What Day of the Week Has The Worst Commute?

New Jersey commuters are the third most likely in the nation to have what's known as an extra-long commute (after New York and Maryland), with almost 15 percent of us reporting an average one-way commute of an hour or longer.  I am fortunate to not have this long of a commute - it takes me about 40-45 minutes to get to work in the morning, and about 50 minutes in the evening (my work day has an abnormal start time, which is an advantage saving me about five to ten minutes per morning commute).

As I was driving home earlier this evening - the main drag between my office and my home is a two-lane truck route, so I spend this time exposed to diesel exhaust from heavy-duty trucks, thinking about the science of commuting while listening to Jason Ellis on XM Radio - I wondered, what day of the work week has (on average) the longest commutes, independent of seasonal fluctuations such as summer Shore traffic?

I was surprised to Google search this and come up with absolute bubkus.  Squadoosh.  A veritable bucket of yuck.  As far as I can tell, there's been no reasonable, scientific (or even quasi-scientific) attempt to determine this.

(Though I should mention: if you look at the entire week, the most dangerous day of the week to drive is Saturday, and the most dangerous month of the year to drive happens to be August.  So keeping in mind we should all stay safe this coming Saturday - I'm writing this post in August - this information is woefully unsurprising.  Weekends bring out the idiots, the inexperienced, and the unfamiliar drivers; and summer weekends are the absolute worst, because everyone is traveling someplace else.)

Virtually nobody I'm aware of studies traffic from a behavioral perspective, and this is a damn shame, because driving is such a unique experience and most of us spend too much time in traffic.  There are likely so many optimizations just waiting to be found, if someone were enterprising enough to discover and implement these improvements, they'd probably win a Nobel Prize for Awesomeness.  But since there's been (to my knowledge) no rigorous attempt to determine the day of the workweek with the worst traffic, here are my back-of-the-envelope thoughts.  Herein, I assume that the key drivers of shitty traffic are:

1. Car accidents;
2. The volume of cars on the road, where more cars obviously equals worse traffic;
3. What I'll call the "incidence of idiocy", loosely defined as non-accident-causing behavior that nonetheless turns driving into an incredible shitshow.  Think distracted drivers, upset drivers, farm equipment that can't go more than 20 mph, teenagers texting each other, etc.

To simplify things, I'll assume the incidence of car accidents is roughly equal across the five-day work week but spikes on the weekends.  This may be an oversimplification, but a quick internet search suggests it's reasonable to make.  So in the analysis that follows, I'm mainly thinking of items (2) and (3) from above:

• Monday: Mondays suck, and you could make the argument that people are worse drivers when they're in generally negative moods, leading to a greater "incidence of idiocy".  But when people take days off from work, they often take Mondays to make a three day weekend.  So even if the people on the road are more likely to be idiots, there are fewer people on the road overall.  For this reason, I think Mondays are out.  They can't be the worst day of the week.
• Friday: The same rule applies here as Monday; when people take off, they are disproportionally more likely to take a Friday off.  Friday evenings, especially in the summertime and the holiday shopping season, may be a special exception, but this has little to do with commuters.  Really, it's the presence of non-commuters (who, again, are more likely to be distracted, incompetent, and/or not know where they're going) that makes driving more dangerous.  In sum, I believe that while Fridays are probably more dangerous than Mondays, they are not the most dangerous day of the week.
• Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: Mid-week days are when office participation is at its highest.  But many offices, such as the one where I work, have started offering a work at home day in the middle of the week (ours is Wednesday), so I'd wager that Wednesday is probably less likely to have a shitty commute than Tuesday or Thursday.  (But what do I know - my wife is lucky if I shower, let alone drive anywhere, on work at home Wednesdays.)
• So, between Tuesday and Thursday, which do I pick?  Based on my own personal experience, I'd go with Thursday.  By the close of business on Thursday, people have been working for four days straight, and the various office and home stresses of the work week have started to take their toll.  Additionally, the weekend is very much in sight, so the most easily distracted people probably already have one foot into their weekends.  (Typically the brake pedal foot.)  I always pay closer attention while driving on Thursdays - especially in the evening, when many companies have after-work happy hours - and tend to drive more defensively overall.

By the way, today was a rainy Thursday.  Rainy Thursdays are the cream of the crop of shitty commutes, because you can add weather-related herping and derping to the various factors described above.  I get the fundamental idea of driving 5 mph slower when it's raining outside, but based on their driving patterns, you'd think some people are rendered completely blind by a light rain shower.  Our brakes still work in the rain!  They won't lock!  They're called anti-lock brakes for a reason.

Anyway, I'm curious whether people agree or disagree with my logic.  What's the worst day, commute-wise, for you?

A New Era of Yankees Mediocrity

Because today is the fourth of July, and because I am of a certain age, and for reasons that do not require much more explaining than this, I've spent some time this morning watching YouTube videos of the 2001 World Series.  Major League Baseball has recently made wonderful strides in releasing free, online versions of complete game feeds from important playoff games (even opening their vault for TV feeds of perfect games that happened during the regular season, on their anniversaries).  In general, when I watch these old games, I enjoy this more for the nostalgia of how the games were broadcast than the nostalgia for the specific games, to be honest.  If baseball broadcasts were movies, ten years ago they would have been simplistic, narrative-focused dramas about the players and the moment, and at present they would be product-placement-infused scream-fests directed by Michael Bay and designed for fans with Michael Bay-like attention spans.  These days, of all sports, only golf is broadcast in a way that assumes its fans have intelligence and respect for the game.

But, I digress.

I started watching the 2001 World Series this morning because (1) I wanted to remember a little bit of how it felt to be eighteen years old and watching baseball and (2) I wanted to remember a time before Joe Buck was terrible and Tim McCarver lost his mind.  (In that order.  Maybe.)  After watching about five minutes of the FOX broadcast from October 31, 2001, though, it became clear to me that I'd continue to watch for another, completely different purpose.  Before Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez completed his warm-up tosses, Buck and McCarver reminded the viewers that the Yankees were a very old team, they weren't hitting, and they were bound to look completely different the next season.

All of these things were ultimately true, as the Yankees' inability to consistently hit cost them the 2001 World Series (heroic home runs aside, the 2001 Series should have never gone even six games, let alone seven).  Of course, a reasonable argument could have been made that this Yankees team should have never made the World Series in the first place, because they were a very old team that had struggled throughout the playoffs.  Their best starting pitcher that season, Roger Clemens, was 39.  Paul O'Neill was 38 and about to retire.  Other starters (Chuck Knoblauch, David Justice, Scott Brosius) were younger, but limited by ineffectiveness and at the tail end of their careers.  The 2001 Yankees were relying, ultimately, on a single middle infielder in his prime (that would be Derek Jeter), solid starting pitching, a good bullpen, and - hopefully - enough offense to scratch out a few runs and win a close game.

