Tag: Self-Care

Reflection: Self-Isolation and Routines

person holding black game controller
Photo by Hardik Sharma on Unsplash

My wife and I are fortunate to be able to work from home. I started working from home Wednesday of last week, and initially found the transition to be manageable. Thanks to my wife’s discipline, we were keeping our normal sleep schedules, and we are able to maintain our normal working routine from the safety of home.

One thing that really threw me this weekend was when I allowed myself the permission to completely relax my schedule. Because of the pandemic, a lot of my pressing obligations and scheduled social time have been put on hold, meaning I have more free time than is typical. During the work week last week, I kept up with work and tending to things around the house, but by the weekend I decided to jump into playing video games, reading, and podcast listening. I also enjoyed a few beers Friday and Saturday nights while exploring the Borderlands, so going to bed before midnight was quickly forgotten.

This had two interesting consequences. First, by Sunday I physically felt bad. Not sick, but my body felt sluggish, I was tired, I had a headache, and my motivation was sapped. While I didn’t drink to excess, I did wonder aloud to my wife if what I was feeling was a low-grade hangover from my general poor choices over the weekend.

The (amusing) second consequence was that my wife remarked that she now sees why I impose schedules and routines on my daily life. She normally encourages me to relax and play games, but this is the first time in a long time that she has seen me proactively partake in games. It was a little like a crash-and-burn by Sunday night – I don’t do moderation very well and her mock-horror was a good reminder of that.

In reflecting on the last few days of the self-isolation, I have learned that it’s important for me to keep regular routines and impose discipline on my otherwise chaotic whims. I’ve known this about myself for some time, but this weekend helped to reinforce why I prefer keeping routines and habits active. Like a child, I crave structure.

Stay Awesome and Safe,

Ryan

What You Say “No” To

Last week I discussed some thoughts on being busy.  Near the start of the post, I made an off-hand comment about why I’m typically busy:

It’s often less of an issue of seeking achievement, and more the result of me absent-mindedly saying “yes” to obligations without regard to the impact it has on my time and calendar.

This is the perfect example of an answer to those interview questions of “what is a weakness of yours?”  It took a lot of self-reflection to realize that a lot of stuff I do is less because it fits within a plan, and more because it sounded like a cool thing at the time.  It was a habit I formed when I was single and life was simple.  However, as things started piling up, it made it really difficult to prioritize.  The most important things in my life (love, sleep, exercise, etc.) end up taking a back seat to those things that seemed cool when I said “yes” to an ask.

I was watching a video from Jon Call, aka Jujimufu on YouTube, and he was discussing email tips that he uses to stay organized.  However, around the 3:30 mark of the video, he drops a fascinating insight:

“If I said yes…, I’m basically saying ‘no’ to (my wife) Sam, I’m saying ‘no’ to (my friend) Tom, (and) I’m saying no to you guys…”

Whether you are talking about your email inbox, your work, or the important people in your life, it’s important to reflect on what you are saying “no” to when you decide to say “yes.”  It’s a hard lesson that I am still struggling with, and I’m thankful with how patient my loved ones have been.

I invite you to reflect on your own life: what are you saying “no” to?

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

 

The Motivation of Failure

Last week, I was passed over on a job opportunity for a more qualified candidate.  Such is life, and I don’t bear any ill-thoughts for the results of the job search.  I’m disappointed, but not soured by the experience.  It’s an opportunity to learn and grow, and I find that more important to focus on than to give in to a fixed mindset of self-pity.

After the feelings of sadness ebbed, I found myself experiencing a different feeling – motivation.  This has happened a few times in my life, and it was strange to be reaquainted with it.  There have been a few critical moments in my life where I failed at something important, and that failure created a fire within that motivated me.

It happened when I climbed Mount Kenya in 2007 after I failed my summit in the summer of 2003 of a mountain in Alberta whose name I’ve forgotten.

It happened when I joined the Campus Response Team and became a Coordinator after I failed twice to be a residence don.

And it happened again last week when I wasn’t selected for the job.  The self-critical sadness was overtaken by a motivation to go to the gym.

As I’ve written previously, It’s been a while since I’ve visited the gym.  According to my fitness journal, the last time I was in the gym was around Hallowe’en.  I’ve been rowing this last month a few times a week in the mornings, but I haven’t lifted iron in around five months.

