Last year was quite a big year for us. But as I looked back at my posts, I was only able to get one post in.

Last year I started the year wondering what steps I might take to achieve my vision for the future. Sitting and reflecting on January 1, 2018, I could not have foreseen what was to come over the past 365 days. Travels to multiple countries, new friends, new family, new job, new perspectives, new experiences.

This year, I’m going to try to share more before I’m ready on here and document more of the day-to-day, the chaos, and the gratitude.

Because even with all the change 2018 brought, what remains is the volume of gratitude I have today, last year, and every day in between. There were hard days and joyous days, I grew and stretched and pushed and pulled. But I remain in sheer awe of the quantity of good friends, good faith, and good health we’ve been blessed with and I look forward to spending each day in appreciation of the good in 2019, as well.

I have a longer post formulating on what today meant to me, what the past week of going to the World Series and then watching the Cubs win it all for the first of my lifetime and also the other milestones to come this week and this month.

But today, right now… here are some raw thoughts on what it means to me to be welcomed to the elite group called “marathoners”.

I run a lot. In fact, last weekend I celebrated 5 consecutive years of at least a race a month. In five years time, those distances ranged from 2.5 miles to 13.1. There were good races and bad, painful and non, wet and dry, sick and well, and everything in between. I thought i could picture what it would be like to run a marathon. I figured I could imagine it.

I couldn’t.

Running 26.2 miles, training for your first marathon… it’s not something you can understand or comprehend until you do it yourself.

To understand what it means to push your body past its breaking point. To rip your own body to shreds from the inside out. To become stronger both mentally and physically with every single step. And to know that no one can do this for you. This has to come from within every single step of the way. And it has to come from a place of love and trust for yourself. And the work you’ve done.

On this journey, I have been incredibly supported by both those already in the club of marathoners, those who run other distances and by those who haven’t ever run a single race. I could not have done what I did today without every single supportive comment, cheer and good thought sent my way.

Today, I’m proud of what I can do. I’m proud of what is possible. I’m proud of what it means to put in the work.

You may be my older brother, but you get to take some advice from your little sister for just the next few minutes. You may have 18 months on me in age, but I’ve got 6 years of experience in the marriage realm. So… get ready for me to drop some knowledge!

Ready?

First off – I certainly don’t have all the answers to give you.

Basically, the advice I have for you is equivalent to the advice a 5th grader can give a kindergartener. It’s only small enough advice to help you navigate the hallways of an unknown elementary school and it’s only backed by the knowledge of a few years of lessons and a few years of life. You entering kindergarten is the start of not just 17-ish years of schooling, however, but the start of a lifelong commitment to continual learning, adjusting and trying new things. And the lessons you learn in these first few years will serve you for the rest of your lives together.

Unlike how you welcomed me to high school, however, I will not be stopping the car in front of the boys soccer team blaring Celine Dion.

I will be kind enough to repay the favor for all the times you let me hang out with you and your friends in the hallway or at lunch.

This weekend at the wedding I will not embarrass you in front of your friends (okay, I probably will embarrass you… but not as much as you embarrassed me in high school…)

I will look out for you with advice the same way you did me all those years when you thought you knew best (okay, you USUALLY did know best).

So, here it is – the best advice I have to give you.

What happens this weekend, on your wedding day, is that the two of you are jumping off a cliff together.

You are jumping off a cliff together and you can’t see what’s over the edge and what you’re jumping into. Your job is to trust in each other and to protect each other as best you can from what may come along on your journey.

And this, pencil ready – this is the best piece of advice I can give you – embrace the jump!

For the rest of your lives together, life will happen and very little of that you can control. The good, the bad, and the every day in between.

You jump off the cliff today holding hands, and that right there is the secret.

You keep holding hands.

And, even though there are times you fall at different rates and speeds, you keep holding hands. You never, ever, let go.

As long as you’re holding hands, you serve as each other’s adventure partner, sounding board, voice of reason and soft place to land. Some days you’ll be hers, and some days she’ll be yours.

Be grateful for the cushion.

