C.J. West's Blog, page 5

MANday Week 11 – Finding Balance

It’s frustrating to sit on the sidelines. To watch your work slip away and know you could have continued to improve day after day. That’s how I’m feeling after a week without any strenuous exercise.

But there is good news.

What I thought was a stomach ulcer has turned out to be a nasty muscle pull.

I’ve had to stop pushups, planks, and runs while my muscles heal. This weekend would have been my photograph, but I’ve been off my regular workout regimen for weeks and I’m gaining a bit of weight. I feel like I can attain a much better shape given a few more weeks of rigorous workouts, so I’ve decided to wait until I can get back into working out before taking that photo.

Today I’m thinking about finding balance while I wait.

I’m a huge fan of the blog Zen Habits and this week while relaxing with my daughter at the beach I focused on my breathing. Leo talks a lot about breathing and how important it is for us to relax and just breathe from time to time.

I noticed my breathing has become more steady and powerful as a result of my running over the last three months. Try it. Close your eyes, relax and breathe. It’s very centering. Life affirming.

Last night I took a long walk through a cornfield. Walking used to be great exercise, but now no matter how fast I walk, my breathing doesn’t change. It doesn’t feel like exercise anymore, but I am burning calories, stretching my legs and taking in the scenery. I really enjoyed the sweet smell of corn. The rows stretching as far as you can see. And the rabbits and birds darting everywhere.

Today I’m embracing my need for a little balance.

Part of balance for me is eating chocolate. And if you’re going to eat chocolate, why not make it something fantastic? For those of you who’ve been eating chocolate every day, go out and run. For the rest of you, check out this fantastic recipe for a great Friday treat.

 

Peanut Butter Squares
Ingredients
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup honey graham crackers (1/3 box) – crushed
2 sticks margarine – melted
Between ½ and 1 lb confectioner’s sugar
16 oz semi-sweet chocolate morsels

Mix well – peanut butter, graham crackers and margarine.
Add confectioner’s sugar until firm, but not dry.
Spread the mixture in a 13 x 9 pan and compact.
Best results when the top is level

Melt the chocolate chips and spread evenly on top.

Cool this mixture for about 15 minutes in your freezer.
If you cool to the right temperature, the squares cut easily.
Serve slightly cooler than room temperature.

Do not serve frozen!

 

 

Lost in Space

In the late seventies my great grandmother was the oldest living person in Rochester, Massachusetts. She lived in a trailer outside my grandparents’ house and I remember her cruising back and forth from the house to the trailer even at ninety-six years old.

The trailer had a distinctive air inside. After so many years have gone by I can’t tell you if the smell came from cleaning products or moth balls or something else she used , but when I think of her, I’m immediately back in the flimsy trailer and I smell that same old scent that reminds me of her.

Today I’m wondering how much our space tells us about who we are. My youngest daughter is a good example. She hates change but lives in a house where the furniture, plants, and pictures regularly cycle in and out. The change is a source of stress that she can’t get away from until she grows up and moves out.

 

My environment screams temporary. My clothes are packed in plastic bins and stacked around my room. My desk, writing chair, and filing cabinets are squeezed into a room that was full before I arrived. If you look closely at the surfaces you’ll see that I’m working on many things at once. I’ve got five different notepads all open and half full of scribbles. Standing there for a few minutes you could tell a lot about my state of mind. I’ve tried many times over the years to organize and declutter, but it seems I default to a state of chaos where I can see lots of tasks at once. I’m comfortable in my clutter, for now.

My brother’s house is a more interesting example. He’s the focus of my new Deadly Junk
series and right now if you look around his place you’ll see Matchbox cars scattered all around the living space as they wait their turn to be listed on eBay. Those cars were a purchase I captured on my blog and in the first Deadly Junk book. If you venture into the spare bedroom or the cellar, you’ll find mountains of stuff he’s bought either at a yard sale or as part of an estate. His love for junk defines him and it’s visible everywhere you look.

