What's In A Name?

As you may have noticed, my blog has a new name, reflecting my current direction in life. After all, unless I do something so extraordinary that the state of Kentucky confers its highest honor upon me, I will probably never be a colonel (at least, outside of a cosplay or fandom context). And except for changing planes in Louisville once, I have never had any association with that great state, so it's unlikely to happen.

I can, however, be a professor. As of this fall, if all goes well, I will be. Concurrent with my Masters degree I am completing a Community College Teaching Certificate. I have been approved for a teaching internship and have only to be placed with a local community college and teach one course under supervision. Achievement unlocked!

It was always my goal to teach, and eventually I do want to teach at the college level full-time. In about 10 years I will be eligible to retire from my current employment. The economy being what it is, I don't want to be dependent upon my retirement benefits alone. So, I will take a page from my father's book and move on to something that I know I will enjoy and which will allow me to have a comfortable existence in my closer-than-I-would-like-to-admit old age.

Part of the application process is to get letters of recommendation from previous faculty. I always feel nervous about asking. I've asked three of my instructors and have gotten one positive response (I'm not sure of the others said no or just haven't seen the message yet). I don't like asking anyone for anything--I try not to impose upon others and when I do ask I feel embarrassed forever afterward. And yet to get to where I want to go, I need to ask, and keep asking.

So now among my many other plans this summer, it looks like I will be drawing up a lesson plan for whatever class I intend to teach (I'd like to teach basic statistics but there are any number of business classes I could teach as well).

And more to the point, I need to take the advice of a coworker of mine many years ago: in order to be accepted in a role, you have to put yourself out there in that role. Which is what I'm doing right now. I'm taking a minor step leading towards many more significant steps in the relatively near future.

Wish me luck! I'm going to need it!

Romancing Hypatia

Hypatia of Alexandria is one of the more intriguing figures of history. Very few women in antiquity have had their voices carry forward to us in the 21st century CE but of those she was probably the most 'modern' in outlook. She was an independent and very powerful thinker, a standard very few people of either gender could reach either then or now. It's exactly what got her into trouble, too.

Hypatia was killed, and the library of Alexandria (or what was left of it after six previous burnings) was burned for the last time, by a group of fanatics who were intimidated by her scholarship. Christian scholars accused her for centuries of paganism and witchcraft; secularists hold her up as a model of free thought against an oppressive church. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. She had both Christian and pagan students in her academy, and was an advisor to the Christian governor of Alexandria. The local bishop, jealous of her influence, stirred up a known troublemaker to get rid of someone he saw as a political threat. It's not that different from what happens today, except murder, arson, and probable sexual assault (usually) don't play into the picture.

At the risk of being overly sentimental, Hypatia has always been the personification of the sciences to me. Science is a thing of beauty, demanding of one's time and resources to get the best possible return. And for me personally, like Hypatia herself science has been notoriously unapproachable.

That liability was exposed when I took my first real science classes in college and found out that I needed serious math to go forward. I probably could have done better if I had remained focused and not lost sight of my goal. Hanging out with Fundamentalists and pursuing a woman who was probably about as receptive as Hypatia herself would have been to my attention didn't help my cause. Everyone would have been happier had I stayed the course: the woman I was chasing would have had some peace; the Fundamentalists would have found themselves a more tractable recruit; and I would have a physics degree. I realized my mistake, but too late to correct in time to get a science degree. So I settled for a degree in history and made a promise to myself that I would find a way to get back to my metaphorical true love.

24 years later...

I'm now on the verge of a return, thanks in no small part to my actual true love, Sandy, who met me along the way and has been very patient these past few years with my angst and the time I've spent finding my way back. I've never lost touch with the sciences, being an amateur astronomer in my spare time and courtesy of some professional certifications a quality engineer by profession. I also managed to pick up enough science units to do a lot of science-related work over the years. But it don't mean a thing unless I have those magic initials after my name.

Now it's time. Three challenges remain ahead of me.

First, I need to finish my Masters thesis. I'm about halfway done with the first draft. The events of the past year slowed me down significantly but I'm ready to get back in the game. I spent the weekend cleaning my office in the garage partly so I could find my notes.

