Invictus

By Willian Earnest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, my unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

If

by Rudyard Kipling

IF you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired waiting,

Or be lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet dont look too good, not talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools...

Power Eating // Forks Over Knives

There is currently a billion dollar “diet” industry. As a professional athlete, what we put into our bodies becomes even more important. You can’t fill up the Ferrari with water… let alone with cupcakes! With all the gimmicks and myths, I thought I’d do a little research into the nutritional needs of an endurance-power athlete. With a little help from Amazon.com, I acquired some literature on two of the diets out there, and set to trying them out.

I started keeping a Diet Journal, not just for calorie counting, but to investigate the other nutritional properties of what I am eating. I also started stepping on a scale that measures weight, body fat, muscle mass, bone density, and water retention. After reading the book Power Eating over winter break, I tried to adopt the recommended diet that fit my nutritional needs. Here are the key principles of a Power Eating diet:

-Eat enough calories (liking this!)

-Eat the carbohydrate you need (loving this!)

-Vary your diet

-Time and combine your food and nutrients (small meals and snacks every three hours, timed around workout schedule)

-Use a food plan (perfect for a schedule freak like me!)

Through the process of testing out these principles I learned that raising self-nutritional-awareness is half the battle. The biggest benefit I felt from adjusting my eating habits manifested in my recovery. Of course, I was not magically faster, stronger, or more fit. But since I maintained a similar training regimen through the culinary change, the results felt clear. The same workouts felt easier, so I was able to put in more work and be a wee bit more pleasant when I wasn’t working out. Tired Christen is cranky.

While it’s a bit more challenging to figure out everything in Sweden, I have done my best to maintain my eating habits in this foreign land. And now, with the beginning of Lent, I am a 40-day pescatarian! (Loosely) Following the guide of my new book: Forks Over Knives, I hope to reap the benefits of a plant-based diet. The goal is to improve my personal health while reducing my carbon footprint and respecting mankind’s relationship with animals. Here is the gist of the Forks Over Knives diet:

-Avoid anything that came from a source that ever had a face or a mother. Sorry to the fishies, I’m still going to eat you!

-Eat plants! The more intact, the better.

-Avoid overly processed foods.

-Avoid preservatives and additives.

-Eliminate dairy. Goodbye cappuccinos :,(!

-Don’t worry about carbohydrates (as long as they are the right type of carbs.)

-Don’t worry about protein (plenty of protein to be had outside of steaks.)

I will keep you posted on how it goes!

“One quarter of what you eat keeps you alive. The other three quarters keep your doctor alive.”

I Believe In Everything.

Fantastic blog from @ThoughtCatalog. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.


"I believe there is an attractive force that exists throughout the universe. Scientists call it gravity. Romantics call it love. I believe they’re both right."

"I believe life begins at conception. I believe life begins at birth. I believe life begins at preschool, at puberty, at graduation, at retirement, at death. I believe life never begins.

I believe laughter is the best medicine. I believe penicillin is the second best medicine. I believe in the placebo effect. If a multinational pharmaceutical company decided to package and market sugar pills under the brand name Placebo I’d probably get addicted and die from an overdose."

"I believe every lie I’ve ever been told. I believe every joke I’ve ever laughed at. I believe every promise every politician has ever promised me. I believe everything that I read on Wikipedia. I believe every hyperlink I click will lead me someplace better.
I believe knowledge is power. I believe ignorance is bliss. I believe the popcorn kernel of truth lodged in every maxim, every proverb, every cliché. I believe in contradiction. I believe in paradox.
I believe in law and order. I believe in chaos and anarchy."

"I believe in the compelling power of rhetoric."

Read more at http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/i-believe-in-everything/#iQRVTrPlJDjs6gHI.99

The Kite Runner.

I started this very popular historical fiction at the beginning of the summer. Instantly enthralled, I was forced to put the book aside in order to read other books for various book clubs, but I was thrilled and excited when I finally got to pick it back up a week ago.

Told from the narrative voice of an insecure Afghan boy Amir, The Kite Runner is a story of grief, guilt, fear, and ultimately vindication, salvation, and redemption. It surprised nobody that I appreciated the former themes and first half of the book a lot more than the latter. I have an affinity for sorrowful stories. It is the drama queen in me.

One of the themes of the story that I really enjoyed was the relationship between Amir and his father Baba. While having to fight for love and affection from a parent is definitely not something I related to, I do understand the somewhat irrational impulse to try to make a parent proud.

“I loved wintertime in Kabul. I loved it for the soft pattering of snow against my window at night, for the way fresh snow crunched under my black rubber boots, for the warmth of the cast-iron stove as the wind screeched through the yards, the streets. But mostly because, as the trees froze and ice sheathed the roads, the chill between Baba and me thawed a little.”

Here are a few other passages that I enjoyed more because of writing style than content:

“It wasn’t meant to be, Khala Jamila had said. Or, maybe, it was meant not to be.”

