The Champagne of Beers

“Watch where you’re FUCKING driving!” 

Standing in the middle of a crosswalk, I threw my hands up as a car cut me off. 

I’m tired. 

I’m tired of walking back and forth to the freaking store. I want a car. 

Of course, I had to pick out the heaviest possible groceries – whole wheat flour, plain yogurt, dried beans, six-pack of Miller High Life. 

My back hurts. This can’t be good for me. 

-- 

Sidenote – one of my top 2 influences is David Foster Wallace’s This Is Water, a commencement speech he gave at Kenyon. Sidenote-within-a-sidenote – the other, Mountains Beyond Mountain. Anyways, This Is Water is about two young fish swimming in a hurry. They run across an older fish that asks, “Howdy boys, how’s the water?” The fish continue on their way, but after a minute, one of the younger fish asks the other, “What’s water?” 

I loved the connection to Kenyon, I loved what DFW stood for, and I loved his edge, so I gave This Is Water to all my groomsmen as a wedding gift. I’ve been emailing with one of them about the significance of the book. For me, it boils down to the word, “This.” 

“This” represents the act of pausing and seeing the water around us. The currents flowing, krill swimming, whales giving chase.  

Sidenote2 - I read a couple of Bulls/Lakers/future-Heat coach Phil Jackson’s memoirs. My favorite was Sacred Hoops, a great read about the intersection of spirituality and basketball. What I took from it: 

The 90’s Bulls said the Lord’s Prayer before every game. I figured if it worked for the Bulls it would work for me, so I’ve been saying the Lord’s Prayer every time I shower. I imagine it helps me in the same way it helped the Bulls. Obviously, life gets tough for everyone - even the Bulls had tough losses, but at their core they were twelve guys that wanted to go down in the history books. With the Prayer, Jackson gave the team a few precious seconds to remember that they had to push through the struggle, and keep playing their game. 

That’s why the best part of This Is Water, is “This.” DFW knew the tough moments in life were the most crucial - that’s where the battle between good and evil exists. But sometimes, the hard part is noticing when we’re engaged in that battle. Sometimes it’s about taking that second to see the battle. 

-- 

After a grueling walk I made it home. I slammed my sweaty clothes in the laundry basket, still pissed off about everything. 

I wish I could just buy frozen burritos like my roommates. I wish I could drive to the store like them. 

As I turned on the shower I remembered. 

This is water. 

No, wait. I walked to the fridge. 

This is beer. 

Shower beers. Ah.

See you on the other side, 

from ken 

Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.

Why I love Wyoming pt 2: A well earned celebratory hand gesture

One of the big running mile markers, pun intended, is the one hundred mile week. It doesn’t really mean anything, but at the same time, it means everything. I had several consistent 90 mile weeks, but the 100 mile week just felt like a higher level. 

One week I had unknowingly racked up the miles, including a 20 mile long run. Near the end of that week, it was Saturday afternoon, the last day of my running week, and I was sitting at 93 miles. I had scheduled a six miler. 

Was it worth it to go seven miles to reach one hundred? 

Would I just be caving into looking good rather than being good, and wanting that three digit week? 

The answer to both those questions, was yes. But I didn’t know that when I departed. 

I set out the door that afternoon settled on a six mile run, and I saw one of my buddies, Samet, a Turkish soccer player. He was about to leave for a short twenty minute jog to stay in shape, but when he saw me running I could sense his competitive side awakening. He casually asked to run with me. 

We set out jogging easy, and I told him I was planning to run six miles. He told me he’d turn back when he felt tired. We checked past the two mile marker, and the three mile marker. Eventually, we passed the tree that signaled three and a half miles. 

We would be running back on the same road, so at that point I knew. I had one hundred miles this week, in the bank. It felt a bit surreal, but it was hard to take in at the moment because Samet and I were in the midst of a heated discussion about the philosophical aspects of our sports. 

We talked about what made us train at grueling levels and why we fell in love with our sports. We had lots of aimless tangents, but ultimately settled on one point. These sports, these challenges, they tested our character. They tested the amount of soul we had in our fragile human bodies. Maybe we were just too proud to give up. 

