Author: Troy Gregory

I like to travel, run, read, write, practice mindfulness, take pictures, play soccer, and spend time with family and friends - in no certain order.

Stressed? Try to Find the Long View

Situation

Let’s say I sell cars for a living (I don’t but the illustration will serve the purpose). Instead of selling a whole range of cars, I sell one car; a not-so-sexy little number that will safely and reliably get you from point A to point B. It also has a surprisingly low cost once we factor in maintenance and gas mileage. Now let’s say that another model that was clearly designed to compete with mine has popped up on the market. It has a lower initial cost, but overall cost of ownership makes it much more expensive after just a few months. Over the past two weeks, I’ve had two major buyers who were interested in buying my car for their fleet go the other way. I’m just coming off a strong growth year with my little car, so both times I entered the meeting with the buyer confident that I’d close the deal. Both times I was unceremoniously informed that the buyer was picking the other model. I was dejected.

Within a day of the second rejection, I attended a previously scheduled conference in which my national manager gave a business update. This update featured, among other things, the successes of my little car and me as the last year recently closed out. The content had been put together before these two recent rejections. While my car and I were being touted in the meeting, I was still licking my wounds from the two fresh rejections. During the business update, I felt like a fraud who would soon be discovered. My stomach turned, my blood pressure was noticeably up, and I slinked down in my chair. I didn’t want any of this good attention while I was falling flat. Most of all, I wanted my national manager to stop saying good things about me and my little car. I kept thinking, “If she only knew.” During the update meeting, we run a visible comment board and I started to become hyper-aware that the positive comments had dried up as the national manager was highlighting my results. “They know,” I thought.

Analysis

This is how our brains work. We go on a good run and we’re on top of the world. But, have a couple of set-backs in quick succession, and all of a sudden the world is collapsing around us. My wife is pursuing a Master’s degree in Psychology and she tells me that our brains have developed a somewhat-controlled paranoia over many thousands of years to keep us alive. For example, a rustling bush might not have meant a large predator was about to make a meal out of them, but if our ancestors had always calmly assumed the rustling was “just the wind,” our species probably wouldn’t have made it. In other words, we’re essentially pre-wired to jump to bad conclusions.

Reality

The reality of the situation is…

  • My little car and I did have a great year last year and I wasn’t a fraud
  • Yes, two potentially significant customers DID reject my little car for their needs, but the problem isn’t permanent
  • In fact, the clients may find that the cars they went with don’t meet their needs and they could change back to mine fairly quickly
  • Even if they don’t, there will be other buyers for my little car
  • These set backs do NOTmean the end of me or my little car
  • And finally, the kudos in the comment board had slowed up after the individual recognitions 10 minutes before my car was being presented – so it wasn’t because people were “on to me”

Using the long view to overcome a stressful moment

When I was young, if something bad would happen, my grandfather would say, “You’ll never know it in a hundred years” and then he’d have a chuckle. At the time I thought he was just old and insensitive. Of course I wouldn’t know it in a hundred years – I’ll be dead by then! But he was on to something. He was using the long view and a touch of humor to offer me an alternative perspective. This situation really isn’t that bad. When events we immediately perceive to be negative occur, our minds race to what this could mean. We then quickly begin grieving the situation and piling on “evidence” of further doom. But if we’re able to slow down for a mindful moment and consider the reality of the situation in context with the long view, many times we’ll see that things aren’t so bad. This in turn, frees up our mental resources to begin working on what we can do about the situation.

What I Learned From a Year of Going Vegan*

Before getting started, I want to explain the asterisk on the word “Vegan” in the title. In conversation, I normally avoid calling myself or my diet vegan because A.) of the politics associated with the word and B.) I’m not 100% perfect in eating absolutely zero food products derived from animals. With regards to the politics, I’m no extremist and I want to avoid being seen as one. With regards to my vegan imperfections, I’m respectful of the people around me. My wife likes to go on date nights (I’m lucky) and if my meat-free menu selection was cooked with butter or if the wait staff forgot to leave the goat cheese off of my salad, I eat it without tipping over any tables in a fit of rage. Having said that, I estimate that more than 95% of the food I eat is completely plant-based. Not bad for a guy living in a mid-sized city in the Midwest.