You wouldn’t expect to find the massive television, the new furniture and all the cool electronic gadgets in the same house. All this stuff clashes with my brother’s love for junk. If you didn’t know my sister-in-law, you’d be puzzled about where it all came from. It would be hard to believe junk sales could pay for all that gadgetry. After following my brother’s hobby for several months I know he could afford those things with the money he makes selling junk, but that’s not the answer.

My sister-in-law is a contester. If you’re running a giveaway and you’re offering a good prize, there’s a really good chance she’s entered. She’s won two cars, countless televisions and electronics, and more gift cards than she can spend. We like to think she’s really lucky. Maybe she is, but a lot of it comes down to determination and the patience to enter thousands of contests. Her success fills the living room.

As I was sitting at the dining room table talking to my daughter this morning, she told me all about how she would create her first apartment to be just the place she wants to live in. I wonder if we all start out that way and how long it takes for our space to take control and begin to tell the world who we are.

 

 

MANday Week 10 – Get Your 5!

I’m going to share some great advice that started me on the road to better health.

This is not secret advice. You’ve heard it before, but I’m here to tell you that it is very powerful and it works.

A few years ago my cholesterol was high. My doctor gave me two choices. Lower my numbers through diet and exercise or start cholesterol-lowering meds.

A quick aside…

When I was young I took all sorts of medication to control my asthma and allergies. It was a real struggle for me to breathe many days. I was rushed to the hospital numerous times. Sometimes looking blue.

In my teens I started waking up with a racing heartbeat. It was so rapid it freaked me out to the point I trashed all the meds and didn’t look back. I had headaches for weeks – presumably because I’d been taking those drugs since I could remember. Since then I’ve avoided taking medication of any kind unless it is strictly necessary.

So, when my doctor told me he was going to give me cholesterol-lowering drugs, I was really motivated to fix the problem naturally. And after a few years of exercise and eating better, I’m convinced that no pill can do what a healthy diet and exercise can.

So here is my doctor’s advice (sans copay) …

My doctor told me to eat 5 fruits and vegetables each day. Not 10 total. Any combination of 5. When you get your 5 not only will you be giving your body better nutrition, but you’ll have less room for all the junk that tastes so good, but makes you want to lounge on the couch.

My 5-a-day plan looks something like this:

OJ in the morning with my Cheerios (a glass counts for one).

Grapes for a snack about 10:00.

A spinach salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, celery and carrots (I count this as two).

Two vegetables with dinner gets me to five.

Normally I’ll add an apple, pear, or a peach, during the day depending on what looked good in the grocery store that week.

Getting my 5 a day became routine. Normally I’m up around 7. In the six months after my visit to the doctor I lost 20 pounds and my cholesterol dropped from at risk to within normal limits. My doctor was stunned. He could tell by looking at me that I’d made a big change.

One more tip I learned from watching a dear friend. Each week my friend take two large Tupperware containers and fills one with fruit salad and the other with chopped vegetables. All the chopping gets done once or twice a week. Then all week long, fresh fruit and ready-to-eat veggies are within easy reach.

Even if you are on the sidelines with me right now, you can start yourself on the road to better health by getting your 5!

One more thing….

A big MANday shoutout to my cousin Rob who ran a 10K this week averaging just over 8 minutes a mile. Way to go Rob!

Who’s The Boss?

This week a bunch of ideas collided and got me thinking about when and why we get our way. We all want different things. When we get together in a group we often need to choose one thing over another. Sometimes we get our way. Sometimes we don’t.

Zen Habits featured a great post about Allowing Things to Happen last week. This brilliant (and simple) post suggests any control we have is really an illusion anyway, so we should let go.

This illusion hit home for me this week. The one time I really like to control things is on the poker table. As I’ve become a better player I’ve learned to influence what others do with my actions. I work hard at my game because I like to win, but in the last few weeks I’ve been hit with an interesting paradox.

I’ve been playing my best poker ever (mathematically) and yet I’m not doing as well as I normally do. Over the last ten weeks I’ve had a string of really horrible luck. What’s been happening is about as improbable as winning the lottery, only in reverse.

