Adjusted Reality

I have flown ten times since we spoke last, and boy, are my arms tired.

We went Austin -> Denver -> Switzerland -> Hamburg, then a few days later took the train 4.5h to Koln, then flew Koln ->Munich -> Chicago -> Austin. Then, 3.5 days later, we turned around and did Austin -> LA -> Seattle (and back). I’ve been in nine different airports, and three different countries. Only once was my luggage lost (it didn’t make the connection from Koln -> Munich, so it had it’s own German adventure, apparently), and twice did I get into the Austin airport after midnight.

I enjoy traveling, I love adventures, and I feel super privileged to have the opportunity to do it for work. However, I crashed into the last few days of Seattle a freaking zombie and have just barely gotten my mojo back. No Covid (knock on wood), no sickness, just exhaustion through and through.

Even though it feels like August barely existed, let’s talk about the triumphs and tragedies in regards to my personal goals.

#1 Weigh some weight at some point…

As of today, we reset at 183.6, the average of what I weighed last week. Not terrible for 3 weeks of travel, but still a little gain. My goal is to not gain anything else in September (losing if I can!) and get back to the goal of four per month in the last three months of the year.

My goal in August was to track all my food. I did… some of it. I actually did the entire Germany trip until the flight home, and then I just fell off through the three days at home and then Seattle. Long story short, I did really well in Hamburg, did REALLY poorly in Koln (convention work is get whatever food you can in you so you can keep going and the drinks, they do flow…), and I’m going to guess I did fair to middling in Seattle.

At this point, all you can do is start again. I’ve been tracking since last Thursday, I have Snap Kitchen and Factor back in my life, and while it took a bit to detox the extra caffeine and extra calories, I am ready for three months or so of normalcy.

September goals are same as they ever were. Easy to state, difficult to stick with.

• Track every day
• 1200 + activity calories
• Detox the caffeine and be excited for boring food again

#2 Strength Over Stamina:

I was not perfect here, but between work, travel, and conventions, I was able to do:

• Two runs in Hamburg
• One row (40 mins in a canoe) in Hamburg (counting this as back and biceps because… yeah)
• Jack and pucky in Koln (yeah, I officially missed chest and shoulders and legs this week)
• Back and bi and chest and shoulders at home
• Two runs in Seattle
• Legs and chest and shoulders in Seattle
• One elliptical in Seattle
• Back and biceps and legs at home last week

This is not as much as I’d hoped but it’s more than I honestly expected. I kept up with all my weights except Koln week, and if I’m being honest, the amount of stairs I was climbing probably SHOULD count for legs. I was thrilled to find a gym in Seattle or I might not have been able to do much. I didn’t feel super comfortable going too far from our hotel. We were in a nice area but five blocks away… it was not so good. In all three places I was getting 15k+ steps per day and lots of standing, so it’s not as if I was sedentary.

Now, I’m back to being sedentary minus workouts, but thankfully the weather is easing up just a little bit. So, here’s my goals:

• Swim a few times, at least once in the lake (lake done!)
• Race distance bike, some shorter (done)
• Three runs per week, some off the bike (yep)
• Weights as usual (I really slacked on back and bi this week but… technically done)
• Stay on top of recovery – 3x week stretch and roll, most days ice and boots (heck yes)
• Waaaaalks. A few times a week now that the highs are like ten degrees cooler (wheeeeee!)

Oh yeah, and I race in 6 days. Obviously, my lead up has been sub-par for… reasons. Thankfully, I’ve been lifting and running regularly, and cycling semi-regularly, regularly before the travel. Swimming, well, it is what it is. All I need out of the weekend is a good, solid finish, and some quiet time camping. It’ll be nice to return to the race where I hit rock bottom and resolved to stop whining about being so far from fighting form and work on getting back there. I’m not there yet but I’m on the path. We’ll see what that means in the moment.

#3 Surroundings

I cleaned nothing. I did however make sure to take the convention swag I didn’t actually want to the office quickly. Baby steps.

This month I’d like to clean out two drawers of mine. More baby steps.

#4 Relaxing Hobbies

• Finish London photos. YEP! London Travel Blog – NOPE!
• 4 Bloodbowl games and 10 hours into Persona – 100% NOPE.
• Meditate 5x week. Ehhhh, probably about 3x week while I was travelling but I’m back to it.

