Author: Aaron

Today is Friday, July 25th, 2025, and it’s time for a Fit Check.  The Fit is Good.  The trends of losing weight and gaining in overall health and fitness continue, and I’m pretty happy with that.

I’ve hit most of my daily walks, and most of those included a run or otherwise increase in intensity. I’ve been back on my strength training schedule. I’ve been back on my calorie counting. I’ve… not… been back on my HIIT or calisthenic exercises… maybe I’ll get one in over the weekend. It would certainly be good for me if I did.

Okay, that’s out of the way.  Last week was a lot more artistic and I very much enjoyed writing that bit, so I’m thinking I’ll stretch my writing on the blog from time to time. More so if I continue to like it. But not today. 

Today I’ve been thinking about my weight loss goals, and this time actually focusing on the numbers. Like, I’m looking to slap some numbers on my spreadsheet.  After the jump, the rest of today’s post is me walking through the making of those goals.  It is very loose and barely edited, and I’m guessing it doesn’t make for a great read.  But it’s something I feel like documenting in this space, and hey, maybe it’s worth a read if you’re in a similar spot.  Otherwise, you ain’t missing much.  Go ahead and skip, then catch me at the next one.

Above is a chart of my weight tracking for the past couple of years. That big spike might not be entirely accurate – I really did get that heavy, but in truth, I may very well have gotten even heavier. Over 300 pounds certainly isn’t the heaviest I’ve ever been. Somewhere back in the 2010’s, I maxed out the top end of my home scale. The scale I had at the time maxed at 350, so with that needle pinned, well, who knows how big I got. This latest spike in 2023-2024 was the big hospital visit, which had more to do with my dying insides than my meal habits, but that’s a story for another day. The chart also has a lot of empty spaces, which might remain empty, I’m not sure. I wasn’t keeping super tight records for big stretches of my recovery. Really, if you’re having trouble just walking, kinda who cares, right?

I’ve been trying to remember what my End of Summer weight goal was, and I’m no longer sure that I had set one.  Some of my goals have been a bit squishy of late, which is fine. Squishy goals are better than no goals.  However, I do like having a thing to strive for, and having a bunch of smaller things along the way is quite helpful as well.  So let’s see about setting something long term and something short term, starting with the shorter end of things with that End of Summer Goal.  But first, let’s think this through.

From what I’ve read regarding health and fitness, it is regularly stressed by physicians, nutritionists, and sports medicine practitioners that you shouldn’t lose more than two pounds per week.  I have also come to an understanding that this is like a rolling averaging type thing – some weeks you won’t lose any, other weeks you’ll lose three pounds, you get it.  Most of this knowledge is years old, and if I were to be more rigorous about things, I’d include some references here.  As I would like the excuse to both spend time reading about fitness and also stretching my research muscles, I am very much interested in that project. However, the time I would need to commit to a project like that is currently taken up by more pressing matters, so that just ain’t gunna happen.  But I haven’t recently read anything that seriously challenges that baseline understanding, so let’s stick with it – the upper limit of healthy weight loss is about two pounds per week.

I’ve definitely lost more than two pounds per week in years past, so if I manage to hit a higher pace, especially at my current weight, I’m not going to stress over it. I’ve also had a few weeks just this year where I’ve lost more than two, but I think that’s to do with a rubber-banding effect, so let’s not include that in our estimates. But thinking about that upper limit and trying to get a feel for my best and worst rates of weight loss is, I think, a good start.  I don’t think it would be fair for me to expect a sustained, ongoing trend of losing two pounds every week.  Sure would be nice, it would mean I could drop more than twenty pounds over the summer, but we’re more than halfway through that summer, and it hasn’t happened.

Summer is about three months – we’re gunna be pretty loosy-goosy with the math in this session, so let’s not get too hung up on details.  Let’s call these “gross estimates”, shall we?  So Summer is about three-ish months, depending on where you measure from.  I mean, where even is the base of a season?  Probably just below the volleyballs, right?  

Around the start of June (which I know is not the actual start of Summer, again, please, just stay with me here) I was just above 260 lbs.  A couple weeks in, I got down to 255, but that wasn’t a perfect drop – I gained a little back, lost a smidge, gained, and so on.  I suspect I overshot a loss and the reality of my situation bounced me back up.  This gave me a little worry that I wouldn’t be able to get over this hump, but I did.  Mathing things out, if we assume about three months, about four weeks per month, and about 2 pounds per week, I could drop 24-ish pounds.  There is no way in hell that is going to happen.

I think my current rate is, at best, one pound per week.  Actually, no I don’t.  I think it’s more like one pound per two weeks.  Is that right?  I don’t think that’s right either.  Let’s step back a sec…

Okay, I want to get down to 210 pounds, or at least see how close to it I can get, before making any overall shifts in fitness goals.  So let’s call that my End Goal.  End Goal = 210 (for now).  At the start of June, I was a little over 260.  It is about the end of July, and I am 252.  About eight weeks, about eight pounds. Likely another three to five in the next few weeks. For the overall, it’s about 42 pounds to go.  If I lost two pounds per week, that would be 21 weeks.  That’s somewhere in mid-December.  Possible, but unlikely.  

That measure of time, though – about eight weeks, about eight pounds – does reinforce the idea of about one pound per week.  The end of August is about five weeks away.  If I maintain roughly this rate, I could be down to 247.  That would be nice.  However, I do have at least one birthday party, a possible road trip, a possible school open house, and some other complicating factors that might derail me a bit.  I don’t think they’ll throw me off by too much, but let’s not add additional undue stress to the pile here.  I’ve got my current weight, my overall goal, and roughly my rate.  That should be enough to scratch out these goals now.

