Goals and Star Wars

When I was in high school, I tutored a boy named Jonathan.  I helped him with his math homework a couple of times a week.  I didn’t get paid for two reasons: 1) he was my mom’s best friend’s son and was like a little brother to me, and 2) I got to talk about math two times a week!  I would have paid them!

When I first started working with Jon, he basically hated math.  I didn’t blame him.  The examples were boring, nothing that would interest a 7 year old kid.  Who cared how many carrots Mrs. James had left in her garden if she started with 10 and a rabbit came and stole 2?  Jon was into Star Wars, so I changed the problems up to include Jedi, Death Stars and light sabers.  Jon was instantly more interested.  He started working really hard and in no time at all he was doing really well in math.

After a while, though, his interest waned again.  One day I asked him why he wasn’t into math any more (a concept that for the life of me I couldn’t understand).  Jon explained to me that his teacher hadn’t been collecting homework, so he felt like he was doing all this work for nothing.  I tried to keep him motivated, but in truth, my drive diminished as well.  If nobody was going to check to see how well Jon was doing in math, what was the point of me coming up with examples of Storm Troopers and Wookies? After a while Jon and I had dropped the whole math tutoring thing entirely and instead would sneak out and go to the playground nearby and play baseball (like I said, he was like a little brother to me.  We exceled at getting into trouble together).

I thought about my tutoring days with Jonathan a few days ago. No, Jon does not still come to me for help with math.  In fact, the man is now 37 years old with a wife and baby, and has a good job in a field that has nothing to do with numbers.  I thought about tutoring Jon because I was thinking about goals.  When Jon had a goal to do well in math, he tried really hard once I made math to be about stuff he was interested in.  But once he realized that the goal couldn’t be achieved because nobody was checking it, he stopped caring; and once I realized that I was never going to reach my goal of getting a kid to love and do well in math, I stopped trying.

That’s why I thought about Jonathan and our math sessions.  Regardless of how crappy it was, my race season is over.  Done.  I have nothing to work towards right now.  And when I have nothing to work towards, I don’t work.  Knowing that you have to run a marathon or dive into a lake and swim a mile at the start a triathlon is pretty strong motivation for getting your butt out of bed and heading to the gym.  But dark mornings, cold weather and a warm bed act like a magnet when there is no reason to pull away from them.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m still doing my work outs.   Well, most of them. I’ve discovered that cold temperatures outside are my number 1 excuse for not getting into an indoor pool, and that biking on my trainer at home is a lot more fun if I’m slowly peddling along while watching “Desperate Housewives” on Netflix rather than killing myself with a bike training video (and sidebar: how did I ever miss “Desperate Housewives” when it ran on TV?  Best show since we all wasted hours of our lives trying to figure out who shot J.R.).    

Cats and Mouse on the Moon

I finally figured this out yesterday as I tried to convince myself that I couldn’t run in 50 degree weather because it was just too unusual for the first day of winter.  I needed a goal.  I thought about taking a drawing class (I draw pictures of 2 cats and a mouse doing all different things on my kids’ snack bags every day (don’t ask, it’s a long story), and I’d love to move beyond stick figures), but drawing just isn’t my thing (and thankfully my kids think that things like stick figures cats and a mouse sledding or doing yoga is funny).  I needed a race.  And after searching on the internet for a bit, I actually found two.  There is a half marathon in Sleepy Hollow on March 22^nd, and another one in south Brooklyn a week later.  I’m still trying to decide which one to do, but I know it will be one or the other (or, umm, both…).  Once I found them I immediately got excited and started looking up training plans and scheduling workouts in a calendar.  I didn’t even flinch when I saw that next week I’ll be running in about 23 degree weather (and as the temperature broke 70 degrees today I learned that I need to live someplace where 70 degrees is normal for December 22^nd).

Some people do really well without goals.  Others need them, and still others need something to work towards and have it be interesting at the same time.  And the biggest accomplishment any of us can do is to figure out which type of person we are and what it’s going to take to get us out of a warm bed on a cold, dark morning.  Mine is training for a race. I wonder if I can get Jonathan to run with me if I dress like C-3PO….