around ten years ago marty and i were walking in the the shopping district next to our neighborhood. we are fortunate to live just next to one of our city's more vibrant urban scenes (and recently named one of the ten best streets in the nation) making it a place rife with curious characters. on this day many years back, a young man passed by us wearing capri pants. save his three quarter length nickers, the man looked completely pedestrian. as he passed i commented to marty that i thought the pants looked comfortable. she said i should get a pair. i asked if guys wore capris. she said they didn't but added that social norms didn't seem to play a role in my dress otherwise and was curious why this might be any different. while this could possibly be construed as a compliment in written form here, it certainly was not meant as one. marty publicly divorced herself (very much so) from my wardrobe selections quite early in our marriage. our union may not have survived else-wise. all that said, for the obvious reasons, i couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger in this case. wearing dated jean shorts is one thing, wearing a woman's pantaloon is another.

now jump forward ten years. a few weeks ago marty said i'd probably be pleased to know that bella's baseball coach wore capri pants. and not just once or twice. it was all she ever saw him in. after seeing the trend she commented on them to him. assuming she was goofing on him, he told her to go stand in line with his wife and daughter who had like opinions about his clothing choice. marty corrected him saying she thought they looked great and told him her husband would be jealous. she was right. i saw him (and them) at bella's game on saturday. after the game i caught him getting into his car and said i liked his pants. he studied me for a moment as we've never met and then he brightened saying, "oh! you're bella's dad. marty said you would like my pants". i said i did and complimented the look. i asked him more about them. he lit up saying how much he loved them and how versatile and comfortable they were. he asked if i was really considering getting a pair. i said i was. he asked me if i would wear them to the next practice so his wife and daughter could see. i shook on the deal.

good to my word, later that day i went to the store he referenced and good to his word, there they were, multiple styles of men's capri pants. after a pass through the dressing rooms and a trip to the registers, i owned my first pair of capris. upon arriving home marty and i had an evening suit-required event so i was unable to wear them out that evening. but i was sporting them straightaway the next day. when i appeared in the kitchen, marty studied me for a long moment before saying, "well, they are a step up from your jean shorts". please remember, since she has trained herself to be blind and numb to how i dress, this was a phenomenally supportive and animated response.

my first errand and public unveiling was a trip to the grocery store. after a slight hesitation before getting out the car, i didn't think of them again. i went in, collected my items and was headed to the register. after passing an aisle i stopped, backed up and looked down the row. standing partway down studying some cans was of all people, bella's soccer coach. and he was wearing his capris. i walked up to him and he glanced at me. then recognition set in and he gave a warm hello. the first question he asked was if i was still going to get some pants. i said i wasn't because i already did. he looked down and expressed what could be described as actual glee. i guess he may have doubted my conviction. we, two men in capris, stood confident and joyful as we compared notes about our comfy bloomers. i then thanked him for the hookup and we parted, but only after a moment of making man-capris look like the clothing option of choice, at least in aisle eighteen of our local grocery.

and then there was the awkward moment later that day when i wore my new pants to a work bbq. i have to credit candor-filled kate with breaking the ice saying something along the lines of, "how long are we going to pretend troy isn't wearing capris before we talk about it" which opened the door for my excited telling of the above decade-long saga.

yesterday i realized a decade-long aspiration to wear capri-pants in public.

the back-story is as every bit compelling as you may imagine. sadly, i'm unable to tell it today as i'm still basking in the high of accomplishment.

here's the latest installment of the troy regiment. a few thoughts about this rendition before the reveal. something i just recently observed about my regiments over the years is that it began as a very simple model and as i had success with it, i added more routines thinking that my system could shoulder whatever i threw at it. what i found though was that i made it too difficult to sustain and instead of bringing order and calm it caused stress and fervor. as such, i've returned to a more simplistic model. only weeks in, i'm already thrilled with the shift. it's been awhile since i've routinely given myself more time to do something than i needed. i've already experienced boredom more times in the last ten days than i have in the last year and for someone who seldom experiences boredom, the sensation can be quite scintillating.

and next, to answer a few questions i routinely get to save you (and me) the email:
(1) the chart is made using excel.

(2) yes, there is flexibility in this. there has to be. it is a schedule, a goal, a guide, it is not a mandate. for something like this to work, you have to be malleable to life (just like with our menu). that said, i often have days that line up well. i've never had a perfect week. close, but never perfect.