Keeping with that logic, let’s say I do end August around 248.  From there to the end of the year is like seventeen weeks.  If it were at the 2lb/week max, that would be like 34 pounds.  Hot damn.  Still not gunna happen, but it’s a good reminder of what’s possible.  If I really got down to it, I could basically be at that 210 goal by the end of the year, give or take.

Let’s take another quick step back here, because at some point earlier this year, I got up over 270. It was brief, and may have had more to do with water retention, but true nonetheless. I was back up around that weight as recently as the beginning of May. That’s like 16 pounds in 13 weeks, so a rate of like 1.2ish pounds per week? Okay, that’s another good data point check in, and more evidence to stick with that 1lb/w plan. Let’s stick with this.

Here’s a snapshot of an old spreadsheet I’ve been using to track this.  I’ll probably gussy it up a smidge at some point.  I really love a pretty spreadsheet, and all the modern spreadsheet tools just make it so easy.  It’s also got a fair amount of silly math in it.  What I’m calling a “Trend” is particularly egregious… yeah, maybe I should get to that Statistics class sooner than planned.  Well whatever, we’ll fix things up at some future date, but not today.

Let’s shoot for 248 by August 29th.  We’ll not fret if we’re still around 252 by then, we’ll just adjust both the expectations of when I reach my goals and also intensify my exercise plan to pick things up.  If I manage to get heavier again, same but harder, I suppose.  But let’s not expect to fail just yet, we’ll just anticipate it’s possible and also that it will be fixable if so.  We’ll be quite happy if we make it under 250, even if it isn’t the 248 goal and even if it doesn’t completely stick. 

Longer term, at this rate I could be in the 230s by October, which would also be quite nice. However, it really is hard to stick to plans the further things get into Winter.  So let’s plan to be squarely in the 230s by the end of the year.  Anything more is a bonus.  We’ll do some little goal check-ins as we go, and adjust on the fly.  

Yeah, this feels pretty good for now. Alright, that’s what’s up. Have a good one, y’all.

Today is Friday, and that means it’s time for a fit check.  How is today’s fit?

I’m on the last stretch of my daily walk and I am going to absolutely crush this last hill. But let’s back up a bit and put things into context.  

For my health, and now to meet some additional goals, I take a walk, almost every day.  It is fortunate, given this, that the town I live in has many sidewalks and footpaths.  My daily walk is a round trip, starting at a section of one of those footpaths that runs behind my home. This path snakes between various neighborhoods opposite a forested area complete with streams, whose outer edge is defined by a local arterial road.  This path connects to some others, which I suppose means it has no end, but there is a technical end, one which is also an opportunity to make my trip into an actual loop.  At not quite two miles from my starting point, the footpath has an underpass, the topside is a road, barely noticeable to drivers as a bridge.  On the other side of the path is a standard, street level sidewalk, and if I continued on, it would go down some familiar neighborhood streets that would eventually bring me home.  But I prefer, once I’ve made it to the underpass, to stay in the relative calm and serenity of the path by making an about face and heading back the way I came.  Small changes in elevation, proximity to the streams, and tree cover makes for differing qualities in air, temperature, and pressure.  There is a big clearing that I pass through, it’s a familiar spot, and I sometimes wonder if it was one of the places that I would occasionally gather with friends in the summers of high school, but that was lifetimes ago and I don’t quite remember.  These days, to me it is about the halfway of the halfway, either the first or last quarter of my trek, depending on which side of it I am on.  

From previous walks and a few too many meandering thinks without substantive geographic reviews, I’ve surmised that somewhere on this stretch, which lies between a foot bridge and a steep hill, is about one mile out from my home.  The overall is just shy of four miles, so logically, the underpass flip must be slightly more shy of two, so if I bisect one half and push out just a little further than exactly, that must be right around one, or at least that’s how I’ve figured it, and the little map on my fitness app corroborates well enough. I’ve been training to start running again.  Training seems to formal for how I’m going about it, I have no stop watch and as I’ve already mentioned, I don’t actually know how far this is.  But it seems about right, and a mile would be too long anyway right now, but this seems well enough for the current needs.  But for my training and in my expectations, I imagine this about the best place to spool my legs up to sometimes take my walk to a run, or at least as close to what a run looks like in my current state.  On this side of the leg, the hill I mentioned is just up ahead. I figured, lacking in specifics though I am, that this is probably enough lead for me to warm up my stiff joints and aging muscles to really give that hill a go.  It’s also the biggest hill, I think, and something about starting with this challenge right away also feels right.

It’s the first few yards that feel the worst.  I called my joints stiff, and that is the common euphemism, but it doesn’t quite capture the reality.  My ankles feel like stuck pivots on an old control arm – years of paradoxically overworking and under-using have stiffened the rubber gaskets, a few too many cycles of rain and shine have rusted and swollen the housing, and the Teflon washers must of cracked away in years past, ‘cause they just don’t glide like they used to.  It’s rough, enough so that at the start of each of these, I wonder if I should even continue, lest I risk greater injury, but I press on and by the time I reach the bottom of the hill, I’ve started to find my stride.  And I charge it.

In my days in the Air Force, I was fortunate enough to receive a few different and key tips regarding exercise.  I find that I’ve grown quite cross with my younger self for not so diligently adhering to the best of them, but I suppose there’s no changing that now. One of my favorites was the least formal, not something I read in a book or was instructed on from a coach or medical professional, but from a colleague.  A boss, really, one of the Sergeants in my unit while I was an Airman, though I don’t recall being in his direct chain of command.  He said, “Whenever you get the chance, always charge the uphills and ride the downhills”.  I’ll never forget that and though I can’t fully explain it, I know that when I’ve put this idea into practice, it has always served me well.  And so as I shake the rust out of my ankles, I feel myself preparing to charge that uphill.  I try to pin my shoulders back, reducing that motion can conserve energy, but if you do it too much you might also cut off momentum.  A few more rules from then, likely nonsense of course, but they too have served me well.  Try to flatten out the hands a bit, so they glide through the air on the way forward and scoop it out on the trip back, like the cut-and-paddle in a freestyle stroke.  My knees start to rise higher, faster, longer, and my stride lengthens, then shortens for the staccato bursts required to pull up this incline.  My thighs start to burn and my lungs just can’t fill enough without feeling like they’ll burst, and I am on this hill, halfway up it, and it hurts, and a euphoria takes over me as the angle steepens and I drop my head and rise my elbows to make room for more air, and I fly, the wind that was pushing me is now carrying me, and I crest that hill.

