22 Jan 2018 |
Life
No weight loss last week, which I now attribute to that regular time of the month. I believe it triggered more desire to eat sweet carby foods as well as caused gassiness, bloating, and cramps. Lawrence reminded me how much it would affect my weight loss last time we did this, so I shouldn’t beat myself up over it.
Yesterday I attempted my monthly 50-mile bike ride. We did 32 miles. By the time we left for our ride, it was close to 11am. I had planned to head out by 9:30am. Next time I’m going to hound Lawrence harder so we leave on time. We could have pushed to make the ride back but by the time we were headed out, I think we were all too full, tired, and cold. The last time we did any ride over 10 miles was also over 2 months ago.
I’ve been playing a LOT of Horizon. It has cut into my food prep time. I’m fully entrenched now, and my default action when I get home is to plop in front of the tv and turn on the PS4. Then I continue playing until 1-2am. Breakfast is easy enough to make… eggs, bacon, and coffee. Vegetables take more time and effort, but I need the fiber. It helps to do batches but I’ve spent all my weekend time gaming!
Making sweets is also not so great for myself. The minty cheesecake I made was fine once I got used to the Stevia, but I ate way too much at a time. I should stick to savory foods, which I feel are more filling.
Saturday, Amy and I walked to the Women’s March. When the march finally started, we marched the stretch of Broadway between 6th and 2nd. Then we split off to Demi for the bathroom. We ate lunch at Baldoria and then hung out for a bit at Lazy Brewing. I spent the rest of the day at home unpacking, organizing, and throwing things away.
Things that I still need for home:
- Rack shelving - kitchen and bathroom.
- Push pins for hanging art.
18 Jan 2018 |
Life
I was at Blick’s the other day. It’s like my candy store. They’ve got art supplies, some crafting supplies, and a lot of the cute stationery store stuff that I love. I picked up a box of Affirmation Cards, made by the awesome company, Knock Knock (makers of those hilarious checklist notepads). More than cartomancy, I guess I just love the idea of randomly drawn cards that make you reflect. These ones are great because they don’t take themselves too seriously, even given their positive self-affirming messages.
Omar told me about a deck created by Brian Eno, called Oblique Strategies. Its goal is to suggest different ways to think, in order to help you solve a problem. Decks used to be hard to find because of its limited print runs. It’s now being printed in its 5th edition, but still costs over $50 - yikes!
Message of the moment
Courage - No one is fearless. No one. But even though I’m not fearless, I am courageous. When fear shows up, I don’t run away from it. I use my courage to conquer it. My courage allows me to walk right up to that fear and kick it in the nuts - then quickly hide behind someone bigger until it goes away.
17 Jan 2018 |
Personal Development
I’ve cycled through several different apps in the past 2 weeks. Here are the ones that I’m currently using:
- Lifesum - I’m using this as a food log, water drinking log, and accountability tool for staying within my keto macros. The interface is nicer than MyFitnessPal, but some features are not ideal (recipe portioning, micronutrient tracking) and some features are not free (unlimited recipe entry, micronutrient display, body measurement tracking).
- Libby - For checking out ebooks/audiobooks from local libraries and reading/listening to them.
- Tinycards - Flashcards for reading Hiragana Katakana.
- JA Sensei - Writing practice for Hiragana & Katakana.
- Duolingo - The beta Japanese course has its flaws, but it’s useful for learning basic vocabulary and sentence structures.
- 30 Day Fitness Challenge - A series of simple bodyweight exercises over 30 days. It would feel more polished with real instead of computer generated voices, but hey it’s free!
These I’m trying to get in the habit of:
- Taskade - Chrome extension to easily create checklists and view them as your browser’s New Tba. It’s great because I’m in front of my work computer most of the week. There’s no mobile app so it’s not so great for when I’m not at work. It may be easier to organize and duplicate checklists than using GitHub… but maybe not.
- Simple Habit - For meditation. I’ve downloaded a few other meditation apps to try also.
- Seventh Sphere - For Lenormand deck reading. I find it helpful for contemplation.
- Asana Rebel or Down Dog - I’d like to practice yoga. I found it was a great all-in-one way to get low-impact exercise and meditation.
17 Jan 2018 |
Programming
Web app project idea - Keto diet tracker. None of the apps out there hit everything I want - clean UI, net carb tracking, custom entries/portion sizing, nice data visualizations, micronutrient tracking. This would be a great side project.
16 Jan 2018 |
Professional Development
I remembered a moment from dinner with a friend last week. She sent me info from her Harvard Business School mentor about figuring out your career priorities in order to plan out a career change.
Unfortunately the activity is behind a paywall, but the process of picking out values sounded familiar to me. Lo and behold, I’ve done the exercise from MindTools. Maybe it’s time to do something similar again. Google results showed this in depth list of analytical questions to Develop a Strategic Vision For Your Career Plan.