This one was a shared story and it was more interesting and detailed than what I included in the TikTok below.
Somewhere
If you think about the fact that somewhere right now, there’s someone who is starving for what you can give, it can be both unnerving and comforting. Finding that person in the haystack is the obstacle. As difficult as it is, I know the only way to find that person is to wear your heart and thoughts on your sleeve. But that’s not what we do. We play it safe right down the middle, mostly believing that’s the best way. At that point, many of us are stuck in that role. As contradictory as it sounds, you do have to come across authentically. It’s that position of trust in yourself and in others that helps you find what you’re looking for and need.
Love, X
Communication
It’s true in business, and it’s true in relationships. Fundamentally, it would be better in both realms if people could express themselves without the messenger getting shot. To be able to present information, opinions, or even feelings based on their perspective or expertise. In business, you’re paying people for both output and experience. In relationships, you’re mutually and reciprocally invested in helping one another. We’re not mind readers. I find across the board that our reluctant response to heed this advice is one of our biggest grievances as human beings. As the level of inability to communicate openly decreases, the volatility and dissatisfaction we experience both as employees and people slowly boils us. In any connection in which communication is not welcome, unexpected and undesirable results inevitably follow.
Love, X
Karma
Karma is not real. Any close observer to the universe and human behavior can see that. It’s probably a good thing for all of us. On the other hand, it would be an ideal world in which we suffered the consequences and paid the price immediately for wrong choices. It would make us be deliberate and probably much more caring about how our words and actions affect other people. Equally true is that it would be a beautiful world if we all communicated honestly, even if such honesty were difficult to get used to. Imagine how much time and energy it would save us. It would push people to learn healthy behaviors instead of learning how to conceal who they really are or what’s going on in their heads. Sunlight never hurt anyone and it’s the basis for all life on Earth. A feeble metaphor on my part, but one I imagine many people will be nodding in agreement with.
Love, X
A Goodbye To Some At Work
My employer offered people with seniority a generous retirement package. And so, as of Wednesday, a lot of familiar faces will vanish.
Someone once said that God only knows everything because he’s been around forever. It’s the same way with some of these people. They make their jobs look effortless at times because they are so familiar with every possible wild contingency. And somehow, they’ve avoided slowly going crazy by the way the rest of us behave.
Every time someone with longevity leaves, I’m surprised by my reaction. That’s how I know that behind their eyes, they will miss their coworkers. Some of them as friends, and some of them as familiar faces.
They will leave holes. Some of it will be work-related and the rest… well, it will be a loss of banter, laughter, and yes, sometimes, disagreement.
I hope everyone lands softly as they start whatever they choose to be their next chapter.
Love, X
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A Truth
I’ve never been one to worry much about how I look.
At 55 years and 11 months, I honestly don’t care if I have to strip down naked at the Farmer’s Market. I don’t know why that would happen, but I’m ready either way.
If something bothers me, I will fix it. And if I can’t, like my hair, I embrace it and laugh. You can mock me for short hair or no hair all you’d like. It doesn’t offend me. It’s like holding me responsible for the blue jay screeching outside your window on a Sunday morning.
I can look anyone in the eyes and feel like they’re equal. I’m not fooled and not plagued by insecurity.
All the titles, ranks, and positions are illusions. We’re human beings, even if we’ve devised an artificial method to separate and distinguish ourselves.
I know what you’re thinking during the day and when you lay down at night. And sometimes you want to curl up and read a book or binge-watch terrible tv. Or you are irritated at your person but just want someone to put their arm around you and enjoy the comfort of someone beside you. Trips to exotic places are fantastic, but life is comprised of smaller pleasures like the first cup of coffee, laughing, or watching people fall off ladders in online videos.
And all of us, no matter what we’ve done or the accomplishments we’ve achieved, pay the same price.
I would have been dangerous with this knowledge at 20.
Unstoppable.
If you’re reading this and you’re young, listen to me, please.
You are as good as anybody you’ll meet. If you put your mind to it, you can run a mile in 4 minutes. You can learn another language, or you can master calculus. You can find someone to love, have a family, or bury yourself in a career.
But you’re going to have to choose your time wisely. It’s not unlimited.
But whatever you want to achieve, whether it’s money, education, or fame, you are as likely as anyone you’ll meet to achieve it if you want it and dedicate your time and energy towards it. You’re looking at many people thinking that they possess some alchemy, intelligence, or energy that you don’t. They don’t.
It’s 100% illusion.
I don’t look at young people the way most people my age do.
