Satchel Paige’s Rules For Staying Young

As the new year dawns I thought it might be appropriate to pass on some morsels of wisdom from Satchel Paige.

Paige is widely regarded as the greatest Negro Leagues pitcher of all time, and might have proven to be the greatest pitcher of all time period had he been allowed to pitch in the Major Leagues while he was still in his prime. Regardless of this, it’s probably safe to say that he was one of the top five pitchers in history, and as someone who pitched professionally into his 50s, is probably qualified to give the following advice:

Rules for Staying Young

1. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
4. Go very light on the vices, such an carrying on in society—the social ramble ain’t restful.
5. Avoid running at all times.
6. And don’t look back—something might be gaining on you.

I’m not sure about number 5, but the rest sure sound pretty good.

How I Did In 2008

Just over a year ago, at the start of 2008, I did something and made a list of New Year’s resolutions for The Doc File. With 2008 being completed, I guess now is a good time to go back and give the list a glance-over to see how well I did:

1. Blog on a more regular basis. Specifically, I mentioned that I’d like to blog three times a week. That would come out to roughly 150 posts in a year, and last year, I posted 100 times exactly.

Verdict: 2/3 Success. I’ll renew this resolution for 2009.

2. Blog with more balance. With this resolution, I was decrying the tendency I have to get into ruts when I blog and I even suggested dedicating certain days to certain types of posts.

Verdict: Failure, but I’ve also decided it was a stupid resolution. I’ll try to balance out topics as much as possible, but I’m not going to not post something just because it’s on a similar topic to a recent post.

3. When you start a “series,” finish it. Looking back, it seems like I did continue to struggle with some series, but I did finally bring the abortion series to a conclusion, and I was pleased with that.

Verdict: Partial Success. Still room for improvement.

4. Do a better job responding to comments. I think I responded to virtually all of my commenters in 2008, and I think I generally did so in a timely fashion (sometimes comments were sent to my Bulk mail folder, and I didn’t become aware of them at first).

Verdict: Success. I’ll try for more of the same in 2009.

Summary:
Out of four resolutions, it looks like I successfully followed through with about 2 1/2, which comes out to roughly 63%. That’s not so good on a report card, or as a slogan either (“63% Successful Since 2008!”), but I guess I’ll take it.

Busy-ness

I’m in the middle (sadly, I’m not quite to the middle yet) of a particularly busy week. In general, I’ve been quite a bit busier since my job changed somewhat at the beginning of the year, which I expected, but this week, everything seems to be piling up.

In addition to my regular work, I have a couple of ongoing projects that I’m trying to finish up, and I have to preach this Sunday, so I’m trying to get ready for that as well. I don’t hate preaching (I don’t love it either), but it is frustrating how much time of preparation it takes for me to produce a relatively short message (my sermons rarely go much beyond the 15-minute mark.). On top of that, the church secretary has the week off, which means I have to do a good portion of her work as well—I spent nearly an hour this morning either on the phone or dealing with people who came in.

If this is all starting to sound like an excuse for what has so far been a miserable failure at living up to one of my blogging New Year’s Resolutions, well, I guess that’s what it is. I’ll try to do better.

…And In With The New

A new year is here, which, among other things means that there have been a lot of people out walking and running, trying to get in shape as part of their New Year’s Resolutions.

I think New Year’s Resolutions tend to get a bad rap, often because people don’t take them seriously and fail to live up to them past January or so. But make no mistake—there’s nothing wrong with trying to improve yourself, and I think it’s admirable to do so.

Although I haven’t written a formal list, I do have some areas that I want to improve on this year. Some I don’t have complete control over (I’d really like to avoid any hospital stays or car accidents this year), while others are pretty much up to me (I want to exercise more and get in shape, and also spend more time reading, both Scripture and just in general).

However, my resolutions aren’t limited to me personally; there are some for The Doc File as well:

1. Blog on a more regular basis.

Clearly, I’m off to a poor start on this one.

When I first started this blog, I only posted when I had something to say that I thought was deep or really worthwhile. The problem with this was that it meant that I only posted a couple of times each month. Since then, I’ve improved the frequency of my blogging (by writing a lot of things that, whatever they may be, are certainly not deep and probably not all that worthwhile either), but I’ve still been wildly inconsistent about this.

I really don’t think I’m a blog everyday type of guy (at least not yet), but my goal for 2008 will be to write three days a week. We’ll see how it goes.


2. Blog with more balance.

I write about a lot of different stuff. That’s okay, because a lot of different subjects interest me, and my half-dozen semi-regular readers have wildly varied interests. That being said, I tend to get in ruts when I blog—I’ll have three or four posts about sports, then some posts about theology or religion, then several completely random posts that have nothing to do with anything. Instead, I’d like to be a little more structured. Maybe I’ll post about certain things on certain days. I don’t know yet.

3. When you start a “series,” finish it.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. I have a couple of “series” that aren’t really “series” at all because they are comprised of a single, solitary post. This is annoying.

4. Do a better job responding to comments.

It’s not like I’m getting dozens of comments for each post, so there’s really no reason for it to take me a week to respond to a comment sometimes.

There are probably more goals that I could/should make, but I’ve already published four in black and white, and really, that’s intimidating enough. I’ll just start with these.

Out With The Old Year…

When I look back on 2007, I don’t think of it as a bad year, but in a lot of ways, it was certainly a stressful one, filled with a number of unexpected events.

The unexpected events began in January, when I decided not to pursue Masters Degree in Spanish. This left me somewhat suddenly without direction in life, which, though not an unfamiliar position for me, is certainly an uncomfortable one. The fact that I reached the decision after the long process of getting into graduate school, buying textbooks and starting the semester didn't really help things.

And that was just the beginning. Soon after, Caroline’s great-grandmother passed away somewhat unexpectedly, and we traveled to Alabama for the funeral. A couple months later, we were all very surprised to learn that my grandmother was very sick, which led to two sudden trips to Colorado (once to see her and once for her funeral).

On top of that, factor in two car accidents (I’m really not a bad driver, I promise), two hospital visits, one of which included surgery, and at times, some fairly significant work-related stress, and you get a pretty decent idea of what my 2007 was like.

A lot of good things happened in 2007 as well, and like I said, it wasn’t exactly a bad year, but at the same time, I’m not really sad to see it go.