And it feels exhilarating.

In all of my previous runs, I’ve yet to make it much past this crest before having to slow to a walk, and today is no different.  It doesn’t help that the wind shifts again at the top.  At the crest is a turnabout that forms the end of a quiet neighborhood street, and in midday, while most people are at work, the wind is free to wash across street in cool, clean smelling notes, calling me to just stop here, enjoy the nice day, and walk the rest of the way. I’ve done enough.  Mercifully, the street is quite narrow, even with the turnabout, and the other side comes about quick enough that the feeling to stay can’t grab hold. On the other side , the path continues and the hill runs back downward, past a small children’s park, a footbridge, and another neighborhood street, this one connecting through.  The stream is back, and its here that I often spot a big, funny Blue Heron, strutting through the waters. There are no more streets between me and home, but many additional landmarks significant to my journey.  More foot bridges, another children’s park, a “Y” that could lead me to a different neighborhood, if ever I felt the urge to explore.  The land here is a little lower, and the stream is both a little nearer and a little higher.  The foliage is full here, green on all sides.  The air is heavy and thick, more a potato leak than a crisp consomme.  I try to push my running stretches as far as I can, picking out points of interest as markers to strive for.  Today, I make it past the park and all the way to the big rock, but just barely.  Happy still, I don’t mind the strange looks thrown my way as I huff and wheeze through another walking stretch.  There are two more hills to go.

I want to stretch out these rests as much as I can, but I also want to hit as many hills as hard as I can, as both challenges are important to my progress.  My goals are many, and some are quite far off, like being able to make this one mile run without needing to walk or take breaks, and that I’d like to do that by the end of this year.  With each extended stretch and each hard pressed hill I get closer, and I’ve finally come to see this as a goal that I might just accomplish, which would sure be something.  I have taken the tallest hill already, now comes the steepest.  Two footbridges, and I like to start at the end of the first, as the foot of the upcoming hill lies at the start of the second.  By this point in my run, I’ve shaken off enough of the rust that I’m starting to glide.  I’m also starting to flag a bit, as my thighs are now burning even when I shift back to a walk, and they’ll be sluggish soon, too filled with sludgy wet concrete feel of lactic acid. My lungs are bursting, and my heart is in overdrive, just trying to keep myself going, one foot after the other.  But I want this, goddamn do I want this, and I push on, over the bridge and up the hill and I am exploding.  The joys of being a bomb.

The hill is short but it sure makes up for it in height.  Like that first hill, I always plan to crest it and keep pushing, but I usually top out just beyond its top.  My thighs still hurt, but who could hear them over the screaming of my lungs.  I am so far past sweaty, and in the sticky churn of this air, I am absolutely dripping, soaked through all of my clothes, soaked to the bone, even my shoes are sopping, and there’s one more hill, just up ahead.  I reassure myself that I wouldn’t have made it without a slowdown anyway, and take the moment to recover as I can.  There are a few bends ahead and then it’s the last hill, a compound hill – two humps with a little dip in the middle.  I’ve picked it out already, just around one of those bends is a tree, not so different from the other trees but nonetheless sticks out, distinct, easy to keep track of, and that’s where I am going to begin my final attack.  Better rest up before I get there, ‘cause I get there, I am gunna get it. 

Here at the tree, my legs loosened again, shoulders back again, elbows pointed, chest out, stride open, I’m going for it. 

I am on the last stretch of my daily walk, now turned run, and I am going to absolutely crush this last hill.  

I’ve not much left, so might as well spend it all!  I can hear myself now, over my earbuds, over the wind and birds, over the honks and whirs from the street through the thinning trees, I can hear my own self and my labored breaths and groans, giving it all to take this last hill and I feel a happiness and relief, one I have known and forgotten, and when I crest this final hill, once again planning and once again failing to keep stride, but not in anger or disappointment, I crest it in joy for having done what I have done.  And I am happy. My run gives way before I can ask it and I slow, this time way down, now leisurely crossing the lawn and easing back up the steps to my home.

Today is Friday, July 18th 2025, and The Fit is good.

~Aaron

It’s Sunday July 13th, and I need to make my check in late again.  Things have been fairly busy, so I had to skip my Friday due date.  Life has got to come first, after all.  One casualty, of course, was 7-11 Slurpy Day.  I guess that will have to wait for next year.  

Alright, let’s do the journal, the Log part of this thing, and get to the Fit Check.  The Fit is Good.  No big gains or losses by the numbers since last week, but things are moving along and in the right direction.  This last week, I didn’t get in as much strength training as intended or even one HIIT session.  I’ll have to correct that next week.  Slacking on those doesn’t seem to have had any measurable setbacks, but I also haven’t been getting the associated gains from them. That’s expected, but I find that by documenting these things, they become more real in my mind, and then I’m more likely to actually do something about them.  On top of the other reasons why I am not going to beat myself up over that, the slacking was also a response to upping exercise in a different area, the running area.

I’ve been taking my daily walks pretty consistently, which I’m fairly certain has been the main driver of my improving health and mood.  Well I suppose diet is probably the real winner there, but meh. Anyway, I had complained in a previous post that my preferred path was blocked off, and how that had put a damper on my plans to get back into running.  I then found a bit of a workaround, but also adjusted my expectations down a smidge.  But I did coax myself to do a run here and there, usually more than once a week.  However, in the last week or so, the construction on my favorite path finished, and it opened back up!  I’m very excited about it!  And I have been adding a lot more running to those walks.