Initially, I stopped going to the gym after my routine was disrupted by travelling to Scotland.  Then I didn’t go out of laziness, and then I didn’t go because I didn’t feel like I could justify going to the gym when I was supposed to be marking assignments and prepping my lectures.  By the time December rolled around I had regained my weight, but I also proposed to my fiancee, and started the planning process for moving out of my apartment.  Along the way, I was tired from a lack of sleep and dissatisfied with what I saw in the mirror.  Yet, it was never enough to overcome my inertia.

Failing to get the job was the final push I needed to hit the gym.  Maybe I needed a physical outlet to vent some frustration.  Maybe it was a form of punishment.  I’d like to think it was something more constructive – I accepted that I failed but I also saw that I could do better next time.  It is within my power to learn from the experience and grow.  The failures seemed to stack until it hit a critical mass; a line was crossed that set off the warning bells that I was heading in a direction I didn’t want to go.

It was time to make the first step and correct my course.

 

I vlog occasionally for my buddy’s YouTube channel, Artpress, and posted this immediately after I got out of the gym.

So, I hit the gym and pumped some iron.  I was nervous to go back as a beginner again, and overcoming inertia was incredibly uncomfortable, but I did it.

Now the trick is to keep it up.  That’s, perhaps, the greater challenge I face.

 

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Morning Productivity

I had an interesting morning last Tuesday.  As I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve been getting up early with my fiancee.  She typically leaves for work around 7am, and I don’t need to leave for work until around 9am, which leaves me with almost 2-hours to fill with how I wish.

I could go back to sleep and work on hitting my 7-hours of sleep per day goal (as of writing, I’m still failing on this goal, but only narrowly).

Or, I could try to use this quiet time to do some things distraction-free.

*If my fiancee is reading this, I mean distraction from technology and daily pressures.  Love you!*

I’ve been steadily adopting the latter option, and last Tuesday I had an amazingly productive morning.

First, I read for around 30 minutes.  I’ve been working my way through Tim Ferriss’s new book “Tools of Titans” which is hefty 700 pages.

Then, I opened up the Coursera app on my phone and did a few lecture videos on an introductory calculus course I’m working on, including practice problems on functions.  That was around 15-20 minutes.

Then I went upstairs to row for 10 minutes.  I started rowing two weeks ago in the mornings and I’ve already noticed an improvement – I’m less winded after the workout and my hips are not nearly so tight afterwards.  I’ll probably write a post about rowing soon, but for now it’s a small habit I’m trying to instill during the work week.

After rowing, I recorded two vlogs.  I recorded a short vlog for Art Press, my podcasting partner’s side-channel that features vlogs from artists who also exercise.  Then, I recorded my daily vlog that I upload privately to my channel as my version of a diary.  The two vlogs took me 5-7 minutes to record.

Then, I finally showered and got ready for work.

Reflection

I know that starting your day on the right foot is a key to success.  It sets you up with a positive mindset that you are accomplishing your goals and using you time well.  I certainly don’t want to do things for the sake of being busy.

I suppose I’m being a little arrogant by sharing this information within my social media feeds – I’ve been tweeting my progress on rowing, and sharing my small productivity wins as they happen.  Am I just looking for approval from others?  Does sharing this really keep me motivated and accountable?  Would I enjoy the process less if I didn’t share (boast) about it?  Am I looking to inspire others?  Lead by example?  Make them jealous?  I don’t have good answers for this.

I also don’t know whether I can keep this up regularly.  This system (I’m calling it a system for the sake of the argument) is fragilely held afloat because of my fiancee’s schedule.  If that were to change, I’m fairly confident I wouldn’t be able to wake up at 6am on my own – I have about of decade of anecdotal evidence to support this.  Also, will I be able to keep this pace?  Exercise, reading, studies, and vlogging takes up a lot of time; will I be able to guarantee that I’ll have enough time and mental focus everyday to continue this process.  Again, I don’t have an answer to this.

Time will tell.  After all, as of writing, I only have one data point to draw an inference from.  It’s important to not get too far ahead of myself and focus on hitting my targets tomorrow.

 

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

I Really Need to Sleep More

As the title says, I need more sleep.  It should surprise no one that sleep is good for you and you generally feel better getting more of it.

