But the truth is the things that happened last December have continued to have lasting impact on our family. Our daily life got turned upside-down, as we reckconed with the problem of Elaine's chronic migraines. They are debilitating, and while there have been moments, days, sometimes weeks of respite, the migraines always seem to be on the peripheral — an wanted house guest that has decided to make its way into our daily rhythms.

In many ways, life is "the same." I still work for Green Line, the girls still go to school, I still coach. Much of life now, however, is tinged with a melancholy that is hard to describe to people who do not have a similar experience. We are constantly trying to find new ways of fighting the migraines, constantly looking for the potential solution to the problem, and always wavering between a hope that things will get better and an acceptance that we are living in some kind of new normal.

The truth is also that our lives are strangely, severely cut through with new glimpses of the beauty surrounding us. In January and February, we were completely surrounded by the love and support of family and church community folks. I learned all year long that I have far more energy to give to my family than I ever thought possible before. We have all come to a deeper appreciation of our faith; I'm even praying and reading scripture regularly again, and often find myself wondering if pastoral work may be in my (distant, distant future).

It's true what they say. It is often the experiences in life you would never choose, the ones you avoid at all costs, that help tranform you into the person you ought to be. I can tell you that I will never, ever look at 2025 with any kind of simple fondness. But I may look at it as the year that changed me, that changed our family, that helped us to become strong and courageous and to learn to have faith again.

Music

Favorite Songs

As always, I've tried to keep track of my favorite songs of the year. The ones I returned to over and over again:

Spotify Wrapped didn't capture much of this because I used Apple Music as a test from August to October.

Favorite Albums

Not as big of a hip-hop year for me, especially in terms of new releases. Many of these albums are older, because I was heavily influenced by the Last Song Standing series this year on the best albums of the 21st century. My biggest, favorite albums this year:

• Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party - Hayley Williams
• Discovery - Daft Punk
• Snipe Hunter - Tyler Childers
• The Blueprint - Jay-Z
• Welcome to my Blue Sky - Momma

Movies

Lots of new movies were "meh" this year. Mid as the kids say.

• Inception - rewatch with Lyla, with her watching for the first time. Her mind was blown.
• K Pop Demon Hunters - okay, so it was actually good
• Marvel: Thunderbolts, Fantastic 4, Captain America: BNW (Thunderbolts was not bad, FF was just "okay", Captain America was pretty weak)
• Together (strange)
• Meet the Roses - provided some laughs, probably forgettable
• Superman (7.5/10)
• Materialists - one note the entire movie, boring
• Mickey 17 (weird, but okay sci-fi)
• The Woman in Cabin 10 - meh
• Companion - solid, Black Mirror-esque
• The Assessment - great concept, pretty bleak
• A House of Dynamite - not exactly realistic but a great thriller
• Wicked: For Good - okay, not even close to the first movie
• Sinners - a surprising vampire movie, enjoyable
• Die My Love
• My Neighbor Totoro
• Kiki's Delivery Service - these two Studio Ghiblis were maybe my favorite watches of the year
• Zootopia 2 - standard Pixar fare

TV

• The Pitt - show of the year, and it came out in January
• Andor - maybe I take back show of the year for the above, this was also incredible
• Your Friends & Neighbors - never disappointed with Jon Hamm
• Love is Blind (season whatever) - as always, trashy and great
• The $1 House - Tia Weston's YouTube channel, which we now look forward to every Sunday
• The Diplomat
• The Bear season 4
• Nobody Wants This season 2
• Pop Culture Jeopardy!
• US Open
• The Four Seasons
• Black Mirror season 7
• Daredevil (season 3 and Born Again), season 3 was definitely a top tier season of television

Books

• Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
• Dune (reread) - Frank Herbert
• Dark Matter - Blake Crouch
• The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (reread) - Susanna Clarke
• Prey - Michael Crichton
• Daniels Running Formula - Jack Daniels
• The Dream Hotel - Laila Lalami
• Annihilation (reread) - Jeff VenderMeer
• Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
• Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky
• The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
• The Deep Places - Ross Douthat
• Your Money or Your Life - Vicki Robin, Joe Dominguez
• Persepolis Rising - James S. A. Corey
• Tiamat's Wrath (finishing now) - James S. A. Corey
• Dilla Time - Dan Charnas