You will each grow on your journey and you will each change, sometimes at different rates. You will process what life gives you at different rates. You will have beautiful sunsets you each see slightly differently… and some days you will see exactly the same things in the world, as if you were looking through the same pair of glasses.

There’s so little you can control in the world, in your lives. All you can control is committing to be each other’s partner for life, protecting each other and committing to never stop holding hands; never stop being each other’s soft place to land; never stop enjoying the fall – because when you do that, the journey of this jump you’re on doesn’t feel like you’re falling at all – it feels like you’re flying – together.

Today is the day the two of you will remember forever. You’ll tell stories about this day for decades to come. Because today, in addition to it being the start of your journey together, should be remembered as the day that you’re surrounded by everyone in the world you love. Be they physically present or connected spiritually and emotionally from afar, today everyone in the world is here to set you both off on your journey.

And on that journey, while you will have each other close at hand, never forget you are backed by the entire network of people that came together for your wedding to wish you well on your journey together.

So today, and this week, happy wedding to my big brother and my new big sister.

Get ready for a hell of a ride – because there’s nothing in this world greater, deeper, more exhilarating, exhausting, yet more fulfilling than building your life together with your partner-in-crime; as you set off on the adventure of your lives together.

Love,

–  Your oldest little sister and her partner in crime –

We’ll always be here to give you shit, give you advice and help you find the answers.

(And just from me, I couldn’t be prouder of the man you’ve grown to be. I can’t wait to see what life has in store for you and your bride over the adventure you’re setting off on together.)

……….

And a special post-script for MY partner in crime who inspired this post and inspires me every day… I couldn’t for a better person to hold hands with on our journey together. You’re the reason I wake up every day and try to be better than I was the day before. I can’t wait to see what comes next for us. Happy early anniversary my love – here’s to never letting go ❤

I often notice that there are recurring themes that happen in my life. Much like the quote in Paulo Coelho’s book The Alchemist,

“Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”

I find it to be my experience that certain challenges, skills and hurdles will reoccur over and over again in time. If you’re smart, you’ll learn from the first pass of the hurdles. If you’re smarter, you’ll ask for help the second time around; but, even that is not enough.

To truly gain wisdom from life’s hurdle in front of you, you have to not only learn from the past and ask for help… you have to be able to see the hurdle from the new perspective of where you are standing. You will never approach a hurdle, however identical its appearance to the previous, from the same place. To assume you have the same perspective as previously would be to deny and ignore the fact that you are a different person today than you were yesterday.

Consider car racing on an oval track. I’m a big IndyCar fan, particularly of the Indy 500. The Indy 500 takes place on a historic 2.5 mile oval on the same Saturday in May each year. This year it will celebrate its 100th running. Drivers at this endurance race have 200 laps of turning left, each seemingly the same as the last. But, they’re not. The turns, however repetitive, are different each lap, each corner. As the driver approaches, the surrounding forces change; the wind speeds, the other cars, the mental state of the driver. The perspective from which you approach the turn must be re-evaluated every single time.

I will always remember the 2011 Indy 500. Of course for the reason that it was the last time I ever saw Dan Wheldon race, and win the Indy 500… but also for the reason he won the race. JR Hildebrand was a rookie that year. He was 23 and he was about to win the Indy 500. He was one turn away from it. Seemingly, all he had to do was turn left one more time, hold off the others on the straightaway and cross those historic bricks.

But, he went high on the last turn. He approached the turn with a maneuver that worked earlier in the race, and hit the wall. He came in second, as Wheldon passed him to take home his second Borg Warner.

In a 2011 New York Times article by Dave Caldwell, Hildebrand is quoted as saying, “Is it a move I would do again? No, I think the only reason I did it in the first place is that it had worked at different stages earlier in the race. But in hindsight, I think with the tires being as used as they were at that stage, that last run after the caution being so long, it’s obviously a learning experience for me.”

That lack of assuming a different perspective for the same problem often ends up with hitting the wall… albeit most of us don’t have the physical representation seen by hundreds of thousands live that day.

