Prologue

Over the years, I’ve worked harder and harder to find meaning in life. But the more I've looked, the more I’ve wondered if I was going about my search the wrong way.

I've been looking for meaning through experience, but I think now that I've always had it backwards. Life will never be defined by extravagant experience, but about finding extravagance in common experience. So for 2009, I'm going to focus less on living large, and focus more on living well. Each month I'll start a new month-long project (like trying to run 3 miles faster than George Bush), to find uncommon results from common experience. Each project will involve daily activity, so every day of 2009 you can check my progress on the monthly projects and see what I discover.

None of these projects will cost much—in fact, I think most will be free. So if you're looking for a year uncommonly rich, you can join me. There's no membership required, just participate and comment if you want. Either way, get ready for a year I hope is unlike any other.

Epilogue

I stumbled across the finish line, but I manage to complete 8 of the month-long projects successfully. Blogging is now over at Wonderfam!

It's February, and February was a …

A Month of Accomplishment (about)

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Forcing myself to finish something (about)

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Ye shall know a man by his leather

Written by Nathan on January 3, 2009 at 5:50 pm from A Month of Resolve.

There are many ways in which I’m ill prepared for this running project. I haven’t run in months. I don’t even know the specific time that Bush ran that I’m trying to run.

But I don’t think my shoes will far among my list of mistakes. I don’t have running shoes—in fact, I haven’t owned a pair in ages. I did think about buying a pair, but in the past my experiences with running shoes have been mixed. New-shoe blisters, awkward builds, ugly style (I’m looking at you Asics).

So I’m stuck with my Nike Total 90 Shift indoor soccer shoes (they’ve gotten uglier in the last year!). They’re proved adequate during the indoor soccer I’ve played, and work well when I’ve worked out in the recent past. They’re new enough that they’re still ok to run in, and old enough to be free of surprises.

Of course, these are the same line of shoes that were reportedly behind England soccer star, Wayne Rooney’s broken foot a year back, so perhaps this is a bad move. I did also seriously injure my right ankle 18 months ago in this pair of shoes, but I think that was largely the product of the weight of the person who landed on my ankle.

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