Orbital Velocity - Text-Only Copy
This is a text-only copy of my serial/open-ended ebook, Orbital Velocity. The official copy, with images, is available for free on wattpad. I've saved this here so I can conveniently search the contents of the entire ebook in Evernote.
This was created using the FanFicFare Calibre plug-in.
Orbital Velocity by markproxy
Category: | Non-Fiction |
Genre: | bulletjournal, essay, essays, exercise, fitness, health, inspiration, journal, motivation, nonfiction, reallife, self-improvement, selfhelp, wellness, willpower |
Language: | English |
Status: | In-Progress |
Published: | 2018-12-10 |
Updated: | 2019-09-18 |
Packaged: | 2019-09-18 12:58:46 |
Chapters: | 28 |
Words: | 19,321 |
Publisher: | |
Summary: | The true, wandering, improvised story of one man's quiet journey from unfit and unhealthy to something better. The chronically slothful author seeks to feed two birds with one seed, breaking out of his cycle of neither exercising nor publishing by sharing his tale of self-improvement. The title, "Orbital Velocity", is a metaphor for breaking free from the gravity that keeps him in bed when he should be up, reading when he should be writing, thinking when he should be doing. Snoozing, reading, and thinking are all good and necessary things, but "being in a rut" often means doing the easy things to the exclusion of the higher-exertion or more willpower-intensive activities that make us humans healthy. "Orbital Velocity" is about breaking the cycle and reaching a point where good-health habits are so ingrained that they take minimal willpower to sustain. Think of it as a quirky, slow-paced, inspirational exercise video for those who prefer to read. |
Language: | English |
Read Count: | 382 |
Table of Contents
An Inspired Moment
Mine has been a life of ten thousand inspired moments, but too few finished projects. Reading back through my journals from past years, a common theme quickly emerges: self-flagellation for my failures to do more. I think much, but do little. I dream stories but don't write them. I write stories but don't share them. I start projects but don't finish them. Over the years, I've come up with a term to describe this phenomenon. I have what I call a "low conversion ratio". Lots of input: reading, thinking, dreaming. Not much output. And by "not much" I mean not enough to make me feel like I'm doing a decent job of converting my talents and time to things that improve my life and the lives of those around me.
This is the story of turning an inspired moment into reality, through the most direct means available to me. The moment: me, lying in bed early this morning, awakened before my alarm by the feline nuzzles of Gracie, who wanted me to help her get her timed cat-feeder open -- thereby defeating the purpose of the timed feeder. For some time, I had been entertaining fantasies of getting out of bed and exercising. I pictured a vast menu of cardio-intensive activities, but did none of them. My mind wandered next to unrealistic visions of creating a quirky, nerdy series of self-improvement videos for YouTube, in which I demonstrated that you don't have to have a gym membership in order to get fit. You don't even have to have gym shoes.
Then came the inspiration. Instead of lying there pretending I'm someone I'm not -- I hate seeing myself on video, I don't even like hearing the sound of my own voice, and I don't want to wake up my wife with ridiculous early-morning antics of trying to make a video -- why not write about it? Writing is a thing I do. I've been doing it since I was about nine years old, when I would write appallingly violent comic sketches to entertain myself and amuse my older brothers while we were all on long car rides. And why not share what I'm writing, as I write it, as a way to motivate myself?
I suspect nobody will ever read this. And that's okay. After all, who would want to read about a flabby middle-aged man's pathetic attempt to get to a point where his heart doesn't pound after climbing a flight of stairs? But I'm hoping that the act of putting it out there, where someone might read it, will be enough to motivate me to "write another chapter" -- to stop what I'm doing, get some exercise, and then add to my story in such a way that it could maybe, just possibly, help one person out there who also has a hard time reaching orbital velocity.
Speaking of which, what's up with the title? It's simple. Orbital velocity is the speed an object must attain in order to break free of Earth's gravity, such that the planet won't just pull that object right back down and smash it to bits. It's my analogy for turning an idea into a thing, for managing to push that idea hard enough and fast enough that it escapes the trap of perfectionism and takes on a public form that means it can no longer be squelched by simply turning over in bed and deciding it was never really that great of an idea in the first place.
Which leads me to one other piece of the moment of inspiration. I have a lot of problems, as an author, but I think the biggest is my unwillingness to share what I've written. I'm a victim of my own unrealistic standards. This is a project that feeds two birds with one seed. Not only does it motivate me to squeeze exercise into a life that seems hardwired to keep it out; it also gives me a forum for writing where I'm not striving to create flawless art. I'm just trying to stay alive a little longer, enjoy the benefits of a moderately healthy cardiovascular system, and share a few thoughts on life along the way.
Day 1: A Planner's Walk
I am not a planner. At least, not the way I think of planners. To be a planner, in my book, you have to have two things. First, you have to be able to come up with a decent plan, and document it in such a way that you won't forget it. This part, I'm actually pretty good at. Second, you have to be able to follow through with the plan. At this, I suck.
As I'm writing this, I have two hopes. The first is that the process of writing this will get me a little more physically active. I happen to know, thanks to science, that I am predisposed to heart disease. Several years ago, a routine blood test showed that I had a high homocysteine level. In order to avoid heart problems, I really need to be more physically active than I currently am. Additionally, I know from experience and from reading Scientific American that my brain works better when my body is healthy. Exercise has been shown to improve mood, to increase mental effectiveness, and to extend lifespan. Throughout most of my life, I've exhibited a remarkable ability to avoid exercise. My profession as a software developer doesn't help. Nor do my hobbies. So, my first goal here, as I've already explained, is to get myself exercising by writing about what I'm doing to get a little more fit.
My second hope is that some person -- in this case, you -- will read this and be inspired to squeeze a little healthy exercise into their own life. While I hope you enjoy reading this, my real objective is to inspire you to stop reading this. My target audience here is people who, like me, suffer from a low conversion ratio. I spend lots of time learning about the benefits of exercise, and maybe even how best to exercise, without actually converting that knowledge into action.
I'm going to stop right now, take a moment to improve my own conversion ratio, and be right back. I'm going to sit on the floor cross-legged for a moment, then put my right leg out and stretch to reach my toes, holding the stretch for at least fifteen seconds -- because my friend Jenny said that's how long you need to hold a stretch in order for it to really do any good. And she's a yoga instructor, so she knows things about stretching. Then I'm going to do the same stretch on the left side. My objective is to lengthen and relax my hamstrings, thigh muscles that in my case are chronically tight, probably from sitting so very often while working, reading news, participating in social media, and generally spending way too much time on my computer. While I'm off stretching, you go do something, too. Stretch, do some jumping jacks, whatever. When you're done, your conversion ratio will also be a little better than it was before. Even a little output is better than no output.
Okay, I'm back. Already, this project is a success: I've done some physical exercise I otherwise would not have. I'm out of bed, I've stretched my hamstrings, and I have a more open, positive, action-oriented mindset about exercise. It's working! I'm nowhere near orbital velocity, but I've broken free of inertia just enough to get an inch or so off the ground. That's a start.
My next activity: go for a walk. I've found that walking helps me think. I don't know how it works, and I haven't read any articles that suggest there's science to back it up, but I suspect they're out there. Based on my own experience, and a handful of anecdotal reports from people I've known, taking your problems out for a stroll can help you sort them out and think about them a little differently. This particular walk will be my planning walk. When I get home, I hope to have a better vision for how I might carry on with what I've started here.
Like this project, the planner's walk feeds two birds with one seed. It's good physical exercise, and -- with a little luck -- it will also help me dream up some ideas for what to write about in future entries. To capture those ideas -- to document my plan -- I'll take my phone with me, and use Evernote to jot down any ideas I come up with. To structure my thoughts as I walk, I'm going to write down two problems I'm hoping to solve by drafting a plan. The first is what I can write about to make this a story worth reading. The second, which is by far the tougher problem for me, is how I can keep this going. Starting things is easy. It's carrying through and finishing them that's so hard. Once I've pushed this out into the open, will the guilt of not having written my next installment be enough to keep me on target? Or can I dream up some additional ideas that will help me succeed with this? How can I break this process into manageable bites, small enough to fit into an already-busy life, while also sustaining my inspiration -- without making it boring to read? If my planner's walk goes well, I'll come back with more of a plan than I have right now. It doesn't all have to be perfect. It just has to be greater than zero, which is about where I am now.
With that said, it's time for me to dress in something more public-ready than a bathrobe. Would it be too optimistic on my part to hope that I've inspired you to take a walk, too? Perhaps you have some project, however big or small, that could use a planner's walk? If not, maybe you could spend your walk thinking about someone in your life, and something you could do to brighten their day. Or maybe just a walk for the sake of walking. Whatever the case, I have to go!
Back from my walk! It was a resounding success. I have lots of notes on what to write about and how to keep myself invested in this. I got some exercise I otherwise would not have. (Google Maps tells me I walked just over a mile.) I rediscovered how easy it is to walk to a nearby park that I rarely visit. And I got to hear a squirrel make a squawking sound I've never heard -- which is fairly remarkable, given my longstanding fondness for squirrels.
While on my walk, I laid down a few rules for myself. Among them: keep it fast. This lines up with two things I tell myself often, neither of which I'm very good at. First is to act swiftly. This is intended to counteract my tendency to overthink things. Second is to outwit trepidation. By this, I mean that my fear of failure often prevents me from acting at all, let alone swiftly, and I've found that I can come up with tricks for getting around this. With all this in mind, it's time to hit "Publish" and take another step toward improving my conversion ratio.
Day 2: An Unexpected Benefit
Upon sitting down at my computer to write this, I opened a web browser... and reflexively went to Facebook.
This is a morning ritual, so ingrained that I didn't notice myself doing it. It's how I start off when I open a browser. It's often the first thing I do when I return to my computer from a work break. If it's not Facebook, it's Twitter, or the New York Times. I work from home and bill by the hour, so it's easier to justify such behavior: I just won't start the timer until I'm done catching up on social media and the news. As a result, a sizeable chunk of each days slips away from me. Don't get me wrong -- I'm very much a fan of social media, and I believe in an informed democracy, which in turn demands some effort on the part of citizens to be cognizant of what's going on in their local area, their state, their country, and the world. But willpower is best thought of as a limited resource. I sink too much time into consuming information, and I need all the help I can get breaking out of that cycle.
Today, however, I quickly remembered that I had opened my browser with a sense of purpose. This gave my willpower a little boost, and I was able to stop what I was doing and shift my attention here.
