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stephenjohannes
Active Contributor

Unlike most of the blogs on SCN that continue to promote using SCN, I'm going to take the chance tell you how I literally ran away from SCN during most of this year.  I am currently towards the end of two major personal projects and I thought it might be worth stopping for one second as I approach the peak of the work for both projects to explain where I have been and if I do plan to run towards SCN again.  As with any run there are sections of warm up, core distance and cool-down, for this blog I will break-down my run into those sections.

Warm-up

I can honestly say that the initial steps away from SCN started when I decided to lose weight this year.  This time unlike many other weight loss efforts I was going to combine diet and exercise and make a total lifestyle change.  During the month of January starting with new year's day I started walking on a treadmill at my local gym three to four times a week. During this time I decided that I wanted to start to run.  I made the switch by doing two things.  I bought a pair of technical running shoes and switched from walking on the treadmill to running very slow.  As you can guess this started to consume a lot of my free time.

Initial Distance

In March of this year I was approached about writing book.  I decided to take the offer and commit to working on the book which would be due at the end of October(for my editors you will have those chapters very soon).   I added this to my running and suddenly I found that my time was going to be split between work, family, running and writing.  I no longer had the time that was needed to contribute on SCN or participate as an effective SAP Mentor.  I continuing moving forward further away from my start.  As part of that I basically said it was time for a "sabbatical" from SCN.

Middle Distance

As I progressed with both weight loss and book writing, I decided to throw one more challenge into my routine.  This final challenge was to train for a half marathon that would be held at the end of October.  Yes I don't know what I was thinking, but I decided to co-author a book and train for a half marathon at the same time while trying to balance family and work.  At this point even if I wanted to run back in the direction towards SCN I was too far away to come back to where I had been.  It's been interesting transition from being a very active member to a lurker.  In some aspects I have a new appreciation of what it feels like to be a "guest" or new member who just joined SCN.

Final Mile/Sprint

In the next month I will be finishing up my two huge personal projects for the year.  The question becomes how far away did I run during the course of the projects.  This last month I have been gradually trying to ease back in as time allows, but I'm not sure if I can run back to the role of that crazily active contributor who seemed to moderate and answer many discussions in the CRM spaces.  It's been an interesting run with lots of scenery and I'm still trying to decide how much I have left for that final sprint.  I have to leave this incomplete as I still have three weeks of training and final revisions left on the book.

Cool down

My goal after running these long projects is to gradually walk back towards SCN with increased contribution level.  However as a walk is not as fast as run and the distance I have traveled away is great, I may not quite get back to my old levels contributions this year.  I have a strong feeling that the my path will not be a loop but rather end up at a different point than where I started.   Personally my goal after the half-marathon will be to work on training on my 5K speed during the winter and to continue the progress that I have made.  In terms of other projects, I want to finally write fiction book idea that has been in my head for the longest period of time. 

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