How I got here

In short, this started as an experiment. I like to run, and like many runner-types in America, I read Christopher McDougall’s super-entertaining Born to Run. In it, I learned about Scott Jurek and later found out that he had his own book titled Eat and Run. After reading Jurek’s inspiring book, I decided to give the plant-based diet a whirl. Over the years, I’ve tried various diets to see what worked for me and what didn’t. And when I say “tried,” I mean “followed at ~95% rigidity for 3-6 months.” My wife indulges me by figuratively patting me on the head with a reassuring “OK baby.” Again, I’m lucky. So… I started with week one in October 2016. After digging into the topic for a bit, I also discovered Rich Roll, whose excellent podcast and other offerings have kept me going. But that is a tale for another day.

Lesson 1: I rarely missed meat

As I mentioned above, I live in the meat-and-potatoes Midwest of the United States. I was raised on meat and potatoes as was essentially everyone around me. So the first question I get usually when discussing my shift to a plant-based diet is, “How can you live without meat?” In my youth, I was a full-fledged carnivore, so I thoroughly understand this question. I used to muse that if one day because of poor health I had to go without meat, I’d drive off a cliff. I wasn’t serious of course, but I will readily admit that there is a satisfaction that comes with chewing on the texture of meat and the fullness that comes from a hearty meal that includes beef or chicken or salmon or… So, you’re getting the picture, I’m not really a good *Vegan* with a capital V. Now for the interesting part, I have rarely missed meat since making the switch.

Maybe I had enough meat in my 40+ carnivorous years preceding. But once I made the switch, there are very few times that I can remember where I really wanted meat. It was more than a year ago the last time I got the urge of the carnivore. It was a cold January day and my body fat was in the single digits from the plant-based diet and lots of running. I distinctly remember walking out of the grocery store and getting blasted by a cold wind out of the North. I was probably hangry because it was just past lunchtime and I hadn’t eaten yet. Immediately following the arctic blast, I remember angrily thinking, “The only thing that is going to solve this is an entire pot of beef stew.” I did not have the pot of beef stew. I have since found plenty of vegetable stew and other recipes that provide the necessary heartiness to overcome the polar vortexes that we experience in Ohio. While individual tastes and preferences abound, I find that cauliflower in buffalo sauce makes great taco filler, Jackfruit in a barbecue sauce replaces pulled pork or chicken, and adding a few cashews or oyster mushrooms to a breakfast burrito filled with onions and peppers gives me the hearty textures that I want in my food.

Lesson 2: It is difficult to be a foodie in a mid-sized Midwestern city

Quite simply, there aren’t a lot of vegan restaurants or places with distinctly vegan options on the menu in Columbus, Ohio. I have found a couple of places that offer tasty options, but they’re generally a bit young and hip for my tastes. I like to sit down with my wife to catch up on the busy week and we find that we can’t do that very well over the din of Indy music, clinking beer glasses, and blaring TVs. So instead of being a “foodie,” which I’m defining here as one who keeps up with the latest food offerings at many trendy restaurants, I’ve turned into a cook. Recipes abound on the internet, and I got off to a great start by watching a few YouTubers, The Happy Pear being my favorite. I prepare the vast majority of our meals at home and the spill over benefit that I’ve learned is that it makes me happy. I know it sounds a bit woo woo, but I have a real connection with the food that I’m now eating. There is something very uplifting about tucking into a meal that I’ve just prepared.

