In the summer of 2007, my girlfriend (now wife) and I went on a Globus bus tour through Italy. You know the type: the bus drops you off at a museum, you wear an earpiece while the tour guide talks into their microphone and holds a little stick in the air so you can follow them around, then back on the bus to a restaurant; back on the bus to a hotel; back on the bus and back on the road.
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Growing up, I was a jock who was secretly a nerd. I played sports year-round and even conned my way into having an independent study gym class my senior year.
That level of physical activity plus a teenage metabolism meant that there would be no consequences for having a three-course cheesecake meal at The Cheesecake Factory with my friends.
Unfortunately, after my athletic career ended and my metabolism changed, my eating habits didn’t, and I gained approximately 50 pounds over the next 15-ish years.
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Putting on some headphones is a pretty universal sign to others that you’re working, or at least that you don’t want to be disturbed. But what do you play in said headphones when you’re trying to focus?
If I am doing chores around the house or running errands, I am probably listening to a podcast. If I am working out, probably some combination of 80’s power ballads and shitty pop music. But if I am working, recently I have been listening to noise, not music.
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You hear stories about people performing heroic feats in life-and-death scenarios: lifting a car off of a child, swimming for miles to get back to shore from a shipwreck, etc. Like most middle-aged guys, some part of my brain assumes that I would be able to do the same. A lifetime of living vicariously through action movies and video games leads me to believe that my body is just waiting to be unleashed for its superhero moment, like a Manchurian Candidate of fitness.
But, historically, I have not had many of those experiences in my life, so there is no need for an alter ego, yet. Even if I did, building a heart-healthy lifestyle around life-or-death adventures does not seem sustainable. Unless you fake it.
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As I have explained before, I try to deal with stressful situations by planning ahead, most often through checklists or automations.
Deciding to keep my sick kid home from school and communicating with his teacher(s) and the staff quickly is just such a situation. I have created two Drafts accounts to help me in those times.
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