From this, I'm taking away two lessons. The first is that I need a way to get to this page without being tempted by info-junkie websites along the way. The second is that this project has successfully added a sense of direction strong enough to help me shift my focus away from unwanted distractions. I can't say how long that will last, but right now it's working. And I suspect that reaching orbital velocity, i.e., getting this good habit so deeply ingrained in me that I can sustain it with little draw on my limited willpower, is going to depend on my keeping that sense of direction, consciously and creatively refreshing it each time it wanes as the days, weeks, and months go by.
In order to bypass the info-junkie temptations, I have a simple trick. I use a keyboard-based launcher to take me straight to the target website. If you're not familiar with this concept, read on -- I'll tell you about it below. But first, why does this help? As I mentioned above, willpower is best thought of as a limited resource. If you leave a candy dish out where you can see it, every time you walk past it and manage to resist it, you make a small withdrawal from your willpower account. Walk past it enough times, and you no longer have enough will to say no. In this case, the candy dish is the UI elements within the web browser that draw me toward my info-junkie websites. In my case, I use Firefox, and I dip into the "Most Visited" drop-down menu almost every time I open the browser. I developed this habit because it made it quick and easy for me to check on the websites I'm most interested in. But then it became one of those "muscle memory" habits -- I now do it without explicitly deciding to do it. It's like I'm on autopilot, and those autopilot habits are hard to break.
To cut the candy dish out of my route, I've configured a simple tool that allows me to avoid the distracting UI elements at the top of the Firefox window. Here is what I now do when I want to add a new part to this ongoing story: I sit down at my laptop; I type Alt+Q to launch a little Windows program called SlickRun; and I start typing the keyword I just added, "orbitalvelocity". SlickRun's auto-complete feature makes it so I usually only have to type one or two letters, and it offers to fill in the rest for me. I hit Enter, and Firefox pops up with the correct Wattpad page. No need to shift my focus away from my go-to websites, because I jumped straight to my intended destination. This slight change to my workflow can easily save me thirty minutes of diving down rabbit holes.
"Wait," you might say. "Why am I reading about computer shortcuts in a story that's supposedly about getting fit? Shouldn't this guy be doing pull-ups or yoga or something?"
I already did the pull-ups and yoga! I decided to do some exercise before I started writing, in the spirit of keeping first things first. I did two pull-ups. This wouldn't sound impressive to my friend who's training to become an FBI agent, but for the past couple weeks I could do only one. It's greater than zero, and it's better than I was able to do yesterday, so I'm pretty excited about those two pull-ups. I also did fifteen minutes of yoga, in my living room. No time spent going to a yoga studio, which is in line with the "keep it fast" rule I established for myself yesterday.
More to the point, understanding your willpower and mindfully working around its limitations is a key part of avoiding bad habits and establishing good ones. If you don't recognize how much your bad habits eat away at your limited resources -- time, money, and willpower -- you can't leave yourself enough open space for the good ones.
Now, I find myself feeling great. I got a little exercise, I stretched my writing muscles, and maybe I inspired you to recognize the candy dishes in your own life and come up with ways to avoid them?
Day 3: The Quantitative Baseline
I was recently reminded how important it is to have a measurable baseline whenever you're trying to improve something. My wife, who has scoliosis, and with whom I've suffered through some truly grueling health complications as a result of her spinal curvature, recently started seeing a new physical therapist. He practices an approach to treating scoliosis patients known as the Schroth Method. It originated in Germany, but was slow to make its way to the United States. The core concept is that understanding the three-dimensional geometry of a curved spine, and all the knock-on effects of that curvature, can help a therapist tailor exercises to an individual patient. It requires a specialized mastery of anatomy, and an ability to visualize how non-standard spinal configuration affects other parts of the body.
At my wife's second appointment with this new therapist, he took an astonishing number of measurements. Far more than any physician or physical therapist she has worked with before. Maybe fifty? His intention is to be able to track change over time, to see what's working and what isn't, and -- ideally -- to show my wife how her efforts are paying off. Since then, she has only gone to one appointment, so I can't speak to how effective the therapy techniques are, but I was certainly impressed by the scientific approach to collecting data.
With this in mind, I realized I should be capturing a baseline for my own modest effort at physical improvement. I haven't much time to write today, so here are the results. I kept my measurements to a minimum, so that I can repeat them relatively quickly in the months and years ahead.
One important word of warning: Don't overdo it!I pushed myself too hard when testing to see how many sit-ups and pull-ups I could do, and for weeks after writing this I felt a sharp pain in my stomach every time I tried to do a pull-up. It was so bad, I started to worry I had a minor hernia! Thankfully, it was nothing as serious as that. But it was definitely a setback.
Body Measurements
- Weight: 182.6 lbs
- Waistline: 38 in.
- Hours of sleep to feel rested: 8 - 8.5
Exercise Limits
Each of these strength tests lasts three minutes, and after each test I wait three minutes before proceeding to the next.
- Push-ups: 20
- Sit-ups: 9
- Pull-ups: 4
For this endurance test, I gave myself ten minutes.
- Jumping jacks: 454
Are these good numbers? I don't know. More importantly, I don't care! They're simply observations of where I am, and as such they demand no context. As I continue my journey toward becoming fit and staying fit, I plan to capture similar snapshots, and see how these numbers change.
You might wonder why I've included the "hours of sleep to feel rested" measurement. I have a hunch that as I become more fit, that number will go down somewhat. This is based on my own past experience, and on comments from friends. If it turns out not to be the case, that's fine. But my hypothesis is that I can eventually reach a point where I "lose" half an hour each day to exercise, but "gain" half an hour each day due to needing less sleep.
One other important point here: none of my goals are going to be based on improving these numbers. Some people seem to benefit from such goals, but I've tried in the past to hit certain numbers -- ten pull-ups in a row, fifty push-ups in a row, etc. -- and I've never hit my target. These numbers are a map of where I've been and where I am. I'm hellbent on not putting a pin in that map that determines where I plan to go.
Instead, I plan to set a goal based on not sliding backward. That, after all, is the objective of achieving orbital velocity. Once you're in orbit, comparatively little force is needed to stay there. But once you start falling back to Earth, you need to recognize you're falling and hit the jets fast, or you'll end up in the same rut where you started. And you'll need to muster Herculean levels of determination to get back out.
What exactly is this no-backsliding goal? How can I measure it? I don't know! Figuring that out is part of this process. It's one of the reasons I'm not just doing some exercises and writing down my numbers on a sheet of paper. For now, I have the very rough goal of not losing ground, and I trust that if it starts happening, I'll "know it when I see it". As I progress, I hope to get a better idea of how to turn that into a quantitative metric, with alarms that go off if I'm slipping out of orbit.
Along those lines, my first idea is to make regular fitness check-ins like today's baseline. Maybe once every two weeks? If I go a month without checking in, then I'm slipping out of orbit, and it's time to get back on track. I'm more concerned about paying attention than I am about the actual numbers. If my exercise test scores drop, or if my weight goes up, that's less of concern. Maybe I'll want some warning threshold there, too -- but I want to keep this dead simple.
Day 4: The Fuzzy Baseline
Good sign: I woke up sore. My pecs are reminding me they exist, for the first time in as long as I can remember. My calves are tight from jumping-jacks. And if I lift my arms toward the ceiling, I can tell that even my core muscles did enough work for me to feel it the next day. This morning, it's time to drink lots of water and do yoga.
Yesterday, I established a baseline of quantitative measures. Qualitative measures are just as important -- possibly more so. What I ultimately want here is to feel better. Numbers give me a precise and reliable way to establish where I am and where I've been, but numbers aren't what made me realize I have to do something. Numbers are the stuff of the rational, logical mind. Emotions are the stronger motivator.
The fact that my pecs hurt reminds me there are men who look good with their shirts off. At present, I do not. Every time I'm shirtless in front of my wife, I feel some anxiety -- despite having known her for about twenty-seven years. This is an emotional response to my self-perception of failure. It's a feeling that erodes my self-esteem, which in turn chips away at my overall mental health. Part of my motivation to lose weight and get reasonably fit is to not have that anxiety detracting from my self-image. I'm not expecting anyone to swoon at my Adonis-grade torso; I just don't want to feel bad about how I look.
To help frame my thinking, I've grouped my qualitative measures into two categories: sources of anxiety; and health issues. I'm fortunate enough to generally be in good health, but I suspect that some of my "middle-aged man" health issues are really due to lack of exercise, less-than-ideal diet, and problematic workplace ergonomics -- all of which I have the power to improve.
So, here's my "fuzzy baseline" -- nothing at all like Robert Sledge's fuzzy bass lines.
Sources of Anxiety
- Being naked, I'm ashamed of my belly and flabby physique
- When I lift my wife (she sometimes likes having her back cracked), I'm embarrassed that it's not easier -- and, believe me, it's not like she's heavy
- I'm reluctant to play racquetball with a friend who invited me to play with him, because I'm worried I'll be doubled-over-and-red-faced within the first ten minutes
- I didn't go on an all-day cycling trip that I had planned to make with a friend this year, in part because I was worried about my physical condition
- Running even a short distance makes me worried I'm going to hurt my knees
Health Issues
- My knees are sometimes a source of pain, and often pop when I do a deep knee-bend
- My shoulders are rounded from poor posture, and it hurts to pull them back
- When I turn and stretch my neck, I hear little pops, which I'm worried might be related to developing bone spurs
- My joints at my shoulders and in my hands and feet pop frequently
- General sense of lethargy
- I often don't feel as clear-headed and able to make routine plans and decisions as I should
If through exercise and diet I can eliminate or reduce any of these, that would be a major victory. I don't plan to make qualitative check-ins as often as I make the quantitative ones, but this is definitely something I would like to come back to after a few months, to see whether things have improved.
Day 5: Useful Exercise
Two days ago, I took a one-mile walk. I stepped out the door to walk for the sake of walking -- to get some exercise. Right in front of our place, I came across a couple of rubber bands. They'd been sitting there for days, maybe weeks, and nobody in my neighborhood -- including me -- had bothered to bend over and pick them up. Are we all in too much of a hurry? Is it because they're dirty and gross? Do we assume some neighbor will pick them up, or that it's someone's job? Here I was, "just exercising", and I found myself thinking, "If I have time to exercise, I have time to pick up these rubber bands."
I walked about thirty feet further, and found another. Just within the past few months, I've noticed a local epidemic of discarded rubber bands. People use them to affix marketing materials to fences and doorknobs all up and down our street, and a disturbing number of them end up discarded along the way.
