My Iodine Year

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I hosted a belated-birthday party for my son.
I could see why they were sticklers about getting the waivers signed!

A favorite observation from Scott Molina

You don’t need to feel good to do good.

He was talking about race performances. Time has shown Scott’s observation to apply more broadly, say, to families and parenting.

Related to my last post about the phases of early education, you are unlikely to regret the difficulties required to set your family on a better path.

Go further… regardless of the outcome for the generation that follows you… providing a wonderful childhood, to any kid, will be a source of longterm satisfaction.

I’ve been at the fatherhood game for more than a decade. Often I feel worn out. The “worn out” seems to be adaptive. Our oldest is now a teen and my fatigue provides motivation to continue the process of getting her ready to leave us.

So that’s the family bit… occasionally awful, often fatiguing, always satisfying in hindsight.

A bit of real-world physics right there.

Physically, my early 50s are much different than my early 40s. The rate of decline isn’t clear to me. The downward trajectory, however, is clear!

Specific tactics I’ve been using, and considering:

Anaerobic & Tempo Load – my ability to “do work” remains at a high level. What’s missing is the capacity to recover quickly from those efforts.

I can see why people choose to supplement their recovery hormones. I’ve skipped that path. I’ve skipped it because the last thing I need in my life is an increase in aggression. I also like the challenge-of-figuring-things-out.

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Strava – I ditched it at the start of this month. I felt the public posting was nudging me towards fatigue.

=> Limiting crowd size appears to help the quality of my decisions.

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Oura Ring – I bought the Gen 3 ring and have had it on for six weeks. It’s been a help. I particularly like the ability to look at what’s happening across the night.

Tired
Ready

Other Changes: turned my morning alarm off, stopped counting days skiing, stopped counting ski vertical and ditched all notifications.

Nothing buzzes, rings or flashes in my life.

Wonderful.

Oxygen Room – When I lived in Christchurch (NZ), I had an altitude room that I used for work/sleep. It was a low-oxygen room, created by running O2 concentrators, and pumping oxygen out of the room.

The company that sold me the system is now creating oxygen-rich rooms, to let people sleep at “sea level.” A friend installed one at her ski place and she loves it. When she caught COVID (breakthrough) with Influenza (same time), she headed “up” to be at “sea level” for recovery.

With the O2 room, I’m considering:

  • What’s the goal? Perhaps better recovery. Sea level sleep, when physically tired, is bliss.
  • Assuming better recovery, how’s that actually better?
  • How would I use the better recovery? History indicates I’m likely to add load until I am just-as-tired as before!

So maybe it’s better to save the $$$s and modify my load.

Time’s going to force load reductions on me, regardless of recovery protocols. Another reason to avoid hormone supplementation => I might as well figure it out now.

Do you notice what you’re not doing to yourself?

It is difficult to wrap my head around things “not done.”

My demographic doesn’t write much about all the alcohol, edibles, prescription drugs and hormone supplementation that’s going on. I’ve decided to skip all that.

When my kids ask why…

Reality is enough for me.

Also…

You will need to decide what you want to get done in life.

Preparation & Prudence

Our family feels like it’s moving into a new phase. The changes are impossible to ignore.

  • My challenges with “preparing” physically.
  • Watching my kids track into self-directed learning, and living.
  • The shortening window, of years, that lie ahead.

On every metric, my life (and the lives of those close to me) is on track.

A new question arose this year…

What was the goal of all the preparation and prudence? Amazing wife, all-star kids, cash burn under control, balance sheet on target, body doing better than I ever expected… what now?

Back in the summer, I wrote a small “to do” list. One of the items was 20 blogs in 20 weeks. This one is #20.

🙂

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Thanks for reading and for getting in touch from time to time.

This holiday season, I hope you get outside and give yourself a chance to enjoy the view. I’ve been trying to look around more.

Picture below is moon-set from the middle of December. I never wonder “what now” when I’m enjoying the outdoors.

PS: Iodine is element 53 on the periodic table.