 

Lots of people react to turns of fate like mine by getting angry. Yelling. Throwing things. It’s like a child throwing a temper tantrum because he thinks he is control then discovers he’s not. Maybe this never changes. But our illusions of control just get better.

The book Zen and The Art of Poker talks about cycles of luck. Where each player takes a turn winning. And that sometimes it’s just not our turn and we need to be patient. If we force the issue and try to bully our way to winning when it is not our turn, disharmony results. I wonder if that’s not also the case in everyday life.

How many times do you see someone imposing their will on others and it is clearly not the right course? We laugh at egomaniacal bosses on television, because we know similar people.

 

One of my favorites is a person I know who insists on driving even though they are horrible with directions. This irrational combination makes me wonder why some people choose to lead all the time no matter if they are suited or not. And why others sit back even when they are most qualified to be in charge.

Does your personality put you in charge when you’d rather not be?

Should you take Leo’s advice and let things happen more often? Or would the world benefit if you stepped up and took the lead once in a while?

MANday Week 10 – Injured Reserve

What Do I have in common with Tom Brady and Wes Welker?

All three of us have torn our left ACL.

Here is a video of Tom Brady going down after being hit by Bernard Pollard in 2008.
That was a very sad day for Patriots fans!

Here is Wes Welker going down after making a hard cut against the Texans. It is so easy to admire this guy! He’s smaller than most of the guys on the field. He’s fearless and leaves it all on the field every game. 

Fortunately there is no video of me tearing my ACL doing flips on the trampoline in 2009. The difference was that while those guys were sidelined, there was a silver lining to my injury. My work was hit with a huge infusion of energy. I was stuck in a chair with my laptop and in eight weeks I cranked out The End of Marking Time.

If you’ve been following my MANday blog, you know about my challenge with Jillian Dodd and that the day for my photographs is fast approaching. You also know that I’ve been hurting the last few weeks and that my exercise is suffering.

This week after talking with my doctor, I’ve decided to stop working out altogether. The pain in my side is too severe to run or to do planks. For the next few weeks I’m going to take it easy while we figure out what is wrong.

While I’m on injured reserve I’m going to focus on writing. My goal is to finish the first Deadly Junk book and get started on the sequel to The End of Marking Time this fall. The delay will also give you more time to tell your friends to get their comments in so Jillian can get to her goal. Jillian and I originally thought she could get 5,000 people to comment. It seemed realistic since she was offering a $500 prize. 

Once I’m back on my feet, I’ll get in a few weeks of hard workouts and head for the photographer.

The Hippie Hippie Shakes

Last week at the beach I saw something that made me stop and watch for a solid 15 minutes.

No, it wasn’t a woman in a bikini.

I saw plenty of women who’d worked on their figures and their tans. And some who’d picked out really skimpy suits.

Some guys had been working hard in the gym, their sculpted arms clear evidence of time hoisting weights. They attracted their share of attention, too.

The guy who stopped me was soft around the middle. At first I stopped not out of admiration, but maybe freakish curiosity. He had long hair and a vibe that screamed hippie, more in the way he moved than the way he looked.

He twirled two hula hoops around his body with a funky rhythm that was hypnotic, the way a belly dancer entrances her audience. This guy seemed indifferent to his audience. Maybe his audience was only me and a few other people who peeked now and then, but his joy came from mastery of his body’s connection to the hoops.

I waited for them to fall and to my surprise they didn’t.

He spun one hoop around his knees. I was certain he was losing control. Then as if to prove me wrong, he hopped one foot out and spun the hoop around one knee, the other raised high and twisting in the air. The guy had control of his hoop. As long as he wanted it to orbit his body, it was going to obey.

While I was standing there I thought of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. For those of you who haven’t read it, he suggests that to truly be a master of something you need to put in 10,000 hours. As I watched trick after trick I was certain this guy had put in his 10,000 hours and was a true master of the hula hoop.

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He performed several tricks, but his mastery went beyond the tricks themselves. He performed with flair. You couldn’t help but feel a funky 70’s vibe when you watched. I could almost hear The Beetles singing Strawberry Fields.

