WUGO | Greg Macek

Life

Posts about life

  • 2025: Almost Too Much at Once

    2025: Almost Too Much at Once

    Featured image: a moment of peace and beauty at a Sleeping at Last concert in November.

    It’s challenging to think about this past year without thinking or writing about politics because it was impossible to avoid. I would be lying if I said consuming political content did not take up far too much time and energy. Truly, it felt as though everything was happening at once, all of the time. It was simultaneously extremely important, exhausting, and often simply taking up oxygen. Discerning when to look away was not a strong suit in 2025. 

    Yet while we watched the persistent attempts to upend the world, life continued, and 2025 still happened despite it all. I was promoted at work in January, which came with more responsibility. Many of us within the organization were working on a significant project that stretched our limits this year, particularly during the first six months. I hadn’t worked those kinds of extra hours in many years. I did not miss that stress of pushing up against timelines and staring at a screen, troubleshooting at 11PM on a Tuesday. 

    In the first few months of this year, I also ran a campaign for local office as a trustee in my town. I built out a website with my bio and lists of issues important to me, had yard signs printed, held meet-and-greets with the public, and more. While the campaign didn’t land me a trustee seat this time, I learned a lot about local politics and how important, messy, and fascinating it is. Perhaps I’ll write about it separately one day. The experience hasn’t scared me off from running for elected office again. I also made connections in my local community that I never had in the 17 years I lived in Villa Park, for which I am grateful. (The real campaign was the friends I made along the way.) 


    In anticipation of a potential election win, I wanted to be prepared with knowledge and skills that would be valuable in a trustee/local government position. In January, I took the plunge and went back to school for the Certificate in Organizational Leadership program at The Chicago School. Classes started in March, and I finished the program at the end of August. I am glad I decided to dive back into school, even if the adjustment to the weekly reading and writing assignment schedule was more challenging than I anticipated.  I applaud every person who has or will choose to go to school while holding down a full-time job, not to mention other life responsibilities like having a family.

    JPG copy of certificate diploma

    And of course, it wouldn’t be a year without me running and training for some races. Compared to 2024, this was a tame calendar with one 8K (March), two 10Ks (June, September), one 15K (November), two half marathons (April, June), and one full marathon (October). While I can’t point to any one thing, I was not mentally in the running game nearly as much as in prior years. Training felt harder. I didn’t feel as strong during races. I attributed it partially to *waves hands at everything* the world and the near-daily deluge of news that did not infuse me with encouragement. Other friends felt similarly unmotivated. Regardless, I mostly showed up week in and week out and made new friends in a supportive run club/group chat.

    Next year, the self-assigned torture fun continues. The same friend and I who convinced ourselves that running two marathons in a week are planning to do it again in 2026. Watch out, Chicago and Scotland, we’re coming for ya! 

    SM Running Club before The Chicago Marathon
    The Standard Meadery running crew/group chat moral support team

    It was nearly too much. Visual representation of the chaos.

    ActivityJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAug
    Work████████████████
    Campaign████████
    School████████████████
    Running████████████████

    2025 ended up being a year where I stretched myself, almost too thin, especially in the first few months. The chart above shows how many substantial targets, beyond work, I set for myself. Two of them, campaigning for a local election and taking classes as a working adult, were new and required a lot from me. I don’t think I was ever close to breaking down, but I was certainly very stressed during certain windows of time (see: a particular few days in mid-March).

    2026 Preview

    I refrained from writing publicly and speaking my mind freely on many topics as the social and political landscape continued to get murkier; the idea of jumping into those waters seemed unnecessary, but I don’t believe that is healthy for me. Constantly avoiding uncomfortable conversations and disagreements with friends or family isn’t a way to have a functioning society. So, if you see this and know we don’t align on an ideological spectrum, be forewarned: I may lovingly push back on what you say or post. My goal isn’t to pick fights, and I don’t want others to do that either, but my goal is to engage in more meaningful and authentic ways to understand each other and challenge my social circles instead of just quietly judging and snickering from behind a screen. I’m exhausted from speaking through memes or vague references to what we think or believe.

    This exercise may prove fruitless and futile, but I feel like I have to try.

    There is a long list of ideas and topics on my mind that I’ve wanted to write about here, but I have put them off for too long. My (evergreen) goal is to carve out time to do deeper thinking, which will mean balancing out my screen time and reducing my TikTok/Instagram/Facebook intake and replacing it with good books and longer-form writing and journalism. I often tell myself I want to be a “words-first” content consumer, but I frequently fail and doom-scroll because it’s easy. If we all believe that too much social media and screen time is bad for the youth and is messing them up, then we should change that behavior in ourselves first.

    I also have to get better at filtering out the distractions so I can focus on what I care about, like reading more books, becoming a better runner, journaling, and endlessly advocating to the world that everyone should love and take transit as much as I do. And sometimes, I’ll be reading books about transit and related issues, probably while riding the train. 

