Ryan – Page 2 – Trying Out Before Buying In

Climbing, Falling and Kingdom Hearts

Last summer I found solace after a tough climbing experience in one of my favorite pastimes, videogames. In particular, a great moment in Kingdom Hearts 3. A moment that I think defines what makes gaming great and definitely one of my favorite sequences as a player.

Lessons at the Gorge

A few years ago, my friends introduced me to rock climbing. While we mostly stick to the gym, every so often we make head to the outdoors for real rock climbing. In my experience, the feeling of ascending actual rock and stone is far superior to the artificial routes of the gym.

A common destination of ours is Red River Gorge, a region in Kentucky that’s popular for climbing. The area’s routes are was mostly set up for lead climbing, as compared to top rope climbing that I typically do in the gym. The difference between the two is the cost of a fall. In top rope, the rope is anchored at the top of the route, meaning a fall will only drop the climber the slack in the rope, which should be next to nothing. In lead, the rope is brought up by the climber and clipped into smaller anchors throughout the climb. This means a fall will take the climber to the last clipped in spot plus whatever slack is in the line. Slack is required to move above the current clip, so falls can be a big loss in progress. This climbing website has a good guide. I thought about just using their picture, but check out their site if you want to see it for yourself.

One of the specific challenges of climbing outdoors that setting the route. Lead, in particular, has a challenging setting process, as you need to place the clips the rope will go into as you make the initial climb. This process is pretty straight forward, as there are bolts in the wall for where to place the gear. The one spot that matters is the top anchor clips, as these need to be placed in a specific orientation for safety. On the bright side, once everything is placed, it’s now a top rope route for those who don’t want to lead.

After the climb is done comes the more complex part, taking everything down. Part of this process involves removing the rope that is holding you up. Before removing, you attach yourself to the top bolts to prevent taking a massive fall. Once the anchor clips are removed, you pass the rope through the existing anchor, often some chains, and lower down like a standard top rope climb.

The removal of gear is called cleaning and the process is a pretty fun one. The biggest challenge is often having the energy to climb back up after a long day of climbing. Being the spry young man I am, I was more than happy to clean as many routes as I could.

During the second route I ever cleaned, I had the joy of finding myself trapped at the top of the wall. Sand had gotten into the carabiner lock that held me at the top. Being unable to lower until detached, I was a little concerned. Remaining calm, a friend raised up a set of pliers with the grip needed to open the jammed lock. Upon being lowered, several friends commented on the calmness of my being stuck. The whole experience boosted my confidence that I might be pretty good at this whole climbing thing.

Meeting Miranda Rayne

The next day, we left camp for the gloriously named “The Shire,” a wall with a few routes new to our group.

After a challenging drive through some crazy backroads and hills, we arrived and began climbing. The first two routes were a lot of fun. Leading and setting them were relatively simple and we made our way across the wall to the route that inspired this post, Miranda Rayne.

It was a long way up, but I’ve been climbing well all weekend. At this point, I hadn’t fallen once, learned a lot and was feeling confident. Starting the climb wasn’t too bad. Around halfway up, I took my first fall. Just some fatigue, right? With a quick shakeout, I made my way back up and fell again. More tired, I tried again. And again. All the while, an experienced group of climbers arrived and flew up Miranda Rayne with relative ease just before I started my climb.

After a few more falls, I had to call it quits. I was exhausted and defeated. Luckily, the other group of climbers were kind enough to finish setting the route, so that my friends could experience the suffering – I mean enjoy the exciting challenge of Miranda Rayne, albeit on top rope.

While I can definitely laugh about it now, in the moment I was furious and disappointed with myself. How could I not climb this route? It should have been easy.

With some time to reflect and think about the climb, I felt more motivated to climb than ever. A big flaw in my current training was height. The gym I go to has 30 ft walls, which may sound large, but Miranda Rayne towers over the gym walls at 60 ft. Adding in the occasional double, climbing a route back to back was a nice way to work on climbing stamina.

Kingdom Hearts is Li…fe Changing

Before I can dive into the scene that inspired this post, I have to lay some groundwork. I don’t know if there’s a game series that I have more nostalgia, frustration and love for than Kingdom Hearts. This silly mashup of Final Fantasy and Disney somehow became a world wide sensation with over a dozen games and many meme-able moments. While I’ll largely be discussing my experience with the series, I do reference several specific plot points for the first and “third” games of the series, so consider this your spoiler warning.

In my youth, my dad would often take my siblings and I to Best Buy where my brother and I would pick a game and my sister would pick her own. My memory could be wrong, but I feel like Kingdom Hearts was a “sister pick.” The world, story and characters had me hooked from the first entry. Sora, the series protagonist, was the perfect insert for dumb kids ready to smack monsters with the legendary Keyblade – a sword that’s also a Key. There’s some interesting ideas they do with the weapon as a concept, but it’s also extremely literal. It tends to lock or unlock things.

Most of the game is gallivanting across several worlds based on Disney franchises like Tarzan, Aladdin and Peter Pan. However, the final worlds visited take a more serious and darker tone. Sora is betrayed by his best friend, Riku. After a challenging fight with Riku, now fully possessed by darkness, Sora makes a difficult choice to save another friend, Kairi. Sora sacrifices himself. He briefly dies, well at least the closest thing the first game offers as any indication of death. A challenging scene to take seriously as an adult seeing and hearing an incoherent Donald Duck rushing to our hero as he disappears into nothingness.

One resurrection and a SquareSoft multi-phase final boss fight later, the forces of darkness are defeated, for now. A plot thread that gets the story truly started is that worlds have been disappearing. Defeating the final boss releases those lost worlds, including the island Sora and his friends started this adventure. In an incredible ending sequence, Sora and Kairi stand on the ground of different worlds as they begin to pull apart. Sora chooses to stay behind to look for Riku and Mickey Mouse – if I explain that part I’ll never get this post finished. The island from the beginning of the game begins to reform around Kairi as a tear forms in her eye. I still remember crying after the end of the first game. Despite all his efforts, the fighting, and adventuring to find them, Sora is separated from his friends.

These games were a fundamental part of growing up for me. I remember getting Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, a spinoff game many fans didn’t know it existed due to its release on the Game Boy Advance. My brother and I traded in maybe a dozen games we no longer played and still had to beg our mom for like 10 bucks to buy the game. Even my early days on the internet were often spent on the KH Insider forums reading the latest fan theories for the story to come.

One challenge of being a Kingdom Hearts fan is the proliferation of spinoff and side games. Out of roughly a dozen entries, there are only three mainline numbered games in the series, with the major gap between these being Kingdom Hearts 2 and 3. KH2 was released in early 2005, and then six games across five different consoles were released before fans saw the “third” game hit shelves. In January of 2019, the world was finally able to play the finale of the “Seeker of Darkness” story-line which began in the first game.