As we went on, I realized I was doing most of the talking. A rare thing when I'm with a new friend.  Samet was breathing hard, real hard. I paused my ranting for a second to check if he was ok. He told me, inbetween breaths, that he had never ran more than four miles. At that exact moment we were approaching six miles. 

I tried to encourage him, but I knew this was out of my hands. He kept telling me he had to walk it in, he had to give up. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I just kept running. 

Before I knew it, the employee dorms were just a short 100 yards away. When we turned that last corner something in Samet’s dead tired body just clicked. The way it clicks in a toddler’s head when he first walks on his own two legs - Whoa, I can do this. 

At that moment Samet muttered, “Thanks,” and with that he took off in a dead sprint. Samet was screaming at the top of his dried out lungs, in broken English, “NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER GIVE UP.” I get chills just putting those words down on paper. 

Samet had gained noticeable ground on me as I got back to our starting point, the employee rec hall. When I stopped, I made eye contact with him and silently acknowledged that we had helped each other reach a higher level of ourselves. He had ran a longer distance than he ever thought possible, and not only that, he had proven to himself the exact reason why he got into soccer in the first place. He never wanted to give up. He wanted to give his best, every moment he was alive. 

And for me, I had reached the seemingly impossible. When I started running in high school, I was a below average runner at best, struggling to break 20 minutes in the 5k. I never thought I would attain the level of running and strength it took to run a one hundred mile week. But here I was, standing with Samet, 100 miles logged on my legs over the past week. 

I will always remember that moment. Seeing the look on Samet’s face, I knew we had attained a connection only possible for those working together, shooting for levels of life higher than the normal person would dare to imagine. We had achieved, together, what life was like when you stick to the grind. 

I stuck out my hand, and he slapped me five. A good day.

See you on the other side, 

from ken  

Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.

Why Wyoming is my favorite state pt. 2: The Trial of Miles

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“You know people just don’t, people just don’t see how much work is really involved in this rap shit. I didn’t know it, I didn’t see it, I never saw it until I was actually in it. You really gotta be in it, to understand what it’s like, but you always gotta, people always gotta see you smiling, you always gotta put on that fake, you know what I’m saying? Like, no matter what you just been through, it has gotta be right.”

        - Cypress Hill

When I shipped out to Wyoming, I made a list of five goals.  In retrospect, I don't even remember them.  Except for the one I stuck to: Running 1000 miles in the 90 days I would spend in Wyoming.  Some quick math reveals that, on average, I would need to run over eleven miles every single day.

It was the summer before my junior year cross country season.  As everyone who has run cross country knows, the real preparation is done in the summer, and when the season rolls around in the fall, it’s all just fine tuning.  That summer, everyone on our team knew we were getting ready for a huge season.  We had a strong class of seniors, and we knew this would be our big shot at making nationals.  Everyone was amped, and the summer really showed it.  Every week people were putting up 70, 80, 90 mile weeks like it was nothing.  It is not nothing to run over 10 miles a day.  It is hard.  And it takes a toll on your soul.

When I reached my summer training grounds, Wyoming, the first challenge was adapting to the climate.  For one, there was snow until late June.  On top of that, it was over 6,000 ft altitude.  My first run was a three miler - for a runner at my level a three mile run was the equivalent of walking down your front steps to pick up the morning paper - but the second day I got there when I went on that three miler, I thought I was having a heart attack.

The second challenge was deciding where to train.  There was a gravel/dirt road, Grassy Lake road, that lead out from our ranch all the way to Idaho.  So everyday I chose to run on that road, out and back.  It could have been nice to train on different terrain and varied scenery, but there was something unexplainably valuable to training on the same road day in and day out.  So after the snow melted, I began my daily ventures on Grassy Lake road:

It took me a couple weeks to shake off the rust and get my legs back underneath me after the track season, but soon enough I was hitting the high mileage.

There are always different philosophies on training, but I was always a big fan of two a days.  I got up before work and cracked out a real easy half hour jog.  It got my heart rate going a bit, and helped my legs recover from the main afternoon run.  In the afternoon, after work or between shifts, I would pound out the main session – a good hour or more.

On my days off, I would crank out a good two hour long run.  Those runs were thrilling in the sense that they made me feel powerful.  I saw my pre-conceived limits bowing down to the reality I was creating.  One such reality was the volume of running my rail-thin body could handle.

