I'm currently sitting in a vacation rental on Manasota Key, about an hour and a half drive south of Tampa Bay. The sun is shining hot and bright on the brilliant greens of a variety of tropical plants just outside the large living room window. It is tranquil. I should take a moment to acknowledge my privilege, that my family and I are able to enjoy this place while the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread unabated, and our entire democracy seems to be waffling at the crossroad with authoritarianism.

It is a period of anxiety and uncertainty, made worse by an undercurrent of something maybe akin to survivors guilt. What is the right thing to do?

It is right to take time for our own mental wellbeing, to temporarily divorce ourselves from the worries created by events outside of our control. That is not escapism, but rather admitting – even finding comfort in – the limits of our own influence in the world.

It is perhaps a sisyphean task to fight for an fair and just society, given the perhaps genetic disposition humans have toward tribalism and conflict, but perhaps even Sisyphus found time to admire the view as he toiled up the mountain.

Happy New Year! I wanted to start this year off on the right foot, so I made sure to get up and go to the gym early in the morning. I'm fortunate that my gym is open normal hours on New Year's Day. I was afraid that the gym might already be packed with new people starting on their New Year's Resolutions, but it was surprisingly empty this morning. Or, perhaps it's not that surprising, since I think the new year doesn't start until Jan. 2 for a lot of people.

I'm going to be switching my exercise program focus a little in 2019. I'm switching gears to focus more on weight loss for the first half of the year, with a goal of dropping to around 150 pounds by July. Once I reach that goal, I'll switch to a fairly aggressive Push/Pull/Legs program for three months with an eye on bulking up to 165-170 lbs. From there, my plan is to settle into a more balanced maintenance program that's a mix of running and weight lifting.

I started off today with a pretty standard 5x5 lifting routine, followed by 30 minutes on the elliptical. I'm switching to lifting twice a week, and running five times a week during this cutting period.

Today's lifts:
Squat: 5x5 @ 105lb
OHP: 5x5 @ 70lb
Deadlift: 1x5 @ 145lb

Today's workout was an early trip to the gym before the rest of the family woke up. I typically leave Saturday as a rest day, but wasn't able to get to the gym yesterday, so decided to just to what I had planned to do then, today.

All I did today was a 5x5 lifting routine. I'm still rebuilding my base, so the numbers aren't very impressive. I also like to run a mile or two after lifting to get some extra cardiovascular training in on days I lift, but I wasn't feeling it this morning. Mostly, my stomach was feeling upset, I think because I had a light dinner last night and didn't eat before lifting. I'm thinking I may need to start taking in a small, pre-workout snack before the gym in the morning so I can push through my lifting routine and still get a couple of miles in.

Today's exercises:

Squat: 5x5 @ 100lb
Bench: 5x5 @ 80lb
Barbell Row: 5x5 @ 85lb

It was a brisk 30 degrees F outside this morning, so I had to bundle up a little for my run. I don't like running with a lot of layers on, so I tend to dress on the light side for runs. The important thing is to keep my hands and ears warm, so I'll typically have on gloves and a warm hat when running in anything under 50 degrees F, even if I'll stay in shorts well into the 30s.

This morning I ran 3 miles in 27:36, and then walked another mile in 19:30. Neither are particularly fast paces, but it did feel good to get outside and move after having been fairly sedentary the past few days.

First off, Merry Christmas! I've been enjoying the holiday with my family, which as always involves a lot of cooking. I stuck to a pretty simple, and traditional menu for our Christmas meal today, since it was just the three of us here: roasted turkey, stuffing, carrots, butternut squash, and salad. I was very pleased with how the squash turned out.

This is a simple recipe, but boasts a rich combination of savory and sweet flavors for a very well-rounded side dish. I picked up a whole butternut squash for this, but you could just as easily use pre-cut or frozen cubed butternut squash. Peeling the squash can be a bit of a pain, so I wouldn't blame anyone for taking a shortcut there.

Ingredients:

• One large butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cubed
• 2 Tbsp oil
• Two or three sprigs of fresh rosemary
• Salt
• Pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Spread the butternut squash into a single layer on a sheet pan. Drizzle with oil, and hand toss until all of the pieces are evenly coated. Strip the leaves from the sprigs of rosemary and sprinkle evenly over the squash. Add salt and pepper to taste. Place on the center rack of the oven and cook at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 minutes.

The squash should be tender, but with some darker caramelized parts. The salt, pepper, and rosemary provide a nice balance to the butternut squash's natural sweetness. It's not a member of the usual lineup for Christmas dinner, but I think it may make it into the regular rotation in my kitchen.  

I recently deleted my Facebook account.

I did this for a variety of reason, but to summarize I just felt like it was a net negative on my life. It drained so much of my time and emotional energy, and didn't really give me anything in return. It wasn't an impulsive decision, either. I've flirted with the idea of quitting Facebook for a while now, and have suspended my account on several occasions. What I consistently found was that my mood in general was improved after being away from Facebook for a few days. But, in each case, I eventually logged back in to catch up on what was going on with friends and family.

Then in November of this year, around Thanksgiving, I was feeling pretty low again, and found that I was falling into this almost neurotic pattern of checking Facebook and other social media accounts every few minutes. I felt numb and enslaved. Every time my phone would vibrate, I'd hastily check to see what was trying to get my attention. To break out of that, I did a few things. First, I just signed out of all of my social media accounts, so it wasn't trivial to look at them. Second, I turned off all notifications on my phone except for phone calls and SMS text messages. I resolved to just not look at or think about any of it for a while.

Within a day or two, I felt calmer. I started reading actual, physical books. I was paying better attention to my surroundings. It felt good.

Fast forward a month, and I was slowly slipping back into the neurotic habit of slavishly checking my messages and news feeds. I was starting to feel low again. I won't go so far as to say that Facebook made me feel low. Maybe there are other factors, and the slippery slope back into social media was a coping mechanism. I don't know. But, I did know that whether or not it was the cause of my poor emotional state, Facebook was doing nothing to improve it, and was probably making things worse.

So, I decided to go a step further than suspending my account. I went into Facebook and downloaded all of my data. Every post, comment, photo, video, like. Anything I had put into Facebook, I saved, using their download account content feature. Once that was done, I announced to everyone on Facebook that I was leaving. A day later I deleted my account. It was surprisingly easy to do, once I had committed to it.

I'm a busy person in general, so I wouldn't say that eliminating Facebook has given me huge amounts of time, but it is freeing me a little to direct my focus at more constructive activities.

I don't want to completely divorce myself from the digital world, because it's the sphere in which I do my work. It's beneficial to my career to remain entrenched in the digital. But, what I do want is to have more control over my digital presence. I still want an outlet, which is the purpose of this blog.

It's still nascent, for sure, but I have an ocean of creativity simmering inside me.