Week 1513
As with my typical busiest of work weeks, I prioritized work over my personal goals this week. This was most visible with my Japanese work.
Sunday through Wednesday night, I was traveling to Philly for work. This was my first time in Philly so outside of work, I did have some personal items on the docket.
Explore the city - mainly go to the infamous Rocky steps. Nailed this one Monday - exploring the art museum and the free library as well. I was constantly impressed by the grandiose nature of many of the buildings and statues as I explored.
Go to PWRBLD gym. I went twice. They were incredibly accommodating for my short trip and the curation of the equipment was awesome. I got to try some machines I have been itching to try such as the Atlantis Hack Squat Pro and the assisted nordic machines, and I stumbled upon a new wishlist piece, the Newtech m-torture Leg Extension machine. I was having so much fun, I was willingly doing more leg work than I was supposed to.
Eat a cheesesteak. I ate two but the better one was from Shay’s Steaks and I practically sprinted over there before I had a meeting.
On top of the above, I had completely forgotten that it is the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence this year so I walked over to Independence Hall and saw the Liberty Bell at 6:00 AM after my morning lift on Tuesday (which I wouldn’t have gotten to do if it wasn’t for my appearance perfectly timing out to a member getting there).
Due to early mornings (technically mornings that were two hours earlier than my normal mornings - the equivalent of waking up at 2:30 AM) and late nights, I didn’t really make time to knock out much Wanikani and I didn’t do BunPro until Sunday night.
That said, I still watched a bunch of Hunter Hunter and made sure that I was getting exposure to the language. I have been watching Hunter Hunter with English subtitles and it’s really interesting to me. This seems to be discouraged but sometimes the English subtitles help me hear what is being said in Japanese.
It’s not great for longer monologues due to the different structure of English and Japanese but it works interestingly well for short statements.
We will see how this converts to comprehension and communication ability in the future but I find it highly interesting regardless.
Speaking of communication, I have been working on my intentionality in how I interact with people in my personal life. I enjoy interactions with people that are seemingly full of energy and a lust for life and, at times, consciously dial this back. This is interesting because one of my favorite things in the world is connecting with people, no matter how briefly.
Afterall, I am trying to learn an incredibly challenging language to learn for native English speakers just so I can travel back to Japan and communicate with random people.
But, that’s a bit of an irrelevant skill if I am unwilling to talk to people in general.
With that, over the past few weeks I have talked to some people I don’t know such as the front desk guy (Adrian) at my gym and various people on my work trip.
I got to hear interesting stories, connect on shared experiences, and talk to people about their personal goals just through introducing myself and talking to people.
It reminded me of how much I valued my friendships as a teenager and has me thinking about bringing more intentionality to hanging out with people in my personal life.
While I don’t want to feel pressure to do something with people every weekend, I have enjoyed the intentionality of taking my dogs to the off leash dog park early in the morning and watching them play and it’s making me want to be more intentional with my experiences, not just my personal goals.
I think this is especially important to me because my personal goals largely involve solitary activities.
While it’s important for me to pursue them, I don’t want all of my time being spent with me sitting in my office or working out by myself at the gym.
The time with my dogs is always welcome, especially when we are doing something that fills their cups.
I can involve other people in my gym goals, afterall, I used to have to lift with people for football but I don’t necessarily like the friction of coordinating schedules. I can do the same for Japanese but when I involve other people there, I want it to be for speaking practice.
I have thought a lot about building online communities or joining online communities for both but I prefer live human connection to one via the internet.
I think this is something for me to monitor going forward and a reminder that I can be intentional in spending time with people, even if it doesn’t directly align with my goals.
There’s a degree of fulfillment that coincides with those experiences that are hard to replicate.
In addition to the connections I made on my work trip, I made a connection through Facebook Marketplace, of all places. Now, I likely won’t ever talk to the guy again, but I got a steal on a Shogun Nord-Ex and talked to the guy selling it for probably 20 minutes.
We connected on our experiences playing college football (him D1, me D2). He let me try out his Rhino Belt squat and his Rep x Peppins and he gave me some tips about laying out rolled rubber flooring.
He immediately compared me to one of his teammates in college, Nate Solder, which is exactly who my recruiters had compared me to when I was looking at playing college football.
Granted, one of us managed to put on the requisite weight (and had the skill) to go to the next level and the other opted to focus on their education - leaving the potential as an unanswered question…
Syd and I also got to spend a bunch of time together and she joined me in going to the dog park this weekend. It was fun getting to hang out and I loved that she got to see the dogs having fun at the dog park - even if this was the only trip I’ve taken where Ellie decided to run off and hang out with different people.
