Month: April 2025

What to Do When There’s Nothing to be Done

When life hands you Blue Screens, all you need is a restart.

In the last month or so, I’ve had moments where the doing the smallest thing was a challenge. After a long day of work, I watch a news story about some new terrible decision the Trump administration has made or another tragedy across the world. It can be easy to feel powerless and like there is no point. It is in these moments that I am working on getting my reps in to just do the damn thing. Time and time again I’ve been wiped out after a long day only to find the small push of energy to do something.

Starting with the Self

While I’ve distanced myself from modern Stoicism, one idea that I think is important is understanding what aspects of life are within and beyond my control. There are some days that the only control I feel I have is my own body and my immediate surroundings. Thus, it’s important to do what’s best for those things. Occasionally, even the simplest of tasks feels like too much, and I have to flip the “do the damn thing” switch to get myself functioning.

One of the best momentum makers I’ve found is to simply get some movement in the day. I’ve been getting back into running now that the weather is getting warmer, but even a short walk is all it takes sometimes. I tend to spend upwards of an hour after work winding down, but have gotten into the habit of still getting out and getting in quality exercise most days. Whether it’s a run, climb or a lifting session, something is usually on the agenda.

Hydration and diet are the next easy steps to sort out. With consistent lifting over the last few months and an overdue cut phase, I’m the heaviest I’ve been in a few years. Trying to lose weight isn’t the easiest, but the first step is to start in the kitchen. Having a few easy recipes ready to roll has helped me make slow and steady progress while still maintaining strength in the gym.

From beyond the body, one of the best practices I’ve been working on is to ensure that my day ends with a solid reset. This involves getting my apartment tidied, and clean, with various items back in their place. It helps to get the next day started on the right foot. Keeping things generally organized also allows me to easily begin whatever it is I plan on doing at the time, be it cooking, relaxing with a game or writing up some paragraphs.

It’s funny how many times I think about how terrible I feel in a given moment and realize it’s probably because I had a terrible night’s sleep, then drank several cups of coffee but no water, and the room around me is a mess.

Action Outward

It can be easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless, especially when it’s other people whose lives are affected by the various decisions and policies being pushed lately. It’s much easier to sit on the couch, watch a YouTube video that agrees with my politics and think “wow that’s really bad. Good thing I have good beliefs and disavow the bad thing.”

I don’t think I’ve ever expressed my politics online or really in person much, but with some pretty heinous stuff lately, I guess I just need to put it out there. Arresting people for thought crimes, bypassing due process to deport legal immigrants and even US citizens alike and obliterating the recent progress many LGBTQIA+ people have made are just a glimpse of the social mayhem the Trump Administration has caused. Hell, for those who elected him for fiscal policies, he’s far from excelling there. There is no plan for tariffs attacking every country. Sure, there could be some merit for a protectionist policy for specific industries or incentives to “bring jobs back,” but with no plan for building that domestic capability all these tariffs have done is cause havoc.

I’m not a political analyst, so I’m sure there are some gaps in what I’ve laid out above, but all this to say, I think things happening from a federal political level are not just bad, they’re terrible. Life would be easier to just shrug my shoulders and say there’s nothing to be done. While I can’t change policies made, there’s always something to be done.

Getting out and volunteering is a good way to point that angst outward and try to do some good. A few years ago, my friend got me hooked on roller derby, and I’ve been lucky to have the time to volunteer for various events for the Chicago Team, the Windy City Rollers. Each time the experience is a lot of fun, be it selling merch at games or timing penalties during scrimmages. Putting my energy into something productive is always better than feeling bad on the couch. Just this past week, I had to force myself to get out and make it to a scrimmage after wavering on it throughout the work day. Once on the train into the city, I was excited to help out. This time around, I even got to learn a new officiating role, so that was really cool!

In local politics, I’ve started following the campaign of Kat Abughazaleh. I’ve joined the campaign’s Discord for the campaign, I’m keeping an eye out for local volunteer opportunities or events to get involved. Sure, an election is still be over a year away, but getting out and doing something with the energy is always better than nothing.

I mentioned in my last post, understanding what my local politicians are doing is something I’m looking to pursue. After voting at the beginning of the month, I’ve been trying to find a good source for keeping up with meetings, but came to the conclusion the best option will be to actually go to meetings. The only way to do that, will be to do the damn thing. Keep an eye out next month for what I learn along the way.

Learning Throughout Life

The Dubuque shot tower. A college friend once turned in a paper claiming the tower was used to fire cannons on ships in the Mississippi River. It was not.

The school system gets a lot of flack these days for its design and goals. Standardized testing, rigid coursework and rote memorization are pointed to as the cause of education’s failures. This is not a post specifically critiquing any kind of education systems. Looking back, I actually feel I excelled in this system. I was by no means a genius in the eyes of the school system, but I showed up, took my tests and got my diplomas. However, I feel like the thing I lacked in this system was genuine curiosity. Today, I have questions I seek answers to, but not the structure or system to encourage I actually do so.

Engaged in English

Memories of my time in high school are seldom of classes or coursework, but of the friends I made and various shenanigans I found myself in. There was one standout exception, my high school junior year English class. This class was notoriously challenging and gave reputation to its teacher, Mr. Kroc.

