I’ll Be Happy When
June 1, 2003

Do you ever get the feeling that life is about to begin? I mean, yes, it’s happening now and everything, but we’re more or less just hanging and life will really, really start, as soon as one or two more things are complete. As soon as the escrow goes through or when the annual sales meeting at the end of the month is finally out of the way; as soon as we lose 20 more pounds or when we’re at last married, divorced, graduated, healed, promoted, respected, recognized or huge. Then, life will be in our hands, understandable, manageable, enjoyable and everlasting. We will be whole and at peace to live life each day, every day, one fabulous day at a time. Smell those roses, man, smell those roses!

In the meantime we wait with bated breath, our brow creased with unknowing and that persistent, eternal tension in the middle of our back. Our focus is fixed on the obstacles -- the things -- the two or more big things wedged between us and all else.

We’ll prepare ourselves and arrange our surroundings and secure our relationships. We’ll consider how life should be and put things in their proper order and fix what’s broke. And the sooner all this is accomplished, the sooner we can get on with life and all its promise.

Hurry, jump, run… pant, pant… hurdle… gasp… are we there yet? Rush, dash, dodge… I sit here typing, thinking and wondering and am convinced that the grand game will commence with the completion of this newsletter. Sure, Bomber…later… next week or the one that follows… June 21st maybe.

I have news -- for you and for me. This is it. Life is here, now, unfolding before our eyes. Wake up… rise and shine... look and see, touch and feel, breathe in the sweet fragrance.

Plans are good, organization is important and order makes a lot of sense. Goals are absolutely essential. Set them wisely and keep them within grasp. Life without them is a maze.

But our days are too often spent elsewhere -- in anticipation and pursuit and preparation and not here this moment in the action of real life, the act of being.

We ought not live our life with our objectives controlling our moving and breathing and seeing and doing. “When I accomplish my goals, surely life will begin.” Surely it will not, if it hasn’t already. Our life is our actions, including our mental, spiritual and emotional presence, in pursuit of our goals.

I believe in trying to get there -- that place where life and its promises begin -- we discover there is no such place. If there was we passed it by and didn’t notice, didn’t visit, or it’s where we are now as we look toward tomorrow. I don’t mean Zen and all that transcendental stuff, which for me is like putting the right-hand glove on the left hand. I’m talking about something real, sensible, essential and doable. Something tangible, like the weights in our hands and the sweat on our brow, the muscles under resistance and that lean steak on our plate and the salad on the side.

With each passing day we become more and more removed from life. Societies in their respective cultures and modernity are staggering, faltering, trying to keep up with progress.

Many of us are out of step and out of time with ourselves, our actions and our purpose. We’re not here, now -- the only place. We’re there, later -- an imaginary place. We need to make a concerted effort to be aware of what we do as we do it and to do it well, to the best of our abilities.

“Yeah, yeah. Right, Draper. Like taking out the garbage and flushing the toilet. Visitations With The Dumpster and I am one with the commode. Ohmm…”

You are close, very close, little wise guy mosquito.

I’m not referring to the mundane things of life, bombers. I’m talking about the more consequential undertakings like flying fast, training hard and eating right.

Great workouts are defined by the might displayed in the exercises and the energy sustained throughout the training session. The pump achieved and the burn endured are factors of no less importance when describing workout superiority. Attitude and mood decide the input and output.

As you have by now observed, we bombers are not always in control of everything. I have had record-setting squat sessions while the workout itself was uncertain and incomplete. I have gone longer and harder in the gym on some weird days, yet felt forced and unfulfilled. And, peculiarly, I have trained bitterly with painful injuries and experienced new highs in exercise connection and training awareness. What’s that all about?

The greatest workouts are when you’re in the Zone, when you flow, when you’re involved in each set and rep, exercise after exercise: uninterrupted, unquestioning, concentrated, experiencing, discovering, engaging, warm and loose.

My best workouts are achieved when:

Internally…

• I maintain my mental focus from start to finish.
  
• I am determined, even-paced yet unhurried. I achieve a rhythm.
  
• I am comfortable and at ease without compromising the intense training edge. This indicates confidence and the calm that accompanies it.
  
• With each movement I carefully assume my pre-exercise body position and intuitively powerize (psyche) and oxygenize to assure maximum output. This represents the start and revving of the engine as the stockcar prepares to come off the line in the trials.
  
• The workout, the sets and the reps are important, but they’re not a matter of life and death. They’re a matter of quality. They have detail, atmosphere and direction, sound and silence, heat, black, white and color.
  
• Each set is approached with high regard, near affection. Every set has its own environment, casting light in a dark place.
  
• Each repetition is acknowledged, understood, almost studied and finally recorded in the system forever. Each rep has its own character and role, the good, the bad and the ugly.
  
• The workout, entirely or any single part of it, is a thing to be accomplished, achieved, attained, aspired toward and not a thing to be gotten out of the way. It is a sure investment, another step, one more concrete block in place.
  
• I apply discipline and yet maintain freedom from depressing training restrictions: concentrate, don’t castigate. Look, listen… and talk rarely (hi, how are ya, I’m okay, you’re okay, end of conversation).

Externally…

• I have no other immediate responsibilities or distractions and no time limit.
  
• I train regularly within the same timeframe.
  
• I load with a Bomber Blend protein shake (16 ounces reduced-fat milk, 2 scoops Blend, banana and two raw eggs, ice) creatine and Nitromax (BCAAs by Anabol Naturals).
  
• I am accompanied on the gym floor by a thermogenics drink, a liter of water and a variety of wraps.
  
• I am wearing a favorite ugly, tight and neck-less T-shirt. Snugness encourages the weakling within.
  
• The gym floor has a dozen cool lifters going about their business.
  
• The music is not blasting and obnoxious… “My baby left me for a convicted serial killer and I feel like drowning in a bucket of warm beer.”

I train four days a week and I manage eight good workouts out of 10. The two workouts that aren’t good aren’t bad. It’s just that the other eight are so good I tend to overtrain and need more repair time. Life’s rolling along and I feel fine. Weight is back in the low-220s consistently without ice cream (lost 7-8 pounds on the book tours during another lifetime). The diet is, in fact, high-protein, low-carb immaculate. I’m stronger, safer, more training-aggressive and less body-critical at the higher bodyweight. At 215 the search for more abs and veins and striations drives me nuts. Nothing new in injuries and the devils I know are no worse. It’s the training focus, bombers, and careful attention to exercise execution, workout regularity and the refusal to crash, if I have anything to say about, by God.

Just giving you my semi-annual “old guy” report, in case some new readers are wrinkling their noses and saying, “Who cares?” If you’ve read this far, you can say anything you want.

Board your fine craft. Let the sorties begin… DD

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