At the start of Game 4, the Yankees' offense was hitting .144 through the first three games of the Fall Classic.  Partly because they'd just faced Arizona's ridiculous one-two punch of Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson in two of those games, of course, but also because their offense consisted of Jeter, a hot-at-the-plate Jorge Posada, and very little else.

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We know what happened after the 2001 World Series, as well - O'Neill retired, Justice left, and the Yankees' corner outfield positions the next season consisted of some combination of Rondell White, Raul Mondesi, Shane Spencer, and the immortal John Vander Wal.  Tino Martinez left, and was replaced by the somehow-still-active-as-of-this-writing Jason Giambi.  Brosius retired and was replaced by Robin Ventura (who, to be fair, overachieved as a Yankee).  The team looked completely different in 2002, and descended into what I consider to be an eight-season prison sentence of nothingness.

I count the 2002-2008 span as "nothingness" not only because of the lack of a world championship for the Yankees (though I am sure it has something to do with it) but because of how uninteresting - if not outright loathsome to their own fans - these Yankees teams were.  Remember Kevin Brown?  Randy Johnson?  "Hot" Carl Pavano?  Tony Clark?  Ruben Sierra?  Remember when Armando Benitez was a Yankee?  (That actually happened.)

Intellectually, I get why the Yankees acquired each of the above players - they were chasing a championship because they felt their fans needed one.  And Yankees fans are, generally speaking, a fickle bunch (see picture below).  But on an emotional level, I couldn't *stand* the Yankees teams which employed the above players, Aaron Boone's 2003 ALCS heroics aside.  I always wanted the Yankees to win, sure, but I always wanted them to win with players I could actually cheer for, and it wasn't the case that those two things would align again until the 2009 season.

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This leads me to this season's Yankees team, which I've found more intriguing than any team since 2001 (which is a remarkable personal feat: in 2001 I'd just barely discovered dating, in 2013 I'm happily married, and everyone knows that guys get less interested in baseball as women get more interested in them).  If you're not a Yankees fan, or if you've been living under a rock somewhere, this year's team has been overachieving no matter how you look at it.  At the time of this writing, they are six games over .500, at 45-39, though only two of the nine players in their most common starting lineup (Robinson Cano and center fielder Brett Gardner) are hitting above league average, and though their best starting pitcher (CC Sabathia) has been underachieving.

Primarily, this team's struggles are very much like the struggles of the 2001 Yankees - they're old, fighting injuries, and are not producing enough on offense.  Of course, the 2001 Yankees won 95 games, and this season's iteration is on pace to win only about 88 to 90.  That may still be enough to get them back into the playoffs, though, given that MLB has expanded their playoff structure since 2001, and also because you can reasonably assume a stronger second half from this Yankees team (if you assume that Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Curtis Granderson, etc., are able to return and serve as upgrades over the AAA call-ups who are currently manning these positions).

If I had to guess, I still do not think the Yankees make the playoffs this year.  But if they do somehow squeak in, I'd ask anyone who is going to Vegas to put a ten-spot at their favorite sports book on the Yankees taking the whole thing, because teams that squeak in have an odd capacity to win World Series (see the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals).  And if odds on something like this ever existed, I'd ask them to put a twenty spot on the 2014 Yankees looking completely different than this team.  Pettitte, Rivera, and Kuroda will be gone.  Granderson and Cano are likely to sign elsewhere.  Jeter, who has a ton of pride, may retire rather than play out his (cheap) 2014 player option.  Alex Rodriguez, like cockroaches and Twinkies, will survive everything and play out his ridiculous contract, for all I know.  This will make the Yankees unlikeable again, for another eight seasons, perhaps.

So hate on these Yankees' lack of ability all you want - you wouldn't be lying to yourself.  But keep in mind it can, and probably will, be much worse in the future.  We are in for a decade of mediocrity, it seems.

Rutgers, Misunderstood

Rutgers University athletics is back in the news again this Memorial Day weekend, and again, it is for all the wrong reasons.  The new athletic director, Julie Hermann, hired after former AD Tim Pernetti was forced to resign in the wake of the Mike Rice scandal, apparently carries with her some baggage of her own.  Specifically, in the 1990s she resigned as head coach of the University of Tennessee women's volleyball team in the wake of a unanimous letter written by her players, describing some pretty horrible coaching methods.  Additionally, though this has been known for the past few weeks, she was found liable in 1997 in a wrongful termination lawsuit by a former assistant coach alleging that she had been fired due to wanting to become pregnant.

It is certainly possible, at this point, that the scandal will carry over to some hypothetical tipping point, and Rutgers University will end up dismissing the new athletic director for some bad decisions that happened over a decade ago.  I am not certain this would be the correct move to make, as people's behaviors and attitudes are allowed to change over time (certain things that are not politically correct to say in 2013 were way more acceptable to say in the 90's), and also as it's impossible for a person to move through the ranks in a highly competitive field such as athletics management without burning a few bridges in the process.  (In fact, some of Hermann's colleagues stepped to the plate today to dismiss yesterday's allegations.)  But, it may still happen.

With Rutgers' mismanagement of its athletics department continuing to make news, I am sure there are people within Rutgers' administration who are wondering when they will catch a break on a good thing that the school does in the mass media.  If only some professor's latest invention or cure or something would make the headlines on the nightly news the way the school's bungling their latest athletic hire does on ESPN these days.  Lately, it seems the school has been in the news for all of the wrong reasons, and the point of this blog post is to help to understand why.

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I attended Rutgers as an undergraduate between 2002 and 2006.  I graduated with a B.A. in Biology (and I did pretty well there as a student, to leave it at that).  Later, to provide some context, I attended Boston College for my master's degree - so I know what it's like to attend a school with a different philosophy (there is no such thing as a "B.C. Screw", though there is an "RU Screw," for instance).

I love Rutgers to the core, though, and while I primarily love Rutgers for the academic opportunities and high amount of value it provides to students for a quality education, I've also been a football season ticket holder since 2009 - which has been more painful than enjoyable, but hey, I am a glutton for punishment.

My first point, as an alumnus of the University, is that for the most part, Rutgers does not seek to excel - and this is perfectly okay.  Rutgers, if it had a philosophy on this - and it probably doesn't, but bear with me here - seeks to be "good enough" and a good value.  Rutgers is now experiencing the bad side of an equation it's been taking advantage of for a very long time.  Nationally, the Rutgers name exceeds what people in New Jersey think of Rutgers.  When I visit my family in Florida and meet someone new, and it comes up where I went to school, I mention Rutgers and they think "Wow, that's a great school, you must be successful."