A woman, I assumed she was his girlfriend, stood up to join him. She was better than anyone I’d ever seen with a hula hoop, but she didn’t compare to him.

He twirled the hoop on either side of his head, on one elbow, and sometimes he grasped it in his hand and moved it around, not twirling it, but using it as a prop for the melody in his head.

All the people who grabbed my attention that day on the beach had worked to be who they are. The women watched their diet, worked out, chose a sexy suit, and primped their hair for the beach. The muscled guys pumped iron with dedication.

Hula Guy stood out partially because he put so much time into what he loved to do and partially because he took a risk. Twirling a Hula Hoop isn’t the most masculine endeavor and when he started I bet Hula Guy encountered plenty of resistance.

He worked hard to be an artist and he has my utmost admiration for his dedication, creativity, and artistry.

What unique outlet do you pour your creative energy into?

MANday Week 9 – More and Better Sex!

Today marks 22 days until my photo session for Jillian’s MANday blog. Guys, if you haven’t been following along, I’m going to give you the best motivation ever to get started on an exercise program.

First, have you heard this old joke:
Guy 1: How do you know when a woman has an orgasm?
Guy 2: Who cares?

This was funny when I was twenty-something, but now I realize how crucial sexual performance is to a man’s self esteem.

Guys, when you see a woman’s magazine with an article titled Ultimate Orgasms, How To Make Them Longer And Stronger, do you pick it up?

 

I know you ladies read these stories because they are prominently featured so often. Did you know when you walk out of the room we pick them up and frantically flip to the article for advice? We put them back as soon as we’re done and try to remember how you had them organized on the coffee table so you don’t know.

Maybe you’re smarter than we think. Maybe you leave them out for us to find, hoping we’ll learn something. Hmmm…

You know what’s coming…

This week I read a bit from Women’s Health. While it didn’t have offer much in terms of technique or creativity, one thing caught my eye. The author suggested that women who have more masculine partners had longer more satisfying sex and you guessed it, more orgasms. Hmmm!

Good thing I’ve been working out for 9 weeks! My stamina for everything has really improved.

Guys if you haven’t joined my MANday workout program yet, check out this article from Men’s Health. 
It’s a great exercise for your abdominals. And don’t forget the pushups. If you’re going to hold yourself up for an hour, some added upper body strength won’t hurt.

So what have I been doing?

My daughter and I went to Horseneck Beach yesterday so I could work on my tan. The farmer’s tan wasn’t going to cut it for Jillian’s blog, so over the next three weeks, I’ll be stopping at Horseneck regularly. For those of you not from New England, it was in the high 90’s the last two days. That’s smoking hot for us northerners!

I’ve got a video to help you guys get in the spirit. Way up above I promised to get you more and better sex. Well, if that article isn’t enough proof that getting in shape will help you attract ladies, I can tell you I watched women drool over the chiseled guys on the beach all afternoon yesterday.

Just do it. You’ll be glad you did.

In between talking to my daughter and watching the girls watch the guys, I plotted a third of the sequel to The End of Marking Time. I’m in love with the new story and it has an ending that rivals the original. I can’t wait to start writing!

And I did actually do some exercise this week.

I walked 11 miles last weekend. I haven’t been running or doing much ab work due to my ulcer, but otherwise I’m feeling great.

I have some good news to report. After a few weeks of focus, pushups have become routine. I can bang out ten pushups anytime, anywhere, and I’m doing 30 to 50 every day. That’s a big change from when I started. The more I workout the more I am impressed with how quickly my body adapts to new exercises.

If I could give you one thing today, it would be the feeling I had this week, realizing that something that had been a real challenge was now well within my limits. Wow does it feel great.

So, tell me about your workouts and what you think about those gossip rag sex articles.

Keep Your Dream Alive

Some mornings I look in the mirror and even I think I’m nuts.

At one point or another, everyone who knows me well (except my brother) has told me I should give up writing and get a real job that comes with a regular paycheck.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve read, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

My particular brand of insanity goes something like this:

Work all year on a book.
Pay for editing and cover art.
Publish.
Wait for money to come flowing in.
Earn back almost enough to pay for editing and cover art.
Repeat.

