Leading and Inspiring! Step One...

Step One: Admitting you are powerless over "XXX".

I refuse to admit to step one.  I refuse to say that I am powerless to being fit and taking care of myself (mind AND body).  I realise that the traditional 12-step program is geared more for traditional addictions: AA, NA, GA, SA, etc.  So, let's start over.  Let's start from the beginning.

What is your Why?

I was told to think about this and have an answer in anticipation of the RWB GORUCK Leadership Camp I was selected to attend this coming weekend.  And I admit that I have been excited ever since I found out I was going. I got the news while I was with my father.  It was much needed uplifting news for me during a dark and depressing time.  I hold tight to those happy moments when it seems like the brightness is dimming in my world.

Moving on.  When I first read that question I did not really understand it.  First of all, grammatically, it is an atrociously structured sentence.  But if you take it apart and look at each piece of it:

• What: as a noun, it is defined as "the true nature or identity of something, or the sum of its characteristics."
• Is: verb "3rd person singular present indicative of be."
• Your: pronoun "a form of the possessive case of you used as an attributive adjective."
• Why: adverb/conjunction "for what reason, cause or purpose."

I realise that probably did not help much for some of you.  But for me, it did.  I spent too much time looking at the whole sentence and getting stuck.  I mulled over things and came up with some bulleted points for discussion:

• How do you define yourself?
• By your looks?
• By your job(s)?
• By your hobbies/activities?
• By your friends/family?
• By your experiences/history?
• How well do you think you know someone?
• Media portrayal (news print, news video, TV shows, etc.)?
• Social media?
• Gossip and/or word of mouth?

But still none of these was the answer.  They were merely things to consider when developing your answer.  How do I define myself?  It depends on the time of day you ask.  It depends on whom I am around and the activity I am engaged in.  Or at least that is what I originally thought.  The definition of me is not a static thing.  But it also has a center to it.  A core.  A part of me that has and is always there.  It is just that sometimes that core gets covered up by a mantle, a protective layer that is cooler and can have varying degrees of thickness.  The core is always there.  I just need to tap into it to realise who the real me is.  What are my constants:

• Female: and damn proud of it
• Type 1 diabetic: nothing is gonna hold me back!  (Well, except for the FAA not letting me be a commercial pilot.  Sometimes you gotta pick and choose your battles.)
• Athlete: I have always been an athlete.  It just took me until adulthood to find what activities made me happy being active.  I learned that organised sports are not my thing.  Neither are unisex activities.  Or basketball.  At all.

Those are the three things that I always come back to.  Not where I grew up or where I currently live.  Not the color of my skin or my education level.  I usually include my job type in there, too.  Because it is something I am proud of.  As are the original three things I listed.  My life experiences have impacted and further defined me.  But I refuse to let negative events in my life define me.  They are merely challenges to overcome, work through and learn from.  Sometimes they suck.  A LOT!  And sometimes they take much.  The pay off may be years down the road.  

Example:  Why do I continue to work a job that does not pay me enough to survive on?  A job that often times causes me to cry when I get home from the frustration of the bureaucracy involved in it?  A job that is oftentimes demonised by today's modern society?  A job that causes me physical pain at times?  A job that I am rarely thanked for or recognised for?

Simple:  Because I love it.  I love what I do.  I love making a difference to my community.  To the people and living things within my community.  I love my coworkers.  Each and every one.  I often run scenarios through my head of in case a coworker was injured or threatened at work.  And I would not hesitate to provide aid to them, even if it mean injury to myself as well.  My coworkers are my family.  And I love them.  As a single person (who loves being single BTW) whose nearest blood relative is almost 2,000mi away, my coworkers have become my surrogate family.  I love that even after almost seven years at my job, I still love it as much as when I started it.  Every day is different.  My office is my patrol vehicle and the city in which I work.  I am outside every day, rain or shine,

 sleet or wind, scorching heat or sub zero temps.  I love it.  It makes me happy (most of the time).

Why would I want to leave that?  A job that mentally and physically challenges me.  A job that makes me better at both.  A job that I get to set my standards and continue to break them and set the bar higher...