I resolved to pick up every rubber band I encountered on my walk. In twenty minutes, I picked up thirteen of them. Yesterday, I picked up another. Today, I picked up four more. I'm reminded of my mother, who -- as a little girl, living in Detroit -- would collect the rubber bands that accumulated on doorknobs up and down Grand River Ave. Sixty years later, I'm following in her footsteps in a way I certainly never imagined.
In addition to getting some exercise, I made my neighborhood a little nicer. Along the way, I also dropped off the mail, returned a hat I had borrowed for a 1920s costume party, and stopped by the dry-cleaners. I call this "useful exercise".
I recognize that exercise is useful in-and-of-itself, but I've never found it to be a very compelling sort of useful. It's one of the reasons I don't exercise. I have a thousand things I want to do or have to do, and setting all of that aside for the sake of exercise just doesn't come naturally to me. If I can throw in a little something alongside the exercise -- a chore, time with friends, volunteer work, exploration, or something else I've wanted to do anyway -- I'm way more likely to do it.
The most obvious example of this in my life is walking to buy groceries. This is so much a part of my routine, I bought a market backpack expressly for this purpose: the Cornucopia Bag from Betabrand. It's a tall bag with three zippered tiers, to keep produce at the bottom from getting squished by everything that's above it. It has a fourth compartment at the top, which can be left open -- perfect for large items like a twelve-pack of toilet paper -- or sealed with a rain-resistant fold-over top. It converts to a shoulder bag, which is ideal for farmers markets; I open the top and all the zippers, and my wife and I can both access the bag as we make our way from stall to stall.
In fact, I used my Cornucopia Bag today. I walked a mile (picking up rubber bands along the way), stopped into our neighborhood food co-op on my way back, and carried home my backpack full of groceries, about another half a mile. Great way to knock out a chore, and the extra weight increases exertion while walking.
The Web is awash with exhaustive lists of ways to get things done while you exercise. Here are a few ideas I like:
- Instead of driving or taking public transit when running errands, walk or bicycle -- and if you don't feel like you're getting enough exercise this way, go a little further than you have to
- Pick up trash while walking or jogging -- search for "plogging" if you want tips on how best to do this
- Update lists or make plans while walking
- Listen to a podcast or audio-book while you exercise
- Instead of meeting for coffee or a drink, meet for a walk, bike ride, yoga session, etc.
- Find volunteer opportunities within biking distance
- Help a neighbor with yard work or shoveling snow
I could dream up more, but this is the sort of thing that's best tailored to each individual's circumstances. Brainstorm your own list. Once you've found "useful exercises" that work for you, stick with them. They can become the most sustainable sources of fitness you have.
P.S. I tried doing a pull-up today, and my core muscles are still so sore from my baseline sit-ups two days ago that I felt like I might give myself a hernia. No pull-ups, push-ups, or sit-ups for me yet!
Day 6: Knee Injury
It's always something!
I've had minor knee trouble for years. I'm forty-six years old, and I have had occasional knee pain for at least the past ten years. It comes and goes, leaving me with no clear understanding of cause or cure. I have a feeling that it correlates with periods where I'm eating less healthy and drinking more alcohol, but it's a pretty weak hunch. I've never seen a doctor about it, because it's never been sufficiently acute to interfere with my life in any meaningful way -- because I really don't ask that much of my body. If I were into running, rock-climbing, or some other sport that puts a high demand on the knees, I would probably have sought a medical diagnosis by now. Instead, I deal with occasional pain while going up and down the stairs, I take it even easier for a while, and eventually it goes away.
Yesterday, my left knee became painful enough for me to pay attention. Climbing stairs, I found myself limping, and eventually switched to using my right leg for all of the lifting: climb one step with the right foot, bring the left foot up to join it, repeat. It got worse as the night went on, as I continued to fetch up boxes for packaging the holiday gifts my wife and I are mailing to friends and family.
Ice, elevation, and rest certainly helped. I'll baby my knee as much as I can, and see where this leads. Probably time to schedule an annual doctor's appointment and make this the main topic.
Fortunately, walking is no problem, so I was able to squeeze in nearly two miles of useful exercise, including a half-mile to the post office to get those packages out in time for Christmas!
Day 7: A Day of Rest
Going into the thick of the Holidays, it's unreasonable to expect myself to keep up my acceleration. And that's fine. I'll pick the quickest exercises, and those that are easiest to layer on top of a busy life, and try to keep up some momentum. I'm able to do pull-ups again without feeling like I'm going to give myself a hernia. My knee is already starting to feel a lot better. Walking continues to feel good. The key is that I know I will be coming back to this. I can squeeze in little bits of exercise, avoid overindulging in food and drink, and maintain an awareness of my long-term commitment to getting healthier and more fit, while also not stressing myself out too much during an already-stressful time of year.
Might be a while before I publish my next installment.
Day 27: Carry a Big Backpack
I was once asked by a friend at a bar, "Why do you carry such a big backpack?" To which I answered, "So I can carry other people's stuff, too."
It was a flip answer, but once the words were out of my mouth, I realized there was some truth to this. The original motive for the big bag was simply that I often have to carry a lot of stuff, and don't want the hassle of having a second bag for times when I could downsize. However, having a large bag also gives me room to carry other people's things, in addition to my own. This most often benefits my wife, whose scoliosis and associated issues make it unwise for her to carry much weight. But I extend the offer to other friends, too.
It turns out, this is a useful metaphor for a deep feature of my life philosophy:having more means more to share, and this often motivates me to work a little harder. It's tough to be generous when you have only enough for yourself.
Working out to have greater strength and endurance than you strictly need is a bit like carrying a big backpack. When it comes time to carry that sofa up the stairs, you're in a position to jump in and help. This isn't just about my getting to a point where I'm healthier and feel better about myself. It's also about having something more to give to others.
So, here it is, Day 27. New Year's Day is already a few days behind me, and I haven't written anything since well before Christmas. How have I been doing? Most importantly, I've healed from the damage I did to myself. My knees aren't complaining anymore, and I'm able to do a pull-up without feeling like I might have a hernia. I also managed to get through the holidays without any gross excess. I made a point of doing something in the way of exercise nearly every day, even if it was just going for a short walk that otherwise wouldn't have happened. On the other hand, I wouldn't say I've gained any new momentum. If anything, I've put on a couple more pounds of "holiday cheer". Time to once again aim for something more than just limiting my backslide.
How are my numbers? Time to find out! My goal, which I set for myself on Day 3, was not to go more than a month without doing a quantitative check-in. With the Holidays behind me, today's a good day to see where I stand. Again, this isn't about the numbers so much as it's about remaining mindful of where I am. This in turn should provide motivation to work a little harder.
Body Measurements
- Weight: 184.6 lbs
- Waistline: 38.5 in.
- Hours of sleep to feel rested: 8 - 8.5
Exercise Limits
Each of these strength tests lasts three minutes, and after each test I wait three minutes before proceeding to the next.
- Push-ups: 20
- Sit-ups: 10
- Pull-ups: 3
For this endurance test, I gave myself ten minutes.
- Jumping jacks: 40
Only 40 jumping jacks? I started to feel a slight pain in my stomach, in the same area where I felt sharp pain for many days after my last check-in, so I stopped. Similarly, I stopped doing pull-ups as soon as I was concerned that I might be going too far.
I find these numbers encouraging. A couple of weeks ago, I couldn't do a single pull-up, because of the pain in whatever core muscle I strained -- presumably an abdominal oblique -- and I wasn't willing to even try doing a sit-up. I'm back in sufficiently good condition to push my daily routine a little harder. Within a few months, I hope, I'll feel like I've outfitted myself with that bigger backpack.
Day 29: Racquetball
The great thing about yoga and walking is that they require zero gear. (No, you don't need a yoga mat. Nor do you need straps or blocks. They're all optional upgrades.) Same with push-ups, sit-ups, jumping-jacks, and other calisthenics. I'm always pleased with myself when I find a healthy activity that can be done nearly anywhere, costs nothing, and requires no commute time.
So I decided to take up racquetball.
While talking with a friend of mine a few weeks ago, the topic of exercise came up, and we somehow discovered that we both loved racquetball, but hadn't played in years. I gave my racquet away a long time ago, but -- as luck would have it -- he had a spare, left behind by an old roommate. And it turns out the closest YMCA, just a mile-and-a-half away, has two racquetball courts, and are currently running a promotion of three free guest-passes. My friend even provided the balls. All I had to do was fish my old, rarely-used sneakers out of the closet, toss some shorts and a t-shirt into a bag, and head to the gym.
It was a blast. By the end, I was red-faced and short of breath, with heart pounding -- and it felt great. I forgot just how fun the game is. My friend and I are evenly matched, and he's highly tolerant of my being very much out of shape. We had such a good time, we made plans to play again. And then I invited another friend to play soon, with whom I've also had that it's-been-forever-since-the-last time conversation -- except this time we're actually going to make it happen. Just like that, I have two racquetball partners, and I'm planning to get a gym membership, for the first time in my life.
Something I noticed, which I hadn't anticipated, is that looking forward to playing racquetball is making me more inclined to exercise, so that I'm more ready to fully enjoy the game. So, not only is the game itself a great way to improve my cardiovascular health; it's also a motivator.
Another benefit: I'm inspiring friends to join in an activity that improves their fitness, too. If we collectively get into the habit of playing racquetball, we'll each improve our chances of reaching orbital velocity. I've gone from lying in bed idly fantasizing about creating exercise videos, to writing about my journey to become more fit, to publishing my writing so others might benefit from it, to directly influencing friends to join me in an effort to get more exercise, just in my first month!
I also had another major victory on my path toward improving my conversion ratio. I found a developmental editor for the novella I'm working on, and I've been preparing a draft for him to review. A writer I follow on Twitter retweeted a post from another writer, saying her editor husband is accepting new work. I jumped on the opportunity, he glanced through the draft I sent him, and he agreed to work with me. I plan to get him a cleaned-up draft within the coming week. Exciting stuff!
Day 35: Mental Health Map
Some years ago, when I was at an unusually low place in my life, I recognized that I had some problems and wanted to better understand them. So I made a map.
