Putting Hard Numbers on Soft Tissue

THIS BEING THE SEASON OF POLLS, I submitted myself to a survey yesterday, but the results won't be used to tar any political opponent. I had my annual office health screening, part of a half-day fair in which I also received my yearly flu shot. I might bitch about work here and there, but my company follows the wise course of providing free flu vaccine to all employees. What used to be a last-minute scramble while working in Manhattan and dashing home for a doctor's appointment or a spot on a hospital queue is now as simple as walking down the hall.

In addition, employees can also get their blood pressure, nonfasting blood glucose and cholesterol, and bodyfat percentage measured. Not having had a fasting read on these recently, I brought last year's nonfasting results with me to compare. The med-tech this time around didn't provide as much blood info as I got last year — no LDL or triglycerides — but my HDL improved (possibly kinked by the ground flaxseed I'd eaten with my oatmeal an hour earlier), and my glucose, though a little higher than in November 2007 (also probably from earlier meals, either the oatmeal or the frozen berries and yogurt in the smoothie I'd downed after my gym visit), was still in the normal range.

Unlike last year, we got a bodyfat reading. They had some sort of induction-based handle gadget we had to hold out in front of us in both hands. Beats someone advancing on me with a huge set of calipers. Based on the data the nurse programmed in, and the wacky Tesla vibe it picked up from my grip, I was told I have a bodyfat percentage of 25.7. Normal for men was listed in the booklet we'd been given as 15.1%–18%.

Today I finally thought, how many actual pounds was this? Using yesterday's weight of 221 lb., I'm carrying somewhere around 56 or 57 lb. of fat. Now, under the 30x40 plan of hitting 198 lb. by my next birthday, and assuming I lost only fat tissue while muscle mass stayed constant, I still need to drop 23 lb. That done, I'd still be carrying about 33.8 lb. of fat, which would represent a body mass percentage of 17—within that normal range.

Good to know, because if I keep eating and working out as I've been doing, I should definitely gain muscle. Not as much as I drop in fat, but judging from the blunt red number on the scale, the result on the chart might be a leveling off of weight loss as I shift my fat–muscle balance. Without grabbing another bodyfat-measuring machine, if the scale read the same while I exercised and ate correctly, I'd have to assume my fat percentage was dropping. This would keep me from getting despondent and engulfing 2 lb. of Whole Foods jellybeans over an evening.

Let's make no mistakes: I've still got a hefty gut. Nobody's gonna mistake me for skinny. And 23 lb. of fat tissue represents a caloric deficit of 80,500 kcal that I've got to realize — via better nutrition, regular and progressively tougher exercise, and maintaining more lean muscle tissue to rev my resting metabolism — over the coming months, which include Halloween, Thanksgiving, my holiday party, and the Xmas–New Year's Axis of Eating. But I can tell, when I shave, that there's less flesh on my face. I can encircle a wrist with the opposing hand with more slack in the grip. I can cover the walk between the apartment and library, across the town park, without getting winded. I put on a shirt last week that hadn't fit me in about 2 years; there was slack around my abs even when I sat. The tape measure says I've lost 3 in. of circumference there since mid-June.

With all of this evidence, each piece small but collectively quite telling, I've got no choice but to continue. Tomorrow I may only add 5 lb. to my squat weight, but all of this work in the gym and kitchen could add quality years to my life.

My Goal One Year Ago Today

I AM UTTERLY CONVINCED THAT I made some mention of this a year ago or so, but I can't find the post. Maybe it was a journal entry. How dare I write something that doesn't get sprayed like narcotic frosting all over the Internet?

Anyway, a year ago today, while frustrated with my lack of progress on the then-current exercise routine, I got angry enough to yank my manual typewriter out of its case behind the couch, roll in a 3" x 5", and type the following off the top of my head:

The first month will be hell. Early mornings, uncaring stars, frost on the car and ice in the bones. Temptation will call you back to bed and warm oblivion. Fight past the alarm and out into the morning. Exercise six — SIX — times per week, 30–45 minutes each. Eat right. Purse each day with cheer. Revel in success and be humble, forgiving, and wise when course corrections are needed. You wield the most powerful force on the planet — an unfettered human will. Stack successes like the bricks of an immortal monument and meet triumph head on.

—10/6/07

I was trying to dedicate myself to more frequent and programmatic exercise. I wanted a daily reminder of my committment to pin next to my bathroom mirror. And, surprisingly, it came to 100 words if you count the date, which would have made the folks at the 100 Words site happy. Though a touch fascist sounding, about what else in life can one afford to be dictatorial other than one's health? Anyway, I thumbtacked it on said bathroom wall and there it hung, aside from visits from guests (I didn't want to frighten them off).

Today, I fought past that alarm and into a cold autumn morning where I could see my breath as I walked to the car. I rode the elliptical trainer for 10 minutes to pump heat into my stiff limbs, then went upstairs to the weight floor. There, I managed to add just a little weight to the squats and bench presses I've been doing. The work I have to do comes outside the gym too, by making smarter decisions about food and sleep. But it all starts with throwing off those sheets and shutting down that alarm . . . and then putting on sneakers and gym clothes and getting the hell over there.

Moral? Write your goals down. No matter how small. Especially if they're small. Meet that small goal, then write another one down and hit that too. You don't yell at a person climbing a thousand stairs for taking them one at a time. You congratulate him or her for making the remaining number smaller. That's what fixing a goal to paper can help you do. It's seeing last workout's weight figures and saying, "Let's see what another 2.5 lb. can do here." It's noting that you consumed the right amount of protein and kept simple carbs well under control by checking the last week's worth of meals.

You'll have no idea how far you've come if you don't leave some traces of the steps you took to get there. Set yourself a little goal and see where your first step leads.

Squats Are Paying Off

DESPITE SOME OFF-PLAN DINNERS this week, I managed to meet today's goal weight of 221. This after a temporary spike, last weekend, to 226, which I attribute to Sunday's carbohydrate-heavy dinner at my parents' place. Three of my dinners this week were considerably subpar as compared to the clean, controlled portions of protein, complex carbs, and healthful fats I had through the other four or five small meals each day. So why, at the end of the week, when I weighed myself and then double-checked the result with a tape measure around my waist, did I still manage to drop 5 lb.?

I believe it's because my addition of squats to the exercise regimen. This week, I did squats on Tuesday and Thursday, owing to taking Monday off from the gym after a solid week of gym visits. I actually woke up before my alarm on Tuesday morning eager to get over to the gym Squatting was the first thought on my mind. How weird is that?

I bumped up this week to eight reps (from seven) of five squats with nothing on the bar. I'll visit the gym for weight training tomorrow, after a cardio session today, because I don't know what sort of gym facilities the hotel where I'm staying Monday and Tuesday in Central City will have. Doubtful they'll have a power rack. I'll be lucky if they have one of those vibrating weight belts from the Coolidge era. So my idea is to put in a vigorous workout tomorrow that will hold me through spotty exercise opportunities and food options until Wednesday.

But back to the weight loss conundrum. I noticed my face looked a touch thinner; I could see my cheekbones more clearly. The waist measurement this morning indicated I'd lost ½" since last Monday, when the scale read 226. When I walked during the week, I was conscious of my quadriceps, the large thigh muscles that squats target. The feedback I got from them was an odd combo of postworkout soreness (though far less than the first couple of times I squatted) and the sense of being larger. The shape of the muscles are a touch different than two weeks ago. They're not Incredible Hulk huge by any means; I won't have to lay in a massive supply of purple pants to replace the ones my gamma surges shred. Indeed, my quads compete for space with no small amount of adipose tissue, to put it clincally. But it seems to be a slightly smaller amount of said fat, and a touch larger amount of said muscle.

I am permitting myself the least perceptibly hubristic shred of joy I can muster.

When you have an enemy on the run, you pursue and reduce them while they are thus vulnerable. My war against fat is still young. But any war comprises many battles, many duels between armies across the vast theater of strife. If I was able to add muscle and drop fat even when I had nacho chips and cheese two nights this week, along with pizza on a third, how much more success might I achieve with an entirely clean diet? Rather than ruing my slips, I will take them as proof that my exercise plan is working, that the overall 30x40 goal may be achievable, and that if I die young anyway, it will be in the midst of a fight I finally have dedicated myself to winning.

You Write What You Eat

BY COINCIDENCE, WHILE RECORDING the ingredients of the post-workout shake I had just mixed in a new Excel chart, designed to record my weekday food intake, a report came over the radio about a study of just such a behavior. Researchers at the Oregon Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research report that people who diligently recorded their daily food consumption (amid a program of daily exercise, reduced caloric intake, and a healthful overall diet) lost twice as much weight over a 20-week period as did those who recorded few or no details about their food choices. (Here's the Washington Post's writeup, along with a U.S. News & World Report article on maintaining a food diary.) My goals for this week included initiating just such a diary. Crazy synchronicity on that.

As part of my goal to lose 30 pounds by age 40, my plan was to control what I eat very closely on weekdays. With three or four meals eaten while at work, it's easier to pack, tote, and eat a specific set of rations. For Saturdays, I plan to adhere to the weekday food choices as closely as I can (particularly breakfast, lunch, and my post-workout smoothie), but I assume I'll eat out for dinner or lunch.

As for Sunday, I nearly always eat dinner at my parents' house, and the logistics of parsing out the caloric breakdown on home cooking leads me to declare Sunday a no-records day and just enjoy myself without worrying too much about the details. Of all the meals I eat each week, my mother's cooking is the one I won't have access to forever. I can let the program slide if it means I get to enjoy such a timebound opportunity.