I think Rutgers is great, and to the extent I am successful, Rutgers played a huge part in that, but think about it objectively: who goes to Rutgers?  In reality, it's a safety school that takes advantage of the fact that New Jersey graduates WAY more college-ready high school seniors than the national average (because our educational structure is pretty close to top notch, and because of genetics and having lots of smart parents here, etc.).  Any qualified honors student in a NJ public high school could write his or her ticket to any small, private liberal arts college in the U.S. - if they wanted to pay tons of money to attend.  On the flip side, the Ivy League schools have to be way more selective toward NJ students because too many are over-qualified and they seek to have a geographically diverse student body (transplant any of these NJ kids to Kansas and Princeton would admit them in a heartbeat).

So here lies Rutgers, with attractive in-state tuition and the opportunity to obtain a very good (but not world-class) education, close to home.  I could have attended a small, private, liberal-arts school, but I am so glad I attended Rutgers instead.  I write this well aware that, with the exception of one or two academic departments, Rutgers is not excellent at anything.  And of course bureaucratically, due to its complexity and uncommon dependence upon the state, Rutgers has always been a nightmare for everyone (students, professors, staff, etc.).  This bureaucratic awfulness had to have played a huge role in a few of the recent scandals - Rutgers' response to every problem is and always has been to form a committee, adding another layer of garbage and noise to the problem - but in the news coverage of the scandals, it's sort of hidden between the lines, as subtext.

This is because Rutgers' national reputation does not include any of the above truths about what Rutgers is like!  So when a series of scandals like those that have plagued the athletic department over the past few months happen, everyone in the national sports media goes "Wow, Rutgers?!  That pillar of academic excellence?!  How can they be so messed up?!"  To which every Rutgers alumni responds back with a face palm and a "Duh," because even the best students at Rutgers who excelled at everything HAVE to remember waiting in line after line, being shuffled from department to department, in order to get anything administrative accomplished while they were a Rutgers student.  That is the not-so-hidden truth about Rutgers.

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Every candidate for the athletic director position at Rutgers had to have known all the good, and the bad, about working at Rutgers. The good had to the have outweighed the bad, though, because a number of qualified candidates were finalists for the position. But "qualified" and "without warts" are two different things, which leads me to my second point: Rutgers was never going to find someone to be their AD that did not have something checkered in their past.

Here am I speculating a bit, because I do not work in this industry, but it seems reasonable to assume that college athletics are a fairly murky area with lots of potential booby traps: NCAA infractions, overzealous and hyper-competitive recruiting of top athletes, academic scandals, shady AAU coaches, etc.  There seem to be too many ways for a person to fall into possible trouble while climbing the ranks of athletic management at the university level.  And Rutgers, which - let's face it - is not known for its athletics, was also not offering a large sum of money to the athletic director.  If Hermann keeps her job, I believe she will be paid $450,000 annually - I'd take it, and you'd take it, but it's not a huge sum of money for the position and for the responsibility.

So what did we expect to get from our new AD?  Former AD Tim Pernetti was a great find, but not without risk - he did not have a traditional AD background (he came from broadcasting) and as a Rutgers alum who loved the school, he was willing to be paid what was Rutgers was willing to pay.  (I would also assume that as a former TV exec, he was already so wealthy at the time of his hire that he was thinking of the position almost like working for a non-profit, a career change that many wealthy people make at mid-career.)  And it turns out that his flaw - keeping Mike Rice on board when he should have fired him - was probably at least partially a result of his non-traditional AD background.

I am not sure if Rutgers will end up dismissing Hermann for this, but the damage has been done already.  The real problem is that the Rutgers Committee to Select the Members of the Committee to Select the Athletic Director appears to have not known something about Hermann that anyone who reads the On the Banks blog knew about two weeks ago - specifically, that wrongful termination lawsuit (with an actual jury verdict, not an out-of-court settlement) from 1997.

That, above everything else that's happened over the past few months, looks really bad for Rutgers University, and it speaks to the core of the problem, which is that Rutgers seems to be a rudderless ship, constantly reacting to these issues without ever being proactive.  Whatever his good traits, new Rutgers President Robert Barchi has shown time and time again that he has no clue, or interest in, managing a medium-profile athletics department.  Athletics, whatever its warts, is fine marketing for the University, and if Barchi can't fix this series of negative news about Rutgers very quickly, in my opinion, he needs to be dismissed as President.

What I think doesn't really matter, though - there are plenty of influential alumni boosters who have to feel the same way about this, and if your money talks and if my money talks, their money SCREAMS.  And once that goes away, the Board of Governors will have no choice except to let the big boss go.  Let's see what happens in the days and weeks ahead...

CNN: Journalism for Stupid People

Earlier today, I Facebook shared an image of the below "BREAKING NEWS" on CNN.com:

I'll get to this bullcrap in more detail in just a second, but first, some background.  I will admit that I mindlessly check the CNN.com home page a few times a day.  It's no New York Times (to be charitable), but the New York Times instituted a 10 article per month viewing limit and I try not to break it too badly.  Further, I'll admit that part of the attraction of CNN.com is watching the cars crash into each other (kind of like when the shit hits the fan and they routinely jump the gun reporting the news - did you hear the Supreme Court completely overruled health care reform last summer?). 

And besides, where else can you find amazing graphics such as what I've copied below?

Let's break down how awesomely awful this graphic (which I downloaded a few years ago but still kept on my desktop - labeled "horrible image.jpg" - because I could not believe that something this horrible and stupid made its way onto a reputable news organization's web site) is.

1. The colors are too close to each other in hue, and do not organize in any reasonable fashion: bright red for a near-certainty of default and... pastel orange for a relatively low possibility of default?  Presumably these colors should be on a spectrum of some kind, since the variable they're describing is interval in nature.
2. The legend, holy smokes, the legend.  This legend looks like it was designed by a mentally challenged third grader on bring your child to work day, or, at the very least, someone who's never seen a chart before.  
3. In order to interpret this chart, I need to look at the nation I am interested in (luckily I'm good at geography!), try to decipher the color, and then move my eyes over to the Legend That Will Burn Your Eyeballs in order to determine... Ireland has a 51% probability of default?
4. But what does that mean, exactly?  Why should I care, and how does this relate to the rest of Europe, a/k/a that amorphous grey blob in between Ireland and the rest of Southern Europe?

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Since it's such breaking news that most of us still like Obama, let's look at the article in more detail and try to figure out why the hell this is BREAKING NEWS.

President Barack Obama's personal popularity may be one reason he came out of what was arguably the worst week of his presidency with his approval rating holding steady, according to a new national poll.