It started when I realized I had a lack of presence and engagement in social outings, especially when I was out with my wife. She's a very outgoing extrovert, an extreme "E" on the introvert-extrovert spectrum, and tends to do most of the talking for us. The stories of my married life are known to me as much through her telling as they are from my own memory. To a large degree, this is a natural side-effect of me -- an introvert -- having married an extrovert. I am also the youngest of four sons, and living in a world where others talk for me is just part of who I am. But I had come to notice that I was even more withdrawn than usual, and it was detracting from my self-esteem, which was in turn limiting my social presence: I wasn't sufficiently proud of my own opinions or life stories to share them, and not sharing them was making me feel pointless and invisible. The two were carrying each other along in an unhealthy downward spiral. To make things worse, this was happening at a time my wife and I were having some relationship challenges, and I found myself unjustly resenting her for what was really my own issue.
Negative feedback loops require external intervention. If I could find a means of beefing up my self-image from some other direction, perhaps this would improve my social presence and break the cycle. If I were excited about some aspect of my life, it would give me something I would want to talk about, something I wouldn't be inclined to prevent myself from sharing. Reflecting on sources of pride in my life, I started picturing them as a diagram of boxes and arrows -- a benefit and hazard of working as a software developer for well over twenty years. I decided to sketch them out, and soon the diagram expanded to a network of interrelated activities and states of mind.
I found this diagram to be quite useful. At times when I'm down or feeling unfulfilled, I can look at it, reflect on where I'm having issues, and see activities I've identified as improving those areas. I call it my Mental Health Map. It has grown and changed over the years, serving as a "living document" that can be tweaked to better match my current reality. Here's how it looks today.
As with any map, "the map is not the territory", an expression coined by Alfred Korzybski to describe the fact that maps are representations of a thing, and should never be confused with the thing itself. For my Mental Health Map, I select the activities and states I'm most interested in affecting, and all else is excluded. It's not meant to be a full representation of my psychological workings. It is a tool.
Until today, the "Physical Fitness" state wasn't even on the map. Exercise is rolled into the "Physical Care" activity, and the arrows indicate that it benefits my energy and mental clarity. Today, I chose to elevate physical fitness itself as something that contributes to my self-esteem. I've always thought of myself as primarily leading a life of the mind -- something I plan to discuss more in a later chapter. This change represents a conscious desire on my part to acknowledge more fully the role physical fitness plays in my self-image.
When I update the map to assist me in getting myself to a better overall state of mental health, I highlight no more than three activities that I need to focus on. If you try to do too many things at once, you diffuse your energy and accomplish less than you could have through a more targeted approach. In light of my effort to reach "orbital velocity", I highlighted "Ritual" and "Physical Self-Care". I left "Work" highlighted, for two reasons. First, and most obviously, I need to work in the professional sense, to pay the bills and keep myself feeling like my career is a source of satisfaction. Second, work also represents writing, and part of my commitment here is to publish often, to build habits that will lead to a better conversion ratio for me as an author.
I'm sharing my Mental Health Map here in the hope that you might see this and be inspired to think of your own life outlook in terms of the states you want to improve and the activities that might directly or indirectly improve them. That could mean making your own mental health map, or it could just give you a useful way to frame things when journaling, talking with friends, or whatever it is you do to reflect on life.
I made my own map using Scapple, a simple diagramming tool from the makers of Scrivener, my favorite authoring software. It's an application I use primarily for my software development, to help me get my head around complex relationships among the classes in my team's code. I've found it's also great for this.
My Mental Health Map is not something I look at frequently, but it has proven useful many times now, when I'm feeling down or aimless or unfulfilled and need some help seeing ways to get back on track.
Day 37: Check-In
Not much time to write. Instead, my wife and I talked about where I am in this process, and about weight and fitness in general -- which is great. But talking takes time. So here are the results of my third check-in.
Now that I have three check-ins and want to be able to compare them, I've put them into Excel. The purple comment-tags indicate that something went wrong. As you might recall, I stopped doing jumping-jacks during my second check-in because of abdomen pain. Today, I stopped because I started feeling a bit of crampy pain in my left calf, probably because I forgot to do calf stretches first. Had that not happened, I think I would have been closer to my Day-3 baseline.
The exciting thing here is that I'm seeing improvement in my three strength tests: push-ups; sit-ups; and pull-ups. I also feel like my need for sleep has already decreased slightly. This matches a qualitative improvement I'm noticing, which is that I'm not nearly as lethargic. My energy level throughout the day has definitely improved, as has my ability to focus and make all the tiny decisions that carry me through the day.
Going back to my Mental Health Map, this means that my Ritual, Physical Self-Care, and Work are paying off. They're adding to my sense of achievement, which in turn boosts my self-esteem, which then improves my positivity and mental clarity. I see it on the map, but I also feel it in my day-to-day life. My rituals are nowhere near orbital velocity yet, but I'm seeing the kind of results that help build momentum.
Day 43: Drawing On a Deep Well
While taking a break between games of racquetball this morning, my friend Dave and I chatted about my effort to get fit again. I mentioned how much better I'm feeling, even though I'm just getting started. I don't feel so lethargic. I need less sleep. My mind is sharper. It makes me feel foolish to have let myself slip into a rut for so long. I can look back at my life and see entire years where I was just getting by, instead of living as my best self. When I mentioned that I already feel like I have so much more willpower and mental clarity, Dave observed that this is a deep well I can draw on -- a metaphor that really struck home for me.
Life can be seen as a series of a million decisions. On a very mundane level, these can make or break your day. A simple example: every day, either my wife or I has to collect and clean out the trays we use to feed our cats. Long story, but we use timed feeders, and if the plastic trays aren't cleaned our cats are prone to chin acne. (We also put little terracotta dishes inside the trays, and that made a huge difference.) When I'm in a mental rut, I'll walk past a feeder and tell myself that's a chore that can be addressed later -- sometimes four or five times in a single day. Each time I do this, I "take the easy way out", and can rationalize that I'm allowing myself to move on to something else instead. In fact, however, I'm adding a tiny amount of stress to my life. I've postponed a chore that will have to be done later, I'm likely to feel a little disappointed in myself for having done so, and I might even be exposing my wife to the same source of stress. When I've been exercising, however, I find myself far more likely to make the right decision: tackle the chore now, as part of the flow. Get it done and move on.
Stress accumulates. Tiny decisions like this add up, and can leave you feeling behind. A backlog of unfinished chores becomes a constant weight on your shoulders. When you have a free moment, and could theoretically set about chipping away at your work queue, that weight makes you more likely to seek escape instead. The bigger the weight, I've found, the greater my desire for escape -- until I eventually reach a breaking point and rage through the mess I've created.
When that stress isn't accumulating, a free moment becomes a joy. Instead of wanting to get away from the mess I've created, I find I'm more likely to do something good for myself. I might take time to journal, read, listen to music, reflect on what's next -- maybe even resume a project I've had on a back-burner, or undertake something new.
One of my favorite books, "The Willpower Instinct", by Kelly McGonigal, discusses this phenomenon in much greater depth. When we reduce stress in our lives -- to the extent this is possible -- we free up mental resources that allow our prefrontal cortex to operate more effectively. This, to me, is the deep well. In pursuing cardiovascular fitness, I'm giving myself the mental clarity I need to make better choices, which in turn gives me more willpower to avoid escapism, spend more energy on doing things that are good for me, and continue getting more fit.
In her book, McGonigal refers to the American Psychological Association's list of the most effective stress-relief strategies. Looking back at my notes, I'm struck by how many of these are part of my Orbital Velocity project. Here's the list, with my own notes.
- Exercising or playing sports - This is at the core of what I'm doing, and the payoff is almost immediately tangible
- Praying or attending a religious service - Not my thing, but it works for a lot of people
- Reading - Now that I have more energy and find myself needing a little less sleep, I'm much more likely to do a bit of reading at bedtime, or to read when I have a free moment
- Listening to music - This has always been a major part of my life, so nothing new here
- Spending time with friends or family - Racquetball has the additional benefit of getting me to spend time with two dear friends more often, and in a way I otherwise wouldn't -- plus, it sometimes leads to quality hanging-out time afterwards
- Getting a massage - Wow, I should do this -- I love massages, and it's been a long time
- Going outside for a walk - I wrote about this early on, and I've been pretty good about keeping at it (although snow and cold make it a little harder to self-motivate)
- Meditating or doing yoga - The amount of time I do yoga each week has gone way up, and I always feel better for doing it
- Spending time with a creative hobby - The writing part of this project is an obvious example of this, but my desire to improve my conversion ratio also inspired me to submit a short story for publication (a dreadful chore) -- in addition to sending my novella off to a developmental editor
If I eventually fall back out of orbital velocity (I would be delusional if I didn't acknowledge that this is likely to happen sooner or later), I hope I remember to come back to this list and remind myself how much cardiovascular fitness can help unlock a greater sense of overall well-being.
P.S. I also biked over 1.5 miles in each direction, to and from racquetball -- while it's 12 degrees Fahrenheit and the roads are still a mess from snow over the past few days. My sense of achievement and pride in commitment are through the roof right now. :)
Day 49: Fitness Tracking Meets the Bullet Journal
The bullet journal concept is wonderfully simple, versatile, and friendly to personal customization. If you aren't familiar with it, I recommend you check it out. Part calendar, part logbook, it's an approach to keeping track of your ideas, intentions, and accomplishments in a way that helps foster focus and organization. It was created by Ryder Carroll, a Brooklyn-based digital product designer. He first publicized the concept in 2013, and it took off like wildfire. I was first introduced to "bujo", its nickname, by my niece, in September of 2017. I tried it out, adapted it to my style and needs, and have been using it -- with occasional lapses -- ever since.
One of the attractive features of bullet journaling is that it's intended to be written out by hand. For people who are turned off by computers for one reason or another, or just want less screen time, the bullet journal offers them a way to plan and log their lives with pen and paper. Research has also shown that people tend to remember things better when they write them down, as opposed to typing them. Writing might seem almost as thoughtlessly fast as typing, but in fact the physical motion of crafting letters on paper pulls in parts of the brain that aren't activated while typing. For people who adhere to this aspect of bullet journaling, I suspect this is part of what makes it work. There's also a peaceful pleasure in sitting down with a single-purpose blank page, reflecting on life, and writing down what's on your mind. Whereas on a computer one is presented with a thousand possible distractions.
For me, however, Evernote is the obvious place to keep my bullet journal. I promptly took the "analog method for the digital age" slogan and chucked it. Because Evernote syncs across my devices, I always have my bullet journal with me. I use it primarily on my laptop, but being able to review and update it on my phone is critical. Having it in digital form also makes backup nearly effortless. It also saves me the time-consuming task of repeatedly writing out things more quickly accomplished with Evernote templates or -- since I'm a software developer -- code that generates text.Most importantly, it's searchable. If I'm going to keep a detailed log of my life, I want to be able to quickly access that information.
