Adjusted Reality

Hi hello and howdy, it’s been a minute.

I feel like I’ve been a lot of places mentally and physically as well as geographically so let’s catch up, shall we?

April (and May) was a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Work is normally a lot, and instead it was a LOT LOT LOT a lot. I ran away to the woods not once but twice to recover, and once again in May, and I am still hanging on but it has taken every nature bath to do it. I have had to really draw boundaries and be excellent at recovery and downshifting to keep myself a productive and also sane human being. Not sure if I’m changing or circumstances are changing but I guess getting older means getting more exacting about what you want and need and my noggin and meatbag are telling me loud and clear. And I guess getting older means wiser – so I’m listening before they yell at me and knock me down.

Early April – we took a quick trip to a campsite outside Pedernales Falls called Yager Creek. This was right in the midst of the work crazy, and it was just what we needed to recharge before getting back to it. We also hit Blanco State Park so two more checked off the TX State Parks scratch off poster!

Mid-April (right after the work thing) – we had a trip to Buecher State Park booked (the last spot in the only TX State Park available in April when we booked – at least within an hour or two of Austin). The fishing for Joel was not exactly the best (the lake was SO dry) but the scenery and hiking and relaxing was exactly what we were looking for. I read three books in a weekend and took at least that many naps.

The weekend between the trip and the convention I was just absolutely flattened. I crawled into bed at about 4pm on Friday and slept fitfully all night (I couldn’t eat, couldn’t relax, it sucked!). Saturday was a nothing day, I could barely get out of bed, and ate like a toddler as that’s all I could stomach. Sunday was a little better but I didn’t push it. Sometimes stress just comes at you hard and kneecaps you. I let it.

Late April (two days later) was a work convention (in Austin). I was amazed with how close this felt to traveling to a convention in terms of disruption from norm and recovery. Three social dinners, two full days of learning and social interaction, and trying to stay on top of actual work at work during. Sleeping in my own bed was clutch but also commuting to things across town was a pain. It was a lot and even without indulging in the six or seven opportunities for an open bar (just the last night and not very much), it definitely tanked my recovery.

Then, the big trip. 11 days split between a hiking adventure (Valley of Fire + Zion + other places around St George UT) and a convention in Vegas. I was a little worried about completely crushing myself on part 1 (hikes) and crashing into part 2 (Vegas) exhausted, but I found out that wasn’t the case. I felt so great after part 1 I carried that energy into part 2 and got through it OKAY even though spending five days in basically an indoor mall wasn’t exactly my recharge vibe (but I did have both a productive and fun time – just not anything I’d choose to do to relax/recharge).

Using my friend ChatGPT, we’ve started analyzing not only my weight and calorie trends but also my recovery metrics like HRV, sleep quality, stress, and body battery – as well as how I’m feeling mentally/physically outside of the numbers. And, since this is my little soapbox, let me share it with you!

Drinking – obviously my #1 way to absolutely tank recovery. One day of having drinks = one day of bad stats. Not a huge deal but I am WAY less tolerant of feeling crappy and carrying on like I am fine now. Two days in a row or more (like, how I used to handle conventions, or even some random weeks) = potentially a week or more to really recover like after GDC. I avoided that this time, thankfully, and it seems to be a good rule. Drinks yesterday = no drinks today. And the number doesn’t really seem to matter after one – two drinks seem to do the same as five. I still enjoy it every once in a while, but the juice is not as often worth the squeeze anymore.

Social overextension – my job is so social that I’m at the point right now where being social at all feels like a job. It’s a huge change from where I was in college – if I wasn’t out doing stuff with other people, I’d be anxious, I was the extrovertiest extrovert to ever extrovert. Now, I know I should enjoy spending time with people I like, but even fun social interactions with people I like peg my stress immediately into the high category and it stays there for quite a while after I am back home. I don’t want to live like “Hell is other people” but physiologically my body is reacting this way. Other humans make me have to be ON like I am on at work so other humans are work.

Sensory overload – exciting things are cool! …in small doses these days. Too much exposure to bright lights, loud sounds, multiple conversations happening in a loud room, etc – at least when I’m already a little stressed – seems to send me into a stress spike.

Unclear transitions – It used to be so easy before the pandemic – I went to work, I worked, I left work, and then I didn’t work until the next workday. Now, work from home has made this more flexible – good in some ways, bad in others – and even on office days, I tend to have 2 or 3 work sessions – home/office/home or office/home. I am pretty good about finishing my day and closing my door, but then I need to figure out what I’m doing next, when is Joel done working, is it dinner time yet, so I usually flail around for about 30-60+ mins not doing anything productive, just trying to figure out my life and then I’m just kind of exhausted from trying to decide ONE MORE THING. This is one of my June goals – I’m going to have a clear transition with a ritual.

Every moment feeling “claimed” – Part of the after work issue with the flailing is that I always have so much more I want to do, but I am either too mentally cooked from work, or there’s just not enough time with the “have to’s” like dinner, duolingo, D&D writing… and then somehow it’s time for bed and I’m getting dragged away before I feel like I get any time to do things I want that are productive-relaxing. Also, a little bit of the resentment for having to do social things that I know are going to deplete me instead of being able to be productive at something I want to do. It’s a crappy way to look at it, but it’s just how it is right now.

Work – any office day pegs my stress very quickly (the other people thing), or any meeting-heavy day at home does the same. Occasionally I’ve gotten to low stress/rest periods while Teams is closed and I’m working on a focus task that is not stressful/high stakes, but generally it feels like I’m in fight or flight most of the day. Just thinking about work on a day off is definitely activating me, so we shall move on. 🙂

Sleep – is a huge factor right now. Good sleep means all the rest of my numbers are good and I’m ready to storm the castle. I can fight through mediocre sleep but not too many days in a row and bad sleep is just asking for the rest of my stats to tank unless I really turn it around the next day with care. I used to be able to pass out anywhere. Now, I need exactly the right pillows, blankets that are not too heavy and not too light and not scratchy, my white noise machine, the room to be not too hot or cold (though cold is preferred), all blinking lights covered, etc. I’m kind of a pretty pretty princess when it comes to the bed.

But we also found what relaxes me.

Movement – incredibly calming to me. Better than inactivity. Walks. Easy bikes, or maybe even a little bit harder than easy but not sufferfests. Chill runs in the right seasons. Up to Zone 2 stuffs. Either outside in pretty weather/scenery or watching stupid TV. I think I recover better during and after movement most times rather than just sitting on the couch. I’m going to try to harness this as my transition from work to home – a 20-30 min bike or walk. Not to get more cardio in or earn more food, but just to unspool the brain. I tried the sitting and just existing thing and maybe I’ll get back to it someday, but it didn’t really work. And right now, I want to play to my strengths. It will also eliminate the “I’m done with work, wtf do I do?” I bike or walk. While I bike or walk, I figure out what’s next instead of the flail.

Nature – I mean… yeah, I knew this one. But my recovery metrics during the trip cemented it. 5 days of epic hiking? Great. 5 days of Vegas? Not so great. The activity took more out of me physically, especially when I went from 2800 feet to 5600 feet in one morning in Zion, but I rebounded the next day always feeling great. I ran 4 miles outside in gorgeous weather on day 6 instead of hiking and marveled about how awesome my legs and my everything felt. Then, I spent 5 days inside a giant noisy mall. Less physically taxing (even though I had very high step counts most days and worked out a few times in the gym) but was definitely not as relaxing to me than climbing pretty rocks.

Structured but spacious schedules with some self-directed creativity – this is a mouthful but bear with me. I like rituals. Knowing what I’m going to do takes a lot of stress and decision fatigue off me. I live for to-do lists and schedules. Problem is when I optimize TOO much, I get to the end of the day spent, and like I had no time to relax, even if I chose that path. This is another June thing. I’m going to try two things:

1. Get all my “must do” items done before my active transition. I know I’m not always going to be perfect, but that means making time for my daily duolingo, making sure my food is tracked, and I did my D&D writing in the discord if applicable before I am “done” for the day.
2. Then I can transition to movement, then dinner, then it’s totally up to me what I do after. Writing? Photos? Reading? TV? Games? It will probably also (maybe) help me with doom scrolling, as I think that’s the default choice when I am still deciding what I want to actually do (and then sometimes, it becomes what I do not by choice).