To be continued next week.

See you on the other side,

from ken 

Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts on the writing.

Alfredo Quinones and a life of gratitude

A couple years ago my friend Amulya attended a summer seminar by a surgeon, Alfredo Quinones. It turned out that Alfredo is one of the most inspiring people alive. I’ll just steal Amulya’s description:

Speaking of absolutely brilliant people, I recently met one of the most inspirational, incredible, amazing, bright people I think I will ever meet in my life. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa. Seriously, all I want is for you to meet him. Everything he talks about resonates with everything I've heard from you about wanting to be a doctor. Basically read this article to learn about him.

He's a doctor at Johns Hopkins who does brain surgery. His story is absolutely ridiculous, but more importantly he's just a great guy. He teaches part of a class going on here and he was just so friendly and really made me feel welcome. It's a graduate level class, I'm not even enrolled, and he's standing next to me explaining stuff about the brain and the nervous system and brain tumors and he's basically a world-renowned surgeon. He gave this talk later that night that I went to, and it was basically just an inspirational talk about giving everything your best, and I've heard that talk a million times, but he's living proof of it.

He was an illegal immigrant worker who went to Harvard Medical School and now is one of the most famous surgeons in the world. He single-handedly made me reconsider going into medicine just so I could help people like he does. As soon as I met him I was like, "Ken would love this guy."

Alfredo pursues what is described as, “A punishing clinical and research workload,” and he does this out of a deep sense of gratitude. One patient that Alfredo treated remains etched in his memory. A teenage patient who was just accepted at UC-Berkeley, the first one in his family to go to college, the beaming pride of his entire family. The patient had a brain tumor that slowly wasted his body away and killed him within a year.

Alfredo knows the life he used to live on the farmlands, and he knows the life he lives now at Johns Hopkins. He knows he could have just as easily ended up on that ICU bed with an untreatable brain tumor. He has been given such an opportunity, and though he may never be able to return the favor to the incredible people he met along the way, he might be able to pay it forward and give back to humanity. It strikes me, in this six page profile, that all he wants from life is to give back.

Amulya was right, I do love this guy. I especially love his drive, but not necessarily his level of drive. I think I am ambitious now, and I think at times I pursued what I could justify describing as a “punishing” workload. But I did this mostly out of pride.

I want others to see how good I am. I want to be the best. Basically, I want to be better than you. Though sometimes I think, “Well, drive is just drive,” this sort of selfish drive just can’t be sustained. Or at least in my experience, I ran out of it.

It’s pretty much my dream to be driven in the way Alfredo speaks of drive. To have such a perspective of gratitude and to operate from such a humble base. How amazing.

And if you can’t be inspiring and nice to people along the way, what’s the point? I mean, nobody would write an inspiring profile about a jerk, right?

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

People Helping People

I’ve been excited to write a post reflecting back on my first six months out of college/in Portland (not this post), and one of the things it’s made me realize is that my biggest struggle is the same as it was in college.

I tend to throw myself into too many things, a sort of, my eyes being bigger than my stomach mentality:

Oh yeah, of course I can take on that additional responsibility at church. Learn a new mouse surgery technique? No problem. Dinner on Wednesday night? Sure! Activism group? Sign me up!

I had this exact problem in college, and I still haven’t struck a good balance of giving myself a break.

The other night, I had a few of my friends over. One of them was my friend Maureen, who is a real southern smily girl that says y’all, a novelty in the northwest. As we were chatting she explained her struggles in her job search. She was especially frustrated because she had such amazing work experiences before moving to the young-people-mecca of Portland, aka job-hell.

My other friend Lee, who is the kind of guy that covers his face in makeup and wears a diaper to be a baby for Halloween, chimed in with a similar situation. His first job as a chef was amazingly rewarding, but when his second job didn’t match up to that same level of meaningfulness, he could barely handle it.

I had similar experiences. In my undergrad lab, a bacterial physiology lab, my experiments worked so beautifully that I had myself thinking I had a god-given scientist’s touch. I had ample data to put together a publication within an academic year of working part-time, an impressive feat. However, it wasn’t easy because of my unreal talent as a scientist, which after seeing the hyper-competitive world of biomedical research is admittedly average, but because bacteria are used to growing in weird places like your fridge. That makes them easier to grow and a lot easier for me to churn out good results.

