10 Minute Rule

I walked into the gym today and immediately realized I didn’t know what the hell I was doing there. I didn’t have a plan or a routine or even a basic clue of what machines I wanted to use. I had no prayer of being successful because I wasn’t even set up to know what that ought to look like Day 1. So, I lifted on two machines, speed walked half a mile, and I left. That was it. That was my big start. That was trash.

I used to be in pretty good shape back in the late 90’s. thirty years later I’ve accumulated so much body fat that I am needed to lose 30 lbs just to get my blood pressure under control. I believe I can do it–at least I want to believe. I just don’t have the plan on how. So, research.

I’ve consulted Chat GPT, of course, and it drummed up a decent routine. However, I am not a single source individual. I want the best of the information I can find to inform a plan that works for me. This research is what I am beginning today in order to get to a place where I can be more effective the next time I am in the gym.

The Bottom Line is this: I need to be giving an hour to stretching and moving and getting my heart rate up. I need to sweat and through that burn off this stubborn belly fat. I need to do this if I want to live. If that isn’t enough motivation, nothing is.

Found my way to Pacific Beach courtesy of my partner’s wanderer attitude. She felt like I needed it, and I certainly did. PB is about walking around and laying in the sun and experiencing the outdoors. It’s a form and place of exercise I can really get behind. It is a reflective place—a reload of sorts where I can let my brain rest and clear and the ocean waves wash away wash away darker or even just unwanted thoughts.

Travel is becoming a constant in my life. I enjoy the getting away and getting to the beach and seeing the ocean and all the people and eating in the familiar places. Once in a while we’ll find something new, and I love that just as well.

it is a chance to feel alive and a part of things in a way I don’t at home, because the home space and routines are tepid, at best. I should work to change those and I want to, but it feels impossible most of the time. Travel helps me find me and reset and focus on what actually matters as opposed to what I’m drenched in every other day and time in my life. It reminds me that this is my life and I am blessed to and have the right and responsibility to live it.

First blog since installing the new WordPress update. I’m doing this one from a phone one handed so it’s slow going. Perhaps not so slow as those nights when I cannot think at all. Here’s hoping there are less and less of those.

it’s been a good week overall. I’m slowed by the lack of a list and work schedule that motivates me. I’m frustrated by work overall to be honest. This hasn’t been the ideal year for such things and that bugs me. I have six years left in the system and I need to start thinking about how I’m going to transition out and even prep people to take over my roles.

but none of that is what I wanted to blog about tonight. I wanted to talk about personal happiness as the prime directive. I believe if we can operate from a place of happiness—if we do what we need to get there first then we can be happier and more productive as a society. Too much is reliant on anger and fear. It’s time to stop working as though this is first gen Monsters INC.

happy matters. Make it matter the most.

I’ve been a bit lost as of late and I think it has a lot to do with my age. This is not the entirety of the problem, but more of a symptom of an underlying condition, which resonates more specifically at the frequency of failure. I’m at an age now where I thought I would have a lot more figured out, and frankly a lot more. Yet here I stand the owner of nothing and able to pass nothing on to my kids beyond decent advice. This is not the way to build a legacy or generational wealth or any of it. I’m in a relationship with a partner who has created all of that for her kids. They’ll have something when we are gone. My kids won’t, and I have to recognize that this may never change. The displaced feeling is about not feeling like I have anything that can’t be taken away from me or can be passed on when I pass. It makes me feel like all I tried to create I failed at and now I’ll never get a chance to do because I’m past that age of being able to create that in any meaningful way.

I hope I don’t pass that on to my kids.

NFL.com is frontpaging an article titled, “who needs to win the draft” as if a draft alone is going to change the game. Articles like that are click bait that openly ignore the reality of the game and, moreover, the stuff these same writers have been saying over the the course of the year(s). Here is a prime example: Ezekiel Elliot was called out the moment McCarthy took the reins. The issue? Mikey runs a style of offense that features fast and shifty backs who are good with the catch. Elliot is not that guy. He hits the hole and goes hard. So, over the years, he fell off. Not that he isn’t still a good back, he’s just not built for that system–or any system outside of Cincy really.

Meanwhile, A top 4 QB remains unable to get anything beyond a franchise tag. Nobody wants to make that trade, and it makes me wonder if he will find movement on the free agent market next year. In the meantime he’s making 32 million guaranteed this year. That is not ‘end of career’ money for a guy who wants to live his lifestyle, so he is going to need more. I get the agent thing (10% is a lot) but he does need to realize the NFL is a blackballing league, no matter what they say on the surface. Ask for too much and you’ll wind up like Colin K.

On the homefront, the little guy is sitting between 10.99 and 11.09 (hand timed) for his 75 hurdles. According to this bit of research, “the measured differences between the handheld and the FAT results ranged from 0.10 seconds to 0.26 seconds. Those time differences were evenly distributed between 0.10 and 0.26 seconds, with the average being 0.18 seconds.” If this holds, he is looking at possibly clocking in at 11.17 to 11.27 (as of last meet and no competition) for the District Championship. His best hand-timed run puts him just ahead of the school record of 11.21. Let us not forget his brother ran 12.75 as a 12 year old kid. He should’ve obliterated the records, but he was stopped by Covid from competing as an 8th grader. This is shaping up to be a great track season at the middle school level. I’m going to run down the high school season next week, because that will take a lot longer to unpack.