Second, I need to retake the GRE. I took it 20 years ago and my scores were high enough to qualify me for Mensa (which at the time accepted GRE scores as qualifying). But the test has changed significantly since then. Time to review, review, review!

Third, and most daunting, is the subject that killed me in college:

Ordinary differential equations. The Ivan Drago to my Rocky Balboa. I passed the course, but I took a beating doing so and was forced into retirement.

Fortunately I saved my textbook and the student solutions manual, and I had a calculus review a few years ago that I did well on. I even have my old calculus book, which was so novel in the late 1980's that it actually contained 'computer problems'. It may as well be engraved on stone tablets now, but the principles are still sound as they were in the 1600's when Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz unleashed them on the world.

So guess what I'm doing this summer? That's right...in between work and taking care of my family, I am going to review, review, review!

And sometime next year, I will finally be on speaking terms with Hypatia again...

A Time To Rise

It was the year of fire... the year of destruction... the year we took back what was ours. It was the year of rebirth... the year of great sadness... the year of pain... and the year of joy. It was a new age. It was the end of history. It was the year everything changed. The year is 2015. The place: my life!!!

Give up???  HELL NO!!!!

My father never, ever tolerated giving up. Even as he was dying he fought to the very end, like the warrior he was all his life. I never got a chance to be that kind of warrior, but I can be one nonetheless.

I feel as though I have absorbed some of his toughness. The day before my father died, a rather clueless coworker who shall remain nameless demanded I send some files to her. Mind you, these weren't particularly mission-critical; they could have waited (especially since it was a weekend!) This coworker brushed off that I had mentioned that my father was dying and I had other things on my mind than meeting minutes. So, I sent the minutes. Not because this individual wanted them, but because I knew that's what my father would have done: completed the mission. I did it for him!

Last year wasn't all tragedy and disappointment. I got to see my son advance in Scouting and my daughter start preschool. Sandy and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary (although our renewal of vows didn't take place as planned for obvious reasons). And I made significantly more progress towards my Masters degree. All I have to do is finish my thesis and it's done!

But the big newsmaker started last September. I made the commitment to have bariatric surgery. 12 weeks of orientation and dieting to get down to the optimal weight for surgery ensued. It has not been easy, but on February 11th everything changed. (warning: semi-graphic picture)

I had a vertical sleeve gastrectomy and I have so far lost 65 pounds since last September and 25 pounds since surgery. I go to the gym or work out on my own every day now. In another week I'll start lifting weights again. And by next year I will run the Spartan race!

I am also aiming to have my thesis finally finished this summer, so I can move on to the next phase: getting my doctorate. It will be a tough, long haul, but I will finish the race that I have started, just as I promised my father. I would like to get my Ph.D in Computational and Data Sciences from Chapman University, which is local to me and will accommodate the schedule of a busy professional with two little kids at home. I've spoken to them and my odds are pretty good there, but if that doesn't work I have other options as well.


My assertiveness is paying off as well. Thanks to a longstanding need and to a coming management realignment I will be returning to my old posting in Import Operations, but this time as their quality manager. In naval terms I have moved on from being XO of an aircraft carrier to the captain of an Aegis-class cruiser. There are challenges to be met there, which I am looking forward to greatly! I miss my old comrades and want to do all I can to help them out!

There's still a lot to be done. There are still bills to be paid, a lot of weight yet to lose before I reach my goal, and little people who are growing up way too fast. And Sandy needs my support more than ever before. But now I feel much more empowered to meet all those challenges. Despite all that's happened, things are looking up, and I will rise from the flames!

A Year of Hell

Forgive me father, for I have sinned...it has been 561 days since my last confession...

The past year has been very, very bad. It started with a car accident about a year ago. Fortunately Alex and I were okay, but my vehicle was totalled. I was not looking forward to another car payment, and my streak of nearly 14 years without a car accident was erased. Thankfully the accident was not my fault!

