Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
Yesterday after work I wrote a longer, rather dystopian post about the future of AI. I developed the idea and the start of the title the night before. I thought up the end of the title, the 3 scenarios, on the drive to work, and I sat at my desk at about 4pm and wrote the post in just over an hour. This was a rare opportunity where I was able to sit, completely uninterrupted for that long, and just wrote a piece, start to finish… I did need some edit time after I published it because I had another work event in the evening, so I couldn’t sit longer and do the final edits.
And that’s what I can’t wait to do when I retire. I want dedicated, uninterrupted writing time. Not like right now, when I’m rushing to get most of this done before connecting with a friend to get a pre-work workout in. Not a 30 minute window where I try to get everything down, create an image, post and share online. Instead, I want an hour or more of undisturbed writing time.
This doesn’t always happen in the summer. I’ll often still feel rushed, with family commitments and other daily activities getting in the way. But it is my hope that in retirement I can actually schedule time to write, make it a priority, and a regular part of my daily routine.
Since joining a gym back in November, I’ve felt very rushed with my writing. It only takes about 12-15 minutes to get to the gym, but the commute costs me roughly a half hour more than my regular morning routine before joining. My workout is also a bit longer than it used to be. So the cost in time has come at the expense of my writing. And often I have to push my daily write to the evening when I’m tired and just want to get it done for the day.
Next week is going to be extremely busy. I’ve got something on the go every day, and a couple of those days will take a lot out of me. I think this coming week will be the busiest of the month. I’m going to need to maximize my rest and be very efficient with my time.
I find weeks like this exhausting not just because the schedule is crazy but also because I end up getting less sleep. I head to bed wired and thinking about what I still have to do, and that results in me staying up later, and not getting as much rest. I am aware of this, and yet I can’t seem to break the pattern.
I’m me of my biggest goals in retirement is figuring out a better sleep pattern. I know that not having an all-day work agenda should make things better… but I fear that heading into summer, I’ll actually just stay up later. This is normal for me during the summer, when the days are longer.
My challenge is to find a routine where I’m fully recharging my battery because this is one aspect of healthy living I have not figured out. I can eat well and work out regularly with minimal effort now because these are habits I’ve developed. They don’t take motivation and discipline, they just get done as part of failing living.
A good night’s sleep still requires effort, and the discipline to go to bed early enough. I have to figure out how to routinize sleeping, rather than relying on motivation… Because my motivation isn’t strong enough. And weeks like the one coming remind me that sleep can make or break the kind of week I end up having.
It wasn’t that hard getting up on Monday morning at 5am to get to the gym. Coming back from a two week break didn’t hurt that much. But getting back into the routine of writing before I got to the gym at 6am has been a struggle.
It’s almost 11pm now and I’m laying down on my couch rattling this off to keep a commitment to myself to write every day.
The thing I am most looking forward to with retirement is time to write. The idea that I can schedule writing time that isn’t rushed excites me. Not having to think up ideas on the toilet first thing in the morning, or while washing my face and brushing my teeth. Not having to edit my work while on a treadmill. Actually sitting at a laptop with a coffee in my hand rather than hunting and pecking away on my phone… these are things I can’t wait to do as part of a daily routine upon retirement.
Before the March break people would ask me if I’m excited about my pending retirement and I’d answer honestly that I haven’t thought much about it. Now, after the break, I can’t say that anymore. I am thinking about it. I’m wondering how to design my days? I’m looking forward to finding a new groove that doesn’t involve a 5am wake up time and rushing to get my whole routine done before starting a long day at work.
The real test will be next September, when everyone is back at work and I’m home. I’m confident that I’ll build a routine that works. I’ll find my groove.
I spent the day travelling today and now I’m home. What a fabulous holiday my wife and I had. It was wonderful to visit with my mom and sister. Unfortunately I spent the entire 10 days with a cough that I still haven’t shaken, but that helped me see the importance of rest.
Normally when a holiday is filled with a lot of down time, I end up feeling guilty, like I wasted the holiday. Not this time. I truly relaxed. I even took time away from my regular routines like meditation and working out… and I did this without the need to beat myself up about it. I just took the time to recover. And as a byproduct, my sciatica has completely gone. I’m not sure if it will return with more activity, but I am thrilled to not feel pain just from standing for a few minutes.
And now I’m home, and the routines return. I’ll be back in the gym early tomorrow. I’ll get back to daily meditation. I’ll start back at work on Monday, ready to enjoy my last 3 months before retirement.
Coming home after a break can often feel like a bit of a slog, but I’m excited to be back, and I’m looking forward to returning to my usual routine… Especially since it’s coming from a desire to get back to my good habits, without beating myself up because I took a bit of time off.