And yet, I’m terrible at it.  I’ve known for a while I’m terrible at managing sleep, but wearing a Fitbit over the last year really helped quantify how terrible I am.

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Here is a typical week for me back in mid-October, 2016.  As you can see, I was averaging less than 6-hours a week, and I would occasionally punctuate my sleepiness with a crash that would waste half a day by recuperating.  By the end of the academic term, I was turning into a zombie.  Things were starting to slide, I felt irritable, my weight had gone up; basically everything bad about not getting sleep was happening.  The only thing that thankfully did not happen was falling asleep behind the wheel.

A small part of me wore my fatigue like a badge of honour.  It was the natural consequence of hustling and being busy.  The problem with this is it was impressing no one, it was wearing me out, and it was pissing people off who I was failing to deliver to on my promises.

Something needed to change.

… And the Clock Strikes Twelve – New Year, New Rules

While I’m not a big new year’s resolutions guy, I saw the start of January as a good time to try and reclaim my sleeping habits.  I had wound down a bunch of my obligations, finished teaching, and was going to spend less time commuting for a long-distance relationship (the fiancee was moving back to my city), so January made sense to focus on cultivating a better sleeping habit.

Step one in any major change is to identify and isolate the variables you want to modify, and track the delta from your baseline.  After all, you can’t change what you don’t measure.

I set 7-hours as a good goal to strive towards as it was more sleep than I was used to but not an unreasonable jump that would set me up for failure.  I decided to track each day’s worth of sleep as a binary yes-no check in my notebook.  The Fitbit would auto-track my sleep, and I would manually log my sleep to ensure I was consciously paying attention to sleep.  I modified the Bullet Journal method and tracked the days I got less than 7-hours of sleep (alongside the days I read, and the days I exercised).

After one month, I look back at my progress.

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For privacy reasons, I’ve blocked out my calendar notes.

Yikes.

Needless to say, if January is my baseline, then at least I have nowhere to go but up.  I hit my target four times all month.  My reading habit was fairly strong, and my exercise is still abysmal.

Light on the Horizon

There is one thing that has changed in February so far that has given me hope: my fiancee has started a new job.

As of writing, she’s in her first week at her new job, and I have only now given notice to my apartment managers that I will be moving in with her, so I’m spending a few nights a week at her place to help support her as she starts the job.  This includes groceries, errands, and taking care of our dog.

Her new job is a few cities over, so she needs to commute about an hour each way, meaning she needs to get up before me and hit the road before I normal would wake up.  As a consequence, she needs to follow a fairly strict bed time while she adjusts to the new schedule.

At one point, I would have let her go to bed, then I would have gone to bed whenever I felt like it, and set my own alarm.  But, in the spirit of supporting her (and wanting to spend quality time with her), I’ve been going to bed at the same time as her, and getting up with her to tend to the dog’s morning needs.

The days where I’ve gotten 7+ hours of sleep have been the greatest I’ve felt in a long time.

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Wednesday would have been 7-hours if I hadn’t had restless sleep.  The Fitbit subtracts your restless period from the total duration of sleep.

Obviously, it’s too early to suggest that I’ve got my habit down, but subjectively I can report feeling better overall.  I have wanted to wake up early for some time now, and getting up with my partner has felt great.  I have time to enjoy my morning coffee while I read or listen to the news, and not feeling rushed out the door has lifted my spirits.  Ideally, I want to keep this going, so it’ll be interesting to see how the system adapts to other obligations in my life (working at the bar being the harshest pressure on my sleep schedule).

I know that rationally, sleeping is good.  It’s good for mental clarity, it’s good for decision-making, it’s good for general health as well as weightloss.  But knowing the facts has so far proven to be a challenge for me.  Perhaps focusing on my relationship and supporting my partner’s success is just the motivation I’ve needed to force me to take better care of myself.

We shall see where things go from here.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Signal and Noise – Facebook, We Need to Talk

Continuing the emergent theme of January for this blog, I thought this post could discuss some of the thoughts that have been mulling around in my head for the last few months.  Once again, in the spirit of pulling back and simplifying, I’ll briefly comment on some thoughts I’ve had about Facebook (specifically) and social media (generally).

This won’t be a think piece about the problems with the various platforms, their social responsibility, the degree to which they are or are not responsible for the behaviours of their users, etc.  There are many great articles written on those topics that have spun out as a consequence of the American Presidential election late last year.  I have nothing new or clever to add to that conversation.