Falling into Darkness

I, however, did not own a PlayStation 4 to play the game, nor did I feel that same pull to the franchise I once did. I had the chance to play a bit when I visited some friends and family who owned the game. Dropping into the middle of a story I hadn’t really touched in years left me thinking maybe I’d grown out of the franchise.

Five long years after it’s initial release, I finally felt the call and bought Kingdom Hearts 3. It helped that the games were finally released on Steam, the most popular platform for buying PC games.

After the long awaited first playthrough, I have some critiques. My first complaint is some minor nitpicks with the story. I feel there are a few missed opportunities. In particular, a potential theme of prophecy and overcoming fate is setup, but left unexplored. The scene I go into detail below is a good example of this theme not really paying off. A prophesied event is prevented, but there’s no exploration of the fact. The game just moves on to the next plot point.

My other complaint lay in the gameplay. With recently playing through Kingdom Hearts 2, I felt overwhelmed with combat options many of which felt very reactive. Its predecessor o the other hand, gives a selection of more proactive choices to handle various challenges and bosses. So much so, that great players can take on some of the games most challenging bosses with randomized abilities and tools and still come up on top.

Despite my issues with the game, I enjoyed my time with Sora and the gang. The writers know how to make certain moments hit, although we’re a long way from the simplicity of the first game. To briefly summarize the wild setup for Kingdom Hearts 3, the main villain, Xehanort, has moved through time to create 13 versions of himself to create a prophesied clash of 13 darknesses and 7 lights. The latter is of course our group of heroes, led by Sora. The forces of light and dark meet at an appropriate battleground, the Keyboard Graveyard, a wasteland with countless Keyblades stuck into the dirt. However, before this battle even begins, a monstrous wave of Heartless – creatures of darkness that serve as the main enemy throughout the series. Everyone dies – or more likely become Heartless like Sora did when he sacrificed himself in the first game. Seeing so many fallen friends, for the first time of the series, Sora gives up. In the aftermath, Sora dies. Like actually to dies this time, arriving in an afterlife not seen in the series before.

After a convoluted series of events, some time travel occurs and the heroes get one more chance to take on the darkness. Events begin repeating themselves, but this time moments before the end, a light flashes and a new character appears for just a few seconds. Sora is lifted by a whirlwind of Keyblades from the environment. This new character is Ephemer, a Keyblade wielder from long ago. His story takes place in a prequel game showing the events of which caused the Keyblade War, the event which created the graveyard the fated battle is now occurring. After being lifted by hundreds of Keyblades, a sequence begins with a familiar button prompt, but this one is slightly different.

The prompt shows the username of a player – not a character but a human player – from the aforementioned prequel. In the lore of the game, Keyblade Wielders from eons past are helping Sora overcome the massive wave of Heartless. In reality, it’s just a list of names, but the designers elevated names to the key to success. It is because of these players, we are able to overcome what was once a defeat.

The build up and payoff of this amazing sequence had me tearing up. Moments like this are why I love videogames. While all I’m doing is pressing a button over and over again, the storytelling and game play come together to craft this connection between fans of this series to bring our hero out from the lowest we’ve ever seen him.

Tying it All Together

Failure and defeat are inevitable in life, especially when trying new and challenging things. Wallowing in that failure is the only way it can truly be defeat.

Other people are a great way to bounce back, no matter how deep in the pit one may be. I am lucky to have a great group of friends that pick me up no matter how low I might fall – sometimes literally.

The Year of Swing

As revealed in the tail end of my last post, 2025’s theme is “Swing.” This theme is certainly up there for odd naming, but it’s one that has me very excited. To break down swing, I’ll use two symbols, a baseball bat and a swing set. Both things swing, but in different ways.

You Gotta Swing the Bat

FLCL, or Fooly Cooly, is a long time comfort show of mine. At only six episodes, it’s a frequent rewatch for me. The show packed of wild ideas that can be interpreted for deeper meaning or simply cool things the creator likes. An episode I never appreciated much was one centered around baseball, as my primary association with baseball is being like 6 years old and crying a lot.

It wasn’t until a recent rewatch that I learned to love the episode, not for the baseball, but what playing meant for the main character, Nauta. To summarize his growth in the episode, he is afraid to swing for a pitch, as he believes he will never live up to expectations of an older brother who became a professional player in America – the show is an anime taking place in a nameless town in Japan. At the end of the episode, when a satalite is falling towards the city, he finally finds the confidence in himself to swing the bat – well at this point it’s a guitar, again it’s a wild show.

Thinking about this episode, I want to embody that growth. Look for opportunities to take the swing. I’ve been using my recent move to my apartment as an example. As soon as I found and liked the place, I quickly took the steps to get settled in. I don’t know what opportunities await me in the year ahead but know I’ll need to swing for the fences if I want to accomplish anything great.

Making Momentum

While there were definitely areas I didn’t accomplish as much as I’d hoped with “The Process,” I’m happy with how some major life aspects shaked out, particularly health and fitness. Coming into the new year, I wanted 2025’s theme to involve maintaining momentum in some areas. Not committing to keeping up the exact same pace, but at least holding on to some of the gains made throughout 2024.

Swing was already one of many possible themes I’d written down while brainstorming ideas, and then it hit me. The visual of a playground swing. The idea of building up momentum and then being able to coast for a while with much less effort. Once I had this visual in mind, I knew Swing was the theme.

I will use that metaphor to keep track of the various areas in my life. What things need momentum? What can carry out on it’s own for a while? What do I need to cut momentum to?

Better Bumpers

Another result of last year was that I found I need to create some better accountability systems to stay on track. To continue the use of recreation metaphors, I’ve been picturing the bumpers at a bowling alley. They won’t guarantee a strike, but at least the ball won’t get stuck in the gutter.

In the past, I had a weekly breakfast with friends that was great. It was a nice way to start off the week catching up, and at the end of the meal, we would set a goal to complete for the week. If someone didn’t complete that goal, they would have to pick up the bill.

At this time, I haven’t found a good substitute for that routine, but I have a much lower stakes alternative. At the beginning of the year, I started an email thread with my brother. I sent what I’m hoping to do in January. For example, exercise at least three times a week and write the two blog posts for yearly themes were ideas I had off the bat. When the month comes to an end, I’ll reply with what actually happened and what I’m hoping for February. This not only provides me with a way to share what I’m planning to do with a low stakes audience, but also provides me a log to look back on for what actually happened throughout the year. I’m sure I’m not alone when it comes to December and can’t remember half the things I did that year.

Targets

To wrap up this post, here are some of the areas I want to work on this year.

For one, I want to get back to writing. With two posts in the last month, I’d like to aim for at least a single post published per month. This is less than a quarter of what I used to write, but many times what I’ve regularly written the last couple of years.