I don’t even need to look at a specific post to know I’ve been talking about lists for years now. In the good times the lists are helpful tools to cue a manageable workload. When I stop using such lists the good times immediately fade. I can get lost very easily and when I do I tend to stay lost–quite purposefully. There’s this quote I love by Steinback. It goes like this: “When I face the desolate impossibility of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day’s works is all I can permit myself to contemplate.” However, instead of one day’s work, I contemplate every game and low hanging task I can conjure in my mind. I will do anything but face that desolate impossibility head on, and that gets me in trouble.

So, I need lists. Such things are designed to allow for that dogged daily contemplation. My partner is a master of lists. She is also a Virgo, so there’s that. My own sign points towards idealistic and susceptible disposition. It also speaks to high emotional awareness and sensitivity, which is why I’m of the collapsing into game-filled ignorance mindset. Knowing these things matter, because knowing allows you to work through and even around them.

So, lists. They matter. They are focal keys. They are touchstones for the daily life. I need to get back to that and do so in a reasonable manner, so that I can get back to doing what needs done, and quickly.

Some Thoughts:

1. Turns out the 42 open windows are vastly less than what is open on the actual computer.

If the world were to be captured in a freeze frame moment in time the way we do with the internet, and a future observer paused to have a look at my phone internet browser they would see 42 open tabs. Those tabs date back some years now. They come and go, but since I’ve owned the phone they’ve never been completely empty.

It could be the number of tabs you leave open is like the amount of random information that swirls through your mind or the number of stray strands of thought that go unfinished. My tabs are a beautiful mess of everything and anything that comes across my psyche.

There is a tab showing a database from the clash Royale game where I can track what my next prize ought to be. There is a tab, only a few removed from that one, telling the story of the great plague. Another heralds the NY Giant free agent signings. Two more tabs point to various locations in my youngest kid’s middle school’s website page. I sort through these on occasion culling the massive list down to a manageable ‘I can’t close that’ amount but never really dealing with what I leave open.

There is a tab about my heart medication. There is a travel tab or three. There is this tab—the 43rd which I am presently using to blog.

All of these are part of my daily life and connection to the world beyond the tiny hamlet I call home. All of these tabs are connections; tiny feelers into a reality I’m constantly struggling to understand and to contribute to in a meaningful way. I remind myself of the world and the work through these tabs and these tabs remind me that there is more to be seen and to learn and to love.

I don’t know what to blog about tonight. Honestly, this happens more often than not these days and the message or lesson in this is to simply keep going. I feel like I’m in the middle of a tornado and being pelted from all sides by all things and just trying to hold on for dear life while everyone around me is going through stuff and acting like their going through it alone but foisting the sometimes manic and sometimes negative energy on me. So, I shell up. I’m a little turtle like that way. Why? because locking in and not saying much is less likely to get you into a fight or argument than disagreeing or offering an opinion or trying to help others see the lesson in what is happening.

Especially when you’re trying to deal with your own shit.

All of it is fuel for the story bank. Every interaction and obstacle is an opportunity to tell a story or add to one. I’m finding that I have a lot that I can say when I write what I know and this is a good sign. It means the story situations are not all dried out and that I can sustain a tale or three.

So, I didn’t die, and now I’m taking the kids to see John Wick. Such are the ways of life in this time and age. My partner says I spend too much time thinking about and constantly taking BP readings. She didn’t want to use the word obsessed but she danced pretty close to saying that if I focus on this so much I’m going to stress out about it. She’s completely right and also too late. I am stressed. I’m writing this blog and thinking about whether I ought to take a reading after. I know I can’t change how things are, but I want to understand how what my body feels like corresponds to readings and I cannot do that yet. What I can say is that I need to inject at least two fifteen minute periods of mediation into my daily routine in order to have a chance to keep this thing under control. In fact, I ought to do three, because the middle of the day and the morning are the two biggest stress points, and if I’m waking up with 150-160 over 105 pressure then I’m not seeing it go down when I sleep.

Best case scenario, I’m seriously damaging my body while trying to adjust to the new meds. Worst case scenario, I’m dying or dead in a week. Morbid? Yes, and chronically unfair, but the truth is what it is and the truth is that I’ve really put myself in a terrible situation that I’m afraid I don’t have the tools to get out of. Regardless, I’m gonna try my ass off, because my partner deserves it and my family deserves it.

I deserve it too.

Not sure what I want to talk about tonight. Had some initial ideas, but my brain is no longer functioning at a high level. To quote the NIH, “Stress can cause an imbalance of neural circuitry subserving cognition, decision making, anxiety and mood that can increase or decrease expression of those behaviors and behavioral states. This imbalance, in turn, affects systemic physiology via neuroendocrine, autonomic, immune and metabolic mediators.” I’m under a lot of stress and don’t know precisely how to handle it.

Some Thoughts:

1. This high blood pressure journey is one of the most difficult things I’ve experienced in my life. It is a tough situation to go to bed each not uncertain that you’ll wake in the morning. That is stress I don’t need to have with High BP. Yet, having high BP and meds that are not entirely working makes it less likely I keep my stress levels low enough to continue functioning properly. I get confused more easily now and type much slower with far more errors, and that can be attributed to stress and mental decline. I don’t know what is going to work out in the end, but this current state is devastating.