Adapting the bullet system to Evernote was quite straightforward. I use check-boxes for to-do items, dashes to indicate things that happened, and two-letter "bullets" for ideas ("IQ"), the "I want" motivators in my life ("IW"), which I will explain later, and reading list items ("RL"). These are my "signifiers", using the official terminology. For each of those two-letter combinations, I have a saved search. If, for example, I want to review all the ideas I've recorded in my bullet journal, I just click the "IQ" saved search, and I get a list of all my entries where I recorded a noteworthy idea.
Like most bujo practitioners, I've added modules to the system to suit my own needs. My daily log is grouped by week, similar to the official system. Each Sunday morning, I add a new note to my "BuJo" notebook in Evernote, and I prepare it for the week to come. To support my effort to reach orbital velocity, I've added a table at the top of the weekly log, which I call my "gold star chart". This table helps me track my fitness and health activities, and serves as a reminder to keep working toward my goals. In the spirit of keeping things simple, I allow myself only four rows in the table. I've chosen to track: minutes of yoga; punches thrown while boxing; pull-ups; and apples eaten. Here's what the table looks like at the start of the week. My goals are shown above the table, and there's a column at the far right for totals.
"Boxing" is my shorthand catch-all for cardio activity. It's a leftover from the last time I managed to get fit, with the help of a Wii boxing game called "Gold's Gym Cardio Workout". It automatically tracks how many punches you've thrown, and I found that 2000 punches per week was a good personal goal. Now, when I play racquetball, I count it as 1000 punches. If I do jumping-jacks, I count each one as a punch thrown. If I go for a long bike ride (a rarity during the Chicago winter), I typically count that as somewhere in the 500-750 range, depending on how long I rode.
"Apples" is also a shorthand entry. I've read over and over that eating an apple each day really is good for your health. Among other things, the pectin helps with hydration. If I drink a green smoothie -- another leftover from a past endeavor to get healthier -- I count it as one apple. My goal is a combined total of at least five apples and green smoothies each week. But there's a catch: I'm only allowed to record one per day. So I'm really reminding myself to eat healthy and drink plenty of water at least five days per week.
The "gold star" part of this was inspired by chore charts for children. They typically involve a check-mark for each day where a chore was performed, and a sticker as a reward for finishing all their chores. In my case, I total my numbers at the end of each week. For each goal that I hit, I have the satisfaction of a job well done -- my metaphorical gold star. If I fall short of a goal, I know that I have to work harder at it in the coming week.
Part of achieving orbital velocity is coming up with a routine that is both motivational and sustainable. For me, keeping a bullet journal has been a helpful way to channel my intentions and convert them to accomplishments. Adding a physical fitness component to this is a natural fit, and having an Evernote template for my weekly log makes it quick and easy.
There's a second half to my approach. For each day in my bullet journal, I have an Orbital Velocity to-do item. Most days, it's just a reminder to work on fitness. Twice each month, it's a check-box that tells me I need to do a full check-in. I've written a program that generates my daily log for the current week. I click a button, my program loads my clipboard with text for the week, and I paste it into Evernote. Here's a sample of what this ends up looking like.
My program is smart enough to know that I work on weekdays, and that on the 15th and final day of each month, I should do a quantitative check-in. In order to check the "Orbital" box, I have to do something in the way of fitness. If it's big, like racquetball, I'll update the text to reflect this. Most days, it's just something small -- but it's enough to keep me going.
Today's Sunday, the start of a new week -- time to prepare my daily log for the week to come. Because this has been so helpful, without taking a ton of time, I actually look forward to it. It works, it's enjoyable, and its value far exceeds its cost -- all the hallmarks of a sustainable system.
Day 53: Chiberian Check-In
It's the last day of the month, and time for a check-in. It was also -14° F when I got out of bed this morning. Our neighbors across the hall have frozen pipes in their back bathroom, and they're waiting for the ice to thaw to see if they have a burst pipe. Happily, our own home is warm and snug, the polar vortex over Chicago hasn't caused any damage in our household, and I'm free to spend half an hour on fitness.
Here are the results:
The first thing that jumps out is that my weight has been steadily going up. This reinforces a lesson I've learned before, through reading and my own experience: exercise alone is not a good weight-loss plan, unless you're on a serious athletic regimen. Which I am most certainly not.
To be honest, weight-loss hasn't been a focus for me so far. It's the middle of winter, and I always tend to put on some weight. There are Christmas treats to be eaten, and the cold weather calls for rich, warming, often fatty or carb-heavy foods. But I started this winter heavier than I want to be, and seeing that I'm continuing to put on pounds makes me feel like it's time to change what I'm eating and drinking.
For the past several years, my wife and I have been doing a "cleanse" diet from about February 15 through Tax Day. My wife is a CPA, and Tax Season is her professional crunch time. There have been years where she worked over a hundred hours each week, for nearly eight weeks straight. Before we started doing the cleanse each year, she found that she turned to "stress foods" and caffeine to help her get through the tough days -- and that the short-term boost this would give her wasn't worth it. The first year she did a cleanse diet during Tax Season, she found she was in a better mood and was able to sustain a higher level of energy, so she decided to make it an annual thing. I joined her, largely out of solidarity, but also because I liked the health benefits. Thankfully, she has since changed her client makeup, and her tax workload isn't nearly as bad as it was. But it's still a work-marathon that demands extra wellness attention.
Knowing that this is coming up, I've been lax about watching my weight -- and it shows. I've also been making a point of eating and drinking all the things in our house that I won't be able to enjoy once the cleanse starts. This is partially to avoid allowing food to go to waste, but it's more a matter of feeling like I need to squeeze in the good stuff before it's all literally off the table. Time to stop the rationalized indulgences and start making healthier food-and-drink choices.
On the positive side, my strength numbers continue to improve. It's a slow climb, but it's headed in the right direction. Plus, I remembered to stretch my calves this time, and finally exceeded my original endurance number -- just barely, but it feels good, and I know I need to work harder on that if I'm going to really move the needle. Losing weight would also help, of course.
Now, time to get to work, and hope we don't discover any plumbing disasters in our building as temperatures start heading back up.
Day 55: Boost Your "I Want" Power With Bullet Journaling
Bullet journaling is largely about capturing your intentions and giving you a better chance of converting them to reality. In my Day 49 entry, "Fitness Tracking Meets the Bullet Journal", I mentioned that I use "I want" signifiers -- but I didn't explain what they are.
In Kelly McGonigal's "The Willpower Instinct", she uses two concepts to describe how we control our own behavior. "I will" power allows us to do the things we believe we should, and "I won't" power prevents us from caving to temptations. She also describes a crucial third piece to the puzzle: "'I will' and 'I won't' power are the two sides of self-control, but they alone don't constitute willpower. To say no when you need to say no, and yes when you need to say yes, you need a third power: the ability to remember what you really want."
The ritual of planning your day each morning gives you a perfect moment to improve your "I want" power. Bullet journaling has become my preferred planning and tracking technique. A "signifier" is a special symbol used to highlight certain bullet items in your journal. An asterisk can be used to signify priority, a lightbulb can indicate a bright idea, an exclamation mark can highlight an important realization or inspiration.
I added my own "I want" signifier. If I were keeping a handwritten bullet journal, I would use a bullseye as my "I want" symbol. Within Evernote, I use the two-letter combination, "IW". This is a combination of letters that doesn't appear in the English language, which means I can search for "IW" and find only my "I want" entries.
I make my "I want" items as concrete and achievable as I can. When I'm trying to lose weight, I might write: "IW - To fit into all my pants again!" Identifying what you want in life and boiling it down to its simplest form helps you remember why you should draw on your "I will" power when you're waffling about whether you really need to exercise, or your "I won't" power when you walk past a candy jar -- or find yourself staring into the fridge, as I often do.
As a writer, I use "I want" notes to help motivate myself to move forward with a story idea, tackle a challenging rewrite, or submit works for publication. For example, this past November, I wrote this in my bullet journal: "IW - To arrive at an idea for an ending to The Curse of the Healing Kiss that I can get excited about." I had finished a draft of my novella, but I wasn't at all happy with the ending, and was having a hard time finding the drive to throw it out and start over. Distilling my frustration into a simple statement of what needed to happen next inspired me to roll up my sleeves and save the novella from becoming yet another abandoned dud on my shelf. Using this motivational boost, I sat down with some blank paper, brainstormed alternative endings, and picked the one that felt strongest. On Day 29 of Orbital Velocity, I mentioned that I had sent the manuscript to a developmental editor. Five days ago, I received his edits -- and he liked the story! I can't claim that this is all thanks to an "I want" signifier... but it certainly helped.
For championship-level thinkers, "I want" motivators are so deeply ingrained that they need no external reminder of their goals. For the rest of us, this kind of exercise can make a big difference. Writing the same "I want" note each day might seem silly, but it's an effective way to keep a destination in mind, especially when you have a horde of responsibilities, stressors, and distractions forever pushing you off course.
Day 65: Big Little Landmarks
Yesterday evening, my wife and I wanted to go out for dinner and make plans for a fundraiser we're hosting in support of a local politician. Looking out the window, I realized we were in the midst of an ice storm. We discussed whether we should call a Lyft or take the bus, and decided that walking half-a-mile to the bus stop would give us a chance to try out our new Yaktrax on the ice. For those who aren't familiar with Yaktrax, they're basically webbed rubber footies that stretch around the soles of your boots and snap into place. Metal coils wrapped around the rubber bite into the ice as you walk, giving you far better traction than even the best snow boots. I had heard of them, but never tried them. My wife's scoliosis and current back complications have made it especially dangerous for her to fall. So we decided to try them out. If they worked, walking to the bus would give us a little extra exercise, route a few dollars to public transit (which is better for the planet than taking a cab), and give us the confidence to use Yaktrax in the future, at a time when we really need them.
While we were walking, I mentioned how excited I had been, earlier in the evening, to record my racquetball cardio "points" on my gold star chart. It's just so satisfying to see that I'm making progress toward a weekly goal that's been challenging to hit. This reminded me to share another bit of news: for the first time since starting my Orbital Velocity project, I hit my weekly pull-ups goal.
"It's always exciting to hit a big little landmark," I told her. "'Big little' -- that sounds weird. But that's exactly what it is. I have lots of little landmarks that tell me I'm making progress, and this is one of the bigger ones."
