The Home of Steven Barnes
Author, Teacher, Screenwriter


Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Five Minute Miracle letter

I just received this note from someone who has been using the 5Mm system, and wanted to share it.  Specific identifications have been removed.
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Hi Steve,

I'm pretty sure that I have not written to you before from this address, but this is my University account, not the one I use to post in 5MM forum..
It seems somewhat appropriate to write you from this account, as your written words and other works helped me get here.

So, what's
the story? Let's see...

How about the short form? The long story,
it is too much and therefore a tale for another day. 8^)
-=-
When I first posted in your 5MM forum back in Feb. 2004, I was one of the washouts from the computer industry.
I had landed in a typesetting position at Allen Press in Aug. 2003, a local academic press covering mostly STM stuff. (Scientific, Technical and Medical)

I took the job they were offering, at the pay they were offering, on the night shift they were offering...
'cause you can only do so much with little income. SO there I was, having sat through month upon months of other people's work and slowly melding my ass to the chair, I discovered that AllenPress had CHEAP gym memberships as a benefit. Just getting moving again, that got me out of the doldrums.

Now, I love the feelings I get from physical exertion, have for years, and I'm always on the lookout for new methods and modalities. I was paging through the stuff at CST looking with undisguised greed at a set of clubells and the thoughts that seem to travel with their users, and I came upon some articles in their Mag by you.

Now you can skip telling Scott Sonnon this if you like, but with my negligible budget, I decided that I could afford one item. The One that I settled on was your 5MM tapes, as they seemed to be a more self-contained modality, needing little in the way of (costly) equipment. I was planning for better days ahead, and would get some things from SS when the cash flow of life was better.

(
Point of admission here: I never did get equipment from SS, I'm still planning upon it, but the Ideas and the Tribe were what I needed to start my life back towards the direction of growth.

I freely adapted the ideas from your tapes and the Forum, and used them both empty-handed and with the standard gym gear you'll find at most any athletic club. The practice that earned me the most looks (and the largest radius of clear space) was the use of 20 and 30 pound fixed barbells. 
mm mm, nice 4' steel staff, with welded on weights. I had a blast slowly shifting my grip away from the center, and thus adjusting the torque I was getting.)

-=-
Needless to say, all this work on the physical and mental fronts boosted my energy levels up
a bit.
I began to look at all the heavy intellectual work that I was helping publish, and I became dissatisfied.
But now it was dissatisfaction with a Focus.
Here I was helping to place commas, all night long, when what I wanted to be doing was the Research and heavy Mental lifting that went into those papers. So I thought it all through, and decided to take the leap.

I looked at all my past skills... Computers, emergency medicine know-how (left over from being a burned out NYC EMT), and being a general knowledge hound... Mixed a desire for the most stable job I could think of, and...

I went to the local university, the University of Kansas, and went to the pharmacy department, and asked them if my prior experience as a EMT would be a boon to my application process. They loved the idea of someone coming in with an emergency medicine background. My BSci in computer science looked good to them, as well.

So, as of August 2004, I went back to school, trying to take things I learned in prior cycles of my life, and parlaying them into a new one.
Just in the past few weeks, I have landed a job on Campus that suits both my short and long term goals. I'm working as the technical and computer lead for the Energy Balance Laboratory. The EBL does research on Metabolism, physical exercise, and obesity. I'm helping with academic research that I think will make a good difference to the world.

The EBL needed a technical person who was interested in research, and the fact that my Doctorate of Pharmacy (Pharm D) will take years to complete sounded good to them, they needed someone who was willing to settle into the position for a few years.

I'm approaching the beginning of my second pre-pharmacy degree, and the world is coming into alignment.
I wanted to stop and thank you for being one of the vectors that helped boost me along this path, and I thought that you might want to hear of the good ripple that your work is making in my part of the world.

My apologies for any grammatical errors in this letter, but I wrote it with a touch of haste. ;^)

Again, My thanks.

P.s.
Any questions? yes, you in front.

Yours in Practice,
Adam (Surname withheld to protect privacy)
############

I love letters like this.  There really are secrets out there, short cuts that help you leverage your energy.  The 5MM tape has some of the best I've found in forty years of searching.

Steve

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