For September…

• London Travel Blog, Krause Springs Photo Editing, Krause Springs Travel Blog
• Guitar 3x week
• 4 Bloodbowl Games (I’m really rusty!), play some Baldur’s Gate (downloading now, so excite!)
• Meditate 5x week

#5 Write a Book

My August goal was to share my draft with someone else. On the way to Germany, I finished a read, and I actually think it’s in better shape than I expected. I don’t hate it. I sort of shared it, and then told Joel to wait because man, one more edit pass, and I’ll actually be super proud of it. Well, proud enough to share with Joel. And then maybe two more edit passes before I send it to anyone else. 🙂 Baby steps.

Two goals this month:

• Not touch my book until after Sept 10th (to give myself some space from it)
• Do the edit pass and ready it for one more read during camping in two weeks

Spoiler alert: I did both these things. I am giving myself up til I leave to continue to tweak it, but I’m ready to send it to my first reader, and should that go well, my second. 🙂

It’s weird writing this blog over like a week and seeing myself complete things I wrote before I posted this, but what’s left for September?

• Continue to track daily (no excuses now that I’m back) and weigh most days
• Prep for Kerrville, and after Kerrville continue to lift 3x week and stay active (5xweek cardio)
• More waaaaaalks (yay!)
• Clean out two drawers
• Photo editing and travel blogging
• Give my book to my first reader this weekend!

It was nice to go places, but it’s really nice to be back home. Now, it’s time to resume progress on some of these things I mostly paused in June.

Summer was my absolute favorite season growing up.

I was a nerd and loved school, but I also loved the freedom of waking up whenever, lounging around the house hanging out with friends, meandering all around town on some form of two feet or two to four wheels, getting into all sorts of trouble, and also frequent trips to the pool.

Well, as an adult, I’d love the hell out of some summer vacation time like that, and the only thing that I’ve got going for me is the frequent trips to the pool. Normally, I also have the meandering around town by my own conveyance, but even that’s been rough lately when it’s one hundred and freaking eight degrees (but it’s a wet heat!). You wouldn’t think that there’s a big difference between ninety-eight and one-hundred and eight, and there’s not, they’re both hot AF. However, when it’s one hundred and eight during the afternoon, it’s unbearably hot from just after sunrise to WELL after sunset, so the outside world is just… no.

So, I’m ready. Summer, I’m good. You can go home now for the year. A full month of well over one hundred degrees is enough. Next year, maybe we can agree on some slightly cooler mornings, and some highs in the nineties? Pretty please?

Enough of my whining about things I can’t change and let’s talk goals.

#1 Weigh 180.6 by the end of July

Survey says… nope. There are many other factors that have contributed to this – but the one thing I’m going to call out is that I went from walking a lot to not at all.

Maintaining is better than gaining, but it’s sure not the steady progress I was making last fall, winter, and spring.

• Week of July 10th – +175 calories
• Week of July 17th – +822 calories
• Week of July 25th – -335 calories

That last week was back on track, and it’s because it finally clicked that the trainer is my summer substitute to walking. While it’s not nearly as nice as the fresh air, clearing my head, and pleasant conversation of walking, it does do the job to replace the calorie burn and I am getting to watch a lot more Bloodbowl games!

This month, I have lowered expectations. I’ll be travelling for half of it. Now that I realize I’ll probably be in Germany a few times a year, I don’t necessarily need to EAT ALL THE THINGS every time, but I know I’ll eat some of the things and I need to keep myself in check. I seemed to do okay last time, but I really think that committing to logging my food for this trip is a good thing. Even if I don’t abide by the rules every day, I can see the trends of my consumption and adjust in real time instead of my jeans just not fitting by the end.

So, August goals:

• Weight 180.3 by the end of August (it’s doable, I have a week and a half before I get on a plane)
• Log my food daily, even while traveling

#2 – Strength Over Stamina

Here’s another place not walking is showing up:

Ignore week one, as I was on vacation, and I forget why week two was a little lighter, but week three and four (and continued on into August) are pretty steady with the training. But… my hours were more like 6-8 before and the only difference was a few walks a week.