The vast majority of writers out there can relate to the sheer joy of the creative process and utter befuddlement when it comes to marketing and sales. Most of us have no idea why some books sell and why some great writers struggle on in anonymity and poverty.

I don’t think you can truly appreciate the frustration until you’ve spent a year working on something that everyone tells you is great, yet still doesn’t sell.

For me marketing seems more like voodoo than science. I must say I’ve done a lot of fun things with book marketing and I’ve made some great friends on Facebook and at conventions. I’ve also been really fortunate to enjoy great feedback from readers. Those kind words above all are what has kept me going this long.

I often get comments from people who think I’ve gotten rich selling books. Some have even accused me of being greedy and only caring about money. That one really makes me laugh. For those financially minded among you, I’ll share some numbers.

I’ve been writing (and marketing) what amounts to a fulltime schedule for almost 12 years. This spring I broke even for the endeavor. Imagine a job you’d work at fulltime for 12 years without getting paid and you’ll have an idea how much I love writing. Another interesting number… This year I have given away 120,000 e-books. If everyone who took a free book this year sent me one dollar, I wouldn’t have to listen to Johnny Cash at 3:00 A.M.!

Needless to say, being an indie writer is hard. So I hope the next time you see a shabby-looking writer burning copies of Twilight in Barnes & Noble, you’ll think twice before turning him in.

It’s not just writers who have it hard in this economy. So many of us are really struggling to make ends meet, I thought I’d share some of the things that help me keep the faith when I’m feeling down.

The first thing that comes to mind every time I’m thinking of giving up is a saying by A.L. Williams, a direct marketer I crossed paths with in the 80’s. He said, “All you can do is all you can do.”

I don’t know why I always hear this saying when I’m down, but the quote has a special brand of circular logic. At first it tells you it is okay to give up if you’ve done all you can do. But then, just when you’ve rationalized selling your copy of Microsoft Word for gas money, you realize there is one more thing you haven’t tried. It works on me almost every time.

When that doesn’t work I pull out my Foreigner 4 CD and listen to the greatest song of all time. Jukebox Hero. How can you not love a song about a kid who finds passion listening at a concert hall door and then learning to play guitar? He makes it big and still loves what he does. And the song rocks!

There is one more song for extreme cases of it’s-time-to-give-up-itis. It’s Never Give An Inch by 38 Special. The song talks about how hard it is to make it when millions of people want the same dream. Sorry, this song isn’t on Youtube. You can find the lyrics here. Or you can play a sample on Amazon here. 

I wonder if these artists had any idea people would be playing their songs for inspiration thirty years later. I guess that’s what art is all about and why we are willing to struggle so hard to make our own.

What inspires you to keep going when things get tough?

Manday Week 8 Women Go Crazy for Good Abs!

I’ve gotten a bit off track in the last two weeks. And I want to share my progress, but first I need to tell you about something I learned at poker.

Last Wednesday I sat next to a mild-mannered older woman, about seventy years old. We were playing No Limit Hold ‘em and she has trouble with her hands, so I was dealing when it was her turn.

We all know each other pretty well and this particular woman sometimes needs help knowing which chips to put in. She’s meek and goes along with the game. She rarely talks and when she speaks, her voice is very soft. I get the sense she’s there to liven up an otherwise boring Wednesday night.

About an hour into the game she lost her chips and it was time for her to go.

She started to get up and then looked at the guy next to her and said, “It was really hard sitting next to you all night. I know you have a great six pack under there and I really wanted to throw you down on the floor and jump on you.”

The image was hilarious. The woman is very short, large, and forty (maybe fifty) years older than the guy she was talking to. He is buff and quiet himself. All he could do was smile until she left.

I tried to find a pic that reminded me of them.
This was the best I could do.

If I wasn’t sitting directly across from her I never would have believed it.

We laughed about that for an hour, but it taught me a very important lesson: ALL WOMEN Love Abs!

Guys, take it to heart. Go visit #plankaday!

Ladies, remember if you want to help Jillian, comment on my MANday challenge.

