Now - Nov 2020

Things that have my attention #

I’m lifting again - and I think it’s going well! The soreness that comes with a good training session has been welcome and rapidly becoming familiar again. I’m currently keeping it very simple and straightforward: alternating sessions between bench/deadlift day (bench press, barbell row, romanian deadlift, and conventional deadlift) and overhead press/squat day (overhead press, low bar pull, squat, pause squat) with some simple linear progressions.

I’d like to also build some cardio and improve eating habits - I think this one is about finding and building better habits, which I haven’t gotten the knack of yet. I’m still a little up and down energywise, which is partially a depression and focus issue, I think.

I’m continuing to plug away at a few DynastyProcess projects: cleaning up the calculator, improving the automation, and plugging away at some smaller projects like player “mortality” rates with Joe.

I’m always feeling behind at work, and struggling to wrap up the big lingering one has gotten me a little down lately. Trying to parcel it down and find the hyperfocus to churn off smaller tasks one at a time.

I carved a pumpkin every week in October, and loved the meditative process that went with it.

I spend a lot of time on R4DS Slack answering questions (especially about Shiny) and would like to capture them in a bit of a longer-format, so I decided to redo this website to feature writing a more prominently. Moving to an blogdown/hugo engine site helps me do that more efficently - especially with RMarkdown!

Rowing is done for the year again, and it was definitely a lost year for me. I’m struggling with the idea of coaching another year of pandemic conditions, and felt like I lost a lot of my own personal fitness and happiness as a result.

Ideas I’m chewing on #

Three new books have just come in, and I’m excited to read them:

• Seth Godin’s The Practice is about shipping creative work - not only finding the creativity muscle but also sharing it with the world. It seems very much in the same vein as Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work, which I loved and still re-read annually, so I’m excited to dig in.
• Emmanuel Acho’s Uncomfortable Conversations With A Black Man - I enjoyed watching the video series, and am excited to read and think more through these issues.
• Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Food Lab - I basically learned to cook (and think about cooking) by reading his Serious Eats column, and while I’m not necessarily looking to pick up anything new from the book, I think I’m going to enjoy the inspiration to think about cooking more often (and more technically).

The US election made me uncomfortable and anxious for quite a while, and thinking about the net effects of American politics as it trickles down to everyone else. Tensions are seemingly coming to a head, and so many of the friends I’ve had and made recently are involved in one way or another that I’m learning more and fleshing out my own political opinions.

COVID continues to spike, which definitely scares me. As of today, there is some good news about vaccines on the horizon - but I’m yet to really get my hopes up.