On the other hand, I work with mammalian liver cells now. Have you ever seen mammalian cells popping up in your old milk? No? Well that’s because they’re needy and aren’t engineered to grow outside of your skin. Basically, that just means it’s a lot tougher to handle them. My experimental success rate has plummeted lower than I ever imagined. Seeing wave after wave of failure and troubleshooting is exhausting.

But that night the simple act of sharing reminded me that everyone struggles. I’m not unique in having stress in my life! Of course, that’s intuitive but to share those burdens is a beautiful thing. It not only lightens the load of the sharer, but it was a great reminder for me as the selfish listener that the world doesn’t stop when I’m stressed and that other people have anxiety too.

Maybe chicken little was right when he said the sky was falling, and maybe all we can do is to accept that life is stressful, be nice to each other, keep each other company, share, and laugh a little along the way.

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

What do you do everyday?

I was sitting at church, zoning in and out, as I tend to in the mornings. One head bob jolted me back like a slap in the face, and they were talking about 90x prayer, an activity in which you pray 13 minutes a day to develop the discipline of prayer.

13 minutes broken up over the course of the day doesn’t seem that overwhelming or even that significant. But when you look at it over the course of a week, it quickly adds up to 90 minutes.

It got me thinking, man that’d be great to be like Martin Luther King Jr. who was once asked, “I heard you pray three times a day, but what do you do those days when you’re so busy?” To this, King replied, “Those days, I pray five times.”

On an unrelated note, one of my coworkers, Carl, a new dad, was telling me about his parenting struggles. He’s an incredibly hard worker, and he spends most of his time slaving away in the lab. Unfortunately, this means that there isn’t much time left to spend with his daughter. His daughter, Anna, spends most of his time with her mom, and she breaks out in a crying fit whenever her mom leaves the room, even when Carl is there. I’ve hardened myself to deal with failure, but I don’t know if I could swallow rejection like that.

Another one of our labmates, a veteran mom, interjected, ”Oh it’s just a phase, you just need to snap her out of it. Just go home everyday around four o clock for a couple hours and spend time with your daughter, then when she goes to sleep come back and work some more. It’ll take a while, but soon enough she’ll love you.”

The 90x prayer and fatherhood struggles reminded me of Amulya’s post on small change. It’s easy to make one or two glamorous decisions every once in a while. That doesn’t take that much work. But how come small change is so much more important to your true character?

I wrote about this thought a while back but it seems important so I’ll rehash it,

“There is no such thing as a courageous person, only acts of courage.”

If you pray once, it’s a nice heart-warming experience. If you pray every once in a while, other people will probably think you’re spiritual. But if you pray everyday, you become a person who prays. You are conscious of your surroundings, you are someone who cares about people around you, you are humble enough to ask for help. Prayer becomes a part of your identity.
There are no innately great dads. There are only dads that greet the sun every morning and sacrifice their own free time and well being to spend time with their kids to slowly but surely develop relationship.

And as I sat in the coffee shop drinking my decaf Americano, I got to thinking…

It’s hard work to pray everyday! Do my ideas have any idea how busy my schedule is? I just don’t have the time for it. I’ll make some other form of small change.

But maybe that’s why small change is so important. Because it gets right up in our face to challenge us, everyday.

If you made a couple big decisions in your life, like you moved to a brand new city. You might just be someone that other people think is a risk-taker, because other people will see you through the big stories in your life.

But if you take small risks everyday, risk losing control of your schedule to a discipline you might be trying to develop, or risk losing sleep for the sake of an important relationship, then, maybe, with time, those small decisions become ingrained in our habits, and become a part of our character.

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

photo by Enid Yu

Beyond Mountains, There Are Mountains

Probably the question I get asked most frequently these days is, “So, are you a student?” Only briefly resenting the fact that I look like I’m 16 and should probably still be in college, I quickly gather myself, repeat “serenity now, serenity now, serenity now…,” and reply calmly, “Yeah actually I’m working up at OHSU (Oregon Health and Science University) in a research lab. We study how your body manages iron.” Further than that, I never really know what to say. Maybe this story will paint a better picture...