Looking back to more things I used to do, another area I’ve fallen off recently is running. While I’ve done some short runs here and there, it’s looking like time for another marathon. Training for distance can be a lot of fun, but just very time consuming. During my last marathon, I wasn’t worried about a goal time. However, I’ve since lost my automatic qualifying time for the Chicago Marathon and would like to get that back. Luckily, while I originally planned on running Chicago this year, I accidentally missed the registration period anyway.

As for something that’s a little more on the fun side, I’ll continue to work on the various backlogs of games, movies and other entertainment that I made good progress on last year. It’s never something that will be “completed,” because I’ll want to experience new things all the time. At the end of the day, it’s a fun way to keep track of it all. I briefly mentioned it when first introducing the backlog idea from Daryl Talks Games, but the part I love the most is taking time to write down my thoughts on a piece of media shortly after experiencing it. This piece is what I find keeps the desire to continue the idea in the long run. I’ve never been great at public reviews like Goodreads or Letterboxd, but this place to write out whatever ideas come to mind with a piece is important.

Here’s to a new theme and a new year ahead of me. Thank you for reading.

Packing Up the Process

I don’t know why, but I felt like this picture summed up the year.

Thus concludes another year in themes. Looking at the year as a whole, 2024’s year of “The Process” had some mixed results. I feel like where I excelled was in what I consider baseline activities, but lagged in areas that are more developmental. To use some examples, I was very consistent with health and fitness, but lacked in reading and writing throughout the year.

Overall, the year was incredible though. I learned a lot, did some traveling and still found time to enjoy myself in the little things – okay maybe too much time enjoying myself.

Number Go Up

Runescape is a game I’ve been familiar with for decades now, but never got into it. I remember trying out the game in middle school, but it never clicked. By the time Runescape was gaining popularity, I was playing World of Warcraft, a very different MMO mechanically and visually.

That all changed when about a year ago, I found myself in the Old School Runescape side of the YouTube algorithm. To briefly summarize over a decade of changes. In 2013, Runescape released a version of it’s game from a backup of the game back in 2007. The community felt the game at the time, referred to as Runescape 3, departed too much from the game they knew and loved. After it’s “Old School” release, the game not only stayed in that same vision of what the game was in 2007, but new content was added ever since. The game now has a massive community.

Enter Settled, a major player in the OSRS challenge run YouTube scene. His various series where he takes the basics of the game but restricts himself in some odd way. His videos sucked me into the game with the stories he crafted and somehow even made the game’s clicking based UI…dare I say engaging?

If I had to sum all the hours I spent doing anything, playing Old School Runescape would dwarf everything, including sleep and work. This game became my life for several months of the year.

Here I am, about a year later now, much more casually playing, but still hopping on here and there. The OSRS community often refers to the game as a “second monitor” game, as much of the game requires little attention. This is where all those hours come in. I can’t begin to count up the time I spent grinding Slayer while reading through One Piece – more on this later.

Other Games

A big item from my post for the year’s theme was playing more games from my backlog, and luckily OSRS didn’t pull all my time and attention from gaming.

After 5 years of waiting, Kingdom Hearts III, the conclusion of the series’s Dark Seeker Saga, was finally released on Steam, and I bought it on release. I waited 5 years to play the game, but it was actually 19 years of waiting since a mainline entry in the series. Kingdom Hearts II was released in 2005, and while the series had many, MANY spinoff games further developing its memeably convoluted story, this was the final chapter in a nearly 20 year old story.

The game was far from perfect, I loved my time back in this world. While the game ends with a cliffhanger teasing a whole new slew of questions, the journey throughout was an emotional trip. If one word best describes the series it would be earnest. I actually started drafting up a post shortly after beating the game, as one of it’s moments in fact had me in tears. Thinking about it again, I want to dust off that draft and get something out, because I need to talk about that moment again.

I revisited older Kingdom Hearts games as nearly the entire series was released on Steam. Going back to the series’ beginning was a great time. I even picked up the red-headed step child of the series, Chain of Memories. I enjoyed this one more than expected. The card combat certainly has it’s challenges, defensive options are terrible for example, but working in the constraints of the game was fun while I played through it.

Outside of Kingdom Hearts, I finally tackled a number of great Indie Games that have long been on my list. Return of the Obra Dinn was an incredible detective tale set on what can best be described as a ghost ship that washes into the harbor. An incredible tale of tragedy is slowly unveiled as the player is able to view moments of the crew. Tragedy is how I see the fate of the Obra Dinn, but the snippets that are shown are so little, that any person could have a completely different reading on the story that unfolds.

In the world of amazing detective games, Paradise Killer was a great time. The vibes are very different than Obra Dinn, offering a seaside version of heaven in which you play as a once exiled detective to investigate the murder of the leaders of this weird and cool form of paradise. The music and visuals offer this fun, funky neon aesthetic that is a blast to explore.

On the note of great vibes, Neon White is one of my favorite games now. A game all about going quick – also takes place in a version of heaven. In this game, you play as a “neon” a sinner brought up from hell to kill demons that have made their way into heaven. The story is pretty good, if you can put up with some of the “anime bullshit” with a cast of characters you’ll love or hate, but this game can’t be beat in gameplay. The goal is to go fast and that’s it. Learning how to move through a level by repeating it over and over is an itch I didn’t know I have until Neon White got me scratching.

Finally, not sure where to fit this in, but I got a tattoo this year! In the past, I’ve mentioned that Final Fantasy IX is a game that influenced me greatly. This year, I decided to ink that influence on body with images of Vivi and Kuja, two characters who have parallel conflicts in the game.

More Entertainment!

Gaming isn’t the only thing I spent hours of my life in 2024. Reading was a struggle this year, I really only finished like 2 and a half books, I’ve read so much manga.

After hearing many recommendations, I finally checked out DanDaDan. I caught up in a manner of a few weeks. This story is incredible. The characters grow into such great people. The anime released at the tail end of the year, and it’s become a contender for one of my favorites. The team behind it did a great job bringing the pages of the manga to life in animation.

On the subject of animation, Beat and Motion is a story I mentioned in the last post as an inspirational piece about pursuing your dreams. I’ve kept up with this throughout the year as well, and the story has not disappointed. Moments from the characters’ lives as creators is told so well. How do you deal with a negative reaction to a work you spent months of your life pouring blood sweat and tears into? What happens when details of your personal life are leaked to the press?

After catching up on DanDaDan and Beat and Motion, I decided it was time I took on the behemoth of shonen stories, One Piece. I got sucked in more than I expected, though admittedly, the most recent arc I started has been a lot less interesting than previous ones. Though, I’m doing my best to stick through, as I’ve heard there’s some incredible stuff down the road. Only like 1200 chapters to go, and then I’m almost caught up!