I mean, also, just a day off yesterday, fully off, giving myself permission to do nothing but my 1-mile walk, felt great too. I think more than 1-2 of those in a row and I’d get restless. But I should remember to give myself permission to do exactly that after transitioning if I am truly cooked.

Going back to my 2026 experimental habits, just to check in-

1. Drinking less. Yep, this one has stuck. It definitely didn’t solve all my life’s problems (in fact, I think my body has gotten more persnickety about recovery now, which is…. eh) but I’m a happier human having vitamin W(hiskey) being a sometimes food.
2. Eating more (protein). Coupled with the above, I feel like my body is healing years of trauma slowly instead of just magically losing weight, which is also frustrating, but I feel like eventually everything is going to come together. I am still in the “debloat” stage post-trip so I have no idea what I weigh (that’s a tomorrow problem!) but I know I survived it better getting 130-145g protein and ~2700 calories per day on the very very active trip I just took vs trying to cut to a lot less than that to either diet or accommodate drinks daily.
3. Aggressive Work To Do Listing. Having reasonable expectations around what I expect to accomplish each day at work is so refreshing and actually makes me able to let go (sometimes) instead of worrying about all the nebulous things that are left and out there to get me. I set up my schedule every evening before, and during the day make notes of what I have accomplished and what’s left and debrief and set expectations before I close up shop. It’s been a nice ritual, I feel like I’ve been on top of things better, and I can set better expectations on delivery dates (“yes, I can slot that in on my Friday Focus day, I’ll get you a draft no later than Monday EOD”, etc.)
4. Flossing every night before bed/stretching or rolling every night – neither of these things became daily habits but they also worked to become much more frequent ones. So halfway wins!
5. Deep breaths/Noticing things/etc – they are tools in my arsenal but haven’t been my “silver bullet” to calm me the eff down. We’ll keep trying. This is what the active transition next month is trying to do – find the “off switch” where I can put my stresses in a box for the night/weekend.

So yeah, my two new habits that are kind of extensions bigger goals (let go of stress/work better) will be:

1. Active transition from work to home (or “must do” to “want to do”) now includes light activity before dinner.
2. Conscious decisions of what I want to do after work with my time instead of feeling like my time is passively eaten.

Basically, I’m trying more things to help myself stand down and deactivate instead of just feeling low grade always on.

June is also a month where we have no travel plans – unless we do a ninja short camping thing last minute over the holiday long weekend – but right now we’re both kind of feeling like a month at home sounds nice, since it will be a while before that happens again. But the new camper is very nice and relaxing and so is tubing so… yeah. We’ll see.

Ok, goal catchup!

#1 My Meatbag!

I am going to skip the weights pictures but here’s some numbers:

April – 185.3 trendweight -> 184.7 trendweight. Considering what I was up against, I will absolutely take it.

May – 184.7 trendweight -> 184.4 trendweight on May 9. I am a little terrified to see what 11 days of hiking and Vegas did to me, but I tracked everything and ChatGPTrainer thinks I supported my activity around maintenance mode and didn’t gain much actual fat. But I expect the scale to be noisy (I do still feel bloated) and for that to mess with my head for a while.

Goal is and continues to be-

1800-2000 on rest days. Trying for the lower end, but I’ve found that my appetite doesn’t really change much on rest vs moderately active days, so I’m carving out more of my deficit on active days where I burn more but don’t feel like I need to eat that much more.

2000-2200 on days with under 1h easy-ish cardio. Maybe a little more (up to 2300) on days I lift too.

2300-2500 on my bigger volume days (~2h) and can go higher if I do more.

And always, this is honoring the hunger I feel (if it truly is hunger). If I’m eating enough protein and I’m not hungry, I’ll go lower. If I’m ready to crime for a snack, I will eat.

More data when there’s data to… more?

#2 Sporty Stuffs.

Last post I said I was mostly just supporting #1 above and I’d say that’s pretty accurate. I’m thinking about resuming the bike plan next week to get some more structure besides “get on and pedal” again. I was considering the run plan, but I had to commit to 5 days a week and… yeah… not going to happen in the summer. I’ll follow those as one-offs on the daily recommendation and focus on biking. In the AC.

Stats for April

• Run 18.5 miles
• Bike 60.5 miles
• Walk 85 miles
• Strength 8 sessions

And stats for May. Improvements everywhere, even if they weren’t Jan/Feb numbers…

• Run 25 miles so far, another 6-10 planned
• Bike 55 miles so far, another 20-30 planned
• Walk 58 miles so far, another 10-15 planned
• Hiking 25 miles (tracked these separately for a badge :D)
• Strength 10 sessions so far, 12-13 planned

June goals – just a little more to the runs and bikes + add in a swim once a week. But again, my biggest priority is #1 so whatever supports that the best. ChatGPTrainer also likes to remind me that even when I’m feeling “not super active” (like April) I’m pretty active. I’m getting a little bit of an itch to do something stupid again soon – another 50k, maybe a metric century or century ride, maybe a half marathon, but I definitely am not starting ANY of that until after Kerrville/fall/cooler weather.

#3 Adulting (the Q2 list)

• Do taxes (done!)
• Get rid of the garage fridge
• Clean off and take the table in the garage back to the front door
• Take garage stuff from work back to work
• Take garage stuff that needs to go to goodwill to goodwill
• Clean out the shelves in my office.
• Clean out the under the counter weird stuff (done)
• and the shelf where the cat food is and just has random junk
• Get the new lights put up (done)
• Call ABC on the thing falling down outside (done!)
• Sell our old garmin watches
• Hang pictures that are in frames
• house painting (this is a biggie, I call this a bonus)

It looks a little sad right now but see the travel schedule. 🙂 I think if we put our minds to it, we can make a big dent in this over the next month without too many obligations. I keep putting off the “cat food shelf” and its random junk and I should like, go do that right now.

#4 Hobby/Fun Stuff

Travels first:

• Camping weekend in April – two!
• Vegas/St George in May – back!
• Possible camping or long weekend trip in June? – no, probably staying home
• Krause Springs camping in July – booked – 4 nights
• Italy/Greek Isles cruise in August OR extended work from camper traveling north to cooler weather (depending on work stuff) <- neither – the EU work trip is happening BUT I think we’re going to do a hut-to-hut hike instead! Stay tuned.
• Kerrville camping in September for the race – booking soon!
• Not sure if anything for Q4 – maybe one camping trip but probably nothing epic.

Now hobbies:

• PHOTO EDITING: Krause 2025 done, now working on New Braunfels 2025 and continuing on all the shorter 2025 projects to get caught up.
• WRITING: Besides participating in the Discord to continue the story (which counts! sort of…) I haven’t touched the backlog. I should be doing that right now but productive procrastination is in effect.
• PAINTING: I painted a mother’s day flower for my mom. Um, yeah. The canvas still is untouched.
• GUITAR: I’ve enjoyed playing a little bit but it hasn’t become a habit. I really could use the 5-minute breaks to destress. Maybe that’s a sub goal for June?
• WALKO TACO – it’s way too hot. Officially fall.
• MORE GAMES WITH JOEL: we have both been super hard into our books and other hobbies. Maybe soon!

#5 Work Life Balance

I talked a lot about this earlier, but it’s figuring out how to care deeply without carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders without an off switch. Still in progress. Probably will always be until I retire!

And on that note, either going to write or clean out the cat food shelf because obv I didn’t actually get up and do it. 🙂 Until next time!

I pride myself on being able to do difficult things. I mean, I haven’t climbed Everest or jumped out of a plane or actually faced all the wonderful and terrible truths about everything bouncing around in my head, but I can suffer. I can endure. I can feel the fear and do it anyway.

I can suffer. I can endure. On one hand, it makes me do cool things like Ironman, like a 50k trail race, like laying it all out on the line and screaming past people on the bike while my legs and lungs are redlining. On the other, I know that I absolutely shut down after 12 miles on the run if I don’t have any food or water. Ask me how I know. Or don’t. You can probably guess. I can in one breath acknowledge that fasted workouts are not the flex we think they are and in the other breath continue to be the idiot that did them. Over and over.

