Update: Wednesday, February 8, 2023, 3:39:33AM EST
Looks like we are going to be staying in the apartment until out lease runs out in September or October even though classes will start in August. We haven’t figured that out yet, but we will definitely be here over the Summer, which means, I have that time to get in shape enough to be able to do most of the move myself without hiring movers.
Turns out the most important goals for 2023 are pretty obvious:
The time commitment for getting to 150 by July is significant, at least two hours of activity per day, not counting all the time to enable that activity by traveling to biking locations, shopping, doing a ton of extra laundry, showering more per day, making healthy meals, and so on. In fact, I anticipate all the activities related to my health goal to impact 3-4 hours per day of my free time. Eventually, I’ll get more efficient at all of it, but for now that means pretty much every other side-project — the Boost, the books, rat/PEGN, the homelab — all take the backseat to the time required to get healthy again. Plus, I have to go through every single box in storage and clean them out and organize them. My rwxrob.tv viewers are going to significantly change over the next three months. Those that love me for tech stuff will be super annoyed, but honestly, I don’t give a fuck. My health and that of my family come first. The rest can come later.
Once I get back on the endurance/outdoor/yoga athlete obsession, I won’t be coming back to many tech topics at all. Whenever I’m outside and really plugged into the actual world everything else fades away. Gaming, tech, coding, hacking, they all become laughably insignificant, and frankly, they are. Life doesn’t happen behind a computer screen. Tech facilitates life. Careers in tech are noble pursuits because they are essential to sustain life, but they are not life. At best, tech creates tools for actually experience life to its fullest. Tech is never — nor has it ever been — the destination for me. As I’ve said before, I don’t really like coding (even though I’m pretty good at it). I like what coding gets me, the tools that make something else in life possible, such as the efficient exchange of information and helping others upskill to enable more of what they want out of life. That is life, helping others find theirs.
I’m reminded of when I completed yoga training some years back. I actually took my computer with me to the training because I was working on a hugely important thing (that I can’t even remember now). While in the training, my focus on computers slide to the side and I allowed myself to really be present for the very real life experience that was happening. I never even booted that computer the entire time. I did memorize all of the Ashtanga opening and closing mantras though. When I returned I insisted on adding yoga classes to my SKILSTAK curriculum and it was very popular, at first. What I wanted was for these wonderful nerds to actually experience life not just their screens. I started taking them paddle-boarding, geo-caching, teaching them to long-board, have light-saber duals, and, yes, learn warrior pose and downward-facing-dog. These, combined with the gaming we did together on “game nights” as a social activity where by far, the best parts of SKILSTAK that I ever did. One parent lamented my ceasing to do them after Covid and the forced-move happened. It was these social experiences that lite up these kids, that parents noticed. SKILSTAK brought life and light to their lives, not just tech skills to get them into the best hacker programs, elite schools, and companies that gave them their own interns by 18 (not them as the intern, they were given an intern). SKILSTAK was the ideal combination of life-enabling tech skills, and moments of the good life. I want that again, for me, and for my rwxrob.tv community. And it starts by my rediscovering life myself, publicly.
People say that resolutions are bad for you psychologically. I call bullshit. I just know that I’m probably not going to accomplish them the way that I would like, but failure is a part of it.
bonzai -> rat -> keg -> pegnpub)init on SaturdaysNote the things that aren’t there: