Just random thoughts as I'm trying to see what regular writing would feel like. I'm sure my themes will be the tried and true topics of goals for the new year, where I am in my various self-improvement projects. I may try to practice writing about bigger things outside of my life. I would like to eventually shift to writing more about things beyond my long held but little progressed against fitness and reading goals. The fitness and reading goal posts are easy to write as the topics require little actual thinking. I'm just reflecting on what I'm not doing to achieve something that I say that I want. Maybe writing about my thwarted efforts to develop certain areas of my life will get me to actually work on doing something in those areas. My biggest problem with achieving any substantial effort towards a stated goal is a lack of energy to pursue activities related to that goal. My wife and I both feel a difficult to capture friction on our effort to get in better shape and just use energy to improve our lives. It's just an energetic malaise. I just want to sit on the couch and do something passive. Reading takes too much effort. That's partially from the books I've been reading, but it's also a lack of motivation to engage in activities with a more subtle emotional return. I'm looking for a more obvious emotional energy hit. My lack of doing anything more than watching TV or scrolling on my phone has made reading or writing posts like this more effortful. It's not a pleasant experience. The flow state has become impossible elusive.
Once deeply meaningful and rewarding tasks feel empty. The pleasure I used to take from reading a good book or working on something interesting (however disconnected from improving my life in some kind of tangible physical way) is a thin imitation of what it once was. I still get excited when I get to work on a deeply scientific problem at work. Making sense from various bits of data that don't look related remains a source of pleasure, but my current work place doesn't offer an appreciative audience for my work. I can get all geeked up about a solution to a problem, but there is no venue for me to share what I've learned. I know when an approach to a problem was clever or inaccessible, but the people I work with just want the problem solved. I spent years learning how to solve hard problems, but my coworkers just want the problem solved. I used to work in a place full of people like me. They knew when a problem was hard and the solution was a real accomplishment. Now, people are impressed with easy answers to obvious problems. What I can do is taken for granted because it's not understood. My wins don't really resonate while my loses resonate.
My emotional energy used to get filled up by the opportunity to work on interesting things in an environment that valued the work and recognized the value I delivered. That fuel has been gone from my life for a long time, and I haven't done anything to find a different way to gratify that need to feel valued, needed, and competent. My initial thought on what to write when I pulled out the computer was some kind of plan to refresh my approach to doing more with my time than watch games and be amused by social media posts. Hopefully trying to reframe my long standing goals would help me see a way to get being better a key part of my life again. I've just been being for too many years (Covid is the most convenient marker for the shift). Sticking with the marathon plan isn't a big deal as long as I get out to run a few miles. Read a few books because reading is a central pillar of my identity but those big, ambitious books you bought all those years ago can wait another year. You will eventually drop the weight. All these things are out there for you to have someday.
I've lived my life with being on the brink of something a good enough proxy for actually realizing the goal. Anticipation is enough. Realization is not necessary. Applying to and getting accepted to law school is fine. Actually going isn't necessary. Being in a position to become a director or some bigger job is just fine. I don't need the job. The recognition that I have the potential to do the job is fine. I don't need to read War and Peace or Middlemarch or any of my other numerous important literary books. The idea for a Substack is just fine. Writing posts that make that idea a thing other people can engage with is irrelevant. Wanting to lose weight is fine (just don't gain weight). Knowing I could achieve a better marathon or heavier lifts is just fine. I don't actually need to do it. I like the idea of doing these things. I like the idea of the person I would see myself as if I did those things, but the effort needed to actually achieve that goal isn't really necessary. At least that's the story.I seem to tell myself when I don't have the energy to take the steps needed to actually improve my life.
I would really like to get off my high blood pressure medication. I assume I could do that if I lost 20 or 30 pounds. This would put me right at my long stated goal of weighing around 200 pounds. To lose weight I need to improve my diet. Improving my diet means finding something not processed for breakfast and taking my chicken and baked potato for lunch. I could eat whatever T cooks for dinner and limit dessert to once or twice a week. Increasing my running volume back to the point where 10 miles is a pretty easy run (there was a time in my life when that was true) would provide plenty of physical movement (along with staying consistent at the gym and evening walks). My weight would likely go down. Would it settle at 200? I don't know because I have never tried.
There are so many books that I say I would like to read, but I never actually pick the book up and try to read it. War and Peace, The Count of Monte Cristo, Swann's Way. These are books I could read, but I don't want to exert the effort to get through them. I'm making a choice. What would it take to get through them? Fifteen minutes while watching TV in the evening? T has been reading at night. She's going to be back in classes next semester. The time is there. I just have to choice to use it. The days for me to ba able to say that are getting limited. I still have time to make these things happen, but someday needs to start being today.