Not too long after that, my mother-in-law was hospitalized. At first we thought she just had a bad cold, but it developed into something far, far worse. She went into the hospital in March, and never left. We lost her just before Christmas. In the meantime, the hospital stay, and trying to settle her affairs at her old home while we attempted to find a new one for her dominated our year--to the exclusion of other things that I now very much regret.

Still, I may have been able to handle that loss (and more importantly help Sandy through it better) had I not had a loss of my own:

Just before Thanksgiving, I lost my father very suddenly to a very severe case of pneumonia. He went from being in tremendously good health for a 74-year-old man to beyond the Rim in a matter of a week. He was my example in all things in life, and I miss him tremendously. It hurts me even to write this, but it must be written.

With my father gone, my mother was left alone. While I would have gladly sacrificed everything to help her, I was reminded by the rest of the family that I still have two very young children to take into consideration. My mother moved shortly after Christmas to live with my brother and his wife in Iowa; their kids are all grown and can provide additional help if needed. I understand the rationale, and we still speak very frequently, but the loss still is there. Christmas 2014 was the last Christmas I will ever celebrate in the home I grew up in. My mother had no choice but to sell.

And all through this there was still life to be lived. There was baseball and Cub Scouts and homework (both mine and the kids!) to take care of, along with the usual pressures of work. The stress took its toll on me unfortunately, and all the progress I had made in the past year towards weight loss was wiped out and then some.

But did I give up? Hell NO!!!! My next post will describe what's happening now.

In the meantime, I am very, very thankful that even as bad as last year was we did have a family reunion last May. Almost all of Clan Condrey was able to attend and as far as I am concerned it was the highlight of the year!

So, folks, that's why I've been so quiet on here in the past year or so. But I need to write, and this is the best place to do it. More coming soon!

Unleashing The Warrior Within

Inside all of us is an ideal person, a being of light and spirit awaiting the actions on our part to be fully realized. Most of us, however, never reach this point. We get potholed by our insecurities, the cares and worries of life, the burdens other people try to impose upon us.

I've carried those burdens too long. I've tried to live up to the expectations of others, only to fall short of my own expectations for myself. I've wasted far too much time trying to play the game, knowing all along that it was rigged in the house's favor.

No more.

I am at the cusp of becoming the man I want to be--the man I need to be. Because someone else has been wearing my skin for a while now, and I'm not putting up with that anymore.

I was reminded tonight during my workout just how much I missed it. I'm up to four sets of eight different exercises, developing all parts of the body. Thursday night I'll attempt to run again. My health is important to me, but more important still is my self-image. I don't like what I've allowed myself to become, so I take on the struggle within.

If I don't lose the weight, I die early. If I don't adjust my attitude and my self-image, I'll die well before the actual funeral. I've seen a lot of people die that way. Worse yet, I've seen people attempt to destroy others that way all too often.

A friend of mine was subjected to that form of cruelty this week. This is a man who has in recent years lost his wife, and is struggling to raise his daughter on his own. He is starting to find himself again after this tragedy, but still needs to vent. We all need to vent, but to have someone else fueled by Internet courage and with no inkling of how much all of us carry inside attempt to shoot him down was sickening to me. I've lost too many people at too young an age (my brother and five close friends dead before I was 25--and four of those were suicides) to wish that upon anyone but damn was the temptation there to wish it on this clown who confused grieving with personal weakness! But I didn't. I want to be the better man.

Much closer to home I see my wife, and how much she struggles from day to day with the kids. I try to help out as much as possible--I am their father, after all, and they need me. Enough said there. I also see how she struggles trying to make things better for the people around her, only to go unacknowledged and unappreciated, even insulted. I take great personal offense to this. I am more than willing to break a few heads on her behalf--I nearly have, on at least two occasions. I would be nowhere near my goals were it not for Sandy, and I want to make sure I give her my all as well.

It is a painful realization that there are still bullies out there in adult life, that some people never grew out of that phase. I've always known this. Much of the impetus for me to become a union steward years ago was a desire to combat such bullies in the workplace. They definitely existed, with about the maturity level one would expect. Thankfully karma has been paid in full measure to all of them now, and in a few cases I was privileged enough to not only watch but play a role.