But as for weekdays, I've set up an Excel spreadsheet to capture what I eat in granular detail. I made a determination of how many calories I'd need to eat to remain at my current weight, and, in another spooky parallel to the study's methods, I knocked 500 calories off of that. I also did some research on what division I ought to make among the major macronutrients — protein, carbohydrates (complex for as many as possible), and fat — and made a note of how many calories of each would give me the right spread of percentages. I also made a separate sheet listing my most commonly eaten foods with serving sizes, calories, and the protein/carb/fat grams. All I needed to do was to write down what I ate.

As you've read, the morning was easy; I was at home, so I could type it right in. For the workday's meals, I took notes. I forgot to do this half the time during my last food-diary attempt, so I would have to make half-assed guesses by the end of the day. I've tried to grease the rails by limiting the initial range of foods I'd eat. Hell, they're more or less the same stuff I eat most workdays. It's the dinners that have been problematic. I'm hoping recording those, along with every other meal, will make it plain when I've made the correct choices and reinforce the practice with results in the form of looser clothes.

They're a touch more snug than this time two weeks ago, I have to say. The birthday–July 4 axis involved a night of drinks, birthday cake, and a cookout/BBQ/homemade cookie whirlwind this past weekend courtesy of Ratatosk and Amy. I call it a last-hurrah mulligan and have forged ahead with a solid plan. (To force accountability, I am also recording my daily bodyweight and posting it, for good or ill, on this blog.)

Despite a bad few nights of sleep these past days (I sleep poorly in the heat), I managed to lever myself out of bed in and crank out an effective workout at the gym. I adhered closely to my list of chosen healthful foods for the entire day, including a far better dinner than I've eaten on a weeknight in some time: roasted skinless chicken breast, broccoli, and a huge-looking baby spinach/red leaf lettuce salad. If I'm going to make any aspect of the last meal of the day big, it's best that it be produce based.

The final number on the day fell surprisingly short of my caloric goal. I was going to aim for 2200 calories Monday through Friday, and see where that got me with 4 or 5 weekday workouts, but I only got up to 1477 today. On a day when I lifted weights, that's a bit low. But it gave me the same information it doubtless gave the folks in the study mentioned above: explicit details of what their food looks like in calories. As long as you're honest, there's no denying that a muffin, ice cream cone, or fructose-laden coffee drink is making an impact on your ass.

If the whole process sounds mechanical, it ought to be. Automatic and programmable. Too much of my eating has been mindless. Paying attention to what each food choice can do for me is the best way to calibrate the right amount for the slow process of fat loss while preserving muscle. That's the Holy Grail of body reshaping, and the only way to gauge success is to look back a day, a week, a month at your food diary, bodyweight records, and workout logs and say, "This combo worked here, this one didn't," and so on. It's fundamentally about taking control and accepting that responsibility for success is mine alone.

30x40: Losing Thirty Pounds by Age Forty

I WILL TURN 40 in just under a year. For this birthday just past, to devote myself to one change that will have the most productive influence on the rest of my life, I have chosen fitness. The goal: to lose 30 pounds by my next birthday.

On my birthday last Friday, I weighed 228 pounds. This January 1, I weighed 231.5. Doesn't appear to be much difference, and I do admit some backsliding during the stressful late winter I endured, but my body composition has changed somewhat since then; a little more muscle and a smidge less fat. Don't get me wrong, I am quite obviously obese. I ought to weigh somewhere between 155 and 175 at my height. But I've been especially diligent since the beginning of May, and I've crossed a definite threshold as compared with past attempts to drop fat.

For one, lifting weights only three days out of eight in early–mid June while in Las Vegas didn't ding my progress at all. I got right back into my routine and took off the few pounds of fat I gained while there. Second, shortly before I departed for Vegas, I did three real pushups. In 39 years I have never been able to do even one. This revelation left me stunned for about three days and provided a tremendous endorsement of what I've been doing.

What have I been doing? Keeping most of my meals during the week healthful and of appropriate size and nutrition, and eating five or six of them through the day. Visiting the gym six times per week at minimum, seven ideally. Keeping careful records of my progress and pushing myself in some new way each time I visit. Avoiding the temptations of crappy calories at work (it's like Elaine's office in Seinfeld with the sugarfests). Restricting meals that dip into the standard American diet to the weekends or special occasions like my birthday.

I am not perfect, and I expect to fail, but I refuse to stop. I know that the forward progress is most important, no matter the temporary deceleration required to avoid obstacles. What I am introducing is a signpost, a checkpoint, to set a definite goal at which to aim. The short-term goals of eating better and visiting the gym are now solid habits to be tended carefully. I want to push them further toward a fixed, medium-term objective of major, permanent fat loss.

Losing 30 pounds by my 40th birthday, to weigh 198 pounds by June 27, 2009, will require a rate of loss of .57 pounds per week, or 2.5 pounds per month. This goal is well within the guidelines of 1–2 pounds per week mentioned as ideal (to maximize the impression of healthy habits and metabolic changes to keep the weight off) on Consumer.gov, the Mayo Clinic site, and WebMD. I've been tripped up in the past by eating crappy food between or after meals due to boredom, aimlessness, depressed mood, or laziness. If I can figure a proper caloric intake per day for weight loss, and direct the energies that lead me into situations where I eat crap more positively, I should be able to hit that rate of loss.

The end of the year will be the real kicker. Halloween through New Year's is a nightmare of free-floating sugar and holiday bingeing. But one thing I learned while in Las Vegas was that I've lost the ability to eat huge, single-sitting meals. I just can't do four plate-loads of food at the buffets anymore. Not that I didn't try; I just went into a lethargic funk after doing so. I've backed myself into a corner of better consumption, it seems. About goddamn time. So I should be able to manage the autumn sugar siege without destroying my progress or getting written out of the will because I brought a Tupperware full of broccoli and lettuce to Thanksgiving dinner. (Besides, a day full of football goes naturally with onion dip and cheddar cheese.)

So that's the goal. The best thing to do is to continue to post here about it, to hold myself accountable in "public," and to track my progress. If I can take one year, set strong yet flexible habits to keep me from heart disease, cancer, and diabetes for the rest of my life, and emerge feeling even better than I already do after just a couple of months at this quest, I'll have prepared myself well to enter middle age. It's time to build on the foundation I've been constructing for the past several weeks and give myself a birthday gift each day.

2007 Goals: Unwrapped

FOR THE PAST 360 DAYS, I have had a plain #10 envelope staring at me from the ledge of the whiteboard that hangs on the inside of the front door to my apartment. The main and return addresses are identical: Both are mine. Last year, I was inspired by a Marketwatch.com columnist to write down a bunch of goals for 2007, but not to look at them . . . only to have a vague idea of what they were, and to strive toward fulfilling them.

Upon reading this list of 36 dashed-off ideas, I believe the Marketwatch guy must have a better memory than I do, because I clearly forgot a great number of these right out of hand. Although he counts a good year as one in which he hits half of his goals and comes close on the other half, I would've counted this as a good year had I simply been able to recall half.

I suspect I'd do better with the plan I considered adopting on the first day of 2006, on which I recounted the SMART system for setting goals: they should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based. Having a predictable plan of events, like my current exercise week, with recognizable goals and the steps to achieve them all drawn out, seems the best way to go for me.

Still, a look at a few choice items from the 2007 mystery list might be interesting:

Find a new job: This was the first item on the list. I didn't really begin looking in earnest until I started my career development training in April. Fortunately, this step only took about 3 months.

Lose 38 pounds by 12/31/07: The closest I came was about 14 pounds in June, when I was home most of the time and able to go to the gym whenever, as well as to adhere to a stricter feeding schedule than I had while I was in the city. At this point, I'm down about 8, owing to the cold blowing my exercise schedule late last week.

8 or more hours of sleep per night: Got a lot better at this after the end of the last job. By some miracle, my sleep schedule didn't creep forward as much as I thought it would during my layoff. During my last 3 months at the salt mine, I'd get maybe 6 tops, 3 on poker nights, because it didn't matter. Now, it tends to be around 7 to 8. I naturally arise at or around 5:00 now if I go to bed at 9:00, no small feat on either end.

Maintain a regular exercise regimen: 4 times weekly minimum: Became a solid feature of my time between jobs, slacked off a bit during the late summer, then I became disgusted with myself, wrote an angry rant and posted it for inspiration on my bathroom wall, and started daily visits in mid-November. Aside from the cold virus–related disruption, I've been a rock.

Keep a clean home; reduce or eliminate clutter, spare paper, old newspapers, and junk mail: Failed spectacularly after I brought home all my shit from the salt mine. I didn't dispose of or properly shelve any of those books or papers until late November. The newspapers waned as I stopped buying the Sunday Times and canceled my Wall Street Journal subscription (just stuck with reading it at work). I also bought a super-shredder to contend with the continued tide of junk mail. Still, there were times when I was greatly disgusted with the piles around the place, and I believe it inhibited my desire to entertain here, which is not fair to those friends who kindly host. I've succeeded in keeping the place major-event-level clean since the party on 12/8, and I intend to do so as long as I can.

Bring lunch and other work food from home as often as possible; no lunches in the city except for payday: I actually cut down to one lunch per week, and this didn't help with my habit of getting a bagel and Diet Coke for breakfast most days, but at least I saved $7–$12 per day, unlike my also soon-to-be-laid-off coworkers. I preserved the habit at the new place, even though I could drive home for lunch.

