“Avid” has to be one of my most favorite adjectives ever, because no other word really wraps together the feeling of hunger, enthusiasm and pure enjoyment that comes with really pursuing something to your fullest potential. Listen to it a few times: when someone is described as an ‘avid’ cyclist, an ‘avid’ gamer, do you automatically think they’re a professional competitor? That they’re OCD about something? No, it’s both less and more than that- almost like the person really comes alive in that domain.

Let me begin this with the unequivocal, undeniable, and extremely accurate statement that I am not, ever have been, or ever intend to be homosexual on an either full time or part time basis. I know what I’m talking about, I’m not in denial, I’m not secretly a cross dresser or have any other strange weird habits that are best not brought up in public. I’m straight, no and’s, if’s or but’s, and no matter how many men hit on me makes me able to overcome the fact that they are bumpy in all the wrong places.

Got that? Good.

More blog neglect, but this time I actually have some interesting things to report.

First of all, in an effort to deal with blog neglect I’ve shifted my usual authoring time to before work rather than after. Afterwards there are simply too many distractions- mental, physical and… ahem… social for me to really get focused on my thoughts and get them down. Whether I can keep it up is anyone’s guess, but for now I’ve got a nice cool morning, a full battery and a patch of sunshine to write in. What else could you want?

I ran five miles yesterday. This is taking some time to sink in, and I still don’t quite believe it myself. It’s certainly an accomplishment for someone who came from the world of morbid obesity, and I am having a hard time not being smug at everyone I know.

Of course there are some caveats- I scaled my speed down to a 10 minute mile with ten second negative splits on the mile, so other than the distance increase I wasn’t really pushing myself. Even so it feels like a significant accomplishment not only because it’s the longest I’ve ever run in my entire life, but because I’ve also managed to break past the 3.1 mile mental barrier that comes with training for a much shorter race.

What really struck me about the whole experience is how easy it was to go the extra mile(s). Once I’d gotten up to speed and convinced my body it wasn’t stopping anytime soon, it was just a matter of keeping my mind occupied while my feet did all the work. My iPod really helped with that, but I’m told the bigger races don’t allow headphones. I can already imagining myself stopping after the 3rd mile because I got bored and saw something shiny lying in the road.

During my Creativity Class last summer we began the entire class on the statement that creativity occurred at the intersection of disciplines. That it required no particularly great intellect, no large cranial matter or not genetic predisposition for intelligence nor focused upbringing that predetermined a creative mind, but that an individual merely needed to be familiar enough with two different scopes of knowledge to draw paralells and connections with solutions that would otherwise be restricted to their own scope.

Set the scene: It’s a corporate boardroom, four or five years ago. The newly hired CEO is holding his first strategic meeting, and everyone’s just a little on edge. None of them know what to expect, and some of them were worried. Were there going to be cuts? Downsizings? The company performance had been utterly dismal- their major competitor had beaten them out of every market segment over the last few years, and the only thing left was a niche segment of crazy loyalists that never blinked at the exorbitant pricetags and substandard performance of their product line.

Some of you know this, but I might as well clarify. About a month ago one of my lymph nodes swelled up to the size of a walnut. Under normal circumstances this isn’t a problem- we all know our lymphnodes go nuts when we’re sick… except I wasn’t. We’re all familiar with the twisted paths our mind can wander when panic sets in, and I wasn’t an exception. Lymphoma, Hodgkin’s Disease, you name it- I was suddenly forced to stare into that black abyss of uncertainty, the eradication of my identity upon death before my time.

The European organic market is significantly more mature than the US market, with 3.4% of its farmland certified organic. Top country on that list? Austria, with 9.7%. After that it’s Sweden, Greece, and Denmark. In contrast the US has… get this… 0.2% organic farmland. Mind you, it’s growing at 20+% a year, and there’s significant consolidation going on in the sector (actual acerage is three times as much as austria, with half as many actual operators). From trends I see in Europe and some analyst reports, it seems like we’re going to see that growth rate in America increase for at least another 5 years, and then eventually settle do a more respectable 7% annual….

For some reason, the relative simplicity of folk acoustic instrumentation allows the melody and lyrics to really shine. Especially on rainy days like today, the tones strike a chord with the moisture in the air, weaving a web of calm solitude into the autumn sky. This is fall music, harvest music. Music performed around campfires, often only with a single guitar and voice. Lyrics that have wistful echoes, insightful phrases that engage your mind and really foster introspection, because rather than trying to describe the entire tapestry of their own story they leave an open framework that force your imagination to fill in the gaps and bring it into your own perception.

It’s a distinctly individual, personal experience with every listening.

And thus, the second half of the trimester begins. Today is my first session of Marketing Strategy, a class I suspect will be six weeks of a reasonable level of work, but annoying nonetheless because it happens in the middle of the summer, conflicts with Soccer, and will guarantee that Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays will be spent working on class foo. What’s particularly annoying about this class is that for the second half of the term the classes run for three and a half hours. Yes, that’s right, I get to sit listening to the guy from 615PM until 945PM for two nights a row, and hope that I can glean some kind of understanding from the man. If that wasn’t enough, I have the same instructor for both of my classes, so I get to see the same guy for 7 hours a week, lecturing on two different topics.