I wear a fitness watch that has a GPS tracking function, and that clocks my path at just under 4 miles – a little less than 2 miles out, then I turn around for another 2ish miles back.  When I’m on my return trip, right around where I think is 1ish miles out, I rev that walk up to a run. I suppose it’s more of a labored shuffle, but for now that’s passing for running. I don’t know that I can actually make it the whole mile back, but I don’t think so. Instead I opt for a semi-structured interval run, which is building both the fitness and confidence to get to my goal.  I regularly challenge myself by upping that pace and/or the length of the stretches between walks, and I try to work on the important aspects of running that I remember being told to watch out for in my youth. Stuff like how I land my feet, trying to widen my stride, opening up my shoulders and lungs, you know, all the run stuff.  And I’m pretty happy with both my progress and the incremental results. I would like to get a look at where the research is on running these days, and see if I should adjust what I’m up to, but this has been working for me for many years, so I’m just going to keep it up for now.

Alright, let’s jump over to my academic situation.  I finished another couple of books, chief amongst them was another book on learning – “A Mind for Numbers”, by Barbara Oakley.  I think that’s the third in this unofficial series. I haven’t finished processing what I’ve read,  so I’ll talk about it and the others I’ve recently finished another day, but I can at least say that I liked that book.  Have I done a book talk post yet? I don’t think so… gotta make note of that.

I’m also just about to finish my third read of Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”, which I’m way more positive on now than I was in my previous reads.  I still have a negative opinion of the bulk of dorks who quote the book, but many things that I enjoy have been over quoted and fawned over by absolute shafts, so I should try not to hold that against it.  

In the Math Zone, I’ve made a lot of progress in my Algebra review/revision, and I’m feeling great about what I’ve reviewed so far.  I feel a lot more confident in the idea of jumping back into Calculus, but I think this Algebra experience is trying to remind me of the lesson to not rush things, that I shouldn’t expect to just “get” something right away.  I think this has been a wrong headed attitude I’ve held for too many years and on too many subjects throughout my life, one that I really have no excuse for keeping.  Everything I’ve ever gotten really good at has been hard won. 

When I first joined the military, I was terrible at running.  I wanted so badly to just wake up better at it, and I didn’t.  I got a little better during Basic, but I definitely didn’t get good.  It wasn’t until after I’d finished all of the training and got to a base with a long, empty road that I could just hammer the work over and over on that I really improved.  In high school, I had wanted so badly to be have some semblance of musical talent, or at least just be able to play a few recognizable songs here and there, and I just wasn’t.  I’m still not very good, but after over 20 years of self teaching, I’ve become significantly better. My strongest progress unmistakably maps to periods when I kept consistent, focused practice.  And when I was in my corporate job, I got extremely good at a few important office skills (like Excel and SQL queries), and that shit did not come overnight.  I had to do a lot of research, trial and error, listening to colleagues, you name it, but I eventually got there. It’s a bit maddening that I still sometimes get frustrated when I don’t immediately understand some new concept, even though I know logically that isn’t how things work.

Anyway, the plan was to dip back into Algebra and then move into Trig & Precalc.  The Algebra revision portion was expected to be pretty short, like a week or two, and it has been much longer than that. I am finally close to finishing this phase, and I think I should wrap things by the end of this week. I’ll reevaluate the plan when I do.  Right now, it seems like I’m going to stick with it.  The only thing that has me second guessing isn’t the notion to increase speed or ratchet things up more, but rather that I might take another step-back.  I have really found my time going back through Algebra to be well spent.  I feel so much more comfortable with the material, and when I do sometimes gaze back into the Trig stuff, I find myself a lot more rusty on the underlying principles from Geometry.  I seem to recall being pretty good at Geometry.  In fact, I think it was one of the subjects that gave me the undue overconfidence that I once held in my general Math skills.  But it’s not a skill set that I exercise with any regularity, so it takes me some doing to recall even the more basic concepts.  I’m pretty sure those basic concepts are going to be key to building up the next set of skills.  So I think I’m on the lookout for a good, and hopefully quick refresher.  However, if I can’t find a refresher that is both quick and sufficiently thorough, then I’ll take another remedial break.  I really can’t keep trying to build on bad foundations.

Next up is coding.  I’ve been doing that free CS50x from Harvard, and I’m really liking it.  But after getting a few weeks into the lectures, I decided that I really wanted to do the actual coursework, and since they offer to let freeloaders like me actually submit our work to be graded, that seems like too good of an opportunity to leave on the table.  So I have been submitting my work, but that’s been very slow going.  I felt pretty bad about it, actually, which now that I’m thinking about it ties back to my frustration with not just getting shit right away.  I was especially frustrated on the very first problem set, which has students making a simple game in MIT’s Scratch coding platform.  The program is extremely easy, made for children, and I think that kind of put me on my heels.  In retrospect, I actually think that’s the point.  It was humbling, but as I pushed past that, I was starting to get the feeling that the exercise was trying to teach something truly fundamental.  I think I might be oversimplifying it now, and hope I’ll expand on the idea as I go, but I get the feeling that the course desperately wants its students to understand the importance of pseudo-coding.  That the overall work of coding is about problem solving, and that writing the code itself isn’t where you solve those problems but rather how you apply your solutions once you’ve worked them out.  I kinda get the feeling this is also my problem with my fiction writing, that I’ve been approaching it all wrong, that it isn’t just having a great idea, it isn’t about just knowing how things should be, but it’s about having stages or modes, being able not just to switch between them, but to also catch yourself when you’re in one mode and need to be in another.  That you need to do prework, then do the work, then review your work, and not just expect but actually plan to have rework.  That some of the best work comes out of your revisions and recapitulations.  I also need to reign in my lifelong problem of scope-creep, but I knew that years ago, and that ain’t gunna change overnight, either.  

