2014 - To Be or Not to Be... the Baddest Mother F-er

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. 

If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. 

If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. 

If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. 

If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

― Neal Stephenson (via Neeraj G.) 

It was this time last year that the end of the world happened. Or whatever the Mayan calendar makers had figured out. But Earth's galactic crossing hasn't really differentiated 2013 too much from 2012, at least for me and my mortgage. So, here I am, barely a few years beyond the honeymoon period, in what I'll call Normal Time. This is perhaps the inevitable stage in the life cycle of a blog (a boy) where the infatuation with (and mere modest gains in) becoming a bad mother-F-er (or professional triathlete or musician or entrepreneur or whatever dream you hold sacred) slowly give way to the first cracks of middle-agedness.

But without the cracks, how else would the light, seeds, and air get in?

It'd be great of my dreams if, instead of balding, they merely greyed themselves into maturity like some kind of George Clooney handsomeness cocoon. Then, when I emerged covered in mucus, instead of obsessing about kicking The Man in the dick or the mediocrity of my running skills, maybe I'd repurpose my feet into Riverdancing or finally learn to love and forgive. Then again, maybe I'd emerge from the cocoon with fangs and a vampire thirst for vengeance.

Transformation is risky business. Regardless, the calendar rollover to 2014 provides me with a welcome opportunity to take stock of the year's highs and lows. I'm especially excited to renew my commitment to own and enjoy the process, since the end products may or may not ever come and are never really ours anyway. For instance, in 2013, I never ran 5 miles barefoot in the snow like I had hoped and trained for, but I spent a lot of time in the snow and didn't let winter weigh my soul down. I never achieved my 30 pull-ups goal, but my upper body didn't completely atrophy into Ethiopian spindles and I did manage 25 decent ones. I didn't watch five sunsets or sunrises. I didn't eat a big ass salad but one day a week, let alone every day. I didn't qualify for the Boston Marathon. I did, however, spend a lot of time in my garden, met a ton of really cool people, saw the most beautiful places I've ever been, watched a few sunsets with nieces and nephews, and ran a bunch of miles that were faster, farther, more enjoyable than I've ever experienced. It was a mega-wonderful year by almost all measurements. So, I suppose gratitude is where I'd like to begin. But after gratitude, it gets more complicated.

As I try to craft how 2014 might go, I recall one of my favorite podcasts this year of Rich Roll's interview with Dr. Jeff Spencer about the so-called Champions Blueprint. Step one of all champions' grand plans, whether they be gold medalists, Grammy winners, or millionaires, is to begin at the end-- of not just their careers, but their lives, where they define what they hope to see in the rearview mirror. First, they define their legacy. This demands that they do their homework-- to ask and to ask again - what's it all for? To win the championships? To get the peer reviews? To amass the baptisms? But what's all THAT for?! What will be left once the trophies tarnish?

"Ten" by Dan Zadra and Kobi Yamada

To be honest, I'm having a hard time committing to paper what I want as the specifics of the 200 Year Dwyer Legacy. I'm having no Ah-ha! That's the birthday cake I wanna make! breakthroughs. Instead, I think I'm only finding clarity around the sort of basic ingredients I know I want involved. My wife, Susie, and I have been working on this activity book together called "Ten", where we make lists of what motivates us, what our dreams and goals are, what our talents, resources, and unique contributions might be. One of the activities is to make a "Ta-Da" list. Unlike a traditional "To Do" list a "Ta-Da" list is...

...an inspiring and magical list of reminders about what you strive to include in each day of your life, no matter what, no matter what, no matter what.

Here are some examples of a Ta-Da list:
Did I wake up and greet the day?
Did I celebrate just being alive?
Did I read something interesting today?
Did I find at least one piece of good news?
Did I learn something new?
Did I change something for the better?
Did I think about my future?
Did I stop to thank someone?
Did I put something-- even just a dollar-- in savings?
Did I find something to make me laugh?
Did I make someone else laugh?
Did I help or reach out to someone?
Did I forgive someone (maybe even myself)?
Did I do something sacred (pray, meditate, visit the sick)?
Did I stand up for someone or something?
Did I do something ridiculous or fun?
Did I tell my loved one(s) how much I appreciate them?
Did I treat my body well?
Did I write down at least one new idea?
Did I take a chance on something?
Did I count my blessings?