Games and reading aren’t the only media with stories I loved in 2024, I watched some incredible movies this year.

I went into Everything Everywhere All at Once with high expectations, and they were still shattered. This movie hits every feeling on the emotional spectrum. The tone goes from goofy to gut wrenching and back again in mere frames. If you still haven’t watched this film, please do yourself the service of watching this one.

While on the surface it looks like a harder sell, RRR is possibly one of the greatest film experiences I’ve ever had. This movie is just so cool. It is 3 hours, the hard part of the sell, but it is an incredible 3 hours. At least watch the Naatu Naatu scene, and you’ll know if this film is for you.

So Did I Actually Do Anything?

Somewhat in line with the idea of The Process, most of what I’m proud of was the boring stuff.

Work, for better or worse, was a big focus for the year. A massive project took a lot of time and attention, but we were able to get through the finish line with only a few issues on the other side.

While certainly not work, at times I felt more pressure to do things right while volunteering for the Windy City Rollers derby organization. A friend of mine got me hooked on Roller Derby a couple years ago, and 2024 I went from fan to volunteer. The opportunities to meet so many people in the organization have been a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to getting more involved as time goes on!

I was very consist in my fitness routine. I’ve been the strongest in climbing that I’ve felt since I’ve started. Taking lifting more seriously almost definitely helped. I got a separate gym membership, since the climbing gym’s weight lifting area is pretty sparse. Regularly lifting has been a huge boost in confidence and has – in my non-medical professional opinion – lessened a few chronic issues I’ve had. Strengthening a few muscles, in particular my hamstrings, basically eliminated a bad case of anterior pelvic tilt I’ve long struggled through. This is where your hips tilt slightly forward due to tightness of some muscles and weakness in others.

Travel!

To put a pin in the year, I was lucky enough to go on some incredible trips this year.

Over the summer, some friends and I returned to Red River Gorge in Kentucky to climb, hike and just be outside. I’ve been to RRG once in the past, but I was a newer climber and the weather was pretty bad when we went. This year, was hot, but at least it didn’t rain for multiple days. This trip was a great time. With being a much more confident climber, I did a lot of lead climbing outside for the first time. I also learned how to set and clean the routes we climbed.

When you arrive to a climbing spot where lead is intended, there’s just some bolts in the wall. To set things up, you need to place your gear into those bolts. After you’re done climbing, you need to take that gear out. Setting it up isn’t difficult, just climb and place, but cleaning is where things get kind of scary. You are in a sense removing your safety devices while at the top of the wall. To perhaps oversimplify, you clip yourself into the top bolts while you untie and retie the rope in a way that can be removed. I had the wonderful experience of some sand jamming a carabiner clipped into that bolt, trapping me at the top of the wall for what felt like 15 minutes. As you can tell from this post existing, I did eventually get down, but what I found funny was my friends’ responses after I came down pretty calm. Every one of them basically said, “thank God that wasn’t me cause I would have freaked out.”

This trip was amazing, but it did have one sour spot and that was “Miranda Rayne,” a route that deflated my confidence throughout the weekend. The bright side was that it actually sparked me wanting to get better. Miranda should feature in that aforementioned Kingdom Hearts III post, as there were some thematic overlap in those two closely occurring events.

After some time at home after RRG, I was able to check a long running to do item I’ve had which was to visit some friends out in Seattle. It has been a very long time since I’ve been out west, so once I found the time, I booked my flights almost immediately. It had been a while since I’d spent time with these friends, so it was great to see their place, as well as a great hike to see some waterfalls.

After jumping around the States for the summer, I was off to Europe in the fall. On what seemed to be a whim, my friend Mike invited me to join him to Belgium and Luxembourg. This was my first time back to Europe since 2019, so I was excited to go to many new places.

Belgium was a great time. The beer was excellent, the sights were beautiful and the history was fascinating – even the sewer museum was shockingly engaging. Luxembourg, however, was the sleeper hit for me. Prior to visiting, I didn’t know much about the small country except that it’s a small country in central Europe, I was blown away by both the city and countryside. For one, it has incredible public transportation. A series of buses – that are completely free might I add – can take you across the country. They were on a consistent schedule and ran long into the evening, though we did miss our last bus our first night out giving us an excuse to walk around the city.

The Eastern countryside of Luxembourg was gorgeous. We stayed in Echternach and hiked to other towns nearby. Taking one of those incredible buses back to Echternach. We hiked only a few routes of the Mullerthal Trail. Returning and seeing more of those incredible sights is definitely on my bucket list. The town is right on a river bordering Germany, so thanks to Europe’s lax travel policies, we even took a brief trip into Germany, as I’ve never been prior to that. When I say brief, I mean we crossed the river, said “we’re in Germany,” and walked back.

Finally the food in both countries. My goodness the food was so good. Mike is incredible at finding great restaurants, in fact he found the restaurant we went to for my brother’s bachelor party that was one of the best meals stateside I’ve had. In Europe, we had a selection of great tasting menus, including an incredible sushi experience at Amatsu in Ghent, which makes an appearance in a Michellin guide although not having any Michellin stars. The latter fact probably helped keep the price reasonable, but the experience was worth much more. The selection of sushi was great, the chef came by to discuss each piece and each course built up to a great meal. Sushi in Europe probably wasn’t the expected food, so to blast off a few other great places, Ribs & Beer in Bruges says all you need to know with a name like that. La Grappe d’Or in Echternach felt like a place I didn’t belong, but the staff were welcoming and the food was even better. La Grappe was home to the best individual food item I had the entire trip, a perfectly cooked duck breast.

Ending on a High Note

As the year came to a close, I made the biggest change in years, I moved! After 3 years of living with one of my best friends, I made the long move to…down the street. Not very far, but it’s farther than across the hall! The change has been pretty nice. I’m close enough that none of my major routines were affected by the move. I have the same grocery stores, gyms, and hell I even do my laundry at the old place out of convenience and an excuse to spend time with my old roommates. The added space gives me room to spread out. Instead of having my bed, computer desk and TV in a small bedroom, I’ve spread out across an apartment.

I knew moving out was on the horizon, but my old landlord, or “landpal” as he dubbed himself, was very cool about the arrangement. There was no pressure to move out after we gained an additional roommate, his girlfriend. We had some great times living together for the few months with the 3 of us, but when I found the apartment, I knew it was the right pick for the near future. I was looking into maybe buying a place, but nothing really called to me as the place I wanted to own. Buying a place may be in the cards soon, but for now, I’m more than happy to settle into this apartment for now.

2024 was a great year and I’m interested to see what 2025 has in store. While the first couple of weeks haven’t offered much indication of how things will go, there is so much potential! The theme for 2025 is already in place, and more to come on that in the next week or so, but for the time being know that 2025 is the year of Swing.