So I spent a lot of time in a notebook mapping out how each part of this children’s programming code would work in pencil. I also scaled back my grand plans of having complex scoring, multiple levels, powerups, and all the fixin’s one might expect in a top down shooter.  I put together a functional if a little light and boring game, with room to grow if I should later return to it.  I feel good about it, though I do wish I’d spent more time with some of the extra, included tools.  Like I think I should have made my own sprite or two, that I could have benefited from that experience. It’s fine for now, though, and I’m overall happy with what I’ve done.  I’ll look forward to the grade, even if it’s bad.  At least then I’ll know where I need to polish up.

The other subjects I’ve been pursuing have been mostly on the back burner.  I completely shelved my English Comp after passing the practice test, but I need to plan a serious revision of that.  I have decided I am going to try to test out of that with the CLEP voucher I received.  I’m a little trepidatious about the whole process, given that I’m new to it.  But I’ve been new to stuff before, which I’ll try to keep in mind while I give a closer look into scheduling that over this next week.

I’m also very seriously looking at Economics again, and I think when I’m at a comfortable enough space with my Math and Programming, I’ll make space for more of that.  I’ve gone over Microeconomics more than once, but I want to give a deeper look at the materials.  Most of what I have looked at hasn’t had much actual coursework, it’s almost all been questions on concepts and extremely simple math.  More than one of the instructors has said that basically is the first year for both Micro and Macro, which I guess makes sense, but I’m just not going to feel comfortable with any of it until I can get a few good practice tests under me.  So I’ll need to make time for that, and I want to make it soon.  I’m coming up on the end of the summer, and I’d really wanted to have been further along by now.  I wanted to be starting at the community college in the Fall semester, but time is an ever present constraint that I need to respect, and I’m wondering if I might be able to spend this time best by reevaluating that part of the plan as well. That maybe I would benefit by pushing enrollment out into the Spring and knocking out as many early courses as I can beforehand.  You know what, I really need to give this last bit a longer think.  Let’s plan to write about this a bit more in the next few weeks, and let’s wrap things up for today.

It’s July 4th, which here in the USA is Independence Day.  I don’t have anything on that subject today, but it is Friday, which means it’s time for a Fit Check.

The Fit?  It is good.  I am now firmly below that 260 pound plateau I’ve been stuck on for months, or maybe even a year.  I’m quite happy with that, as well as how my clothes have been fitting lately. Though I’m trying to keep my excitement in check, because I remember how incredibly demotivating that plateau can be, and I also remember how often I got stuck on similar plateaus in previous weight loss attempts. So, you know, gotta keep it together.

I haven’t been working out as hard lately, but that seems that have been okay. The biggest wins seem to have come from how serious I have been about keeping consistant with my primary mode of exercise. I would like to get back to longer sessions, more regularity on the cross training, and more intensive workouts in general, but it is apparent that I don’t need to be working out super hard all the time.  That being said, I’ve also found that I like a lot of those hard workouts. They feel good, and I really like the results, too.  So as I continue to refine my routine and schedule overall, I need to make sure that I’m keeping time open for my normal exercise, because it is absolutely clutch to my plans and overall health. I also want to make time and space for harder, longer sessions, at least here and there. I’ve had a similar thought with food, but that will be a post for another day.

Okay, so the current routine goes about like this:

1. Walk, roughly medium intensity, for about 1 hour, every day.¹ 
2. Lift (or rather strength/resistance training) about 15 minutes (give or take), three times per week.²
3. Do something really intense once per week, more if possible.

Variation is OK, and regularly applied, but always with this type of session as the benchmark for how much exercise I’m trying to get out of it. For now, this is really workin’., surprisingly well. That daily walk is really key, and adding one of those cheap home walking pads and standing desks was a huge boost.  

This is where we’ll do a little of a Fit Check X³ Academia Check.  Ack Check?  No, not that.

The Academia is going well too, I think, though I regularly find myself in a minor despair over it all. I think I should hurry up and work on getting some of the low-hanging credits, so I can lock in some accomplishments and have something more concrete when trying to feel some sense of momentum. But I suppose that’s yet another subject for another time.

That walking pad I mentioned really is a huge boost, and that’s the real subject of this little check in. It helps me solve an old problem of mine, though not as well as I’d like.  The problem is that I need to exercise, and that preferred exercise of walking typically needs to take about an hour, but I also need to study, which takes several hours every day, and I need to clean, cook, eat, etc.  The time I want and need to be spending exceeds, sometimes greatly, the time that I actually have.

I’ve long understood that a big part of learning, formal or otherwise, requires improving time management, but I don’t think I’ve appreciated that fact to this level before.  I also can’t shake another thought that just keeps coming up – this fact just doesn’t square with people I’ve encountered in my actual real life. The sheer volume of people I have met and worked with that are profoundly bad at time management in spite of holding degrees, sometimes advanced ones, astounds me.  I’ll have to wrestle with that another time as well.  I should really be flagging each time I push a subject off, because I really do intend to revisit them, and having subjects in the chute ready to go would really be a boon.

Anyway, there are things that I can do while walking, including critical thinking.  However, I can’t use the pad for everything.  I find it extremely difficult to do math while using the pad.  Not because my mind can’t keep up, but because I do my best math work when I have the pencil and paper. No matter how good the desk, there just isn’t a reasonable solution to all the rocking around that comes with walking. Not to mention the dripping. Oh, how very much I drip. I really gotta think about getting a tarp or underpad or something, lest the rug in my office starts to get real dank.