Instead, I want to focus on my relationship with social media – how it has affected me and my behaviour.  You, my dear reader, may or may not agree with my attitude towards social media.  That’s ok.  I’m not speaking to any sort of norms here.  I don’t think people should adopt my views if they don’t want to.  Your relationship with social media is wholly bound up in a different set of lived experiences which is not guaranteed to overlap with mine in any meaningful sense.  I will be describing my experiences here.

Birthday 2015

In 2015, I set a challenge for myself to cut back on my Facebook use.  I felt that I was spending far too much time endlessly and mindlessly scrolling through Facebook.  This challenge was motivated by a desire to be more productive in my life.  I wanted to consume less and produce more; I felt this was important for me to grow as a person.  Facebook was a constant and daily consumption habit where I binged on updates from my network of friends and family.  It was less about a sense of fear of missing out and more about seeking updates to what people were doing and things they found interesting.

So, on my birthday in 2015, I deleted the app off my phone.  The experiment wasn’t very successful as I logged into Facebook using my phones Chrome browser (I had legitimate reasons to need onto the site initially since my job at the bar uses a Facebook group for scheduling shifts).  When I didn’t log off from the browser, I essentially was left with Facebook on my phone.

It took until around September of 2016 to wise up to my usage, and I deleted the Chrome app from my phone.  For the last 4 months of 2016, I abided by the spirit of the original challenge and things were good.

Birthday 2016

Every year at the outset of my birthday, on the stroke of midnight, I deactivate my Facebook account for 24-hours.  I do this for a number of reasons.  It allows me to be more present in the day.  It allows room to reflect and introspect.  I don’t have a constant deluge of notifications from people wishing me a happy birthday (especially from people who only message me once a year because Facebook tells them it’s my birthday).  And it removes a mindless activity so that I can do more productive things with my birthday, such as exercising and volunteering.

This year was no exception on that front.  What was unique was that my birthday was buttressed against several days of travel and time with family.  For the better part of  the next five days,  I was busy with family and Christmas, and was never near a computer with enough time or the desire to check Facebook.  I realized only after my family expressed concern that I had possibly unfriended them (and my fiancee joking that she was no longer engaged to someone on Facebook) that I finally logged back in.

Upon logging back in, I realized that I hadn’t really missed the experience.  The first few days did have me missing Facebook in moments of boredom, but otherwise I hadn’t really missed using the service.  I was actually a little sad that I was giving in and returning to the service because it became a game to see how long I could go without using Facebook.

I also realized that I felt happier in my ignorance.  Well, that’s not true because I still followed the news and read articles; I kept up with current events.  But in not paying attention to the micro-updates in peoples lives and in unverified news, a weight had lifted from my psyche.

Signal and Noise

When I reflected on these thoughts, I realized that I should maintain some element of distance from using Facebook going forward and disengage.  My rationale has changed a little bit since 2015.  I still seek to favour production over consumption, but since the election, using Facebook has become, for a lack of a better expression, less fun.  Through a combination of fake news, false information on memes, politicization, activism, expressed attitudes and values I disagree with on many levels, and uninteresting updates, I don’t enjoy using Facebook like I once had.

What I realized is that the signal-to-noise ratio had skewed too far in the noise direction.  I personally don’t find Facebook all that useful outside of some very limited cases.  I was having a hard time filtering out all the distractions.  There are a number of reasons for this that, if I genuinely sought to address, I could fix.  I could start hiding posts, or reporting fake news.  I could unfriend people I don’t associate with, or I could hide posts and stop following updates from people in my network.  I could curate the experience to better suit my tastes.

There are two big reasons why I don’t follow this route.  First, I’m conscious of trying to avoid setting up an echo chamber that reflects back only things I agree with.  I value diversity of opinion, even if I disagree with it.  What I’m seeing on Facebook is not opposing viewpoints expressing themselves constructively.  This may make me a bad person, an abuser of my privilege, or a bad ally, but I don’t find value in only associating with people who narrowly share my values and beliefs.  It’s especially bad when I agree with the cause, I agree with the conclusions, but I disagree with the message or argument presented.  I value setting aside individual differences for common purposes.  I value good, sound arguments.  I value constructive input and critiques.  I value testing assumptions and arguments to ensure the burrs are smoothed out.  A consequence is that this does end up challenging my beliefs less; on that front, I acknowledge the consequence of my action.  I don’t have an adequate response to this and I need more time to reflect on it.

