Week 1496

As I continue to think about the level of effort I put in each week, I have concluded that it’s not that I lack effort, it’s that I am lacking intentionality. 

I have been able to be consistent in the gym as I have had a consistent direction that I am moving in. I have made it mindless. 

I know exactly how much I need to eat to gain weight. All I have to do is get to the gym, pull out my phone and follow my prescribed workout. I keep the scale in the bathroom so it’s easy to weigh myself (for my wife’s sanity, it’s not out all of the time but it’s accessible). 

When I was consistent with Japanese, I had a clear system. 

Do Wanikani everyday, no matter what, with a general goal of clearing out all of my activities each day. 

It’s so simple but I think I have been shying away from formalizing what I need to do because I get bored. But I get bored at work and I still show up and do what is expected of me (well, I like to go above and beyond but you get the point). 

The part I know I am going to struggle with is remembering the gameplan. I am tempted to do phone reminders but I have typically just ended up ignoring those.

I don’t understand why things feel like such an internal battle sometimes. I know what I want to do but it’s like my body fights back to conserve itself. 

So here is what I have concluded the next year will look like. 

I will periodize my goals to keep myself engaged while maximizing progress over short sprints through next February. 

The rest of February will be the ramp up. I will then prioritize Japanese. Followed by dog training. Followed by content creation. Closing the year with a focus on lifting. 

You might be thinking, “Dakota, none of that really goes together.” Yes, young padawan. That’s the point. Too much of the same thing is incredibly boring to me. I am leaning into my interests and seeing what I can accomplish. 

These aren’t all of my interests by any means, just what I most want to accomplish outside of work right now. 

This could be my life structure for the next few years, who knows? But this will help ensure that I make progress. 

DAILY BASELINES (Year-Round):

• Japanese: 20-30 min minimum

• Dogs: 10-15 min minimum

• Blog: 1 post/week

• Lifting: 3x/week minimum

Also, while I am documenting this, I noticed a new stretch mark around my shoulder joint (chest side) getting big! 

I feel the new baselines are doable on a daily basis and give me reasons to limit my distractions while helping me to progress towards my goals. 

I have no idea of how this will impact me and would be foolish to speculate. It could do a lot or may only move me towards what I currently want out of life. But if that is what I accomplish, isn’t it worth it?

I am writing the rest of this on Sunday to reflect on the week. 

We had a lot going on this week. 

Syd’s stage ended up being a bit of a shit show as it was an occupied stage by a couple getting a divorce. Occupied stages are a pain in the ass because the seller has a tendency to want everything to be their style.

At least from our perspective, staging isn’t meant to appeal to the seller. It’s a nice plus but not a must. Staging is meant to appeal to a wider audience, photograph well, and help prospective buyers see what they can do with a space. 

The inherent problem is that the seller is living in the home and has to live with everything, therefore wanting to inject their opinions into design decisions. 

It’s a weird balance as, depending on the structure of the contract, they are paying for it and you want them to be happy. Simultaneously, they aren’t the ones buying the home that you are trying to appeal to. 

On top of that, the realtor is typically picking the stager and the stager has to find a way to blend their style with the style of the existing furniture in the home. 

This makes occupied a giant pain in the ass.

I have been trying to find a way to help Syd address this opportunity. This is such a pain in the ass that few stagers are willing to take on occupied stages. That creates a gap in the market where you can charge a premium because most people don’t want to deal with the headache. 

I think a lot of it comes down to managing expectations and charging enough to make the suffering worth the time but my job is to help support Sydney, not to deal with the realtor nor the seller so I have low stakes in the game. 

All that to say - the seller seemed to really not like much of what Sydney did in a job that she took on to build her relationship with a realtor that has given her a couple of good opportunities just to get screwed over due to poor communication as it pertained to all parties involved. 

Fun! 

On top of that, my work has had a lot going on where my heaviest workload that cyclically comes up fell on top of some additional duties that I take on, plus traveling for work that is taking time away from where my focus needs to be. 

Essentially, I know that this month is going to be a shit show for me from a stress perspective because I have too much going on in a limited amount of time. 

It’ll be fine, I just have to focus on how I manage my time. 

Despite all of this, I was much better about getting into the gym this week and will knock out two workouts today. 

