As I mentioned in my last post (for anyone still reading) I am moving all of my blogging efforts over to Young Old Soul. That’s my new brand. This blog’s current content will likely be archived and taken offline as I work out how to re-purpose the brand into something more useful. I think it may be time to bring the site back to the roots of its name.
Its time to end the world in every glorious way.
I’ve just launched my new blog, Young Old Soul. This new brand will represent my blogging presence from now on. Eschatic will be archived and repurposed as an outlet for some of my forays into fiction and other creative pursuits.
I’ve taken the plunge for the first time in my life and put myself into debt. I held out for so long, it wasn’t an easy thing to do. The consolation: a 2009 Ford Focus and (hopefully) a decade’s worth of reliable service. Or it could become a shit poor excuse for transportation in five years. Who knows? All I know is that it will not become a shit stain on my credit record.
I plan to have it paid in full in 18 months, double that if the bottom falls out of my awesome life but it will be paid off early. I refuse to carry the debt beyond three years if I’m able enough to avoid it. Check my new pimp ride! And yes, its red.
Making that purchase was the result of a week of frustration. I could barely concentrate on anything else. Buying it was almost cathartic. That’s one reason it had better last. I splurged a bit and I’m happy so far, but if this thing doesn’t last me for a good, long while, I’m gonna be pissed. I opted for the extended warranty, bumper to bumper and power train for six years or 72,000 miles. Likely six years unless I get the travel bug. I seriously doubt that I’ll travel 72k miles before then.
This car thing has dominated my thinking so much that hardly anything else had room to insert itself. Maybe I can get back on track now.
I’ve gained 20 pounds in 18 months. Assuming the conventional 3500 calories per pound, that means I consumed an excess 120 calories every day for that year and a half. That’s a soft drink or half a candy bar or a table spoon of Chocolate Moose Tracks ice cream. Or it might even be a pound of stir fry vegetables or a 4 oz. chicken breast or just over half a cup of rice. Or maybe my metabolism slowed drastically after graduation and I simply failed to account for the reduction in my diet. Whatever the case, an extra serving here, a slice of red velvet cake there, over time those calories accumulated and now I’m faced with a choice.
Do I take control of my health or do I continue down the road of denial and irresponsibility?
There are many ways to get the excess energy into our bodies, healthy and unhealthy alike. Regardless of the vessel its still an excess. We don’t use it so our bodies store it as fat. It builds up over time while we’re distracted by life: going to soccer games, watching television, playing video games, and stressing out over deadlines at work. In order to lose the weight, we have to break the cycle and reverse the process. Every little excess adds up and to break it down we have to create little deficits. The larger the deficits, the faster we burn the excess, but the higher the risk to our health. So to lose weight properly we must sustain our determination and initiative. We must have a plan.
Gaining twenty pounds over eighteen months doesn’t sound too absurd. As I mentioned above, it only takes an extra serving or self-indulgence per day. However, taking eighteen more months to lose that twenty pounds does sound absurd. It sounds absurd because we’re accustomed to the luxury of immediate gratification. I want to declare it unacceptable, a waste of precious time in my youth to be stuck with the baggage of my irresponsibility. I want the weight gone and I want it gone now.
That’s a lovely, exciting, and emotionally charging declaration of desire, but its just not realistic. History has shown that unearned rewards are rarely utilized wisely. People win millions in the lottery and find themselves poor six years later. Just like they lose weight only to gain it back six months later. We see this reversal because people rarely learn from windfalls. They don’t know how to maintain the fortuitous gift they’ve received. Even in the case of losing weight at the gym, earning the reward with hard work, if it isn’t habit you probably won’t keep it off.
After all, maintaining something is merely habit. If you have good money habits, you’re far more likely to invest your lottery winnings and sustainably withdraw it over the span of your life (and leave it to your heirs). Similarly, if you build good eating and exercise habits then you’re far more likely to lose the weight and keep it off. By hitting the gym every day for two or three hours and losing the weight in a two month marathon burn, do you really have the discipline to keep it off? Can you sustain that exercise schedule or any exercise schedule for that matter? Is it habit?
Honestly, I don’t like exercising in a gym. I don’t even like making it a point to exercise every day. If I lose twenty pounds by exercise alone and don’t develop the dietary habits to maintain a proper weight then you’ll be reading this again in another eighteen months. So I’m going to take the long view on this. I’m going to correct my dietary habits to support consistent and gradual weight loss and then maintenance. When the fat’s gone, then I’ll look at building muscle. But its all going to be framed by the long view.
The plan is simple. First, I need to determine my daily caloric needs. How much food do I need to sustain my current weight and get adequate nutrition? Second, I plot the caloric deficit necessary to lose the weight over the same length of time it took me to gain it. At first blush, that seems like 120 calories, considering it was a 120 calorie excess that got me here. Third, I take that deficit from my daily needs and restrict my diet to the result, starting immediately. However, that’s not all. I also need to figure out a regular cardiovascular routine that burns the same number of calories on average in just 30 minutes per day. I’ll execute the routine three days per week. So ultimately, I’m creating a 120 calorie deficit per day and also burning an extra 360 calories per week via cardio. Assuming I’ll falter with the cardio and miss some sessions, that should be a running deficit of 840 calories in the worst case and a full 1200 in the best. Thus, it may take me another eighteen months to lose the twenty pounds I’ve gained, or it may take just over a year. Either way, I’m committing myself to a gradual schedule with a disciplined diet and sporadic exercise.