Lesson 3: I have had no problem with endurance sports

As mentioned previously, I’m both a runner and fond of trying new things, diets included. I had previously tried the Paleo diet. I found it both tasty and effective as a weight-loss tool. Admittedly, I’ve never been a big guy, but I tend to carry 10-15 lbs of extra weight in spite of a fairly active lifestyle. I like to blame my 45-50 hour a week desk job and the occasional adult beverage. I lost all of the extra pooch around my mid-section with the Paleo diet, but I ran into a couple of other problems: 1.) I found that I had trouble sleeping and 2.) I couldn’t run more than 4 miles without my legs locking up. My muscles would just give out. Not really cramping, just more like them saying “Nope, we’re done” and then going out on strike. Since going plant-based, I again lost my mid-section pooch but had no trouble training for, and running four marathons over the course of one year.

I do want to say that in the very beginning of my plant-based adventure I was eating very little carbs and fats. While I could still run and run (~60 miles per week) with my super-trim phsysique, I had a short bout with insomnia and a tired libido. After about a week, I figured out that all I had to do was eat more legumes, nuts, and avocados, which brought back just a little body fat (still in the single digits) and a happy bedroom. In fact, after a year of eating a plant-based diet, my most recent health screening resulted in the best numbers I’ve turned in since I was in my 20s.

Lesson 4: My body’s response to fruit changed significantly for the better

This one is fascinating to me. I don’t know the science behind it, but at this point I don’t care. In years past when I was not at all careful with my diet, I had an interesting sugar spike response to say, eating an apple. It was so noticeable that over time I eventually steered clear of many fruits to avoid the rush and crash. After the first 2-3 months of eating a plant-based diet, I started to notice a significant difference. I can now eat an apple or an orange with absolutely no jitters or crash. These days, I carry two or three pieces of fruit with me per day and I eat them as snacks instead of chips or even nuts. I feel a moderate boost of energy with no side effects. So, I’m sure someone can tell me the science behind it, but I’m now looking at fruit much more favorably these days and I quite enjoy it.

Lesson 5: B12 makes me happy

It’s fairly well documented that people who eat a plant-based diet can become vitamin B12 deficient. Meat eaters get B12 from meat and – while I’m not expert on this – our purified water sources generally prevent us non-meat eaters from getting B12 from “nature.” So, people who eat a plant-based diet essentially need to supplement. Here’s the cool thing: taking a B12 supplement once a week is like a blast of sunshine, a cool breeze, and a group of non-allergenic puppies excitedly running around your feet – all at once. Seriously, this stuff is like happy pills. As with all good things, too much can be problematic. We don’t need a lot of B12 to prevent deficiency (think, teeny-tiny micrograms) so B12 is not your caffeine replacement. This is especially true since recent studies have linked high doses of B12 with increased risks of lung cancer – notably in men who currently or have smoked in the past.

Let’s wrap this thing up in a grape leaf

In conclusion, I’m an imperfect vegan and happily so. My plant-based diet has fueled me through 4 marathons in one year and has provided me with clean-burning inexpensive food that gets me through my work days behind the desk. I have found it easy to maintain a healthy weight even when I take a break from running. What started as the latest in a long line of dietary experiments has turned into a rewarding and highly maintainable lifestyle. 

Troy works and lives in Columbus, Ohio with his better half and their blended family of 6. He runs, reads, writes, cooks, travels, plays soccer, and has a fledgling mindfulness practice when he gets the chance. The picture featured is Troy’s not-so-world-famous homemade veggie paella.

From Humbug to Hooray in Less than 30 Minutes

It has been a tough week. I have felt “off” for most of the week with interrupted sleep, too many personal tasks, not enough working out, and insufficient fresh fruits and veggies. By this morning, I was a grump. I was doing my best to hide it, but I was not a happy camper. 

At work, I’m a manager and I was heading into my team’s Friday morning huddle. “Huddles” are where we get together as a group and bring everyone up to speed on our individual work. I lead the conversation, which helps set the tone for the day. We had a rotational analyst whose last day was today so we had a few extra people around the table to wish him well in his next adventure. We also have a tradition on Fridays. The idea is to have a discussion prompt that as we give our updates, each person answers. These tend to be icebreaker style questions to get people talking for the purpose of team-building. Something like, “If you could pick any single superpower other than immortality or endless wealth, what would it be?” Did I mention that I was grumpy? I was in no mood to even participate in this conversation let alone lead it. That’s when an interesting thing happened.