But the second reason why I don’t follow this route is that I don’t feel invested in the desire to fix the experience I have on the platform.  Instead, I’m much happier to step back from the noise and seek other areas of my life where I can boost the signal of things that matter to me.  I can focus on paying for news that I value (I recently purchased a subscription to The Economist, and a subscription for The New Yorker was gifted to me for Christmas).  I prioritize time with friends and family.  Being present with them is more important than cursory updates.  And I have the time to satisfy my desire to be constructive – making things, collaborating with friends, and learning.

To me, Facebook is an endless well of distraction.  Are there useful things on there?  Sure.  Are there important things on the platform?  Absolutely!  The activism and awareness campaigns that have popped up in the last year are a testament to how the platform can be useful to getting the conversation going for a mainstream audience.  I would never want to take that away from the experiences of others.  What I have a personal issue with is what the behaviour represents about me.  Facebook is a crutch I use to distract and occupy myself when I’m bored or procrastinating.  I seek out the notifications and the feedback.  I seek out validation and approval.

Facebook is built specifically to take advantage of this biological system in our brains.  I won’t go so far as to say it’s addictive, but I will say that the site is engineered to get people to frequently come back to the platform multiple times per day through posts, notifications and suggestions.  It leverages my desire for novelty and new content is frequently just a refresh away.

The same can be said for other platforms such as Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram.  I suppose where my bias shows is I’m less critical of Instagram because I can curate my experience better around my interests and hobbies.  On top of that, I find the experience purer on Instagram because I use it to share things I do and find interesting in my everyday life.  These are things that I experience and these are things I make.  It’s constructive, rather than consumptive.

Moving forward, I’m seeking to engage less with social media.  I don’t hate or think Facebook to be evil.  It’s a tool like any other.  My goal is to scale back my use and be more mindful.  I want to signal-boost the important things and tip the scales away from consumption into something more constructive.

Produce, not consume.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Quitting and Simplifying

A theme is emerging for January for me, so let’s continue our exploration of simplifying and cutting back.  My last two posts discussed how I’m shelving my goal to be a paramedic.  Getting engaged and reflecting on 2016 didn’t just lead me to the conclusion that I need to orientate my future towards stability for my fiancé and I.  I also reflected on how I felt at the end of the year about my life.

I concluded that I felt tired.

The Cult of Busy

I hate that I’m so busy.  I fully admit that I sometimes use my busyness as a humblebrag to signal my “hustle,” but truthfully, I rationally know that being busy isn’t a good thing.  When you are busy, the things that you prioritize begin to slip.  When you are busy, you sacrifice sleep.  When you are busy, you half-ass things.  When you are busy, you miss deadlines.  And on, and on.

By the end of December, I was a walking zombie just marking time until business wound down for all of my projects.  I was average around 5.5 hours of sleep per night and felt perpetually in a daze.

Mid-last year, I received an offer to be the Vice Chair of a grants committee I was on.  It was a potential huge step forward for me – it would be an important role for a prestigious community organization, it would groom me to Chair the committee, and it would give me access to important community movers and shakers.  Getting that kind of network exposure is like gold for the young professional.

I replied honestly that I was interested but unsure if I could commit more than one year, on the assumption that I would apply to a paramedic program in February 2017, which could lead me to leaving the region for school.  We set the conversation aside in the interim until I had a better idea of what my future looked like.

In December, the conversation came back up.  Having just proposed to my fiancé, I hadn’t yet had a chance to consider how the proposal will concretely change the next few years of my life.  I asked for the rest of the month to think things over and I’d get back to the Chair.

Being Strangled by Busy Creep

In reflecting on 2016, especially the last 4-months, I realized that my calendar suffered from busy creep.  I had over-committed myself and said yes to too many things.  Keep in mind, I love novelty and experiencing new projects.  I jump at the opportunity to learn something new and help friends out.  But in my quest to learn, I had lost sight of any sense of vision for what I wanted to accomplish, and through a death-by-thousand calendar entries, I had stretched myself too thin.  Working full time at the College, teaching, and working some nights at the bar was enough to keep me occupied, but I am also the Treasurer of a Board, regularly podcasting, blogging, maintaining a long-distance relationship, etc.  I was building a huge sleep deficit, gaining weight, and consistently making bad decisions (YouTube being my drug of choice late at night).