In all my years of learning at that point, I was able to float my way through the education system. Taking this class was, in my mind, just another rung in the long ladder of high school. This was the first class I ever felt it was up to me to care about learning.

English classes up to that point were largely built around reading a book and taking a test about what happened. I can’t recall any exploration of themes or deeper analysis of a work in those earlier classes. In Kroc’s class however, we read through a binder of curated poems and short stories. Classes were mostly open discussion about what a given piece meant. The symbols used, historic context and personal interpretation were all valid discussion points.

In one particular class, we were discussing a poem that I unfortunately can’t remember. The class was quiet save two guys ones offering any ideas, and at one point, Mr. Kroc just said something to the effect of, “well if no one else wants to have a discussion, just take a study hall.”

After a few minutes, a guy sitting nearby and I began discussion the poem, and we came up with some ideas. We walked up to Kroc’s desk and started telling him what we thought. He responded with a calm “you should have been willing to share earlier.” It was one of the first times I had to actually engage with a piece of literature and critically engage with my own ideas. I just had to be willing to share my thoughts with the class.

This was also one of the first classes I ever had to perform proper research. One of the handful of papers for the class was a submission in a Chicago area essay contest. Students were allowed to choose their topic with some guidance on scope and material from Mr. Kroc. I couldn’t say why, but I chose to pursue “Chicago’s impact on the 1960 election.” The best I can remember, it was likely believing in all kind of conspiracy with the mob’s connections and their effect on the election. I remember being incredibly bored and couldn’t say it was what I expected, but it was a question I wanted to pursue.

Going Away to College

As high school came to an end, I was off to college. Paying tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree and run cross country. The latter makes up the bulk of my college memories. Running was such an anchor for my time in college. It defined the people around me, how much time and energy I had and certainly the highs and lows of college.

The coursework I had was, at the time, second to running and spending time with my friends and teammates. There were a handful of classes that I enjoyed and remember fondly. Some for their material, others for the people I shared them with. As a business and economics major, my degree coursework wasn’t particularly difficult or about new challenging ideas. Something unique the college I went to, Loras College, offered was a set of courses they called “Advanced Gen Eds.” These were required classes built around a handful of theme with one set being the “Cluster,” a set of two Advanced Gen Eds taken in the same semester with a linked idea. For example, the cluster classes I took were Astronomy and Mythology and the Cosmos. The idea being a link between the stars and the stories behind them. These were always a nightmare for semester schedules, and I imagine most of my fellow students despised these at the time. Looking back, I do wish I invested a little more into these classes. I honestly can’t even remember the other three required Advanced Gen Eds I took without looking them up.

Entering college, my plan was to major in marketing. I had a genuine interest in the industry and it was an easy choice. I added the idea of business management and finance after talking with one of the captains of the cross country team, due to the overlap of courses needed across business majors, double and even triple majoring was a relatively simple process. My advisor at the time was one of the few Economics professors encouraged me to switch out my finance major with econ. This required more planning than the triple business major, but was still manageable.This deviation from my original plan was from a spark of real interest in the analysis side of economics.

My econ major even required me to write a thesis, another opportunity to explore a question of my own. I chose to research the effect of an at the time recent Obama era policy expanding unemployment benefits in response to the recession. I remember having a good time combing through government data and running some math analysis that would be a foreign language to me now.

While actually writing the paper and presentation side of my thesis was far less interesting, although it’s one of the handful of college coursework memories I remember deeply. I remember the actual spot in the library basement I sat until the early hours of the morning writing with a split screen playing the first season of Digimon for background noise.

Asking My Own Questions

These opportunities to search for answers to my own questions is the spark that created this blog. The research when I started was my own micro experiments, and the results were my own observations. I haven’t had the pull to return to any experiments or challenges, but I’ve been thinking more about questions that I lack the answers.

Years ago, I remember an episode of the Tim Ferris podcast in which the guest, Dropbox Founder Drew Houston, listed a handful of books he called his “course for aspiring executives.” I shelved them on Goodreads and only ever got to reading one of them. While my interests have diverged away from business subjects and material, the course concept of this list intrigues me. Taking a handful of high quality resources on a given subject and learn from them. Not just check off the to do, but understand and engage in the work.

As I mentioned, I didn’t really engage with many of the classes I took in college, even those I had genuine interest. I prepared for my tests, did the homework and got my degree. Creating my own “course” might just be what’s needed to reengage that part of my brain.

Here’s some questions to start. These may not have a “course” worth of investigation, but can maybe build up ideas and questions into a larger field of knowledge.

Here are a few ideas from the time of writing this post:

  1. What does my local government actually do?
    • Illinois has its local elections tomorrow, so I wish I thought of this one sooner. I’ve already cast my ballot for this cycle with the little information I found online, but hope to build a greater understanding for the long run.
  2. I managed to compile a few questions regarding philosophy.
    • Who are today’s philosophers? What are their key ideas?
    • What is the current philosophical movement?
    • I enjoyed many of the twentieth century post-modernists I’ve read. Are we still in the same overall movement? What causes a philosophy to become a while new movement?

Do you have answers for the above? Where or how did you learn them? What are the questions you will pursue your own answers?