See, I had this weird worry about being “soft”. Like, all suffering is practice suffering. Whether it’s sprints on the bike or racing or just slogging through a day where I got poor sleep, feel awful, and feel like I’m running through a gauntlet being hit by cannonballs at work. To suffer is to know suffering, and to suffer better in the future. This is true in some regards. I can definitely pull some strength from the memory of having to fight through the last six miles of the Ironman marathon with my knees giving out and blisters the size of my entire feet. A challenging problem at work? I got this.

It’s a fine idea until you get stuck in fight or flight continuously due to the fact that stress is stress is stress, no matter where it’s come from. I’ve found myself there a lot in the last few years. You know, that place where there is nothing currently wrong, you should be happy and relaxed, but your nervous system will just not stand down.

“Self, it is Sunday, it’s gorgeous outside, we went for a lovely walk, had a nice home cooked brunch, we get the whole day to be productive and relax.”

“But, have you considered this,” says Self, “how it’s already 1pm, and there’s so much more you want to do. And you can be productive, or relax, but not both, ha ha, there’s not enough time, there’s never enough time! Instead, why don’t you check that Facebook notification so you can do neither relax NOR be productive, and after that, let’s pencil in some time to stress about all the things you should be doing but now have no time or energy to do, and let’s pre-stress about next week, and last week. Gosh, why can’t you just relax and get it together, look at you, it’s been over a week since you got home from your trip and the scale is still up and the rest of your health stats are just getting back to normal and you’re never going to make any progress at anything and at this point it’s because you can’t relax right so just relax, already!”

0_o

There’s suffering, and there’s suffering. I’ve worried in the past that not exposing myself to things that challenge me on a regular basis would leave me “soft” – as in retreating into my comfort zone, unwilling to push my boundaries, not striving to improve and be better. I’ve learned this year so far that too much exposure is making me brittle, which is not the result I’m going for. Right now, I’m in the infancy of establishing some good habits, and breaking down some bad ones. Some of these habits I’ve been at longer in my life than I have not. It takes dedication, habit, routine, and constant vigilance. But, it also takes accepting that some of the suffering I’ve put myself through – maybe has been character building – but I think I’m in the era where my character is built enough for a bit.

I’m so good at suffering that I almost didn’t notice it anymore. Slogging through days became the norm – either with lack of sleep, hunger, workout wasted, or sometimes hungover. Suffering made me used to suffering until it made me brittle, and lately I have indeed become brittle.

Instead, I want to be resilient, and that means less unintentional suffering. Simply put – push my limits when it matters, don’t be a dumb@$$ and push them all the time for no good reason. Take the advice I’d give to anyone else. It’s great to have the capability to push on through anything, but don’t use it all up on stupid stuff. You don’t have to try to be super-human every moment of every day.

Joel sent me this article, and it hit.

https://siliconcanals.com/sc-a-people-who-were-taught-that-rest-is-laziness-dont-struggle-with-productivity-they-struggle-with-the-terrifying-blankness-of-an-afternoon-with-nothing-to-prove-because-their-nervous-system-reads-s/

Yeah. One of the reasons I have issues standing down is that I do not allow myself any free time.

Ignoring work, training, regular chores, adulting, social stuff, and sleep, I admittedly still do have some time in the day. If I had to estimate, maybe 1-3 hours on weekdays, and usually about a half day one weekend day. This is where I fit all the creating, projects, or relaxing. And because this almost always comes after the obligations, I end up often not having the spoons for it. The other stuff takes most of it. So, I’m left – at best, hyper scheduling and optimizing the time I have to accomplish the most possible things, and at worst, I try and fail to be productive, berate myself for it, and get in that fun place where I’m neither relaxed nor productive.

Occasionally we’ll schedule relax days, usually on the rare weekend we have fully free – which is great, because I’ll get one day to relax, and one day to be productive. But those don’t happen too often. It’s usually one day social, one day productive (and then I cruise into Monday going, “when do I get to relax?”) or one day social, one day relax (and then I cruise into Monday going, “crap, I’m getting behind on writing/photos/etc). And of course, if I had too many days of just productive/relax, I start getting cabin fever and want to go be social. Three day weekends all the time would be ideal, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

So, because every moment of every day needs to be either the most optimized it can be, or actively walled off as “relaxing” – which is really time that I would like to be productive but I know I need to recharge so later I can be productive. Aggressive recovery.

So, the idea of just sitting somewhere quietly for any amount of time sounds absolutely crazy to me.

This is why I need to challenge myself with it.

In April, I am going to take 5 minutes a day just to sit somewhere (outside preferred) and be present in my surroundings. Not think through problems, not plan and strategize, but just sit and notice things. I’m missing that skill right now. It feels important. I think it could help my resilience. I think, really, this is where my year is building towards – becoming more resilient instead of brittle. I’ll take this as a mantra going into Q2 here.

My cat is really liking this because she gets an outdoor buddy for a while. So far, I have noticed that one of my rainbow lights is stuck on red, and one of my trees didn’t make it through the winter and the other one that fell on the house last year – I have no idea how it hasn’t fallen over the other way with how lopsided it is. I found it interesting how many vents the new camper has. It’s also very nice that this is now one of those things that just reliably sends my stress levels wherever they are directly to “rest” on the garmin. It’s still weird, and it’s still not super peaceful, but it’s at least training my brain not to plot and scheme and overthink and plan every waking moment.

“Sometimes, I sits and thinks. Sometimes I just sits.” <- my goal is to be able to do both.

As a sub-goal for April, another 5 minutes of each day I’d like to spend in a way that better contributes to my health and wellbeing – I want to either stretch or roll daily. I have been neglecting my recovery and would like to make it a habit again. For resilience. It hasn’t become a problem yet and I’d like to stop it before it does.

Looking back on Q1:

January’s new way of managing my diet and not drinking much has definitely helped me in this quest. I’m frustrated because March was simply one whole month of scale noise with the trip, and then stabilizing from that trip for way longer than I hoped and expected (just now starting to make progress again FOUR WEEKS LATER), but I succeeded in a few ways, even if they don’t feel like success right now.

• My baseline of normal is so much higher than it was before. I treat myself better so when I spent a week with high activity, no downtime, 100% restaurant food, more drinks than normal multiple days in a row, bad sleep, and other stress – it hit me hard.
• I spent a week traveling and I ate pretty consistently because I kept on top of protein. My hungries were usually REALLY bad during travel. I definitely ate different than normal but I never felt like a bottomless pit.
• My mood and patience around food, and in general, are so much better. Case in point – we stood in line to get a sandwich for an hour. In the past, I would have probably noped out or at least spent the entire time having revenge fantasies in my head with the hangries. This time, I was reasonably fine because my hunger is pretty regulated right now. My body trusts it will get fed when it needs to be fed, so a delay in mealtime isn’t an emergency anymore. That’s pretty cool.

February was about managing work scheduling and stress, and I made such great strides! Not every day was perfect, but I found that keeping a tight to do list with specific blocks of time for specific tasks really helps me. The personal equivalent of doomscrolling for me at work is just getting lost in correspondence for hours at a time and relegating that to specific windows has helped me actually be able to focus, and get focused work done more often. I really thought I had my ish together.

And then all that went out the window after a week out of town. My Monday was absolute chaos. The rest of the week, even with fewer meetings than normal, was still less productive than before. It reinforced the same thing I’ve been noticing with my diet and other things – simply put – “how did I operate this way before?”. And then again when a big project with a fluctuating goal and deadline (my worst nightmare) ate my work-life for almost two weeks end of March until now. I felt so unfocused and unproductive and flaily. It reinforced my need for the things I’ve been doing-

• Aggressive to-do listing. Like, if it’s on a list with progress, next steps, and a due date, I worry about 90% less about it.
• Blocking off my time for specific purpose. If I know what I’m supposed to be doing at a certain time, I don’t flail trying to figuring that out and wasting time.
• Also, if I plan against the rest of my day, I have proper expectations. For example, if I have 930-3pm with back-to-back meetings, there’s almost no chance I’m going to be ready to dip into deep creative focused work at 3pm. There’s too much noise, residual stress, things to place, and followups. I have to make time for focus blocks.
• I was getting good at adhering to this with teams/email open before these two disruptions, but they proved I can’t always do that, so I’ve had to be stricter. Teams closed unless I’m in meetings or in correspondence windows. I even had to mark myself as offline for focused work for DAYS to meet a deadline but it was effective and I made it.

