The Consistency Challenge

For some time now, I’ve been aware that I have a problem staying consistent. This affects several areas of my life and, although not causing me and my family any real degree of pain, it is making the days that go by feel less and less fulfilling.

What am I lacking? What do I feel I could be doing better? Where is my time not being optimized? All of these questions (plus others) plague me from time to time. In the context of consistency, I’ve realized that I’m “floating” through a lot of things in my life. Again, this isn’t necessarily a negative thing, but it’s also not helping me obtain some goals.

And, yeah, I know, this is a retrospective of the year gone by, compiled during the last few days before a new year is upon us. Cliche, but the holidays are one of my most nostalgic times and with that comes the memories of how I used to do things, complete tasks, appreciate what I had, and altogether be happy.

The first, and biggest thing I need to get better at is my health. I’m very overweight, have a sedentary lifestyle, and don’t workout. Other than the normal aches and pains that accompany being almost 50 years old, I luckily have no major problems, so I feel lucky that, if I get my health under control, I may be able to ward off some bad things as I get older.

So, what am I going to do about this? I know I need to lose weight, monitor my caloric intake, and start moving. How am I going to do that exactly? I’m not entirely sure yet, but a plan is forming.

My time management skills have been for shit in recent years. Reading between the lines, I’ve been lazy about things. I think motivation is the problem, and my motivation comes from two things: being organized enough to know what needs to be done plus riding on the high of just having completed something recently. I’m starting to come up with a way to enumerate, detail, and execute my to-do list. I know I don’t have a lot of visitors on this site, but I may post a lot of these goals / tasks up here for accountability’s sake. The key will be the momentum, though. The more I get done, the more I’ll want to do.

Being creative and producing a cool thing has always been in my blood. And, like everyone, I have things in my head that need to be brought to fruition. That is about to start as well, as soon as I’m able to get my time management back under control.

All of the above things have led to inconsistent productivity, and ultimately, I feel like I’m not living up to my full potential. I’m starting on this today, and will do my best to post my progress up here (and to post less serious stuff too).

Comics added to collection:

Post-Ian, Pre-Dominican Republic

I figured I’d finally post up here to let everyone know we made it through hurricane Ian just fine. Since the storm shifted trajectory at the last minute, we dodged the majority of the winds and water. As a result, there was no damage to the house. The only mishap we had was that several trees in the preserve out back fell over in a domino effect, with the last tree landing in our back yard. Since we have nothing in the backyard, there was no damage to anything. The tree still needs to be removed, but since it originate from off-property, the CDD is expected to remove it. I reached out to them on October 9. I suspect it’ll be a little bit before they can make it around.

A view from the treeline.
The opposite view, from the lanai.
The trees covering the walkway in the preserve.

Carl flew out from L.A. on Oct 3rd to help his mom, who lives down in Venice. She was without power and water (she has well water and no electricity for the pump). He used my place as a sort-of base of operations for a week and went back to California on the 10th after her power and water came back.

This weekend was pretty busy getting small tasks done around the house. I’m back into using a detailed Excel spreadsheet to plan out blocks of my personal time, so several thing were able to get done. I also have gotten tired of way I feel and have decided to go back to Keto to lose weight and combat how terrible I bottom-out when I eat carbs. I’ve been good the last few days, but had some rice tonight with dinner. Back on track tomorrow. I intend on tracking weight up here publicly at some point, but I need more momentum first.

I bought and watched Clerks III today. I think those movies are a great little trilogy, but this third one really had me on an emotional rollercoaster. Hat’s off to Kevin Smith on a fun one!

Lastly, this week and next is shoring up nicely. Becasue of all the hard work during the hurricance, my boss is forcing me (oh shucks!) to take off Thursday and Friday this week. This is even with the knowledge that I’m off all next week as Cari and I and another couple travel to an all-inclusive resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. So, after I “clock out” on Wednesday, I’ll have eleven days off. The plan is to really relax in D.R. and reboot myself physically and mentally. I hope this makes up for the debacle that was Christmas time.

Life, Work, and Fun

So, a lot has been going on lately. I’ve been working a decent amount (yeah, big surprise there), but I’ve also been getting organized in a lot of ways on the personal front too.

We went through a new logo redesign for Suncoast Studios a few months ago and recently we’ve printed up new business cards as a result. The next step is to do a website redesign, which is (kinda) underway right now. Actually, I’m building a development server, which is a first for SCS. Normally I make changes to the live server, but since this is going to be an entire redesign, I didn’t want to potentially mess up the live box. The dev environment should be complete this week, and the goal is to have the new site live by November 1.

I’ve also been making headway on app development. I’ve recently signed up to be an iOS/OSX developer, and have managed to get a new Mac Mini (i5/2GB RAM/500GB HD) to write XCode on. I’ve created a little app for the iPhone to play around with, and will eventually be working on a real project.

And speaking of projects, I’ve been working on a new lighting system for the fish tank. Arnold and I have been brainstorming on a new LED lighting system that incorporates fiber optics, as well as a micro-controller that contains a web server that allows you to configure the lights. More on this to come.

Oh, and speaking of fish tanks… It’s currently empty. I had a system mishap a few weeks ago where I woke up one morning to find all the fish dead. The water temperature was 110 degrees, and come to find out the heater shorted out and the thermostat never turned off all night. All the fishies died. 🙁 So, I have some work to do to the tank now, including getting new pets.

And lastly, I’ve decided to get healthy. For the next two months, I’m going to be on a juice fast to lose weight, reboot my metabolism, and get a huge amount of energy.

Feeling… Eh.

So, lately I’ve been noticing that I have very little energy. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’ve been working non-stop for weeks, haven’t been eating right, and my workouts aren’t long enough. The workload will taper off very soon, as I’ll finish Allie’s project in the next few nights. As for eating, well, I need to do better on that (not today though – I just ordered some hot wings). And I intensified my workout tonight to see if that helps. I also stopped off at CVS to pick up some multi-vitamins with lots of B12 and B6 in them.

I get home, walk in the door and look at the fish tank and see the two Moneywort plants I bought floating on the surface. What the fuck. These plecostomus’ have to go this weekend. I went to Target for a couple minutes today to see if they had pH conditioner for the tank to get the levels down to around 6.8, but no luck. I’ll have to get that on Saturday I guess.

Well, back to work…