Writing, or at least the quickly typing immediate thoughts on a computer type of writing, fits very well with the walking pad for me.  I do worry that I’ll drip too much sweat into my keyboard, thus rendering it inoperable, but that’s a problem that can be solved.  I mean, there are keyboards made for that, some that you can get on the cheap.  I get the notion that a person can get to that same place with programming, but for right now, a lot of my best programming work is like my best math work – it’s with a pencil and paper.  I need to get into flow rhythms where I can start spotting when and where different types of work, different parts of my work flow can and should appear, and how to fit them together. If I can spend a few of each weeks’ walking sessions while listening to audio books or watching lectures, this boon could be even greater. When I get out of lectures and back into the working world, that time could easily shift and fit perfectly. Shoot, I kinda think I’m starting to work this out right now.

In all of my learning and in all of my previous work experience, there would be problems that needed solving.  Some of those problems are best solved by just using what I’ve already learned and working it out on paper, and those sections, for me, are just not compatible with other activities.  That’s OK, but what doesn’t work is how sometimes they just come on. I’m starting to see a picture of a type of work life balance where you can Jenga the pieces of your work around your life, and that’s really angry-ing up my blood. It’s like when some rich prick goes on about how you should be taking X amount of hours out of every day to read, yet they demand upwards of 10 hours a day out of their employees. Can your employees take two to four of those hours to read like you apparently do?

Dang, I’m really starting to hit on a deeper thought, but expounding on that would expand this post much longer than intended.  I had also promised to wrap up my “work day” early, given it is a Friday and also a holiday that many office workers have off. I suppose this counts as “work” in my current situation, so I’ve blown past that promise.  Alright, let’s put a pin in all of these thoughts and come back with them some other day.

For now, it’s hot, the world sucks, and I’m tired.  So it’s time for a little break, and I advise you to do the same.

OOOH WAIT – I’ve been working on a Crispy Eggplant dish to replace some of my favorite takeout that I’ve been missing. It’s good, real good, but needs some work. The big solve for me right now is how to not smoke out my condo while I cook it. I’ll come back with notes and a recipe when I make some more progress.

Footnotes:

1. Maybe take one or two in seven days off, depending on overall health and otherwise needs.
2. Right now…
   • I have these split into Legs & Abs, Chest & Back, and Arms & Shoulders, structured as a modified GVT.  It’s been workin’ pretty well so far.
   • I’m not hitting this as much as I’d like… I only did legs this week and I’m not sure if I’ll get to the rest over the weekend
3. Pronounced “Cross”

Today’s check in is hopefully going to be a bit of a trend – slow and steady. I’ve pretty comfortably kept my weight under the current ceiling I’ve declared. I seem to have gotten over the most recent plateau, which is quite nice. I’ve bracketed my progress into ten pound chunks, which means it won’t be for another few months before I’m comfortably into the next bracket. Hopefully I will be confidently in that bracket and working on the next by the end of summer, but for now, it’s up to me to just keep steady with it all.

Now I’ve got a little get together to get ready for, so that’ll be it for today. I’m not sure how busy I’ll be over the weekend, but if I can find the time, I’ll post some more. I have some things that have been on my mind and I’d like to write and expound on them. Am I using that right? Well whatever, until next time.

It’s Friday, it’s Fitness Check time.  

First thing’s first, let’s follow up on the previous check.  The weight loss I clocked was real, I did in fact drop some lbs.  My concern that the big 5+ pound drop was not quite real has also turned out correct.  I have consistently clocked higher weight than that big drop, but also lower weight than the previous week, even with some less than great snacking.  So I’m pretty happy on all accounts.

To that weight weirdness, I had a thought and it looks like there might be some truth to it.  I seem to go up a few pounds directly after workouts.  I haven’t checked enough to notice any specific consistencies.  I would have guessed that I gain more after strength training than I do cardio or calisthenics, but the numbers haven’t really supported that.  Either way, the weight tends to drop back down after a rest, which I can only guess suggests swelling.  For my medical situation, swelling gives me concern, but I’m pretty sure this is the healthy kind of swelling. I think this because I’m familiar with the weight lifter’s concept of “The Pump”. I’ve experienced myself. Actually these days I tend to experience it after every strength training session. I suspect I have the actual science here wrong, but the intuition is that the exercise swells your muscles with fluids and stuff for various reasons, including healing. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter as long as I don’t need to be worried about it.  And that seems to be the case, I just want to keep myself aware of it, given I need to weight myself more regularly than is typically recommended to keep an eye on those medical needs.

It’s worth saying again, even if it is just to keep reminding myself, the weight isn’t the real goal here.  The fitness is. I had planned to test a few of those goals by my birthday, which is the middle of June.  I also planned, or rather expected to fail those. The idea is to see where I’m at to plan where I’m headed. Log a baseline… KPIs, right? Well I did, and I’m quite happy with the results there as well.  As predicted, I did miss the goals.  Not all of them, I guess.  Some goals were just to get going and keep it up.  I’ve far exceeded those plans.  I hadn’t planned to start my HIIT calisthenics until the end of summer, but I’ve gotten ahead by doing it a good couple times already in June.  I’m pretty happy about that, too.  My big cardio goal is to run an unbroken mile.  I was expecting to fall extremely short of this goal at this time, especially since my preferred training route is a little out of sorts right now.  Having tested, I did fall short. However, not anywhere near as far short as I was expecting.  I stopped and started a couple of times, but the intervals of running added up to longer than a mile, and my overall pace was higher than expected as well.  Very dope.

Okay, next up.  I bought some equipment.  I’ve had my eye on a few bits of gear for a while and decided that it’s time to shit or get off the pot, as the rather gross saying goes. So to figure out if I actually want them, I read some reviews to get an idea of whether or not they’ll actually help as desired, check price versus quality, etc. If they seem to check out and I have the budget for it, I should just go ahead and do it.  Top of the list for years and years has been one of those walking pads.  A walking pad is like a specialized treadmill, but the specialization is to actually make it smaller, weaker, and cheaper than a standard treadmill.  When I started looking at them, the tech tended to be split into two groups.  The first group seemed to deliver on the promise of helping me get my steps in without having to leave the home, but were well above my price range.  The second group was cheap, but seemed like hot garbage and as though they’d fall apart immediately and also had no warranty.  It’s been a few years and the tech seems to have caught up with my budget.