I’m not perfectly on track but inching closer with a couple of two-a-days. 

I have been training the dogs more and making a more concerted effort to take them out to play, which I feel good about. 

While I no longer need to go outside with them, I always monitor them when I let them out and they have had diarrhea pretty much daily since switching them to Kinetic dog food. It’s kibble and I hate feeding it, but I needed a cost-effective temporary solution to un-emaciating them. 

I hate this and will be switching their dog foods back to something fresh and just suck it up and manage myself better to ensure that it is doable. 

They have short lives and there is no need for me to make them shorter or have them suffer due to what I am feeding them. 

In that vein, I have been thinking a lot about the impact of having pets on a grand scale and I am continuing to experience a dissonance there. 

I absolutely love my pets and we see ourselves having pets as long as we are capable of caring for them. I also recognize that my pets are predators and need meat to eat which supports factory farming, which I am working to support less through my diet. 

On top of that, I have personal goals that require me to eat a large volume of food to sustain (bodybuilding and getting to 250 lbs lean). I have done this predominantly vegetarian but I am still contributing to this issue through a massive consumption of eggs. (3 whole eggs and 400g of egg whites a day). I also consume a good chunk of protein from Core Power Elites and am questioning how I feel about the ethics behind it knowing that the cows aren’t “naturally” producing milk year round to support this consumption. 

My plan is to address consumption from my level first, help Sydney with it on her side, and see where we fall from there. 

While I don’t like what we are supporting, I currently don’t have a viable solution for feeding our pets nutritionally correctly. 

I have had all of these thoughts in the back of my mind as I love animals and don’t see us as above any other creature or being (I recognize we are the species that has had the single greatest impact on the globe but I don’t know that I agree with us choosing which lives are the most valuable as each life is a gift. 

This is not an ethical issue that I mean to force on others as I believe in the right to choose how you want to live your life. I just think if humans were raised for slaughter, we wouldn’t tolerate it near to the degree that we tolerate it for other species. I mean, I hope we wouldn’t tolerate it at all. 

Again, these are the musings of someone trying to figure out where they draw the line on their ethics and morality. 

I like to think that I’ll be able to get shredded and cut back to a plant-based diet. But I struggle balancing my selfish desires over what I feel is right. 

I know people have done plant-based bodybuilding, just nobody my size and that makes it intimidating. On the flip-side, it increases the potential impact. 

This is not where I expected my writing to go today but clearly I have been grappling with this. 

In the coming week (minus my travel for work), I will find a replacement meal for my yogurt to see how much I have to consume to replace ~44g of protein per day. 

I also need to prepare Syd for the week so she is stocked with easy food options. 

I emailed Maev to confirm the caloric content of their meals for the dogs to ensure that I set them up for success when I switch them back as well. 

With Japanese, I have successfully studied for the last few days. I’m on a roll but haven’t studied for longer than 30 minutes. I’ll get back to 1-2 hours a day in March but it feels great to make progress again. 

Just as documentation - we had a fridge tech come out this week to fix our Frigidaire. The side by side model apparently has an issue with the fan in the freezer freezing and throwing the freezer into a defrost state. That should be fixed next week. 

It took me three days to mount the Samsung Frame TV that I got Syd for a few holidays worth of gifts (she’s wanted one for ages but I didn’t because the screen quality is meh compared to LG Oled) because of the mounting system and something being directly behind where the left mounting bracket needed to go. 

This meant clutter and anxiety in our house on top of high anxiety and stress levels. 

I also had someone come out to see what it would cost for us to get ethernet routed into my office and am waiting to hear back because I had to kick him out early to help Syd with her stage (I’m glad he was gracious about it). 

I look forward to being done making minor tweaks with our home so we can just chill. 

I am proud of most of the progress this week and I look forward to getting through this month to a less busy March. 

Listening to:

• Rich Roll’s Podcast

• Spotify Discover begging to hear a new song I like (enjoying listening to music at the gym with there being too many people at 24 Hour all the time)

One of my dreams when buying a home happened Sunday. Ellie laid down on the grass (turf) for the first time. I envisioned that for my dog Hank but am glad one of the dogs got to bring that vision to fruition.