Controlling Expectations

Topic: Control Your Expectations, Don't Let Them Control You
Key Words: Old Cheese, Bowels, Summer in Houston
Word Count: 602
Tomorrow's Topic: Why The Stock Market Hates Me

Well it's official, I'm old enough to write a blog entry entitled "Controlling Expectations". They're weird things, expectations. They can cloud your judgement; mess up your head if you're not careful. You expect something so intently, for so long, that you discount the opposite of your expectation. But often times, in my experience at least, what you don't expect turns out to be a great thing. On running, and other topics, here's a few philosophical comments about expectations ...

I always expected to have a car payment. I mean, cars just break and cost a lot to fix when not under warranty, so get a car with a long warranty, drive it hard, and trade it. Oddly, a lot of my friends have opposite views. Ed drove his Blazer for at least 8 years, Jason pimped the Green Focus for 7 years, and Jonathan's Protege is kind of like the cheese in the back of my fridge; I don't know how old it is, but damn, it's old. But now that I have a car I like, and one that doesn't break as much as my last two, I actually want to keep it for a long time; I surprisingly enjoy the thought of driving it for a long time! The expectation of perpetual car payments was built on the back of crappy Ford and German cars, so it actually has some merit; others, however, are merit less...

... Such as my love of New Balance shoes. I have NEVER ran in a non-New Balance pair of kicks, ever; I expected I would always be in NB. I've been a relatively injury free runner, but I've had some knee pain that was almost certainly improvable with shoes that are more stable than your traditional NB. After a Spring of excessive knee pain, I purchased a pair of Mizuno today in the hopes of stabilizing my feet, and thus, helping out my knees. More stable shoes making a happier knee is not an exotic concept; my expectation simply got in the way of considering this course of action. The jury is still out on the success of the Mizunos, but in shoes, as I should do with all thing, I should put all options on the table and try to do what's best. Some expectations, you take for granted ...

... Such as Joly not expecting to read about my bowels on my blog. Likewise, she expected to always spend some time at a favorite past-time; whipping up some cake batter. Now that she equates "packing a cup of flour" with my bowels, the cake, well, it's just not the same. Undoubtedly Joly has better things to do than make cake, so I'm sure she'll use this new time to great benefit, and unexpectedly, her life will have changed for the good ... all because of my bowels. Think about it. Wild stuff. Seriously though, sometimes things come out of left field, and change everything. Sometimes, you might actually like the change.

As for Oprah, I kept to my plan and ran today; a 4 mile Felix run. 91 degrees folks, welcome to Summer in Houston! It's going to be hard to train in this heat, but I have to try. After all, it's the only way for me to surpass my lofty expectations for the Chicago Marathon.