Everything Else

• One major milestone was my goal over the summer of training for a 5:30 1600m. I trained myself all summer using the Daniels' Running Formula method, and boy did it work. I started the summer at 6:00 flat, and by Labor Day was able to run a 5:36. I have not been that fast since high school, so that was a fun experiment.
• Speaking of running, the cross country season was excellent this year. I also used much of the running formula to help train the team, and nearly all students PRed at the state meet, along with all running PRs at some point during the season.
• I know a lot about migraines. And treatments for migraines.
• I became the athletic director for the girls' school. TBD if that was a good idea or a terrible one.
• A couple hunting trips throughout the year, and although I'm sure I've gotten my own birds before, a recent trip resulted in me nailing a teal with 100% certainty! (no one else was shooting at the time). Felt like a big moment.
• Favorite podcasts this year were The Bible Project, Ross Douthat's Interesting Times, some Ezra Klein Show, the returned Heavyweight, and Last Song Standing/Dissect

But what if Christianity is not water? What if, instead, we understand the Christian era as a clearing in a forest? The forest is paganism: dark, wild, vigorous, and menacing, but also magical in its way. For two thousand years, Christians pushed the forest back, with burning and hacking, but also with pruning and cultivating, creating a garden in the clearing with a view upward to heaven.

-Louis Perry, "We Are Repaganizing"

Great and thought-provoking piece from a 'non-Christian.'

This particular quote connected for me to the recent Bible Project series on the wilderness, an excellent theme study of how the notion of the wilderness shows up in the Old and New Testaments, and how they are connected to the Creation narrative, Israel's ancient history, and Jesus' life.

One of the ideas surrounding the wilderness in Genesis is that the Garden of Eden itself is surrounded by the wilderness, and that is where the humans are cast out after the Fall. Throughout the Old Testament stories, the wilderness is a place where God's abundant life is not often found, outside of "little gardens" or surprise encounters. God often also uses the wilderness to teach and prepare humans for what he has for them. This particular quote brought this to mind though — the wilderness is something constantly encroaching or surrounding the fertile places. It's a harsh place. Not necessarily devoid of life, but devoid of abundance and God's generous good gifts.

In Perry's piece, she notes that the world looks like it's repaganizing, turning to "older" ways in which humans have structured society. She sees Christianity as a small area in a dark, wild forest. A place where humans have cultivated societies which actively care for the poor and weak. Given that this has not historically been the norm for human societies (quite the opposite), she views the historical period we've lived through as an anomaly, one that has had paganism encroaching on it, waiting to overtake it. Much like the wilderness in the Creation narrative.

I'm still friends with the former co-pastor, who was in his early forties at the time. His spouse (and the other co-pastor) was a little younger, I believe in her late thirties.

I myself had just flipped into my thirties, and the remainder of staff were in roughly the same age range.

After the co-pastors were asked to resign for various reasons, I stayed on a bit longer to continue to walk with the community. I don't know if I can say I had much of a goal at that point except to continue to do the pastoral work I had taken on at that point, and potentially help lead (preferably not on my own) that community.

However, it quickly became clear that my theological commitments were VERY different from the remainder of the board's, and apparently some of the staff as well. They were not interested in my taking on any form of additional leadership, and in fact, my commitments and their own were at odds. It was at that point in my own life that I began to find my way back to some form of orthodoxy — particularly a commitment to the three big Creeds as my own theological baseline. (A surprise to me and the people around me, I assure you.)

Anyway, I'm supposed to make this story "short." There I quickly found it was time for me to move on. After much reflection over the course of the year that followed, a big takeaway for me and Elaine was how unwise I think it is for leaders of churches to be young — especially those in "top" positions or without oversight from a board with older folks on them. What life experience, on average, do people in their thirties really have? I'm not saying none, and I'm not saying people in their thirties shouldn't do pastoral work. But to lead a church, to try to help families and individuals grow in wisdom, to sit with people in the darkest and brightest of moments, to encourage failing marriages and splitting families? It is so incredibly strange to me that we have this culture in America where men and women in their twenties and thirties are placed in these kinds of roles and expected to do this work, often alone.