(3) for those who look at the chart and think marty is getting ripped off attention-wise, you're daft. if anything, marty wishes i'd sit around less looking at her to say something to me. my take, if you're going to error in marriage, it is the side to error on.

(4) and yes, i still get my books knocked out of my hands in the hallway and pushed down in the sandbox at recess. but not as frequently as i used to.




or view the four year evolution...
also note the summer of 2010 was when i finally became a morning person



click to enlarge

here's a swimming update. for those who may not have been following along or don't care or can't remember, a brief re-cap. i spent three years trying to swim a mile (starting from not swimming at all). on december 12, 2010 i made it, swimming 2000 yards (a pool mile) in fifty-five minutes. upon reaching that milestone i set a new long, long, long-term goal of swimming those 2000 yards in under thirty minutes. in pursuit of this goal i plan on swimming 2000 yards once a week for the rest of my life. as a first sensible step towards the thirty minute mile i set out to get my time under fifty minutes. after a mere five months (!!!) of effort i made it last week with a time of 49:24.

a funny thing about the time is that i've been feeling stronger and faster each week. a few weeks back i felt so good while swimming i half expected to blow by the goal coming in at forty-seven or even forty-six minutes. on that swim it turned out i dropped two and a half minutes logging my worst time in weeks and ending at almost fifty-three minutes. then last week walking to the pool i felt terrible. i felt so fatigued and dull i almost turned and went home. i decided to go though the paces and assume a low time for the workout. instead of just limping through the forty laps it turns out i got my best time ever. as nike sagely and often suggests; just do it.

so i don't get called out again and have someone send me a chart, i thought i'd better go ahead and chart my progress ahead of time.

and if anyone besides me thinks me ever getting to a thirty minute mile sounds ludicrous, i figured out that if i can just improve my time by five seconds every month, i'll hit my mark by the spry age of sixty-two. if that sounds like a ridiculously long time away, i have an inkling we'll all be there before we know it.

also, the more accurate times starting in january are thanks to a super jazzy lap-counting watch i got for christmas.

next stop ... forty-five minutes.

my family was eating at lion's choice (a local roast beef sandwich house) enjoying a rare trip out for food. while ordering our food i glanced at the guy next to me. he was an older gentleman and was in the midst of talking to the cashier. his face was framed by the take-out window and in the daytime sun, i noticed a significantly long hair sticking out of his nostril. now this was not a weekend growth variety of nose hair. this one had been brewing for many months, if not years, and had become dislodged with a sneeze or snort as it was sticking out a full inch or better. my immediate inclination was to tap him on his shoulder and motion to my nose letting him know he should go check it out, but he was putting in his order and my cashier was talking to me as well. when i finished paying and turned the man had already moved on.

moments later we had our food and took our seat. i distractedly looked around and saw the man sitting on the other side of the dining room with a guy about my age who i presumed to be his son. prior to seeing his table mate, i assumed the man was alone and had no one to tell him he had a wayward nose hanging more than an inch out of his right nostril. seeing he was not alone, i got annoyed that the guy with him did not let him in on the matter. marty noticed my glance and asked if i knew them. i said i didn't but told the table what i saw. we then spent our lunchtime talking about acceptable ways to handle such moments and how informing people of such things, even if embarrassing, is the neighborly thing to do. it also came out that i was bummed out that i didn't get a chance to give the guy a heads up but going to the table uninvited to tell him in front of his lunch date was even a touch out of my comfort zone.

our table's conversation moved on but i'd occasionally look the old guy's way wondering if there was anyone else in his life who may let him in on his grooming mis-step or if he'd have to wait for the weight of the hair to pull it from the follicle naturally. after his meal was complete the man stood to refill his drink. seeing this i hurriedly excused myself grabbing my own still full drink and headed to the soda counter. he was already there and i positioned myself to his right. noticing me he shifted to the left giving me room to share. knowing the moment was short, i began with a smile ...

TROY
thanks

OLD GUY
sure.

TROY
oh. excuse me.

OLD GUY
yes.

TROY
i think you have a hair getting away from you there.

OLD GUY
huh.

TROY
(i rubbed my nose and quietly added) you have a nose hair making a break for it. the next time you're in the bathroom, give it a quick look and you'll see it.

i then sidled away. his last look didn't seem to register a quick comprehension of my point but that is not the sort of conversation you tend to draw out any longer than one needs to. when i returned to the table i excitedly told my cohorts of my adventure which they eagerly took in.

that was several months ago. last week after our family dinner was wrapping up and alex and anthony had excused themselves, bella, marty, and i sat in our chairs talking of this and that. shortly before excusing herself, bella said to me:

BELLA
hey dude, you got one getting away from you.