Meet the co-author of this blog, Oliver the Cat. He greets me at the couch at around 5:15am, and will meow if I don’t put my legs up on the table. When they are horizontal, he jumps up on my legs and waits for a good head scratch. Once he’s satisfied, he turns around to face my feet, and stretches out along my legs.
Alas, it only lasts about 3-4 minutes, then one little adjustment or shift in my body position is enough for him to get off me. But not until I’ve started tapping away words on my phone.
Oliver is probably the only part of my morning routine I don’t have control over. He can choose to sleep in, and avoid my lap for a morning. He can decide how long he wants a head scratch & massage. He can have the nerve to jump off me before I’ve written anything. Still, any time he chooses to run through this little ritual, I’m happy to make sure it happens.
Oliver isn’t just my cat, he’s very often my writing companion… there to support me in my daily writing, stealing just enough of my attention to put me in a good mood, but not too much of it to distract me from the reason I got on the couch… which is to write.
We’ve fully reached the stage of finding reasons to go rather than finding excuses not to. I’m not available this weekend to do our weekly walk up the Coquitlam Crunch, so Dave and I met in darkness at 6am to start our trek up the hill.
I’d say we reached this stage a full year ago. It was 2025 that we went from our commitment to doing the climb at least 40 times a year, matching the weeks of a school year, to ensuring we never missed a week. This wasn’t a voiced decision, it’s one we just found ourselves doing.
Now it’s something we just do… And yet it’s a lot more than that!
It’s a chance to to talk, to rant, to seek advice, to share, to listen, to connect.
It’s a commitment to a friend.
We now regularly meet at 6am for workouts anyway, and we often do multiple crunches at a time training for Everesting the Crunch, so to meet on a cold Thursday morning and just go up and down the Crunch once, actually feels like a rest day.
We’ve heard this all before regarding habits, goals, and projects: Before you pick something new up, you need to put something else down.
The conference I went to back in October was led by Simon Breakspear who shared his Pruning Principle. He guided us to ask, “What is on my ‘Stop Doing’ list? What can I Delay, Delegate, or Dump?”
Adding a gym membership has been great, but it has come at a cost. The 15 minute commute each way means I’ve lost 30 minutes of time from my morning routine. I also spend a bit more time at the gym compared to my home workout. The question I now find myself asking is what am I going to give up to make up that time. I already get up at 5am and moving that to 4:30 would not be a healthy option for me.
I’ve decided that I’m dumping my online distractions. I’m leaving behind Wordle, Strands, and an online game that I usually play. I’m also doing zero social media in the mornings. Even 5 minutes can detract from a longer stretch or cardio workout. I’m keeping my Daily chess puzzle (while doing my bathroom duties), but not allowing any other online distractions in the morning.
I’m not sure that will be enough, but I also started writing this post last night and that’s going to help a lot too. Often the longest part of my morning is coming up with an idea to write about. If I get my idea started in the evening, that’s probably going to be the biggest contributor to not feeling rushed in the morning. I know online time in the am is also a huge distraction, especially when I’m stuck coming up with an idea. I’ll often distract myself online which is more of a delay than it is ever an inspiration.
While my gym membership has only been for a month, and two weeks of that were holidays, I know that adding the membership to my morning routine has been disruptive and unsustainable without a change. I need to prune distractions from the things in my routine that really matter.
It’s that time of year again where I go to my big tracking calendar and add up my totals for the year.
Once again I was very consistent with my workouts and meditation, and I’ve yet again maintained my daily writing for another year. I’ll break a few things down as I reflect on the year.
Workouts: After taking a look at my 2024 calendar, I realize that I haven’t missed 2 days in a row in over 2 years. This year I was a little less strict in my definition of a workout, sometimes only doing 15 minutes of cardio, and sometimes not doing both weights and cardio, but still committing to a workout 326/365 days in 2025.
In my 2024 post I said regarding one of two goals, “Gain 7-8 pounds of muscle… Now I fluctuate around 167-169 pounds and would like to bring that to 175 pounds.”
For the last couple weeks I’ve been bouncing around 173-175 but I hit 178 a couple months ago and I’ll get back there after the holiday break. So, I totally achieved this goal, and couldn’t be happier. For 2026 I hope to be in the 183-185 range. I think this is a huge challenge, my body seems to like the 174-176 range and I’ll have to work more on a consistent diet rather than just focusing on weights and training.
Meditation: This is something I need to improve. While statistically I did well with frequency of meditations, about 85-90% of these were done when walking on my treadmill. Although I listened to a guided meditation, I was almost always distracted and allowed my monkey brain to wander instead of truly meditating.
I’m actually not going to try to change this at all in the next 6 months, but once I retire I’ll attempt to meditate for longer, and be more dedicated to meditation. This will include a more formal setup and a setting other than on the treadmill. For now I’ll stick with the status quo.