It’s too uninteresting to explain in detail, but my job in a nutshell consists of growing up some liver cells, treating with certain conditions like high or low iron, then harvesting them to measure their response to such conditions. The final step involves developing a piece of film that reveals my results for a usual week-long experiment.

So about a month ago, I was going through a cold streak in lab. Cells I was trying to grow would die for no obvious reason. Simple experiments I handled without thinking twice as an undergrad turned into massive uphill battles. I kept getting flustered, which made me more nervous, and I messed up over and over. My confidence looked something like Ted from the cult classic sitcom, Scrubs. In other words, it was shot.

One of those depressing days, with the grace of God I had painstakingly reached the final step of developing a piece of film with my data on it. I waited in the darkroom with the red light on, allowing the chemiluminscent marker to burn its mark into the Kodak blue x-ray film. Reluctant but feeling confident, I stuck my piece of film into the developer. Waiting for the moment of truth. Was this the day my cold streak would finally break? Would I be a genius again? Or would my last six days be useless, again?

As I waited, the developer started making ungodly screeching sounds. My piece of film was stuck in the goddamn developer. I momentarily considered hiring a therapist.

I quickly collected myself. Realizing I had no idea what to do, I went over to one of our grad students and asked her to save me. We went and got one of the professors, Jack, who was experienced at fixing outdated lab machinery. He was the kind of guy who has a huge smile on his face and asks questions like, “So I’m sure you did everything absolutely right, but were you sure to make the obvious decision to put the film in vertically?”

Together, we struggled with it for a while, trying all the obvious solutions, replacing the rollers, tightening the screws, nothing worked. With time, we were able to put together a patchwork solution.

He stepped out, and I was left in the dark again, to test the developer. Somehow, it felt symbolic to be standing in the dark. Having no idea what was going on. Being lost.

Realizing I was taking myself too seriously, and that I was just developing some film, I stuck the film in the developer and stood there, quietly but audibly humming Maroon 5 to myself.

The film came out. The results didn’t look great, but the developer worked. I stepped out of the dark room and saw Jack, who looked engaged with one of his students. I waited a second to make eye contact with him, and threw up an awkward thumbs up along with a forced-looking smile, signaling success. He raised a fist and exclaimed, “We persevere,” and went right back to work...

Sometimes, what’s on that piece of blue film isn’t what you want. But maybe that’s not what counts. Maybe there will always be mountains beyond mountains. Maybe it’s about accepting those mountains as an inevitable part of a beautiful life. Maybe, it’s just about persevering.

Maybe, even when there’s no hoop, you just have to keep throwing that basketball up because you never know what can happen when you keep fighting.

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

Good things come in 3's

The last few weeks, I feel like I’ve been crazy busy. Fortunately, all with awesome things, but busy nonetheless. When I was feeling like I was pushing on burnout, I started worrying, and fortunately again, three ideas popped into my life.

The first was this inspiring poem written by one of my friends:

Sweat burns my eyes
It is hot and I am tired
For days now (or has it been years?)
I have been climbing
And climbing
And climbing
There is no end in sight
Yet I must go on
I must keep climbing
For if I stop
I might become rooted

I loved this poem for several reasons. The simplicity, for one, and also the idea that sometimes you just have to lose track of time and not worry about how long you’ve been climbing. I definitely have a tendency to think, oh I haven’t taken a break in x days, I must need a break!

But what I loved most about the poem was the last word, “rooted.” I love the shortness of poetry, it allows every word to hold SO much meaning, and that one word, rooted, just really connected with me. I always want to be making progress, improving myself, and avoid getting stale or rooted. One of my biggest fears is that feeling of being stuck. Time is precious!

The second was a Filipino phrase my friend told me about, “isang bagsak” which translates to something like “one down.” A quick google search showed that it has multiple vaguely similar interpretations, but I think the basic idea is to exclaim this phrase, along with a clap, at the end of a group meeting to establish a sense of solidarity and progress.

On my run this morning, my running partner was mentioning that he’s starting to get in shape, and we talked about how awesome it is to feel your fitness improving. It’s always an incredible feeling to be making progress, whether in physical fitness or as a group fighting for a beautiful cause, no matter how seemingly small the progress may be.