That’s a weight loss plan that fits my psychology.
This is what can happen when you go from broke to rolling after graduating college and picking up a salary. I had no budget to speak of over the past year. My bills were paid as soon as I got them, but beyond that everything was discretionary. The result of such fiscal promiscuity isn’t entirely pretty. I give you the ‘09 Expense Review.
I’m making progress again. I took the weekend to catch up on things. The Laundry List isn’t looking as bad these days.
The property and information audits are complete. The financial audit is currently in process as I write a custom application for expense analysis. I haven’t even thought about the time audit. I expect it to be a simple affair though. It is a matter of simply scheduling my priorities and intentionally acting upon them. This past weekend perfectly demonstrated the efficacy of this simple strategy.
Looking ahead, I expect to have time audit finished and be well into a proper expense analysis by Wednesday. The end of the financial audit should be in sight by the end of the week. The most interesting part of this effort will be what comes next. How do I best utilize the results of these efforts moving forward?
I failed to meet my three week deadline for completing the laundry list. Why did I fail?
Quite simply, I had other priorities. Its hard to recall all the activities that I deemed
more important over the last three weeks, but I can assure you that there were a lot of movies
and games in there. Now the important question is what I am to do about it. I said that I
would hold myself accountable, but simply setting a deadline doesn’t qualify. There have to
be consequences for failure.
I feel a shallow shame for missing my deadline. I let myself down, but it doesn’t feel that
serious. I’ve lost touch with the motivation behind the endeavor. This should feel like
a betrayal of that motivation, but losing the connection to it destroyed the causal relationship.
The great tragedy in this is that I am now missing the power of that causal relationship.
Success promotes further success. This failure is a setback.
I’m going to make the consequences of this failure as simple and effective as possible. I
have a number of projects in flight at all times. Currently I have the laundry list, GRE studies,
various programming projects, Left 4 Dead level design and testing, three movies en route from Netflix,
and this blog to tend to, amongst other things. That is quite a lot to fill my time. Apparently
I value the movies and games/level design most, because that’s all that I’ve accomplished over the last week.
Next to spending ample time with my greatest distraction of course!
So, in order to promote getting shit done I’m going to revert back to basic disciplinary methods.
I’m grounding myself from the above activities until the laundry list is complete. After that
I’m going to schedule a dedicated time each week for attending to these less valued demands on my time.
This is time management 101 and, frankly, I’m embarrassed to be here.
I’m nearly two weeks into the laundry list. What have I accomplished?
My property audit has begun, but it is not finished. I sent three boxes of books, dvds, and games home with my brothers in the first week. I still need to revisit the remaining items to get dispense of some more. I’m finished with the books though, I’ll be keeping what survived.
Next up is my clothing, then general household items (particularly in the kitchen). Keeping the minimum property that I actually use and selling or giving away the rest is my goal. I must whittle down the useless mass contributing to my inertia.
Beyond these meager efforts, procrastination has reigned supreme. But then of course that’s not the whole story. My biggest distraction will forever remain because I simply refuse to get rid of her.
Yet another list of shit for your accounting pleasure. Let’s get down to business.
As I’ve mentioned before, I spent a lot of money in 2008 and have nothing to show for it. The majority of my property was carried over from my pre-professional life. I own books, movies, games, and other things that I’ve collected over a decade or more. Are these things at all useful to me anymore? Do I honestly continue to value them as I previously did? If not, then why do I insist upon keeping them? Its time to lighten the load.
Most people don’t like to think about death or disability. We prefer to assume that everything will continue like it is, that shit doesn’t happen. But I’m not like most people. I need to audit all of my critical information. There needs to be a central, secure repository for account numbers, passwords, contractual responsibilities, etc. that my loved ones may get to in the event of my death or disability. I also need to draw up wills as a part of this process, living and otherwise.
Automated savings is the name of the game. My 401k contribution is automatically taken from every paycheck. I need to setup both Roth IRA and an emergency fund contributions the same way. I don’t want to automate my bills, that feels like removing responsibility. My ultimate goal is to save 50% of my salary after tax and live off of the other 50%. Reducing my bills to the bare minimum should leave plenty of room every month to have lots of fun. Having to sit down and write the checks will constantly remind me of the spread and thus motivate me to keep them down.
Time is our most precious resource. How we spend it matters. Who we spend it with matters. Making the people and activities that are important to me a priority is the sole purpose of this effort. The primary metric for happiness is simple: no regrets.
To make myself accountable for these endeavors I’m allowing 3 weeks for completion.
Fuck! My attention to this chronicle is pathetic. Writing takes time. Especially the interesting kind. I’m gaining a whole new respect for people that can keep it up. This must be why I see so many guest posts on the big blogs I get around to (not many).
I’ve been struggling with the identity of this chronicle for a while now. I have changes in the works, but they’re not being executed quickly enough. I admit that I’ve been lazy lately, but this is truly pathetic. Setting a tenable pace for accelerating my pursuits is at the forefront of my mind right now. I have a lot of interests and pursuing them to meaningful ends is going to require the sacrifice of simplification. I’ll start with a machete and work my way down to a scalpel.
Goodbye non-essentials. You’ll hardly be missed. Now I just need to make myself accountable for these changes. Expect a laundry list soon.