Week 1485

I lost a whole 5 weeks of my life in one week. A whole month! All because I asked ChatGPT to do the math instead of doing the math myself. Teach me to be lazy…

Anywho….

I feel like part of this year has been reducing the gap between recognizing a need or a pain point and acting on a need or a pain point. 

I tried to start bullet journaling last year in an attempt to be more productive (because it’s the tool that matters, not doing the damn thing - ya know?) and I read back through it midway through this week. 

I complained about being fatter than I wanted to be for a whole year, at least, before taking the action I needed to to actually make a change. Going into the new year, I wrote about getting into the gym more, reducing calories, etc. I did start getting into the gym but was inconsistent at best and was able to drop from 260/270 down into the 250s. 

But I continually let convenience best me, eating out way too frequently and too large of portion sizes for my newly-slowed metabolism. I couldn’t find workouts that I was actually enjoying and I was getting really annoyed at my plateauing weight. 

It took me until January 2025 to reach out to a dietitian to help with a meal plan to lose the body fat I wanted to and consistently get back into the gym 5 times a week. 

Fast forward to this week and I was staving off the temptation of buying a $1500 course because my dog has been pulling excessively on her leash. I have a free board and train with a company that has done a phenomenal job of helping me with my dogs but I feel gross taking things like that and feeling like I owe others and I feel like there is a gap between what they taught my dogs and how I literate on it. 

So, I settled on buying a $300 course from Will Atherton since the proceeds go to helping train dogs in shelters and I can always buy a more expensive course in the future if I need it.

Today was the first time that I have actually enjoyed taking Ellie on a walk since we got her at the end of July. Just by positioning a sleep lead correctly and doing his “tune-up” drill. 

Con - I managed to give her diarrhea while doing crate training either with peanut butter, raw chicken gizzard, or with beef liver treats. Nothing quite like frantic “I need to go out now or I’m going to shit myself” whines to get you out of bed at 4:00 AM.

Honestly, I appreciate those whines so much. Beats a diarrhea down the wall while you’re already running late for work morning…

While buying courses isn’t always a solution to pain points, I was looking for a way that I could be a better pet parent with winter coming up (maybe? It’s been hot all November) and this checked a few boxes for me. I also thought about it 3 or 4 days before buying it. 

Syd and I talked about this decision as I was going to ask for the course for Christmas and through her questioning, I thought about if it was worthwhile to just have someone else do it or for me to actively learn more about how to fix the problems I was experiencing. A question I asked myself is, “do I want to always have to leverage someone else’s expertise for this in the future?”

I am okay doing that for my car. I find the work that mechanics do to be things that piss me off and not satisfying even when the job is done due to the time, energy, frustration, and dirt/oil everywhere. Thus, I am okay leveraging and paying someone else to do that for me. 

I love my dogs. I love having a great relationship with my dogs. I love knowing how to communicate effectively with my dogs and I want to have dogs for as long as I am able. Therefore, this is not a skill I want to outsource. 

I think this is a nice framework for learning other skills. Do I want to learn how to write better? Do I want to learn how to edit videos past a certain proficiency? Do I want to learn how to code a website? 

I don’t have answers to all of these but I would like to be fluent in Japanese. I would like to know more about programming workouts and my diet for myself (even though I’ll likely have a coach for this more often than not). I would like to know how to train my dogs to a high degree of obedience so we have the freedom to do more. 

I listen to a lot of Mark Bell’s Power Project as I love that they are interested in finding different things to try and that they don’t have dogmatic ideologies and Nsima talks a lot about how people quit BJJ after getting their blue belt as that puts them at a level where they essentially know how to defend themselves. 

I love this concept and, tbh, that is probably the level that I would quit at if I got interested in a martial art. 

I don’t need to be the best at it and wouldn’t care to be a black belt unless I got really into the competitive side. Plus, it takes A LOT of time and dedication to become a black belt. 

Any skill is the same way. After a few years of work, you can get to a high level of proficiency and everything after that becomes marginal improvement. You have to decide how much you want to marginally improve or if your time would be better suited maintaining that skill while trying something new. 

Another episode had a motivational speaker as a guest who indicated that he didn’t read books or something to that end ask he didn’t want to “taint his canvas.” He didn’t want the influence of others ruining what he is compelled to do naturally. 

I both see his point and disagree with it. I believe that through exposure to many inputs, you can figure out your style and figure out what you don’t like while pushing your skills. There could be something you really like or would be compelled to do that would fit within your style that you are completely ignorant to and exposure could open your eyes to it. 

So what he believes helps prevent him from limiting his mind, I believe could be a limitation. 

Or maybe I just like distracting myself. Time will tell. 