Oh, I see.  CNN sponsored a research survey, and in order to maximize page views, they disguised the one potentially interesting finding in a press release labeled "BREAKING NEWS".  Because that doesn't spoil actual breaking news, like, I don't know...

The other breaking news story: THAT GIANT TORNADO THAT IS HEADING RIGHT FOR A MAJOR AMERICAN CITY. 

God, CNN is just awful.  People are about to die in a massive natural disaster in Oklahoma City, and some dumbass web editor is sitting at his or her cubicle, herping and derping about search engine optimization and new visitors because OMG, most of us still like Obama.  Sometimes I wish I lived in the 18th century.

Anyway, back to the article itself.  Hmm, President Barack Obama's personal popularity may be one reason his approval rating held steady?  Wow, this reeks of expecting a certain result in a survey, not finding it, and designing some straw man excuse for not finding the result you were looking for.


The new numbers indicate that Obama remains popular, with 79% of Americans saying the president is likable.

"This underscores just how important the president's personal characteristics have been to him, and how useful it is to the White House that IRS, Benghazi, and AP controversies have not dimmed Obama's personal popularity so far," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

Or, alternatively, it means nothing.  It means nothing because politicians are almost always inherently likable people - Bill Clinton?  Ronald Reagan?  Everyone loved those guys.  Smooth operator, that Slick Willie.  He could charm the pants off a cowboy. 

But likability has nothing to do with approval - approval exists along party lines, and likability is a personal characteristic.  So, I don't know, maybe this happened:

• The entire political machine has its head up its collective ass when it comes to interpreting and understanding research; specifically, they tend to over-state marginal differences and try to materialize stories out of the ether when no true data patterns exist.
• The political establishment thinks the American people care about Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and other issues ostensibly plaguing the Presidency.  In reality, most American people do not, and the data supporting the opposite point is rigged - specifically engineered by research companies on behalf of their journalistic-machine clients to make it look like randomly selected Americans participating in a research survey care about something they do not care about.
• Because no one cares in the universe about these issues, Obama's approval ratings don't move.
• BUT WAIT, EVERYONE CARES!  IT MUST BE BECAUSE HE'S SO DURN LIKABLE, THAT OBAMA.

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Last month, I was randomly selected to participate in Quinnipiac University's weekly political phone survey of New Jersey residents.  I was asked many "yes/no" style questions regarding my opinions on many different topics germane to current events in New Jersey.  For instance, should Mike Rice have been fired?  What about Rutgers President Barchi?  Do I approve of Governor Christie's performance regarding jobs and the economy?  Hurricane Sandy relief?

On several occasions, I did not know how to respond, so I simply said "I don't know."  But that's me being honest, and also being a survey researcher by trade and knowing that the "Don't know" option exists.  Most people, forced into a yes/no type question, will answer either yes or no.  And this is what ends up happening, as a result:

Fifty-five percent say the IRS and Benghazi matters are very important to the nation and 53% saying the same thing about the AP case.

"But that doesn't quite make either of them another Watergate - at least, not yet. Nearly two-thirds say [sic] that Watergate was very important to the nation at the time; 58% say [sic] Iran-Contra was very important during the Reagan administration," says Holland. "So Americans see the current controversies as very important - maybe as much as Iran-Contra, but not yet at Watergate levels."

First, how does something being "very important to the nation" translate to "I dislike how the President is performing, overall," even if the President were involved in the scandal (besides the point it's debatable the extent to which he knew about either issue)?

Second, I know virtually no one who thinks that the IRS, Benghazi, or AP scandals are very important to the nation - but maybe that's just my friends.  So I doubt your data's integrity, fundamentally speaking.

Third, what does it mean that Americans find these scandals roughly as important as Iran-Contra, but not as important as Watergate?  I know that Watergate got Nixon impeached and forced his eventual resignation; Iran-Contra is a blip in the history of the 1980's.  Some historical context would be useful, here.

The poll also indicates that 52% say the president can manage the government effectively. That's up 10 percentage points since the last time CNN asked the question, in 2011.

As always, Obama's Achilles heel remains policy issues. Most Americans say they don't agree with him on the size and power of the federal government.

How... how are you allowed to contradict yourself like that in the real world?  You just said one thing in Paragraph A, and the absolute opposite thing in Paragraph B.  Part and parcel of managing the government effectively is making policy decisions on the size and power of the government.  If I contradicted myself this blatantly, like, EVER, at my job, I'd get called out on it in a heartbeat.  And I'm not writing an article for the front page of a website that draws 10 gazillion page views her hour!

Seriously, did someone with a shred of common sense vet this article before going public with it?  Or were they too busy ironing out the pastel color scheme for their next incorrect use of a map, when a table would have sufficed?

Why Must We Live Someplace So Damn Expensive?

(Author's note: Occasionally I like to deep dive into personal finance topics, and this is one of those.  I swear, it'll be less boring than you think, but if this isn't your cup of tea, feel free to not read what I've painstakenly written. ::sniff::)

The projects of West Baltimore. Not where I currently live.

Like most people with a mortgage, I often fantasize about how awesome life would be if I didn't have a mortgage payment.  To me, this is the epitome of wealth; I'd keep working, and saving, and investing, but to not have to pay for the privilege to live somewhere would be the ideal way to live.  I think with the extra money I would have, I'd buy lots of socks, but wear each pair only once.

This led me to think about the practicality of ever not having a mortgage.  You see, houses in the part of New Jersey where I live are expensive.  I think there are good reasons why they are expensive - and I'll explore a few of them later in this post - but we bought our house for $375,000 two years ago, thinking we purchased a bargain, but thinking about the sheer magnitude of my mortgage payment is enough to make me wish I were paying rent again, instead.

When a person decides to live somewhere, they're not only selecting a neighborhood, a school system, and a town or city.  They're also selecting a specific micro-economy; a place where certain goods and services cost a certain amount, which is definitely different from the price your old college roommate is paying for their goods and services.  Some things, like a gallon of milk or an electric bill, cost more or less the same amount no matter where you live (with rare exception).  Others, like real estate and taxes, show incredible variance.

How much variance, you ask?  Let's take a hypothetical family, who just happens to live in the same house that my wife and I share, but in some alternate universe.  They have a household income of exactly $100,000.  After some time, they elect to move, because their $2,000 monthly mortgage payment strikes them as highway robbery, and frankly they are just plain tired of living in New Jersey - too much fist-pumping and littering on the side of the road, maybe. 

