Temporarily reformed adventure junkie

This week I asked Joel, “is this what being boring feels like?”

And honestly, it’s not too bad for a change.

If you’ve met me, or at least my social media feed, you know that I’m an adventure junkie. If I have free time, I’m here to squeeze any sort of exciting, beautiful, awe-inspiring, picture-and/or-blog-worthy experience out of it. Uncharacteristically, I am currently amidst a week off where it took a hell of a lot of self-control to not just go for a little camping trip somewhere pretty (it’s FALLLLLL out there, you know), or hop a plane somewhere, and I’m actually not hating it. It may be that I’m still in deep picture-editing-ception (I have a whole cruise + fall hikes + ten full days of EU sightseeing left so I’m in ZERO danger of running out of material) so I know my adventure log has been very full this year already. I *am* missing a scuba diving focused trip something fierce, so that’s something I’ll have to address next year, but for now, I’m OKAY with being here instead of anywhere else.

It’s been a long “2-4 weeks” since we all got sent home from work one Friday in March 2020, and when I let many of the plates I was spinning crash to the ground over the pandemic, I’ve just been walking around them (or just on top of them) ever since. Late 2022 has been about starting to pick up some of those shattered pieces, for real this time, not just pretending while sweeping them under the rug. Y’know, really trying to clean house (both literally and figuratively). Some plates are worth gluing back together. Some need to be thrown away and replaced. Some, maybe I can live without the spinning of this particular dishware in this new era. But it’s time to stop spending every free moment running away from my plates to go on adventures.

It’s just weird to take a Monday off and go to the gym, do errands, and clean. There was absolutely nothing adventurous about that – but I’m proud to say our office has carpet again (and I believe it will have EVEN MORE later today). I’m not going to have a super gorgeous modern minimalist house anytime soon – but I may at some point not be MORTIFIED if I forget to turn on my Zoom background in the office. We’re going to try to make incremental and time-boxed progress on the rest of the house as well – this week we’re trying for one hour a day, and weeks where we are working, we’re going to do two hours a week. Just that one change (time-boxing it) made an overwhelming task something that seems at least less intimidating to start and maybe even eventually achievable. I can give two hours a week to fix something that’s causing me strife. It’d be nice to not have to add “sorry there’s stuff everywhere” to the greeting “hello and welcome to our home”.

In the spirit of proactivity and not ignoring problems, I started with an executive coach this week. It sounds very fancy, but really, it’s just an outside voice with a non-disclosure agreement to talk through work challenges. I’m finding that I have fewer and fewer appropriate sounding boards these days for some of the things that come up. Instead of unloading on someone who shouldn’t have to be burdened with it, I now have her! I’ve found the space to just babble really useful, and while she’s given me some golden nuggets, the ability to talk things out loud instead of in my head was super helpful. I have a few things to try over the next month to see if they help my productivity and give me the ability to connect better.

And now, I shall end this missive with the normal things. This is my reward for being boring.

And I’m happy with my prize right now. The meal delivery services are very much helping this quest – especially this week. We could have easily said “eff it” week and go get takeout/go out even if we shunned the adventure. However, the food, it just keeps showing up. So, we keep eating it instead of being adventurous. And my trendweight, she keeps going down. It’s like methodical, boring, mundane magic!

Last week I ate 1469 calories per day on average and getting that average below 1500 is key. It’s not much lower, but I’m getting more activity to balance it out. It’s not jacking up my appetite yet, so that’s good, but this is abouuuuuut where I’m going to stay for a while.

Yep, that’s two runs AND a swim, as well as three trips to the gym to lift weights. My seven-day step average is at about 9k (which is a triumph in and of itself with this craptastic weather). I’m working my run up to 3 miles/30 mins (three more weeks to go if all goes well!) and would like to swim 1000m/20 mins, but that’s it. After that becomes easy, I’ll work on doing it faster (slowly) instead of continuing to add time.

For the first time in a while, my goal for this week is “another one like the last one”. That’s the opposite of what an adventure junkie would say. I’m weirdly excited to be temporarily reformed – at least for the next few months!