Around 4 weeks ago, I hurt my foot from running with Pico and trying to push through the pain. Once I realized it was getting worse instead of better, I decided to take some time off and started driving to the dog park instead of doing the full loop. It wasn’t a great situation because Pico wasn’t getting enough exercise, but I wasn’t sure what else to do. While at the park, I spent time sitting there trying to figure out a way to regain my personal discipline in relation to my goals. At the time, me and the person I was seeing were having some difficulties. I was acting like they didn’t exist, but I found I was easier to irritate and this was bad in combination with Pico getting less exercise. I felt and still feel, there is something I am missing.

What I am trying to figure out is how can I both put all of my being into my goals while being true to myself as I am? I am having trouble formulating the question. What I mean is last week the person I was seeing broke up with me. Our relationship was rocky from the beginning. One of my goals is to only tell the truth. In the relationship, this pursuit caused me to not really be present in the moment because I was always thinking how what I was saying should be phrased. Another goal was not eating carbs except on Thursday and Sunday. One thing I said to her was my parents don’t really like the goal either because they feel I am being too hard on myself.

The reasons that I have been told for not restricting myself have generally rubbed me the wrong way. ‘You’re being too hard on yourself’. ‘You can’t keep this up’. ‘Everything in moderation’. In some sense, they feel like excuses and self-appeasement. Before I was in a relationship I felt like I had found a solid foundation from which I could pursue my goals. Part of me blames her for encouraging me to stop the rules I set for myself. But if minor perturbations completely knock me out of the zone maybe my foundation isn’t so solid.

At the same time, for some reason I have felt myself inspired by the image of the First Hokage in Naruto. In the show, he is unbelievably strong but also so at ease and comfortable. He is willing to use his strength when it is necessary, but only for as long as it is necessary and just enough to have what he wants to happen actually happen. Minimum necessary force. Another segment which has also stood out for me has been the segments from DBZ where Goku/Gohan train in the hyperbolic time chamber. While in there, the world is at stake and they have 1 year to make themselves as strong as possible. When they are training they are going all out. But as soon as the training session is over, they are like completely different people. Laughing and relaxed. Looking at both of these segments, I wouldn’t think the First Hokage was strong or that Goku/Gohan were training if they didn’t explicitly show it.

Maybe there is something to this. One thing I have noticed in myself since being in a relationship is I haven’t really made much progress forward. I was planning to start volunteering in hospice, but that hasn’t started yet. I have been feeling a pull to start looking for a new job and the resume is updated but I haven’t sent it out. I have been meaning to lose weight and gained 15lbs. One note I made in this page last night was ‘why haven’t I made forward progress even though I’m working so hard’. Wake up at 6:30 every day, clean the apartment, clean Pico, stretch, do a mini workout, meditate, take out Pico and it is 10:30. I do some work, but while I am working I also have been feeling like it isn’t that important and the thought crosses my mind ‘why should I work hard at this?’. So instead I answer random questions on stackoverflow or waste time on side projects which haven’t gone anywhere. I take out Pico again, then I sit around and watch YouTube, go to sleep, and repeat the next day.

I feel that in some sense I have been feeding the wrong parts of myself. While I was in the relationship, I would keep checking my phone and get irritated when she didn’t get back, which would bleed into other areas of my life. Eventually I started taking it out on Pico. All the while pretending like I was working hard. Even in the physics sense, work = force x distance. I am putting in a lot of force, but while distance is 0 no work is being done. I am just grinding my gears for no benefit and patting myself on the back at the end of the day just because it is difficult. In this sense, maybe I have been putting a lot of force in random directions. My goal for this week is to re-orient myself in the direction of my highest goals in a way that is founded on actual bedrock and has a clear direction.

That I am drawn to these images suggests to me that maybe I can improve the quality and amount of forward progress I make by being more relaxed. In general, I have found that when I’m not working I feel guilty. But maybe the problem is in the types of non-work that I do. What do I usually do when I’m not working? Watch YouTube, smoke, overeat, have a bad night of sleep, feel guilty and upset that I have set myself back. This leads to one of 2 thoughts ‘next time I will get it right, may as well stay here for a bit’ and ‘I better overcompensate tomorrow to make up for this’. Maybe there are ways I can not work that will make me stronger and better off the next day instead of feeling like I have accrued debt.