But where to move?  Well, here are their hypothetical options, including how much money they'd need to make in order to match their household income in New Jersey (overall), and how much their mortgage payment would be (instead of $2,000 per month), assuming they wanted the exact same type of home in their new destination:

• Chapel Hill, NC: $86,626 annual income, $1,460 mortgage payment
• Jacksonville, FL: $71,352 annual income, $940 mortgage payment
• Austin, TX: $70,440 annual income, $940 mortgage payment
• Seattle, WA: $88,981 annual income, $1,480 mortgage payment

(All of the numbers above come from CNNMoney's Cost of Living Calculator - it's a fun tool to play around with.)

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The first thing I think when I see these numbers, to be completely honest, is: why the hell do I still live in New Jersey?  None of the locations in the above list strike me as horrible places to live.  Some of them, like Chapel Hill and especially Austin, are downright wonderful - they're not backwoodsy, or poorly-educated, and they do not lack for culture, entertainment, and the arts.  

But this brings me to my second thought: the economics of supply and demand, in a very meta sense, do not make huge mistakes very often.  That is, New Jersey is a more expensive place to live than Chapel Hill, Jacksonville, Austin, and Seattle precisely because more people want to live here (relative to supply) than the aforementioned locations.  Even when houses in New Jersey sometimes end up looking like this:

Someone's seven figure beach home, uprooted by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.  I hope they had flood insurance.

There are other valid reasons to want to live in New Jersey.  For instance, part of the high cost of living in New Jersey is the association with a high-tax infrastructure that provides essential services (e.g., police, education) at a high quality.  People can disagree until the cows come home about the goodness or badness of taxes.  Personally, I don't mind paying taxes, so long as I can see the result of paying them.  Students in the public school district in my town end up at Ivy League schools, like, all the time.  I grew up in a town kind of like the town where we currently live, and all of the best high school teachers in my school earned six figure incomes.  And you know what, high property taxes be damned, they all deserved to earn six figure incomes!  They had gone to fairly prestigious colleges and graduate schools, and instead of pursuing more practical careers with greater income potential, they instead climbed the most gradual income ladder in existence, dealt with all kinds of frustrations (in addition to dealing with most kids, who suck), and ended up giving me a damned solid public school education.

Rest assured that in the four cities listed in the above cost of living comparison, teachers are not earning six figures.  In fact, income inflation is a matter of fact in areas with higher cost of living, which brings me to my next point: if our hypothetical family decided not to move, but to stay in New Jersey, eventually they could move wherever they wanted (more or less) and live like kings.

Assuming their mortgage payment were not too much to handle, they'd pay it off eventually.  And once it was paid off, at least in theory, they'd be holding a fairly valuable asset in a very desirable location, and it would be 100% theirs.  They could sell it to someone else (again, in theory, there would be a line out the door to purchase the house) and buy a veritable mansion in Jacksonville, Florida.

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Later this week, I will visit my dad in Florida (Jacksonville, no less... ha!) and at some point soon after arrival, I will see a 5 bedroom, 4 bath house with 3,500 square feet, an in-ground inside pool, and a frigging bowling alley on the market for the same price as our current house.  And, like always, I'll get a little pissy and jealous inside about living where I live.  But, hopefully, I'll read the above and remember: hey, you can't beat the food, the diversity, and the educational opportunities for future generations in New Jersey.

Even if the weather here sucks ten months out of the year, the traffic is endless and interminable, and your property taxes would buy a gently used BMW sedan every single year.

Grr, Florida real estate prices piss me off...

A Roadmap to Turning 30

Earlier today, Deadspin linked to a wonderful Esquire interview with former NBA star (and successful co-pilot) Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, who wrote eloquently about the 20 things he wished he'd known when he was 30.  Abdul-Jabaar, now 66, has always struck me as an interesting paradox; an intensely serious and physical player on the court, but every time I'd heard him interviewed (most recently on Opie and Anthony on XM satellite radio) I have been struck by how thoughtful and quiet - practically studious - he seemed.  Given this, I was very interested to read what he had to say to Esquire, the magazine that does the greatest work with making ordinary men seem extraordinary (and extraordinary men seem transcendent). 

Esquire does high-end journalism well in general, in my opinion, but its light shines brightest when it strives to use the examples of older men to teach life lessons to younger men.  I've been a long time subscriber and it's nearly impossible for me to read an issue without jumping directly to the "What I've Learned" interview (this month, Willie Nelson!).  It turned out that Abdul-Jabaar's self-authored article was even deeper than that.  Instead of small nuggets of advice, the article provided deep, sometimes excruciating detail regarding each of the items for which he wished he knew back then what he knows right now.

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I turn 30 later this year, and I am - except for matters related to planning a huge party - not considering it a very big deal.  People get caught up in milestone numbers, and sometimes this is with good reason; turning 21 is a legitimate excuse to purchase a legal adult beverage, and turning 80 (for instance) is an accomplishment worth truly celebrating for longevity's sake.  But 30 is none of that; unless you are a professional athlete, it's fair to say that anyone at this age has not yet accomplished even a fraction of what they will eventually accomplish. 

I know I feel that way about myself, which is why I read Abdul-Jabbar's article with a critical eye toward self-evaluation.  Where, if anywhere, did I seem to be doing pretty well for myself, still being a relatively young man?  And where do I know I am weak?  Below, I've sampled from his list of 20 items, and expounded a bit where relevant on where I stand:

(All words in italics are from the article itself.)

1. Be more outgoing. My shyness and introversion from those days still haunt me. Fans felt offended, reporters insulted. That was never my intention... I loved to play basketball, and was tremendously gratified that so many fans appreciated my game. But when I was off the court, I felt uncomfortable with attention... Basically, I was a secret nerd who just happened to also be good at basketball. 

If you asked me honestly what I wish I were better at, my first reply would be that I wish I were more of a people person.  Don't get me wrong, if I know you, we're cool, and we can talk about anything.  But I've always had problems connecting with people at first (through some combination of shyness + being a not-so-secret nerd who just happened to also be good at math).  Last year, I read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, which helped tremendously (especially for an item written about eighty years ago).  What I try to practice when I meet new people, whether it's at an airport bar somewhere or in line at the grocery store, is to find something easy enough to talk about (the weather, sports, work, family) such that most people can talk about it comfortably.  But it's a constant work in progress for me.  I wish I were better at it.

3. Become financially literate. I chose my financial manager, who I later discovered had no financial training, because a number of other athletes I knew were using him. That’s typical athlete mentality in that we’re used to trusting each other as a team, so we extend that trust to those associated with teammates. Consequently, I neglected to investigate his background or what qualified him to be a financial manager. He placed us in some real estate investments that went belly up and I came close to losing some serious coin.

I'm doing well at this.  When I left graduate school, I decided to become more actively involved in my financial future.  I designed my 401(k) allocation myself, picking the lowest cost index funds available to me and rebalancing annually to shuffle more funds into sectors that I felt were on the rise.  I've also been reading tons of blogs and books about personal finance.  As it stands, my financial security is one thing I cannot complain about as I turn 30.