TROY
what?

BELLA
(she wipes a finger across her eyebrow as if she's giving some old mafia sign). over here. you got a hair getting away from you.

TROY
where? here?

BELLA
(she motions me to lean forward and reaches forward) no here. the next time you're using the bathroom, you should run it down.

after several futile attempts of my trying to grasp it, she reached up and grabbed the long hair that decided to start pointing straight out from my head instead of resting flat with the others. once she had a pinch on it, she gave it a few soft tugs to prove her find. seeing how long it took for me to get the message, i now worry i should have sent bella over to the old guy instead of me given how slow i was in understanding her not at all subtle clues.

and don't think i (or marty) didn't notice her perfect re-use of my technique (on me). and while i'm sure having a keen memory will benefit my children in life and school, i can see, already, it isn't doing my parenting any kind of favors given their seeming ability to recall my every bit advice, which oftentimes, when used on or against me, seems less sage than when directed at others.

yesterday was the last day of my class. this was the third year i taught this particular course. someone recently asked me what my favorite part of teaching was. after a moment's pause, i said my favorite part of teaching was not teaching.

to elaborate, i really, really, really like teaching but it is an all-consuming and way-taxing and ever-relentless duty and the minute that duty ends, wether for the day or the semester, and you don't have to prepare for class in a week or a month, the air around you just feels lighter and the minutes more relaxing. so saying the best part of teaching is not teaching is just an awkward way of saying teaching makes you appreciate your time in a way you otherwise wouldn't if you didn't know the pressure of preparing, performing, and assessing a semester or year long class curriculum.

after sharing my notions about prefacing things with the word ADULT and what exactly it implies, i didn't want to be presumptuous enough to say that you would never see the use of the word the same again but in support of that possibility i present this message i received from my friend jen last week. it read:

Just thought of you as i drove past the the brentwood community center ... they have a sign up that says "Adult Easter Egg Hunt". Seriously.

get your baskets kids, this year we're not visiting the cousins, we're looking for eggs in someplace called brentwood!!!

i grew up in fort collins colorado. by the time i was thirty i had been as far east as italy, including peppering the united states east coast from vermont to the florida keys. in regard to going west, the furthest i had been was steamboat springs which was a few hours drive from my boyhood home.

in my thirties i took in more western locations such as portland, seattle, vancouver and many smaller spots between, but to date, and by design, i had never crossed the california state line. today this changed in that as you read this i am sitting in the san francisco bay area, on stanford's college campus specifically. before even arriving i could say that this first experience is going to give me an unfair impression of california and what i've been missing which is not an inconsequential factor. fortunately i've got a good jump on being a crotchety, opinionated old goat who's slow to move and thus won't be easily swayed by california's come hither gaze.

also, a slight drizzle has been known to perturb me so i have realistic expectations of what uncontrollable, quaking ground would do to my mood.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. adults only

we have an electric toothbrush. everyone but marty uses it. everyone who does use it has their own brush head that snaps onto the handle. when you buy a pack of the brushes they come with these little colored rings that slip over the base of each brush so you can tell them apart. inevitably, i always get stuck with the pink marker. it is both embarrassing and appalling how much can be gleaned about my life by that little hot pink ring of plastic.

i just had a dream. it was less than ten minutes long as it occurred between snooze alarms. bookguy and i were standing in the middle of a serengeti-like plain. bookguy was putting his shoes on and i was wordless standing over him. a small plane erratically flew overhead, sharply banking and turning as if evading something. as it passed closely over us, we could see a man standing in the lowered freight door opening at the plane's rear. he was holding onto cargo netting on either side of him and swaying to the plane's dips and dodges. i commented on what he was doing and how crazy it looked. bookguy said the crazy part was how much those rides cost, adding that the man probably paid upwards of $60,000 for that ride. i gasped at the amount and asked why it was so much. as bookguy finished tying his shoes and stood up, he casually said they were probably taking him to the indian ocean. i asked what he'd do when they got there. i was told he would jump in. i asked if that was dangerous? bookguy confirmed it was because of the sharks and said that excitement is what made it so expensive.