I’m actually typing this (slowly) while at about 50 minutes walking on one right now.  I also got myself one of those standing desks for this.  Both are much less expensive than they were just a year or two ago, and they are both way better quality than the cheap ones used to be. I feel pretty confident I’ll get a lot of use out of both, and they both completely fit my current needs. I’m pretty happy with there, too.

I’ve also been looking at those selectable weight dumbbells for years.  I’d not really thought of them seriously.  Similar to how the walking pads have changed, these used to be split between super pricey or super shitty, leaving them largely as a novelty at best. They are still expensive, but they came down enough that I was able to get a set for a little over $100, and that works for me.  I also got a pull-up bar.  It was $20.  I haven’t set it up, but for that price, I don’t care. I figured I could at least save myself the mental space of constantly asking myself, “Should I get a pull-up bar?”  Now, even if I never use it (though I’m sure I will), I can at least stop wasting time on the internet looking at them. Still looking at them – kettle bells. Though not because I’m not sure the worth, I know they are worth it, I’m just cheap and I’m looking for a good price.

It’s also worth saying how happy I am with the weights.  I’ve been using an old Bowflex for my strength training.  Those are fine and all, but they very much have drawbacks.  Most of those drawbacks are fine for my purposes.  I’m just trying to get fit, not get huge.  But I am a big fan of free weights, and I also really don’t want to go to a gym every day.  Perhaps that will change in the future, but that’s where I am now.  My tits are pretty sore today, even though I didn’t come near maxing on weight.  That really puts things back into perspective.

Last bit. Though I’ve been lamenting my schedule and routine lately, I’ve actually been making little tweaks all this time.  I’ve been getting out of bed progressively earlier, which has been a big win.  It’s so much easier to manage the other time constraints, needs, and wants when you have a bigger window of “up time” to work with.  I’m not saying you can’t be a night owl.  When my life was entirely about being at that desk, late nights were regular and actually useful.  But those habits had long become less useful to the degree of being detrimental before I’d even noticed.  In my life now, I’m at my best when I get to bed at a reasonable time and pull myself out of the envelope early enough to knock out at least one goal before 9 am.  Even earlier might be better, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet.

There are additional tweaks I’d like to make, some already in progress, but the biggest bits left to tackle outside of fitness and academia are really about my social needs.  I think those will take more work.  However, I don’t seem to be alone in this want amongst my friends, so I think I’ve got a leg up.  I just need to keep up with the commitments.

Alright, I’m going to finish up and dick around for the rest of the day.  I think I’ve about earned it. Peace out.

Looks like I have my first missed post in this era.  I’m not going to beat myself up for it, but I do need to rethink whether or not I continue to have expected posts.  I really like the idea that I’m going to have a scheduled, weekly post. I like that being consistent and of a consistent type of content. More specifically, since my health has become paramount, I like keeping it oriented around that, and I like the set day being Friday.  So I do plan to keep that up, though also I think that, like the routine I was lamenting last week, the idea or my execution of it needs a little tune up.

Alright, this is the second post in a row that I include a weight measurement after saying that I wouldn’t.  Can’t be helped. I got down to 255.  I think that’s a fleeting 255, and I’ll get to why in just a sec, but I’m still quite pleased.  It’s incredibly frustrating to feel stuck in a weight plateau, even when all of my other vitals and measurements are telling me that things are going well. So I was very happy with that. My scale measure 254 at one point, but I’m not counting it. I expect to go back up a little this week, maybe even all the way back up to 260, which will be a real let down, but I have to be ready for that very real possibility or I may have a crisis of motivation.

I sort of fasted. I’m not sure where to mention this, but I think it’s worth mentioning, so I’m just going to squeeze it in here – I first started seeing a bit of difference on my scale before I fasted. I saw 258 on Thursday, even though I hadn’t been eating great. I mean, it’s not like I was housing pizza rolls or whatever, but you know, I wasn’t on my best behavior.

I had not planned on fasting, but I got pretty close and maybe even did fast by some definitions for a couple of days in a row.  I got really busy, but not the bad kind of busy I’d been in for the many years of my previous employment.  Instead, while my time was packed, it was packed entirely with things that I wanted to do.  And it felt pretty great.  I studied, worked on projects, spent time with friends and family, exercised, wrote, played some music, and did some art.  I cleaned, which I struggle to keep consistent with, but this week I was able to get into a real chill zone while doing it.  That was pretty dope.  The only drawback was that I didn’t do a lot of cooking.  That’s a bummer for a number of reasons, the top two for me are that it means a higher risk of eating something that could hurt me (not a super high risk, I can read a label), and also I enjoy cooking. Not being able to put a little time in the kitchen is bit of a bummer. But I did make eggs a couple of mornings, so at least there was that.

I suppose that wasn’t actually the only drawback.  I mean, I did get hungry to an unhealthy point more than once.  I didn’t ignore the hunger, which is why I’m not definitively declaring that I fasted.  It’s more like a taste of fasting… odd phrasing.  I have done actual fasting in past attempts to lose some weight and it always went poorly.  I felt like hot garbage the whole time that I did it. On top of that, I didn’t make much progress to my goal, and quickly rebound right after finishing.

