Roseville, MN

Diagonal Trail

Run Time: 64:57 + 2-minute kick

Creative name for this trail. The elevation gain data seems a little exaggerated. Partly that is the width of the graphic, but also, I ran this trail from one end to the other and it felt pretty flat. The approaches from the street were the most pronounced elevation changes I encountered, and those kind of worked the other way, so I cannot account for these climbs at each end.

An uninteresting run for the most part, but a good find, because it was only a few minutes from the hotel that I usually stay in when I fly into MSP for a trip through Minnesota/North Dakota, or Minnesota/Wisconsin. Other than when there are three feet of dirty snow on the sidewalks, now I know a run route that requires no driving, which I prefer.

On one side of the trail was a golf course. On the other, a graveyard. Not sure what the metaphor is in that description. The beginning of a tiring week of watching Stanley Cup playoff games till midnight or later. Turned out to be my only run of the week. Coincidence.

In past years, when I would watch games after the fact, I would try to watch all of the playoff games. This led to asking extended family members at mid-summer events to not tell me who won the Cup, because I was still watching old games a month after the Cup was raised. I am less completist about it now, but if I’m in a hotel doing late work after a day on the road, I will have a game on if a game is being played, and if there’s another game after that one, I will stay up and try to catch a nap the next day at a rest area. That’s why it’s called a rest area.

What is a completist? A completist is someone who listens to entire catalogs of a musical artist to see if there are any songs they have recorded that should be added to their playlist. A completist is someone who finds on YouTube a classically-trained harpist who does rock song reactions and analyses, and after watching a few recent ones, goes back to their original posts from 3 years ago to watch them all in chronological order.

I am subscribed to 25 podcasts, and I listen to them from oldest-to-newest. 5 of the feeds cycle out episodes when they get old, so I start each day with one of each of those (so I don’t lose any). If I listen to one each of those in any particular day, then I move onto the next in a rotation of all feeds, followed by one of the episodes of the podcast feed that has the most episodes in the queue (first place currently held by This American Life, with 717 episodes, the oldest unlistened episode from 9/4/98 (no need for 4 digits in the year, because that was pre-Y2K); “unlistened” means unlistened to as a podcast episode, because I probably listened to it live on NPR when it aired). There are more rules to tell me where to go from there, if I have a long day of driving that exceeds 7 podcast episodes.

I think it’s almost as fun for me to design these systems of completion as it is to do the actual activity requiring the system. I have given up on the goal of reading an author’s entire bibliography, because I don’t read fast enough. I know I’m not alone — what, after all, is binge-watching all about? I might finish those This American Lifes, though, before my American Life is over.

The important quality in the pursuit of completism is endurance. Endurance, as Chinaski says, is more important than truth. One reason why I have confidence in my sales work is that I know I have endurance. I will outlast my competition. It’s inevitable. That is a comforting thought. I recently had a prospect email me in a response to a visit request that I was welcome to stop in, that he appreciated my follow-up, and that he had a feeling that my perseverance would be rewarded eventually. I love that.

This is another example of what I call “do what you like to do.” This does not mean the conventional message of magically find a lucrative career that matches your interests. It means find a way to do what you like to do in the things you choose to do. Make it fit you. I like to complete things. I like to write. In my work, in my life, even in my yardwork, I find a way to complete things (or work toward it). I find reasons to write (the yardwork example doesn’t apply here). I managed a towing company for 7 years. I wrote a newsletter each pay period, because I like to write. Nobody asked me to write a newsletter. I just did it.

How can you apply your obsessions constructively to your life? All of them, not just a few.