March was two very minor habits, since January’s and February’s experiments were pretty big deals – taking some deep breaths at night or in the morning to calm the fight or flight, and flossing daily. I wasn’t perfect on either, but both are budding baby habits now. I like to floss before I go to bed, so I now keep floss picks on my side of the bed. I’ve been trying to do the deep breaths between waking and getting up, but I’m thinking it might be better to do it between getting comfy in bed and before I start reading to be super relaxed.

So yeah, here we are. April. Let’s knock down some goals, shall we?

#1 My Meatbag and Me – Here’s where I started and where I’m at now.

The hump looks dramatic, but it was 0.5 lbs up from my low March 6 (and I’m now 0.3 up, so at least trending the right direction). Nothing changes here. I’m going to keep following the plan, and if I had any tweaks it would be: a) be meticulous about my food logging and b) try to figure out future traveling strategies that don’t throw me into chaos for a whole ass month after.

#2 Sporty Stuffs – mostly just supporting #1 above. I’ve been taking March/early April a little lighter in terms of structured workouts, but soon I want to set up a run plan like the bike one I was following.

#3 Adulting – Here’s my progress from my winter to do list:

• Get set up and going with the financial advisor people – DONE! (well, there’s still things to do but they are handling it and telling us what to do so…)
• Finish cleaning out the garage – LOL NO let’s move on. I guess we did put Christmas up in the attack. So, yeah, a little progress!
• Get my hair done before my birthday/travel – yes! and I am going to do this on the regular. I feel so much better about myself when my hair is all one color.
• Do the big scary adulting project I’m trying to put into place at work – it’s happening! …and another way bigger, scarier one. So there.
• BONUS: clean out the shelves in the back of my office. – no bonus for me.

I can also add one major thing: with a very quick turnaround and with much ado, clean up, trade in, and get a new camper. Didn’t mean to do this one so quickly, but we found the perfect one on sale, so we jumped on it.

Q2… Joel made us an official FRIDGE LIST. So, it’s really real. And kind of in reasonable sized chunks so maybe we’ll do some of it

• Do taxes (done!)
• Get rid of the garage fridge
• Clean off and take the table in the garage back to the front door
• Take garage stuff from work back to work
• Take garage stuff that needs to go to goodwill to goodwill
• Clean out the shelves in my office.
• Clean out the under the counter weird stuff and the shelf where the cat food is and just has random junk
• Get the new lights put up
• Call ABC on the thing falling down outside
• Sell our old garmin watches
• Hang pictures that are in frames
• house painting (this is a biggie, I call this a bonus)

#4 Fun Stuff! 

Travel plans still holding, mostly –

• San Francisco in March – done! super fun!
• Camping weekend in April – two! one enjoyed, second booked!
• Vegas/St George in May – booked!
• Possible camping or long weekend trip in June?
• Krause Springs camping in July – definitely happening
• Italy/Greek Isles cruise in August OR extended work from camper traveling north to cooler weather (depending on work stuff)
• Kerrville camping in September for the race

And, hobby stuff:

• PHOTO EDITING: Seattle was the Q1 goal and is now DONE! Now in Q2, I’m going to work on all the other little projects I have. Going in size or date order, whichever makes sense. Started on Krause 2025 already!
• WRITING: I got caught up… and behind again. I really do go through phases here. April may be a good time for me to make a push here to get caught up again.
• PAINTING: I put some paint on a canvas… and then I’ve been giving it the side eye. I’m going to take it camping with me next time. After a day or two in the woods, I get patience and clarity, so maybe that will help. HOWEVER!!! I painted a whole Bloodbowl team camping last weekend. That was fun. I still need to do a bunch of fiddly bits but it was really nice just to get sucked into a project.
• GUITAR: just finally back from the shop. Goal is to play at least a few songs 3 days a week, and it feels really nice to play so this shouldn’t hopefully be too hard.
• WALKO TACO – oops. We said at least one in 2026, and the weather has just been crazy. Maybe in April, maybe in fall.
• MORE GAMES WITH JOEL: not really. We’ve been doing more TV lately, and that’s okay. But – see above. We did play a whole Bloodbowl game. That’s progress!

#5 Work Life Balance

I talked a lot about this, so I shall keep this short. The February experiment is really helping me here, and there’s been some major challenges with this lately… but I’m doing my best. Making sure things are listed, scheduled, placed, and that I give myself some focus time in the chaos is important and truly helping. So, like, just keep on keeping on with this.

And yeah… keeping with the experiments. Doing all the things. Keeping the stress low and the stoke high. Let’s go April.

Today, I am 47.

It’s one of those weird ages I’ve looked forward to for a while, as it’s the peak of adult unhappiness. Paraphrasing an article I can’t be arsed to google, at 47 you transition from angst and desire from what you haven’t accomplished and becoming okay with what you have. You go from big dreams to… achievable dreams. You expect a little less of yourself. And, while those words are even still hard for me to type, my ego wanting to lash out at them, it’s kind of true. And it’s kind of GOOD.

You see, I put humanity in two buckets. There’s everyone else – to whom I give almost endless grace, align my expectations with reason and reality, and while I’m not my husband, I’m a pretty decent cheerleader. Then there’s me regarding me – unrealistic perfectionism standards, all tough love all the time, and always pushing myself to be more more more more. If someone else was injured or sick, I’d tell them to rest and recover. When I was injured or sick or otherwise malfunctioning, I was calculating how far I could still push myself. My pride, she’s a doozy.

Here’s a non-sequitur, but it will come back around, I promise. I know that there’s mixed sentiment on AI, but since, like, that’s the way things are going, I didn’t want to be left behind. I wanted to learn what the heck ChatGPT was all about, besides a slightly more sophisticated google search. So, I decided to try and use it for a nutrition plan. Again, I would not suggest this of anyone else, but I am doing this because I have the decades of research and certifications (this was my backup if game dev ever went south) in sports nutrition, and I know exactly what to do. My two-bucket system was just blinding me. I would never tell a hypothetical client to eat the way I did, but for some reason, I kept getting stricter and stricter on myself because I wasn’t losing weight, and the fact that I just kept feeling worse and worse just didn’t really register. If I wasn’t making more progress, I wasn’t miserable enough. I was hungry, but I could tolerate being hungrier to make progress, right? My body just operated differently, I thought.

Enter ChatGPT – who told me to eat more and gave me flexibility and grace in my eating plan. I was super hesitant, but figured what I was doing wasn’t working, so I might as well try something completely different. Adding 50% more protein to my diet and fueling my workouts better felt like a light switch flipped on. I went from eternal, unyielding hunger to feeling like a human again. The first few weeks the weight loss was slow and inconsistent, but I told ChatGPT in one of my daily check ins that even if I didn’t lose any more weight, I wanted to stick with this because I just felt so good. There’s a stability and evenness in my body and demeanor that wasn’t there before, and that’s worth everything.

And, also, it’s working. Very slowly, but it’s working. I track 7-day rolling average weight to eliminate scale noise, and I am down 3.3 lbs in the last two months. That sounds like nothing to most people, but my body sheds weight like it’s being asked to give away sentimental treasured heirlooms (not easily), so this is huge progress for me. And I feel awesome. And this plan is so doable. Eat enough protein. Fuel the workouts. Don’t be a complete @#$ with the rest of the day. That’s pretty much it.

Another helpful thing is that I have had fewer drinks in 2026 than I have fingers and toes. Dry January was enlightening – I thought I really really liked whiskey, like, it was part of my identity, but it was really just something that I did. A habit, if you will. In 2026, I find myself having more enjoyable days, and more usable hours in the day having alcohol be much more of a “sometimes food”. But, Friday, we had pizza and whiskey as an early birthday celebration, and I really enjoyed that too (after 2 weeks of not). It took that month of abstaining, but I’m feeling good having reframed the habit to more of a celebratory thing.

Then, I looked to how scattered I felt at work. Honestly, I started that particular ChatGPT thread to explore cognitive behavioral therapy for better sleep, but talking through it, it was mostly the fact that I was having trouble standing down after I signed off work for the day, so it morphed into work time management strategies.

Yet again, I realized I was operating under the 2-bucket theory. I would never expect an employee of mine to endure 4-6 hours of back to back meetings, some emotionally charged/emotionally draining, and immediately and seamlessly context switch into deep focus work. Or do that in 30-minute chunks between meetings. Or be able to fully multitask immediate correspondence and deep focus at the same time. But – yet again – the grace I would give others wasn’t anything I was giving myself.