In August, I’ll have to be crafty to keep up training but here’s my plan:

• Three weights sessions per week, non-negotiable. What is negotiable is what this involves. I may not have access to a gym for weeks. My strategy here is to prioritize back and biceps on days where I have access to weights (either at home or if I can find something in Hamburg). I also have some partial weeks where I’m at home so I may load up Mon/Tue/Wed as lifting so I can have the rest of the week off.
• Prioritizing biking and swimming while I’m at home (5-6 days) and running when I’m traveling (minimum of 3 runs per week)
• Enjoy the hell out of walking everywhere in Germany while it’s cooler

#3 Not Ignoring My Surroundings

I cleaned off the vanity and the bathroom counter. I feel pretty good about this. I also cleaned out my pajama drawer because I wanted some new pajamas. This month I am out of town so much, I’m just going to pause this. I’ll say my goal is to clear out ANY one thing and call it a day month.

#4 Relaxing Hobbies

I did pretty well here!

• Finish April Camping Trip pics – YEP! Moved onto Germany and London.
• Catch up blogs: April Camping Trip, Day 1-4 Paris
• Get back in the habit of playing guitar on WFH days – this has been middlding, but I’d say I play at least 2x week
• Finish the set of geometric paintings – Whomp whomp. I thought I was closer to finished with these and I’m not. And I’ve been focused on other things like goal #5 🙂
• Meditate 5x week – YEP! Most days before I get out of bed.

I won’t have access to much of the hobby things for most of the month, but here’s some goals:

• Finish London photos. I doubt I get much further than this but if I do, decide whether to start Krause Springs, my last Cruise, or push through the rest of 2022 Paris.
• If I can finish the photos in time, London travel blog
• Play at least 4 Bloodbowl games (now that the league is on pause, I’m out of practice)
• Get at least 10 hours into Persona 5
• Meditate 5x week. Always good to keep up with this one on the road

I’ll get back to guitar and painting goals when I’m home for a while. 🙂

#5 Write Stuff

As of midnight last night, I finished the first edit pass. I focused on worldbuilding (eliminating places where the characters feel like floating heads), solving some of the problems I glossed over when I changed from third to first person, some smoothing of the style/tone (though I can do better here), making the ending a bit more meaningful, impactful, and showing more character development with it, and yeah, some fiddling with words just because I couldn’t help it.

I think I’ve now got something I’m proud to share again, and the last test is to give it the laying-in-bed-reading Kindle Test. So that’s up first. If it passes the test, I start giving it to test readers. If not, then I go back and solve more problems. So, my only goal this month is to share it with one other person.

So, August. You’ll be a weird one. Here’s what’s on tap:

• Track all August, even on vacation, and try to be a reasonable human being while traveling
• Bike and swim more while home, run at least three times a week while traveling
• Weights three times a week, and do my best with the equipment I have on hand (or don’t)
• Clean out a thing. Just one.
• London photos and blog
• Play more games
• Share my book with one person

If I don’t melt, I think it’s doable. 🙂 Let’s go!

It’s been a heck of a month, so far, y’all.

I mentioned here that I came back from Germany with a shiny new promotion. It’s the kind that gets announced publicly and I didn’t think it was a big deal because I thought I was doing the job already but, SPOILER ALERT, no, I was not, at least not fully. It’s funny to look at musings of past me talk of being busy, and talk about feeling the weight of responsibilities. Past me was adorable. 🙂

I know this too will pass. Once again for the fourth time in three and a half years I am adjusting to a new title and set of duties. I like that better than everything staying the same for too long and me getting bored and life feeling stagnant, and I’ll never say otherwise, but I’m really glad that this is the job I think I’ll keep for a while. That means I get to learn how to succeed here and also succeed at having a life too.

One huge non-work accomplishment? Y’know that silly little game called Bloodbowl I’ve been playing for four years, ten league seasons, and something like 1600 hours? Well, I finally won a championship!

This game has taught me a lot about patience and persistence, and how to recover when (not if) I fail. Weirdly enough, I found myself not really loving the Amazons, they are this weird mix of not agile, fast, or tough, but their skills make up for it when everything works. And thankfully this time it worked through the entire playoff season instead of my team imploding somewhere between the quarterfinals and the final game. This was the third time I made it to finals in the last year, and I’m thrilled to have checked that box. Now I get to play a really crappy team – as is tradition for the winner in the season after – and I get to just have fun with it for a while.