I admitted that I didn’t have a prompt for today’s discussion and asked the team to generate one. After a couple of miscues, we settled on, “How have you changed in the past 5 years?” I asked someone at the far end of the line away from me to go first. I had hoped that we’d run out of time before getting to me. As we worked our way around the table, people told stories of graduating college and finding new friends, of watching kids grow up and needing to adjust parenting style, of seeing parents grow old and feeble, and of harrowing tales of having a child recover from a tumor. Some people got married, some people were once rock stars, some had children of their own, and some went on amazing trips to volunteer abroad. As I scanned the room, I was floored by the smiles on people faces. One young lady exclaimed, “We’re a bunch of badasses!” We laughed out loud. 

In the end, there was just enough time for me. With my mood lifting, I explained that I had gotten married a second time (very happily), I changed industries and no longer had to travel to marginally secure Mexican border towns, I had a child start college and another start high school while I maintained great relationships with both, and that I ran my first marathon and then kept on going for 3 more on the year (which prompted good natured calls of Forrest Gump). We all filed out of that meeting room with smiles on our faces. Two of the guests from other work teams said that they were going to use the Friday discussion prompts for their teams. Before I got back to my desk, a co-worker looked at me in earnest and said, “Really good meeting, thanks.”

The truth is that today, it wasn’t really my meeting at all. If given the choice, I wouldn’t have held it. I didn’t come up with the discussion prompt and I talked very little until the last 2 minutes. Prior to the meeting, I had tried to break through my grumpiness a couple of times with short meditations, listening to music, and even going for a brisk walk. Nothing helped. I had resolved to quietly grumble my way through my day and then sweat it out this weekend on a long run. Instead, I got support without asking for it. I was lifted by others’ stories of accomplishment and gratitude, which helped me practice my own. The mood carried me through a very productive day and into the evening.

I’m still a novice in my mindfulness practice. But I’m learning. I tend to be problem-solver and most of the time I can work things out for myself. Today, I learned first-hand about the power of having a support group – even when the group was none-the-wiser that they are supporting you. Sometimes, I just gotta get out of my own way.

A New Beginning

I originally started Quixote Goes as a travel blog. It was going to be a space where I wrote about planning, experiencing, and reflecting on travel. But shortly after I started it, my Dad got sick and went into the hospital for intensive care. After a 5-week battle with illness, he passed away. It wasn’t a total shock. His health hadn’t been the greatest over the past years. However, losing your father will cause you to reevaluate what’s important. At that time, keeping up a travel blog wasn’t near the top of the list.
More than a year has passed and I’ve been getting the motivation to write again. However, I’ve decided to expand the focus of Quixote Goes beyond travel. Since my Dad’s passing, I’ve become a different person. I still love to travel, but there’s more. In 2017, I ran the marathon that I contemplated in 2016 and then some. I also switched to a whole foods, plant-based diet. In addition, I began actively pursuing a mindfulness practice. As a result of these endeavors, I’ll open the topic list of this blog accordingly.

 

Over the past several weeks, I reflected on the name Quixote Goes. Does it still fit with this expanded subject matter list? Does the subject matter list even go together? How many Ohio-based, 40-something, office-working, imperfectly vegan, marathon running, fledgling zen buddhists who like to travel are there in the world, anyway? In the end, I decided to simply go with it. And like my beloved character Don Quixote, I’ll just have to see where the adventure goes.

Selecting a Travel Destination

Destination.jpgIntroduction:

How did you decide to go there? When talking to friends and family about travel, I frequently get that question. On our recent trip to Europe, we did a stopover in Iceland and it brought more than a few inquiries. We’re now in the midst of deciding between going back to Iceland later in the year or heading to Montreal, Canada this summer. As we work our way through that process, I thought I would turn it into a blog post, which might help inspire readers to select a fun destination for summer. 