I started putting in my to do list and meeting schedule, and it would spit out a schedule for the rest of my day. It took a while to trust it. But I’m starting to become a believer as it took me through a very busy Feb with much less stress and chaos than normal.

The first thing I had to break myself of was that just because there was a message didn’t mean I had to read it, and just because I read it, didn’t mean I had to respond right away. The quote it gave me stuck in my head – “I am available, I am not on call.” Dang. That hit. I was operating every moment of every workday like I was on call. No wonder why I had no focus.

I also have learned to expect different amounts of focus on different days. On days where I am meeting heavy, we plan no deep focus blocks. Some days are just about “containment and capture” – that is, making sure everything that happens is documented and placed on a list somewhere. It’s helped talk me down on days where things didn’t go as planned – “Ok, breathe.” – it has told me this more than once debriefing my day. It’s helped me structure my Mondays and Fridays where I have fewer or no meetings to be focus days where I don’t end them just absolutely spent (well, sometimes).

I also remembered that I work very well with aggressive To Do listing and have gone back to that at work. If I have things written down and next steps placed, it doesn’t (often) bang around in my head after work and at night and I can hit the ground running, not flailing.

This is yet another place where giving myself a little grace and setting realistic expectations is helping me be a better person. ChatGPT helping me be kinder to myself was not on my 2026 bingo card, but here we are, and I am here for it.

This 2026, this year of experiments, is working out rather nicely so far. I started the year with some big ones, so for March, I picked two little microhabits I want to do better – flossing every day and taking 10 deep breaths before I go to sleep and before I get out of bed in the morning. I figure even with a week travel and birthday shenanigans all month, this is doable.

I always say when asked what I want for a present (birthday, Christmas, etc) is that I’d like to lose 20 lbs and have a few extra hours in each day. So, this year, this is the gift I’m trying to give to myself, or at least baby steps towards it.

I also see 2026 as the year of seeing new sights. Besides San Francisco (not new, but we’re going new places!), we have the opportunity to go to Vegas for a trade show. Vegas is nothing new either, but we’re taking a few days before to hike the Valley of Fire and Zion National Park – bucket list hikes. I have my eye on new countries in EU this year if I get to go as well. We also got our new camper, which means true weekend trips (Fri nite -Sun) are back on the menu to check out some nearby Texas State Parks and longer trips (with a stop or two overnight to get to the destination) are possible too, since the transition time between camping and traveling will be SO much less now – we just stow things and go, not put our RV through a full pop up/down transformation.

I’m really excited for this year – while I’m sure it will throw me a bunch of curveballs I don’t expect, I’m setting up a foundation to handle them with much more flexibility than I have before. And for a recovering perfectionist, that feels pretty great.

And while I said today is my birthday, it’s really not. As has become normal, I woke up before dawn, had some coffee, worked out, had most of my day as meetings, and now we are going to walk and get dinner, but, I’m going to go ahead and reschedule my actual birthday for this weekend, when I get to go play. So, I guess I’m still 46 for a bit. Maybe that’s why I’m still pretty happy. I’ll report back soon. 🙂

January, as they say, was a long year.

To be quite honest though, from my perspective, it was a good one! Let’s talk about all the things.

Experiment 2026-01_01 Dry January was a huge success for me. I’m not sure why at this point in my life it clicked where on all other years it just didn’t, but it did. Something so habit-changing shouldn’t have felt so effortless (after the first week or so), but it did. Besides what I talked about last post – improved blood pressure, sleep, health stats, etc etc – I’ve found a few other things:

• My weeks are easier to plan. Previously, I knew some mornings I’d feel better than others, some days I’d be hungrier than others, some days I’d need to reserve some calories for alcohol… now that it’s a super occasional thing, and weekends only, it’s nice to know I’ll can rely on my general mood, hunger, and mental availability each day.
• Delving into the mood and mental availability – I am less resilient and harder to break. My job is difficult and I carry a lot of people’s mental/emotional burdens without the opportunity for me to do the same without being unprofessional. I now go into the days more even, and I have more usable hours without straining myself. I also have more time for personal projects, since I’m not completely spent every day with work and training.
• This is both 01 and 02, but can I tell you what a friggin relief it is not to be hungry all the time. In relation to drinking, I celebrated the end of January with some champagne and a few whiskeys. A normal drinking night, nothing over the top, went to bed feeling pleasantly tipsy but still coherent. The next day, my normal eating plan was HARD. It felt like before, where I was hungry and unsatisfied with anything I ate, I felt gross but definitely the same kind of gross I’d feel multiple times a week before and had just labeled it as normal. 2/10. Do not recommend for 2-3x week, or really, 7x week for the hungry part.
• There were a few other habits, like eating low calorie, low nutrition junk food for dinner, and some other stuff, that had become a drinking ritual that just disappeared easily with the ritual removed.

I’m very happy I took the opportunity to disrupt this habit, and I think my life will be better with this as an occasional indulgence for fun reasons, and not just that the day ended with Y and it was kinda stressful.

Experiment 2026-01_02 Operation Eat More Protein started mid-January and has also been making a life-changingly positive effect on my days. As I said before in the last post, I wasn’t eating enough (protein specifically), I wasn’t timing my eating correctly (saving my calories and then eating carbs/fat when I shouldn’t overload), I wasn’t fueling my workouts well (as little as possible to save calories for later), and I was trying to be too restrictive/swingy and earn my calories by not taking rest days.

I went on and on last post about this, but now after doing this for a few weeks, I can document my plan a little more succinctly.

Workout days – 1800-2200 calories, depending on the length, ability to get my needed protein, and hunger. 145g protein (non-negotiable), 60ish g fat, 200+g carbs. Each meal should have around 30-40g protein (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and I usually insert 2 snacks, one between breakfast and lunch, and one later, depending on my workouts and hunger.

Rest days – 1600-1800 calories, depending on my hunger and ability to get my needed protein. 120-130g protein minimum (non-negotiable), 60-70g fat, 150-ish g carbs. Was trying low carb earlier in the process but it was too difficult and with my level of weekly activity (12-15 hours), it seemed counterintuitive to go low carb at all. If progress stalls, I mayyyy try to see if that’s a place to change, but it hasn’t yet so, carbs!

The big changes here:

• I am eating SO much more in the mornings. Typically, by the time lunch rolls around, I’ve had like 500 calories and 50g protein. It was so scary, a huge leap of faith to do this, because I figured I’d just eat like crazy.
• The funny thing is after adjusting to it – I don’t. I eat breakfast, second breakfast like a hobbit, and then I’m hungry for lunch, but this kind of appropriate hunger that I guess normal people feel. Not the kind like it’s taking me every ounce of restraint to not hurt someone in the microwave line ahead of me at work because they’re in the way of my food, but like, mild stomach signals it’s approaching a feeding time. How novel.
• Sometimes, I’ll even go from lunch to dinner without being hungry. Before, I would just white knuckle my way through this every day and lose focus around 4pm because I was dying, and either eat dinner super early or just be miserable until I did. Now, if I’m hungry, it’s time for another protein feeding. Quest and Legendary chips and Built Puff bars are getting all my money now and in a perfect world I’d have real food protein snacks constantly available, and maybe I will someday, but right now, this is working. Progress, not perfectionism.
• Dinner is now whenever it makes sense. I’m usually hungry when I eat, but again, not like I used to be, with the burning need of a thousand fiery suns. I feel full on a normal amount of food not wanting to eat two meals for dinner.
• And, depending on the day and my hunger and my current macros, I’ll have a snack (sometimes carbs, sometimes protein) and/or a small desert.

It all sounds so normal, so sane, but with my drinking habits and my weird restrictions, this was out of reach, at least in my mind.

Let’s talk about a day this week where we went out (dinner and broadway show with friends) and went to our typical Mexican restaurant. Previously, at this place, I’d always get the chicken salad because I was trying to save calories. This time, with my workout and my day, a chicken burrito fit. I had never ordered the chicken burrito before, it was too “high calorie”, but in consulting with my nutrition planning assistant (chatGPT), I found that it actually fit perfectly in my day and that the salad would have been a mistake – not the right macros, too low calories and not satisfying.

