Saying it starts here is as good a spot as any. Today begins officially using this blog as my daily journal. These entries will be generally more casual and stream-of-consciousness rather than any deep introspection or contemplation. To the future, they will be simple reflections of where my mind generally was at the time of publishing them. Will be especially invaluable to my year-end life-and-times retrospective, which I’m writing annually to keep ever mindful of the context of my actions and inactions within the world I inhabit, whose general movements and non-movements I also want to document for posterity.

I don’t want to spend much time going over my highest level thoughts and feelings here, at least not in this entry. The first year-end life-and-times retrospective will handle that soon enough. So… onto the nonsense minutiae of what is my daily life at the moment. 😄

I’m transitioning my workouts to functional strength: pushing, pulling, lifting, carrying, holding, jumping. Compound movements that we use in the real world rather than isolated muscle work. Mixing up exercises broke my previous lifting plateaus. Upper body strength is still increasingly slowly but surely, but squat and deadlift have plateaued, so maybe this will be the answer to that.

I may be addicted to caffeine. By coincidence, didn’t have any for a couple of days. And yesterday, I felt so inexplicably, uncomfortably… neutral. Not good nor bad. But had no drive. Not tired at all, but yet going through my planned tasks like an emotionless zombie. This feeling carried into today, and was starting to worry me a bit because I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Most of my days of late are full of passion, drive, and energy. But like a switch, all that was gone. Then, I had an iced coffee. And BAM! Alive! Right as rain immediately and since. One can generally get over caffeine addiction within a couple miserable weeks of detoxing, but I simply do not have that time now to sacrifice. So I’ll continue pounding coffees.

I’ve got to stop scrolling social media in public while Israel is daily massacring Palestinians, destroying Gaza, and too many in the West, particularly our leaders, support this or are directly complicit. Has me tearing up and wanting to scream in frustration at the top of my lungs in the middle of the gym.

OK… back to the grindstone.