Eliminate caffeine: Now this was purely utopian. I had a whole little tapering-off regime along with this item, very industrious on paper no doubt, but it worked about as well as those that Burroughs instituted to get off heroin. The last time I am going to have the willpower to kick an addiction is during a work cutoff.

Write daily for 1 hour; post all relevant work to the blog: Though I did get more entries up this year, including my Lenten devotion, and I participated in a 100 Words month in October, I still could've done more. I take Dr. Pauly as my inspiration here; he puts in 2 or 3 hours of free writing per day, in addition to his column assignments, travel for work, poker coverage, and interviews, and if you compare the early days of his poker or personal sites to the rich and insightful posts he now produces, you can see every hour of work under the skin of his writing. It's not only the difference between Pauly's blog and a lot of other poker blogs; it's the difference between Pauly and a lot of other writers.

Spend at least 15 minutes per day outside, as weather allows: I like this one and I believe I did well with it, up until about the past month and a half. I found myself taking walks outside in Chelsea as the end of my work approached, both to get some sun on my face and lift the winter blues, to breathe unrecirculated air on my own time for a spell, and to remind myself that there was indeed a world outside that job. Once sprung, I tended to walk to the gym on many nice days, and to sit outside in the park or near my building. On fall weekends, when the weather was freakishly warm, you could find me with the newspaper and my radio, listening to football and breathing in springlike air without the allergens of May to plague me. At this job, I've tried to get outside and just stand there, away from the smokers, or to walk around the perimeter of our huge parking lot, and enjoy the free skies. All of this is an attempt to claim time as my own, outside, where our ancestors evolved, and place work in the comparatively narrow context where it belongs.

Some of the other goals are still relevant and perhaps worth pursuing this year. As I said, I'd do it visibly, in stages, not tucked away in an envelope. But if nothing else, seeing that envelope with my name on it each day did make me think that I should be doing "better," no matter what I was doing, and to find out what might comprise "better" in all my activities. So it was not entirely meritless.

Five-Day Siege

HOME ON A MID-DECEMBER NIGHT, looking at my last full work week of the year, and it's gonna be a bear. And not one of those funny, tricycle-riding bears you wanna just take home and let live in your garage. No. Even if it looks like that type of bear, once you get this one home, it punches out your kid, rips the lock off your liquor cabinet, chugs your Johnnie Walker Blue, peels your car out of the driveway through the garage door, and eventually shows up on the 11:00 news being hosed off the side of a school bus after careening through a petting zoo.

Yeah, that type of week.

With one seat still open in our editorial staff, one of my stories a mere skeleton and in dire need of a rewrite, deferred days off being taken before they go stale but causing outages among the rest of the staff — including the art director (who, mercifully, survived last Monday's layoff) — and a looming, yet increasingly laughable deadline coming at the end of the week, which everyone knows will be bumped into the final week of the year, but which nobody wants to admit, this proves to be one of the squeakiest squeakers in the long history of squeakerdom. (Look it up. It's right next to w00t.)

At least I had a decent weekend to steel me for these rigors. I got some chores done and had a fine lunch at the northern Bergen haven for BBQ known as the Mason Jar, following this up with brewing a mighty mass of chili. Lunch and/or dinner for the next 2 weeks will be much simpler to assemble. Today, after the somewhat defanged nor'easter offered a modicum of hail-like snow and winds far less than expected, I availed myself of the weekend rail service recently instituted on the line through my town to attend my friend Bill's holiday party at his recently repainted condo in Hoboken.

For this, I actually left early, out of some masochistic urge to actually watch the Patriots manhandle the Jets up in Foxboro. I parked myself in front of a burger and, uncharacteristically, a beer, at a bar once reaching Hoboken. (I barely ever drink, especially when away from home, as I usually drive myself places.) This became two beers once the Jets began reverting to recent form. By the time I abandoned my stool, I — an infamous lightweight — was quite tipsy.

I threaded my way through the post-nor'easter Hoboken (barely any rain, and no ice, both far less than the weather genii foresaw) to Bill's place, where, as I said, I took in the paint job he'd delegated to his sister back in August. Very nice work, I have to say. He's been there for about 8 years, and I was stunned to see what a couple of careful color choices could do for a place. And he had more than one, too: a red entryway, light-blue kitchen, greens here and there, a touch of eggshell. It was like he moved and I didn't have to risk my bursae by lifting his couch. I can't paint this apartment with anything except water-based white pigment, so I have to live vicariously through others' design decisions. As for the party, it was a good time, featuring, as always from his place, a balcony view of Midtown Manhattan, which lit up enchantingly as night fell and the fog shrouding the taller buildings dispersed.

I scanned the glittering skyline for my old building, where I spent most of the last several years of my career. Decidedly nondescript, it was invisible amidst so many impressive edifices and shining Times Square attractions. I'd previously had a view, from a corner cube unaccountably given to my lowly self, spanning from the Statue of Liberty to Weehawken, with Hoboken and the great expanse of the Garden State as my horizon. From that cube, I could see Bill's condo building, and with the right optics, that very balcony on which I stood this early evening. I spent quite a number of moments — sometimes when coming in early or staying late to work on that beastly accounting title with the 48-hour turn — scanning the horizon or watching the Hudson roll unstoppably down to the harbor and wondering what I was going to do next, but not really having much of a push to try anything else. Not quite a designer, sort of an editor at one point at that firm, certainly not a writer, I was in a dangerous niche, where my expertise grew only slowly in any direction.

My company's move would take me from that vantage point, which I'm sure is now in the possession of one of the partners from the law firm that occupied the five floors below us and was creeping Borg-like through the remaining upper floors of the building. Does this person ever use the view for anything more than just putting the zap on easily impressed clients or colleagues? Does he or she ever just watch the river flow, the trees of Jersey stretch off into infinity, the way the land seems to roll back forever on a windy day when the smog is blown from the sky? Does this person reflect on how fortunate he or she is to have that position, and that it, like the view, is fleeting, and meaningless without realizing just what it took to get there . . . that it's better to walk away from a hateful job that offers you a breathtaking vista outside your window, but never permits you the time to look out at it?

Against this reality, having a rough schedule ahead, but one in which I get to write and see my work in print — even just as a few small items about pharmaceuticals, or buried in the context of making a rough narrative readable — where I can drive home in a quarter hour and have far more time to myself, or visit my parents and enjoy far more of their company in their later years — against this, having such a schedule doesn't seem so bad. One year, three years, five years from now, it's unlikely to make a difference, as long as I can return to what matters.

Six Thousand Words, One Hundred per Day

OF ALL THINGS, MY carpal tunnel syndrome was flaring up this week. I had a 3-week stretch at the outset of my new job when a new ergonomic keyboard was "on order." In practice, it took some shoe leather to verify that the IT department hadn't received the order, which at least served to point out the uselessness of the person in my office tasked with workstation ergo-issues.

The upshot is that I gave my wrists some time off to recover. Hell, I even missed the anniversary of my blog, which dwells on the Orwellian-named Patriot Day. (For this Boston College graduate, Patriot Day — or rather, Patriot's Day — is the third Monday in April, on which folks in Massachusetts and Maine get the day off and BC students get to cheer those Boston Marathoners challenging Heartbreak Hill.) I actually achieved a major milestone at work, which I will detail in my 3-month mark post. It required a lot of typing and mousing and whatnot, which is why I was feeling a touch worn around the hand-joints. Typing further later that night had less than the usual attraction. Still, the cure for that is a tight, meaningful post, if only to register my own existence in the screaming void of the Internet.

Small ≠ lacking in content. A whopping three-pernt-five years ago, I participated for 2 months in the 100 Words website challenge. The awesome Amy introduced me to this site. The goal: Write exactly 100 words a day for a month. Next month, repeat. My Lenten writing exercise took inspiration from its method. For a long time, it was down due to some sort of crash, and then due to retooling. It is back up now; although I thought my entries were lost, it seems to be reading logins now, so I won't have to resort to Google to read an archive of the two months' worth of entries I'd logged.

I took a look yesterday at the 6,000 words I wrote during that span. Many were quite good. I found the exercise challenging, not as much for confining myself to 100 words per, but for coming up with a topic each day. More than a few times I took inspiration from a tool I'd purchased nearly a decade ago, The Observation Deck, a stack of 50 cards, each bearing an inspirational action to spark writing, plus a book explaining each card and some alternative interpretations. In the manner of a stressed student, some of the entries were written after a quick shuffle and pull of a card, then a sprint through MS Word, at 11:30 p.m. before the day changed and I recorded a skip. But I hit each day, more than a year before taking up the similar challenge of a blog.

I believe constraints aren't all bad when it comes to creativity. Gary Larson mentioned in one of his collections that an artist once opined to him that his choice of format — that same daily box each day — taught him more about his form than formal art training might have. Anne Lamott writes in Bird by Bird of the importance of short assignments. She keeps a 1-inch-square picture frame at her desk, which reminds her that by narrowing one's view of a writing task — by looking through such a small window — even huge assignments become single paragraphs, even single sentences, and lose their ability to daunt. The very title of her book refers to the advice her father gave her brother, who, when panicking in the face of a massive written report on birds, was advised just to take it "bird by bird."