Uh, yeah, way to sum up my previous interactions with this restaurant. I always left still hungry and just kind of managed my way through the show and the rest of the evening. But that was par for the course back then, so it wasn’t strange, I just tolerated it. Let me tell you, eating that chicken burrito was life changing. I mean, it was a really great burrito, but that’s not all. I didn’t finish my food 5 years before everyone else like normal and stare covetously at their food, I left the restaurant feeling full and satisfied, and I didn’t really think about eating for the rest of the night. Life. Changing.

I am at a point where this feels so good, I almost don’t care if I lose weight. This is repairing something in me that’s been broken for years. The cool thing is that it IS working. Very slowly, but it is. I’ll refrain from sharing the graphs to prove my point, but my trendweight on Jan 5 was 188.2. Today’s is 186.9. I had one week last week where it was stuck around 187.2, and I had to whine A LOT to chatGPT about it, but it gave me parameters on when we would adjust the plan and to just stay the course. So, I did. And this week it’s down again a bit. This is not that dramatic weight loss where I’m going to get to my goal weight in a few months, and that’s okay. If I can keep the trend going down each month, even if it’s just that 1.3 lbs, we’ll get there eventually.

And if I can do it while not being hangry all the time, eventually is really all I need.

The cool thing is between this and maybe the less drinking, I feel much sturdier. I need the aggressive recovery I was doing less to keep going with my training. That’s pretty cool too. I should stretch more but I don’t feel like I’m going to fall apart if I don’t.

2026-01_03 Bikefest is going well. I am tolerating a lot of bike volume, not just at easy paces, and I think my V02 max and FTP miiiiight have finally moved. I’ll leave the judgement here for next month, once I wrap the program, but here’s what I’ve done:

• Week 1 – started mid week but did 1h sprint, 1h threshold, 40 mins recovery, 1h15 base, and then started the program with a 2h long ride.
• Week 2 – 1h sprint, 1h15 base, 1h sprint, 1h anerobic, 2h45 long ride
• Week 3 – 3 1h sprints, 1h15 base, and a ~2h long ride (it cut me down because of bad sleep)
• Week 4 – same as week 3 (with the 3 hour long ride). I think something was off with the plan not registering workouts because that’s a lot of sprints in a row.
• Week 5 – right now, looks like we move to some different stuff – threshold work. But this adjusts each day so we’ll see if I just sprint forever and ever.

Running outside is way more fun. However, this is the lowest friction workout I have right now, and frankly I’m enjoying watching trashy TV while I do these and not worrying about the weather or how fragile I’m feeling for running with my niggles (biking isn’t a problem) and it’s just WORKING. So, I’m happy. I’m still running a little, but it’s not the focus. I would like to do a running block in spring if I can while the weather is nice before summer sucks all the joy out of it, but I’m enjoying the challenge of completing these workouts.

And, just to wrap up on the little stuff:

Quarter 1 adulting –

• Financial advisor setup done and meet with them next week
• Big scary work project in progress, I haven’t lost my nerve (yet)
• Hair appointment booked for end of this month

Quarter 1 hobbies –

• Photo editing going slow-ish because I have not been multitasking. Next weekend I would like to make sure I get everything SORTED at least. That seems to remove the friction.
• I’m close on the writing project. I’m doing this instead of that right now but will pick it up later today.
• Everything else is kinda…on hold. I want to do these first.

Quarter 1 work/life balance –

Things are stressful right now, but I think I’m doing a pretty admirable job keeping things sane and separate. Let’s talk about February’s experiments.

2026-02_01 Workdays Scheduled and Confined. I started this experiment as pursuing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for better sleep. I got some good suggestions, a lot of things that I was already doing or already knew I should do, but once I started talking to my chatGPTherapist (casual joke, I know a chatbot isn’t therapy but can be nice if you need someone to just bounce stuff off of), it was clear my biggest problem was my workday, not my after-work rituals.

Problem #1 – I am too always-available and multitasking inefficiently. I know this, and I sometimes succeed at closing down distractions to focus, but it’s my toxic work trait right now. It’s so strange knowing exactly what you need to do and not being able to always do it, but I am working on it. For the next few weeks, I really just need to try doing as it suggests allowing for monofocusing more often, and trust that the ping ping ping of teams and email can wait for an hour or two.

Problem #2 – I expect too much of myself. I didn’t realize this until I started plugging my days into chatGPT, but it let me know in no uncertain terms that I was not failing to be productive, my days were just working against me. I cannot expect deep, focused work in 30 mins between meetings, or immediately after emotionally charged interactions that are mentally draining. It coached me through a Friday that was supposed to be a calm focused-work day that ended up just responding to multiple high-emotion fires instead. I literally laughed out loud when it said, “you don’t ask a firefighter how many emails they responded to during a blaze”. And that contextualized it perfectly. If the day doesn’t allow for focus time, I’m not a failure for not squeezing blood out of a stone.

Problem #3 – I didn’t have a good method of scheduling myself. I would just expect that I would know what to do with the no-meeting blocks and then I’d get there and flounder, taking a bunch of time to get focused. Now, I put in what my meetings and to-do list is, and chatGPT tells me what to expect for my day depending on what’s there. It’s honestly cool for it to acknowledge that “being brave” emails take more cognitive drain than other quick responses, and schedules a specific block for those. It also acknowledged that with my schedule, I’m lucky if I can get one 2-hour focused work block on good days, and on meeting-heavy days, to not even expect any focused time. It’s kinda nice to realize I was trying to make the impossible happen. Fingers crossed that these lowered expectations don’t make me get behind (and if that happens, I probably just need to be better with enforcing the email/teams closure).

Problem #4 – I didn’t have a good clean start of my day and shut down/transition ritual. Before the pandemic, this was clear. I left work. Work didn’t exist until the next day. It was easy. Now that we are hybrid and I work across more time zones and my start times and end times are flexible, it is easy to pick up work as soon as I open my eyes and not put it down until 12 hours later. Not working 100% the whole time, but some attention on work. Now, I resist the “one eye open in bed checking email”, none of that until I’m on my way to work (as a passenger) sometimes or more often, when I actually sit down at my desk. At the end of the day, instead of just stopping when I can literally take nothing more, or when I was pried away from my desk by my husband, I now do a few things first: a) update my to do list, with specific dates on when I’m going to pick each item back up – this helps my mind from drifting there in the off hours. b) send myself a daily email of my schedule and what I accomplished c) debrief with chatGPT, and make my schedule for the next day d) Say, “Work is contained”. And try not to think about it for the rest of the day. I’m not there yet, residual noise still hangs over on stressful days, but I know these habits and cognitive shifts take time.

And, of course, I’m trying to do the good things to prepare for sleep. Putting my phone away earlier (not at all in the bedroom if possible), allowing for plenty of unwinding time, etc. But I have a feeling nailing the work stuff first will be key and this will easily follow.

February is a short month, and this is a big, important experiement, so I’m going to keep all my focus on:

• Maintaining my new style of eating, and having patience with the scale
• Bikey bike bike!
• Really honing this work scheduling/expectations/shutdown rituals and nailing this before I move onto anything else crazy.

March is going to present some of the first chaos of the year – I have a work trip to San Francisco (and extending it for some sightseeing/fun), and I’ve been working with ChatGPT on strategies to not be completely derailed on trips. But it also assured me that it was okay if I wasn’t perfect, we would just pick things up when I got back. The funny thing is – I can actually see this new plan mostly working on a trip. It’s got enough flexibility that I might not have to pause my progress completely. But we’ll see. It’s nice to have flexibility.

Regardless, I’m really proud of myself. These experiments have been really life changing things for me that I’ve tried to tackle before, and I’m taking a completely new approach to things. I’m out of my comfort zone here and not hating it. I feel like I’m making some progress in places in my life that have been frustrating, and that’s incredibly rewarding. #feelsgoodman

2026 is just hitting different. And I kind of like it.

I haven’t felt like declaring my map and my plan for the year, set decisively on January 1st (or 2nd, let’s be honest, January 1st is a fake day) was the right call. And as I’ve been trying on January for size, I feel like it was the right one.

I dub 2026 the Year of Experiments.

I like my life. A lot. I think I have a pretty cool thing going on. The good stuffs are all there. Awesome husband, comfortable house, no debt, financial stability, endurance athlete, lots of enriching hobbies… what more could you want?