    This post is part year-end recap, part open accountability for myself and to any reader who knows me well enough to keep me honest to my goals and aspirations for 2026. 

  • You Make Me Feel Safe

    You Make Me Feel Safe

    Over the summer, while I was hanging out with a friend, a moment of particular vulnerability stood out during our conversation. They told me, “You make me feel safe.” It was a profound statement to make, unprompted, and one that displayed significant vulnerability and trust. (It’s impossible to know how that would be received – other than good.) It was quite unexpected. This friend is not always the most open about feelings, which made the moment that much more impactful. Not only was it a refreshing moment of openness, but I took what they said to heart and reflected on how I must be doing something right in the friendship. 

    I’ve thought a lot about this moment since then. Innately, we seek safety for self-preservation, for peace, and for comfort. How many of us have people we would consider a safe space? How much work are we intentionally putting into ourselves to be that for others? Are we willing to work on being emotionally and physically safe spaces to our circles? Is our very presence enough to put people at ease, let them be themselves, and lower their guards?

    I recognize my own limitations in putting this type of trust in others. If I do, it’s rarely full-throated, which, by definition, means I don’t feel completely safe. I selectively lessen my grip and often just for a fleeting moment or two. Loosening that emotional control for too long may put something on display not yet curated for public consumption. Guess I need to practice what my friend did with me, proclaim who my safe spaces are to those people, and live within them more wholeheartedly.   

  • 2020, The Loss Of Nuance, and The Callousness of Selfish Gain

    2020, The Loss Of Nuance, and The Callousness of Selfish Gain

    I was not ready for what this year became. I suspect you, reader, were not either. 

    This year was hard. Though like many others I tried to make do with what was dealt. I spent more time alone than usual and wrote about feeling the need to be cared for as a single person. Travel was mostly nonexistent, save for one coordinated trip to the South for a week in June to see & quarantine with close friends. The April marathon I trained for was canceled. Yet I continued running throughout the year and almost logged 700 miles. Neighbor Bob and I masked up and replaced the basement and stair tile. I completed a year at my not-so-new job. I also made some new friends while nerding out over stationary. So not all was lost.

    However,  I also found 4 gray hairs. That is not acceptable. Thanks a lot, 2020!  

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  • Best Supporting Actor

    Be the best supporting actor role in everyone else’s story

    Me, Me, Me

    American culture has an odd obsession with celebrity and being a star and unique. We are taught to see ourselves as important and as the center of our universe. Individually we are each the point from which all things revolve and rotate around. We each matter, probably more than the next person! It’s ok for goals, personal freedoms, and desires to take precedence over any unexpected repercussions in our ongoing quest for self-gratification. It’s self above all else. 

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  • Counting Up All The Change

    It adds up to something much more significant than expected

    “Every moment has led up to this.” 

    – Every movie protagonist as they get ready to face their biggest foe

    Change adds up

    Over the last couple of years, on this blog I have examined questions about identity discovery, living in a space with less built-in promises, and on reliance and trust on people outside myself. Offline in the real world, I’ve been quietly preparing my mind and heart for a big change. What that change would be was very much unknown, but it’s clear through what I’ve felt compelled to share that the status quo wasn’t good enough anymore. In the process, I couldn’t see what that would add up to. I don’t have the final answer yet; I’m actually still doing the math and formula calculations, scratching out notes and numbers because I write in pen and never believed in doing my math homework with a pencil.   

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  • On Reliance and Trust

    Life has a way of finding new things to surprise us with and to shake things up to keep us on our toes. They can be small and feel inconsequential in the moment. Others are bigger and have an immediate effect on how you see the world. I’m in the midst of one of those bigger life surprises. 

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  • No Promises

    This is the crux, the core, of so much hesitation in my life. There are no guarantees afforded to us. But I always want more of what isn’t available: More stability, more reliability, no bad surprises. That level of expectation is, of course, is folly and pure madness to chase after such levels of security and predictability. Perhaps it is that excitement, joy, and real living are found at the edges, in that space where we’re taken beyond our comfortable spaces. Those parts we’re afraid to expose to anyone else, maybe even to ourselves.

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  • Identity Discovery

    Every year around the sun brings with it a multitude of opportunities, but the most important one to me these last few years is taking the time to understand myself better, explore those things that I connect with, what doesn’t, and express what’s on my mind and heart through outlets like this blog. Intentionally or not, I have often found myself alone on the journey which provides (more than?) ample time to think, reflect, overthink, and act. In a world that creates so much noise, the solitude isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

    As it’s been in previous years, I struggle with finding ways to summarize a whole year of my life into one post. What parts should I share about publicly on this platform? What am I comfortable sharing? Can I be vulnerable enough to go deeper than I have before? Is there anything about my life that is useful to others? Was there a common thread tying everything together?

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