My personal aspiration has been to make everything better wherever I go for everyone around me. The thought came to me last night that I am missing myself in the aspiration. It should be ‘make everything better wherever I go for everyone around me and myself‘. The thought also came to me that maybe some of the rules and rigidity which I try to stick to are actually me punishing myself rather than actually making me better off.

This past week, I have been mulling over these thoughts in my mind. I want to restructure myself so that I am more easygoing and relaxed in a way that actually improves the quality and amount of forward progress I make. I have been jotting down thoughts as they have come to me. From what I can tell, the most important changes I need to make are making sure what I am working on is relevant for making progress on my goals, making sure I put all of my focus and attention into what I am doing while I am doing it, and making sure that I have enough time to relax and enjoy life to avoid cheating on myself and to reward myself for forward progress. To help, I think answers to the following questions will be useful.

1. Based on my average day, what goals am I prioritizing?
2. What goals do I want to prioritize?
3. How should I restructure my schedule to better fit my goals?
4. What is the right rest to work ratio? Day, Week, Month?
5. What should I do when I am resting?

Based on my average day, what goals am I prioritizing? How do I spend a typical day? clean the apt ~30min, clean Pico ~30min, stretch ~20 minutes, mini workout ~15 minutes, meditate ~15 minutes, writing (any time remaining until 9AM), take out Pico ~(1 hour, 1 hour, 20 mins), start ‘working’. I am having some difficulty detailing my work time breakdown because since being moved to the most recent project, I have been finding myself not getting much productive work done at all. I spend a lot of time keeping tabs on the old projects I was working on, checking slack, checking emails, reading reports online from people about how the company is terrible, answering random questions on stackoverflow, wasting time on side projects, and doing some relevant work. After, I cook food, watch daily news, and then unwind. Given this what am I working towards? I guess I am working towards general physical fitness, keeping the apartment clean, staying current on the news, and maybe getting myself fired.

What goals do I want to prioritize? I want to be more valued at work, I want to be in a relationship which is working for both of us, I want to spend more time with friends, I want to be more athletic, I want to be less on edge, I don’t want to routinely feel busy/rushed, I want to help where my help will be useful, I want to continue learning what I think about things, and I want to live in the moment as fully as I can. What do I need to change to better do this? I think I need to remove distractions and focus on 1 thing at a time, start accepting job interviews, I will replace the second 1 hour walk with a shorter one, I will see if I can do more of a speed clean instead of a deep clean every morning, I will only go to the gym on training days (mon, tues, thurs, sat), and I will prioritize writings by publishing ‘next weeks topic’ a week early.

How much rest do I want each day? I don’t really know. I feel that I will need to play this by ear to some degree. Ideally, resting should leave me better off so maybe I can take breaks when I feel myself hitting diminishing returns and stopping doing work when it gets dark outside. One thought which came to mind is maybe how I rest should depend on what I was doing. Some ideas that came to mind are going on a walk, grabbing a drink with friends, listening to music, maybe I will get a massage some time, trying a new activity, and watching a movie/tv. I would have liked to have come up with a detailed plan with times when I should rest and work and what I should be doing when I am resting and working, but between me trying not to be too rigid and me not knowing how to build a schedule like that I am having some difficulty. For now, I will try to be easier on myself and build from there.

I will try to summarize. Several years ago it slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t happy with my life and who I was or who I was pretending to be. I acted like I was care-free but behind this I was plagued with anxiety and a general unease. Eventually, I started noticing that there were certain activities/behaviors I would engage with which would cause these feelings to amplify and I would feel even worse. I felt that if I could just get these under control, I could do anything. When I was successful I felt great but when I failed I felt equal lows. After much trial and much error, I found a way where I felt good most of the time. I could see myself making progress and that my hard work was paying off.

But the path I had found was strict. I needed to be constantly diligent with my schedule. Every day needed to be the same. And I constantly had my guard up to make sure that I wouldn’t slip. I pushed away friends and family because any perturbation could cause me to crumble. Instead of recognizing that the foundation I had laid was on sand, I acted like I had found bedrock. Eventually, I found myself in a relationship. Things were better than at my lowest point I ever thought possible. In hindsight, maybe part of me knew that the foundation was sand and that was why I tried to move the relationship along so quickly. Anyways all this time my friends, family, and both relationships have been saying I am too hard on myself.

Maybe I am wrong. It really would be great if relaxing and being easier on myself as long as when I am working I am directed and focused leads to things getting better faster than even in the strict path I was walking before. I don’t know. In some sense, it feels too good to be true. But for some reason I feel like this is the correct path forward.