Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

I’ve had the idea for this post bouncing around in my head for a couple months now, and was waiting until I got a new job to type it out.  Which I mean to say that I’m in the running for a new job that I really hope I get, because I realized that even having cancer and being super dependent on having health insurance at the moment is no reason to stay in a holding pattern until things “get better” or “back to normal”.  If anything, it’s a call to quit wasting time and do something enjoyable.  The clock of life has been ticking very loudly these past 7 months.

And the swift kick in the butt that finally booted me out of my desk chair was watching this:

The next day I changed my desktop wallpaper to this so it would stare me in the face every day: 

Everyone bitches about their job to cope, and for the longest time, venting was enough of an outlet for me, but it doesn’t change the fact that now I look myself in the mirror in the morning and I ask myself “Is this really what I want to do today?”, and the answer comes back “No” too many times.

And then I went back and read an article that my Dad forwarded me over a year ago: How Will You Measure Your Life?  Last year, I printed it out and read it three times through.  I tried very hard to understand it.  Not that it’s overly complex, but, what am I supposed to do with this information now?  Upon rereading it this year, I find it pretty obvious.

And so I guess if I was qualified to give any career advice at all, I’d say stop worrying about finding your “perfect job” or “true calling” and just get out there and do something that’s interesting at the moment.

So Steve Jobs, thanks for helping me get my ass back in gear, among a thousand other things.  Rest in peace.

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The other sort of related bit of news I should probably get around to sharing is related to staying hungry, and definitely being foolish.  Foolish like running a marathon without doing a training run of more than 13.1 miles, like I did two years ago.  Only this year I’ll be running 2 marathons with minimal training.  Or three, if you count going through cancer treatment as a marathon, which I think is a valid point.

Most of you know I’m planning on running the Marine Corp Marathon in Washington DC at the end of the month.  And most of you also know that my sister and three of my cousins are running the Chicago Marathon this weekend and have already raised a lot of money for Team in Training.  But what I’m pretty sure only Ian knows (and maybe Jeremy), is that I’m also planning on running the Chicago Marathon as well.  Surprise!

And yes, I know registration sold out in February, and charity slots sold out at the end of June.  That’s why I signed up 2 hours after registration opened back on February 1st.  Seriously.  I bet none of you bothered to find registrants by last name before.

I’d already decided back in January that doing a Half Ironman and running a marathon in the span of two months wasn’t hard enough, so I thought I’d throw another marathon in there for funsies.  And getting diagnosed with cancer certainly put all my athletic and life plans on hold for a not insignificant amount of time, but I rocked the SavageMan, and I’m not slowing down.

So kindly remember to redefine what you thought was impossible and stay hungry, stay foolish.