Weekly journal: 2023-01-15

As part of my year of connection, I’m going to experiment with a weekly journal here to connect with myself. You’ll probably be bored if you read this.

Last week

Let’s start with a vowel check:

• A – Have I practiced abstinence this week? Pretty well. Ate some junk on the day of my long run and that’s about it. Also ate a feast last night but that was date night so it was planned.
• E – Have I exercised well this week? Yeah! Finally got a solid week of exercise. 23 miles running and 3 gym sessions. That’s more running in the past week than I got in the previous month.
• I – What have I done for myself this week? I added a “what’s giving me anxiety this week?” section to my 1-1s with my boss to get all that junk off my chest.
• O – What have I done for others this week?
• U – Do I have any unexpressed emotions? I’m starting to look for a therapist (for my year of connection) and I’m pretty dang nervous about trying to find the right one, and how that’ll go.
• Y – The “yeah” factor; what brought me joy this week? During a long trail run, I stopped about halfway and stared at this and listened to music for 10 minutes or so. It was quite a moment:

Last week’s plans vs. reality:

• Weekly experiment: Did a “cold blast” at the end of every shower. Hated it as expected, dreaded it every day, and didn’t notice that improving. Maybe eventually it would be valuable but at what cost? I’m killing that experiment.
• Mistake of ambition: I wanted a normal week with nobody sick, and I got one. And wow, it feels good to be back to normal.
• Looking forward to: Was pumped for the kids to go back to school, and it was everything I hoped it would be.
• Stressing me out: Never ending sick season was stressing me out and that feels better now, but there’s always the looming threat of more. 😬

Takeaways from last week:

• Reading back, I’m realizing how quickly I took my healthy family for granted. I went from “everyone is sick and this is the worst!” to “everyone is healthy and this feels amazing!” to “everything is normal, meh” over the span of like two days. I need to appreciate feeling healthy.
• I wonder if the cold blast thing may have had more hope of succeeding if I didn’t go into it fully expecting to hate it. That may have been a self fulfilling prophecy. “Whatever you think, you’re right” and all that. Cold immersion is supposedly pretty great for you after all.

Next week

• What’s my next weekly experiment? Writing an answer to this question every night: “If you could live this day over again, what would you change?”
• What is stressing me out? Finding a therapist that I have rapport with, and getting through the initial “getting to know you” phase and the intro awkwardness.
• What’s my next mistake of ambition? Signing up the initial cohort (4-5 people) for an internal coaching training that I’m putting together at work.
• What am I looking forward to? Monday is MLK day so no school/work! Weather is supposed to be nice so I’m gonna try to drag my kids somewhere outside, maybe Paris Mountain.