Finished Reading: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion 📚
Currently reading: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion 📚
Weeknote: 2025.02
Work
Monday was my first day back “in the office” since December 20th. It’s the first time in a long time (ever?) that I’ve taken off a full two weeks during the Christmas and New Year holidays. Given that I was sick that entire time and rather than using that time to recharge it was spent recovering, I wasn’t really looking forward to returning to work. But, I spent time last Sunday evening reviewing my calendar for the week ahead to set expectations and make a decision to enter into Monday optimistic and ready to start the year off strong.
In an ideal world I would have ensured my first few days of the week were not quite as meeting-heavy as they were. It would have been nice to have a more gradual ramp back into the work grind but it was not to be. There was no time to gradually get up to speed to safely merge. I had to get from zero to sixty immediately.
Much of the first half of the week was spent doing some internal and external interviews to bolster some research we are doing in support of a new strategic initiative. I also wanted to spend some one-on-one time with the team members that I support to catch up on their holidays, wish them a happy new year, and align on the performance review process that is kicking off. I started working on a couple of personal deliverables I need to complete before the end of the month. In particular, I drafted an update I will present to our executive leadership team later this month. In addition to establishing the structure and outlining the story I want to tell, I also identified all of the data and other inputs I’ll need to complete the slide deck.
I also spent some time with my manager reviewing all the things currently on my plate and seeking some guidance on how best to balance both the individual contributor responsibilities on my plate in addition to my people management responsibilities. I seem to have become the default assignee for all the special projects my boss’s boss spins up and I’m now at the point where something has to give. I’m not able to effectively move them all forward given my current capacity and the last thing I want is for the team members I support to suffer.
Personal
Although I started feeling relatively better this week, I’m still not sleeping well. Despite my efforts to consistently implement good sleep hygiene habits, I’ve had a terrible time falling and staying, asleep. My wife’s hypothesis is that it’s stress related and I don’t necessarily doubt her. I was very intentional this week to wake up and go to bed at the same time each night. I also ensured I exercised each day. I managed my caffeine, water, and food intake. After heading to bed, I didn’t have any screen time. I just read my book. If I found my mind and/or heart racing, I practiced breathing exercises and prayed. Still, I struggled with managing more than four hours of sleep each night. And I had to fight hard for that four hours. There are a couple of environmental things I’m going to try (seeing if I can make my room a little cooler and darker) as well as some supplementation I might experiment with but I may just need to head to the doctor soon.
I’m still getting used to this new season of parenting. Just because all my kids are all adults now (18, 20, 22), there is still parenting happening. It’s just different. And I’m still getting used to it. They are all in different stages of work, school, and pursuing careers but they are all living at home still. It seems like that will be changing soon with two of them on track to transfer to other universities in the fall but in the meantime, I’ve trying to encourage them to take advantage of the time they have at home. A time to stretch, grow, try, and fail while they have the safety net we’re able to provide them while they are still under our roof.
My son returned this week after spending the last week+ visiting friends on the East Coast. There were some things I wanted to catch up on so I invited him to grab a beer with me on Wednesday. Although he’s 22 years old now, I think it’s the first time just the two of us have sat across the table from one another, enjoyed a cold beverage together, and just talked about things going on in his life. I enjoyed that. I’ve learned that he’s much more receptive to substantive conversations if we’re out of the house and doing something together (i.e., hiking, shooting hoops, etc…).
I’m embarrassed to admit this but one of the “exciting” things that happened this week is we got our Litter Robot delivered. This was a purchase I avoided for a couple of years now but I finally pulled the trigger. With three cats in the house and me being the only person who works from home, I end up scooping cat boxes way more than I would prefer. Especially when the cats really belong to my girls. So, rather than continue to gripe about being the only one who keeps the boxes clean or continue pestering my girls to clean the boxes, I decided it was an investment in my own sanity. The verdict is still out on whether it will meet my expectations. One cat took to it right away, one cat is still a little leery of it, and the other doesn’t think it’s a big deal.