6. Get handy. I always wanted to be one of those guys who, whenever something doesn’t work, straps on a tool belt and says, “I’ll fix it.” Recently my washing machine broke and flooded my entire downstairs. I was forced to stand idly by waiting for a plumber to arrive while water rose around my ankles because I didn’t know how to shut off the water. That’s the kind of experience that makes you have your testosterone levels checked.

Yeah, I mean, becoming handy - unless you start at a really young age - is a life-long process.  Over the past couple of years, I've learned how to paint, wire outlets and light fixtures, mow lawns, landscape, fix simple drain clogs, install a tub surround, a ceiling fan, and a door knob.  I'm probably leaving a few things out, and I know for a fact there's a ton left to learn (I know nothing about carpentry, for instance, which seems like something I'd be good at).  Maybe ten years from now I'll be able to compare myself to others and say that I am handy, but for now, I'll have to settle for taking on new home improvement projects and seeing how I do.

 

7. Be patient. Impatience is the official language of youth. When you’re young, you want to rush to the next thing before you even know where you are.

Another huge weakness for me; I may be the least patient person I know.  I work in an office building with a physical therapy office and I like to walk fast.  It absolutely kills me to have to slow down in order to accommodate the needs of someone who is walking slowly due to a physical condition - I don't mean to be an asshole, I just really need to get where I'm going.  Why do I rush?  I have absolutely no idea; I'm either walking to my desk (where I do my job perfectly fine without needing to rush) or I'm walking to my car (and I'll get home when I get home, there's no point in rushing).  Even though I understand it, it's like I'm addicted to moving fast.

I drive pretty fast, too, and I find myself being jealous of slower drivers on the road.  It seems like a very Zen thing to be; cool, calm, and collected enough to not need to PUSH to get where you're going.  I wonder whether any of these slow drivers were like me when they were younger (probably no, probably most people as Type-A as myself don't live to be that old in the first place - our hearts explode first).  But still, the point is to self-evaluate here, and if I can improve on this maybe just one day a month, that's something.

 

9. Career is never as important as family. The better you are at your job, the more you’re rewarded, financially and spiritually, by doing it. You know how to solve problems for which you receive praise and money. Home life is more chaotic. Solving problems is less prescriptive and no one’s applauding or throwing money if you do it right. That’s why so many young professionals spend more time at work with the excuse, “I’m sacrificing for my family.” Bullshit. Learn to embrace the chaos of family life and enjoy the small victories. This hit me one night after we’d won an especially emotional game against the Celtics. I’d left the stadium listening to thousands of strangers chanting “Kareem! Kareem!” I felt flush with the sense of accomplishment, for me, for the Lakers, and for the fans. But when I stepped into my home and my son said, “Daddy!” the victory, the chanting, the league standings, all faded into a distant memory.

I write this as a childless man, and I'll choose to remain childless for at least a while longer, I believe.  This makes me happy because I'm inherently selfish (at the moment) and don't want to give up any of the freedoms that I personally have worked very hard to obtain (at least for right now).  I'm sure that as I get older these priorities will change, but I'm living my ideal lifestyle at the moment, and that's what matters for the purposes of this post.

On the other hand, a man starts to wonder about getting old (which happens to those of us who are fortunate) and getting infirm and needing help (which happens to everyone, if they live long enough).  These are big picture questions and I can't even feign an answer to them right now.  Staying childless gives me the comfort of not having to address what being part of a family means.  My family life growing up was tough, in its own way, and my extended childhood is a great way to "punt" on these types of questions.  Similarly, it allows me to focus on my career - and I do care a bunch about my career right now.  Will things always stay this way?  Probably not, but Kareem's words are interesting to read at this point in my life, regardless of what the future brings.

10. Being right is not always the right thing to be. Kareem, my man, learn to step away. You think being honest immunizes you from the consequences of what you say. Remember Paul Simon’s lyrics, “There’s no tenderness beneath your honesty.” So maybe it’s not that important to win an argument, even if you “know” you’re right. Sometimes it’s more important to try a little tenderness.

Unlike the patience thing, I am improving at this.  Because of what I do for a living, I'm rarely lacking for being around egos.  You can look at this in one of two ways, and I elect to look at it as being fortunate to work in a line of business that attracts smart and tough-minded people.  Earlier in my career and earlier in my life, I was so concerned that I wasn't competent/mature enough to fit in that I would push my arguments on other people.  Now I've learned to just give up and give in, even if I think I may be right about the argument itself.  

 

Many times I've feigned sympathy in conversations with strangers who have assumed my political views are radically different from what they are; in the past, I'd correct them and try to convert them to my cause.  Now I just let them think I agree with them.

I guess at the end of the day, I'd rather be well-liked than great at knowing stuff.  I think most people who know me know about my intellect already; there's no need to shove it on unsuspecting strangers. 

11. Cook more. 

Aw hell yes.  Man, do I love cooking.  I try to cook for my wife and me at least three times per week; my specialties are Mexican, Italian, grilled meats, and starchy side dishes.  The only place where I could see improvement over the next ten years is sharpening my skill set; for instance, I'd love to learn actual knife skills (get it? sharpen?), and I'd love to learn how to cook more haute cuisine-type stuff. 

13. Do one thing every day that helps someone else. This isn’t about charity, this is about helping one individual you know by name. Maybe it means calling your parents, helping a buddy move, or lending a favorite jazz album to Chocolate Fingers McGee.

Good at this, I think.  I'm extremely charitable within my own social circle.

14. Do more for the community. This is about charity, extended to people close by whose names you don’t know. You can always do more.

Awful at this, on the other hand.  Sometimes I wish I believed in God because - faulty premises aside - churches are great at getting people to volunteer; say one thing for religion, for better or for worse, it brings people together.  I do "guilty white person" things for charity, like donating money and clothing and old kitchen utensils and shit, but none of that seems real.  If I could make it to my 40th birthday having helped build a house or something, that would be ideal.

16. Don’t be so quick to judge. It’s human nature to instantly judge others. It goes back to our ancient life-or-death need to decide whether to fight or flee. But in their haste to size others up, people are often wrong—especially a thirty-year-old sports star with hordes of folks coming at him every day. We miss out on knowing some exceptional people by doing that, as I’m sure I did...You have to weigh the glee of satisfaction you get from arrogantly rejecting people with the inevitable sadness of regret you’ll eventually feel for having been such a dick.

