This picture has nothing to do with this post.

I just came off a four-day weekend after going full tilt at work for the past several months and I’m still a bit tired.

1. I’m glad I’ve got a great job with PCMag and am very much enjoying the actual work (and the people are awesome, too).
2. As I’m adjusting my style to match PCMag’s, I’m getting to exercise different muscles than I used to in my old gigs.
3. While exciting, it can tire you out!

What did I learn by taking off that time? Four-day weekends are great, but next time, I’m going for five. Additionally, unexpected things came up which took away from relaxing and recharging. Depending on the schedule of events, I’m gunning for a week off in the near future. However, I think I may try to plan daily recharging with that time off (beyond watching movies and TV).

There’s a bunch of stuff I’ve put off that could be useful to me like indoor rock climbing (due to anxiety), going through stuff still in boxes (due to the difficulty of moving boxes from the storage loft to a work surface), and re-organizing the kitchen. The thing is, I know that if I do these tasks, it will pay off with long-term benefits.

Also, I’d like to go on vacation away from NY again.

I was going to write a post on one of the 1000s of social networks out there, but I can’t succinctly fit it in a tweet or something similar. Also, I’ve grown disgusted with Twitter. However, I felt the need to share some stuff to get it off my chest. Once this is published, I can kind of free my mind a bit.

Mental Work

I’ve spent over a decade in talk therapy with four different therapists. Don’t worry, I don’t therapist shop. Instead, insurance changes, retirements, and moves have caused each change. Each therapist has helped me learn new things and come to terms with so many issues.

Like a lot of people, I had a childhood that left me with lots of relationship issues, self-worth issues, warped thinking, and I did not learn how to empathize with people until my early 30s (plus, I still struggle with all of these). So often my therapy sessions felt like I was tearing myself down over and over again while trying to build myself up. I don’t have a good metaphor for this, but it’s like trying to run a race while having to tie your shoes constantly. You CAN do it, but it is horrible. Thankfully, I’ve made progress and am much better off for having done this hard work. 

Fitness Setbacks

My physical fitness has been a mess for the past five or six years. An incident took me out of my routines and I drank heavily. (Oh, and you’ll never guess what alcohol does to my mental fitness). I gained a lot of weight. Then there was a pandemic and we were all stuck at home. So, I ate. I drank. Exercising in my New York apartments has kind of sucked because things need to be moved out of the way, then reset. I’ve been spoiled in the past as I’ve owned a couple of homes and had a dedicated space to do whatever. I fell out of my habit of working out and moving around.

I used to have two dogs, who have both passed away. Those two knuckleheads were helpful for both my mental stability and physical fitness. Petting a dog is soothing. Then there was the forced time outside with them — they needed to go out for the bathroom and they loved to walk. I’d be forced to leave the apartment and walk around. I took a lot of pride in tiring out those two with long walks so they would nap when we got home. That’s all gone now and I don’t think I’m mentally strong enough (right now) to get a new pet as the loss of them was devastating. When I got them as puppies, I remembered thinking, “You know, you’re buying delayed sadness, right?” That being said, the joy I got from them is immeasurable.

I’ve had very little motivation to move around. I used to work out with my brother when I was younger. Then in college, I would work out with friends. Since they hated working out, I quite enjoyed making them miserable by pushing our workouts to be harder and harder. After college, I tried to stay fit, but gained a lot of weight in law school.

I’ve tried to get fit in the past, with varying degrees of success. I’ve got years of experience when it comes to figuring out what does and does not work for me. So, I’ll try again, but smarter. Here’s what I’m like: I like routines, goals, and purpose-based exercise. I don’t view walks as exercise (even though it is). I think I need to rethink how I view fitness as a whole.

So Very Tired

My body aches, my cardio is horrible, and my brain is tired. I’m frequently reminded of that Darwin quote, “I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.” Why did I share this? I needed this out of my mind.