With Fall always comes immense positive change in my life. (Spring as well, just never positive for some reason.) This Fall has me seriously considering my daily routine locked to my desk in the room of my apartment. I’ve been floundering around discovering the best alternative for me, but one thing is for sure. I’m done with month-long, self-inflicted prison sentences. So far the changes have been, well, liberating, and my priorities in terms of money and time have pretty dramatically changed. I cannot overstate how wonderful it has been returning to the outdoors. What the hell was I thinking all this time?!
Let’s recap.
My priority for 2023 above all else was getting fit again. Everything else took a back seat. I’m happy to report I’m well on my way to meeting that goal by December. I’ve dropped from 98 kilos to 78 today (that’s about 44 pounds). I still have a way to go to reach my goal of 68 (66 total pounds). I’m a lot stronger all around. I feel it in everything I do from climb the stairs to our apartment to lugging water bottles for our cooler. My sleep is better. My attitude is better. My work is more focused and efficient. And, according to a recent physical, everything (but my teeth) is well above average for an old guy like me.
I’m a yoga guy at heart. Always have been. Endurance sports are yoga when done in the right way, slow, repetitive, with proper breathing and connection with all around you. Only people who understand what true yoga is will appreciate what that means. And that’s fine. You could say, then, that my return to cycling—something that has always centered me since I was a child—was a continuation of my yoga practice in a different way.
In December 2022 I started biking outside. Then it got cold so I discovered Zwift and started obsessively biking indoors, which was fun, but not the same. Then I re-discovered biking outside and combined it with live streaming. Then I realized live streaming was distracting me and holding me back from biking to locations that I really loved so I stopped live streaming completely. In fact, I stopped streaming most everything except for weekend Boost stuff. Then I got lonely on the long bike rides and introduced streaming back. Of course I obsessed about the best route for streaming after that. Then I realized that I really just want to do the same loop/route all the time. So for many days I streamed the exact same route and live streamed it all. I dialed in the IRL streaming rig. Put the rear rack on my bike. Bought another two accounts for a total of four modems. And perfected the Action 4 in webcam mode with a gimble and with binaural audio. I really nailed the IRL streaming rig. Every route concluded, when I could manage it, with a sunset stream and some good conversation. Chatting throughout the ride slowly dwindled off as I found myself just rattling off what was going through my mind without always looking at all the chat. Chat was either too quick for me to read safely and attentively or nothing at all because everyone was just enjoying the scenery. The routine became so well known by the community that we started creating names for different areas, and noting the exact second the stream would die because of holes in service that were absolutely unrecoverable. Then, after doing a test, I realized that most all of it could be done better (and cheaper) without streaming it live.
And so here we are.
Most recently, I’ve been grappling with the inevitable change forced (finally) on Doris and I as we face our last year in this apartment and finding a semi-permanent alternative by next October. Doris loses her studio at that time as well. We need a place where she can work in a studio and I can at least store stuff depending on whether I stay there all the time or not. The very real option to travel the world while working as a “digital nomad” has presented itself. It’s scary realizing something you’ve always dreamed of just might actually be possible in the near future. We have some debts to clear up before that is possible, but it is continuing to look more and more like a reality.
My priority for 2024 is, therefore, is to discover what I want to do with my life (again).
This has led to a lot of experimentation and exploration. One thing I know for absolute certainty is that I do not want to be constrained to any single room or cubicle for work and that I will never let my health fade again as I allowed in 2022 when my priorities were Kubernetes, Bonzai, PEGN, Ratx and other open source projects, and yes, gaming. (Sorry folks, it’s an objective scientific truth that coding and gaming turns any human being into a lard ass.) I couldn’t give less of a shit about all that stuff right now. There is never anything worth giving up your health. I feel foolish obsessing the way I did, but, alas, that’s how I am.
Returning to fitness has almost accidentally included a slap-in-the-face reminder of who I actually am, a river guide, cyclist, skier, surfer, swimmer, paddler, skater, and outdoor-obsessed Patagonia guy who happens to code and do tech stuff to make a living. To realize how far I have come from where I was consider that I very seriously considered changing my major in college to environmental law because of my love for the outdoors growing up in Utah, home of the annual Outdoor Retailer convention because Utah (my home state) is the single best state in America for those who love the outdoors (but North Carolina has to be a close second). At one point I was comped entry because I literally helped launched the first paddle-board company in Lake Norman when I agreed to be the first My Aloha employee having just discovered the amazing sport of SUP. In fact, I still own the standupclt.com domain (which redirects to a Facebook group run by others now).
Yesterday I spent the entire work day from the beach at the lake. It was glorious. Last night I slept in my car in the parking lot without any issues. Today I cancelled my Zwift account (which I can always start back up at any time and not lose any progress). And just a few minutes ago, I posted my first 4k bike route video blog. This is the new normal for rwxrob.
My top priority now, therefore, has become getting very good at working from anywhere and playing outside. How could I have forgotten?