My wife immediately pointed out that this is a concept we both learned from my software-development career. Breaking big projects into smaller projects, and then breaking those smaller projects into still-smaller tasks, is a key element to successful project planning. To some degree, this is obvious, and comes naturally. We all do this, whenever we think about a project and make a list of all the steps necessary to complete it. But I've worked on software projects that spanned across years. With really big projects, the smaller items that end up on that to-do list can easily take a month. When it comes to gauging your velocity toward a distant objective, it's advantageous to have frequent "mile markers". This helps you get a sense of whether you're working at a good pace, and whether you're on schedule to hit far-off dates. It also serves a secondary purpose, which can sometimes be even more important: finishing tasks brings satisfaction. If your distant goal feels forever distant, it's easy to lose steam and feel like you're never going to get there. Setting and achieving smaller goals along the way makes it easier to keep your spirits up over the long haul.
Getting fit takes a long time. Locking in the good habits necessary to keep you fit takes even longer. I'm expecting this project to span at least a year. As such, it's important to have milestones along the way to confirm progress and provide opportunities to celebrate victories. Some of those objectives are harder to reach than others -- and you often don't realize this when you first define them. In the case of my weekly pull-ups goal, twenty-five was a number I was able to hit quite easily a few years ago, so it seemed reasonable to use that number again. As it turned out, it wasn't until Day 62 that I was able to write "25" in the totals column -- a big little landmark.
Recording my daily activity gives me lots of little goals. My next big little landmark is to hit all four of my weekly goals in one week. So far, this week looks promising. I have a second racquetball game scheduled for Friday. I'm now able to hit my pull-ups goal. My "five apples" target shouldn't be a problem. The toughest one is actually doing ninety minutes of yoga. Looking back through my bullet journal, I see that the closest I've come is seventy-five minutes. My average is closer to thirty minutes, with five minutes here and ten minutes there. Everything else in life, including racquetball and writing these entries, takes up so much time that it's hard to find an hour-and-a-half each week for yoga. I enjoy doing it, and it takes almost no prep; it's just hard to find the time. Maybe this week will be my week.
By the way, the Yaktrax worked great. They turned treacherous conditions into a pleasure. And we were smart enough to bring a small bag with us, so we could stow them once we got to the restaurant. It's a bit surprising that it took me this long to discover such a simple, low-cost solution to the problem of walking on icy sidewalks. I guess it's partially a function of aging. When I was younger, an occasional fall on the ice was no big deal -- especially since it only happened once every few years. Now that I'm older, and my wife's scoliosis is leading to complications we never saw coming when we were younger, falling is a bigger risk.
I suppose this too is a landmark. While it's not one to be celebrated as a victory, there are always benefits to knowing where you are.
Day 76: On Hold For a Cold, Ten Days and Counting
Today's my tenth day of a nasty cold. I postponed my last check-in and have continued to push it off day after day because I need rest. Near the end of my last entry, I wrote, "Maybe this week will be my week." Needless to say, it wasn't.
I've had to cancel racquetball, and I'm not doing any yoga, pull-ups, etc. I haven't started the cleanse diet that was supposed to begin a week ago. My sleep has been heavily interrupted by coughing. My bullet journal ritual is running at about 50%. I've been keeping up with work, and have only had to cancel a couple of events on my calendar, but my efforts toward Orbital Velocity have pretty much been on hold.
Once this cold is behind me, I will face a test: how quickly can I get back into the good habits on which I've been working so hard? In past years, when my efforts at getting fit and healthy have been less formal, I've definitely been derailed by illness, sometimes failing to ever get back on track. Long vacations have also thrown me out of my rituals. Easier habits creep in, and the momentum I had is lost.
I do have some good news. I have a doctor now, I went to my first-ever annual physical, and it went great. I've been lucky enough to never need to make routine medical appointments. Now that I'm forty-six, it seems like a good time to take my health more seriously. The knee pain I mentioned on Day 6 was the inspiration for making the appointment. In light of chronic knee issues over the course of many years, I wanted advice on how to avoid more serious problems as I age. I had to wait two months to see this particular doctor, but he's my wife's GP, so I already knew I liked him. Plus, his background in osteopathy is a good fit for the kinds of health issues I've faced. His exam of my knees turned up nothing particularly worrisome. He advised me to focus on strengthening my quads, to take strain off of certain ligaments, and to avoid any repetitive twisting motions.
Eight years ago, my cholesterol levels were pretty bad. I made quite a few diet changes, and by the following year my numbers had improved. Following the appointment, I went to the clinic's lab for a blood test, and I was curious to discover whether my cholesterol issue had resurfaced in the intervening years. I'm happy to report that my LDL number was the lowest I've ever had, and my overall numbers looked pretty good. There's still room for improvement, but my diet changes have paid off.
Perhaps tomorrow I'll be back to good enough health to start reintroducing some exercise. I'm looking forward to it, which is a good sign. Having racquetball and check-ins on my calendar helps; thinking about them while sick has kept me mindful that I have good habits to get back to. There's something bigger going on here, too. This project has given me a sense of an overall trajectory, such that this cold just feels like a brief diversion. It has given me a mental framework that will prevent me from simply forgetting to resume exercise. I've written in the past about the question of how one builds an unyielding internal commitment -- not just good habits, but a new way of being that drives you to make smarter decisions and be your best self. I feel like I'm starting to experience that. Whether I am will soon be tested, and -- if so -- how exactly that's happening is something I plan to explore in future entries.
Day 77: Measuring a Setback
Ten days of sickness brought my new exercise regimen to a temporary halt. Today, despite a mild lingering cough, I felt ready for a check-in. While I'm not yet up for a long hike in the cold winter weather, half an hour of pushing myself -- not too hard -- in the warmth of my home feels safe. It's important to honor one's health, but I feel pretty confident that my sickness is behind me, and that I'm now just dealing with the aftereffects.
So, how much impact does a setback like this have on my numbers? I've been curious to find out. To some degree, I can't know, because I've been intentionally losing a little weight at the same time. I haven't been cutting calories or avoiding rich foods, but I've been making a point of eating oatmeal for breakfast instead of granola, I've reduced dairy, I've had very little alcohol since my last check-in, and I cut my beer intake to zero -- which is especially hard, because our favorite German restaurant is closing, and I've wanted to partake of their excellent beer selection at least one more time before it goes away. As a result of all this, my weight has dropped a bit, which should make some of the exercises a little easier. However, given that I've only lost a few pounds, it shouldn't be too hard to see the impact of my cold.
Here are today's numbers.
Over the course of the past three weeks, I've lost just over five pounds. Not bad! For me, that's the most exciting thing here, and I'm looking forward to continuing this trend.
Also good, and quite surprising: my sit-ups number actually went up! I'm not even sure how that's possible, given how little activity my core muscles have seen. I can only guess it's due to having lost some weight.
The rest of my numbers are more in line with what I expected. Upper-body strength suffered a little, and my cardio endurance dropped off dramatically, almost certainly due to reduced lung capacity from my prolonged cold.
The real victory here? I'm coming away from a cold wanting to resume my exercise habits. In the past, I would either have put this off with the excuse that I should wait a little longer, or -- more likely -- I would have simply forgotten that I ever had an exercise habit, until my body reminded me that I desperately needed one.
There are people who would think this is weird, maybe even pathetic. People whose identity is tied up with being and looking fit. Or people who are just hooked on running, working out, etc., and naturally miss it whenever illness gets in the way. I'm just not one of those people. And, if you've read this far, I'm guessing you're not, either. The fact that I woke up wanting this is a pretty big deal for me.
Day 90: Summing Things Up So Far
I'm ninety days into this, and it's already been hugely beneficial. It's training me to publish short pieces faster and more often, it has inspired me (and three friends!) to play racquetball, it has served as a fun and unconventional way to keep in touch with a dear friend overseas, I'm in a better mood and more productive state of mind, and it's got me on track to build good-health habits that I'm hoping will last decades into my future. My mom even started reading along, and loves it!
I feel like I'm starting to achieve that unyielding internal commitment that makes good habits truly sustainable. How is that happening? Are there lessons I can carry into other personal challenges?
You Can't Learn From the Mistakes You Don't See
Recording my twice-monthly check-ins has proven to be highly motivational for me, and has become the anchor ritual of this project. I honestly didn't realize just how poor my strength had become, and charting my progress toward improving my numbers has helped me feel that it's truly within my power to correct my mistake of letting myself get so out-of-shape. Seeing "on paper" that I'm making it a priority to improve my fitness confirms that it's doable, even in a relatively busy life, and encourages me to stick with it.
I've long been a firm believer in tracking personal finances. My wife and I don't spend a lot of time reviewing our investments or cash flow, but we do use Quicken to record transactions and monitor account balances. My favorite thing about this is that it allows us to always know our net worth. It's a single number that motivates us to work hard and save towards retirement.
Why have I never put the same value on tracking my physical health? I've had a few spurts of interest, tracking weight loss or how many push-ups I can do, but it has always been toward a short-term goal. Adopting the mindset that I should track some basic physical fitness numbers for the rest of my life could be the single most beneficial thing to come out of this project.
Building rituals of observation into your life that help you see where you are and stay on course over long periods of time can be truly life-changing. You can't learn from the mistakes you don't see.
Set Out Your Exercise Clothes Before You Go to Bed
I've heard a thousand times that reaching goals starts with putting first things first. Why is it so hard to do?
In the context of this project, putting first things first means starting my day with exercise. And nothing makes me more likely to do this than setting my exercise clothes out where I'll see them first thing in the morning. Whenever I have something I should do in the morning, but don't really have to do, I find it remarkably easy to forget it. I stumble around our apartment and gravitate toward breakfast, tea, and my habits of reading the New York Times and catching up on Facebook. The simple act of setting out my exercise clothes before I go to bed puts me into the mindset that I have something to do the next morning. Seeing them out serves as the tickler I need to remember my good intentions.
Having overcome the hurdle of my own forgetfulness, there's still the question of whether I'll have the willpower to actually put those clothes on and exercise. It's not easy, but once I've succeeded a few mornings in a row, it turns into a routine -- and the demand on my willpower diminishes. Eventually, my morning exercise routine becomes a source of joy and pride. No matter what happens the rest of the day, at least I have the satisfaction of having planned to do a good thing for myself and then actually done it.
Inevitably, something kills the routine -- late nights out, early-morning appointments, illness, travel, etc. And almost every time, the thing that gets me back on track is remembering this simple trick.