BUT... BUT... arrogantly rejecting people is fun!  I am going to share a deep, dark secret with you right now - something I've never put on paper before (I think).  I've always sort of vaguely disliked other people until I get to know them.  I think it's the lasting chains of being a nerdy kid without too many friends in elementary school - when you're an outsider you start to think that the problems are with other people.  (And by the way, given how well my adult life has proceeded thus far, it's kind of difficult to prove to me that 8-year-old Fred didn't have a serious point.)  As an adult, though, this behavior can quickly become antisocial and overly judgmental.

So what do I do to fix this?  Well I'm pretty sure the issue is dispositional at this point; I am never going to be a social butterfly in this life.  But through learning better social graces I've been able to act somewhat smoother in casual interactions, which also helps keep me from judging (judging is, after all, a reflex with its basis in social anxiety).  This is another work in progress for me.

18. Watch more TV. 

 

I am an absolute STUD at watching TV.  No possible areas for improvement here.

20. Everything doesn’t have to be fixed. Relax, K-Man. Some stuff can be fixed, some stuff can’t be. Deciding which is which is part of maturing.

The day when I can learn how to say "fuck it" and actually mean it will be a paradigm shifting day for me.  I have to say, the big takeaway from reading Kareem's thoughts - and thinking how similar these issues are to the ones I face now, as I approach thirty - is that I'm a type.  Specifically I'm a driven, neurotic, ambitious person, which is both an awesome thing to be in the long run and an absolutely awful thing to be in the momentary quotidian of life.  The key is to learn how to enjoy moments, and I think that's something you just need time in order to figure out.  Or maybe more appropriately, you need a sense of the transience of time in order to figure out - I've yet to realize that time is short, and I am going to die someday.  I just assume that I'll keep growing, and learning, and becoming faster at running half marathons indefinitely.

Is this true?  Absolutely not, but it's nice to dream, at least for a while.  And when that dream ends, it'll be time to come to terms with item #20, which is ultimately about setting priorities.

Student Loans, or NONE LIKE IT POOR!

           For the longest time I believed myself and my friends to be members of Generation-X, mostly due to the fact that I heard this term flying around frequently when I was young.  A few years back, I found out that I am Generation-Y, aka a Millenial.  You know what else I found out?  That Millenials, in every sense, are screwed.

            The economy is still slow, and likely won’t pick up until people start spending again.  And the age range that traditionally spends the most, on everything but healthcare, e.g. cars, houses, furniture, etc, has no money to spend on these things for a number of reasons.  We have been forced into a number of Ponzi Schemes, namely Social Security and Medicare.  I say forced, because most Ponzi Schemes obtain members by stupidity or greed.  For us, it doesn’t matter if we are one, the other, or both.  What little money we have left is almost certainly going to student loans.  Why you ask?  Because parents drill into our heads from early on that you have to go to college and get a degree.

            I believe this to be a good course, but I believe too many people go and get degrees that are nearly useless, i.e. history, political science, art.  Or people major in whatever seems to be popular on TV, e.g. CSI lab tech, or use one of the aforementioned useless degrees to go on to something they watch on TV, e.g. lawyer.  I will take this time to disclose that I am an attorney, but took the time to become an engineer first.  Disclaimer, The Big Bang Theory did not exist until after I graduated, so there wasn’t a show glamorizing being a nerd, nor did any shows glorify the “patent attorney.”  Alas, while I feel I help advance the culture through bringing new technology to the market, I, like so many others carry student loan debt.  

            Law School, Medical School, and Business School are all very pricey, and I knew this going in, so I brought this on myself.  However, my point is that many colleges charge the same as Medical School, which will create someone licensed to save a life, for a degree that might get you a job as a waiter, if you are lucky.  Even the useful majors struggle these days to find that first job.  So the debt keeps piling up due to compound interest.  When will the student loan (non-dischargeable) debt bubble burst?  At what point will the job makers cut over-head to the point that the Millenials can no longer hope to pay off their student loan debt, and the original lenders can’t squeeze another penny out of them, or resell on the secondary market?  

More importantly, what will happen when the bubble does burst?  Will the current debt be forgiven?  Will lenders cease providing educational loans before then?  Will schools start going under because no one can afford them?  Or will they just become more reasonable with their tuition?  Will this lead to a reversion to the way we see things that we no longer tell our children they must go to college?  What will happen to the banks holding all these IOU’s that they can never collect on?

At this point in my life, I am starting to think that the best thing a high school graduate can do, especially in NJ, is to go be government employee from age 18-38, then retire with a pension, then get another job from 38-58, then retire with a second pension.  Avoid college and student loan debt.  You can still go to the parties, and you will actually be able to buy things that you want, in addition to those you need.

Why I Torture Myself, a/k/a Why I Run

How it looks is exactly how I felt - finishing a 10k race in March 2013

Yesterday morning, I woke up five minutes before my alarm clock would have sealed the deal - 6:55 am.  I slowly went through the pre-run preparations that allow me to run long distances (or, perhaps more accurately, keep me from feeling the negative after-effects of running long distances).  Fully stretched?  Check.  Guzzle down some water and fill up my nerdy as all hell fuel belt with 10 oz water, 10 oz Gatorade?  Double check.  Space age, fourth generation Gore-Tex long sleeved shirt and running pants?  Status achieved.  Body Glide (don't even ask)?  Absolutely necessary.

As I stumbled down the two flights of stairs in the Cape May bed and breakfast inn where my wife and I decided to get away for a relaxing weekend, I was thinking to myself, this is technically a vacation, my wife's up there sleeping like any sane person would be sleeping at 7 am on a Saturday morning on vacation, and I could be sleeping, too, for at least another hour and a half or so.  What the hell am I doing?

We'd been to Cape May, damn, I'd have to say this was the fifth time we'd spent a weekend in this town.  Because I treat this town as a place to unwind and relax, and because I generally do not associate distance running with unwinding or relaxing, I'd actually never run a single step within Cape May city limits before*.  But this morning, this unseasonably frigid April morning with temperatures barely above freezing and a complimentary 25 mph swirling wind, just to make things extra interesting, I was going to run the streets of Cape May.

(*NOTE: I'm fairly certain this is true, as I have meticulously kept statistics on every run I've taken since January 2008 in an Excel spreadsheet, but it is possible that I did run Cape May on a visit prior to 2008.  I encourage every runner to keep notes about each run - I keep date, distance, time, pace (calculated by Excel), location, and notes.  My "notes" generally include brief details about how I felt, whether I ran alone or with a friend, the weather that day, and any special achievements or items worth jotting down.)

The problem with this particular run was, it was God-awful terrible.  Specifically it was terrible in the worst possible way - I am generally a healthy and strong runner, but my one long-term weakness is cold and windy weather when I don't have my ski gloves.  I have poor circulation in my hands, and I also react awfully to frostbitten hands in a total body, almost autoimmune sense.  Now, every runner has to give up on a run (I call it "bonking", a phrase I learned from my father) once in a while, but 2013 had - to this point - been a banner year so far in the not-bonking category.  I had run dozens of times up to that point, under different conditions and for different distances, without a single bonk.