I get satisfaction out of seeing the interface between a creative person's inspiration and the limits of the form he or she has chosen. Larson's panels were a window into a lot of warped perspectives, but he had the challenge of balancing the rendering of the characters, and the technical demands of the form (readability, dialogue, an extremely limited color palette), and — most important — whether anybody would get the joke. Oh, yes, and he had to do that six times a week. Yes, he eventually branched out to the Sunday strips, much larger and in color. Still, when one walked through the halls of my college's academic offices, it was the little daily Far Sides one saw more often on the professors' doors.

Between whatever was going through my head in the still-frozen early months of 2004, and occasional whacks on the side of said head from the Observation Deck, I wrote a diverse selection of complete pieces. Most feel comfortable in their own skin, in the constraint imposed on their length. I feel this is worth remembering, because I now write at work with definite word counts and column lengths in mind, very practical limits — I can even write directly in the Quark document if I want to ensure a perfect fit.

Some folks lose sight of the perfect level of audience commitment for a work. I viewed a short subject at the 2003 CineVagas film festival, a meditation on the vampire from Nosferatu if he gave up his Transylvanian dominion for a mundane life in a Los Angeles suburb. It was witty, sad, and probably about 15 minutes long. During the Q&A, the producer aired his speculation about remaking it at feature length. I immediately said, "No, don't make it longer. It is perfect the way it is." (This, in public, in front of a bunch of strangers, from me, who makes Marianas Trench starfish look social.) Four years later, we have the cavemen from the recent GEICO ads starring in a television series. Even controlling for my natural bias against most of the shit Hollywood produces, I suspect this series will have viewers pining for the perfectly sized 15-second bites we got of these guys in the ads. To quote Krusty the Clown when he was mired in the depths of an interminable and unfunny SNL-style bit, "Uhhhhh . . . this sketch goes on for twelve minutes."

I think there's a balance to be struck between my 500 daily words during Lent and the picture frame of 100 words back in '04. Carpal tunnel be damned. I was doing something very right back then.

Alone With the Iron

ON THIS MEMORIAL DAY, I all but had the gym to myself. The number of cars in the lot was closer to what one might find at 4:30 on a Sunday afternoon in early December . . . when most folks are huddled next to heaters for warmth, cheeks red but knuckles white on their armrests, while the Giants or Jets clash with some foe in late-season battle. The only reason to venture outside in the brittle late-autumn air would be to fetch more wood for the fire. The gym can wait until Monday morning, before work, if they can get up that early . . . depends on how late the Late Game runs. . . .

If I have done nothing else right since my layoff — and I believe there are a few things I have done right — I have logged almost 3 months of consistent gym attendance. At the one-month mark after my layoff, I reported that my next step, after establishing regular gym attendance, was to get my eating habits into better shape as well. I have mostly succeeded, with few deviations from a more thoughtfully planned diet. I was right about avoiding the morning bagels; it's made a big financial and caloric difference. Though my weight chart has not shown a steep plummet, and I don't look grossly muscular or rail-thin compared to when I began charting my weight, I can tell the ratio of fat to muscle tissue has changed. My clothes are getting just a little looser each week. My stamina is higher, whereas around this time last year, it was a chore to walk the two long blocks from my subway stop to my workplace. I don't get as freaked out by the spikes that occur on my Excel weight chart, because I know they are either due to slight variations in muscle or water weight, or are the result of a long weekend, big dinner, or scheduled binge, like a wedding. On the day of each month that corresponds to my birthdate, I disregard all limits and eat what I want. You need a break once in a while.

It's not a matter of looking good in swimwear. Though I'm not one of these monstro-guys who you see on TV being removed from their house through the wall, on a shipping flat, I've carried 30 to 50 pounds around long enough to render public toplessness a nonstarter, no matter how much fat I eventually lose. I'm always gonna have some sort of gut, I fear. Rather, I am trying to lay the foundation now for long-term heart and sugar-level health into middle age and beyond. I can minimize the likelihood of heart disease and diabetes now, or I can wait — like I suspect many Americans are foolishly doing — until I get whatever ailment strikes and assume health care at that point will bail me out.

I can't make a guarantee that I will have comprehensive health care that far in the future. I have to invest now, in more healthful food intake and regular exercise, to stave off as long as possible the cancers, heart attacks, and joint erosion that will swamp the Baby Boomers and their children (and grandchildren if no revolution of health spares them) in the coming years. I've gotten to the point where making these investments is easier. I avoid having crap in the house. I don't eat out much, and when I do, I try to keep portions and food choices reasonable within that day's intake context. I minimize refined sugar and sweetener intake. It sounds bland, and perhaps motivated more by long-term hypochondria, but little decisions made now, reflexively, along with the occasional controlled deviation — a poker spree in Atlantic City that includes a trip to the Borgata Fatburger, a chicken parm hero, or a dessert with my mom's home cooking on Sunday — keeps me motivated.

Motivation drove me out of bed this morning. I awoke before my alarm. My sleep is more shallow in warmer weather, so when I drifted to consciousness and couldn't fall back asleep by 7:00, I decided not to fight it. I got my gym togs on, made up a bottle of "fruit punch," and headed out. I noticed that, during the bottom third of a workout, I get bone-tired. Not wanting to choose some overpriced, chemical-packed energy drink that will give me kidney failure 5 years from now, I decided to make my own. In the fridge, I have a big glass bottle of green tea, about half strength, and a jug of Trader Joe's 100% cranberry juice with no added sugar. Into a Poland Spring bottle I pour a quarter cup of the latter and a half cup of the former, then fill the rest with water. This I sip while lifting, which gives me some blood sugar and antioxidants along with the hydration (and just a bit of caffeine to rev the engine). Unsweetened. It makes me angry. Good angry; motivated to fix my busted ass angry.

My apartment complex lot was nearly free of cars, as were the roads. Aside from a couple of folks staking chair space along the Memorial Day parade route, and three soldiers standing next to a Humvee tricked up with Army recruitment branding, the town was dead. This was nothing compared to the vehicular desolation at the gym lot. Beautiful. I could proceed from one set of weights to the next without pause.

What few patrons were there were split evenly, if thinly, between the aerobic machines downstairs and the upstairs weight floor. I logged a 10-minute warmup on an elliptical trainer and then toted my clipboard to the second floor, where a mere handful of people were coming to grips with the iron.

I am by no means a bodybuilder of Schwarzeneggeresque dimensions, nor am I ever likely to be. But I think I have tapped into the right attitude, the honesty and simplicity of challenge to which Henry Rollins alludes in "The Iron," his essay on weight training. When I grab a dumbbell, 40 pounds is always going to be 40 pounds. The task is simple: Pick it up and move it, then put it down. Conscious more than ever of my inevitable physical breakdown, I focus on those steps to the exclusion of all else, taking a second to check the feel of the bar in my grip, the position I'm in, before budging it from its perch. Good form counts for more than heavy weight and keeps you out of the ambulance.

I try to screen out the distractions that other members bring. I do sometimes bring an iPod when I use the aerobic machines, because that can be a long hour with nothing to accompany one on the trip, but I recoil at the sight of them on the weight floor. I especially revile goons who stride about the floor with a cellphone — or, even more ridiculous, one of those fucking wireless Borg rigs on their earlobe. Pick an activity: chatting or lifting. Do both at once and you chance failing at them both as well. I also try to ignore the ill advice and poor form that some of the so-called experts exhibit, which sadly includes some of the staff. What I need to learn, I can ask of those who have made more of a life of this than I have, either in person or through the written records of their success via the bookstore or the Internet. When the gym is empty, however, the distractions are absent.

When I eventually snag a job, I hope to move my workouts back to the morning, at the very opening hour of the club, while preserving the anticipation I feel for them now. That I let this habit slide while at my last job typified the imbalance plaguing my life. This time away from work, though not a permanent or truly desirable circumstance, has allowed me to lift the veil on the rest of my life . . . shining light on areas where I need work. If I can begin fixing these now, I'll have a better shot at maintaining that balance once I start with the new 9-to-5. If nothing else, though, I at least want to keep moving forward with my weight training. This has been the most positive stretch of work in that area for years. I can't stop now.

Career Exercise

IN THE COURSE OF the career-path materials I have been working through these past few weeks, one exercise had a more speculative nature. It asked the reader to look back on the execution of his or her career vision after 5 years in its pursuit. This was a multiquestion, freeform exercise, allowing more depth in response than the stereotypical "Where do you see yourself in five years?" interviewer chestnut.

I have been answering the exercises in this section from two career-path standpoints: as a graphic designer and as a writer. The latter being more speculative based on my current career path, I chose that perspective. At the risk of sharing proprietary information from this company's methods, I paraphrase the questions hereafter, along with my unedited replies:

Most important contribution you have made through your work:
My essays or informational articles empowered readers to take control and make permanent changes in their lives. I inspired them to pursue their own goals and interests. I became a trusted source of information.

Most productive or exciting aspect of my career:
Most productive was having a weekly column for which I produced short pieces, either on specific topics or personal essays, to a wide readership. This series gave me clips to shop around, to expand into larger projects, and eventually to sell as a book.
Most exciting aspect was receiving responses from readers on how my work has helped them.

Most difficult challenge and how you overcame it:
Getting started! I did a lot of writing for spec early, and sent it to a wide variety of publications. Rejection was difficult, and doing work for no immediate money put a crimp in my spending. I made sure to understand my markets, heed submission requirements, work closely with editors to ensure the suitability of my pieces, and never stopped writing. Nothing was as satisfying as making that first sale, and when I was accepted, others followed in buying my work. Never underestimate the influence of being able to provide solid, engaging copy on short notice and regular deadlines to content managers.