I was reminded of this when reading this article on the NYT about ChatGPT's handling of 4o and how many people were deeply affected in negative ways when using the chatbot. Key quote:

Earlier this year, at just 30 years old, Nick Turley became the head of ChatGPT. He had joined OpenAI in the summer of 2022 to help the company develop moneymaking products, and mere months after his arrival, was part of the team that released ChatGPT. Mr. Turley wasn’t like OpenAI’s old guard of A.I. wonks. He was a product guy who had done stints at Dropbox and Instacart. His expertise was making technology that people wanted to use, and improving it on the fly. To do that, OpenAI needed metrics.

Earlier the article notes just how quickly ChatGPT usage has grown. Somethint like 800 million weekly users, the fastest growing tech company ever, etc. My first thought: why in the world is a 30 year old in charge of this product? I already have my misgivings about it anyway, but my God. Wisdom and life experience don't always go hand in hand. There are plenty of elderly CEOs and CTOs that make bad decisions. But we know this product has a deep effect on the human mind. We know people are using it extensively. And OpenAI put a thirty year old as the head of their main product, presumably to increase engagement? No one questioned this at all?

This is probably a problem everywhere. But now that I'm solidly in my mid-thirties, all I can see in myself is just how much life I have not lived. How much I still have to grow and learn. Maybe we ought to think about how much we let systems and products and technologies into our lives that have been built by human beings that lack life experience.

Step 2 of the book details a simple (but not easy!) step on the path to financial health/independence. Robin says the only way to be up front and honest about your spending is track every cent in and out. It's been a LONG time since we've done this — the last time was back when we first got married and literally had our income converted to cash and put in envelopes so we could only spend what we made and not a penny more.

So, since the beginning of October, I've started doing just that. Every cent in and out is now tracked in a spreadsheet, with a few extra fields for things like account/category/subcategory, etc. Prior to this, I had a "general" idea about how much we spent on average, but it has been a good practice so far, and my goal is to continue to do this every day.

The overall point, though, I think is deeper than simply this budgeting/financial piece in our lives. Money is necessarily a big part of how we orient our lives, so it's a good place to start. But since I started doing this earlier in October, I've tried to view it like I'm "brushing my teeth" every day. I never, ever miss brushing my teeth. I have one set of them, I'd like to keep them healthy as long as possible, and I like having fresh breath. Not to mention, brushing my teeth isn't even something I think about doing. I just do it because I do it.

I've been thinking a lot about how there are plenty of other areas in our lives that probably ought to be the same way. Tracking all our transactions? Probably needs to be a brush your teeth thing. I have a set amount of money coming in every month. I would like to retire someday, and I would like to be prepared for major expenses. The best way to start to get a real sense of this is by tracking transactions daily.

Cleaning the common areas of the house? Brush your teeth.

Basic car maintenance (something I'm falling into an obsessive YouTube rabbit hole about)? Brush your teeth.

Exercise / fitness? Brush your teeth.

Perhaps one can get a little overly obsessive about this, but on some level this is like... the task of life, right? Later in the book, Robin gives other steps for her financial life plan to set you on a new path. One of those things is to go back through your daily transactions and note whether something positively, negatively, or neutrally affected your life. Did it bring you closer to the kind of person you want to be?

In the same way, perhaps "brushing your teeth" in all of these areas (or the areas that are important to you) eventually gives you some impetus to evaluate what actually matters to you. Since you're checking in on this thing daily or weekly or whatever, you start to get a sense of which things are just taking up your time and space when you actually don't want that in your life. Vice versa, even if you "don't like" brushing your teeth in some area or another, you may continue to do so because you know the outcome is worth the value it brings to your life.

I'm attempting to grapple with this book though, so I'm tackling it like I would tackle a textbook in a class. My science background is woefully inadequate, so I'm also trying to supplement with LLMs and trusted sources like Khan Academy. Very possible I get things wrong here, but the hope is that I come out on the other side a better and more informed coach and athlete!

Chapter 1 - Muscle Structure and Function

Notes and Quotes

Structural Components of Skeletal Muscles

• There are three major types of muscle in the body:

1. Cardiac
2. Skeletal
   • broken into Type I and Type II fibers, discussed later
3. Smooth

The primary focus of this chapter is on skeletal muscle, as this type of muscle is the biggest contributor (cardiac to a lesser extent) to athletic/running performance.

