What I've Been Up To
(Updated: August 4, 2024 from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA)
- I've been thrilled with the response to my newest book, How To Turn 39, and as a bonus it's sparked some truly interesting conversations with folks who have had a lot of insight to share with me on the matter.
- I started taking CrossFit classes about a month ago, and I'm two sessions deep into a beginner's ballet class at a local dance school. Both endeavors are meant to help fill in some gaps I've recently noticed in my at-home, self-guided workout routine, and the idea is to round out my development while also learning some new things, meeting some new people, and having the excuse to do something structured and physical a few times a week. I'm enjoying the hell out of both exploratory avenues already, and have added some mobility- and stability-oriented online classes into my routine, as well, to ensure I'm working on that sort of thing daily, not just weekly.
- Early last year, I re-recorded the audio versions of a few of my older books, and I took the opportunity to make some tweaks and corrections to those tomes in the process. I wasn't able to finalize that work until just the past few months, as going through and producing all that audio (and getting the new editions of both ebooks and paperback ready for shelves and e-shelves) was a fair undertaking—but I finally finished, and it feels great to have those refurbished readables available (and to be done with a few typos and odd phrasings that have been bugging me since I published these books, in some cases more than a decade ago).
- Fundamental to accomplishing those last two bullet-points was allowing myself to end (long-term project) One Sentence News in order to free up time and energy for other things. I didn't fully realize how much of my attention and waking hours I was funneling into OSN until I retired it, but wow: I feel an abundance of both that I haven't experienced in a while. I learned a lot from running it, though, and feel good about what I invested in it, just as I feel good about having given myself permission to end it when it made sense to do so.
Things I've Been Recommending
Book: Nuclear War: A Scenario / An absolutely devastasting book that basically just takes you second-by-second through what happens if a nuke is launched (or imagined to have launched in a convincing way). The rapidity with which everything we've ever done as a species (and planet), and everything we could do in the future could be wiped out nearly entirely is just incredibly depressing, and not something that fully hit me in all its implications until I read this book (in two sittings).
Song: Funeral by Tele Novella / Simple, mellow song with deceptively complex lyrics and a fittingly understated music video (watch via link). This song nudged me to check out the rest of their catalog, which is also quite good.
App: WorkOutDoors / I've established a habit of running around my neighborhood a few times a week, and this was the app (iOS only, I'm afraid) that was near-universally recommended to me as an upgrade from the built-in Apple fitness offering. I'm not a huge fan of some of the visualizations, but it's powerful, collects gobs of useful data, and offers me a lot of extra interesting stuff when I check back later to see what worked and what didn't on a particular day (it also easily connects to my Apple Watch and the $30 chest-strap heartrate monitor I use).