The Monthly Challenge

I took the Marine Corps Fitness Test today. I didn't do as well as I was hoping (I have apparently lost all of my upper body strength), but I still managed to rank in the 1st class. Not too shabby (considering I'm an old fart in my age group), but there's still room for improvement. I ended up doing 12 pullups (60 points), way more than 100 crunches (100 points), and finished the 3-mile run in 21:15 (80 points) for a total score of 240.

In February, I had to talk to a stranger each day. Today, I had to talk to 3.

Person number 1 was a cyclist who was riding right behind me on my way into work this morning. First I almost spit on him, then he popped his tire so I turned around and tried to help him out. Nothing terribly exciting, but he was a stranger and we talked.

Person number 2 was the facilities guy at work. When I got ready to ride into work this morning, I thought I was being cool by only bringing my house key instead of my whole keychain. I had forgotten that I had a locked drawer at work which I needed to get into, and the key for that drawer was on the keychain back in my apartment. People made fun of me. Then I had to talk to the facilities guy to help me try to break into the locked drawer. He did not make fun of me. Thanks, facilities guy.

Person number 3 was any number of people at the bars JBlake dragged me out to later that night. Believe it or not, nobody terribly interesting goes to Hollywood bars.

Budgeting and decluttering are not two things I think of when I think of manliness. But if the internet says they're manly things, then I guess I have to do them. I'm still in the middle of doing both and I've realized that: 1. I have too much junk laying around, and 2. I spend way too much money dining out.

That's all for now.

Day 6: Update Your Resume

Last year, after taking a typography course, I totally redid my resume. I was really pleased with the way it turned out and had no need to redo it (although the colors do need to be tweaked for printing.) So instead of revamping the whole thing, I just updated it a little bit to include what I've done in the past year or so.

Day 7: Reconnect with an Old Friend

I looked up one of my best friends from high school/junior high and "sent him a facebook." It's weird how close we used to be, and then out of nowhere just stopped talking. I don't think I've spoken to him in at least 8 years. It's really crazy...

Day 8: Start a Journal

I guess a blog is kind of like a gournal. But today's task sounds kind of like Notebooking November. I guess I'm going to have to start that up again. Scans to follow...

For day two, I'm supposed to shine my shoes.

So your task today is to shine your shoes. Get out every pair of dress shoes that you own and get them all into ship shape condition. You never know when you’re going to need to don a pair, and the last thing you want to do is be ready to run at the door to an important meeting and realize that your shoes are in no condition to meet the public. Having a closet full of shined shoes ensures that you are ready for any occasion, at the drop of a hat. Plus, shining your shoes is the kind of quiet, repetitive activity that will calm your mind and soothe your stress.

Belive it or not, I don't own any shoe polish. I was going to pick some up after work today, but I realized that the only pair of leather dress shoes that I own (and occasionally wear) is a weird deep brown color. Now I think I did shine my shoes once or twice as a kid (they were probably Air Jordan's) and as I recall, the shoe polish needs to match the shoe. Well, I didn't have the shoes with me, so I never bought any polish. So, before I head out for the night, I've given all of my shoes a nice once over with a wet rag, and I must say that it did get rid of most of the dust.

Today is day one of my 31 Days to Becoming a Better Man. And by "my 31 days," I mean "TAoM's 30 days + 1 Jesse bonus day."

Your task for Day 1 of our 30 Days to a Better Man Project is to discover, clearly define, and write down your core values. Before we begin, let’s be clear that we’re not trying to define goals here. Goals are specific actions, like “becoming financially independent by age 30″ or “asking my girlfriend to marry me this June.” What we are looking for are values: the ideas that you esteem to be of great worth and that give structure to your life.

So I've been thinking about these for a while (well, the better part of a day) and here's what I've come up with. It was really tough cutting it down to five core values, but I'm happy with the results:

Selflessness

A true man is completely selfless. At the end of Terminator 2 (SPOILER ALERT!), Arnold Schwarzenegger's character burns himself in order to save John Conor and all of human-kind. He wasn't thinking about himself, he was thinking about everybody else just like a true man... ermmm...cyborgggg... would.

Passion

No, I'm not talking about sex you perverts. I'm talking about passion as an intense emotion that drives action and motivates people. Can that emotion be related to love and/or sex? Sure, but that would still mean you're a pervert.

Humble Self-Confidence

So I guess this is kind of two values combined into one, but I think the sum of the parts is greater than the whole in this case: humility is a great quality to have, but just because you're humble does not necessarily mean you believe in yourself; every strong male figure is self-confident, but some men who are self-confident are just dicks. A man who is humbly self-confident has the best of both worlds - he knows he's bad-ass, but just lets everybody else figure that out on their own.

Forthcoming Honesty

Here comes another two-fer. I don't really know what to say except that there are few that things I dislike more than a liar*. (*Not applicable during a poker hand.)

Adventurousness

A real man takes chances. Sometimes they may be stupid chances, but most of the time, it is a calculated risk. One of the things I've always prided myself on, is that I'm willing to make mistakes. I'd rather try something and get burned by it and know that it was a bad idea, rather than never try it and wonder "what if?" for the rest of my life. If you can't learn from your mistakes, you'll never learn at all. Oh, and real men sky dive - that is adventurous.

I think the interesting thing is that my list consists completely of qualities. There are no tangible objects on my list. When I came up with the list, I wrote down a few tangible things like "friends," "family," and "really bitching, red sports cars" but those aren't really my values. I don't like my friends because they're my friends - I chose them because the display a lot of the qualities which I value most. I chose my family members for the same reason (that's right, some people do get to choose their family members - I consider myself very lucky.)