Journal: Eating, habits, and Wrestlemania

Okay so I said I would schedule a newsletter and post last week because I was going to be in Austin for a friend’s bachelor party. I followed through on half of that: I went to Austin for a friend’s bachelor party. Lots of fun.

I’ll ramble about four things from the week.

I wrote an extra post this week: I didn’t send it out as a newsletter. I decided I’d stop numbering the journals/issues and just track the numbers on my own. I thought it might help me stop writing about writing and blogging about blogging. There’s a place for that but sometimes I need to try focusing on just writing about whatever the topic is. Oh yeah, the post. The post is The four pillars of health. In the past I might’ve just titled it “Book notes: Wired to Eat” then tag and categorize it properly. I share some thoughts from reading Robb Wolf’s Wired to Eat.

What I’m watching: Wrestlemania 33: During one night of the bachelor party, we made burgers and watched Wrestlemania. I haven’t watched a wrestling pay-per-view with friends since middle school. Undertaker had a streak but it wasn’t The Streak yet. Most of us had not watched wrestling in a while. But all of us watched wrestling as kids.As an adult, it’s always great learning someone watched wrestling growing up. You know that person, at some point in their life, could suspend their disbelief to be entertained by giant men pretending to fight each other.

It brought me back to when we were all growing up. That’s when my friendship with the bachelor was built. We weren’t watching it for the irony or anything. We watched it for the art that it is.

The Undertaker retired. When I was a kid, he was 100% the deadman. He went through his phases but was still the deadman. I’ve changed my gimmick up more than he has since then. When the Undertaker debuted, I was 4. I’m 30 now. And just as willing to sit down with my best friends to find entertainment in giant men pretending to fight.

Mindful now, mindless later: I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Gretchen Rubin’s Better Than Before. I’m really enjoying it so far. I read The Happiness Project a few years ago. She’s described it this way: The Happiness Project is about finding what made her happier and Better Than Before is learning to make those happy things a habit.

When establishing a habit, you start by being mindful about it. With the proper approach you can find proper motivation and build the environment and trigger. Then it becomes mindless. You’re going to have habits one way or another. Why not make them go toward your goals?How have I applied this in the past? I write and post pretty consistently. I’ve removed as much friction as possible. I can write anywhere on a lot of devices. I switched from Jekyll to WordPress — trading some nerd cred to think just a little bit less anytime I want to post something. (Sometimes thinking a lot less without the temptation to tweak HTML & CSS.)

My motivation has become more and more intrinsic. I… just like writing. Having a blog lets me create goal markers. Making it even more enjoyable. If I was driven strictly by extrinsic metrics reader count or revenue, I would’ve stopped 175 posts and $1.67 ago.

(Thanks for the continued support to my two subscribers. You know who you are. And you know who each other… is? “are”?)

I started a private podcast: Where “started” is “pressured friends into listening” and “podcast” is “audio files of me rambling for 20 minutes”. Though that probably does qualify as a podcast. It’s the Wild West out there.I mentioned that I’ve been recording voice notes. I was recording more and more. I was starting to feel myself so I went long once and thought it wasn’t bad. I sent it to a friend then a couple more. One of them enjoyed it.I can see why so many people make them. It’s fun. It’s a good change of pace to yap into a microphone for twenty minutes instead of re-writing a sentence over and over. (Just kidding, I re-write once at most then scratch my head. Remember kids, good is the enemy of “it’ll do”.)

I’m off to San Francisco this week. I’ll bring my camera along to try and take a morning walk if possible. Or a walk after work. As always, we’ll see.