Make a list:

Melanie and I keep a running list of places we want to go and then use it in our annual planning process that includes budgeting for travel. Our typical sources for deciding on destinations are travel magazines, social media, friends and family, and occasssional work travel. I joined Instagram (username @troywgregory) a few years ago. Some of the users that I follow on Instagram were posting amazing photos from all over the world and that, along with my lovely, nomadic wife, lit a burning desire to go see some of these places first hand. As the travel bug took hold of us, we began to seek out travel magazine articles (Conde Nast Traveler is my current favorite). After subscribing, we discovered that we could get a lot of content by following the magazines on social media or by signing up for their free email lists. For instance, I now follow CN Traveler on Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat; all of which offers slightly different yet equally inspiring content. Finally, as the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. We’ve come across quite a few people in our daily lives who also like to travel and they have great stories to tell about their destinations. 
 
We found ourselves jotting down notes and creating non-permanent lists in notebooks, but the travel destination ideas were coming in more quickly than we could keep organized, so we wanted a better solution. Obviously the list can take any format, but we use Wunderlist, a truly simple mobile and desktop app for making and sharing checklists. We maintain an in-app travel destination list that either of us can add to or check off as complete. I could go on and on about the criteria we use to add a destination to our list, but it simply revolves around our interests. For instance, we really like live sporting events. Well, I should say that I really like live sporting events and that my wife loves me, any dazzling spectacle, and to travel – in no certain order. So… we’ve been prioritizing travel to some of the bigger and more historic locations for live sporting events over the past few years. We’ve seen the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, a Red Sox game at baseball’s oldest and weirdest: Fenway Park, we’ve been to a Cleveland Cavs home game (no stretch for us as Ohio natives) and for me, the top of the bucket list check mark was seeing El Clasico: Real Madrid vs. FC Barcelona at Camp Nou in Barcelona, Spain. In all cases, we took the opportunity to go see the city (or more) that we were visiting and had some great experiences along the way. The tip here is to dream big. I’ve been an FC Barcelona fan since 1978, but I never thought that I’d actually make the trip. And yet I have, now twice! Put those big, audacious goals on the list and it might be surprising just how accessible they become.
 
We organize our destination list into long weekends or weeklong visits depending on what there is to do and the complexity of travel from our home. My wife and I call ourselves “tapas people” because we both like a small sampling of a lot of different things. Therefore, we find long weekends or a touring vacation with several destinations most appealing. Note: after talking with several non-Americans, we’ve decided that “tapas people” is a charming name for “American travelers,” because we Americans apparently have a reputation for hurry-up vacationing. Whether we’re “tapas travelers” or simply Americans, Melanie and I are just not the sort of people who can schedule a weeklong trip to the beach and unwind. After about 3 days, we’ll both be on the search for an Internet cafe so we can begin planning our next adventure. I would like to point out that this kind of self-knowledge is vitally important when selecting and planing a trip. Or better yet, having this kind of knowledge of everyone in the group you’re planning for is critical because it helps prioritize destinations, transportation methods, and itineraries. Our most recent trip abroad included our two young adult children as well as my son’s girlfriend and the itinerary took quite a while to develop in order to accommodate everyone’s interests and needs. 

Selecting the destination:

As I mentioned above, we have an annual planning process. Explaining our planning process could probably be a blog post by itself, but I’ll try to briefly describe it here. Several years ago when my wife and I were getting organized in our new relationship, we sat down and talked about our big directional goals. Near the end of every year, we have a formal discussion to reevaluate those goals and then set sub-goals for the coming year. In recent years, one top goal that has emerged has been to prioritize experiences over material things, which results in travel. Obviously, we take care of household necessities first, but we really do look at travel experience as a gift that’s much more rewarding than – for instance – having every possible cable channel that only seems to motivate us to stay home and huddle around the tube. We include the kids in our directional goals as well. We took our family of 6 (and added a cousin -why not?) to New York City a couple of years ago for the family Christmas instead of giving material gifts. The kids still talk about that trip and look forward to the next one. As we go through our planning process, we look at our available budget and then consult our list to pick what we would like to do.  
 