Daily-Ink: I’ll continue to write every single day for 2026. This started in July 2019, and I have no plans to change this in the short term.
Creativity: This was a failed goal but I’m still happy to track it. I wanted this to increase, but it decreased. Essentially, the only thing I tracked this year was meetings with my uncle where we discuss our Book of Codes project and just as importantly, life, the universe, and everything. Again, I’ll have new goals after retirement, but for now I’m in maintenance mode and just want to keep going as-is.
So, my main goals this year are calorie tracking and building muscle mass. I only want to get to 185lbs, this isn’t a plan to keep gaining weight after that. I actually like the weight I’m at right now, but at 58 with a not-so-great back, I realize that I’m one injury away from having to take a few months off and potentially dropping 8-10 pounds. Hopefully such an incident is a couple decades away, but even if it’s only 5 years away I’m keenly aware that I will have a much harder time regaining weight in my older years. So if I can sit at 185lbs as my normal weight, I know that I likely won’t drop below 175… which again is a weight I’m quite happy to be at.
185lbs by the end of 2026 is my goal, and to get there I will focus on hypertrophy in the gym and a higher protein and calorie intake than I have normally consumed.
Fitness, meditation, and writing are things I no longer need to track to ensure that I’m on track. For this reason, I think I might be retiring my large calendar and stickers. I recently got a Garmin watch with Lifestyle Tracking and I’ll still record these daily, but it’s time to put an end to the calendar. It has served me well but having joined a gym, I no longer go to my basement every day and tracking this month has been less diligent since I could go a full week without adding stickers. That said, if you are starting a new goal, I can’t recommend this strategy enough.
2026 is going to be a great year of continued progress… Gradual at first, but picking up speed after my mid-year retirement.
I’ve been feeling ‘off’ on top of issues getting a good night’s sleep, and that has thrown my schedule out of whack. Compounding this, I just joined a gym and the just over 30 minutes commute time to get there and back has thrown off my morning routine. I already get up at 5am and I’m not pushing this to 4:30 to compensate. So, I need to readjust my schedule. On top of this, I’m just 2 days away from winter vacation so my entire routine is about to get upturned anyway.
So what gives way to this? When there is a major disruption in the smooth running of my routines and habits, what breaks? Well, if I can help it… nothing. No, I won’t skip a day writing. No, I’ll never skip 2 days in a row working out. No, I won’t accept that this is a crazy time and I’ll just get back to my schedule when there is time.
That said, I’m probably going to end up moving something to the evenings. I actually have given up a puzzle I do each morning called Strands, and I don’t do Wordle first thing in the morning anymore. But more importantly, I won’t let scheduling be the reason that I don’t get my personal goals done each day.
I’ve said before that it’s the hard days that make you stick to a habit, but it’s also the way you handle your habits when your schedule doesn’t cooperate. When there is a metaphorical disturbance in the force, and things are not as they should be, these are the times habits are made or lost. Because habits are easy when they are neatly stacked into the routine of the day. But take away that routine and suddenly the habits take a lot more effort.
I guess I’ll just have to ‘use the force’… of momentum, of expectation, and of commitment to make sure that while my schedule and routines are totally disrupted, my habits will consistently prevail.
In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear shares the idea of getting 1% better. What’s fascinating about this is that the evidence of improvement is not something you see early on.
Going to the gym 6 days a week for 2 weeks will not have your muscles bulging out of your previously loose shirt, but 2 years later you might need a new wardrobe. Reading just 10 minutes a day doesn’t make you an avid reader in 2 weeks, but 2 years later you’ve read a couple dozen books.
The idea of working to be just 1% better is fantastic, and it has some great long term benefits, with no downside. However, there is one thing to consider and that is avoiding pitfalls that set you backwards. The simple example is that you are making great progress in the gym then you push too hard and get an injury. Now it takes months of rehab before you can get back to where you were before the injury. That’s a lot of days not getting 1% better. Sometimes these injuries are from pushing too hard, sometimes it’s from a simple movement that your body wasn’t expecting. These are understandable, and not always avoidable.
On the other hand, sometimes these injuries fall in the ‘you better never’ category, fully avoidable and preventable.
You better never pick up a football and throw it to almost your maximum distance without warming up with a dozen or so short passes first.
You better never challenge someone half your age to a race and go from zero to full speed in 12 seconds.
You better never do that Instagram challenge where you contort your body and try to pick something up off the floor with your teeth.
Essentially, you better never do dumb shit that your body used to do easily when you were half your age, letting your ego get ahead of your current abilities.
On a journey to be ever better, you better never choose to do something where 10 seconds of misguided effort sets you back months of consistent progress.