Speaking of this non-work life stuff, I’m here to give a quick check in on my year goals. I thought about waiting until the end of the month but that felt like “starting the diet on Monday”. Through these check ins I usually get inspired to be more productive or get back on track. So, let’s go.

#1 – Weigh 180.6 by the end of July

Well, to the letter, sure. I weighed in at 180.6 earlier this week. But, I know I mean trendweight, and no, that’s currently 182.4. My low point was mid-May (180.8) and I’ve gained about 1.5 lbs since then. I’ve deserve it, it’s not a surprise with travel, races, and spotty tracking of my metrics. The good news is I seem to be on a downward trend this last week, and I’m back to normal in terms of what I’m eating and doing a little better at expending calories.

• Week of July 10th – +175 calories
• Week of July 17th – not done with the day yet, but I anticipate being about the same here

This is better than last month.

One of my challenges is that I like to walk for extra snack calories (and because walks are awesome, it’s a win win), and it’s hot AF right now. Could I walk in feels like 115? Sure. I have before and I’ll do it again. Do I WANT to walk in this weather? Hells to the no. So, this week I started giving myself the choice of “walk or trainer” instead of “walk or just overeat a little” and so far I’ve been able to convince myself it’s a thing. It sounds like such a minor thing, but many days the 200 calories are the difference between being under or over and when this happens repeatedly, that’s where the inches start building into progress or regression.

I have 8 more days. I don’t think I’ll make 180.6 but I’m motivated to keep playing the game of inches.

#2 Strength Over Stamina

While I don’t think I’m making too much progress here, I am definitely not regressing, and I’m perfectly happy with that considering life right now. The first two weeks of the month weren’t so great, but I’m back on track here now.

• Weights 3x week – YEP. This is non-negotiable. I’m not really going up in weight anywhere but I am showing up and lifting the heavy things and that is enough.
• Resume swimming, hit the lake once – No, and no. I’m going to try and fix both of those within the next week.
• One brick per week – Techically I’m doing today’s tomorrow, but I’ll average once a week.
• Three other bikes/runs each week – This week I’ve actually done FIVE (two runs, three bikes)
• Prioritize recovery – I’ve done really well here. Boots and ice almost daily, stretching and rolling are back 3-ish times a week.

I just need to get swimming back in my life and I’ll really be on track here.

#3 (Not) Ignoring My Surroundings

I am happy to report I made some progress here.

• Finish decluttering the vanity area
• Clean out the right side drawers
• Clear out the space under the vanity

All of these things are not perfect but really close and I hope to check these off this weekend. I haven’t gotten to the bathroom counter/under the sink yet but maybe that can happen too, and Joel hasn’t been motivated to clean the gutters beyond one mention last month so we’ll move on here.

#4 Relaxing Hobbies

I’ve needed my relax time this month 🙂 so I’ve done well here!

• Finish Camping Pics and decide on the next – YEP, and I decided to just knock out this last Germany/London trip next. My goal is to get out of the hole of photo-ception by finishing smaller projects before I get back to Paris. I could also stop traveling but we all know that’s not going to happen.
• Catch up blogs: The Urban Woods of San Antonio, Paris, je t’aime (part 1)
• WFH guitar breaks – I’m not perfect but I’m playing a few times a week again and getting my caluses back (OW)
• Finish the set of geometric paintings – I’ve made progress but I’m a little further away from done than I thought.
• Meditate 5x week – I have been REALLY good about this most mornings!

So, I’ve got some painting to do. Fun!

#5 Write Stuff

I forgot how much work editing is, in some cases, it feels like it took longer to EDIT some chapters than it did to write them. Probably not, but this first edit pass is not something that’s taking a few hours. I’ve put at least a work day into this over the last few weeks and I’m about 1/3 done. I am still hoping that I’ll have some closure and be ready to share it by mid-next month, but that will take some time and dedication to get there. My goals were:

• Identify places where my characters are floating heads (build the world) – This is what’s taking most of my time and attention and it’s getting better. I need to remember that even though I can see the characters in my mind, not everyone else can.
• Find where the story drags – I’m about to get to the middle part where I have to watch out for this. Just because it happened in the D&D campaign doesn’t mean it needs to happen exactly that way in the book.
• Deliver on the promise/tone at the beginning of the story – This has taken some work as well. I start the story as a child, and then it gets a little dark. I have had to do a lot of editing in the first chapters to make sure I don’t make the promise of a heartwarming family friendly tale and then tell that to screw right off. The overwhelming theme is trust/lack thereof, and it took some work to set that from the get go.
• Make sure the ending is sufficiently exciting – We shall see when I get there. I’ll try on this pass, but I think this may need to be pushed to the second edit pass or even just be something I ask my readers, I may be too close to it.