What skills have I perfected in my career?
Writing good copy quickly. Research. Interviewing. Accepting editorial advice gracefully. Finding new, regular markets. Taking inspiration and turning it into powerful results on the page or screen.

What did I enjoy least?
For a long time, I worked a second job as a proofreader and copyeditor, so I had to scramble to earn money for retirement and healthcare. Rejection, even for good reasons. Scarcity of markets. Beginning articles and then realizing there isn't enough content to justify word count. And of course that ancient writer's lament, not getting timely payment.

What awards or commendations have you received that were the most meaningful?
My column is syndicated widely via RSS. I have received recognition for my personal blog. I have been invited to speak on topics of my writing. The Village Voice and Time Out New York have both favorably reviewed my first book.

Either this is a brash, presumptuous list of isinglass fantasies or a series of target at which I need to launch myself. I'm not sure which. All I know is that these words came from somewhere.

Precipice

I HAD THE PLEASURE of speaking with my friend and former supervisor, M., yesterday afternoon. She had some downtime between stages of her final grad-school project work, and we chatted for well over an hour. I miss being able to holler over the cube wall at her.

We discussed a wide range of topics, but the central theme was employment. I have no doubt that she can find work after she graduates. The question is whether it will pay remotely what she is worth. She told me how the salaries today compare to those her friends and classmates were able to snag 10 years ago, and it's a grim comparison.

Both of us could pick up a junior job in some publishing, advertising, or other shop where we could lay out pages, retouch art, and the like — similar to the job I probably could have taken in my first week — but is that the best thing for me right now? I'm no graphic designer. I'm just a page monkey. I understand typography, page layout, the needs of a printer, and how to work fast fast fast with complex work. I have no formal art or design training, I can't tell you anything about color theory, I don't have a historical understanding of graphic design history, and I have no experience outside of periodicals. I am way behind even undergraduate design majors in these respects. This is not to say I can't make an attractive book or magazine. It's just that employers want designers to do more than this . . . and for less.

M. agreed with the self-analysis I offered above, in somewhat different form. I asked her rhetorically if I really ought to take the time to continue at my present level in a design/layout/typesetting position, paying as much or (probably) less than my last salary, work two or three years, learn the software and techniques that I would need to become a full designer, and hope by then I could qualify for the magic "X to Y years of experience in [specialty] design" I see in the ads . . . or start at the absolute ground level in a new field whose focus is closer to my truest, most devoted talent, gain experience, get paid nothing for quite a while, but take a shot at aligning my passion with my career, no matter the cost. Is it worth changing jobs, even careers, and grind my way along for a couple of years, at an age when hiring managers expect candidates to be in senior positions or at least on track toward same, and yet reap the reward of full career satisfaction?

This post comes to mind.

I may be on the threshold of a complete transformation. When I changed jobs in 1999, the functions were different, but it was still editing, still typesetting, and even still training, what with my inept boss at the time. If my hunch is correct, I may need to spend the next several months going in a very different direction than I had been. Even "going" is a stronger stance than the one I had taken at my last position, which was largely stasis. Standing still.

Standing still is for statues. Right now I need to move. Let them build my statues when they capture me accurately — after I'm dead.

Career and Fitness Roundup

IT'S BEEN BUSY AROUND here. I spent Thursday and Friday in all-day seminars at the career-counseling office. On Saturday, I ran errands and entered my sixth week of thrice-weekly weight training with a newly revised routine. Between the two, I was capsized by a weird and intense wave of nostalgia for the greatest city in the world. I'll touch on all of these.

I woke up on Thursday grumpy. I'd just spent three days at home working through the career-center materials. This program will leave me more prepared and confident in my job search, so I am not knocking it. The prospect of two more full days of the same, stuck in an office without the local park, library, gym, or even walking path for an escape, was not encouraging.

I got to the office early and found most of the other participants had done the same. Only two empty seats remained. Everyone had already written their names on the cards provided, so I took this as a sign that folks were willing to contribute. My grumpiness began to lift somewhat, if only from seeing other people.

The instructor showed up right on time, and we began with an introductory exercise. She asked each of us to give our profession and describe our last position, our reason for departing, one good thing that's happened in our lives (in work or outside), our hopes and concerns over the process, and what we would truly like to do next in our career. I was fourth in line, so I had some time to think of answers. The "one good thing" stumped me at first; the lingering funk I was in clouded my objectivity.

By the time they got to me, I had recalled a piece of advice from P., the career coach who had visited our office shortly after the layoff news. When speaking on the phone during our job hunt, he said, stand. You project more forcefully when speaking in a standing position than when sitting. Taking this cue, I said, while rising, "I feel more comfortable talking to a crowd when I stand, so I'm gonna stand." I tried to hold everyone's gaze for at least one sentence while I said my piece, which I managed to deliver without my usual storm of "uh"s and "y'know"s. As for the "one good thing" example, I briefly summarized my successful writing devotion.

Hearing the others gave me a sense of their optimism. Aside from one guy who was a salesman and seemed like a bluff-hearty bullshit artist, the others varied from tentative to shellshocked. Putting folks on the spot to speak in front of 10 strangers is rough for some folks. When I learned that two of the most reticent people were also in the business of corporate communications and executive-level event planning, respectively, I wondered how this had affected their work. These professions require effective speech and confidence, both of which seemed muted in their body language and projection. As far as optimism, their manner and tone conveyed more of a "what choice do I have?" attitude toward the learning that lay ahead.

The class that day and next alternated through enlightenment, pulling teeth, and contrariness on the part of some of the participants. The instructor was not forceful enough in keeping the people on track. They easily diverted into areas inessential to the course materials, or even the job hunt. The instructor had a bad habit of engaging folks on these points, rather than diverting the course firmly through its many stages. Worse, when she tried to return to the materials, she would often think of something at the last minute to offer the person who was diverging — a website, an humorous rejoinder to the person's point, a reference to another person's wisecrack earlier that sparks said person to sound off for a minute — and delay our return to the defined path.

I understand it's important to have a dialogue in these events. I know how helpful it is for folks going through the often lonely effort of job hunting to know there are others enduring the same quest, and how others in meetings like this can not only provide advice, but actual leads on jobs. But when the instructor mentions an online networking tool, and the conversation diverts for 15 minutes because the class is split on whether it's a pay service, whether you have to be invited like Gmail, et cetera — I had a strong feeling that we would give the final stages of the process short shrift. One of these stages was the interview, no small part of the process.

The inability of some of the participants to let the instructor help them was disturbing. I know being thrown out of a long-term position is demoralizing and leads one to question one's worth. But the attitude of some of these folks went from submission to surrender. This includes the corporate communications person and the event planner. The former was responsible for producing award-winning annual reports —writing, collating financial data, working with legal departments, contracting artists and printers, and quality control. She claimed she wouldn't be of use to an organization these days simply because she had been doing this one thing, in addition to her other daily duties, for so long. The event planner, who surely had contact with caterers, florists, event halls and staffing agencies, and the executive staffs of the bigwigs throughout her own firm, said she had no connections. The instructor tried to pry some details out of her on what she did, but could not get this 18-year veteran of corporate event planning to do so or even realize the value of her network. This went beyond shyness or poor speaking skills. This was a failure to let a skilled professional help. Few things make me angrier.

Add to this a microbiologist who contradicted several pieces of advice or research-tested techniques that the company had developed. Sometimes he wouldn't even offer evidence, just saying something like, "Are employers really going to accept that?" or "Does [technique] really apply to people in my industry?" At one point, after grinding my teeth through a day and a half of this guy's shit, when the instructor took a moment to describe the details of corporate-recruiter compensation, he said, "Do we really need to know this?"

"Excuse me." I halted the instructor. To him: "I find this useful. I've registered for a recruiter conference that [the firm] is offering on April [X]. [Firm] thinks it's important enough to invite recruiters to tell us how they do their job, so I want to hear what [instructor] has to say on this point too."

That was his last interjection.

I had a break between these classes when my friends Jen and Steve held a dinner party Thursday night to give me, Felix, and his girlfriend a chance to see their new house. It was very relaxing and gave me a chance to speak about anything but the job hunt for a few hours. I confess, I woke up Friday morning even more grumpy than Thursday, faced as I was with another full day with these jokers.

It was a grind. The incident I mentioned earlier with the online networking tool occurred Friday. We were just about to enter the networking chapter, which is one of the areas in which I am weakest, and it was all I could do to keep from screaming as the instructor kept letting herself get diverted from the coursework. I had 2½ weeks left to exploit the services of the career counselors. Any distraction over useless bullshit took unrecoverable time from that total.

I went home Friday feeling very drained. I had taken lunch across the street to avoid contact with any of the students (though I wasn't able to avoid the salesman, who unfortunately came into the men's room where I was trapped and kept asking me questions about myself, despite the implicit signals of my one-word answers to fuck off). I knew there was great value in the course materials, and I had been hoping to explore them in greater depth with a career expert and willing students. Instead, I found that this path, like many in my life, would most profitably be followed solo.