Build a Momentum Network
On Day 29, when I played racquetball, loved it, and decided to make it a regular thing, I already had the sense that involving others in my effort to get fit would help me reach orbital velocity. It turns out that this is an even bigger factor than I anticipated. I now have three friends with whom I regularly play. With one of them, we decided to make it a standing date: every Monday evening, barring some major conflict, we play for an hour. The fact that it's not solo exercise makes it more of a commitment -- a calendar item I work around when scheduling my week. When my days get busy, the time I intended to spend exercising on my own tends to get squeezed out of existence, but my racquetball dates survive.
By scheduling group activities, even if it's just you and one other person, you bump up your accountability. You also help someone else reach their goals, which makes your own commitment to show up feel all the more important. I call this building a momentum network. You become part of a thing that's harder to put a stop to.
Much of life is a tug-of-war against the tendency to not do the hard thing, and having more people on your side is always a good thing.
Share What You Do
Just as including others in your activities can build momentum that benefits all members of the group, reporting your progress to people you respect can also contribute to your sense that your goals are important -- and add to the joy of your victories. I specifically say "people you respect" because you want to feel like you're on the hook not to disappoint them. More importantly, you want to anticipate that wonderful feeling of getting a high-five from them when you hit a challenging goal. It really helps make it feel like what you're doing matters.
Sharing this with my wife has been a huge motivator. She loves it when I read new entries to her, and she looks forward to reviewing my check-ins. And she bugs me when she realizes I haven't written an entry in a while, reminding me that improving my conversion ratio is as much about writing as it is about getting the exercise I know I need.
Find Exercise You Enjoy
In a sense, this is obvious. Of course one's fitness habits will be more easily sustained if they're enjoyable. But actually finding exercise you enjoy, and making it fit your schedule, can be remarkably challenging. If you love swimming in the ocean but live in Iowa, that doesn't do you much good.
It turns out I love doing pull-ups. How do I know this? Three days ago, my pull-up bar broke! I was 80% of the way up when one side of the bar fell straight down, and the other soon came with it. Fortunately, in spite of being utterly shocked, I stuck the landing. A quick inspection showed that the bar was no longer usable. I did some shopping, found a better-designed replacement, and ordered it.
While waiting for it to arrive, I was surprised to discover just how often I had the urge to do a few pull-ups. I really missed my pull-up bar! When it arrived today, I wasted no time busting into the box and getting it installed. I tested it out, am thrilled with the upgrade in durability, and feel like I'm back in business.
I only wish I enjoyed sit-ups half as much.
Catching Up On My Last Check-In
My most recent check-in, on Day 82, came only five days after the previous one, and I didn't bother to write about it at the time. But I'm happy to report that it showed an almost-complete recovery from the setback I had after my prolonged cold.
My weight dropped a bit, and I was back on track in terms of strength exercises. My jumping-jacks count was a little low, which I attribute to still having a mild cough and reduced lung capacity. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that I noticed my ideal number of hours sleeping had crept back up, and I have the sense that has continued. I'm not sure what might be going on here, but I suspect the long, cold Chicago winter isn't helping. It could also be the cumulative effect of less cardio. I'm definitely looking forward to warmer weather, and the fact that I'll be more inclined to ride my bike and go for long walks.
Day 96: This Is My Week
I finally have a week where I hit all four of my weekly goals -- and the week isn't over yet. I've done yoga for at least 15 minutes every morning. I played racquetball twice. I've checked the "apple-a-day" box every day, with an apple and/or a green smoothie. And I'm already past my pull-ups goal for the week.
My momentum is reflected in my mid-month check-in, too!
My weight is down almost ten pounds from its high-point, thanks to the "Tax Season cleanse" diet that I've been on with my wife. (More on that soon.) My push-ups and sit-ups are up significantly. The number I'm most excited about: where my previous best with pull-ups was six in three minutes, I'm up to nine this time! It feels great. I also nudged my jumping-jacks count past my previous high.
In terms of how I feel, I'm also seeing major progress. Looking back at my qualitative measures from Day 4, it's good to see how many sources of anxiety I've downsized or knocked out entirely. I certainly don't have any concern about being red-faced and winded while playing racquetball; my cardio endurance has definitely improved. My knees are doing way better, although I hope to see more improvement here as I do more quad-strengthening exercises. I'm far less ashamed of my body when I'm naked, although I'm still very conscious of the flab and belly fat.
The biggest qualitative improvement? I feel way more clear-headed. I'm wasting less time, I'm making smarter decisions, and I don't feel as lethargic. All this work continues to pay off, and it feels great.
Next week, Orbital Velocity goes to Mexico. My wife has a Tax Season tradition of going somewhere sunny for a week or two, staying somewhere cheap, and benefiting from the mood-enhancement of working outdoors while powering through twelve-to-sixteen-hour days. The current state of her scoliosis-related health issues is bad enough that she doesn't feel safe making the trip alone, so I'll be going with her. It'll be my first test of how well I can stick with this while away from home. And I won't have a scale or a pull-up bar, so my next check-in won't happen until we return in early April.
Day 117: How Was My Vacation?
When someone asks, "How was your vacation?" they usually aren't asking whether you threw your diet and exercise habits out the window. In asking myself that question, however, that's essentially what I want to know: what was the impact of my being away from home for over two weeks, away from my newfound habits and rituals?
Strictly speaking, my trip to Mexico wasn't a vacation. In fact, I billed 20% more hours in the month of March than I typically would. For my wife, it was a Tax Season work retreat, a way to escape the effects of Seasonal Affective Disorder from Chicago's winter gloom and get the benefits of a solar recharge when she most needs them, during her two-month crunch time. It's something I recommended she do each year, starting about four years ago, and it's been a huge help. We found cheap lodging on Isla Mujeres, with good wifi, and we both worked every day we were there.
When the trip was still ahead of me, and I was in that magical place of envisioning what my days would be like, I pictured yoga every morning, push-ups and sit-ups at least a few times each week, and creative ways of sticking to our diet. What I didn't picture were mosquitoes waking me up at 3:00 AM, biting me until their blood payload was heavy enough that I could hear that singular high-pitched whine that drives me insane. We put an end to this nightly interruption of sleep by closing the window and balcony door at bedtime, and turning on the A/C -- which we prefer to avoid. I'll take mosquito netting over air-conditioning on any but the hottest of nights. I also didn't picture how dirty the floors of our room and balcony would be, a common problem in dusty, sandy places -- especially in inexpensive hotels. The poor sleep made it so I didn't feel like waking up and doing yoga, and the dirty floors made me want to keep my hands and face away from them. The exercises I'd imagined myself doing simply didn't happen.
And I was constantly tempted, of course, by delicious Mexican foods that were definitely not allowed while on our diet. I wasn't overly generous in making allowances for favorite foods or beverages. But I did have one al pastor taco. I drank more sugary hibiscus and tamarind "water" than I should have. I ate more fatty meat than I typically would. We enjoyed a glass of wine and a break from work each evening at sunset. When rice or potatoes showed up on my plate along with the seafood and vegetables I was expecting, I always ate at least some of it. There were a couple of situations in which our respect for Mexican culture and the beauty of a moment required of us that we order tequila. And the sheer volume of food we ate -- three restaurant-sized meals, most days -- made us both realize most-of-the-way into our stay we needed to cut back a bit, and order more dishes para compartir.
All things considered, however, I felt like I did pretty well. Not a single beer, not a single burrito. Only one breakfast was covered with boiling-hot cheese, and that was an accident -- and a mistake, as we were later informed by what polite people call "digestive discomfort". We ate lots of healthy ceviche and cocteles de mariscos. Eggs with vegetables for most breakfasts, and we were painfully self-restrained in our refusal of tortillas y totopos. My wife is particularly good about saying no when off-diet carbs are brought to the table as part of the meal, for which I am always grateful... about an hour later.
This is all to say that you can visit another culture, where you love the food and want to eat all the things, and manage to eat healthy, allow yourself a few indulgences, and come home no heavier than when you left.
In terms of exercise, I realized after a couple of days that my at-home routines weren't carrying over well at all. So I took my own advice: find exercise you enjoy doing, and push yourself to do it. I love swimming in the ocean, so I took one to three swim-breaks each day. While swimming, I established some "landmarks" in the water, like sandbars and swim-area buoys, and used these to define boundaries for swimming laps. This way I could measure how far I was swimming, and push myself a little harder each day. I've always sucked at distance swimming, and have admired people who are good at it. Even the small amount of progress I made in the course of ten days felt great.
Now that I'm back, it was time for a check-in, to see whether my efforts while in Mexico were enough to keep me on track. Here are the results:
I'm delighted. Over the last twenty-one days, I lost four pounds. My waistline measurement is finally down -- which I can feel when I put my pants on. I beat my previous records for push-ups and pull-ups, despite not doing either for over two weeks -- which tells me all that swimming paid off. And the biggest victory for me is that I broke 500 jumping-jacks in ten minutes.
The one disappointment is that I had a major setback in the number of sit-ups I'm able to do in three minutes. This comes as something of a surprise, to be honest. My guess is that it's due to my having done no sit-ups and almost no yoga while away. Seeing the impact of this is super helpful. Now I know what I need to focus on for the next ten days, until my April 15 check-in.
Actually, there's one other disappointment -- and it's an informative one. Since arriving home two nights ago, I haven't really been looking forward to getting back to my Orbital Velocity habits. I didn't write a single entry while in Mexico, and I didn't immediately have that "welcome home" feeling where you crave the rituals you've been away from.
Right now, however -- having been home for a day-and-a-half -- I do look forward to getting back into the swing of things. What made the difference? Was it just a matter of needing a "recovery day" after the mild strain of being away from home, and of coming back to lots of household chores? I suspect that was part of it. But forcing myself to do a check-in this morning, and feeling good about having done it, seems like the turning point. It reinforces my sense that twice-monthly check-ins need to be a part of my routine for the rest of my life. They need to become part of who I am, as essential as brushing my teeth, shaving, getting my hair cut, going to the dentist every six months, and all the other aspects of personal care that I've mentally filed under "Mandatory". If there's only one thing I take away from this project, I think that's likely to be it.
So, how was my "vacation"? It was sunny, it was romantic, it was fun. And it was a success.
