Goals Reconsidered & Awesomeness Examined

I've written about goals before, and that still stands.  I'm still sure of two things: 1) I can control my behavior, and 2) though my behavior can be directed towards a certain outcome, I cannot force that outcome.  One too many times I have said what I will dead lift, and my dead lift resulted in two pops from L4 and L5.  The bar returned to the floor, and I returned to the floor where I was unable to move for twenty minutes.  One too many times I have said what I will squat, and my abdominal wall tore open and my intestines came out.

I do still have hard goals.  I just no longer publicize them.  They're all over my training logs, they form parts of my passwords on various systems, and they're written in toothpaste on my bathroom mirror.

That last one is almost a lie.  Earlier today I thought that was a great sounding line that I had to put in the blog.  Then I remembered one of the ground rules is that I don't lie in the blog, so I just put the overriding goal on my bathroom mirror in toothpaste.

I used Crest.  Probably I need to get some Close Up because the red turns me on.

So yes, I have definite goals, but I target behavior. I know what I want to squat in August and November and December, but I don't exactly know if I will.  I do know whether or not I squat Mondays and Fridays like I'm supposed to.

And this, I think, is the right way to go.  It's only necessary to safeguard against the real goal degenerating into "becoming more awesome."  Awesome is great, and in the worthwhile circles it's intuitively understood, but in the larger world awesome is merely the space between getting off the couch and hyperbole.

We want to be better than that.

So as sometimes happens with me, I stopped today and gave consideration to the nature of awesome.  It's hard to pin down, but I wondered if Chairman Mao was onto something; perhaps awesome is the continuation of diplomacy by other means.

Like this:

I roll up to work today and a guy gets out of his car sporting two bags from Chick-fil-A.  It seems like no matter what I try, I have to be the kind of guy I am, so I yell across the parking lot "I see you're heterosexual today."

I know.  A lot of people are not going to do that, but I thought it was okay because the guy can say yes or no or just ignore me.  Instead as we walk towards the entrance he launches into a lecture on the evils of homosexuality.  The situation is indeed bad by the time he asks me if I know about Sodom and Gomorrah - likely I'm better acquainted with Hebrew literature than you actually -  and then he comes to the high point of the lecture.

"Do you know why AIDS is so prevalent today?"

And because at this time I'm still me - and don't panic, I have no blood-borne pathogens - I say:

 "I don't know about anybody else, but I got mine from IV drug abuse."

And the guy shuts up because being me I've fashioned myself into a useful Human, and the appearance that goes along with being useful can be used as a powerful incentive to get people to shut the fuck up.

Or again like this:

Finally yesterday I arrived at work at the same time as the CEO.  The guy opened the door for me, and maybe when you make 120 times more money than another guy you open the door for him.  I don't know because I don't make 120 times more money than anyone employed in the western hemisphere.  What I suspect happened is that the weenie assessed my usefulness, wondered what corporate security's response time is and how many people they can field, and then decided it might be a nice gesture to get the fuck out of my way.

So you have your hard goals, and you have your awesomeness which to you - if no one else - must be real, and it has to be something more than being able to walk around the block a few times.

What really are my goals then?

I want to go to a company barbecue, put two ounces of coleslaw on my three compartment styrofoam plate, fill the rest of the plate to a depth of six inches with meat, and watch co-workers avert their disgusted gazes in terror when they notice me looking back at them.

I want the director of a USAPL powerlifting meet to hand me the pee bottle in the belief that just possibly I really am on the D-Bol.

I want to walk on the sidewalk without hearing the cyclists who don't know what a street is say, "on your left."   I want them to see me and go a block to the left.

I don't want anyone asking me if I'm okay after an erg race.  I want them to call the paramedics immediately.

And then there's the stuff on the mirror.

I might have to edit the mirror.

I do not have to miss any training sessions.