Weekly journal: 2023-02-19

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? Yep, the “Don’t Eat That” chat I started last week is still working well.
• E – Have I exercised well this week? Yeah! Good week. Starting more speed work.
• I – What have I done for myself this week? Took Valentine’s Day off of work to hang out with Nancy.
• O – What have I done for others this week? Whole mess of parent teacher conference and doctor/dentist appointments for my kids. Does that count?
• U – Do I have any unexpressed emotions? Still feeling a good bit of stress I’m having trouble root-cause-ing. Still haven’t dug into it with anyone.
• Y – The “yeah” factor; what brought me joy this week? A really hard intervals run. I was on a high all day after that.

Last week’s plans vs. reality:

• Weekly experiment: Shower at the gym and go straight from there to a coffee shop, instead of going home. I picked a bad week to try this because of appointments mentioned above. Didn’t get to a coffee shop a single time.
• Mistake of ambition: Write a manifesto for focusing the entire team on one piece of work, and share it around my workplace. This sat on my todo list all week and I never did it. Company layoffs kind of took over.
• Looking forward to: I’m taking Tuesday off work for Valentine’s day! This was A+. Nancy and I had a great day together.
• Stressing me out: Just those weird pangs of stress that I’ve been getting lately. Nothing has changed there. Therapist appointment this week may help.

Takeaways from last week:

• I should look at my calendar before making goals for the week.
• I should take more time off. A random day here and there is huge.
• I should try harder not to cancel therapy appointments.

Next week

• What’s my next weekly experiment? More speed runs, and never miss a run, even if it’s a 20 minute squeaker in between meetings. Running hard seems to be a silver bullet for stress.
• What is stressing me out? Not understanding the source of my stress is itself stressful, and my company announcing layoffs-to-come isn’t helping!
• What’s my next mistake of ambition? Still want to write a manifesto for focusing the entire team on one piece of work, and share it around my workplace.
• What am I looking forward to? Tomorrow’s a holiday and the weather should be gorgeous. Gotta find a park to go explore!