A rest infused stream of consciousness on work, goals, and retirement.

The title of my blog is random thoughts, revelations, and crazy crap that seem to occupy that space between my ears. My time down here in St Croix, including the day of travel, has left me with a few days to just think and rest. I have been thinking a lot about my good fortune. I am one of the most fortunate guys in the world in that I have three gigs that I absolutely love. It has been said that if you have a job that you love, you will never work a day in your life. I totally embrace that statement and it has been true for me.

I love all three of my gigs for different reasons. I love flying for United Airlines. I have wanted to be a pilot since I was 7 years old. I’m not making that up. It isn’t an embellishment. It is the truth. I have always loved airplanes and have always wanted to fly them. I literally used to dream of being a United Airlines pilot. When I was a kid, my parents were divorced and I would travel with my little brother from one parent to the other. We would always fly on United Airlines to Denver and then fly Continental to Houston. The pilots used to pull us up to the flight deck and give us the tour. I remember them asking me if I wanted to be a pilot when I grew up. Well, it worked out for me. United has been wonderful to me and I have loved it.

I could have never done any of the things in my life were it not to have been for the Navy. I quit high school and enlisted in the navy when I was 17 years old. I have done everything from clean toilets to serve food in the wardroom, to all the other grungy lower level jobs that young enlisted men do in their first years in the service. I even bucked hay on a working party in Memphis, Tennessee! I have also tracked Soviet airplanes and ships back in the day as an 18 year old electronics warfare technician. I have flown or traveled by ship all over the world thanks to the navy. They paid for my education both undergraduate and graduate school. I have been in the same room as the President of the United States three times in my life. I have sat in the White House Press Secretary’s office. I have flown in 20+ different types of airplanes and done some really cool things. Now I get to pay back for all of those incredible opportunities in a leadership role where I get to set the stage for some to live out some of the same experiences that have come my way. I do a lot of navy as a reservist- and love every single second of it.

A lot of guys think of making rank as something that is a reward to them. I look at that one differently. Ribbons and medals are awarded for what you or your unit has done. Rank is bestowed with a trust based on what they believe you will do in the future. I was quite chuffed when I made 0-6 because it meant that the number of years I could serve would be increased to 30 years commissioned service (36 years for me due to my enlisted years). I now get to bang around this place for 7 more years and work as hard as I can to look out after the next generation of the navy. Of all my gigs, being a navy guy is my absolute favorite. T and I were talking about it over lunch yesterday when I was clacking away on my iphone answering emails. She asked me if I ever get tired of working. No. I don’t. I love technology for that reason. I can be in St Croix preparing for a race and at the same time staying engaged, so that nothing slips through the cracks. I also have a dynamo of a staff that are smarter than me and have my back 24/7. In a crowd like that, I never get tired of working- because to me it isn’t work, it is service. It puts a whole different spin on it.

My third gig is the coaching thing. I sometimes refer to myself as the accidental coach. I started coaching friends of mine, literally on the back of bar napkins in pubs laying out a basic week structure for dudes. I remember one time drawing out a mitochondrial cell in a bar in Ecuador, with a dull pencil, explaining how the cell works and why it is important in endurance exercise. I absolutely love this stuff! That gravitated to sending out Monday emails with a layout of what my buddies might want to consider when getting their training in week to week. Mitch Gold with Counterpart coaching took it from there when he gave me the opportunity to coach with CpC in 2005. Mitch taught me how to coach and how to throw camps. For that, I will forever be in his debt.

In 2008, I ventured out on my own fearing that my coaching journey might draw to a close due to being in grad school and launching into marriage with T. I had no idea that it would blossom so fully into a genuine coaching enterprise with T as my partner, and having a few coaches come onboard to share with us the opportunity to build the IMJ tribe. I still can’t believe I am rolling down this coaching journey enjoying it as much as I am.

It is amazing how much I learn each day from both the navy and coaching. To be honest and blunt, United Airlines is a union gig. I fly revenue trips for a corporation. I have an employee file number that is six digits long and a union member number. I communicate with a computer for my schedule, I fly the trip, and a paycheck arrives. I rarely fly with the same person twice, there is very little camaraderie, and I will only progress as far as my seniority (based on my date of hire) allows. I still love it, as this profession allows me to do so many things other career paths do not, but it is what it is. We aren’t exactly curing cancer over there at the big U.

I learn new skill sets every day in the navy. I think my favorite thing about the reserves is the growth that is necessary in order to successfully take on each of the new roles that have come my way every couple of years. At this level in leadership, if you don’t grow and continue to develop; you will be gently ushered toward retirement. I love that about the navy reserves and the navy in general. You are never done learning and growing. It never gets easy, and the next challenge is on its way as we speak. I heard a phenomenal quote from a woman we met at breakfast yesterday morning here in St Croix. Susan Quinby spends an appreciable amount of her winter here and is a faculty member at Barnard College at Columbia University in New York City. She quoted her mother when she said “if you rest, you rust.” After watching my grandfather take his own life at 85 because he was literally bored to death (my opinion), I have just become very comfortable with the thought that I will never retire from working. My roles and gigs will inevitably change over the years, but I don’t ever intend to stop working. I just don’t see any reason to go heels up, wear sansabelt slacks pulled up to my nipples and white tennis shoes, play golf (a fat white guys plague if you ask me), and sit around watching network news bitching about stuff that probably doesn’t affect me, is half true and that I don’t fully understand, just because I am bored out of my grape.

Coaching is an example to me about how much I have to learn in this life. I say it again. I have so much to learn. I have so much to do. I am only partly aware of how much I still need to learn, because I think there is truth in the axiom that “you don’t know what you don’t know”.

On things that I need to learn, the business side of coaching has probably been my biggest challenge. I have always been very uncomfortable talking with folks about money. I suspect it is because I was raised poor by a single mother. We needed help from the government in the way of welfare (working welfare, my mother has always had a job and worked her ass off). As a boy, I was very aware of our situation and was embarrassed by it. I think because of this, I get very reticent to raise the issue of money, even when it is for services paid in the way of coaching. Just learning from Teresa how to go about that, as well as how to advertise a business, build a website, develop product, search engine optimization, set up a social media site, etc., has been huge. I am much more comfortable in talking training protocols, methodology, and things like sports science. The business side of IMJ has made me so much more aware on how business in America works. It is a recurring theme both with the navy, my coaching, and my journey as an athlete- there is just so much to work on, whether it is in the way of training hard and continuing to improve as an athlete, or learning more about how to be more effective in making my athletes get faster, or working hard to more fully understand how to most effectively provide leadership and impact to the navy folks with whom I work. I love the prospect of the challenges that lie ahead!
So there it is. That is what has been rumbling around in my brain the last three days. I would quickly state that I am having a glorious time with my wife, best friend, lover, and training partner. I just absolutely love traveling to races with Teresa. Everybody deserves someone that loves them completely. I am in that situation with Teresa. No one is more content with that thought than me. Blessed.

If you survived that rambling stream of consciousness- hope it was worth it.

Cheers.

Jonser