I tried simple hacks to help me, such as installing a light timer on my wifi router to force myself offline.  Truthfully, the only thing I needed to hack was my calendar.  After thinking it through, I realized that after having completed a full term as a grants committee member, now was a good time to bow out gracefully and resign my post.  I drafted a letter to the Chair, explaining my situation, and resigned from the committee.

A Time For Reflection

The Chair, being a wonderful person, accepted my resignation without question and offered to keep the door open if I wished to return in the future.  I valued my experience on the committee, but I realized that it didn’t fit with my ultimate and immediate priorities – my health and my relationships.

I still feel bad about the resignation.  I had hoped that my anxiety and reservations about sending the email was the result of actually sending a resignation.  However, after sending the email, I’m still feeling down about the decision.  It was a great opportunity and could have lead to some amazing future possibilities.  Worse yet, I feel like I’m quitting or letting others down.  I know rationally that this is not true, but I can’t shake the feeling nonetheless.  I suppose this is the equivalent of a busyness detox – the feeling will fade over time as I start to feel more in control of my time and life.

The grants committee was only a tiny portion of my calendar.  It amounted to about a month and a half of moderate work per year.  Cutting this from my plate will not be the magic solution to my problems.  I see this as the first step to getting my house in order.  Truthfully, I don’t really have a lot of direction at the moment.  Once I decided to shelve paramedicine, I lost my direction and momentum.  I need to find something else to aim at and work towards professionally.  That is one area that will require some reflection.

But more basic that that, I need to reflect on my values.  I don’t have a good answer yet as to what I feel my core values are at the moment.  Without that level of self-awareness, I’m likely to allow unfocused busyness to creep back into the picture.  Without values to act as a filter, I’m likely to accept whatever opportunities come my way irrespective of whether they add value to my life or further my goals (or if they are time sinks that steal time away from more important things).  Because something sounds cool, or because a friend asked me shouldn’t be the only reason why I say “yes.”

Once again, I don’t have a pithy way to wrap this up; this will be a work in progress for me.  In the meantime, it’s probably time I get back to work.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Happy Holidays!

Whether you are celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or any December-based Festivus, I hope you are having a safe and happy holiday season, full of cheer, love and lots of merriment.

I’m taking this week off to rest after a packed semester, but I’ll be back next week to kick off the New Year.

I’ll see you in 2017.

Much love, and Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Reflection – The Cost of a Lack of Routine

I’ve posted a few times recently about how I’ve been incredibly slack on keeping up my (lack of) fitness habit.  The addition of teaching was enough for me to abandon fitness as a priority.  There are obvious costs associated with this, such as poorer health and eating habits, but there is also the financial cost that most people are aware of, and I don’t think I’ve really appreciated the magnitude of until now.

Since July, I’ve been paying for my membership to the gym without going.  This cost shouldn’t be surprising to anyone.  At various points since July, I’ve been aware that the fees were being applied to my credit card each month.  On reflection, I realized how much of a “death by 1,000 cuts” scenario this is.  During each month’s charge, I rationalized that the cost is fairly low.  Because it wasn’t breaking the bank, it was easier to excuse the bad habit.

Yet, it all adds up:

August – monthly fee $11.30
September – monthly fee $11.30
September – bi-annual equipment fee $20
October – monthly fee $11.30
November – monthly fee $11.30
December – monthly fee $11.30
 Total (CAD): $76.50

If you don’t include any interest accrued, I’ve spent a little over $75 to not go to the gym.  There are two ways of looking at it.  Either, $75 has been the cost of inaction (not going, or not cancelling my membership), or $75 has been what I spent to sit at home and do other things (opportunity cost).  Regardless of how I frame it, I’m out $75 with little to show or account for it.

I suppose the obvious next step is to create a solution to this problem.  With the new year and my birthday rapidly approaching, it makes sense to use this as an excuse to erase the bad history and start fresh.  I want to, however, learn from this experience.  It’s important that I reflect intentionally because otherwise I’ll be doomed to repeat the behaviour.

I don’t have a nifty solution to this at present.  I merely wish to make this observation public to hold myself accountable and get myself thinking about what I can do about it.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan