Episode 4-477 – The Apocalypse – Nick Sansbury Smith

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-477 – The Apocalypse – Nick Sansbury Smith  (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4477.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Chris’ other show à Intro: Hello my friends and welcome to episode 4 477 of the RunRunLive podcast. Here we are a week after the 126th Boston Marathon.  I have no entertaining race report for you.  I didn’t run.  But somehow the race managed to pull itself up and run without me.  In section one I’m going to talk about this year’s Boston Marathon.  In section two I’m going to talk about how to understand and leverage the fear of loss to achieve your goals. And in today’s interview I speak with triathlete and Indy author Nick Sansbury Smith.  It’s a great chat.  I wanted to ask Nick how he manages to be a successful independent author and still manage to stay healthy.  Turns out he works his ass off.  I’m going to keep interviewing people until I find that one who spends 3 hours a day working and is highly successful.  I know they’re out there! I’ve been working myself.  I think that’s the real secret.  To realize you’re going to get up a work everyday until you can’t anymore, but to figure out how to get something out of it – so you’re working on your own terms.  Spring is springing up around here.  Trees are starting to bust out.  My cherry tree and my forsythia bushes are flowering.  My blueberry bushes and raspberries are starting to bud up as well. My chives wintered over from last year.  As a matter of fact the chives have escaped into the woods and gone feral.  They’re out there competing with the poison ivy for world-forest-dominance.  I’m feeling pretty healthy.  I’m back on a clean eating routine.  I am walking Ollie a mile a day in the trails and I’ve got a pretty good fitness routine going that I’ll talk about in the outro.  One advantage of not running a marathon last weekend is that I can start working on my yard without fear of ruining my race!  This weekend I think I’ll turn over the gardens if the weather stays nice.  I’m contemplating spending some, if not all of the summer down on Cape Cod in my other house.  Now that I’ve chased the racoon out.  So I told my wife that she can use my garden beds to plant her cut flowers.  It’s good to give the vegetables a rest every few years.   I do have a fresh crop of hybrid tomatoes for this year.  I got a good germination rate.  14 out of 15 seeds are going strong under the grow lights.  It’s a beautiful thing.  How are you doing?  It looks like the pandemic is winding down.  More like people just stopped worrying about it.  But, did it help you think about your priorities?  Maybe be kinder to yourself?  I wanted to talk with Nick because he is a very successful independent author.  And that’s not easy.  The new world of publishing is a double edge sword.  The internet removed the old gate keepers so now anyone who wants to be a published author can do it.  No one has to give you permission.  The other side of that cutting edge is that this creates a vast, noisy soup of mediocrity the is hard to stand out in.  They freed the authors’ voices and simultaneously commoditized them. And this is true of all artists in this new frame of reference.  Artists are free to create.  They are free and enabled to release their creations out into the world.  From the garage bands to dancers, everyone can take their shot.  But it’s still work.  Especially if you define success as commercial success, which you don’t have to, but if you do, it’s now on you to create that success and differentiate from the throng.  Now we have turned our starving artists into hustlers.  Like I said, It’s a double edged sword.  And you might say that this artistic Darwinism is good for everyone, the cram floats to the top.  And this is true.  But the vast middle stays stuck.  So in many ways nothing has changed.  The gate keepers are gone but the algorithms are still deciding.  I think at the end of the day you need to work in your art because you are compelled to do it.  It’s answering the sirens’ song – a longing within you that you don’t have a choice over.  The art completes you.  The art compels you.  And in this sense there are fewer frustrated artists stuck in back offices and laundry rooms wishing their lives away.  I think it’s a good thing.  I’d say it’s democratic, like the original internet evangelists used to, but I think i’'s more chaotic and less deterministic, which suits me. Anyhow, your assignment for the week is to go buy something from a struggling artist.  And leave a nice review.  Karma is a river and you need to inflate your raft and take it over the falls every once in awhiole. On with the show.   About Zero ZERO — The End of Prostate Cancer is the leading national nonprofit with the mission to end prostate cancer. ZERO advances research, improves the lives of men and families, and inspires action. Link to my ZERO page: (for Donations) … I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to me trying to sound sincere about Stamps.com or Audible.. (although, fyi, my MarathonBQ book is on audible) We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio. There are book reviews, odd philosophical thoughts, zombie stories and I curate old episodes for you to listen to.  I recently added that guy who cut off is foot so he could keep training and my first call with Geoff Galloway.   “Curated” means I add some introductory comments and edit them up a bit.  So anyhow – become a member so I can keep paying my bills.   … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  … Section one – Boston 2022 -   Voices of reason – the conversation Nicholas Sansbury Smith – Indy Writers in the Apocalypse Nicholassansburysmith.com  Nicholas Sansbury Smith is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Hell Divers series. His other work includes the Extinction Cycle series, the Trackers series, and the Orbs series. He worked for Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management in disaster planning and mitigation before switching careers to focus on his one true passion–writing. When he isn’t writing or daydreaming about the apocalypse, he enjoys running, biking, spending time with his family, and traveling the world. He is an Ironman triathlete and lives in Iowa with his wife, their dogs, and a house full of books.    Section two –Fear of Loss -   Outro Ok my friends we have written our way to the end of episode 4-477 of the RunRunLive Podcast.   I have not been running still.  And the knee feels pretty good.  It’s basically a 1 on a scale of 1-10.  I’ve got a nice cadence going.  I walk the dog a mile every day.  Which takes about 20 minutes but makes him happy.  Ollie is coming up on 3 years old and he’s starting to be a bit more mellow.  He’s still a bit of a velociraptor, but he gives as many hugs as bites now on average.  I ride my bike 3 days a week.  Tuesday and Thursday I go out for a mountain bike ride in the woods.  Sunday I go out for a longer ride that’s a combination of road and trail.  I’m trying to get some time in the seat and build up my fitness before I start pushing.  It’s also still pretty wet in the woods and as much as I don’t mind working, the deep mud holes can be a bit of distraction.  I’m trying to be purposeful and get my balance and strength back before I get too aggressive.  On the off days, Monday, Wednesday, Friday I’m doing a light core workout and a 30 minute yoga for bicyclist that I really like.  Less than an hour all told, but again, consistency is the name of the game.  Baby steps. Next week I’m going to go out to Cincinnati to hang out and do the ½ marathon at the Flying Pig.  I’m not worried about run/walking the 13 miles.  I’ll jut have to be careful not to hurt the knee.  Should be fun.  We’ll record something.  So it’s all good.  We talked about using the fear of loss and a process pact to change behavior.  I’ll add one more method you can use.  We’ve talked about it before.  It’s self-image.  If you end up in a position where your expected self-image is out of synch with your reality it causes you to be unsettled and to take action to get back into alignment with that self-image.  The easy example for me is when I start putting on too much weight.  There’s no avoiding the pants that are snug.  There’s no avoiding the scale.  These are the facts and they run counter to my self-image.  They cause a discordance in me that drives me to start focusing on my diet and mindfully working to re-establish that other, less lumpy, me. Same with my fitness.  It’s good news bad news.  You might say it’s unhealthy to tie up self-worth in your fitness level.  Maybe, but it also causes you to take corrective action when that fitness level is out of synch with my expectations for myself.  Theses are negative examples, although I would argue they result in positive action. There is a positive version of the same phenomenon.  An aspirational version.  The way this works is that you consciously start to associate yourself with a self-image of what you aspire to be.  This is where those affirmations and validations come into play.  You can starte describing yourself as the person you want to be.  If you are powerful enough about this it can create that same motivation to take actions that will put you in synch with the aspirational self-image.  Refer to yourself as “A healthy eater” or a “Fit person” enough and your brain will figure out ways to get you there. Try it.  And I’ll see you out there. MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Rachel -> Coach Jeff -> Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.