Exercise
I was still not feeling 100% this week but I wanted to make sure I at least spent a little time moving each day. Most of my exercise this week was on the stationary bike but I also got a little walking in as well. Due to my taking a step backward with my health, Friday and Saturday were both inactive days.
- 🚴🏽♂️ Bike = 21.5 miles, 1h 18m
- 🚶🏻♂️ Walk = 7 miles, 1h 40m
📷 In addition to the exercise and fresh air, the best thing about my walk was this view:
Media
📚 I’m currently reading The Confident Mind by Nate Zinsser. Zinsser is the Director of West Point’s Performance Psychology Program and has worked with collegiate, professional, and Olympic athletes in addition to military and business leaders. I’ve enjoyed learning more about the research and data that demonstrates the correlation between what/how we think and how we perform. It’s especially interesting learning about the relationship between our thoughts and the physiological responses elicited by them.
🍿 I watched Carry On, Mississippi Burning, 1917, and Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever.
Things I’m looking forward to next week
- 😴 Sleeping and feeling better
- 🏋🏼♂️ Remaining consistent with exercise habits
- 🎂 Celebrating my mom’s birthday
- 📺 Season 2 of Severance
- 😉 Doing a more concise, summarized, bullet point weeknote
Are you really living if all your time and energy is spent trying not to die?
Watched: Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever (2025)
🍿 Currently watching: 1917 (2019)
I saw this ad on the back cover of The Economist. It caused me to consider what (if anything) I would hand down to the generation after me. I’m curious; what are some of the things that you intend to hand down or perhaps have been handed down to you?
🍿 Watching Carry-On (2024)
A quick peek at Mount Rainier on my afternoon walk. 📷
Currently reading: The Confident Mind by Nathaniel Zinsser 📚
I don’t remember when or how I got this book but while scrolling through my Kindle tonight, I found it and decided to give it a go. We’ll see.
After battling through three and 4.5 hours of sleep the past two nights, getting six hours last night feels like a small victory—and it’s made a world of difference in how my day is going.
I’ve ordered some melatonin (which I’ve never taken before) that I’m hoping will help improve my sleep.
Lately I’ve taken to only wearing my Apple Watch to track my sleep or when I’m exercising. The interesting thing I’ve noted while wearing my analog watch throughout the day is I’ll get phantom alerts on my wrist that feels exactly like a notification coming through on my Apple Watch. Weird.
I go back to work tomorrow after two weeks off. I’m disappointed the two weeks didn’t go as I hoped, expected, or planned. Most of the time was spent feeling under the weather with no energy to do anything I wanted to do. Not the best way to burn my PTO. Trying to be optimistic about the week ahead.
Currently reading: The Holy Longing by Ronald Rolheiser 📚
Running on just 4.5 hours of sleep last night, plus being held hostage by a cat curled up in my lap for hours this morning, has completely derailed my plans for the day.
I completed my first trip of the year to Home Depot. I had to grab some plumbing supplies to repair the drain for my bathroom sink. This is sure to be the smallest and least expensive of our home maintenance tasks this year. Especially with the need to replace our roof this year.
Look back in memory and consider…how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!
Seneca, ‘On the Shortness of Life’
Settling in to watch the Kraken play the Canucks. 🦑🏒
I’ve been using the Monk Manual Weekly Planner, an analog tool that includes monthly and weekly “prepare” pages for setting intentions with “reflect” pages for weekly retrospectives. This year, I plan to scan these pages and upload them to my Day One journal. It feels like the perfect balance: staying hands-on with my planning and reflections while preserving a digital archive for future reference.
Learning something new in 2025
New Year’s Day was mostly a quiet, lazy one for me—nothing special, just some time to relax. But I did manage to do something that feels a little bit monumental: I signed up for a Drawing for Beginners class at the local college. It’s one of their Continuing & Community Education classes, which means it’s low-stakes and open to anyone who just wants to learn something new.
Now, here’s the thing: this is not something I would have done for myself in the past. For most of my life, I’ve been the guy behind the scenes—the husband, the dad, the one who holds down the fort while everyone else chases their dreams and explores their interests. And I’ve been happy to play that role, truly. But lately, I’ve started to wonder what it would be like to do something just for me. It’s taken a while to shake the idea that doing so would be “selfish,” but this class feels like a small step in that direction.
