Congratulations! You’ve made it 10% of the way through 2024. Time moves quickly from hey!-it’s-a-brand-new-year to slipsliding right on through it.
At 10%, I’m checkpointing a couple of my goals with some interim thoughts already.
I’ve been moving every day. Mostly running with an occasional long walk or ruck (with a 25 lb weight vest) to give my knees some rest.
A couple of months last year, a friend and I did a 30 day pushup challenge: 100 pushups, every day without fail. The first week sucked but we kept going. 3 or 4 days in there was some pain and soreness. The second and some of the third week was exhausting. But the pain is gone and you keep going even though your whole upper body always feels tired. And then the fourth week, pushups started getting easier. The exhaustion settled down and the sets got easier. 4 sets of 25 became 2 sets of 50 and it always felt like there was more capacity.
Running is like that but slower. I’m still deep in the exhaustion phase and trying to stay slow and maintain Zone 2 ranges. But the trendlines are in the right direction and it feels good to rebuild cardio capacity. I should be quite a bit faster this summer than I was last summer.
I’ve been off all social media for over a month now, minus Twitter. I love Twitter and it can be addicting too, but it does not have the same draw as photo/video based social media. You’re not checking every 10 minutes and consuming every little 2 minute or 30 second break you have with swipes. This feels good. It actually feels like a bit of a brain rewire. I used to get mired into YouTube Shorts - which I hate - anytime I opened YouTube - which I love for interviews and longform content. But since ditching Instagram I haven’t touched Shorts even though it’s still on my phone. I find myself daydreaming more too.
There’s still a ton of reading, but it’s more freeform, I don’t care about the pages, and don’t care as much about dropping a book if it isn’t good after 50 pages. Goodhart’s Law is definitely a thing.
2024 feels good. And I’m saying that in February, the worst month of the year!
You must change your life.