And this reminded me, I am making progress! I’m getting better at working with my cells, making good friends, having amazing volunteer jobs, and just generally spending my days doing things I want to be doing.

And of course, good things always come in three's, so I was expecting a third inspirational sign, and it turned out to be a Buddhist saying.

“Act always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference.”

So the first two things, my friend’s poem and “isang bagsak,” helped me realize that I don’t want to get rooted and that I am making real progress, even if it seems more penguin-paced than hummingbird-paced. The third, the Buddhist saying, just made me remember to laugh at myself for taking myself so seriously and getting so stressed out, and enjoy the fact that I’m actually making progress in the direction I want to go in.

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

photo by Tambako the Jaguar

The Secret to Happiness

There is something fundamental about sports like running, cycling, swimming, rowing, that make them different from sports like basketball or soccer. It’s hard to say what that is exactly, but I think it has to do with the fact that it really tests how hard you can, or want, to push yourself. As a result, those sports really teach you a lot.

The legendary University of Oregon running coach Bill Bowerman once told his athletes:

“Running, one might say, is an absurd pastime upon which to be exhausting ourselves. But if you can find meaning in the kind of running required of you to stay on this team, perhaps you’ll find meaning in another absurd pastime: life.”

I have been running for the past eight years, which makes it the single activity in my life that I have been doing for the longest time. Through those eight years I have learned countless important lessons, one of the more important ones is brought up in John L. Parker’s epic novel Once A Runner.

The protagonist, Quenton Cassidy, is a collegiate track athlete training for the Olympics. Being the stud athlete he is, everybody asks him questions about what he eats, whether he believes in stretching, what his resting heart rate was, how many hours of sleep he got, and so on. Cassidy’s answer to all this mess is simple:

“The secret is this: there is no secret.”

He goes on to explain it is about simple hard work, and running countless miles. That’s the great thing about running. Surely, good genes can help, but being good at long distance running is largely about running those painful extra miles.

I think the lesson here is an important one. When thinking about change and improving one’s life, the tendency is to look at the quick fixes and tricks that other people apply, here are some of the most common ones I’ve come across:

Tired of your environment? Move!
Sick of your job? Get new one!
Tired of your exercise routine? Try yoga!
Bored of your hobbies? Learn a musical instrument!
Confused about your life? Write about it!

I have taken up all these trick changes, hoping for a quick fix, which some of them have definitely provided. But at the same time, these quick fixes only last for so long. The hard truth is, there is no secret trick to improving your life. It just comes down to picking one or a few things you like and keep doing them, whether it’s running everyday, making an effort to be social, or working in your garden every weekend.

This past week was pretty hectic, at the end of it I felt like giving up and scrapping a lot of my life projects - quitting my volunteer work, giving up training for the Portland Marathon, and so on. I’m not sure what exactly reminded me, but something brought me back and gave me the fuel to keep pushing through all the crap.

I think, sometimes, you just have to love that feeling of being helpless and being completely overwhelmed. There are undoubtedly going to be times when you are that overwhelmed, and that’s certainly part of the deal of life, so you might as well love it. Or something like that?

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

photo by MartynvanDeelen

stop for a minute

I am starting to see more and more that one of the points of life is to throw yourself into the community you’re in. So, one of my main day to day focuses has been to have better interaction with the people around me.

As I start to get busier and involved with more things, naturally I get more stressed and overwhelmed. When I’m stressed and overwhelmed, it’s a lot harder for me to deal with people, as I imagine it is for just about everyone. I read a smart quote that said, “It is easy to be heavy, hard to be light.” That quote has a lot of truth to it. It’s easy for me to just cut people out completely and go into a world of my own, not interacting with society at all.

So as a way to make sure I continue staying light, I’ve started to work out little tricks that help me stay happy and pleasant with others. I have two important ones. One is that I always try to make sure I am getting enough sleep. I don’t always want to get more sleep, I’d rather be reading, watching another episode of Scrubs, sitting around eating snacks, but I know that if I don’t get enough sleep, inevitably the next day around 2 or 3 I’ll hit that mid-afternoon tired and get snappy, short with people, and generally be no good at being with people.