My guard was sufficiently down by bedtime to feel deeply nostalgic about not going to New York City each day. I couldn't get the various experiences of the past 7 years out of my head. The Manhattan skyline capped with dense, low clouds from the vista of the Lincoln Tunnel helix. Neon reflecting on wet Times Square pavement. Empty avenues barely lit with dawn and free of cars when I came in before 6 a.m. to bust out a newsletter on tight time. The cannon knocking down the toy soldiers atop the Radio City Music Hall marquee each Christmas season. The steps of the Treasury Building downtown, where traders, bankers, and the statue of George Washington watched a presidential hopeful address the creche of world capital. The feeling, wherever in the city I was standing, of being in the center of the universe, which I have not felt in Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, or Las Vegas. I know I can return there with a quick dash down to the Hudson, either via tunnel or ferry, but 2 weeks without walking on its streets hit me at a vulnerable moment, and I felt sad to have lost the daily opportunity.

Eight hours of sleep set my mind right. I had other matters to worry about. Saturday marked the beginning of my sixth week of devoted gym visits. Though the close of my last job and the need to launch my career search led me to move the specific dates around, I still got to the gym for a full-body weight-training workout three days a week. I also used the aerobics floor at least one day on top of those each week. I've added a little muscle, and my weight dropped by a few more pounds.

Now that I've established the habit, I want to return to one of the more successful routines I used when I was still going to work. It is a two-day split of body areas, done twice per week with a day separating the visits. Rather than using one long set per exercise, this one broke it into three shorter sets, with more weight each time. In the past, I allowed schedules, mood, or other distractions to pull me off of the program, but when I stuck with it, it worked well. This time, I have clear early mornings and late afternoons — the perfect time to push the advantage. I've taken a break from the Thursday night game to keep my sleep cycle on track (work or not, and winning or losing, recovering from a 3 a.m. bedtime is rough).

I wrote up a sample routine and hit the gym late yesterday afternoon to try it out. I found my intro circuit, useful as it was in establishing a habit, missed some areas I wanted to cover, like my lower back. (Whatever else I did at the gym, I always made sure to work my back muscles, to avoid the problems many of my friends were now encountering in their late 30s.) I lowballed the weight so I could get my form down, as I hadn't performed a couple of these exercises in a few months. I got a good start, hitting abs, back, chest, and biceps. Today is legs, shoulders, and triceps. Once I get the specific exercises chosen, I'll make up a new chart and get my progress on paper.

One useful tip: I left space on my last chart to jot notes. Nothing too complex; little hints for the next visit, like "Strong throughout. Move up," or "Weak form past rep 12." Just something to keep my progress steady but forward. If I've been stuck on a certain resistance or even a whole exercise, I want to know. I've also been writing down what aerobic work I've done between weight-training visits.

I am hopeful that my job hunt and my fitness work will mesh. Success in one field has to build confidence in other areas. Plus, if I have a frustrating day searching for work, I can always dash over to the gym for 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer or take a long walk. And I am documenting all of my work in finding a job, not unlike the records I'm keeping of my gym visits. The program actually mandates that you track your time in searching, all the contacts you make, the volume of correspondence you send out, and other tangible markers of job-hunt work, so if you're lingering uselessly in one area, it becomes evident, and you can correct course.

I have solid notes from the seminar on what to do next, despite the distractions. I will let the other students inspire me to dig deep into my abilities and to inquire constructively, rather than hide behind my achievements and let cynicism paralyze action. As for the gym, well, completing a long walk up and over a tall hill yesterday without stopping or losing my wind was solid evidence of my progress. I have a long way to go, but at least I can see results.

If I can still fit into my interview suit when the time comes to dust it off, I know I will have passed major milestones in both fields.

Layoff: Endgame

WORK RESTS FOR NO man, even one who is being laid off that very day. From the moment I arrived in the office, I had some issues, which the outsourcing folks has posted, to review for press. Proofs of a project due to go to press in June — for which I had set first pass because I assumed nobody would recall how to do this project in my absence — needed corrections. I also wrote a long email about how to handle this project when the time came. Let it not be said that my company didn't earn value from me until the very end.

I signed my term paper about halfway through the morning, after I had completed the work I just described. My supervisor followed soon thereafter. From that point, I considered myself more or less free to go around the office and say my goodbyes.

I was pleasantly surprised to find folks spontaneously offering to act as references should a prospective employer request some. My supervisor, who had expected to move swiftly through the office with only a few protracted goodbyes, seemed amazed that she received the same reception. She shouldn't be. I pulled her aside yesterday to give her a goodbye card in which I summed up her awesomeness as a manager and a friend, and the folks she met today communicated the same message.

To each person I visited, I gave a sheet of note-cube paper with my true-name email address (I made one specifically for job hunting) and my cellphone. I am entertaining all offers. Of course, determining exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life is an ongoing and open question, but to have several sets of feelers out is a great asset, no matter how many opportunities they end up locating.

One woman, with whom I had had a very fruitful chat about job opportunities in less conventional areas, presented a case for my qualifications as a tech writer. I do know a woman who does this for a living, but my coworker in this case felt this term was being applied to a very broad skillset across several specific jobs, and that my writing ability combined with editorial and design skills added tremendous value. I will add this term to my job searches and see if there is indeed this diversity of positions. This is a career that thrives well as a freelance position, a potential long-term goal of mine, so it's doubly of interest.

My supervisor had asked late in the day if I wanted to get lunch, and when she returned to her cube — and was surprised by how much time she had taken — I was ready to go. Joined by a department-mate who is on the block come December, we made our exit after turning in, Dirty Harry Callahan–style, our badges. My super was kind enough to treat me to lunch, and we sat, finally free, and watched Chelsea pedestrians pace by in all of their multicolored sartorial variety.

From there, we headed to our respective subways. I set down the monstrous plant I was carrying home to give her a big see-you-later hug — she graciously invited me to her graduation party in May — and then covered the last two blocks with my department-mate to the PATH station. When the Hoboken train arrived, I gave him a handshake and a big hug of his own, dragged my plant onto the car, executed a flawless Nixon exit, and began my last ride, for now, to Jersey from south Manhattan.

In all, the entire experience was low key and mundane. Surprised? Don't be. At this point in my life, some calm grace is welcome. If there was going to be any drama, it would have been yesterday, between me and my supervisor; I pulled her into our director's empty office to give her the goodbye card, because had she read it out loud, there was a good chance I was going to cry. I remained entirely composed then, and today as well. I suspect it's because I intend to keep in touch with her, quite possibly as soon as tomorrow morning, as I sent her a thank-you gift of flowers to brighten the apartment in which she's gonna be stuck, for the next several days, finishing her thesis project.

I am proud to have left such a positive impression with people, that they offered their aid in my search and their sincere best wished and regrets at my departure. Though I might have spent more time there was good for my career path, I worked to make a difference, and the reception I got from my now-former coworkers confirmed that I was successful. That I did this merely by doing the best work I could, and in acting in the office as I would like to be treated myself, gives me hope that I will find a receptive audience in the next office.

Deep Focus, Motivation, and My Career

WHILE SCROUNGING FOR A legal pad Friday evening to record some job-hunting to-do's, I found one that had about 15 pages of notes I took from stock maven Jim Cramer's belated radio show. Around August of last year, I got curious enough about his theoretical stock-analysis talent to record, from his radio podcasts, his stock predictions. For a few weeks, as I headed into work on the train, you could have found me with my headphones on, yellow pad on my lap, jotting down Cramer's impressions of this or that security. I transferred these notes into an Excel table at work, along with closing price of the stocks on the day he made the call, and I planned to mark the position of the stocks at 1-week and 1-month points past his call to test his wisdom.

As it turned out, I need not have been so diligent, as Cramer's stock calls were also being recorded with price information on TheStreet.com, and SeekingAlpha.com was transcribing calls made during his media appearances. And the news of the layoff forestalled any possible investment study and commitment of capital I might need for short-term survival. Still, the documentation remained. I read through these notes Friday and marveled at how deeply I had concentrated on this task. My notes were quite detailed; I had even made bullet points out of Cramer's evidence for or against a stock or sector. I took inspiration from this effort today.

I will give you another example. A photographer documented the disassembly of the famous Stardust sign days before the casino-hotel was demolished (RIP). As you can see, the order in which the workers removed the letters was unintentionally (?) comical. I thought this would make a great avatar for one of my online forum accounts. So I dragged the shot onto my desktop, fired up Photoshop, and did a simple crop job, like so:

I opened an Photobucket account, loaded the icon up, linked it to the forum, readjusted the image size again in Photoshop to prevent distortion, and I was all set. Some time later that day, though, I decided the crane had to go. Lacking work, I reopened my icon, and set to work. Though I am a tyro at Photoshop manipulation, my teammates at work have said that much of what they do in retouching shots is trial and error, just experimenting with tools, brushes, blends, and color sampling until they feel it's right. So I got right in there with the eyedropper tool, painted out the crane, and restored the T and A (har) on the sign.

This left a large blue gap where the crane had been, and where I knew, on the sign, there had been stars. So I searched up a picture of the intact, unobstructed Stardust sign as a guide, then copied, pasted, and touched up some of the stars on my original shot from elsewhere on the sign. The result was far better:

Granted, this is all child's play for someone who bangs out gigs of photo manipulations all day and night. It was encouraging for me, an autodidact on Quark, Illustrator, and InDesign, to see I could wade into Photoshop and get results, even on a small scale.

During this whole procedure, I lost track of time, the office, incoming email, anything unrelated to the task. When I checked the clock, it was well past my usual lunchtime. It was the deepest I had sunk into a task at that computer, in that office, in weeks.