Wait a minute.  Am I beginning to answer my original question?  Is this my "Why"?  Yes.  Yes I am.  I then googled "What is your Why" and I found one of the most inspirational videos I have ever seen in my life.  

My "why" does wake me up in the morning.  I wake up early on my work days to work out.  There are days I do not want to wake.  I went to bed too late.  I am tired.  No.  Not acceptable.  Because if I give in that one time, what will prevent me from giving in the next time and the time after that?  And then where will I be?  Unhappy.  My true happy place is exercising and being out in nature.  Doing both is a near holy experience for me.  My "why" is to better myself.  To set goals before me, and doing all that I can to reach them, crush them and set the goddamned bar higher to crush them again.  My "why" is to be an example for others.  To inspire them.  To show them it can be done.  Sometimes (fuck, who are we kidding, most of the time...) down the rough road.  Going down the easy road in life is not for me.  I do not want an easy life.  I want a life full of challenges.  Full of accomplishments and adventures.  I want to be able to say "I did that."  And say it with pride.  I want to be able to see those barriers and know that I overcame them.  You're female?  Yeah, so what?  I can still do it.  I may have to modify my track to get there, but I will get there one way or another.

I am not a fast person by any means.  My body is built more like a sherpa.  I do not have to cross that finish line first.  I just have to cross that finish line.  And if I did not cross the line, I want to know I did all that I could to get there and learn from that experience so that I can cross it in the future.

I see the goals others have accomplished and I tell myself: I want to do that.  I want to reach that goal, too.  Or, I want to be like that person.  I want to be as motivated as him/her in that task (or tasks).  I see them and they inspire me.  I want to be able to do that for others.  And right now, as well as for many years, that group I really want to inspire are diabetics.  Why set your goals in life so low?  Be what you want to be.  Fuck boundaries.  You re-set those boundaries and keep moving them as you accomplish more and more.

And now, I get to the entire point of this looooong post.  Sorry.  I get so damn wordy at times.  The words.  They just flow and I cannot seem to stop them at times.

I decided after the Seattle 9/11 GORUCK events that I wanted to set my bar higher.  I wanted to do a Heavy.  I trained hard for one at the end of 2015 to do one in May 2016, but an injury caused me to put those plans on hold.  And another injury caused me to miss participating in the MLK GORUCK event in DC in Jan 2016.  This time 'round, I am going to take much better care of my body.  I am going to work in nutrition.  I am going to monitor my blood sugars much more closely.  I am going to incorporate my GP Doctor who specialises in First Responders and an Endocrinologist I have been in contact with in Seattle.

I applied to get my entry fee for the Heavy sponsored.  And fuck me, I was accepted!  Holy mother balls fuck sauce!  Me?  The organisation is called Live for a Living.  Huh.  Crazy.  That is also my mantra in life.  And the two people that currently run it are two people I have followed on the webs for a bit.  Crazy!  One of them is a woman who completed a GORUCK HTL (Heavy-Tough-Light) event for the San Fran 9/11 this month.  She blogged about it.  My mind was blown.  I was further inspired.  Damn.  What a freaking badass monster woman.  I wanna be like her!  The other is a man who I first heard about back in April 2016.  The Barkley Marathons.  If you have never heard of them.  Google it now.  Just. Do. It.  This man did the event...as a guide runner for a blind runner.  He has done a slew of other adventure races/events, but that is the one that always stands out in my mind.  Fucking inspirational as shit.  Both of them.

Live for a Living is first a philosophy. An idea that we can experience greater life fulfillment when we follow our passions and put people and experiences first.

So.  Come May 2017, I will be in Washington DC for Memorial Day weekend.  I will be doing a GORUCK Heavy!  I got this shit!  First day of officially training starts 10/01/16 with the Horseman workout plan.  Pathfinder 010 starts in November.  I will supplement it with regular bouts of snowshowing and hopefully renew my membership to the rock climbing gym.  I got this shit.  I can do it!  Here is my profile entry on the Live for a Living website.  Fuck yes!

If I am ever flagging in my training.  I will come back to this post to inspire myself.  I got this shit.  I can do it.

Sheepdogs and Sheep

I attended a few hours of training today during work.  The training is called, Sheepdog Seminars:Building a Community of Leaders who are Called to Protect Others.