So, here’s where I need to focus the rest of the month to have the best July progress possible:

• Keep up the habits of tracking, weighing, and extra activity (trainer) instead of walking.
• Get back to swimming and get to the lake.
• Finish the vanity and the bathroom counter/sink
• Paint the canvases
• Keep editing!

Seems doable to me. This is oddly enough the calm before the (travel) storm, so I need to take advantage of being home enough to make what progress I can when I can. The goals in the next few months will definitely be a little… different, and probably more focused on preventing regression than anything.

We went from the end September to April 21st with no camping trips.

We decided to stick around the house during the winter and work on healthy routines, and I really made some great progress because I wasn’t running off here and there. But it was time to defrag my brain and spend a long weekend in the “woods”. I was really, really, really ready for this one. So, Friday around noon, we headed to the wilderness of the downtown San Antionio KOA.

I was very very very happy that we were in the city, as when we set up the camper, the toilet started spraying water. It wasn’t the greatest start to a long weekend. After eating the usual camping kick off hot dogs for lunch, we had to make two hour long round trips to Lowes to get things to fix it, instead of the bike ride we wanted that afternoon. Then, since we were out and about alrady, we decided that we were going to treat ourselves to the purportedly best al pastor tacos in San Antonio at Al Pastor es mi Senor. The meat is roasted on a spit like Doner meat and served sliced thin with really fresh, sweet pineapple and spicy sauce. Definitely the best al pastor tacos I’ve had in recent memory. High enjoy!

The next morning, we took it nice and slow, and started… The Chickening. When we planned the menu, to keep things easy and lower calorie, we got a giant package of chicken and resolved to cook it many different ways. We started with chicken, half a giant loaded potato, and salad to fuel the day’s impending bike ride.

We wanted to wait for the best weather, so we dawdled playing Space Marines until mid-afternoon and then went to play bikes for about two hours. We did the entire loop that afternoon and found a really nice vista we missed last time we took a wrong turn. We cooled down in the pool because it finally hit 80 degrees, and it’s the last time it would be sunny and warm this trip.

We refueled with some of the best Teriyaki Chicken of my life and had a nice chill evening listening to a really crazy downpour.

The next day, everything was flooded and the roads were wet, so we decided to skip the bike ride and do a two hour hike instead. We had a beautiful time outside watching so so so many butterflies play on the multitude of wildflowers.

This worked up an appetite for tandoori chicken for dinner. During the evening, we chilled out and enjoyed the three-day camping effect, I’m pretty sure this was the day my brain started to unspool a bit. I finished reading the version I cut of my book at the time, and it was crap – which is okay, it motivated me to push through and finish the draft so I could start revising.

Day four was a glorious repeat of the previous, just with sunshine. The roads were still kinda wet, so we hiked, we ate chicken multiple ways, we read, and had a nice relaxing last day of camping. I was up early the next day taking meetings and working while Joel drove home, but I thoroughly enjoyed my four days in the urban woods.

After a day in Brussels, on August 31st, we hopped a train, and then another train, and then another train and eight hours later, ended up in Paris.

Yeah, I’ll never wait until the last minute to book a train again. Lesson learned. It was a two-hour trip that took almost eight. However, when you end the day with that view, how can you complain?

The only other thing on our agenda was stopping at the grocery store around the corner and raiding their wine section. After two weeks of hotels, I was SO excited to be able to have an apartment, and dinner was a charcuterie board we put together and a few bottles of cheap french wine (my fave!) on the balcony watching the fattest of the fat doves play in the trees.

We woke the next morning after a nice long sleep feeling refreshed, so it was time to go play! After a lovely brunch of a croque monsieur, cappuccino, and part of a Nutella crepe, we ventured out on two feet to take a better look at my favorite landmark (le Tour Eiffel) from all sides and then ended up at the museum of French Architecture for an hour or two.