just then on the other side of a tuft of trees about hundred feet away, two giraffes came charging by us. they were so close you could see the strain in their faces and the muscles in their neck contorting and working from their body's mad dash. i pointed and yelled, "whoa! look at those things. oh, how cool is that. they're truckin'. ohh, they're so big, i feel like i'm seeing real-life dinosaurs." bookguy wordlessly took in the scene as his eyes tracked their passing. as they moved into the distance i asked him what he thought they were running from so fast. in turning back to bookguy my eye caught two flashes in a bunching of trees. in squinting harder i noticed three lions crouched in the underbrush. i pointed in their direction and said "those lions might have something to do with it." before my sentence was complete, one of the lions sprang from hiding. she charged toward us in gigantic, darting, bounds. matt and i took a few thoughtless steps backward and just had time to mutter, "what do we do now?" before the lion was on us. i turned to move out of her path but before i took a single step, i felt her teeth sink through my right thigh's muscle like it was soft butter.

with that my eyes mercifully opened to the quickened beating in my chest.

i reviewed a deepak chopra book yesterday. deepak chopra has not, historically, been my brand of tea. how i came to own one of his books may be more interesting than the book itself (and the book is quite interesting).

every week i try to eat lunch with someone off the beaten path; former colleagues, friends i haven't seen in a while, people i think i'd like to know better. these lunches ...

i teach a college class. it is called Presentation Matters. it is a class i designed from the ether three years ago. presentation matters is about, in short, applying the traditional creative process, as taught in basic composition and the like, to technology and/or digital problems. this may seem obvious and unnecessary, but i've got a semester-long curriculum backed up by 1.4 trillion bad powerpoint decks and generic files that says otherwise (and yes that was a troytistic!). if i could have renamed Presentation Matters in the second year i would have called it Thought Matters. and, if i could rename Presentation Matters this year, its third, i would call it Focus Matters. what happened to zavisa and the recipe, as detailed yesterday, is what i try to get to happen for my students. his saturday afternoon is a study on the power of passion, intent, and focus. more importantly (most importantly!) is that the experience zavi had can be captured and ridden, like a horse in the wild. one just has to go look for their palomino on the prairies and in the woods.

when we're doing things we don't like, our minds wander, often to things we do like. so if you're able to position yourself doing what you like, good things are bound to come from such focused time. if nothing else, we'll all enjoy our workday a bit more which translates to a little something called our professional lives.

were i saying this to bella, her brow would have furrowed several sentences back. in fact, if she made it through the fifth sentence, i would have been glad to get that far. but odds are she would have held a hand up pausing me long enough to say i was getting "lecturey". if you feel as bella surely would (and surely will again), apologies, but it can't be helped as such things are a passion of mine, they are my horse, and i get excited every time i see one dash by.

if you need further evidence, check out the final product of zavi's passion product which i forgot to share yesterday. hopefully he won't mind that i plundered his facebook gallery for this week's content. i steal only in the name of love and respect.


click to enlarge

after my mom died, i found the below card among her things. i don't remember how old i was when i wrote it. more truthfully, i don't even remember writing it. that said, i can tell you that seeing i wrote it, and that she kept it, has spared me untold agonies. i would suggest, if you have things to say you haven't said to people you deem dear, get them said. and after you do that, keep doing it. because even though i felt infinite relief at this discovery, i still carry the regret that i needed it to remind me i said it in the first place.


click to enlarge

TRANSCRIBED BELOW

when i talked about swimming a mile and shared the schedule, i commented that it looked less impressive on paper than it felt achieving the goal. a surprising number of people commented on my choice of words and said i was wrong and it did look impressive. but yesterday one fellow in particular, a friend i used to work with, took it a giant step farther than the other folks by vividly proving me wrong.



fact of the matter is, he was a bit astonished that i didn't graph it myself and instead used a pedestrian and mockable table to showcase the data. i have no defense but his email charting my effort put a big and excited smile across my face. thank you ryan b.

and he named his chart tdawesome.

more smiles.

some more to yesterday's post about swimming the mile. below you will find what is essentially my buildup to a mile after i learned how to decently swim a single lap (without looking completely embarrassing). the telling thing about the below data is that once you get to ten laps, the world starts opening up because if you can swim ten laps, you can almost surely swim twenty. and then if you can swim twenty, thirty is just around the corner. and after swimming thirty, forty ain't much more than a drip in an already full bucket.