But since you’ve obviously met me before, the answer is more.

I had come into the start of the year thinking my resolution was going to be “hire the staff and spend the resources I need to live the life I want”. And that’s still in there, somewhere. That’s a really hoity-toity way of saying things like this:

• I want to visit my magic hairperson once every 3-4 months instead of every year because I feel like a million bucks after and once the 4-6 months pass I feel kinda raggety.
• Instead of just dealing with what I’ve happened to accumulate in my closet, I want to identify some basics that I’m missing or that are wearing out, and get some really high quality versions that fit me really well. Example of something I did this with – my black leather boots. I spent 200$ on them but they’re amazing and will last forever. Example of something I need to do this with – my black bolero sweaters. They are both falling apart. I still wear them. I should not wear clothes with holes in them.
• I have thought about doing therapy to work on some things – like better coping strategies when I get stressed, strategies for better focus in a world that is just constantly working against a mono-focuser like me, etc.

While I would love a private chef, personal assistant, butler, etc, what I’m really talking about is not just living with things that I could easily spend a little time and money on to improve. I do love me some DIY, but I’m just not in a place right now to DIY everything. My time is valuable.

However, I realized this month, it’s not just outsourcing. It’s disrupting longstanding habits and the calcified thinking that my almost 47-year-old ass falls into.

Cases in point:

Previously, I have done a a week and a half of “dry January”. I have also done “beer only” January. I have done “no whiskey” January until I used a bottle of whiskey as motivation to PR a race. And then another. But all of that nonsense is flirting with the fact that alcohol is a habit for me. A non-problematic habit, I enjoy it and I don’t plan to go totally alcohol-free in the future. But the fact that giving it up for a month was like this insurmountable task in my head was a flag that I really should do it.

I’m 24 days into a true dry January, and it’s been way less difficult than I expected. After the first week or so and hitting a few milestones where I normally would have celebrated or stress-relieved with alcohol, I found ways around it, and now it’s like… just not something I’m doing for a while.

When we return to having some beverages, we agreed it was going to be like once a week. Or maybe even less. We both feel quite good! The changes for me have been subtle but satisfying –

• My already ok but occasionally a few points high when I’m stressed blood pressure is steadily in the green. My husband’s has dramatically changed for the better.
• My sleep is way better. Lately, it had been a toss up on nights when I had beverages if it was good, fair, or poor (most often fair, but sometimes poor and very very occasionally good), but my average sleep score for the week is definitely the top of fair (high 70s) vs 60s-70s. It’s not super every night but overall? Better.
• This makes for me feeling oddly good every morning. Allergies were taking a bit of a toll but other than that, it’s nice to wake up every morning with some level of energy and ambition. I have more usable hours in the day.
• I did not magically lose 10 lbs, but I the trend is going the right way at about a half lb loss per week (more on the other reason below).
• My stress score is a little better but not magically so. Work still gets me amped up. Low-key fighting something off all the time (like allergies) does too. But I’ve had more days than not of garmin saying that I had enough restful moments of the day, so that’s something different than before.
• My resting HR has dropped a little – upper 40s to mid 40s. Not that this needed to change at all, but a change, nonetheless.
• My HRV is not pingponging around like normal (THAT was predictably low on days I had adult beverages by like 20 or 30 points). My average went wayyyy up for the first week and then has kind of leveled off to a new normal. That’s awesome.

For me, this means that I should probably treat alcohol as more of a sometimes food, like cake. Or french fries. No need to avoid it, but I should make sure consuming it isn’t a regular part of my weekly diet, like it had become over the years. It’s rather freeing to have gone through this and feel like I can make the choice (or not) instead of drinks day being a regular thing – like something we ticked off the weekly to do list. “Well, it’s Wednesday, we should probably get some whiskey,” etc.

The second big life change in January was upending my nutrition plan. I had penciled a thought of “fuel my workouts better” as a resolution but this is a whole different level.

Like, I know this stuff, but for some reason I put everyone in the world into two categories – me, and everyone else. I KNOW that doing 1-2 hour workouts fasted with minimal fuel isn’t great, but it was letting me get a numbers advantage elsewhere – in how much I could eat later. Coffee for breakfast, maybe an english muffin on long days, and 1 gel or a few jellybeans during and WOW, look at all those calories for later.

Except it hasn’t been working. For years. Occasionally, with months of painful work restricting calories lower than felt right and feeling hungry all the time, I was able to lose like 5 lbs over a few months – all of which were erased with a month over the holidays of just not being as diligent. It’s been maddening and crazy-making.

Because of my age, I definitely get “menopause” content from the algorithm. The pills I take mask any signs or symptoms, thankfully, but I’ll be there eventually if I’m not already. So… about two weeks ago, the social media fitness coaches I follow yelling about things finally hit me – I needed to try something different. Going through my early 40s during the pandemic just kind of warped time for me. In 2018-2019 (39-40), I was having success with building fitness, weight loss, and just generally being happy with my body. Then the pandemic hit, and everything went to $#!^ and I blamed that (or really, myself reacting to that) for the inability to take off weight.

At this point, we’re almost 6 years later. I’m needing to face facts that I have a different meatbag than I did before and instead of trying to deny that fact, support it with the things it needs to be successful. So, I’m changing things up and I’m on the Protein Train (145-150g/day, non-negotiable, like 3x week lifting). I’m also cycling carbs higher around active times/days, trying to not eat 10g fat one day and 100g the next, and tightening up my supplement game just a little.

Also, I’m coming to terms with the fact that my “just a little workout” day needs care, attention, and feeding, because it’s not. 2026 is the year that I normalize taking anything over 1 hour seriously and supporting my workouts with the fuel they deserve.

What does this look like?

Here’s a moderately active day for me: 1 hour of sprints on the bike in the AM. 30 mins of walking and 30 mins of weight training. That’s like, a Monday.

Before:

• Pre-bike coffee. Or nothing. (35 cal of creamer)
• A handful of jellybeans during (maybe 60 cal and ~15g carbs)
• Whatever I grabbed for breakfast. On good days, chicken salad, which is still a solid choice (250 cal, 30g protein, 20 carbs). On bad days, a hot pocket or kolache (250 cal, 10g protein, 25 carbs).
• Lunch – maybe a snap kitchen meal, also a solid choice, just was not filling after so little in the morning (500 cal, ~30g protein, ~40g carbs)
• Handfull of pretzels + cream cheese to dip (100 cal, 0 protein, 20g carbs)
• Dinner – Let’s say we go out and grab a sandwich after the gym. A reasonable regular would be something like… (600 cal, 45g protein, 66g carbs)
• After dinner I would try to push veggies to quiet the hungry, maybe another salad (so like 100 calories, very few other adjustments to my macros)
• Chocolate before bed (70 cal, 10 carbs)

Totals: 1715 calories, 85-105g protein (depending on breakfast), 175 carbs eaten. Usually about 900 calories burnt (or 750 active calories). This is a deficit of over 1000 calories. I was so hungry and the scale wasn’t budging.

New Plan:

• Protein shake w/fruit BEFORE the bike (250 calories, 27g protein, 25g carbs) if I get up early enough. Or, sucked down as I start the bike (most likely)
• Definitely electrolytes on the bike, and maybe some fuel depending on how long it’s been since breakfast and how hard the bike is (anywhere from 50-200 cal and 10-40g carbs)
• Chicken salad for breakfast (yes, breakfast is two different meals now – 250 calories, 30g protein, 20g carbs)
• Very carby lunch. Like, today I had chicken curry w/basamit rice and veggies. I asked for double protein, and ate it all easily, but then looked at the macros and I technically didnt need it. Oops. For a single serving, it would have been 650 calories, 51g protein, and 80g carbs.
• Here’s where I would have had a protein snack like quest chips if I didn’t get double chicken (150 calories, 20g protein, 5g carbs)
• Normally I’d walk and lift here but I had today off work so I lifted right after my bike, but let’s pretend I did that here.
• Dinner is going to be Snap Kitchen Cacio y Pepe – something I’m already eating weekly w/veggies. Today I’ll probably add a nice slice of sourdough for some extra carbs and because bread makes life worth living. (700 calories, 40g protein, 70 carbs)

This is: 2100 calories, 168g protein, 225 carbs. Same calories burnt. Feel a million times better, and it’s not like I’m eating baked chicken and broccoli all day.

