Life Lately

A lot has been going on lately. On Monday night, just before bed, I read something in a book that really disturbed my thoughts. It's one of those things you encounter from time to time that makes you wonder if your whole life is an illusion and fake. I was hoping to go to bed early, but my thoughts were racing all over the place. I like what I heard from Jordan Peterson (I know I mention him a lot; I'm reading his recent book and I listen to him on YouTube while I'm working). He said that the surprising thing is not that some people suffer from anxiety; rather, it's a miracle that anyone ever isn't anxious. 

Rather than try to suppress the thoughts and go to sleep, I sat up in bed and began to think without resistance. I thought, "My brain is telling me I have mental work to do, so let's do this shit." And I sat up in bed thinking for about an hour. Then I spent thirty minutes writing in my journal, and another thirty minutes reading through last year's journal entries, then some more time thinking, and a little more writing. By that time, it was midnight, two hours after I planned to fall asleep, but I did the work instead of putting it off, and I turned off my light and fell asleep.

***

I have been doing a lot lately. I'm hopefully going to buy a house in the next few weeks. I'm going to look at one today. I'm doing it without a realtor, but I've researched it and I think I can make it happen. I'm also going to do a 20-mile bike race on Saturday, Bo Bikes Bama (with Bo Jackson). On Friday night I'm going to a silent auction with my friend who's coming down to stay with me this weekend. After the race, we're also going camping in Georgia! Oh, and I have a ukulele lesson on Friday, too, and I'm supposed to learn the intro to "Here Comes the Sun". So, maybe it's normal to feel anxious, when you've taken on so much at once. But, it's also kind of exhilarating.

I haven't done as much gardening or photography lately, with everything else. I did do some severe pruning (even root pruning) to two of my citrus trees, and repotted them in 5:1:1 mix. They had gotten too tall and lanky, and it was difficult to water them because the potting soil was getting old.

One exercise I've taken up lately is the farmer's walk. I didn't know what it was until recently, but now I wish I'd been doing it for years. The concept is easy: pick up heavy things in both hands, and walk. I started with 25lb plates, one in each hand, and my goal was to carry them down to the creek and back, about a 1/3 or 1/2 mile round trip. Let me tell you, that first time I tried it, I had to drop the weights and rest every few hundred feet, and my forearms were bulging and burning like crazy. My left forearm, especially, felt like it might pop open. That night, it continued to be bulging, and seemed to have a slight fever.

I've kept up the farmer's walks on all weekdays. Now I'm able to carry the 25lb weights without stopping. Once my grip strength improved, my form improved, and now the exercise seems to target more my upper arms, shoulders, and upper back. Yesterday, when I did it, it didn't even seem difficult, so I decided I'd move up to 45lbs in each hand.

I don't know if I've ever seen such fast results from an exercise. Two weeks ago, I could barely handle it, and now my whole upper body seems stronger, and I'm starting to see the veins on my arms and hands better, and my sleeves feel tighter now. Even more, it's hard to imagine a more practical exercise. I recently helped with moving, and I soon realized that moving is essentially like doing farmer's walks, and I was moving heavy things for two hours with total ease, and some other guys seemed a little winded and complained about how heavy things were.

I've also been doing hill sprints on my bike. A few weeks ago, when I went up a steep hill near me, I had to put my bike in the lowest gear, and by the top of the hill my quads were on fire and I could barely gasp for air. Yesterday, I noticed, while doing hill sprints on my bike, that I had actually forgotten how many I had done, because I was thinking about other things and apparently the sprints weren't enough to distract my thoughts. My quads also feel hard as a rock now, so I've definitely grown in strength. Time for more challenging sprints?