swim date	total laps swam	max consecutive laps in a row
09/08	15	2
09/12	20	3
09/15	20	3
09/19	22	3
09/22	23	4
09/25	20	2
10/13	22	5
10/17	26	6
10/23	27	7
10/27	30	8
11/03	35	10
11/14	22	20
12/04	35	30
12/12	42	40

sadly, it looks far less impressive on paper than experiencing it did. and i imagine the same will hold true for my twenty year effort to get my time from 54:27 to 29:59.

you may remember my earlier declaration to swim a mile. on december 12, 2010 @ 2:20 pm, i joined the club of humans who can swim one mile.

transcript of a fictitious interview of myself by myself in the head of myself as i pulled myself out of the pool just after.

well, there are two schools of thought here. some people quibble over the exact distance and claim anywhere from 33 to 36 laps is the number, but non-tourist divined something called the pool-mile which is simply 2,000 meters and in a 25-meter pool is an even 40 laps, or 80 lengths. this is what i swam, a pool-mile.

the first time i swam it, it took me 54 minutes.

giddy, great and grand.

technically, three years, but i started not knowing how to swim. the first year was learning the stroke, the freestyle, which some folks call the crawl. the second year was spent learning how to breathe, while swimming the crawl of course. and the third year was mostly about conditioning and bringing it all together.

well, regarding swimming, i plan on swimming one mile, once a week for the rest of my life with the hope of getting my time to under 30 minutes. regarding the next thing i'm going to learn to do, i've named knitting as the thing i will focus on in 2011.

well, it was going to be drawing, but i was convinced (or rather cajoled and coerced) by a new friend to switch to knitting. actually she won me over with a cogent and spirited argument which i'm now glad and excited about.

yes. to knit a sweater like the two jCrew ones i've been wearing for the last fourteen years.

i'm told it is.

i guess i'll just have to then knit me a thong to wear while swimming my laps. this should properly incentivize my teacher to see that i make my sweater goal.

the first question i was to field in the year two thousand and eleven came from anthony. after waking in the morning, he came from his sleeping spot to snuggle between a still sleeping marty and i. after cuddling into marty for a bit, he rolled over, turning his open eyes to me. he brought his hand up and gently rubbed the stubble on my cheek, chin and upper lip. after several wordless moments of he and i looking at one another he broke the silence by quietly asking, "why is mom is getting older?"

grinning and unsure if marty was awake to hear him, i asked what made him think mom was getting older. he explained it was because she had a bump on her face. i asked about this bump. his clarification, while equally unclear, implied it was over her eyes which i took to mean a furrow or knit in her brow.

i took the time to explain that he was also getting older and that every moment of every day all living things are aging. he chuckled at this as if i were silly and explained to me that he wasn't getting older, he was just getting bigger.

after a few more moments of silence i asked him if i was getting older. without hesitation he told me i was not, i was already old.

i was walking anthony to school. to get there we walk down a long, wide grass median filled with tall, mature trees. it is flanked on either side by 80 year old tile-roofed, brick homes. it is a picturesque start to my day and extra so when i'm holding hands with my bright-eyed and chatty four year old. we've travelled the route enough that anthony knows where each tree is that he can reach when r...

people have been asking how i've been doing. well, mostly, they've been asking marty how i've been doing, but some do ask me. the short answer is, all things considered, i'm holding it together surprisingly well.

i'm someone who believes what we do with our time and our lives is a choice, a choice we are able to control to significant degrees. i'm also someone who believes the thoughts possible through our minds have immense potential and something we have quite a bit of control to nurture and train. given these two beliefs, i recognize i have the power to drive myself to complete dysfunction or to embrace the fortunes that came from my time with my mother. the choice of how i direct my mind's energy is mine, and right now, days are a balancing act between those two possible extremes.

the notion i'm most struggling with is that i can't pick up a telephone, punch a series of buttons, and hear my mother's brightened hello at the sound of my voice. that there is not a phone on this planet that can make that call happen leaves me, at moments, feeling panicked, desperate and more alone than i've ever thought possible.

but when i step back and employ an ounce of empathy, my thoughts are more sorrowful for others. i feel sorrow for my mother whose life was cut far shorter than it should have been. i feel sorrow for the many children, adopted, fostered, and natural, who had bad to horrible childhood experiences in the homes they landed in. i feel sorrow for the children with ailing parents caught up in long, drawn-out scenarios that are draining and full of sadness. and i feel sorrow for my father who still after waking from a nap in his living room chair, will start talking to his wife before looking over to find her rocker empty and still.

