying Teri:
So when one of my friends told me about the idea of a Date Me doc, I was first outcomes focused. If this can help with finding a future wife, why not put the time into do it?
For those that don’t know, a date me doc is like a resume for dating. Makes it very clear with what you’re looking for. Hopefully this is the future. I love reading these and thanks to my friends who have shared their docs with me.
So I dud make one. Here’s the link for those curious:
Please don’t forward or even click on this link… I’ll probably take it down.
Really?? What happened to focusing on Singleness (last post)
The lesson to share today is in my writing the date me page (did this about a month ago), it actually gave me a lot more peace of mind about staying single in the first place. See, here’s some proof:
Documenting all my goals and values in one place helped me see what was really important to me in a future spouse. It helped me see how I’ve also been settling when I have a random crush (gym, church, etc) because they are really cute, but I know deep down it’s probably not a good long term fit because it’s obvious that we don’t align on values.
Creating the doc also helped me see that I should probably cut back on 1:1s and even text messages with single women unless there’s clear intentions with pursuing a relationship. Why waste people’s precious time?
I don’t get your point…
Okay I’ll try to make it more clear.
Sometimes I need to be outcomes focused (sign up for an Ironman for me to stay on top of my health and fitness). In doing so, sometimes you get to the opposite outcome, like me writing a date me doc and now wanting to stay single. And the point is to recognize when that happens and be OK with it. That’s life. You never know what’s gonna happen.
Just be honest… What’s really on your mind?
Lots of things still make me sad. But at the moment, losing Teri isn’t one of them. I’ll always miss her. But today I’m not sad about her not being here with me.
As lame as this sounds, the values of humility, patience, and perseverance really matter to me and just want to focus on this for myself and tell others about what I’m learning along the way if they are willing to listen. Let me try to make it more concrete, as I don’t get into it too much on my date me page:
Humility
I feel like this is the secret to life.
My whole story of these past 18 months have taught me that all my pride and ego caused so much unnecessary drama with my relationship with Teri.
At the moment, I’m most attracted to people that really get it with admitting when they are wrong and are teachable. Not to judge people my age, but many 40 year olds tend to be pretty stubborn and set in their ways. They’re too good to seek therapy, or get professional help in a specific area (FYI, I am going to see a physical therapist). They know everything.
This isn’t easy for me, FYI. I’m dealing with lots of pride issues, and am thankful that God is humbling me today in the area of training. I’m sure when my Achilles feels better, God will find something else. Like I’ll meet someone and will have to write something humble here about how he threw out my plan to be single. Wouldn’t that be so funny?? Okay not really.
Anyways, if you have something you want to tell me, Erwin stop blogging, stop running, stop ____, start ____. I’ll try to be all ears and listen. It’s how I get better and if you’re reading this, you probably care enough about me to tell me what I should hear.
To me, the opposite of humility is being prideful and judgmental. I just don’t want to spend time with people who are so good at blaming others for ______.
Perseverance
What also breaks my heart these days is hearing about people give up in one or more areas in life. For some, it’s not going to church anymore because something happened at church in the past, usually because of a relationship breakup or something. Regardless of the reason, my prayer for all of you is that you’ll find a church or community that works for you:
Amazing time at Mariners NI this past Sunday. Wish everyone was there. John Yeo delivered my favorite sermon of the Overwhelmed series. And thanks Phoebe for inviting me to sit next to your family!!
I get it, some of you don’t need church. You have your faith or beliefs and it’s working fine. I go through those times and even wanted to skip church this past Sunday and just watch it online so I can rest. Sometimes that does make sense, but this past Sunday, I’m so glad I went.
I’m so thankful for all the people from Mariners NI that continue to pour into me in the ways I don’t deserve. Especially Gretchen, who still invites me over for dinner, even over 1.5 years after Teri’s passing.
Another area of people giving up is diet and exercise. I’m sure most of you don’t really relate to doing an Ironman and probably won’t do something crazy like my friend John did in 2022: Sign up for a half Ironman without doing any research. After losing Teri to cancer, I’ll say for the 100th time that life is short, so why not spend more time prioritizing your health and wellness vs. other things?
I know it’s easier said than done to get healthy. We are all too busy. I get it. Kids, school, work, parents, all adds up. But it’s not like you’ll be less busy later. It never ends. For me, the change in mindset started with humility. I needed help in my late 20s (way out of shape, working too much). I knew I couldn’t do it alone. I didn’t know where to start. Thankfully a few friends helped me work out at the gym and get signed up for a triathlon and the rest is history.
I can still relate in some ways. I’m sort of feeling hopeless with my diet, with my constant habit of eating two dinners. But after reading most of the Intuitive Eating book before bed (recommended by my psychiatrist), I’m learning to “accept” my body the way it is and just be OK with my weight and not being so hard on myself with messing up on my diet. Anyways, things have been getting better, I’m down almost 10 lbs from last month.
Patience
Again, all of this is easier said than done. Here’s what I’ve been up to in this area, open to ideas:
Yoga has been really helpful because there’s a lot of sitting and breathing in class. Sitting still is no fun.
Sitting in the cold plunge by myself for 6 minutes a day always teaches me patience. I hate going in every time, and sitting there doing nothing makes it worse.
At my new job, of course I think I know all the answers with what systems to implement. After 45 days, I’m realizing how much better it is to slow down and not rush the process of developing relationships first. With a strong team that’s aligned to clear business outcomes, the implementation should go a lot smoother.
The Achilles problem - learning to rest and trust the process of getting better, is really teaching me patience.
Patience with reading the Bible: Almost in the New Testament! I can’t wait…
Okay past my bed time, not sure if any of this is helpful or encouraging. Feel free to share how you feel in the comments. Have a great week!
Thanks for reading!
Erwin
Oh no! Not your Achillies! Rest up my friend. One of the greatest things I’m learning now with my torn tendon is that it’s ok to not try so hard esp as we get older. It is soooooo humbling and so hard not to be up and active, but it has been a sweet time getting to know Jesus more. That is the greatest blessing of all! Hope you just have tendonitis and nothing more!