We worked our way up to the Arc d’Triomphe and watched the traffic go around it for a while – not sure I’ve ever seen a four-lane roundabout before, but the Parisians seemed to handle it okay.

We were told Champs-Élysées was not to be missed – and I’m glad we walked down it for the spectacle. However, since we are not exactly shop-o-holics, we just marveled at the giant Dior store, noted the giant line outside the Louis Vitton store, and wandered down a side street back towards home base.

We stopped at the second of two museums for the day (I found this trip that I have a maximum of two, three is right out), the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. The exhibit they were showing had art from around the world – everything from very early (BC) sculptures and carvings to costumes and masks – I can’t really describe it besides it was wonderfully eclectic. We wandered and snapped photos until they kicked us out at closing. We split a lovely sausage and arugula pizza and pancetta spaghetti on the way home and crashed.

The next morning, it was time to climb! We had tickets for le Tour Eiffel and we checked out the view from the first and second etages. Maybe next time we’ll go to the top, but it was an extra ticket so we decided to skip it this time. The views were just fine where we were at. 🙂

We stopped at this adorable French cafe for lunch, which unfortunately had the most mediocre French Onion soup for lunch (but the atmosphere and people watching made up for it). Then, we had an appointment with death, that is, The Catacombs. After descending hundreds of feet underground (where it was blessedly much much cooler than the heat wave in the city), we spent an hour walking among really interesting and macabre art.

For Joel, it was the highlight of the trip, and I can’t disagree that it was one of the most interesting and unique experiences. When I think of it, I can remember the cold on my previously sweaty skin, the musty humid odor of the caverns, and the quiet reverence in which we walked through the meticulously arranged bones. I’ll remember that forever.

We returned to the apartment for wine and charcuterie for dinner, as per usual. 🙂 And as per usual, fat freaking birds joined the party. I said I couldn’t pick a favorite thing we did when we were in Paris, but upon editing photos, I could see I lied, as I took so many on the sunset cruise.

But, like, look at this. How could you not? The city of lights, indeed.

The next day, we slept late and grabbed a bahn mi for lunch. It was on my Paris bucket list to get somewhere. It did not disappoint. I’m just sad I didn’t get a chance to eat a second one.

Our first museum of the day was a Picasso Museum – while it had his art, most of it was focused on his family and his life. Speaking of eclectic, he was an… interesting dude. I’ll just put it this way, he had a collection of toenail clippings. I guess to make out-there art you have to be a bit out-there yourself.

For our second museum/exhibit of the day, we stopped at the Pantheon.

Gorgeous, awe-inspiring, and overwhelming art. At that point of the rainy afternoon, we realized we were a bit full up on sightseeing, so we retired back to the apartment after a feast at the Mediterranean place down the street. I caught up on work, lost a Bloodbowl match, and we relaxed as the next two days would be big ones!

The next morning, an incident with an e-bike – running out of charge way before it said it would – left us too late to catch our walking tour. Now, you’d think an e-bike without a battery would just be a bike. You’re not wrong, but in the heat wave chugging up and down those hills, it felt like pedaling a battle cruiser.

Instead, we decided to wander on our own, checking out the famous Moulin Rouge, and randomly stopping for lunch at the Cafe de Deux Moulins, where Amelie worked. The food was decent, the atmosphere was adorable. Then, we meandered more and wondered why it was recommended as a must-see as there were just a bunch of risqué shops. Just before we gave up and left, I hit up google and found that we needed to travel further up the hill.

We checked out Sacre Couer, some of the best views of the city, and the Monmarte Artists District. This was why we were supposed to be here. The Artists District was adorable, and we made plans to come back the last day to get some souvenirs.

Then we walked down the hill again to see the monument, the obelisk, and wandered around some very pretty gardens and fountains. Then, we went to the Musée de l’Armée and looked at tons of cool weapons.

And, of course, some of the things that weapons do…

After that, we had reached the limits of our time on feet, and we ducked into an Asian restaurant and had some delicious garlic pepper chicken thingee and then we called it a night as the next day was… THE LOUVE… and we’ll pick up there next time (or in about 6 months when I edit those photos haha).