The Year of The Process

We’re all getting to where we need to be at our own pace.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about what I want my theme for 2024 to be. A theme should feel that it’s just the right thing. Looking back on the last few years’ themes, I was building up to the things I wanted to do with my life. With Foundation, I wanted to set a baseline of habits and systems for myself. With Intention, I determined my desires. When it comes to 2024, I believe the the best guidance I can hope for is “The Process.” With the process, I’m focusing on the execution. Doing the work or letting go of the goal. Working through my the items I need to complete. And finally, taking the time to fix the little speed bumps and annoyances in my day to day life.

Live the Lifestyle

This piece is the part I really wanted to pin down this year. I mentioned in the first post for intention that I have a bad habit of coming up with ideas but making little progress with them. As last year was coming to an end, I considered focusing on deadlines or specific milestones to reach throughout this year, but what all I really should be focusing on is the work that needs to be done. The small actions day after day that slowly build up to a completed work or project.

The bigger idea or goal sounds great, but if I’m not doing the work needed, what does it matter? I’ve been coming back to this piece of advice from author James Clear’s newsletter from a while back. He wrote:

“It doesn’t make sense to continue wanting something if you’re not willing to do what it takes to get it.

If you don’t want to live the lifestyle, then release yourself from the desire. To crave the result but not the process, is to guarantee disappointment.”

Living with too many ideas is overwhelming. What do I really want to do? Of those, what do I want to work on now? The best answer to those is the one for which I want to live the lifestyle.

There’s another piece of media that has me truly inspired to get back into the creative chair. It contains a similar piece of philosophy to the advice above. The manga series Beat & Motion follows an artist who is getting back into his passion of drawing after quitting as a child. He recognizes his need to put in extremely hard work and practice to simply keep up with those with greater talent.

The spark of his return is a chance encounter with a friend of a friend. After he mocks his friend’s passion, she berates him and kind of threatens to throw him into traffic. After the encounter, he decides to animate a music video for his favorite artist, who just so happens to be the very girl who chewed him out. The story is ongoing, but I’ve been enjoying the early chapters I’ve read so far. There’s a balance between the daily grind, practice and improvement alongside dreaming up the big ideas to motivate and provide guidance to the next goal.

There’s only a little over 20 chapters out now, so catching up is definitely on my to do list. Speaking of which…

Inbox Outbox

I, like many of us, have accumulated too much stuff. I don’t mean in the physical material sense, though that can use some work too, but mostly in a mental tracking sense. I have emails to review, books, comics and articles to read, chores to complete, games to play, movies and TV shows to watch, ad infinitum. All of these things slowly pile up in inboxes everywhere.

Inboxes are the places where we shove the things that “need to be processed.” Emails, folders, stacks of mail, shelves, even something like YouTube’s “Watch Later” feature. Those are all things that need to be handled later.

While I want to make progress on these lists and inboxes, I don’t want to have pressure to “get through these as soon as possible.” I feel it’s antithetical to my vision for “the process” which is both do and to enjoy the activity in question. I mentioned in the end of the Year of Intention post, Daryl Talks Games’s backlog spreadsheet. I’ve taken this and started to add the games, books, etc. that I want to enjoy. A warning Daryl gave viewers against using a system like this was setting a hard deadline of completing a backlog. I want to have this as a fun way to help me pick games I’ve wanted to play but for one reason or another haven’t gotten around to yet. So far, I’ve just taken my Steam Wishlist and what I already own and am already pushing 200 entries. This is before adding in games I’ve already played but want to take a more critical look at, especially those I played as a kid.

These systems aren’t bad in of themselves, they exist for a reason, but letting them get out of hand means there is an ever growing list of stuff. As that list grows, there’s an ever worsening choice paralysis of what to do at a given moment. Instead of just picking something and enjoying it, I have to try to pick the right thing.

My focus lately has just been doing whatever calls to me at that moment. I’m trying to avoid paths well traveled, but am not fighting it if that’s what I’m feeling at the time. Better to be enjoying myself than stressing about if I’m working on the right piece of entertainment.

Little Tweaks for Big Improvements

This last piece is the dark horse of what I came up with for the process, and I’m already seeing massive gains in my daily life. What I’m looking to do is focus on fixing an annoyance or problem as quickly as I can. Doing this in just the last few weeks has led to me solving several small annoyances that I’ve been dealing with for years.

Some of these have been quick one or two minute fixes like changing a setting on my computer to stop my mouse constantly waking my computer from sleep mode. Others have been “inbox” to-dos for years. For example, I broke a staple gun years ago and kept meaning to fix it. The other day I spent about an hour and a half working on it until it was fixed. It was probably the most rewarding feeling I’ve had in ages.

The spark for this one came while visiting my brother and his wife, I noticed this shelf in their kitchen. When I got home, I looked at this section of the kitchen counter. I’ve long hated that spot because it was just this awkward separate piece from the rest of the counter, and it just kind of gathered stuff.

I asked about the shelf, and it turned out to be called a baker’s rack. Later that day, I ordered one, and then set it up as soon as it arrived. I’m loving it now, and so is my roommate. It has shelves for all the things we frequently use that were once buried in cabinets or other rooms. With that huge quality of life improvement, I’ve been looking out for other areas that I run into these frustrations.

I could keep going with examples, but perhaps I’ll save what I’ve gotten done as the year progresses. Having an idea in mind for a future post might help my publish more than two posts this year!

Finding these little improvements is something I somewhat started a couple years ago with automation, and I hope to leverage what I learned from that experience to improve my life.

ATTN: Intention

The year of intention has come to a close, and I have mixed feelings about it now that I am looking back. With only a single post made, the declaration of that theme, I feel guilty that I didn’t write more. Rereading that post, I find it funny that the end of 2022 year is when I drifted from my prior theme. As this year, I’m pulling myself back into the theme with the middle months being where I faded from acting with intention. Even in that unfocused time, I made progress in a variety of areas, and from it I think there is something to be learned.

When I sat down to put this together, I was at first disappointed in what I felt I accomplished for the year. However, is no failing at a theme. Using the lens of Intention in reviewing my year, I actually found some interesting insights.

What is a Yearly Theme?

To provide a primer for any unfamiliar. The yearly theme is a concept I discovered from the Youtuber CGP Grey. Instead of resolutions or even specific goals, a year is guided by a specific idea referred to as the yearly theme. Myke, the cohost of Grey’s podcast Coretx, uses the metaphor that a theme is a North Star. It’s a guide for decision making, not a destination.