I remember what it was like to be scared. And to feel the pressure of my entire life in front of me. I had the disadvantage of trauma and ignorance to overcome.
Maybe to feel like I wasn’t handsome enough or smart enough. The secret is that most of us are average in the literal sense. Embrace it. Joy is when someone finds something that they excel in. It just takes one thing to feel fulfilled.
If you want love, there’s someone looking at you right now with hungry eyes. Yes, there’s also someone looking at you, thinking, “Lord, what a doofus!” You can be happy in a world in which there are both.
If you want to be educated, witty, athletic, or a hermit, you can do that too. Whether you’re 22 or 55. None of us know where our finish line sits.
Love, X
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The Ball Rule, 3 Posts
These are in reverse order, with the most recent first. The Ball Rule is one of those obvious and succinct ways to describe a problem that most couples have.
Weight Loss Motivation
I haven’t done well writing for my blog, mainly because I’ve been creating videos for myself and others.
Here are the weight-loss-related videos I’ve done for my TikTok.
An Uneasy Observation
The TikTok I made about this interested me.
The original post from the wife I mentioned, it garnered the usual amount of teeth-gnashing; mainly from those who got irritated about the therapist’s quote:
“…your phone is YOU… the stuff you interact with…the words you share…your pictures…and most people keep that hidden for a reason…and it usually has nothing to do with privacy…it’s about controlling whether people know the real you.” (“Even your partner,” it should have said.)
Reading that smacks you in the face with the truth. It’s like if your browsing history were published in the newspaper or if a list of all the people you’ve texted, DMed, or interacted with were published for the world to see. Our phones are a great reflection of the totality of us, especially when juxtaposed with our relationships.
As Dave Worthen preaches: “You share your bodies, you brush your teeth together, you have children, you spend most of your lives connected, but lord help you if someone wants to share your phone, even with the best of intentions.”
I’m not saying I have all the answers, but reading and hearing all the commentary about this anecdote really gave me further insight into just how big of a problem this is for most of the modern world. Our ancestors didn’t have to worry about this: most behaviors were direct and observable, and privacy/secrecy were not issues ideal partners had to confront.
Love, X
A 1,700 Day
The other day was an odd day. I woke up at 12:55 a.m. with something I was struggling to remember suddenly clear in my mind. I started my day like any other. Coffee, cat petting, and play. Because I was up earlier, I started doing pushups. For whatever reason, I felt like my body was lighter than air. Most mornings, I am burning with energy. It’s been that way since October 2020, when I began to transform my body. 100, 200, then my daily limit. I’d kept my promise to keep it reasonable for a long, long time. Going into work, I continued to do sets at odd moments. It wasn’t as if I were thinking about doing them. I’d be on the floor, wherever I was inside the buildings or out, doing pushups again. By the end of the day, I’d done more than 1,700. I’m sure I forgot to count some. (Just realized how many times I typed “I” in this post!)
The law of increments helped me to realize that while I can’t do 500 pushups at once without tearing something, I can do multiples of that amount if I do them in smaller groups. Whether it’s weights, walking, running, or pushups. That’s part of why I encourage people to use their day to their advantage. They might not be able to set aside 45 minutes in a block, but they certainly can spare 1-2 minutes several times a day. If you harness that realization, you can make amazing gains toward whatever goal you’re aiming for.
It was an odd day to blow past my intentional record. Not planned, not even really trying. It reminded me again that most numbers and obstacles for this sort of thing are mentally anchored and not connected to real limits.
I was a little sort the next day, but not unusually so. If I deliberately pushed myself to do so many on a given day, I’m certain I would be unable to move the next day. Pushups once served me as an anti-anxiety tool. I used physical fatigue to beat down the anxious moments. Counting them out worked as meditation for me. Before my emergency surgery, I decided to do far fewer of them, recognizing that I’d taken an effective tool and gone too far with it. That’s usually the case with anything; we adopt behavior and find it helps. And sometimes, we use that effective way to overcome feelings or behavior incorrectly. For most, it is a glass of wine each evening, then two, then a bottle over time.
Having a FitBit is a luxury that helps me. Over time, the analytics pop up and remind me of correlations between sleep, mood, heart rate, and activity. Every once in a while, I have a day when my brain is in a zone of both activity and disconnectedness. And on those days, it correlates to my body feeling like I’m tapped into hidden energy.
For the days when I’m not feeling it, I go ahead and do my thing anyway. Because motivation follows action. If you get moving even when you might not want to, over time, that becomes the new normal to you and you can understand that it’s your own mind causing you problems. Not your tiredness or schedule.
Love, X
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 