I have grown in my profession knowing the analogy of the sheepdog.  It is something law enforcement types hold strongly to and associate with as a group and individuals.  The analogy was brought to our attention by Lt. Col Dave Grossman (Ret.) in his book On Combat, written after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.  In the book, he describes the analogy as:

"If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath—a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. "

Grossman was one of the speakers at the training I attended.  I could only stay for the first half, due to needing to get back on the street and respond to calls for service.  The training was hosted by a local church and it was aimed primarily at church-going people.  It did not hide this fact.  Part of the advertisement on the training was that it would discuss violence at places of worship and how church-goers can be better prepared for impending violence, both at places of worship, and in their every day lives.  Here is a quote from their website:

""We have now documented over 622 violent deaths on church and faith based property since 1999. In addition, thousands of sex crimes have occurred on church and faith-based property. We beg you, we plead with you - in tears - for the sake of your precious flock, do something before the enemy strikes your people. Do not fall prey to the mentality of the people in Amos's day, who said: "Nothing bad will happen to us" (Amos 9:10)"

I learned a lot while there.  But I admit a certain level of discomfort I feel when I am in a church.  I feel that I am intruding in a place saved for those who worship God.  And by worship, I mean in whatever accepted way that church has defined it as in the larger mass religion sense of the word.  So while I am inside, I feel that I cannot be the real me.  That the person I am is not acceptable and I must modify myself in order to be there.  I do not know why I think and behave this way.  Perhaps it is because of the sour disapproving looks I get from church goers when I am me.  And, as a result, it leaves a sour taste in my mind for how closed minded people at church can be rather than accepting, i.e. not hypocritical.

Anyway, the training.  It felt like a fire and brimstone sort of sermon. The end of days is approaching and are you ready?! I learned about mass shootings, i.e. massacres from all over the world and that the U.S. does not have the worst ones in recent history.  Here is a brief list of the ones mentioned at the training (I will not type out the terrorist's names, they do not deserve to have their names recorded or ever spoken of again):

• Norway 2011:   Regjeringskvartalet and Workers' Youth League (AUF)-run summer camp (77 died by one man that day)

• Germany 2009: Winnenden school shooting (16 died by a minor-aged person)

• Germany 2002: Erfurt school shooting (18 died by a single shooter)

• Russia 2004: Beslan school massacre (330+ died by multiple organised terrorists, some of which escaped)

• Pakistan 2014: Peshwar school massacre (145 died by multiple organised terrorists)

That is just a small list of the much longer list of massacre violent events in recent human history that were discussed.  Granted, some were discussed in more detail.  With maps of the buildings, locations of killers and the response of military and first responders to the incidents, as well as the national government's immediate reaction.

After listening to stories like this for hours, it can begin to gnaw at you a bit.  I found the incidents to be both horrifying and interesting.  Things to learn from in order to better prepare ourselves and to try to understand the reason for the incidents in the first place.  Grossman stated that today, the upcoming generation is so saturated with media (TV shows, movies and video games) that espouses violence and desensitizes death, including making law enforcement out to be the evil/bad/antagonist so often that they have lost their way.  That they do not understand the importance of life versus death and the impact of violence upon others.

Now I have heard this argument many times.  Especially growing up when rap music was on the upswing and conservative politicians and groups claimed that bad words made our youth do bad things.  And that TV shows had to have a rating system in order to prevent children from viewing violence.  After doing a Google search on violent video games, I came across this interesting article published in Time Magazine.  It stated, 

"..the American Psychological Association (APA) has joined the debate, arguing in a research review that playing violent games is linked to aggression, but that there’s insufficient evidence to link the games to actual criminal violence."

As a person that does not play video games at all.  Yep, you heard me.  At all.  They simply hold no interest for me.  Why would I want to play something on a screen inside a building when I could be reading a book, or, even better, outside playing and interacting with my spiritual happy place- NATURE!  Therefore, I cannot confirm or deny how video games impact a person's violent and/or aggressive nature.  Most of my friends do not play video games either.  And those that do, do not spend much time on them.  My personal opinion is that they are a waste of time and cause people to be lazy, stagnant and anti-nature.  But that is my own personal opinion.  And, as we all know, opinions are not facts.  And they may not be right.