I have been thinking more about selling my gaming PC and my consoles to remove distractions from my home. 

I haven’t been using them as well, so might as well sell them while they are worth something? 

I’ve been thinking about selling my Pokemon collection as well. While I had a lot of fun earlier this year wasting money to rip packs, chasing the thrill of pulling a Charizard like I wanted to in my childhood, I have no use for any of the cards and don’t look at them so they just take up space. 

I am reluctant to sell them as I don’t want to price everything out but I also just kinda want to be done. 

We’ll see what I do there. 

I’m feeling that way about a lot of things around the house. I’m wanting to clean the slate. I bought a ton of stuff that I don’t need or use and it’s just taking up space. 

Speaking of acting on impulse, there is a young man at my gym that is 18 and into bodybuilding. He just got hired as a trainer and sometimes I dread interacting with him as I don’t want the unsolicited coaching that I gave when I was his age. 

He asked me how my range of motion was on a chest-press machine and I told him, “I promise, my form is how I want it to be.” Not taking me being a dick personally, he said he was going to get me half a foam roller to deepen the ROM. 

The power of assumptions. I made an ass out of me and me. 

The ROM was better with the foam roller and my ego was checked nicely as well. 

I have noticed that it seems like I have amassed a good number of friendly faces at the gym that I can give a hard time about being late, a friendly wave, or the occasional between set conversation (but not too long) and it has been nice. 

I’m not a huge fan of online communities but it’s been nice seeing some friendly faces in person.

As part of my dieting this year, I have become a lot more comfortable with throwing food away. 

As a kid, the expectation was for me to clean my plate. I remember sitting with my dad being forced to eat mashed sweet potatoes while I was sobbing and gagging (he at least ended up cutting the sweet potatoes with the non-trash, russet mashed potatoes) due to this expectation along with going to CB Potts and getting the Faburge burger that my grandad said, “you’d better eat that whole burger” to which everybody sat and waited while I filled my stomach beyond capacity to consume. 

I harbor no resentment over these memories but do believe that they created a weird pride surrounding never leaving leftovers and a weird relationship with not feeling comfortable throwing food away even if I don’t like it. 

Sweet potatoes have always grossed me out. 

Now, I’ll take a bite of something, determine if the taste is worth the calories and eat it if it is or throw it away if it isn’t. What a novel concept. 

It sounds privileged to say that I am comfortable with wasting food but most of the food that this happens with is junk food. Cookies that people bring to the office, monster energy drinks that have terrible tasting artificial sweeteners, etc. 

This combined with flexibility in my pretty regimented food routine (I have had the same breakfast (300g of egg whites, 100g of beans of my choice, 30g of mozzarella, olive oil, and more Chipotle Cholula than I care to admit) and lunch (300g of frozen fruit, 300g no fat greek yogurt-I prefer siggi’s but King Soopers doesn’t get the big container anymore, and cinnamon) practically every day for the last 9 months) has helped me feel a lot less guilt with food. Though, I still feel guilty if I have ice cream too many nights in a row despite me hovering between 12-15% body fat right now. 

I’ve been watching anime pretty much daily (My Hero Academia or DBZ) which has given me a good amount of listening practice and I continue to do Wanikani paired with typing out the example sentences around every two days. Wanikani is a bit more intensive and I am currently 900 reviews behind so I get exhausted quickly. 

Plus, I’m constantly stimulated lately so ya boy’s ability to focus on one thing is - uh - no bueno. 

I mean 上手じゃない。

Speaking of distractions, I watched a video of a Polar Bear from a zoo growing up today and at one point, it jumped in water to catch a frozen sardine and my brain immediately went, “魚” (sakana). That has been fun to experience more and more as my time with the language increases. 

Food: Various Monster Rehab Flavors (all mid but the peach was the best out of/10, wildberrysuckedbecauseittastedwaytooartificial/10), Mango Loco (8/10), Viking Berry (wasgoodbutdidn’tfinish/10), Pacific Punch (garbage/10), Rockstar Recovery Lemonade (pleasantsurprise/10), Redbull Winter Edition Fuji Apple and Ginger (funtotrybutunlikelythatIwillbuyitagain/10), Chik-fil-a Nuggies (alwaysslap/10).

Consumption: THE CYCLE by THAT DUDE DAX (full disclosure, I have listened to this like three times but believe it to be a bop), Mark Bell’s Power Project

Dog training videos from Nate Schoemer, Doggett, Will Atherton, American Standard Dog Training

Pain Points: not tall enough, not as consistent on meals this week as I would like, need to clean the garage, struggling to focus with tasks one could reasonably consider boring but necessary