Early this year I sought out to get back into the swing of writing again by writing a post every month. I’d managed to keep up so far, even if the content was far from my best work. When June 30th hit, I had no clue what I was going to write and needed to make a decision: draft up something quick to meet that goal, or take the failure and some time to write up something for real. With this post being well two weeks late, I chose the latter. I figured this would be the best time to evaluate how the Year of Swing is going and double down, course correct or even change direction completely. There are definitely areas I’m aiming to improve, but first, let’s cover the wins of the year.
The Wins
One of the biggest areas I’ve been excelling is time spent with friends and family. The year started off with a visit to Florida to spend time with my dad and younger brother, an annual trip at this point for my dad’s birthday. However, this year, my older brother joined me for the time down there. It was great to spend that time together, and I hope the next one goes even better. Maybe the Lightning will finally win a game my dad attends.
On a more recent trip, I went to New York City for the first time. It was a great experience and got to spend time with some friends of friends, getting to know them more. The food was amazing, and we only had a few days in the city, leaving many restaurants still on the to visit list. The Met was a great museum experience, and it was only upon perusing the gift shop I learned that The Great Wave of Kanagawa is kept there. Unfortunately, the iconic painting wasn’t on display when we were there. We consistently joked about needing to go back, and I certainly hope that joke becomes a reality relatively soon.
To wrap up the big trips of the year, my climbing friends and I took our yearly trek to the Red River Gorge. While I didn’t come face to face with Miranda Rayne again, we took on several new routes that were a ton of fun. No serious falls or anguish from me this time, just some good climbing and time with friends.
Throughout the year, I’ve been volunteering with the Chicago Roller Derby Team, the Windy City Rollers. Learning new roles and helping out the organization has been a blast. I’m meeting so many new people, gaining a deeper understanding of the game, and offering support to a largely LBGT+ group in these troublesome times for that group of people. I haven’t been to anything very recently, though the group is on break for the season until later this month. Afterwards, I’ll be getting back to helping out in any way I can.
In the theme post for the year, one of the objectives for the year was to send a monthly email to my brother to keep track of goals and what happened in the month. This was to be both a way to document the major and minor occurrences throughout the year, but also keep on track with projects and objectives. While I’ve regularly sent over ideas for the month ahead, I’ve often failed to hit everything I set out to do. This of course brings us to…
The Fails
Let’s start with the obvious one, missing my monthly post target. Before deciding to put this one off, I went for a walk and gave myself the line, I’ll lose this battle to win the war. Rather than write up a poorly thought up junk post, I would rather take the time to think through the point and structure of a post. Unfortunately, this does mean I’m behind even more for this month, but all I can say to that is the need to build up a better writing habit – a pillar of this year’s theme.
Another area I started off pretty well was running, but came to a halt in May. I can’t think of a particular reason, just a break in the habit, and next thing I knew a couple of weeks went by without a run. From there building back up became harder and harder. As the heat increased, so did the friction to get out and run.
For media backlog, I’ve been keeping up with a number of titles including making my way through all the Kingdom Hearts games, as there are a few entries I’ve never played. However, I haven’t been writing any reviews and have been lacking even on my internal notes system.
In general, I’ve been struggling to find the energy to make the time to do much of anything. Can blame this on a number of things, but biggest of late is greater demands from work slowly adding up. A major project has been in full swing starting in April, and it’s had me putting in a lot of extra hours. Starting to feel major burnout, I had a good conversation with my boss on trying to reduce that stress. It’s opened the door for opportunities to take some time off during the week, and it might be the only reason I’ve been able to get this post out.
The Plan
Finally, this is how I “win the war.” Taking a closer look at where I am and where I want to be, I’m taking a shift in mindset to claw away at simple wins. The point of Swing is to build momentum with small actionable steps that lead to the bigger goals. I’ve been failing to really use the idea of momentum to make things easier.
The first and foremost idea to implement are some degree of consequence for not sticking to my goals and habits. A few years ago, I tried using the accountability app BeeMinder. From that brief experiment, I felt a little too much stress from possibly losing money, but it’s a straight forward method to add some stakes. Prior to BeeMinder, there was a time that my friends and I got weekly breakfast together where each of us set a goal for the week. If that goal wasn’t met, that person would pick up the bill, an idea I took from Felicia Day’s memoir, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (almost).
This was my favorite approach for this consequence concept. While the underlying action was still monetary cost, the social dynamic made it feel more consequential. It wasn’t just throwing money into the void through some app, it was having to tell my friends that I failed that week. While I work to get this type of system back in place, I’ll use BeeMinder or similar app to hold myself in some way accountable. If I find an alternative, I’ll include it in a future post, but for now, I’ll stick with the devil I know.
As for what I’m shifting to build momentum, I’m going to try a new goal setting approach. For the next few months, I will be setting 5 to 7 action based goals for a week and target completing at least 3. For example, writing for at least 30 minutes for 3 days of the week or running 20 miles in the week. These are clearly defined and should all build up to an larger goal I’m working toward at the time.
On the writing front specifically, I hope to write a lot more, but not likely publish very much of it. Something I plan to start doing is identifying what it is about certain writers that I enjoy. Folks like Jared Bauer, Noah Gervais and Jacob Gellar are all writers I respect. I even bought Jacob Gellar’s book of annotated essays, and see this as a great opportunity to really analyze his work. I’d like to get more into essay writing, and learning from these writers and others is a way to improve my own skill.
After a rocky couple months, I’m also shifting health and fitness to the forefront again. I took a break from lifting for a few months, but plan to get back in with a more relaxed program than I was following before. As far as running goes, I want to keep up with light mileage to maintain some cardio. With the summer here, I’m thinking shifting to an early morning or late evening run should help. It’s been a while, but early runs were a regular practice in the past.
Just this week I’ve been itching to get back into the gym. With a few trips planned in May, June and July, I paused my membership to focus on travel. Now I’m hoping to slowly get things in gear. I’m heavier than I’d like to be and have been planning to cut weight for months now. Watching a Dr. Mike Israetel video recently, I see the last few months as an unintentional “diet break” that he suggests for long term weight loss success. Not going to pretend like I did “the right thing” but rather than get mixed up with my past decisions, it’s time to get back to a consistent diet and track my meals again.
With the above in mind, I hope to have a new post out soon to catch up on the year’s goal. It may not be before the end of the month, as I once again want to avoid putting out a post just to check a box. I’d like for these posts to offer something to the reader, even if it’s just advice on avoiding the mistakes of my past.
Trying Out Before Buying In 