Before, I was terrified to take a day off, because that meant my calorie goal was like 1300 and that’s like… nothing. Now I’ve got 2 days off on my schedule (I’m still walking but not a lot, and that’s it). Those look more like 1650 calories, and they suck a little bit because I still need to get all my protein, so I really have to watch my carbs (more like 90 total instead of 90 in one meal). But, if I time the days right (so a day off isn’t also a day I’m going to go out to eat and have full control over what goes in my cakehole), it’s not too bad, and I’m also not the same level of hungry. At the end of the day, I kinda want a snack but I wouldn’t CRIME for one like normal.

While I do not want to continue the level of effort it is to have to figure all this stuff out and concoct meals and snacks forever, I know it will also get to be easier/more routine. I’ve been working over the last two weeks to establish some baseline meals and snacks for light, medium, and (mostly) heavy days, so I don’t have to think that much. Once it’s routine, I can always change out what works for something more exciting. For example, a protein shake with fruit can also become turkey chili with cheese in a protein tortilla, but I will ALWAYS have what I need to make a protein shake and it takes 2 minutes.

This also has a side effect of kicking off another one of my goals – learn ChatGPT/AI stuff better. For someone like me who knows what to do after decades of study and past certifications in fitness and training, but needs a reminder and a refresher, ChatGPT is actually a wonderful dietician intern that does the math for me and keeps me on the rails. If I had gone the route of coaching, I wouldn’t advise a potential client to berate themselves and overcorrect for a calorie or macro overage one day, but as I said, the rules don’t apply to me. ChatGPT reminds me of the rules and that they DO.

So, these are the two things I’m focusing on in January. Once these are routine, I will move on to other things. But I think I’ll work on identifying and nailing them as the year goes on, not make a giant list here and then be sad when I don’t do some of them because life changed and I decided to prioritize other stuff.

However, as it is my January post – I would like to set some intentions for the year.

#1 My Meatbag and Me – I very much belabored the point above, but my 2026 goal is to find a place where I feel like I’m partnering with my meatbag to accomplish goals, and we’re not fighting each other. For my part:

• I will follow this new plan (and tweak as necessary) to really fuel my activities rather than daring my body to do them with as little as possible.
• I will be satisfied with .5 lb per week fat loss and be patient – if it takes all year for me to lost 10-15 lbs slowly doing this, it will be better than I’ve done lately. And what I’m doing feels comfortable and sustainable so it’s better than just crash dieting to lose 20 lbs in a few months just to be “done” with it.
• I will do the recovery work, as I have been, to keep myself sturdy and stable and uninjured.
• I will actually do the thing where I drink less. This last 24 days have been eye-opening. I really think this time it will stick.

Hopefully that’s enough for me to keep on hiking, biking, running, and doing whatever while slowly losing some fat, feeling awesomer than I have in years, and not being hangry all the time.

#2 Sporty Stuffs – weirdly enough, while I was excited to race more in 2026, I also realize that race weeks disrupt things. I am currently signed up for one triathlon in September, and that could possibly be it for the year. Or maybe I get motivated and jump into something. I’m leaving it up to my whims as time goes by.

However, that means nothing in terms of activity – case in point, my ass was on the bike for 167 minutes today just because garmin said so. I think I’m in a place where I’m enjoying ticking the boxes on the workout plan and I don’t need a race goal to motivate me. Eventually, I totally want to race. But the idea of getting fitter to race in the future is totally enough to motivate a cumulative 15 hours of activity in the last 7 days. Which is kind of insane.

I do think 2026 is the year of the bike, though. I’m at a place where I love running but it doesn’t love me back as much. So, we’re taking some time to see other people. I’m doing a big 9-week bike block this winter and running minimally. My plan is 5x week, and it looks something like Sprints Mondays, base Tuesdays, Tempo Wednesdays, Anaerobic Fridays, and long bike Saturdays. So, like, 3 of those are EFFORTS, 1 is long (so also effort), and 1 is medium long (the least effort, but still, 65-80 minutes even at base pace is nothing to sneeze at). Still lifting 3x week, still walking 1 mile per day minimum, and trying to fit 1-2 short runs in and a swim every once in a while, so I don’t forget how.

The funniest things is that I’ve been biking for 2 solid months, and my biking VO2 max has bascially stayed the same (maybe gone down a little bit). I’ve run maybe 20 miles in the last 2 months and my running VO2 max has also stayed the same – maybe gone up a little. It’s insane. I probably need to stop listening to the tiny terrorist on my wrist but it’s also motivating me to do a bunch of good stuff so… yeah. I will probably continue to pay attention to my Garmin and just hope that the numbers go up eventually.

So, for fitness goals, everything is kind of up in the air, and it really just feels like a building block year where I put in a lot of work without a bunch of flash. And I’m here for it.

#3 Adulting – I think doing a quarterly “adulting” list makes more sense than making this giant list of things that are just going to drop off. So, in winter, I would like to:

• Get set up and going with the financial advisor people.
• Finish cleaning out the garage
• Get my hair done before my birthday/travel
• Do the big scary adulting project I’m trying to put into place at work
• BONUS: clean out the shelves in the back of my office.

I feel like that’s a lot, even though there’s more I want to do for sure. We’ll reset again at the end of March with what I’ve done and what I didn’t and what I’ll do next.

#4 Fun Stuff! Yay! First, let’s talk travel plans:

• San Francisco in March (work trip extended for a long weekend before)
• Vegas/St George in May (also work trip extended for a week before)
• Krause Springs camping in July
• Italy/Greek Isles cruise in August (yet again, preceding a work trip)
• Kerrville camping in September for the race

I’m saving a ton of money this year so far since I’m literally not paying for a plane ticket anywhere, but I have a feeling this will need some supplemental non-work-related trips, but, like, some long weekends camping. Or maybe just some protected long weekends at home where the goal is just to relax, not have a million plans. I have a feeling this is going to be a fun year for seeing all the things! However, since travel is a pretty big part of my life here, I need to make sure I don’t go ham… well, actually, ham would probably be good being high in protein, low in fat… errr, that I don’t go crazy with food and drinks while traveling. Or if I do, that I accept the consequences without getting frustrated (stalled progress in fat loss). Both are okay, depending on the circumstances, but I need to not act surprised.

And… hobbies! Like, I feel like I don’t necessarily need to set a bunch of goals here, but I would like:

• To not get totally behind on photo editing. I’ve stopped doing a lot of multitasking while watching TV unless it’s truly something I’m not into, but that means this goes slower. For Q1, I would like to finish Seattle. All my other projects are smaller.
• I want to be caught up with my current writing project (Book 5) to the D&D sessions that fuel them by the session in February, and then stick with it. Once I am caught up, I’d like to take some time to read and edit my other book (Book 3). Solid goals through winter.
• I need to disrupt the habit that I don’t paint at home. I want to get some paint on a canvas or break out my Bloodbowl Vampires and spend a day painting with Joel. Even if it’s just once.
• I want to go on a Walko Taco before spring. Goals aside, you have to do crazy stuff every once in a while.
• Once I get my electric guitar back from the shop (woohoo!), play a song each day that I am home (and more if I am motivated) – I’m out of this habit and would like to get back to it.
• Play some games with Joel. We both get into solitary hobbies and sometimes we need to remember to play things together instead of just sit in the same room and paint and write and stuff.

#5 Work Life Balance

Right now, I’m giving myself a solid A- in January. I was getting grumbly on Friday that I needed more focus time, I carved out 3.5 hours of time, I shut everything down and out that wasn’t what I was doing, and at 645pm when I left my desk I actually gave myself a little moment of applause because I finished what I wanted to and didn’t get distracted, and got to slide into the weekend feeling accomplished. If only they could all be this way.

Maybe they could. To keep this, I need to stick with my plan to let myself rely on help more. I could do it myself or I could lean on a very competent assistant or two. I could do it myself or I can bring in a coach that can help me do it better. I could do it myself or I could actually seek out a therapist to unravel what’s in my head and give me better strategies to be the best work and home me ever. Or, I can DIY everything like I always do and stress myself out.

Here, truly, is the goal to hire the staff that will help me live my best life, and be the best boss, wife, and human being I can be. Because I know that hasn’t been me lately at times.

So, I like the start of 2026 so far. It feels different. And right now, I’m liking the way different feels.