In Grey’s theme video, he uses the examples of The Year of Reading or Health. Rather than “reading X books” the focus may start with books, but could shift to include reading articles, academic papers or interviews. This replaces a success or fail condition, with a focus on general improvement with what will actually work at a given time. One doesn’t fail the theme of reading by not hitting a specific number of books, but can be happy to see that much was learned by finding what they wanted to read.

Did someone say foreshadowing?

Objectives of Intention

In my last post, I pointed to three things I wanted out of the year of intention. I have mixed feelings about how these ended up, especially the first. The objectives I pointed to are:

Read 40 books with a financial incentive on the line.
Find my purpose
Be more present and aware of my attention

I find it funny that I ended up declaring a specific reading goal since that was the example used by the video for why goals aren’t ideal. As the year came to an end, I made a mad sprint to finish the 10+ books needed in December. While I did hit that goal, I avoided a lot of other things that I wanted to in order to hit this arbitrary number.

What I want to focus on is less my declaration of a book count and dive into more what I think I wanted when I set this at the beginning of the year. The key piece to this was adding stakes to not doing something I’ve set out to do. I’ve long been guilty of sharing ideas or plans with no commitment to delivering. Taking a goal from past years that I’ve been close to completing, reading 40 books, and adding an incentive was a way of testing the efficacy of adding this element.

I have mixed feelings on how effective this incentive structure actually was. On one hand, I did complete the 40 book goal. I read more books in the last weekend of the year than I did in some entire months.. On the other hand, it’s led to me putting off other things so that I can read an arbitrary number of books. When I made the decision in January, I was hoping that the cost of not reading would inspire me to stay on top of my goal throughout the year, but in the end, it’s turned into a mad dash to the get to the finish line.

The next two I find more interesting to investigate. The concept of finding a purpose was one of the big things I wanted to take away from this year. In the last few years, I’ve had a number of visions for where I wanted to be in life. Ranging from business ideas to the people in my life, I’ve floated around the same handful of ideas of what I wanted to do, but rarely put in even the minimal effort of making these vision a reality.

In terms of presence and awareness, I found myself on the opposite side of this coin. Allowing myself to fall into the traps of algorithms, clickbait and a desire for distractions, looking back I can see the pitfalls of what led me into those things.

In both presence and purpose, I found myself coming back to the need for stronger systems to protect me from my impulses.

Distractions and Detriments

Looking back on the year, it was sometime around March or April, I dropped the habits and systems I followed for years at that point including my long running weekly review. There wasn’t an exact reason or inspiration to stop, one day I just found myself thinking, “why do I keep doing all of this stuff?”

I spent more and more time watching YouTube, going through the motions and not really thinking about what I was doing. I kept trying to get myself back on track simply writing the things I needed to do. I even tried putting together an ideal schedule for every day and even a high level plan for the remainder of the year after watching this Ali Abdaal video. Of course, this too fell to the wayside as my time became less and less focused.

A major change in the middle of the year was my purchase of a Steam Deck during the summer. The Steam Deck is a handheld gaming device similar to the Nintendo switch, however it’s really a handheld computer designed to play games from Valve’s PC gaming platform Steam.

Having this device led me to play a lot more games this year. Some were good experiences. Some were great games. Others were too good and led to some late nights going for one last round when I should have been asleep.

Inaction in Action

To end this off on a positive note, looking back on the year, I’ll share some examples of how I felt I succeeded in my vision for intention.

I had the privilege of giving a speech at my brother’s wedding. I had a loose idea of this speech written down for years. They were one of those couples you just knew they would be engaged at any time. When I dusted the draft off to start the real thing, it needed work. It had no real flow or direction and felt really flat. Thinking about the couple, I came to the themes of patience and ambition being something I saw in them individually and their relationship. Quoting some moments from my experiences with both of them and finishing things off with a quote from the writer Rainer Maria Rilke in which I actually disagreed with the writer’s premise. “Marriage is difficult and those who take it seriously are those who suffer and learn,” just feels like a little to intense for a wedding reception. Funny enough, I actually missed a whole section, as I was speaking from memory with only a few notes, my preferred method of speech delivery. The part I found funny was it felt so important while I was writing it late the night before, but just keeping it moving it felt natural. It’s not like anyone would have even noticed if I didn’t announce that I forgot where I was in the speech.

In October, I completed the Chicago Marathon for a second time. The time was a little slower than I was hoping, but was still happy with the result of 3:06:25. A ran 2:57 a couple years ago, so was hoping to keep the sub three hour streak. In another area of fitness, I competed in my first climbing competition. Competed is perhaps a strong word…let’s say participated. I was climbing problems, what climbers call the specific routes in bouldering, around the middle of the range for the group I was in. Once again, this was about what I expected from a performance perspective. What I enjoyed was being part of a community event with a lot of other climbers I’ve seen in the gym for years now.

As I mentioned, I played a lot more games than usual this year. Along with those games, I read more books then ever. With a group of friends, I watched plenty of movies – we worked our way through the Fast and Furious films for the release of Fast X. In consuming all of this media, I’ve juggled different apps from Goodreads to Letterboxd. These are useful as social media, but I don’t think they are the best for actually consolidating an ever growing list of media backlogs. That’s where Daryl Talks Games’s gaming backlog spreadsheet comes to help. Daryl released a video late last year and just released his followup after completing his backlog. The system is a simple Google Docs spreadsheet. I took his format and created new tabs for movies, books, TV and even board games. The most important element in my opinion is a separate tab that is simply a place to quickly jot down thoughts on a given piece of media. Simply writing down some thoughts helps to immortalize an experience.

Finally, one of my favorite experiences this year was working on a month long game jam with my friend Jack. He and I worked pretty hard on it, only to find I had misunderstood the exact time of the deadline for the jam – I blame timezones. After a push to wrap up a few final bugs and work out an actual objective for the prototype, I found out the submission deadline was predawn. The theme of the jam was anti-capitalism, so we focused on the process and didn’t want to stress or crunch on it. Finding out that I had screwed up the deadline left us with only the experience we gained along the way.

Working on games has always been a lot of fun and fulfilling. When it comes to the purpose element of this year, I definitely see making games as a part of that, even if I maintain it purely as a hobby.

The Year of Intention

I took a lot of inspiration from my friend Adam who spent last year taking his photography to the next level.

Despite the outcome of 2022’s final months, I still believe in the potential of the yearly theme. Having a single concept to drive goals, ideas and action can eliminate distractions and set priorities. After the year of Foundation petered out, the word Intention was the first that came to mind. With this theme for the year ahead, I hope to act more decisively, set a functional schedule and prioritize my ever expanding list of goals.

Resetting and Moving Forward

While the year of Foundation started off well, the latter part of the year didn’t live up to my expectation. It took a few weeks into this year, but I’ve set myself back on the right path. Returning to weekly reviews, monitoring habits and writing these posts are just the start.