Imagine how good you'll feel if you can say "Ta-da!" to these kinds of questions at the end of each day.

This list, no matter how true and beautiful, is also somewhat trite and intimidating-- almost imposing--
Hey, were you a living saint today? It begs a more pressing question, What might the Ta-Da list look like of someone who truly is a bad mother-F-er? Below is my first crack at what I think their list might be, whether they are a young boy or old woman. It's pretty much universal.

Did I get grounded as hell today, maybe walk/run around barefoot or in kung-fu slippers?
Did I get hydrated as h-e-double hockey sticks?
Did I prepare myself thoroughly to F those mother-F-ers up?
Did I let the big hairy BS wash past me?
Did I choose the "red pill" (as opposed to staying plugged into the Matrix)?
Did I F with their minds/paradigms/dogmas/addictions/commercials?
Did I stand tall and do WTF needed to be done for the ones I love?
Did I face the fear/F-er?
Did I stand in awe at some cool science schizer?
Did I let the universe blow my F-ing mind?
Did I move/sweat/dance my balls off?
Did I embrace my Womyn/partner and play with my cats/dogs/alligators/kids?
Did I thank myself for being my own guru but also bow to my senseis?
Did I visit my compost?
Did I befriend/recruit/uplift/study/surround myself with bad mother-F-ers?

"We use the buddy system. No more flying solo."

Bad mother F-er aspirations aside, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling haunted by some kind of residual Mayan end-of-the-ages drama. I'm mortally wounded by the state of the world and especially the Japanese nuclear disaster and cover-up at Fukushima. A sobering cloud of nuclear fallout hangs over me and I don't see it going away for a couple million years. It's not like we, as a society, are accidentally over-reacting to nuclear fallout and the annihilation of the ocean and inappropriately over-loving each other. We're just sort of watching it happen like, "Ho hum, well... that's just the system doing what it's programmed to do-- delivering paybacks to the investors."  

I know we're supposed to "live in the moment" and all, and that "we're not guaranteed a tomorrow", and cliches like that. But somehow it resonates deeper and truer when you say, "live like you'll die by the third Tuesday of the month." That calls for a completely different agenda. So when one of my senseis, Guy McPherson, estimates that enough planetary self-reinforcing feedback loops have been kicked into action such that climate collapse and near term human extinction is "likely by 2030", that kind of specificity changes how I piece together my 2014 goals. Pull-ups and yoga goals are either irrelevant or, more likely, more relevant than ever. 

Sure, the end of the world (death) is inescapable for all of us. I get that mentally. But to even consider the non-zero possibility that we've only got 15 or so years before this ball we call Earth drops to shit-- that hits me emotionally-- motivationally. Perhaps that's the genius of religious eschatology-- Doomsday is always just around the corner, so we better shape up. 

Maybe the trick here, in the spirit of "Antifragile" author (and bad mother F-er) Nassim Taleb is not to tinker with the decimal points of probabilities of disasters, as if assets will only be risked against the most probable or foreseeable of them. The trick, instead, is to assume ALL assets WILL be exposed to disaster (black swan events) and to ask myself if my assets are even worth saving. And if they are, are they prepared to not only endure disaster, but be improved by it. I hereby devout 2014 to the task of better asset management.

Am I living like a fragilista materialist scumbag? 

Or...

Am I on the spiritual path to becoming a bad mother F-er? 

What's in your wallet?

I have to give a special shout out to the RawBrahs for their challenge to own less than 100 things. It speaks to me as the first step in an essential and ongoing distillation process of what's important. 

After that, my hope is that: 
1) Things around here get less thing-y.
2) I have less stuff to stress about. 
3) But the stuff I have is more sacred and better taken care of. 
4) Relationships become what matter most. 
5) And mental, physical, and spiritual health reign supreme. 

MAYBE I EVEN...
1) learn to play a few Jack Johnson songs on the guitar,
2) resurrected my garage from the abyss-- make it habitable,
3) run around Lake Tahoe,
4) have sex in an orange grove,
5) go gluten free,
6) go on a huge gluten binge,
7) produce a few podcast episodes,
8) qualify for Boston (for real)
9) ride my bike (or run) from Cleveland to Cincinnati
10) get more real tattoos than imaginary ones.

And now it's out there.

Happy New Year, everyone! 

I love you.