“A creative writing teacher at San Jose State used to say about clichés: ‘Avoid them like the plague.’ Then he’d laugh at his own joke. The class laughed along with him, but I always thought clichés got a bum rap. Because, often, they’re dead-on. But the aptness of the clichéd saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliché. For example, the “elephant in the room” saying. Nothing could more correctly describe the initiation moments of my reunion with Rahim Khan.”

“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”

Everyone Should Write.

I began to describe why I love to write in 25. My Blog Blog. Here is a more concise and eloquently written explanation, courtesy of @ThoughtCatalog.

"Writing is hard work. It’s smoothing, and polishing, and tucking in the elbows of each paragraph. It’s voice and technique and practice. It’s mastering style with form, power with control. And I think I know what it’s all for. It’s for getting closer to the page. It is for getting closer to yourself, to get yourself closer to the page."

"Writing also makes us vulnerable. Yet if we don’t write, we are vulnerable just the same. It is only that writing makes us think about things, codify them, and chisel them into stone. People can look at it, hold it in their hands, judge it. But the thing is, I think, that with time and mortality as facts of life there is only one judgement that means anything: to ourselves — who we were, and what we believed."

Read more at http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/everyone-should-write/#2pc2e0gG2T8tIyDl.99 

Kafka On The Shore.

I recently finished reading Haruki Murakami's Kafka On The Shore. I began the novel in an attempt to start a book club within my team here in Gothenburg, but the book's strange cover, summary, and themes scared a few of my teammates away. I, on the other hand, was instantly enthralled. I haven't been submersed in a true story in a long while, and it felt important to be living in two worlds temporarily.

I could not do a summary justice or even accurately express my feelings about it. The only way I can describe it is: provocative and paradoxically spellbinding. Murakami has a way of being so simple, and yet every word seems both loaded and symbolic. Here are a few of my favorite excerpts: 

"Miss Saeki looks at me for a while, and the smile fades away. 'Picture a bird perched on a thin branch,' she says. 'The branch sways in the wind, and each time this happens the bird's field of vision shifts. You know what I mean?'

I nod.

'When that happens, how do you think the bird adjusts?'

I shake my head. 'I dont know.'

'It bobs its head up and down, making up for the sway of the branch. Take a good look at birds next time it's windy. I spend a lot of time looking out that window. Don't you think that kind of life would be exhausting? Always shifting your head every time the branch you're on sways.'"

...

"Perhaps most people in the world aren't trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It's all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real pickle. You'd better remember that. People actually prefer not being free." 

...

"'There must be a limit to that kind of lifestyle, though,' she says. 'You can't use that strength as a protective wall around you. There's always going to be something stronger that can overcome your fortress. At least in theory.'

'The strength I'm looking for isn't the kind where you win or lose. I'm not after a wall that'll repel power coming from outside. What I want is the kind of strength to be able to absorb outside power, to stand up to it. The strength to quietly endure things -- unfairness, misfortune, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings.'

'That's got to be the most difficult strength of allt o make your own.'"

For Those Who Want To Lead, Read

"...But deep, broad reading habits are often a defining characteristic of our greatest leaders and can catalyze insight, innovation, empathy, and personal effectiveness."

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/for_those_who_want_to_lead_rea.html

Wild. From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail.

The Press women in my family recently decided to start our own baby book club. And so, at my mother's recommendation, I picked up Cheryl Strayed's Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail. Within minutes, I was transported 5,000+ miles back to my home state, but into depths I never knew existed. Hours later, I was looking through my google calendar to find an 100 day gap for me to begin my solo backpacking trip on the PCT. If you're looking for a little inspiration, I highly recommend it! Here are some of my favorite Wild moments:

"I had diverged, digressed, wandered, and become wild. I didn’t embrace my new name [Strayed] because it defined negative aspects of my circumstances or life, but because even in my darkest days—those very days in which I was naming myself—I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn’t have known before."

"But walking along a path I carved for myself- one I hoped was the PCT- was the opposite of using heroin. The trigger I’d pulled in stepping into the snow made me more alive to my senses than ever. Uncertain as I was as I pushed forward, I felt right in my pushing, as if the effort itself meant something. That perhaps being amidst the undesecrated beauty of the wildnerness meant I too could be undescrated, regardless of what I’d lost or what had been taken from me, regardless of the regrettable things I’d done to others or myself or the regrettable things that had been done to me. Of all the things I’d been skeptical about, I didn’t feel skeptically about this: the wilderness had a clarity that included me."

"It had been so silent in the wake of that commotion, a kind of potent silence that seemed to contain everything. The songs of the birds and the creak of the trees. The dying snow and unseen gurgling water. The glimmering sun. The certain sky. The gun that didn’t have a bullet in its chamber. And the mother. Always the mother. The one who would never come to me."