I have noticed that, when I assume a task in a field that interests me greatly, my reserves of effort seem limitless. Few of my previous jobs at this company could harness this sort of focus. I worked on an accounting newsletter, which had a half-day turn on getting first-pass proofs out, on which I would bend my will intensely on crafting detailed tables of company information, generating pie and bar charts, and copyfitting. I always knew the clock was ticking, so I had to rely on myself to get details correct the first time, to avoid having to backtrack, redo, and thus burn schedule. I loved that title, despite the late nights and early mornings I had to put in for it. Sometimes, looking at the finished product the next day, I was surprise I had been able to accomplish something so complex in such a tight spot.

I've seen this trait in other endeavors of mine. Insanely detailed dungeons I made as a young adolescent for Dungeons & Dragons. A pages-long travel guide to Las Vegas written, on the spot and with minimal Internet research, for a friend with a visit cued up. Mix tapes laid painstakingly down, track by track, with more care than sound editors exercise on TV shows. Let's not even get into love letters. If my interest is engaged, my endurance and drive spike. If it flags, my mind wanders, I procrastinate, and the work suffers.

What does this mean for me? What I need to do is find a job — maybe even a career, if that's what it takes — in which I can align my interests with my labors. Yeah, I know a zillion career and self-help books and courses exist that preach this platitude. What is worth recording, and acting upon, is my noticing the trend, that I can still feel this passion for something in publishing and graphic design. What I did for this company, earlier accounting title excepted, was largely uninspiring, a self-inflicted wound I admit. I needed to see that there were tasks and projects in my field that could light me up like this silly icon job did. I need to know that the searching I do from this point won't result in another job where I feel lax, wasted, and uninspired by most of the tasks I do.

Pledge to Redress My Habits

THE FIRST GREAT CHANCE I had to correct my patterns of poor diet and no exercise came when I was 16 years old. Taking advantage of my new driver's license, I could drive myself to a gym one town over. I was about 180 lbs. at the height of five-sevenish, a fair amount of it fat. My parents pointed out a sign-up deal for the gym in the paper, so I took advantage of it.

At the time, I was about 10 years into a sedentary life. Although I played soccer for 6 years in grammar school, my position — halfback — was assigned by coaches wise enough to realize I would be useless as an offensive player and fatally leaky as a fullback or goalie. Thus I got little real exercise. With the double-whammy of video games and Dungeons & Dragons hitting me as my age reached double digits, a long love affair between my ass and a couch began to the clatter of dice and digital explosions. I rode my bike to school on nice days, but once high school began, the bus replaced the bike, and another avenue of regular exercise was closed.

So I decided to give a regular exercise regimen a try. I signed up in my workout clothes and was straightaway taken on a supervised introductory lesson. Having expressed an interest in weight training, the instructor led me to the Nautilus machines upstairs. A legend on the wall declared, "SEVEN DAYS WITHOUT NAUTILUS MAKES ONE WEAK." I eyed some of the bulky specimens lugging iron about and grunting their way through intense sets and wondered if any of them even skipped a single day, much less seven.

I began my journey by cycling in place; a 12-minute warmup on a bright yellow Lifecycle. I dutifully pumped along, listening to the loud in-club radio and craning my neck to inspect the women in the adjoining aerobics studio. (I was 16.) When I finished, my guide handed me a clipboard bearing a grid that listed the various Nautilus machines, along with blank rows for exercises I might add on my own to customize my experience. From there, we made a circuit through the steel maze of torture implements, recording initial weights and reps and proper seat settings, as I went from doughy newbie to . . . sweaty, exhausted doughy newbie.

I began a thrice-weekly routine, coming to the gym after school, sometimes after dinner. I slowly filled in my log sheet, raising my repetitions and resistance slowly. And it worked. I was building arm and back muscles I had never felt before. I found my waistbands looser. My shirts sagged slightly at the gut.

Sadly, I sabotaged myself with a poor diet. A great deal of the quest for fitness is achieved in the kitchen. I was still living at home, so I was eating the Standard American Diet — which, to her credit, my mother prepared with verve and love. She didn't know I needed to cut back to the essentials and avoid starch, gravy, and dessert. Neither did my trainer mention anything at all about such a need. By the summer between high school and college, I had developed an unprecedented sweet tooth for jellybeans, Gummi raspberries, and other such bagged, per-pound candy. I was doomed. I dropped out of the gym and gained all of the weight back.

I made another push to drop pounds in freshman year of college. It might surprise you to learn that at one point, I had lost 28 lbs., a far cry from the stereotypical "freshman 15." I somehow found it easier to control my diet when it was portioned out by a commissary, and we had a free-for-students gym with a track, exercise bikes, and Universal machines. This drive stalled in April, when I allowed the stress of final projects and exams to become an excuse for eating junk food and straying from my regular gym visits. When I returned home that summer, I was back to my pre-college weight.

I spent the rest of the available time at college in which I might have resumed my efforts instead to becoming a gloomy geek, letting my hormones and the comfort of being a miserable victim rule my existence. You all know the type. I could have thrown off this depressive attitude with proper diet and exercise, but I didn't have the will or wisdom to break free of these self-pitying behaviors, and my attempts to cut weight via these methods were sporadic at best.

This mood carried past college and into my early twenties. Though I signed up at a new Gold's Gym near my house, and I visited with some dedication, I never got the message that I needed to adopt a revolutionary diet compared to the slop I was eating. A breakup in the mid-Nineties became my excuse to gain another 30 pounds. I did obtain a NordicTrack machine, and I used it to keep myself from gaining more weight, but still, if I insisted in eating Doritos and fried food on weekends, I was going to undo any good work I did when I attacked the machine every night.

Once I moved into my current town, I rejoined my first gym, which had become a mecca for racquetball players. It was a pain in the ass to navigate around them each morning, as they had a habit of surrounding the entrances to the courts in the building with a half-acre of their racquets, bags, shoes, and other impedimentia. Although the gym had upgraded its weight-training equipment since the late Eighties, the physical plant was poor, with moldy ceiling tiles in the locker room, malfunctioning televisions, and crowded conditions during peak hours. They only began cleaning up their act when ground was broken for a New York Sports Club a few blocks away. I set my membership payment plan to month-to-month at the old place and preregistered for the NYSC weeks before it opened.

I have been exercising for nearly 2 years at the new place, and although I have kept myself from becoming even more grossly distended, that's not the goal. Recovering the strength and proportions best suited to long-term health is the goal. It was only in the past 12 months or so that I truly learned the proper way to eat for an active lifestyle. I gave it a run earlier this year, and now, I am returning to this wisdom. I can report that, since the beginning of this year, I have lost 9 pounds of body fat, and with diligence, I will complete the new introductory workout routine I have adopted and move up, with habits and diet set firm, to a more rigorous and comprehensive program.

It is to that 16-year-old self that I dedicate my current efforts. I endangered your health, magnified your isolation, dampened your self-esteem, and destroyed your attractiveness. I may have cost you a life with a loving woman. I cannot let mood, employment, or poor eating habits further destroy what is left of your future. I deeply apologize for letting you down.

Rolling Start at the Gym

I RETURNED FROM THE gym about a half hour ago. Feeling good. More crowded than I might have guessed. I was able to navigate my way around with little trouble, because I was doing a whole-body routine with only one rep each. I have been reading the posts of a classic old-school bodybuilder, Dave Draper, a contemporary of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his weightlifting heyday. I had been fumbling my way through a homebrewed routine for some weeks, with gaps in attendance due to soul-crushing bullshit at work. This is unwise from a health standpoint and wasteful of money. So I selected a beginner's program from Draper's site and decided to begin it with deliberate, humble care.

This week, I have trekked over to the gym three times. I created a chart in InDesign at work, in my copious free time, to track my progress. This act alone put me in the spirit to be able to look back a year from now and see just how much work I've put into improving my health and cutting my body fat. I set it up for three lifting workouts per week, as opposed to the four I had been trying to do before this. Insofar as I've been doing some work before this, I consider this less of a cold beginning than a rolling start, a reboot.

This was a practice week to test out the exercises on this plan. I wanted to make one change per week. The next is to adopt a better diet. I am returning to eating five to six small meals per day, including a decent, homemade breakfast every day, and special attention to pre- and postworkout nutrition. I want to develop one solid habit at a time. I have tracked my spending for the past several months, including a category for "junk food" purchases, and I can see where my will has been weak. If I'm stuffing myself with filling and nutritious clean food each day, I'll have less desire for trash. I'm looking forward to rustling up large multiday meals on weekends, especially on the Foreman Grill or my cast-iron stovetop grill. I anticipate setting off my smoke alarm at least twice per week at this rate.

I will take a day every so often to "cheat," either to eat like mad or to snack on "forbidden" foods, which will coincide with my birthday each month. I can't be expected to be a monk each and every day! But my reward will be baggier clothing, more stamina, better sleep, and lingering glances from women who are moderately (as opposed to blind stinking) drunk.

My time away from work, if extended, needs to be disciplined. I've seen how I can slide off an established schedule without structure. Including regular, healthful food in each day, premade as much as possible, along with regular, progressive exercise, will keep my spirits high and my health on the grow while I look for a job. I know there will be streaks, especially if it takes a while, when I will be discouraged in my job hunt. Having a solid record of successful physical training and nutrition will buoy me through these spots.

