Time off Midwinter break 2024 - Divide and conquer

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It’s midwinter break and I’ve got a week off. Most of these I try to do as a big family adventure. Finding something everyone wants to do is super challenging, so this time we tried something new, divide and conquer: I had a 1-2 day mini-vacations with Amelia, Zach, and even Tori. It worked out very well, the time-off was packed, Stanley Park with Amelia, Yellow Deli with Zach, and a crazy hotel on the Peninsula with Tori. On top of that restarting magic, balloons, and kettlebells and meditation in between.

Long ago, I learned I should pre-write these, but I decided (implicitly, by not applying discipline) to wing it, so I’m writing this at the end of the vacation.

This time off was probably easier than others as I got many environmental boosts to my inner peace:

  • Work has been going great, and I only needed 1 hour to “disconnect from work”. I’m actually excited to get back to work and dig into stuff, but I wrote it in a document and will pick it up when I’m back at work.
  • Money Troubles have been great - stock market is through the roof, with Meta and MSFT at all-time highs!
  • Health has been great, diet and exercise are dialed in.

My top priorities:

  • Don’t waste it by doing nothing.
  • Recharge my “dealer of smiles and wonder” identity - doing balloons and magic.
  • Create moments with the family (and take Selfies of them)
  • Stay healthy (though this is easier than usual see below)

Moments

  • Zach to Yellow Deli
    • 6 hours with Zach talking about lots of blog content
  • 2 times - Zach to improv, then subway to somewhere hopping and walk home together!
  • Tori and I went on a mini-vacation (WOW!)
  • Amelia and I did a 2-day trip to Vancouver (Stanley park, Denman street, and Granville Island)

Success Stories

  • Did magic several times:
  • Did balloons (FIRST TIME IN MONTHS):
    • Kid at restaurant, kept thinking I should go to the car and get balloon stuff, finally did it after dinner. Of course, the kid loved it.
    • NOTE: Great work past Igor for leaving all the balloon accessories I need in the car!
  • Lots of physical exercise:
    • Every time in Seattle hit the gym, and got great workouts
  • Discovered Bryan Johnson and his blueprint idea. I’m definitely with him in spirit, though not his exact path.

Top Learnings

This is less new learnings, and more recounts to existing knowledge

  • It really is easier to divide and conquer the family
  • Going to Vancouver when Toni is driving is trivial
  • The messed-up spoon story with Amelia :(
  • Tori and Amelia prefer a plan in advance (this isn’t much of a learning)
  • I’ve gotten way better at travel thanks to all my MPK trips (I used to fret about packing for days, now I just have everything in my travel bag, and the car is packed with stuff)
  • Have all the stuff I want pre-loaded (like balloon gear)
  • My discipline:
    • I don’t think of myself as being disciplined, but then people tell me you’re crazy, you’re super disciplined
      • I wake up at 4:30 and gym
      • I gym like 6 days a week for 1-2 hours
      • I meditate
      • I write a ton
      • I went years losing 5 lbs a month
    • I think what it is is I’m hyper-disciplined, but …
      • I’m not realistic on how much I can do, so 20 habits I want, can only do 5, so some are always rotating in and out, not congruent with my deliberate desires
      • I get mental blocks, like can’t cash checks on the fridge For years
      • Can’t refill hot tub so haven’t used it (which I love) for a year.

Relationships

Friends

  • Most parents and kids folks were out of town for winter break
  • Hang out w/Clive
  • Week before Zach’s parents’ friends invited me out, wasn’t sure I wanted to go, but did anyway so that I’d be able to join.

Tori

Private, but we made time to go on a mini-vacation (WOW)! I’ll keep it mostly secret, except

Zach

  • See the Yellow Deli
  • Did spontaneous musical improv, then took light rail far away and walked home at night, pretty cool.
  • Did spontaneous improv, then took light rail far away and walked home at night, pretty cool.
Loading (/yellow-deli)

Amelia

  • Went to Vancouver (left at 6 am so she could sleep and we could get there by 9 am)
  • Went go Granville Island, and Denman street, and stayed at Sylvia Hotel
  • No pool at the hotel, so hit the Vancouver athletic club
  • Messed up the spoon

Identity Health

Magic

  • ☐ Practice Daily
  • Magic for a kid hanging out at the magic store
  • Server at the Yellow Deli (the thing he wished for was “Grace”)
  • Did magic for folks that had their deck standing in front of the Yellow Deli
  • Zach nudged me to do magic!

Biking

  • ☐ Re-inflate my folding bike tires
  • ☐ Put my big bike back out front
  • ☐ Get lock for Brompton

Tech Guru

  • Found a cool framework for doing web UX in python, used it to do a math game for Math Agency

Shell + Enabling Environment + Python in VIM

  • Did some work on my AI bots
  • Got some new insights into RAG (how hard it is)
  • Start using my dual keyboard setup

Cognitive Health

  • Wrote up a bunch of blog posts
  • Discovered Bryan Johnson and his blueprint idea. I’m definitely with him in spirit, though not his exact path.

Meditation

  • Worked on my informal box breathing
  • Several days
  • Doing it while charging in the Tesla

750 words/Gratefulness

  • Remembered the sublime states, which are a larger category here, and seems more impactful for me.

Physical Health

Statistics

Weight Start: 189 Weight End: 187 Gym Days: 3

Diet

  • I’m doing terzepatide, so this is no longer a concern

Sleep

  • Didn’t get enough, but worked well.

Energy

  • High

House and goods

  • Stocks are way up so feeling very financially secure (though security should come from production capacity, not the current assets)
  • Basically own everything I want

Mental quicksand

Got grumpy about some stuff

Dug back into sublime states, that’s super helpful

Loading (/sublime)

Angry that wasting my vacation, and sacred time with family

The antidote is doing stuff, divide and conquer to reduce the activation energy and tackle it