one month ago i talked about how after three years of working at it i finally swam my first official 50m pool length. three weeks later, august 22, i swam that same 50m freestyle length but this time when i reached the wall, i did a flip-turn and swam a return 50m length back. had you seen me after i completed this circuit you would have thought i was just accepted into the space program.

last weekend i swam fifteen full laps with flip turns in each (resting after each lap), and this weekend, the last weekend the outdoor pools are open, i hope to swim twenty laps, still with a rest after each, which would represent my new distance goal of a nautical pool mile (2,000 meters). the last step is to remove the need to rest after each lap. the only sad part to this story is i'm going to have to do this in shorter (25m), indoor pools during the winter months.

a picture of anfer and i from our neighborhood's fourth of july party someone just recently passed on.

multiple people expressed relief at thursday's post. based on what went down on monday, tuesday and wednesday, they feared i had gone mad or simple or both and that i was going to do nothing but stand and lecture and preach in judging and pedantic ways. but then i returned to poop and called it feces and bms and turds and it was big and in smears and cudgels and being yelled about.

you never have to worry about me straying too far from what you've come to expect around here. i'm boringly consistent. and genetically incapable of carrying on an adult conversation for more than seven minutes. and i'm also expert at surrounding myself with like-minded people. when i told a new friend that i've never burped the first thing she said in reply was, "so that must mean you fart a lot". i'm a magnet and insatiable for such things so you never need to question the questionable stock or caliber of what you will find amongst the stacks here.

when bella was born i couldn't swim. swim officially that is. i could swim underwater and dog paddle, but no for real strokes. three years ago i set an annual goal for myself to swim a mile. that is with no-stopping, flip-turns and all. at my city pool, which is an olympic-sized pool with 50m lengths, this would mean 18 laps, or 36 lengths. for most pools, it would be 36 laps and/or 72 lengths.

after one summer with much help from marty and by studying other lap swimmers, i learned how to swim freestyle, which some people call the crawl. this was the stroke i chose because it is the style i most coveted when watching other swimmers. at the end of the first year i could swim a 50m length with a reasonable amount of effort and needing several minutes of rest afterwards and before moving to the next length. since two lengths were out of my reach, the 36 i needed were astronomically distant.

i continued working into the next summer. my stroke was improving but i was still very much struggling with the oxygen management. by this time i knew there was something tragically wrong in my technique. i kept practicing thinking that something would click, akin to learning to drive a manual transmission, and i would just figure it out. the click never came in year two. there was a bright spot however in that while on our summer vacation, the fifteen year old son of a family friend taught me how to do flip-turns while we stayed with them for a week. i didn't get the technique truly figured out and working for several weeks but he definitely gave me the tools i needed. so even though at the end of year two i seemed no closer to my goal of eighteen laps, i was invigorated by my ability to do a flip-turn (a skill that was far more daunting than the actual swimming).

this is my third year working on this goal and i 'm calling saturday, july 31, 2010 (@12:30pm) the day i learned to swim, for real, because on this day the click came. it started as every one before it had. i drove to the pool, found an open lane, set my towel and stuff down on a chair, slid into the water, glanced at the pristine blue sky, stared down the 50m lane, got my goggles situated, took several deep breaths, thought about my mechanics, and pushed off just as i had hundreds of times before. but this time was different because this time i reached the other side ... and with plenty left in my tank. no racing against my fading breath. no pulling up. no switching my stroke to an above water option mid-way. i just went and went and went and went and then i saw the painted T at the bottom of the pool and i was there. elation! i rested for a few moments and pushed off back the other way. stroke, stroke, stroke, T. more elation. and i would go on to be elated six more times that day. and eight more the next.

it seems my stroke did not have a pronounced enough body swivel in the water and in addition to being inefficient was causing me to swim 'flat' which was making it hard for me to get good breaths of air. i'm crediting getting over this three year hurdle to a confident-rich, moxy-full kid i've never met named jimmy dshea. he posted a youTube video about the freestyle and stressed the importance of swiveling your body. his emphasis put this in my head and made me more conscious of this mechanic the next time i swam, which was this last saturday.

so while i still haven't yet gotten my mile, i now possess everything i need and plan on making quick work of this next bit. for my next challenge, i'm going to try to become as charismatic as my new and revered swim mentor, jimmy dshea.