Day 161: Overcoming My Dread
Back on Day 127, I had my best check-in yet. I was down to 170 pounds, nearly seventeen below my Day 53 high of 186.8, and I set new personal records in all four of my strength-and-endurance categories. Then my diet ended, my wife and I started our post-Tax-Season celebrations, and we spent two weeks on vacation in Curaçao. We had a fantastic time, and did lots of walking and swimming, but my official fitness regimen came to a halt. We ate lots of delicious local foods: goat stew (kabritu stoba), beef stew (karni stoba), conch (karko), iguana (yuana), and grilled chicken, pork chops, and ribs. And lots of carbs, since nearly everything comes with french fries or rice-and-beans. After we returned home, I was too busy for much in the way of exercise, and my wife's birthday week involved lots of eating and drinking with friends. I did squeeze in a game of racquetball, but it kicked my ass, leaving no doubt that my cardiovascular improvements had slipped.
I knew I would eventually find the time and willpower to get back into my Orbital Velocity rhythm, but I had skipped my April 30 check-in, and was filled with dread at the prospect of my May 15 check-in. Work and birthday festivities meant that the check-in didn't happen. And then I put it off again. And again.
Until today -- Day 161. My wife is away for the afternoon, at a clothes swap with girlfriends. I have some time on my own, and no good excuse to put off the check-in any longer. As much as I've been afraid to measure, record, and share the proof of my many self-indulgences, I knew I had to do it. I was disappointed in myself for going more than thirty days without a check-in, and I was determined not to let myself lose any more of my hard-earned momentum.
So I put on my exercise clothes. I did ten minutes of stretching and breathing and meditatively lying on my back with a cat on my chest. I moved the coffee table aside so I'd have enough space on the living room floor for sit-ups, where I tuck my toes under the sofa for stability. I started up the timer app on my phone, and I pushed myself into the process.
Much to my surprise, my numbers weren't so bad. I've put on six pounds in a little over a month, but my strength-and-endurance numbers were better than I expected. I managed to hit my pull-ups record, and I even set a new record for jumping-jacks.
It's done. I'm proud of myself for sticking with my commitment. For the second time in two months, I returned from a long trip and had the will and presence of mind to get back into my fitness regimen, without too terribly long of a delay. After having put my discipline aside for a few weeks, so I could relax and have a great time, I was then able to get back into the swing of things, rather than let myself slide all the way back to square one.
Now it's time to cut down on treats, make time for more exercise, and lose all the weight I've put back on. I was excited to fit into clothes I hadn't been able to wear in a long time, and to feel no embarrassment about my body when wearing nothing but swim trunks. Time to get back down to 170.
Day 184 - Searching For the Lost Spark
Having recently noticed that the spark of wanting this thing has left me, I find myself now searching for memories of what it felt like to have it. I remember the zeal of a new idea, of undertaking a new project, and the desire to check Wattpad each day to see if anyone was reading my posts. That's an energy that cannot be renewed; a project is only new once. I also remember the pride of progress, especially as I was able to do more and more pull-ups -- but I perceive this memory as an arm's-length observer, academically inspecting a specimen, and it does nothing to help me regain the visceral sense of importance that once drove me to stick with my rituals.
I skipped my end-of-month check-in, eleven days ago, thinking I would just wait a few days to do it -- once the ache in my left arm was gone, and I could do a full set of pull-ups without worrying that I might injure a muscle in the process. The ache hasn't gone away, and now I realize I'm using this as an excuse to procrastinate on a scheduled chore that I just don't feel like doing.
This is how a habit dies.
Orbital velocity is about powering through the lulls -- rescuing the habit when it's at risk. This means noticing trouble, which is something where my rituals have definitely helped. But it also means digging deep for the willpower to make yourself do the thing you don't want to do.
Which leads me to two questions:
1. What can I do to dig up more willpower?
2. How can I make myself want this again?
There are other questions, of course. Why did I lose the spark? How can I prevent that from happening again, if at all? Does it have anything to do with time away on vacation, and the challenge of getting back into a routine? Is it because life's just too busy, I'm tired, and when I have a little free time I don't have the energy to want to work on fitness? Does it suggest a deeper "down" trend in my life?
All interesting things to think about, but I've found that it's generally easier to see how one got into a hole once one is out of it. As for how to get back on track, just writing about this has helped me focus a little bit. And I managed to do twenty minutes of yoga this morning, when I inexplicably woke up an hour before my alarm was due to go off. Which is probably a clue: when I have some time that feels like "bonus" time, I'm more inclined to exercise. This probably means that feeling overloaded and exhausted is at least part of what's been going on the past few weeks.
How else can I muster more willpower and get back on track? Something to think about. Right now, I don't have answers. When I get some time, maybe I'll read back through my old entries and see if I can rediscover some of my lost spark. And maybe it would make sense to stare at my Mental Health Map again, to remind myself that there's an order to how my strengths can be boosted through straightforward processes.
Somewhere along the way, I decided that this project would last one year, with annual updates to follow in sort of a living epilogue. Here I am, halfway through that year, and I find myself in doldrums, often feeling like it's pointless to even try raising the sails.
Day 191: The Magic of Waking Up Before Your Alarm
I'm definitely in a rut. Not a deep one, but enough of one that my willpower is scarce compared to where it was a hundred days ago. When I am feeling energetic and self-directed, I try to seize those moments and make the most of them, usually by catching up on household chores. Outside of those times, it's hard to do even the simplest things that are good for myself, like ten minutes of stretching, knocking out a few pull-ups, or going for a walk. My professional life is in good shape, and I think I'm doing a good job of helping my wife through her medical challenges. I've even been eating healthy, and my weight is down to a new low since I started tracking it back on Day 3. But my dedication to fitness has been seriously suffering.
Today, however, I managed to do a check-in. It's three days late, but I did it. Why today? I completely skipped my end-of-May check-in, and I've been putting off this one. How is it that I finally made it happen? The key, I think, is that I was up before my alarm. I had some unexpected bonus time in my day, and I had the serenity and privacy of being the only one awake. So I got up, did my morning cat-care chores, had a glass of water, and went straight into a check-in.
As I mentioned, my weight is down. Interestingly, my needed hours of sleep also seems to be down -- which is something that happens to me early each summer. My push-up and sit-up numbers are down again. I managed to squeeze out an eleventh pull-up, just barely. And after just over a hundred jumping-jacks, I felt a slight twinge of pain in my knee that made it seem vulnerable, so I stopped.
I did it. I haven't slipped so far that I've completely stopped doing check-ins, and I think that's the key. In years past, I might have gone six months or longer without doing any exercise at all, and I wouldn't have even noticed. But I'm feeling some of the qualitative symptoms that this project was intended to address: knee issues; spinal instability due to lack of core strength; lethargy; and lack of willpower. I need to get back on track for this project to be a success.
When I was writing Upload, I found it hard to find time to work on it. The number one thing that helped me past this was the fact that our cat, Brother Man, who has since passed away, would wake me up hours before my alarm. He was relentless, and I loved him way too much to even think of locking him out of the bedroom. Maybe what I really need right now is another needy, angsty morning cat.
Day 201: Write Your Way Out of a Rut
I think I'm officially out of my rut. And my big discovery is that simply writing about it actually helped me get out. It cleared my head, helping me to acknowledge that I had a problem on my hands, that the consequences of the problem would just get worse if I didn't address it, and that I needed to focus on how to get out rather than dwell on how I fell in.
On March 4, 1986, I wrote my first diary entry ever, in a red Stuart Hall spiral-bound notebook. That notebook happens to be sitting on my dining room table right now, left out from when I was recently working on captions for old family photos. In the thirty-three years since, I've filled fifteen journals and a couple of other notebooks that were part-journal, part scratch-book for prose and poetry, and I'm working my way through another. I no longer use handwritten notes to record life events; photos and my searchable Evernote bullet-journal have taken over this role. I still sit down with pen-and-paper to explore creative ideas sometimes, marking my most productive entries for future reference with Levenger page-points given to me by my now-wife back in the 90s. But the primary role of my handwritten journal these days is for life reflection. It's free therapy. It's a place for me to dump emotions and random thoughts, and see if they coalesce into a higher order.
My journal is a bit like Dumbledore's Pensieve, but the magic's not quite the same. It's modestly good at showing me memories and allowing me to relive my past, but its greater power lies in pulling elements of my present together, into an order that grants me a perspective on my own life -- full of hopes, worries, questions, and fears -- that I otherwise couldn't access. Writing my thoughts out allows me to assemble them one on top of another, into structures too complex to construct in my head. There's also something about recording conclusions of self-aware moments that gives them greater weight, pushing me to a state of conviction that helps me make change happen. On my Mental Health Map, which I posted on Day 35, this is a big chunk of the arrow that points from Reflection to Mental Clarity, which lies -- not at all by accident -- at the heart of the map.
Writing about the fact that my habits were slipping away helped me accept that this was a real problem, and that I needed to do something about it. The next time you're in a rut, try it yourself. State the problem. Write about emotions in connection with this problem; this can help you realize just how much being in a rut is affecting your quality of life, in a way that motivates change rather than magnifying your fatalistic dread-filled sense of sloth. List ideas on how you might improve your situation, and resources available that might help you follow through on those ideas. Remember that you weren't always in this rut, and you'll have a better chance of lifting your gaze skyward and gauging how best to take the first step back up the slippery slope that landed you where you are.
This year-long log of my effort to reach orbital velocity is essentially a single-topic journal, and is similarly forcing me to pay attention, assemble my thoughts, and gain perspective along the way. I'm a scientist conducting experiments on my own life, recording my observations as I go; and the mere act of observing and recording myself is altering the course of my day-to-day life. Somehow, writing helps get the neurons of my neocortex lined up and working toward a common objective, increasing my odds of mustering what it takes to struggle out of the pits and bogs I invariably fall into along the way.
You can do this, too.
Day 220: Keeping It Going In the Midst of Summer Fun
No time to write -- too much work, too many life obligations, and too much summer fun. But I wanted to share my latest check-in, as proof that I'm sticking with things enough to not lose ground, and as inspiration to anyone who's following along.
Summer indulgences have added a couple of pounds, and I'm not exercising enough to break any records, but I'm proud of myself for holding steady.
Day 249: The Summer Fun Continues
Summer in Chicago is a time not to be squandered. My wife and I have been keeping super busy, and once again I find myself just barely having time to do a check-in and post results.
The exciting news is that I managed to hit a new record for jumping-jacks. I don't know if this was a fluke or if the cumulative cardio of playing racquetball over the past six months is continuing to make a difference.
The bad news is that my strength numbers are in slow decline. And my weight's inching back up. It's good to be able to see this as it's happening. It helps me understand that I need to mitigate the "damage" of my summer fun, and start working harder to get back on track!