I’ve always wanted to learn how to draw. Not because I have some grand plan to be the next Picasso—trust me, I don’t. It’s just something I’ve always thought would be fun to do. That said, I’m horrendous at it right now. Any game that involves drawing—Pictionary, Telestrations—has me practically breaking out in a sweat. My stick figures look like they’re having a bad day. But I’m not signing up to become amazing; I’m signing up to give myself permission to be a beginner.
At first, I thought about teaching myself at home. A sketchpad, some pencils, and YouTube tutorials—it would’ve been cheaper and easier to fit into my schedule. But then I realized the bigger appeal of an in-person class: it gets me out of the house. For someone who works from home, exercises in a garage gym, and generally spends a lot of time in his own bubble, the idea of walking into a classroom full of strangers felt oddly… exciting. And maybe a little intimidating, too.
The class starts in a couple of weeks, but I’m already equipped with everything I need, thanks to my oldest daughter. When she asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I saw an opportunity. I sent her a list of the required class supplies—a sketchpad, graphite and charcoal pencils, erasers, and a sharpener. On Christmas morning, I unwrapped the whole set, and there it was: my not-so-subtle push to stop procrastinating, get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and sign up for the class.
Those supplies sat on my desk for a week, almost daring me to take the next step. Yesterday, I finally did it. I logged onto the college’s website, created an account, and hit “register.” It felt like crossing some invisible line—one where I could say, “Yeah, this is for me.”
So here I am, about to try something new at 54 years of age, and I’m equal parts nervous and excited. I don’t know if I’ll be any good at drawing, and honestly, I don’t care. What matters to me is that I’m doing something I’ve always wanted to do, and I’m doing it for no other reason than it makes me happy. That feels pretty good.
Wrapping up 2024
A significant theme of 2024 was my health and its negative impact on my daily quality of life. Reviewing my personal journal, I estimate that 25-30% of the year was spent feeling unwell, unable to pursue the activities or lifestyle I prefer. After 15 years of living with a chronic disease, the greatest challenge remains the mental and emotional toll of not being able to live the way I truly desire. Because of this, I will continue to make my health a focus in the year ahead. Specifically, and despite the fact I’m already very proactive about optimizing my well-being, my focus for the year ahead will be ensuring I sleep and rest better. I’ve only been getting between 4-6 hours of sleep each night and I’d like to bump this up to 6-8. If there is one success metric I will track in the year ahead, this is one of them.
Despite my health challenges, I was fortunate to still enjoy some experiences and memorable moments throughout the year. Things like attending Seattle Kraken games with the family, getting dressed up for the Kentucky Derby and heading to our local racetrack with a group of friends, a trip to Hawaii, and some great hikes and kayak trips.
I also enjoyed cheering my kids on and celebrating some of their milestones and accomplishments this year. My youngest graduated from high school, started her first job and is taking classes at the local college. My oldest daughter (our middle child) decided that she wants to pursue becoming a firefighter and has pursued it with passion, successfully passing her physical and written tests and in the thick of interviews. My oldest is about to finish up his two-year transfer degree while also working part-time and is spending his winter break submitting applications to universities. It’s exciting to see them all establishing some momentum as they head into a new year.
I didn’t make as much time for reading this year as I would have liked. I ended up reading about twenty books total but the few that stand out include:
- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
- Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad
- A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson
- Hidden Potential by Adam Grant
- The Second Mountain by David Brooks
- The Road to Wisdom by Francis S. Collins
I didn’t watch many movies this year but I did enjoy a few series on streaming. In particular, I enjoyed:
One thing for sure is that the older I get the faster time seems to pass. I hope to take some time tomorrow to reflect on the year ahead but for now I need to muster enough energy to make an appearance at a NYE party so that I’m not always “that guy” who never feels well enough to join in. Not sure how late I’ll stay but I’m committed to at least show up.
Happy New Year! 🥳🥂