The second trick is one I developed from my time with the Kenyon College Community Choir. Before every recital our conductor would remind us to take two deep breaths by putting two fingers up in front of him, so the entire choir could see but the audience couldn’t. For me, the gesture was kind of a reminder to slow down, reorient myself in the moment, and remember why I’m here.

So sometimes when I’m feeling overwhelmed I’ll purposely slow down my walking and take in the moment a little more, or I’ll just stop entirely, put two fingers up, and take two deep breaths to regain composure and put myself back in the moment. When it works, it really reminds me that I might feel overwhelmed but I should be grateful for this opportunity because I really do want to throw myself into as much as possible.

Ironically, I lost a little bit of sleep writing this..

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

Living the Dream

One of my first semi-major sidenotes came up the other day. I was asked to lead a home community, or small group, with my church this fall. This chance to lead home communities pretty cleanly fits two of my major goals.

1- Become more involved with my church
2- Lead through serving others

I should be super excited, which I am. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel nervous. I mean, I don’t even know what I would talk about! What if people come to my small group but don’t get anything out of it? Or what if people don’t come? That would be sad. It’s kind of the, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it!

There was a quote I really liked from Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, something like:

“Scared means you want to leave, nervous means you want to play.”

I am nervous about this opportunity, and I think being nervous is great because it means you care. A lot of times hopes and dreams seem awesome as hopes and dreams, but I find that when they actually fall into your lap they’re really a lot more of a pain than you expected. Living the dream is a lot harder than it seems. It makes you nervous, second-guess yourself, pile on more work to your schedule, and so on. Thomas Edison had this fitting quote:

“Most people don’t recognize opportunity when it comes, because it’s usually dressed in overalls and looks a lot like work.”

I’ve noticed people idealizing following your dream into the idea of a zero hour work week. I think the zero hour work week is when you’re following your dream it always feels like play, so you really aren’t working at all. I guess I would tend to disagree with that. A lot of times, following your dreams is to love what you’re doing and enjoy every moment, but there are also moments when you have to suck it up and fight through some rough patches. It’s a balance between aligning your actions with your goals while enjoying the moment.

I hope this home community experience helps me get involved with the church, and/or learn to lead. If not, maybe it will be fun, and I’d be happy with that. I guess I’m here for the sidenotes, so we’ll see how it goes.

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

Hummingbird Theory

This theory is near the crux of what I believe, so I always wanted to flesh this idea out. I came up with the Hummingbird Theory a few months ago but I like to think I’ve lived by it for a while.

I was at a bead store over spring break, looking at all the cool random animal beads. I found a hummingbird that I really liked, so I decided to buy it and make a necklace out of it. Later, someone asked me why I bought a hummingbird necklace, and I didn’t really have a good answer. Naturally, I looked up hummingbirds on Wikipedia, and came up with the hummingbird theory.

Hummingbirds have the fastest metabolic rate of all animals. They are constantly on the verge of starvation, and are always fighting for their survival. In essence, that’s how I want to be living.

I stole this quote from one of my wise friends, the quote is by George Bernard Shaw.

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Life is no ‘brief candle’ for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

While I’ve started to recognize that being too ambitious and hard-working can be dangerous and lead to burn out, at the same time I still believe life is about pushing your limits and being thoroughly used up.

A lot of times I hate myself for being busy. Last night, a Friday, I was packing up to go home from work. I was beat from a long week and ready to relax. I checked my phone before heading out and I had a text from a friend that started, “Hey Ken, you busy tonight?...” I was immediately prepared to text back, “Sorry, not tonight, it’s been a long week.” Then I finished reading the rest of the text, “We could use your help feeding the homeless..” At that moment I thought, damn.

If he had finished the text with anything else I would have been prepared to bag it and go home. But I knew that I wanted to commit to a cause bigger than myself, and to be exhausted fighting for that cause. Sometimes, opportunities fall into your lap when you don’t want them, but it’s kind of the, be careful what you ask for, kind of idea. So I headed off to help out.

This is not to say everybody should be feeding the homeless, and I don’t want anyone leaving with that impression so I wanted to end with this Vince Lombardi quote.

“The quality of a man’s life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor.”

I think that’s really what the hummingbird theory tries to get at. Find your dream, commit, and chase after it relentlessly.

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com