Some more Googling of violence in the media and impact on youth came up with the following:

• The Impact of Media Violence on Children and Adolescents (by the American Academy of Children & Adolescent Psychiatry)

• Violence in the Media (published in Psychiatric Times. 2012)

• Citation for: "The Myth of Violence" by Trend, David. 2007.

And so on.  

I honestly have not done much research on the topic.  I know, based on my personal experiences with the public while at work, I have noticed a shift in our culture.  People seem to expect law enforcement to work wonders.  As if when you call for help, and when the police arrive, your problem will be magically solved.  Proof!  Solved.  Done.  Police in the movies do it so fast.  So why cannot the ones in real life do it, too?  What?!  You mean if I call the police for a problem, I may actually have to take action myself?  What?!  I may have to take responsibility for my actions and have consequences for them?!  Inconceivable!!  Yes, media.  Thank you for distorting how people think the law enforcement world really works.  Here are some perfect examples of fucked up police perceptions:

• CSI TV shows.  Fuck no CSI shit does not happen like that or that damn fast.

• NCIS TV show:  Really?  Really?  Do I need to say more?

• James Patterson books

• Any film on LE other than "End of Watch"...and even parts of that were not quite right

I am tired.  So very tired.  Of having my profession attacked.  Of being told to be guilty because of the color of my skin.  Do I think their is systemic racism in the American culture.  Sure.  Do I think the solution is violence and beating down everyone because of it?  Nope.  Was I raised in a privileged white middle class manner with two caring and loving parents that provided for me and attempted to have me experience as much that life can offer?  Yes.  Do I feel guilty for it?  No.  Should I?  Why should I?  Instead of beating everyone down.  Why don't we build everyone up?  Why don't we offer solutions that do not involve violence.  That do not involve killing others?

*sigh*  I am just tired.  I want to move to a cabin in the woods far away from all this vitriol.  Away from people.  I want to be in nature at peace.

There are times I feel caught.  I have friends that are very conservative in their views.  And I have friends that are very liberal in their views.  After having lived in Idaho for years and working the profession I do, my views have changed over time.  And now I feel caught in my thought process since I see both sides of the argument for a variety of issues:

• Should we arm our teachers in anticipation of a school massacre? (And by arm I mean a tool to harm an intruder: OC, taser, gun, etc.)
• Should everyone have equal access to guns and be allowed to carry them openly and/or concealed?
• Do we stand for the Star Spangled Banner or take a knee?
• Do we let refugees from the Middle East areas in scott free or do we attempt to check for terrorists?

And so on.  Since these are all deep topics and I have no intention of sharing my opinion on any of them.  Let us end with a smile on our face:

My Religion

View from Kerry Park.

I had a fairly deep and almost spiritual thought yesterday on my drive home from Seattle via Scenic Route 410 through Mount Rainier country.  I parked the Jeep.  Stiffly and sorely clambered out of it and shuffled around to take in the scenery.  I was in awe.  There is this MASSIVE mountain dominating the scene.  It is covered in snow.  The sky is a deep blue.  Trees and rocks and rugged nature everywhere.  And I am so happy.  I am at peace.  This is my place.  This is where I belong.  The world feels right.  And that thought came to me, that my religion is this.  I follow and worship the land of nature.  It is such an integral part of me.

Being there helped cleanse the frustration and crowdedness of people and traffic and dirtiness of Seattle from me.  It was quiet and serene.  It was a nice break to get out of the Jeep and move around a bit before the long tiring trek home.

My future will involve a place like that.  Being far from civilization.  Being where it feels right.  I want to see so much of the world.  And that world involves natural wonders like this, like a massive snow covered mountain.  And the more remote the better.  I want my life to be full of one adventure after the other.  This is why I do perceived crazy things like my hikes, OCRs, GORUCK, rock climbing, etc.  I love the way I feel while I am doing them.  But the feeling I have when I complete some task or challenge or another, I cannot explain.  That sense of accomplishment.  That I did it.  My body was pushed and it prevailed.  Sometimes, with much pain and soreness or injuries involved.  But I still did it.