On a more serious note, my workouts have been suffering the last two weeks.

One good thing… I noticed this week when I stand up behind my desk I see abs (3 sets of two) reflected in the mirror across the room. I haven’t seen them since I was in my twenties, so that’s kind of cool. (and now you ladies know I often write with my shirt off.)

A few of you sent messages this week wondering where last week’s MANday post was. I wasn’t sure what to write last week because I had two setbacks.

First, I hurt my back doing some intense ab exercises. I have lost two weeks of planking because it took that long for my back muscles to return to normal. My back issue is nothing serious, I just stressed the muscles a bit too much. They are better now.

The second problem isn’t going away quite so easily. I’ve developed a stomach ulcer and I’m in pain most of the time. I ran once this week and I’m doing some upper body work, but I’ve had to really limit my ab workouts because I don’t want to aggravate the problem. I’m also sleeping more to give my body a chance to heal.

I feel like I’m on track for the photo on July 14 but at this point in the contest I wanted to be pushing the workouts hard. Unfortunately, I can’t do that right now. If you stop by facebook or Twitter and are wondering why I’m not there, I’m probably fishing, trying to relax and get my stomach back into shape.

Since I know how much you ladies love abs, I’m going to share some in this post.

Enjoy! And don’t forget to share your workout progress with me.

Deadly Junk

I’m about halfway through the first book of my new Deadly Junk series and this weekend I had an experience that will give you a behind the scenes look at Deadly Junk and what’s coming this fall.

One serendipitous thing about this title is that it keeps taking on new meanings for me as I work through the story. Usually my book titles have at two meanings, one apparent and one that you understand a little more when the book is finished. This time around I’m finding meanings around every corner.

This weekend my brother held up something for me and said, “Now this is Deadly Junk.” He was right.

Doesn’t he look like an action hero?

Lorado, the main character in Deadly Junk, is modeled after my brother’s life. He’s involved in two very different worlds . Bringing them to life has really been an eye-opening experience for me.

The first world is junk. Yard sales. Estate sales. Stuff people leave on the side of the road. You name it. If it has value, my brother can spot it at thirty miles per hour.

Each book in the series talks about several valuable things he’s found while I’m writing the book. I incorporate them into the story and tell you a little about what they are, why they are valuable, and how you can find them for yourself. If you are an eBay junkie, or can’t help stopping at yard sales, you’ll enjoy the antiques and collectibles mentioned in the books.

Today’s topic is something for the kids.

About two weeks ago my brother was offered a collection of toys that would make any ten year old boy lose sleep for a month. Someone had been saving Matchbox army vehicles and plastic figures for years and decided it was time to get rid of them.

When he told me how many pieces I was amazed. There were 8 bins brimming full of cars and army men.

In July I’m going to visit some good friends who also happen to read my books. One of the boys is having a birthday, so I decided to combine the parents’ love of books with the boy’s birthday present and give him something straight out of Deadly Junk. Here is the collection I assembled.

Notice the heap of green men in the background!

The 2,000 men and dozens of vehicles didn’t make a dent in my brother’s collection. But it took over an hour for us (yes I had some help!) to set the pieces up for these photos.

Here are some more action photos:

Great detail on these tanks.

I loved these crawling guys

 

 

Playing with these guys brought back memories for me. When I first saw the collection I was in awe of the sheer numbers of pieces. The shiny helicopters, all in mint condition, grabbed my attention first. When you are a kid, you get a helicopter, maybe two. This collection held fifty identical helicopters! What kid wouldn’t want them for his airbase?

My brother has spent days with these toys, but he wasn’t excited about the pieces he had fifty or a hundred of. He spent his time researching rare models. The thing I’ve learned about buying large lots is that there are a few pieces mixed in that are valuable. In this case, one piece paid for the entire lot of 50,000+ pieces. The trick was finding that one piece and a few more like it.

When you read Deadly Junk this fall, you’ll learn about finding the treasure mixed in the chaos. I hope you’ll join me then.

So, did you play with toys like these? Or were you a Barbie girl?