Looking on the year behind, there were several mistakes I made along the way.

Goodreads goal of 40 books. I’ve done this multiple years in a row where I’ve gotten so close, but fell off pace in the middle of the year. I’ve set some stakes this time around. If I fail to hit my goal, I’ll be giving my brother $100. I might change up where the money goes, possibly using a tool like stickk or donating to a charity, but at the end of the day I’ll be out $100 if I don’t make my goal.

I’m planning on a similar approach for other action oriented goals, but am still deciding where I want to focus.

Finding my Purpose

This is a silly question all of us ponder at least once in our lives. For me it’s been a rotating answer for the last ten or so years. If you asked me to answer what I wanted to do with my life, I would have given a different answer dating back to my senior year of high school. After several milestones in my life (college, first jobs, new cities, and so on), the answer changed at an increasing rate.

At one point, I looked into opening an escape room, and another I considered making a waterless soap for anti-car commuters. All of these ideas exist in an ever expanding library in the back of my mind. While none of them are eternally off the table, the constant pivoting has led to a rare feeling of progress anywhere.

I’m turning the big 30 this year, and while that’s far from a death sentence, it’s definitely a milestone. Donald Glover has a joke in his standup about reaching your 30s,

Once you get around your 30s, that’s who you’re gonna be for the rest of your life pretty much. If you’re a conservative and you’re in your 30s, you’ll probably be a conservative the rest of your life. If you’re a liberal in your 30s, you’ll probably be a liberal the rest of your life.

The rest of the joke takes a turn about blowjobs, but I don’t think it detracts from the above message. I fear getting caught in this spiral of pivoting is a habit I’d like to break before it becomes “who I’m gonna be for the rest of my life.”

This year, I want to not only find an area of intent, but make it my priority. Perceptive long time readers may have noticed that the URL of this blog has changed. No longer the mouthful “tryingoutbeforebuyingin.xyz” I’ve “rebranded” to QRyguy.com. More on the name and what it means in a future post. The intent behind the change is to use this site as more than a blog, but a homepage and portfolio of the things I am working on. With the pressure of public facing progress, I want to make more substantial progress on specific goals.

Intent in the Moment

Intention not only includes the big picture ideas, but acting in the moment with intention. A part of last year’s theme, Foundation, I created an ideal schedule for a week, day and even hour. As I fell into the funk of the end of the year, those schedules collected dust.

I don’t expect to stick to these schedules by the minute, but having a frame for how I should spend my time should help from getting lost. If I plan to go to the gym certain days of the week, that helps plan recovery days, meals, evening plans, and so forth. Setting a few key tasks can help decide surrounding tasks as well.

Speaking of time, I’ve found myself relying heavily on algorithmic content for entertainment and learning. Algorithms can be useful for discovery or reduce decision making, but relying on them can be a dangerous way to waste an afternoon. Doom scrolling for something to watch or read is a dangerous time sink. Going forward, I hope to be cognizant of how I engage in content, both sought out and algorithmically presented. Whenever I find myself doom scrolling, I need a plan or fallback if I spend too long searching for that perfect item.

You can say it’s sad that this much mental attention is spent on scrolling through YouTube or Twitter, but these websites are designed to keep our eyes on the page. I’ve fallen victim to the algorithms’ snares far too many times and want to create a plan for next time I find myself in their court.

The year of Intention is off to a good start. Thinking about things critically has me ready for tomorrow, the next day and beyond. I hope to have a clearer focus by the end of the month and can’t wait to share my progress with you.

Back in the Saddle

Caught off guard during one of the many trips in my downtime. Photograph by Adam Varnas

This post has been on my to-do list for the last few months. Each week that passed was another dose of embarrassment for being away from writing for so long. The new year is upon us, and of course that puts pressure to put the previous year’s mistakes behind us and start anew.

On Foundation

As prior readers know, last year began my attempt to apply the concepts of a yearly theme, as opposed to new years resolutions. I came upon the idea of foundation, envisioning the process of developing a good base of operation in my life when it comes to my health, habits, and relationships.

The first half of the year started off great. I was consistently writing, working out, and trying out a wide range of trials. August hit, and then I missed a week. Beginning a trial on logging workouts, I drafted up a post with little to say and little excitement about the topic. Not every post needs to be fueled by passion, but it felt like a slog. I thought to myself, stepping back for a week to formulate my thoughts would be best, and here we are five months later with those thoughts still not formed.

In that time, I took an unexpected turn. Not only did I stop writing, I stopped a lot of tasks I found to be part of the foundation I’d been building, including tracking my habits daily, having a consistent sleep schedule, and even my weekly reviews.

The time wasn’t spent completely idle though. I went on a number of trips with friends, started a consistent workout schedule, and even took my rock climbing to the next level. While it’s not the foundation I anticipated at the beginning of the year, I found myself in a good place despite the drastic change.

On Writing

For the last few years, I’ve been writing on and off for this blog and don’t plan on completely stopping anytime soon. However, I don’t know that I’ll always be going about things through the trial approach. Those posts give me a jumping off point of a topic to discuss, but I’ve often found myself with little to say about a trial, especially not much to say over the course of four weeks.

Over the years, I’ve tried to create a structure to these posts relating all of them to the trial at hand. I’ve always circled back the structure of an introduction, brief progress reports, and a conclusion on if I plan to continue the new aspect in some shape or form.

Something that has fluctuated has been my day for publishing. This I do plan on changing once again, as I don’t plan on committing to posting weekly. Instead, this year I want to focus on writing posts with a particular goal or question to answer, rather than a weekly commitment. These might be thoughts on trials, as I still plan to sprinkle them in, but the primary driver of topics will be ideas that arise from various sources. These could be from books I’m reading, media I’m watching or even a walk in the neighborhood.

Stay tuned for a more extensive post covering for my 2023 theme. For now I’ll give you the theme name: “Intention.”

An Off Week

Sometimes a little time off is exactly what’s required.

After a few months of focused effort on improving systems, I wanted to take a step back and relax for a few days. A minor injury while lifting weights made for good timing to take that time. I fear I fell a bit too far into the bad habits, but coming out of the other side, I’m feeling ready to get back to the grind.

A Little Like Junk Food

The way I look at small breaks like this is that they are a little bit like a cheat day in diets. The important part is to follow the diet a large majority of the time. Cheat days help to push off bad choices to a future date and to mitigate guilt with intentional breaking of the rules. The occasional departure isn’t going to ruin things. I can’t recall where I heard this quote but I like to follow the advice, “One salad doesn’t make you healthy, and one bowl of ice cream doesn’t make you unhealthy.” All things in moderation I suppose.