This past weekend I did the 9/11 commemorative GORUCK Light event in Seattle.  It was my first GORUCK event for 2016.  Disappointing, I know.  I had to drop the other events due to injuries earlier this year.  I was quite nervous.  I had only prepared a week before the event.  After I got back from MN.  I missed the Boise GORUCK event while I was in MN and missed it terribly.  I was intensely jealous of all the photos and updates of the Boise event.  I could feel myself getting fatter and out of shape by the day.  Now that I am back in Idaho, I hit the ground running.  I have been training hard.  Being active daily and back to eating less than when I was in MN.

My self esteem plummeted when I got back from MN.  My inactivity took its toll on me.  For the first few days back here, I was in a foul mood.  But once I got back to working out, my spirits improved immediately.  And they have not flagged since.  My happiness is in being physically active and being in nature.

Heavy doing PT in the fountain.

I arrived in time to watch the beginning (Welcome Party) of the GORUCK Heavy 9/11 event.  I watched their Endex as well as the Welcome Party of the Challenge event the next day.  It was so nice to be with my GRT family again.  I did not realise how much I missed them.  It feels so nature to be with them.  Friends with them.  Even though we rarely see each other and have only done events together (granted, hard ass multi-hour suffering greatly events), I still feel a connection to them.

I did the Light event.  I was supposed to do the Challenge, but I transferred it since I was not sure I could physically do it and not injure myself due to my limited training.  I was less nervous than I thought I would be.  Forty-nine people appeared at the start.  Whoa.  That was by far the largest group I have ever done an event with.  A friend and I gathered them together into ranks.  Reminded them of all the things they needed to have for the event.  And if people did not have those things:

• Required weight
• Photo/govt I.D.
• $20 cash
• water (3L preferred)
• headlamp
• special instructions for 9/11: photo of someone that died in the attacks that day (and be able to explain that person to others, if asked)

we found others that had extras and tried to make sure everyone was set.  But of course, once the event started and the Cadre were doing their inspections, there are always those few people that did not read the packing list and fucked the rest of us over.  And by fuck, I mean for every "infraction" someone did not bring/follow, that is PT that all of us have to do.

Pretty Man Cadre Geoff speaking to the Challenge Endex.

This was the first event I have done where the Cadre were less strict.  They never advised us that our rucks could not touch the ground.  We did not have any coupons.  Our Welcome and Endex were not terribly hard.  They were more helpful than harsh.  Although, sprinting up Queen Anne Hill Rd was probably the worst part of the whole thing.  Event worse than doing the Tunnel of Love.  But maybe that was because we did that on grass versus on a rocky beach or on a hill in pouring rain.  We did do exercises I have never done before, so that was nice.  We did buddy sit ups where you have to keep your hands behind your head and stand all the way up while your partner helps you up by pulling your momentum from holding your legs.

Me birthing myself from the Tunnel of Love.

Buddy sit ups: completion of rep by standing up.

 We did have two sets of team weights.  Both specially made for the 9/11 event.  One was a custom weight made into a Captain America shield with information engraved on the back of it about those we lost on 9/11.  The other weight were two wooden blocks painted to be the Twin Towers with the names of everyone that perished in them written on the sides.

 

This was by far the easiest GORUCK event I have ever done.  But it also pointed out to me where I am lacking in my current training.  I definitely need to work on my upper arm strength by holding my ruck above my head.  For part of the Welcome Party we did 4-count to 25 reps of flutter kicks, jumping jacks, mountain climbers and breast stroke arm pulls on our stomachs.  And we did it four times.  I had a hard time on the mountain climbers with my arms holding me up.  Same goes for the tunnel of love.  And good grief.  My push ups are deplorable.  Definitely need to work on arms.

Mountain climbers! 

Cadre made me lead one session of flutter kicks.  Counting out the 4-count.

Cadre sat us down at Kerry Park and we discussed the events in the world leading up to 9/11.  I am surprisingly not well-versed on this part of world history.  It was good to be reminded of tribal life.  Something that Americans, and much of the "developed" world do not understand.

