Sabbatical Update - Travel to Utah

Well, the first phase of my sabbatical at Franklin University has come to a close. I've spent the last 5 weeks here in Ohio working on article writing, as well as on an application to become a Certified Performance Technologist.

Traveling to Utah
For the next phase of the sabbatical, my wife, daughter and I are traveling to Logan, Utah where I will spend the next 8 weeks as a visiting scholar at Utah State University's Center for Innovative Design and Instruction. It's strange leaving Franklin and our home for this long - Katie and I are very integrated into our Latter-day Saint congregation in Grove City, and we both enjoy volunteering and serving in that congregation. We will miss our friends and neighbors during the stay, but we know that the opportunity will be wonderful. Plus, some members of Katie's family will be staying in our home while we are gone, so we will not have to worry about the home during out time away.

The Travel
We will drive a total of 27 hours across the United States to make it to Logan. We are driving through the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and Utah. We plan to make the drive in 2 days, taking about 13 hours per day. We're also going to make a few stops when we get to Utah to see family before we make it up to Logan.

We considered making the drive in one straight shot without stopping for a rest at a hotel, but we have wisely decided against it. Here's a map of our route:

View Larger Map

The Vehicle
We'll be driving our fairly new Kia Soul, which has proven to be a great traveling car. Very comfortable, reasonable gas mileage, good storage space, and a nice stereo make it an ideal traveling vehicle. We made the trip out to Utah last year to see our families, and it went quite well.

Visualizing my Values

I recently took part in an emotional intelligence assessment tool designed by 6 Seconds to help me determine my emotional intelligence strengths and weaknesses. The test was relatively painless, and I found that I have strengths in the following areas of Emotional Intelligence:

• Exercise Intrinsic Motivation - I have internal drive and motivation that moves me forward.
• Exercise Optimism - I believe that my efforts now can influence what happens in the future.
• Pursue Noble Goals - I am goal-oriented - my long-term goals shape my decisions and actions.

I think I already intuitively knew that I had some of these strengths, and it was helpful to have them validated and emphasized. It is easier to benefit from something if you can name and focus on it.

Creating My Personal Compass
I followed up on my results with with Tracey Austin, an extremely well-credentialed, experienced coach at Franklin University. In our coaching session, he suggested that I create an image that shows my "True North Star," something that helps me to maintain focus on what is truly important to me. I decided to call it my Personal Compass. 

My Personal Compass for a successful life.

Explaining the Compass
I am not completely satisfied with it, but I think the "compass" above captures most of what is important to me. My purpose is to achieve success, the inner circle. I define success as godliness and the aspiration to become godly. Godliness in action is obedience to God and service to the people around me. I certainly do not assert that I am a godly person, but I try to work toward that ideal - I do all I can to live the life of a follower of Christ.

The middle circle indicates the four areas of my life in which success is critical: myself, my family, my church, and my employer. I have set standards of living for each of these areas, and I constantly set goals and work toward success in each. I believe that if I am diligent and true to these priorities, they will point me to a successful, happy life.

The outer circle represents my values, or the means through which success should be achieved. To be successful, I endeavor to dream and envision my desired future, I work hard to reach my goals, persist in my efforts, achieve successes, create opportunities for myself and others, believe in God and in myself, serve the people around me, and always have fun in my work.

I think the image captures my values and priorities - I will probably adjust it as time goes on. At some point, I'll frame the image in my office so that I can refer to it daily. Thanks to 6 Seconds and to Tracey for helping me become more self-aware and move forward in my goals!

Running and Physical Therapy

I have set a crazy goal to walk/run 36 miles on my 36th birthday this September. I've never done anything like this before (accept the week-long 50 mile hike/bike ride I did as a Boy Scout of America which was a lot of downhill riding and mosquitos). But, barring any injury, I am going for it.

In this quest to run 36 miles, I've been seeking the help of several professionals. I've been working with a physical therapist for the last 3 months, and she has helped me to build my strength so I can avoid injury as much as possible during my training.

Video Analysis
My physical therapist recommended that I have another expert physical therapist do a video analysis of my running. The first thing the therapist did was have me take off my shoes and walk around in increasingly ridiculous ways. She was apparently observing my gait to see the mechanics of my joints. She then placed several blue stickers on my legs and had me hop on the treadmill where she took video of me running.

When I run, I sometimes imagine that I glide gazelle-like across the asphalt, the ground flowing beneath me. This is what I think I look like when I run:

After running on the treadmill for about10 minutes, we reviewed the video of me running on her ipad. She showed me several areas in my running that could be improved to improve my running. However, I must admit that I was a little distracted by the two most obvious observations of my running:

(1) I am a handsome fellow, - this I expected - and

(2) my running did not in fact look like a gazelle bounding freely in the meadow. It looked, in fact, a little more zombie-like, similar to this:

The therapist emailed me several exercises to work on over the coming several weeks to make my running and walking more efficient, so I guess I'll start working on that. Just 4 months to go until my 36 miler!

Writing at the Library

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am currently taking a sabbatical from my work at Franklin University for the summer trimester. For the first month (May), I have been focusing my efforts on writing a coupe of journal articles. I thought I would share a little about what that has been like.

I have been spending my time at the Grove City Library in downtown Grove City. It's a relatively quiet place, and I can usually get a lot of work done. This is pretty exciting work, my friends - writing scholarly articles! To give you an idea of the excitement, here is what it looks like when I am writing:

What it looks like when I am writing scholarly articles. Usually there are two hands, but one of them is taking the picture.

Sometimes I feel like I need to take a break and look up. When I do, this is what it looks like:

What it looks like when I look up from writing scholarly articles.

Every once in a while, I get a little crazy and I look the other direction. This is what that looks like:

So, I guess you could say that things are really pretty exciting right now. Ill be sure to report on my progress in my writing in the next week or two. For now, back to writing...

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