This last week, I gave myself some time to play games and watch YouTube. Even though I feel like I didn’t do much, I spent plenty of time with family who were in town. Outside of time with them, most free time I had to myself I spent with controller in hand. Video games have an interesting way of scratching the itch for accomplishment. Level ups, achievements, and rewards are like some ice cream after grinding away for weeks for a little bit of accomplishment salad.

On to the Next One

With this brief break coming to a close, it’s time to get back to the projects I’ve been working through. I’ve longed teased a DnD adventure that I plan to publish, and I’m hoping to have that ready by the time some friends visit in a few weeks, though my original plan was the end of this month.

One of the primary reasons I opted for this break was not having a new trial in mind. With the conclusion of The Four Pillar Plan, I needed some time to think about where I wanted to experiment. An area I’ve been increasingly focusing has been fitness, especially lifting weights. A long standing habit I’ve heard in the fitness community is to keep a workout log, something I’ve never really done. With my last lifting session ending early due to a muscle tug in between sets, I think it is a great option to plan, record, and review my workouts.

Foundations and Pillars

I began working on what was to be the final post of the “Four Pillar Plan Trial” summarizing my thoughts. In the end, I felt like all I did was repeat points from prior posts that explored some of the “pillars” more directly. With this result, I thought I’d take some more time to think about how I feel about these areas and more.

A Midyear Check Up

The annual theme of foundation is one I’m very happy I chose. It hasn’t always been easy, but looking into the elements of my life that I build on has been an incredible practice this year. I’ve been able to think about the critical practices, people, and routines in my life and take time to expand or mend them.

During this week, I looked over what notes I had in mind for foundation. I’m happy to say that I’ve largely stuck to what I had in mind regarding the theme. I’ve been taking steps to improve the base of my life from my health to my habits to my key relationships. The long standing weekly reviews have been a good way to get a high level view of how I see the year going, and overall, it’s been promising.

One element I’ve neglected since the early months is a loose schedule I had for how I spent each day and how I spent each week. The exception being climbing which has stuck to the schedule since basically the beginning of the year.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about some ideas from the PARA system that have been sitting in my head a few weeks. One of the key ideas there was expression, the last step of the process as a whole. It serves as the answer to the question of why bother with capturing and organizing information into a system if it will simply collect metaphorical dust. Trying to set up my week in a way where certain days are focused on different parts of the CODE system is something I’m pondering.

The year isn’t going perfect by any means, but I know I’m slowly progressing in the major areas I care about.

The Role of the Pillars

To address many of those major areas, I turned to The Four Pillar Plan. This trial felt largely to be a process of rebuilding a variety of shoddy habits. Walking and sleeping being two critical ones of the past.

An area I haven’t thought on much is the way I spend my time relaxing. I often use platforms like YouTube or Twitch as ways to decompress and wind down. Watching a video or stream is an easy way to turn off my brain for a few minutes and then pick myself up afterwards. The problem is there’s this feeling of finding “the right” video. I’ll spend minutes scrolling through, checking multiple apps and sites for the one. Often I’ll find myself more tired after a brief search that led to not watching anything.

I feel like the “Netflix scroll” is a common issue nowadays. A stupid issue to be certain, but a common one. There’s just so many things vying for our attention that it becomes exhausting to pick one.

Trying to actively relax is a seemingly oxymoronic concept, but it’s been paying off with a better sustained mood. Incorporating walks as a break is an easy way to get more movement in while getting my mind off active problems to solve. I’ll still watch videos and streams, but don’t let myself get caught in the endless scroll problem. If I find I’m spending too much time looking for something, I just stop and look for engagement elsewhere.

Going forward, I think keeping these four elements in mind will help to set a floor for what constitutes good habits. If I’m maintaining these four areas, I can feel content with where I’m at.

On the subject of the future, I’ll be taking one more week to settle some ideas as I consider what to do for a trial next. Another post should be on it’s way, but I haven’t come to a trial that I am happy with at this time. For now, I’ll use this as an excuse to complete some of the ideas I drafted up last year before my unplanned hiatus.

Matter of Movement

Movement is a part of the natural world.

Three weeks into the framework of The Four Pillar Plan, I’m taking some time to look back on the progress gained, and lost, as well as the next pillar in my sights, movement. The week went well overall, with definite gains in relaxation, but some loss in sleep. Movement, however, took center stage as both a practice in itself, and a way to relax.

Prior Pillars

My previous posts centered around two pillars in the Four Pillar Plan, sleep and relaxation. The latter of which I’ve been incorporating more effectively. By taking the time to properly relax through walks or intended activity, I feel like I’m getting better quality relaxation time. In doing so, I feel better recharged to actually get things done, reducing my to do list and ultimately stress.

Sleep on the other hand is still on shaky ground. Whenever I start to get a handle on my sleep schedule, I spend a night or two up late, sleeping in, and screwing my sleep cycle up. While it’s sometimes something foolish like going out drinking, but it’s also as simple as wanting to read just a bit longer or having coffee too late in the day causing trouble falling asleep.

Minor decisions in my day make end up biting me later on. Attempting to close out my daily habits, I’ll sometimes stay up a little too long trying to button up the remaining habits. My hope is to make better practices that help to get them done sooner than later, especially if I can shift my mornings to allow some more personal time.

Move Along

One of the most critical habits I formed in the last few years was a long nightly walk I took back when I lived in Dubuque. I’ve tried a few times to reform the habit, but I find the Chicago suburbs to be a bit too noisy to have the same relaxing feeling the walks of Dubuque had.

Instead, I’ve found midday walks to be a bit more useful. Using a short walk as a form of relaxation has been a great way to tackle two pillars with one activity. Taking a break and disconnecting from work and technology through a walk around the neighborhood has been a nice way to unwind. Similar to my nightly walks, letting my mind wander helps to get idle thoughts off my mind.

I’ve been trying to work a few shorter walks in throughout the day as compared to the long walk of the past. With short walks in the morning, during lunch, and after work, I can get more in while spreading out my time spent being active. Something I’m trying to use to build the habit is having some kind of sweet treat if I complete all of these walks as intended. A nice little reward to build the habit up.

Walking isn’t the only method of movement I’ve been working into my routines. Biking is still my primary mode of transportation when traveling alone. Be it for the grocery store, the gym, or an odd errand to run, my bike has been a useful way to get around with some free activity. I’m extremely grateful for how easy it is to bike around here thanks to nearby trails connecting a string of suburbs.

Yoga is another practice that’s being reintroduced into my routine. Since the pandemic started a few years ago, I hadn’t been to a yoga class. Even when the opportunity arose to start, I held off. Getting back into a class this week was great. I’m far from as flexible and loose as I once was, but taking the time to move, flow, and breathe was a reminder of how helpful yoga is for me. It’s another practice that I feel reinvigorated after. Making a routine of going regularly will be extremely helpful both physically and mentally.