We had a veteran Cadre who was helping train two new cadres.  I imagine they were all pretty tired by the time the Light came around, having done all of the Heavy and Challenge the two days before.  The newer two cadre mainly ran the Light.  The veteran Cadre disappeared for a bit.  They all seemed fine.  This was the first event that I did not really interact with the Cadre.  Did not joke or get to know them at all.  Which was a bit disappointing.  The same can be said for the other participants.  I did not bond with them as much either.  There were so many of them.  And we never truly suffered much either to solidify those bonds.  While we were doing the Endex (which basically means more PT and lots of running to and fro the duck poop water pond fountain thing), one of the newer Cadre asked me if I was ok.  I tell them at the beginning of every event that I am a T1D and where my food is located.  This Cadre thought I looked pale and wanted to make sure I was ok.  I advised him I am always pale, so it is quite normal.  I did test during the event.  I like to keep my sugars high in order to avoid crashing.  At one point, I reached 300s, so I took 1 unit to bring it back down a bit into the 200s range.  But at least this time I avoided the 400-500 range like I have done in the past.

2016 GORUCK 9/11 Seattle Light Finishers and Cadre.

My chosen person to commemorate was Capt Kathy Mazza of the PAPD.  Here are info links about her, her life and involvement in 9/11:

• ODMP
• PAPBA
• Smithsonian American Hist
• 9/11 Memorial

Last year I did a write up on my thoughts and opinions as it relates to 9/11.  So I do not think being redundant on here will serve any purpose.  I must say that now as an adult, I feel more viscerally when I see images of that day.  I think it is because now I am an adult.  I have had a plethora of more experiences than when I was 17 years old watching it happen live on TV back in 2001.  And every time I see images or read about it, I am bothered by it.  By the atrocities that humans can commit against each other.  Do not get me wrong, things like Pol Pot's genocide and the Holocaust are monstrous in comparison.  But I did not live through those.  I did not see them live on TV and live with the results of those actions in my life afterward.  It is harder for me to understand the heinous nature of those events for those very reasons.

But you know what images bother me more than any other from 9/11?  The images of people falling/jumping from the towers.  My throat tightens and my stomach clenches at those images.  I saw this article on FB this weekend regarding history "airbrushing/deleting" them out of that event.  And that some people find the action of jumping to be unacceptable.  The article upset me more than I thought it would.  Here it is: 9/11 Jumpers: American Wants to Forget.  My comment on the FB friend's update with the link was as follows (and still holds true for me): 

"Wtf is wrong with society to shame families and themselves thinking that "falling" from the towers is an un-godly and unacceptable action? It is these people and the action of their death that moves me the most when I think of 9/11. Shame on anyone who wants to write/airbrush these people out of history. The amount of fear and pain and suffering and options left to them are unimaginable to me. Much less any of us who were not there. I do not judge them for what they did."

The patch I earned.

While in Seattle, I also went to the Museum of Flight where I got to go inside and active Army Reserve Chinook and sit in the Captain's seat in the cockpit.  They also have the Space Shuttle Training module where astronauts trained for the real thing.  It is basically a space shuttle without wings.  They also had the very first 747 Jumbo Jet (go figure, since Boeing sponsored the museum) and the 787 Dreamliner.  I got to walk through both, as well as the Concorde Jet.  It was a very cool museum.

I brought the twin tower weights back to Idaho with me.  I took the Capt America shield back to the house I was staying at with my friends so they could give it back to its owner.  PNW Trvlsqd is a wonderful group of people.  I am so glad to have met many of them and participated in events with them.  Some mentioned their support for me if I ever needed it for my father's process.  Some of these are people I have never met before and they offer these things.  It is people like this that give me hope for humanity.  People like this that I call family.  For some of us, family is much more than blood.  I would do so much for people like this.  I wish the Boise area had a Trvlsqd the way Seattle does.  But I have my RWB family here and they are very similar (RWB is not big in Seattle like it is in Boise).  These groups of people are my "tribe".  They are equally, if not more, crazy as I.  They aspire in life to challenge themselves.  And I can always count on finding someone to do some physically crazy thing with me from one of these groups.  They make me happy.

American as Fuck.

My happy place: scenery in nature with Jeep and fun outdoor toys.