Last month I found myself on a panel of professional women, preparing to speak to a group of high school girls.

The panel was varied, as would be the questions. The girls had free rein to ask anything about jobs, career paths and life. The panelists were in fashion, business, education, medicine, sports and technology.

Knowing that we needed to be prepared for any question, I tried to think back and put myself in their shoes. They were about to enter their last semester of high school. Some would be starting their careers, other would continue their education. At that that time in their life, suddenly the question,”What do you want to be when you grow up?” became more and more real.

I can clearly remember being in their shoes. Fiercely independent, determined to tackle the next step… and a little bit afraid to let on I didn’t know exactly what I was doing; I was just guessing. I remember thinking everyone else had it all figured out, especially the adults and kids already in college.

I would learn, of course, that no one ever has it all figured out. I would learn with experience to trust my gut, but balance that with research and reason. And, over the years, my gut would get more reliable with experience. But learning those things, that’s something that you can’t really be told. It doesn’t always make sense until it happens slowly, over time.

On my run that morning, I started to think about the best piece of advice I’d ever been given. If I could pass that same piece of advice along that day, maybe it could had the same impact for the girls who were listening.

I thought through conversations with mentors and conversations with friends. Conversations with family and conversations that came during some of the toughest moments that I’d been through over the years. Through all of that, I realized one of the best pieces of advice I could remember is one that I heard from my high school band teacher.

“If you see a piece of trash on the floor in the hallway, it’s your job to pick it up.”

At the time, I couldn’t understand that it was about a lot more than picking up the piece of paper. It was also about a lot more than making the walk down the hall for the janitor easier that day.

That simple piece of advice stuck with me because it represents that you are part of a community. It’s your job to make where you’re standing a better place than when you got there. It’s your job to contribute, to make your community a better place.

We all see “it’s not my job” syndrome happen in the world. Trash in parks and where it shouldn’t be, communal coffee pots where someone took the last cup and didn’t make a fresh one, even someone with their hands too full and struggling to carry all their bags. It may not be “your job” to pick up the trash, and there may even be someone whose job it is to clean that up or fix that, but if you’re there and able – make the place you’re standing better. Because that absolutely is your job.

That’s the best advice I think I’ve ever been given, and I passed that along to the girls that day last month. I don’t know if it will stay with any of them, but I know it has made a difference in my life and how I make decisions each day, wherever I’m standing.

We just got back home after a 12-day trip exploring Europe for the first time together and it was incredible. We saw Germany, France and the Netherlands and took in a lot more than museums, monuments and restaurants.

One of the things that stuck with me most was something that I didn’t expect. It was the gaining of a deeper understanding.

I’ve learned about European history before, read about it, heard the stories and even seen museums in the states with exhibits dedicated to understanding. But there was something about traveling to hear and see the connection between the stories across borders and nationalities that was totally different.

I expected to see the impact of WWII when we were in Germany, and I did. It was ever-present from the landmarks, to the stories wrapped in some of the most prominent world brand company history; it’s a part of every single story and brick in the street.

What I didn’t expect was the connection that would follow, to France, to Normandy and to the Netherlands.

In France as we visited each monument, the dark years of Paris’s occupation was part of the story as well. It touched the latin quarter, the Champs-Elysees, the Arc d’Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower. As history goes, it’s still a fresh wound, in fact, I’d venture to bet some of the cafes still have the same chairs today they put away each night and set out each morning today they did 70 years ago.

Which makes sense when you think about the larger context; 70 years is not that long in the context of European history; Notre Dame cathedral is a prime example.

The construction of Notre Dame cathedral began in 1163 and wasn’t completed for nearly 200 years. Imagine the mindset and how much faith it must have taken for both the laborers and the visionaries, who envisioned the magnificent cathedral that wouldn’t be completed for nearly 6 generations. To labor day after day and know that your grandchildren’s grandchildren may not even see the completion of the construction, is to understand the faith present at the time, and to understand perspective on history in Europe.

With that perspective, understanding that 70 years ago is fresh and still very much recent history for these countries.

