I am a calorie counter by necessity and have been doing so consistently for over three years and for the better part of ten years. If I don’t count calories, I have zero self control. It’s how I keep myself accountable. Now that we are in the warmer months, I’ve been wanting to challenge myself to lose some extra weight, so I’ve been trying to go to bed hungry. Hunger as a sensation will not negatively hurt me and I’m fortunate that it is temporary. I think one of the struggles with diets and reducing your calorie intake is an anxiety around being hungry. You really must change your mindset on what it means to be hungry. You cannot let a biological feedback mechanism control you goals in life. I need to relearn that comfort with hunger every now and again. This is my big challenge during the warmer months.

Everyday I grow much more comfortable with here and think much less about there. Maybe it was the pandemic, or maybe it is my getting older. Here is full of rich detail. Squirrels fighting, birds chirping, trees blowing in the breeze, and ants making their way around me. There is place I have not seen before, but perhaps have thought about, read about, or seen pictures of. There has many of the same things as here - trees, rodents, birds, bugs, etc. I am here though, and not there. I get to enjoy here much more than there because it’s where I am.

When it comes to television shows (do we call them something else now?), I have picked up a few that I consistently hear positive reviews from people I know. Generally if a lot of people are talking about it and multiple people recommend it to me, it’s doing something right. I’ll never have enough time to consume everything on every streaming service that I have been cornered into subscribing to (thanks kids). There have been a handful that I’ve watched over the past few years (Succession and Ted Lasso as a few examples) and through fear, I dare not go past season one. I think it’s still my trauma from how off the rails Game of Thrones went.

Now that I’ve committed to owning a record player, I needed a place to put it. This project had to be prioritized behind the ongoing kitchen refresh, but I was able to sneak it in here and there. Record players are new to me, so I did end up doing research on what makes for a good quality record player stand and speaker stand. It turns out the heavier and less prone to vibration, the better.

I tend to systematize things. I like a process to be clear and decided in my brain so I can feel a sense of control in a chaotic world. This can be how I plan my goals, projects, and todo’s. This can also be things like an exercise plan for the week. When I should meditate. How much I want to read. I like to commit to a plan and that will generally help me move forward on goals. The problem is, the universe continues to expand and change. The system is only relevant for that moment. My plans this week may be great, but next week may change with the busy and demanding lives we all lead. I’ve learned to hold loosely to a system and think about what is going to work this week. More than a week out is just leaving too much room for the unknown to throw everything you wish into turmoil. Why set yourself up for disappointment, just be more adaptive.

The Spirited Man, also known as Van Neistat, posted a video last week on thinking visually that resonated with me. I don’t do well with the word stuff or hearing spoken instructions. I am definitely a visual thinker and learner.

Photos aren’t like they used to be. No envelopes of printed 4x6’s. No sleeves of negatives to sort through. No albums to pull off the shelves and flip through with their sticky plastic protector pages. Today there is no barrier to pulling out your phone and taking a single or a hundred recorded images. They all get stored and backed up to the cloud like some limitless recording of your life. But then what happens? Do you believe these big tech companies are going to be in business forever? What about when your kids want to see photos after you die? Will they even have access? Will your account eventually be deleted?

Though I’m late to the party, I credit my son for getting me into vinyl records. It was timed well with my general frustration over where we are going as a society with all of this digital madness. I spent considerable time contemplating and researching if this was to be a positive new hobby for me and if so, what was the right setup to buy. During an unfortunate case of Covid in early January, I had read the book Analog by Robert Hasson and in my isolated recovery with full “covid brain fog” decided to just go for it. By the afternoon, I had ordered everything I needed.

I don’t remember where I had heard this over the past month, but this resonates with me as I am both trying to be a better human and am curious what it means to be a man - which is a topic we’ll save for another time. I think what I like most about this is it orients one towards being excellent and deemphasizes needing external validation by being “good”. Being good at being a man implies character and principles where as being good towards the person in front of you implies doing whatever it takes to meet their needs. The latter is dangerous territory for my worst instincts as a people pleaser.