The workplace, however, is governed by rules, with mechanisms to ensure they are enforced (imperfectly though they may be). Everyday life is a different question. And honestly, I've seen enough douchebags over the past five years to more than stock the local pharmacy. One only missed a civil restraining order because we didn't have the filing fee at the time!

But worst of all are the bullies I carry in my own mind, the ones who fuel self-doubt and hesitation on my part. The ones that whisper in the night: You're a failure. You're not good enough. You're only wanted because no one else was left. You are continually mocked behind your back and will be forgotten as soon you're gone, provided anyone noticed you were there to begin with.

How do you fight a battle against an opponent inside your own mind?

The answer is simple: prove him wrong! Make yourself better, physically, mentally, and spiritually. And that's what I'm doing right now. I may have been knocked down, but I'm getting back up again! Fall down seven times, stand up eight!

Deeper than my conscious thoughts, deeper even than those whispers in the night, is the man God intended me to be. A true warrior, a man of strength, courage, and honor in every arena of life. He may not be the strongest, or the smartest, or necessarily the most virtuous, but he's certainly going to scare the living crap out of anyone counting on the old me to back down.  Especially those voices within!

More later...

Seeing David In The Stone

"Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." -- Michaelangelo

I continue my weight training, interspersed with my walking regimen. Tonight I added French curls (an exercise I've always found difficult) to the mix. An extra exercise meant fewer reps, however. I need to get used to this.

It's my hope to find the statue that is the ideal me beneath all of the sloppiness that's accumulated over the years. I don't just mean physical sloppiness. I mean mental and moral sloppiness as well.

I am currently involved in the Federal Executive Board Leadership Associates Program, an intensive year-long series of activities intended to develop mid-level government employees myself into executive material. As I intend to be around for a while, I'd like to get as far as possible. The current class has only been running since June, but already I've gotten a lot out of it. Part of my current interest in working out, for example, is a side project to encourage greater physical fitness among federal employees. Another employee at my agency started a team, and being the competitive person I am, I decided to join.

This is one way my competitive nature is helping me. I can see also where it has hurt me, and hurt others, badly. It is a double-edged sword for sure!

Back to the leadership program. This week we had a course in conflict management. Using the assessmetn tool, I discovered that I have a lot of work to do. I have a tendency to want to try and win arguments, even if there's no point in doing so beyond being able to say I'm right. For certain lines of work, this is a good thing. In every day life, this is a very bad thing. I have alienated who knows how many people because of it. I'm not proud of this. I am sure that there are more than a few people who can attest to this. If you're out there and reading this, please accept my apologies, know that I see the problem, and that I'm working on it.

It is such a relief to let go of conflicts, and to recognize troll bait when I see it! No longer am I bound by that invisible hand that seemed to force me to constantly be on the lookout for the epistemological knife fights I so often find myself involved in! My karate instructor back in the distant past always told me that the best move in a fight is to turn around and walk away. If only I'd applied that wisdom to the pseudo-intellectual posturing I see around me--and not get sucked into it myself--I'm sure I would have been much happier overall!

It's more than winning arguments, though. It's wanting to win at life, with 'winning' poorly defined. In college it wasn't enough just to have good grades, I had to have a girlfriend too. And by 'have' I mean 'be the only thing going on for her'. I don't think I was as big a douchebag as that statement implies (there are at least two women out there who could confirm this--or not) but I can see where a lot of my behavior wasn't what it should have been, or even anywhere close. And for that, I am truly sorry. To any male between the ages of 17 and 22 reading this (including my son in about 10 years): I've seen some of you do the same crap. You cannot simultaneously put a woman on a pedestal and chain her like a slave. In fact, you shouldn't do either one. Make and keep a friend--an equal partner--and what you want is more likely to show up on its own. Not guaranteed (nothing is!) but more likely. And that is Uncle Steve's Pearl of Wisdom for the night. :-)

This desire to be ahead of the game at all costs isn't all bad--academically it's been a tremendous asset, and my career hasn't suffered either (although I will emphasize that to my knowledge I've never stabbed anyone in the back on the way up). But when wed to faulty assumptions it is yet another layer of stone that must be removed to get to the ideal form beneath.