We spent a day venturing out from Paris to Caen and to see several of the D-Day beaches. As we got closer to Caen and began to hear the history of the city, we learned that nearly 90% of the city today is newly built, because it was destroyed during the liberation in WWII that killed 2000 civilians. And yet, the impact of the liberation, the larger purpose of that loss of the military and civilian life even today, resonates in the town, at the battlefields and in the memorials. The recency of that loss, the gain of the liberation and the hope that turning point brought to the war can still be felt today, while standing on that ground, seeing the landing boats still in the cow pastures and looking through the hedge rows.

We expected the understanding of the history and impact of DDay to end when we left France, but instead it permeated even through Amsterdam as we visited the Anne Frank House. In those tiny rooms, where 8 people lived for two years, there on the wall it still stood today. A hand drawn map of the Normandy beaches and the DDay invasions, marked with push pins of the troop movements. That hope came through the walls when there must have been mostly darkness for so many long days and nights, stress and tension reigning. Over 400 miles away, hope in the form of sacrifice, both military and civilian, for a better change for the future still stands in the air today.

That’s something that can’t be read in a book or even heard in a story retold.

Last weekend I started the path down accomplishing a lifelong dream.

We booked our plane tickets to Europe… and there is no emoticon or stock photo that will effectively capture that emotion.

I’ve dreamed about, planned for and wanted to go to Europe, Paris specifically, since I was five years old. When my dad used to come home from work and I was in kindergarten I would greet him, “Bonjour, papa”.  I started taking afterschool french lessons in first grade, continued with extra-curricular before-school French classes in middle school, and continued classes through high school and college. As recently as a few years ago I would drive around with “Learn French” CDs playing in the car to brush up on my French so it wouldn’t become rusty.

And last weekend, we made the first steps along this very bucket list item – we booked flights! We’ll be celebrating our five year anniversary with this trip, the only way we could justify the extravagance, and it will be unlike any other vacation we’ve ever taken.

Three countries, two people and another stop on our awesome journey.

Right now the plan is to visit Germany, France and the Netherlands.

What should we see, where should we stay? We’d love your advice as we get more into the weeds with this exciting trip!

I don’t run to be faster than anyone else.

In fact, I don’t run to compete against anyone other than myself.

That’s part of the reason I usually get my training runs and races in by myself. I can be easily tricked into trying to race against others when I train or race with them. It shifts my thought process into a battle for perfection that I won’t ever win.

I’m a self-aware perfectionist. It was only recently I added I added self-aware to that statement. I hate making mistakes and can beat myself up for hours and days when it happens. When I make a mistake I felt that pit in my stomach and my heart rate rises, predictably, as I work to fix whatever happened or is off. After the fix, it still sticks with me. I beat myself up about it because it was made in the first place.  

But, because I’m trying to be more self-aware, this week I tried to dig into that emotion and identify what the underlying concern and cause is. Yes, I want to do things right. I don’t want to make mistakes. But, in the bigger picture… how do I shift that focus from beating myself up to being able to objectively solve the mistake. I want to identify what went wrong and work on developing skills to change that in the future, rather than relive those mistakes over and over. 

This week I also found myself talking out loud and saying, “I just can’t do everything.”

Something that should be a simple admission, but it feels like a failure, like a mistake. I believe part of maturing is understanding that I really can’t do every thing. Some days, I just won’t be able to fit a work out in. And that has to be okay. Some days, I won’t be perfect in my diet. And that has to be okay, too. Cleaning the house will have to fall back some days, while work projects have to be reevaluated and repurposed when competing projects butt heads for limited time.

The hard part, and what I’m going to have to learn, is that those choices and leaniencey doesn’t equate with failure, mistakes or loss of anything other than perfection.

Because, in reality, perfection isn’t possible to achieve. It’s possible to strive for, but not realistic to expect as a result. The end result can always be better, I can always work harder and learn more. I’m working to understand the difference between striving for perfection, which encourages high quality, thoughtful, strategic work in everyday life… with the expectation of perfection and anything less than equaling failure and mistakes.