• Muscles are made up of bundles of muscle fibers. Muscle fibers in turn are made up of bundles of rods called myofibrils. Myofibrils in turn are made up of sarcomeres (stacked on top of each other). Sarcomeres are made up of myofilaments which lie parallel to one another. These myofilaments are made up of a "center" thick filament made of myosin molecules and thinner "outer" filaments made of actin molecules. Myosin and actin interact with one another in a complex way (mentioned below) to produce muscle contraction (concentric shortening, eccentric lengthening).

• For energy, triglycerides (fat droplets) and mitochondria, along with glycogen stores are dispersed throughout the sarcomere. Mitochondria and fat droplets can produce energy with and without the to the mitochondria, where enzymes convert this energy into lood supply. With the blood supply, blood droplets energy from food ATP (adenosine triphosphate — the body's main energy currency). Triglycerides (three fatty acid molecules linked to a glycerol molecule) are broken down by triglyceride lipase -- also broken down by mitochondria to provide energy to muscles. Again, this can happen both from the bloodstream and "non-aerobically" (NOT anaerobically, a different thing). When the fat in muscles is directly used by mitochondria, the glycerol is transported to the liver, turned into glucose. This is important for prolonged energy needs.

• The glycogen stored in sarcomeres is the other non-aerobic method mitochondria gain access to energy.

Biochemical Events of Muscle Contraction

• The myosin molecules (making up the thick filaments) have "heads" that have a kind of attraction to the actin molecules of the thin filaments. In resting state, the attraction is blocked physically by tropomyosin molecules. To start the muscle contraction, the brain sends a neurological signal via the peripheral nerve surrounding the muscle fiber to the motor nerve end plate. This signal releases acetylcholine to a special receptor on the muscle cell, which causes a new electrical signal to travel down the transverse tubules of the muscle cell.

• From this point, (unclear on the mechanism), calcium stored in the sarcoplasmic reticulum is released. This "moves" the tropomyosin molecules (via a binding to troponin-C, a receptor that is attached to the actin/tropomyosin) allowing the myosin heads to attach to the actin molecules.

• At this point, the myosin head goes through a cycle, where in the ATP stored in the myosin head is broken down into ADP and Pi, the myosin head "bends" at a 45 degree angle (potentially there is a different model here, as this doesn't fully account for eccentric contraction), which pulls the actin filaments toward the center of the sarcomere.

• This fully contracted position is called the "rigor complex". To break this rigor complex, mitochondria supplies fresh ATP at the ATP binder on the myosin head, and the calcium is removed from the troponin-C receptor.

• The rate at which this occurs determines the speed the muscle can move. The total number of these "cross bridges" determines the power of the muscle. The speed of the contraction is determined by how fast ATP is bound and split on the myosin head. Power is also determined by the amount of calcium bound to troponin-C receptors.

Types of Muscle Fibers

• Type I fibers are usually red due to the higher content of myoglobin, have a higher concentration of mitochondria, and are considered "slow twitch" meaning a lower myosin ATPase activity. Usually endurance athletes have a higher perecentage of these.

• Type II fibers are a little more complex and there is a spectrum, but generally they are white, with a lower myoglobin content and lower mitochondrial concentration. Considered "fast twitch", though IIa fibers can closely resemble Type I. Type IIb are "traditional" Type II fibers.

• During exercise, the brain goes through a recruitement phase where Type I are recruited first, then Type IIa, then Type IIb.

• The body's composition of these fibers are somewhat genetically determined, but exercise can change the makeup here as well. The recruitment of these types and their exhaustion have various explanations, including energy depletion, but also neurological patterns, and the brain's use of different receptors to determine the body's oxygen, temperature, and glucose supply (these receptors help the body to protect itself from brain or heart damage).

Concentric and Eccentric Muscle Contractions

• Not much to say here, except that eccentric contractions produce 2x force as concentric contractions, meaning depending on their use they are more likely to be the cause of muscle or tendon injury.

• Weight training (both concentric and eccentric) has been shown to aid in running performance, especially eccentric movement. Runners often benefit from weight training, but not necessarily the other way around (i.e., running can inhibit the ability to gain strength). Most likely strength training helps due to the "neuromuscular adaptations from lifting that ensure muscle activation [during running/racing] remains high."