Why am I competing? What is there to be gained? How will my competitive nature help or hurt others? What will it do to myself in long run? I need to start answering these questions more consistently.

Because while I'm cutting through the physical flab to reach the ideal person inside, I also need to cut through the mental and moral flab to reach  what that person should be like. And I cannot do that unless I'm honest with myself. "Let him that would move the world first move himself."

Time to put away the past. The other thing the assessment tool told me was that I tend to dwell on problems too much. The problem's solved--I'm not who I used to be, and cannot change what that person did. I can only hope for forgiveness, and do what I can to improve. And that's the real competition: the one within!

The Long Hot Summer

I've been away for a while, I know. But I'm back to stay!

Since ending the medically supervised portion of the weight loss program, just about everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. I've faced a number of personal and professional challenges these past few months that have caused me to revert to old habits.

First to go was the exercise. After my last long run of 2.8 miles I stopped for some reason. It got too easy to rationalize not running again--too tired/too hot/too much to do/too many other excuses to count.

Next to go was diet discipline. Back in June my mother was hospitalized for several days (thankfully, she's doing better now). I fell back into my old habit of stress eating. A number of other events happened at home and at work to compound the stress. On top of that, I had chosen this summer to take three classes instead of two to knock a year off my Masters degree. Two of my classes involved heavy math and were taught by instructors whose notes were minimal at best (one class didn't even have an official textbook!) Between the rigor of the courses themselves and losing time while Mom was in the hospital, I spent most of the summer term catching up. I managed A's in two of the courses and a B in the third...but getting there was much, much harder than I anticipated. And a lot of stress eating was involved.

I accept that there's stress in life. That's an inherent part of existence. Someone whose life is completely stress free is either not truly living or completely oblivious to his or her situation. As with so many other things, however, it all hit at once. My faith has been challenged and restored repeatedly over the past three months. My sanity? Sometimes I wonder.

But no more. With but one exception (which I can do nothing about but wait) most of the stressors have been resolved. Now it's time to focus on building myself back to the person I know I can be. I started that in earnest tonight.

With Sandy absent much of the evening, a run was out of the question. So I went to my old standby: the weight bench. Weightlifting has always been special to me: it's one athletic activity I've been able to remain reasonably competent at, even excel. For two years during my undergraduate years I took gym classes every quarter to build exercise into my routine (as if working as a cook and a janitor, and walking nearly everywhere, wasn't enough!)  The weight training was something I'd started in high school but it took off in college. If I'd kept up with it, who knows where I'd be now?

Of course, I'm not powerlifting like I was 20 years ago: my right shoulder and my back reminded me tonight that I'm 44, not 22 even with the relatively light workout (low weight/high reps) I took on:

3 sets/25 reps each:
Bench press at 25 lbs
Military press at 25 pounds
Curls at 25 pounds
Dead lift at 25 pounds

The objective of low weight/high reps is to develop muscle tone and endurance as opposed to instantaneous power. It's also (contrary to popular belief) one hell of a good cardiovascular workout: think calisthenics with a positive load applied to every part of the body. I also attempted knee extensions but the weight bench I have isn't made very well for that. I may settle for running/cycling to develop my legs. I can get new running shoes much cheaper than a new weight bench, and I need new shoes anyway.

It felt good! Just the act of putting on my old lifting gloves caused a bit of a surge in me, as though I were Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone. I still feel a little tight even after my shower, and probably will feel much tighter tomorrow...but that's a good thing. Muscles need to be challenged in order to develop. Tomorrow I'll run again, then Wednesday night (Sandy's bowling night) I'll hit the weights after the kids are in bed.

Why am I suddenly back in the saddle again? Two reasons. One I'll explain in more detail tomorrow night. The other? Let's just say that it's better to be in control of one's circumstances rather than the other way around. There are relatively few things I can change in my life as it is, but that's no excuse not to address the things I can. And my health--and general well-being--is one of those things.