But 3.3 miles into a scheduled six-miler, I had to pack it in and walk back to the bed and breakfast, muttering curses under my breath, shamed by the road.  When I returned to the relative comfort of our heated room, it still took me another ten minutes for the frostbite to subside enough for me to relax and actually take a shower and get along with my day.

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Today's run was the complete opposite experience, by the way - seven miles at a comfortable 8:34 pace (how many of you knew that was 7.0 miles per hour?) at a local park.  Though it was still breezy outside, the weather had warmed to sixty degrees and as a result I was able to run in a t-shirt and shorts.  The park was buzzing with people, as today was the first truly spring-like weekend day of the year, and this actually inspired me to run faster.  As much as I hated yesterday's attempt at running, today was an example of why I run.

The health benefits of a moderate amount of running (let's call it 15-25 miles per week, though everyone is different) are pretty much indisputable.  A man my age and my size burns 150 calories per mile; running twenty miles in a week burns 3,000 calories, so it's pretty difficult for me to gain weight when I'm able to run twenty miles per week on average.

Mentally, the benefits are just as clear.  Twenty miles is about three hours per week spent running, at my current pace.  Whether it's on a treadmill or outdoors, that is a great deal of time for organizing one's thoughts and working through one's troubles.  Outdoor running is also forced sun exposure, which - in addition to a relatively strong early season farmer's tan - has mental health benefits as well.  People get SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) for a reason, and I'm fairly prone to feeling down in the winter time as well.  When winter finally starts transitioning into spring each year, I can't wait to get outside and run.

These are benefits for anyone, and they are relative to each person's previous health condition.  A sedentary person could complete a "Couch to 5k" running program and achieve notable health benefits, just because of where they were before.  I'm a repeat half marathoner (my seventh half marathon will take place later this month) so it's a bit more challenging for me to push the health envelope - I would either have to run longer, which I do not want to do, or run faster, which I am begrudgingly attempting to do.

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I run to escape my problems, and I intend to be completely transparent about that.

I run because if I didn't run, I would eat the same way I currently eat, and consume the occasional few beers the same way I currently drink the occasional few beers - but I would not feel, act, or look the same way I do right now, because I run.

I run to compete against myself, because I'm years out of school now and I'm still addicted to competition.  Until you graduate college (or, I suppose, law school if you're a lawyer or med school if you're a physician), you're constantly competing intellectually against your peers.  If you're a talented student, you learn to love the competition (because you're used to winning, for the most part).  But in corporate America, I have found that score keeping is vague, competitions are few and far between, and you don't know who wins and who loses until everyone retires.  So I run to keep that spirit of healthy competition alive.

I run to be social, which is weird because for many people running is a solitary endeavor, and it is weird because I'm not a very small-talky, chatty person in my everyday life.  Put me in a race environment, though, and I become best friends with people I've never met before (I am also like this at bars and at playoff baseball games; random strangers bear hugged me after Mark Teixiera hit a walk-off home run in a 2009 playoff game against the Twins - I guess I am just very huggable). 

I run to live longer, because I'm convinced that the human heart wants to be pushed (within boundaries, as ultra marathoners are hurting themselves without a doubt) and the human heart does not want to beat a hundred times per minute at rest.  People disagree with me on this, and that's fine - I concede that runners have been known to drop dead from time to time - but in a very macro sense, an average, moderate runner should see more years on this planet (and more of those years should be healthy years) than someone who does not run at all.

Finally, I run to experience running.  Running hurts, and frankly running sucks sometimes.  But you learn a great deal about yourself through running distances, breaking down your own mental barriers, running with people, and becoming enraptured in the process of simply putting one foot in front of the other, quickly, for an extended period of time.

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I do not, on the other hand, run for the following reasons:

1. To compete against others;
2. To be "good" at running;
3. To push myself further and further every single time;
4. To crawl through mud, climb fences, be cut by razor wire, etc.

The above are perfectly reasonable reasons for a person to run (hey, whatever toots someone's noodle is none of my business, as far as I am concerned), but I simply cannot run for these reasons. I am not certain why I am not a very fast runner - I assume it's a combination of my genetics and my just not wanting to work that hard at anything - but I know that I lack the mental and physical fortitude to become a very fast runner.  Plus, as a recovering fatty, there's no way I would ever combine dieting with a distance running plan.  I run to compensate for my unhealthy nutritional choices and nonetheless remain relatively skinny; if I were to eat too healthy while running so much, I would lose too much weight.  Nobody likes a stick figure Fred.

I can't push myself further and further every time because then I'd burn out and stop running altogether.  For someone who races fairly regularly, I am exceedingly prone to running burnout.  I have my share of problems with running journalism (e.g., Runner's World), one of which is the assumption that the readership runs because they love and/or are addicted to running.  I face palm every time I read these articles about post-race recovery plans that include things like "We know the first thing you want to do the next day after a half marathon or marathon is get back on the pavement.  Fight that urge."  Um, I'm sorry, what?  Please tell me this is sarcasm and I am just not getting the joke.  After racing 13.1 miles and leaving every ounce of energy I had on those 13.1 miles of pavement, I barely want to drive down a road for the next week or two after the race, let alone run on pavement.  I get pavement PTSD.  I can't even listen to shitty 90's grunge rock, that's how scared I get of Pavement.

And finally, there is this totally okay for other people, but not for me, running subculture of these "tough guy" runs.  I was reading an article about how these "tough guy" Spartan runs attract type-A, masochistic macho stock trader types - the kind who pump iron because they just want to be awesome, brah.  Apparently these guys crawl through sewer pipes and have their nipples plugged into electrodes just to finish these "races", which are loosely inspired by Marine Corps boot camp hell weeks.  So to each their own, I suppose.  You guys should have fun at your Goldman Sachs sausage festivals, and I'll just stay the course and enjoy running regular races, which I guess will now consist of only regular guys and all of the women.  Sucks to be a regular guy, I guess.

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I will know that I love running when I am able to run consistently for a year without any sort of break.  As of the present time, I have never been able to pull this off.  I typically train hard through the winter and early spring for a half marathon; then break for a while and hardly run at all for most of the summer (just three miles here or there).  Then I pick it up again in the late summer and through the fall for a second half marathon; then I break for the holidays.  For all I know, this strategy (if you can call it that) has kept me from becoming seriously injured while running.  But still, I would appreciate a year's worth of consistency for consistency's sake - just so I know I could do it.