When making our destination selection, we factor in the timing of related events as well. For example, we knew that one of the best midfielders of all time for FC Barcelona (Xavi Hernandez) was leaving the club at the end of the 2014-15 season. So we prioritized our trip that included the big game at Camp Nou for my 40th Birthday celebration. On a more somber note, the other obvious “related events” that we also consider is security. The BBC offers current events news for most countries around the world and I usually begin immersing myself in my destination’s local events a couple of months ahead of time. While the US State Department website doesn’t offer a lot of specifics, it’s also a good idea to check their listing of travel advisories before making plans. When we have a couple of top ideas, we’ll run through some quick pricing on flights, hotels and other details to make sure we can meet the budget. Once confirmed, we usually have our direction for the year set and the trip planning process begins. We start up to 6 months beforehand for something like a a multi-week trip to Europe and as little as a week for a spur of the moment weekend trip. I’ll provide more details on trip planning in a future post. Occasionally, we’ll run across low cost opportunities and we may add a short trip to a destination from the list, but most of the time our trips result from a very purposeful planning and budgeting process. Hopefully, this post will inspire a few readers to start their own list and to perhaps go see something new.
 
Want more information about a topic mentioned or have your own story to share? Let’s connect! Send me your destination selection insights or any related travel story to troy.gregory@live.com.
 
#discover #travel #destinationselection #travellist #quixotegoes #iceland #spain #barcelona #sports #sportstravel #fcbarcelona #bostonredsox #bosox #neworleans #sugarbowl #cleveland #cavaliers #cavs #realmadrid #elclasico #newyorkcity #NYC #beginningtravel

Quixote Goes

An Introduction

Is that a 4 armed giant I see up ahead?!? I’ve finally bitten the bullet and started a blog. I think this makes me splash number 233,658,092 in the proverbial sea of bloggers. I won’t bother with how I intend to be unique or notably different – because let’s be honest – I probably won’t. Quixote Goes is going to be a travel-centric blog in which I cover not only my travels, but also hopefully helpful hints, tips, and allegations to help my dear readers in their endeavors.

A few tidbits about me: My name is Troy and I work to live (instead of living to work) at a major US financial institution, so my blog is in no way about my workplace or any of its affiliates. I pursue several passions outside of work: I’m first and foremost a family man and I’m blessed with a lovely wife, a blended family including 4 kids ranging from elementary school to college, 2 dogs, and a pet bunny. I love soccer and I am a die hard culé so Barcelona will get a lot of travel attention. I like to play soccer, run distances from 5k to hopefully completing my first full marathon this year, and I’m a leisurely bicyclist. I am based in the United States Midwest, which allows me an affordable lifestyle to pursue my passions. Obviously, I enjoy traveling and have been through much of the United States. I have also repeatedly traveled to Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, and Western Europe. Finally, I love to read, which brings me to the blog title: Quixote Goes.

As those familiar Cervantes’ works, Don Quixote was a gentlemen who had a decent, comfortable home, but was drawn to leave for periods of time in order to pursue adventures as a knight errant. With best intentions, Quixote was sometimes delusional in how he saw the world, which inadvertently produced his adventures. Like Quixote, I have felt the pangs of my own folly during my travels and I hope to share not only the humor in it but hopefully some lessons learned that will help others avoid my mistakes. But I’m not always errant. Sometimes I come across a really incredible place, travel technology, activity, or people and I’d like to share those experiences as well.

Coming soon

A significant portion of my family and I just got back from Europe and I wrote a travelogue during my trip. I’ll be posting some fun stories from that trip here. In addition, my wife and I have just decided on a Canadian road trip for later in July so I’ll be posting about the planning process as well as some fun pictures and posts from the trip. My wife and I also travel for some of our “races.” While we aren’t really competitive enough to say we’re racing, we still participate in the odd 5k, half-marathon, and as I hinted to above a full marathon in Chicago later this year.
I’m looking forward to this. Hopefully it produces more than the occasional rueful countenance.
Thanks,
– Troy