Once I do get my next gig, I will decide how best to integrate my program into the new arrangement of hours in my day. With any luck, I'll have to bring in a photo to show my new coworkers just what I had to do to get into the shape I present to them. Believe me, I have plenty of potential "before" pictures. I am very eager to craft the "after."

Tips for Fair Workplace Compensation

ONE OF MY COWORKERS today mentioned she had stayed until 7:00 p.m. last night and didn't get home until past 8:00. I immediately told her to make sure she gets that time back from the company. I've put in my share of late nights and early mornings — sometimes in the same day — and it took me some time to realize that you will only get from a corporation what you either ask for or take. My father, a lifer at a Dow 30 company, had the same attitude: Take everything the company offers. Though what follows might sound like sour grapes in light of my impending layoff, rest assured my feelings on this topic coalesced long before I was told I would no longer be needed at my current workplace.

Here, then, are my thoughts on garnering all that is due to you from an employer. I am not a financial planner, lawyer, human resource officer, or labor relations specialist. I am an American worker in the early 21st Century with 15 years of employment experience, who is simply sharing some wisdom and caution that — like anything you read on the Internet — should be verified independently and customized to your specific needs. There is a universal appeal, however, in watching out for your own ass.

Paychecks: Karl Marx was a dingbat in a lot of ways, but fundamentally he was right: We sell labor for money. You may love your job, but you're not a charitable organization. Take every dime due you.

Know what you are worth. Research your profession online. Contact career counselors. Survey hiring managers and human resource experts. Go into the interview armed with the salary range your experience and job responsibilities command in the market. Like a martial artist's years of sparring, this knowledge will give you a confident stance from which to engage the interviewer. Once you are hired, let the employer mention a figure or range first. Request more: in cash, but also in benefits, the date your healthcare begins, earlier salary review, options vesting — they expect you to bargain, and the vast majority of negotiations win at least some additional concession. This is your first contact with your human resources officers, and possibly with your future managers (who will sign off on any future raises and perks). Show them now you are unafraid to speak up for yourself.

Benefits: A wide range of overt and hidden benefits await the modern white-collar worker. Take them all.

• 401(k), 403(b), or other tax-deferred plan: A shocking number of my coworkers do not participate in my company's 401(k) plan. This is suicidal. Even a conservative portfolio of index and bond funds has a far greater chance than Social Security does of surviving the depredations of inflation, taxation, and Congressional kleptomania. Contribute as much as you can. Learn the Federal maximum for the tax year and strive to max it out. If you are servicing debt, like student loans or a mortgage, at least defer enough from your paycheck to exploit fully any employer matching contributions or profit share. Employer matches are free money.
• Company stock: Some companies offer discounted commissions on purchases of their shares. Others offer them as tax-deferred elements of retirement programs, or as options. These all can be excellent bargains, but — HUGE caveat — as part of a diversified investment portfolio. I can name the reason why in two notes: Enron. Do all the research on your company's business prospects that you would do when buying securities of any other corporation. Don't let any feelings of loyalty or sentimentality blind you. Be as cold and dispassionate as your company's board of directors would be in selecting an acquisition target.
• I add on both of these counts that most companies consider retirement education a participant-driven activity. Aside from quarterly account statements and flyers from the fund company, annual reports, and maybe a yearly visit from a harried fund rep 'round enrollment time, you will be left to do your own homework. High schools and colleges provide almost no personal-finance education. Ransack your fund company's Website and your library for solid financial-planning information and the skills to give your retirement money the best chance to grow.
• Flexible Spending Accounts and transit benefits: Again, many of my coworkers eschew these benefits. Be smarter than they are. Medical expense FSAs can be used for a wide variety of procedures and expenses. And as our parents age, the dependent care FSAs can be vital in obtaining compensation to give them the quality care they need when they can no longer care for themselves. More recently, companies have offered the same sort of plan to offset mass transit or parking costs. All of these reduce your taxable income and are far saner ways of lending the Feds money than having it taken out of your paycheck and getting it back with no added value or interest.
  

Extra time (not overtime): I will dwell on this point because it is the most widespread — and the most uncontested — inequitable transaction between worker and employer in this country.

Face it: If you're a white collar worker, you (a) don't get overtime and (b) have been asked or at least pressured to work beyond the usual 8 hours. Should your boss approach you for this, don't panic. Enact what you might call a graceful exchange. If a supervisor asks you in person to stay late, make acceptance of this request conditional upon recompense. Time off in exchange for extra work is the most obvious way, but has a fatal flaw. If you leave amicably or are laid off, few if any employers will financially compensate you for this extra time the way they might for unused "official" vacation or sick time. To compromise, tell your boss on the spot that you would like to take that time off within that pay period. You want to come in later one day, or leave earlier the next Friday. Don't offer a reason; state your demand confidently and without an attitude. You are setting the terms on which they will request this of you in the future, so it's best to tell them early that you will not be a pushover.

Before end of business that day, summarize this verbal exchange in an email that forces your boss to repeat the answer in writing. For example: "To review what we discussed, will I be able to take next Friday off in compensation for the extra time you have asked me to work this week?" Maneuver the manager into answering your question. You therefore document that you addressed it, and you can smoke out the sort of manager who refuses to back up words with written confirmation. You know the cliché about verbal contracts. Show them you see through their game.

You might be told that extra time is routinely expected of all employees, perhaps out of some nebulous sense of gratitude for having a job or working for their fantastic corporation. This is especially true in workplaces where you're supposed to take the example of your coworkers, all laboring well past 5:00 or arriving before dawn, as an unwritten prompt for your own behavior. I disagree. Their gratitude for employment is demonstrated every other week in the form of a paycheck. Any other time they take from your life should incur a debt to you. Do not be afraid to exact it.

Maybe your industry prides itself on short-term sacrifice for long-term rewards, such as the first few years of law practice, game programming, Web design, or the like. Keep in mind that these benefits might lie over a horizon that you never get the chance to reach. Employers can and will lay you off with no warning, explanation, or recourse. Even in fields where such early-career monasticism is the norm, take something for yourself on a regular basis. Don't let duty or tradition turn you into a perspective-challenged robot for the sake of a fat future salary or a portfolio full of options.

You might fear not being perceived as a "team player." Fuck that noise. Ask to meet the rest of this mythical team, and whether its members would be willing to pick up your kids, shop for your groceries, get your car inspected, enjoy a midweek date, or do any of the other things you might pack into an already crowded day, while you sit in the office for a few more hours. Ask them if the team will give you that time back at the end of your life. You got that job on your own, you'll retire from it alone, and though you may be part of a group layoff, expect no support from this "team" when you make that long last walk to your car. Give your employer nothing without getting something tangible in return.

Vacation and sick/personal days: This is not grammar school; you will not be graded for attendance. If you are, you work for hypocritical control freaks and you should start job-hunting.

My father took every sick day he was granted each year, whether he was ill or not. Never underestimate the power of what my friend Dave dubbed the "mental health day." And if you are sick, take a sick day and stay out until you are no longer communicable. Why else would the company grant sick days unless it wanted to you recover and avoid infecting the staff? Stay home, get well, respect your coworkers, and avoid catching something worse in your weakened state. Unless you carry a weapon for Uncle Sam, you will not receive a Purple Heart.

As for vacation time: Plan to take it all. I frequently hear complaints from coworkers who claim not to be "able" to take a vacation day. Too many people get into the habit of believing they "can't" take time off, only to take vacations in haste and with little planning at the end of the year for fear of losing the days. Chart your time off early and make your plans known to your boss and your workmates. The only reason not to take regular breaks is when you are soon leaving the company and they are compensating you in cash for those days.

In your obituary, nobody will eulogize you by writing, "He never took a day off." Take every day offered. Refresh your mind, fill your lungs with outside air, and let the sun shine on your face, whether from your front porch or a tropical sky. Enlightened employers recognize the benefits of well-timed and frequent time off. More common is the sort of employer that will do nothing to remind you of the time they owe you.

Training: A wise boss once told me, "When you stop learning, you're dead." Accept the chance to learn new software, procedures, and the functions of other departments. Attend seminars (which also afford you networking opportunities.) If your company offers regular training or sponsors continued certification, take them up on it. Keep yourself fresh and competitive in the market. If they actually offer tuition reimbursement, seriously consider continuing-education courses or graduate studies. This will pay a double dividend: You get a boost on paying for the education, and you will increase your potential future earnings.

Don't be afraid to ask for any of the above. If your company doesn't offer these opportunities, perhaps nobody's requested them yet! You ought not to be disciplined for requesting the skills and tools to do a better job. If your employer refuses to offer training in your field, begin searching for a new job. Don't stay in a workplace that discourages education.

Miscellaneous perks: Computer-purchase loans, auto leases, society or professional memberships, life insurance, accounting or tax-preparation assistance, subscriptions to technical periodicals in your field, payment of entry fees for creative work into competitions, and discounted tickets for entertainment or sporting events are all worthy of consideration.

Use your company's willingness to provide anything I've discussed as a gauge on how long you stay there. Get out when they no longer serve you. They employ you. They do not own you. They don't govern the course of your career. Only you can decide when your work and your interests no longer follow the same track. Identifying and accepting this sort of discrepancy is not a mark of failure. I define a failure as someone who neglects to collect every cent of compensation and every hour of time off he or she has earned, who instead works weekends and Federal holidays because they think this will impress their bosses. Don't work for your boss. Work for your professional development, for the satisfaction of meeting your goals, and for the means to enjoy a comfortable, well-rounded life. Work for yourself.