That rebound is a big part of my skepticism I mentioned earlier of my drop to 255.  There’s also the logic of it, like I got in some decent eats yesterday, including some turkey meatballs and pasta salad at my brother’s house, and a big bowl of ramen with gooey egg, murky broth, and springy noods last night.  I started today with eggs, toast, cream cheese, and avocado.  Not unhealthy, but also certainly not low cal.  On the other hand, I have been eating pretty healthy by most measures for months, and I do feel like my body is otherwise pretty happy with that.  Lots of fruit and veg.  Peaches have been showing up lately, and I’m pretty happy about that, too.  So while I can buy the 258 number before the mini-fast, it’s likely that the additional drop was really just that I was on empty, and now that I’m back to normal, that won’t last. Given previous experience, I also have to prepare myself for a possible over-correction. Those really suck.

This little accidental experiment has also been helpful in instructing me on what not to do.  The truth is, I have been seriously considering a real go at a fast for a while.  Things are different for me now than they were during the previous attempts, so results and side effects would likely be different as well.  I can’t yet speak to results, they are still settling in, but the side effects were definitely different.  Every previous attempt was just terrible.  I felt horrible the whole time, I was super irritable, I had awful bathroom times, and at the end of the fast I felt so sick to my very empty stomach that I had a hard time getting calories back in me.  Then as soon as I stopped feeling so ill, I just binged.  Completely crushed whatever I had at home and often ordered in some real gut bombs.

But none of that happened this time.  I mostly felt pretty great throughout.  I wasn’t frustrated at the struggle of not eating, in fact I wasn’t thinking about it.  It wasn’t until Sunday morning when I was quite strangely both very happy and also kinda weepy that I realized, “Oh, shit, I haven’t eaten anything but fruit and treats in almost 24 hours.”  Fast forward past the aforementioned ramen and I was feelin’ fuckin’ great.

I don’t know what that means for me going forward, but it’s certainly something to reflect on.

Anyway, that’s the Fit Check I owed to this blog, a few days late but I think worth it.  Barring another event, I expect to check back in on my fit this Friday as scheduled.  We’ll see what’s stuck.  Alright, I gotta study.  Peace.

I have been struggling with getting my… well, what is it I’m struggling with?  Something, right?  My schedule, for sure, but I think it’s slightly bigger than that.  It’s like a combination of schedule, plans, balancing needs… like my routine, I suppose?  I think routine.  Yeah, I think my routine is broken.

My routine is in need of some fixing.  

I know I’ve lamented some issues with my routine before, though I don’t recall exactly when or to what degree.  I think at some point I had this notion that I’d just figure it out, fix it, and it’d be super cool so I’d share it.  It is not super cool.  It’s not fucked, I mean I don’t have a day job to get to.  I don’t have any job to get to.  So that means there isn’t like, something every day that I’m rolling in late to or that’s dorking up all of my other plans and wants or anything. But I do have studying, which I have been increasingly treating like a job. And I also have occasional appointments and other obligations, but those are relatively rare.  It’s really the learning needs and the social obligations… obligations?  I guess I am obliged to participate in some of them, but there are many more social situations that I’m not obliged but also not having and would like to have. Wow, that was a real sentence there. You know what? This post is going to be short and barely edited, and that’s just how it’s gunna be.  I’ll post something on the subject that’s more substantial when I think it through some more.

Actually, the tone of this post is a decent illustration of the point.  I’m a little overwhelmed, occasionally flustered, and I’m like, 99% sure it’s because my routine has completely fallen apart.  Supporting this claim is how I’m starting to feel better about things with even the little work I’ve done so far towards fixing it.  I think that’s what I was starting to say in the last paragraph.  Well, that and how I’d like for the fixes to my routine to include more openings for my social wants.

I definitely have the time and I’m pretty sure I have just about everything else that I need to fix this shit. I guess I’m currently in the trial and error phase, and I’ve made some errors.  I am dialing in my needs regarding health, fitness, and sleep pretty well.  I’ve started a good effort on fixing my studying situation, which really needs to take up the lion’s share of my time.  But I need to open up as much time as I can, and I need to reserve a good chunk of that, every week, for some social gettings of together.  Preferably more than one.  I’ve been averaging something like two outings a month, and that just ain’t cuttin’ it.  But it’s tough to make get togethers happen when you’re an adult and even harder when you have weird health needs and that further compounds with anxiety.

I did myself up a little starter schedule, which was some nice spreadsheet practice.  I’ll post whenever I get around to the real one.  I think I’ve figured out that in order for this to work, I need to get back to starting my days earlier.  Not as early as when I was in the military, but way earlier than I have most of this past year or so.  

Alright, I’m not totally together right now, but wanted to jot down this thought while it is fresh in my head. I also wanted to to get something small posted before too much of the week burned by.  Talk about routine problems, it’s already Wednesday. I’ve got some work I want to put into that schedule and routine before today is over, so I’m off to do that.  See you on Fitness Check Friday.

The fitness check this week is… good? I’m not really sure what to put here as a check-in when it isn’t a number, and the goal is “better health”, so, you now, what is the progress indicator other than I feel good? I don’t know, I’ll work on that. But I do have numbers, in a moment.

I definitely feel like I’m continuing to make progress, and that’s the whole deal here.  I know I said I wouldn’t bring up my weight measurements until something happened just one week ago, but hey, something kinda happened.  Nothing huge, but I think I might be under 260.

My weight fluctuates very frustratingly throughout the week.  It fluctuates to the point where I can’t trust the measurement even when I try my best to control for standard factors.  It’s a pain in the ass.  I also think my scale might not be great, but I’m not in the market to replace it anytime soon, so we’ll just have to deal.  Anyway, on Wednesday I had a check in with my cardiologist, and the nurse that brought me in clocked my weight at 258.  I think that scale may have been adjusted to deal with clothes, and I was uncharacteristically dressed quite lightly, so maybe I was a little under.  However, in previous visits to the same office, the scales had me a good bit heavier, and also matched fairly closely with my home scale. Also, while the recent home weigh-ins didn’t match that number, things do add up to indicate the away scale is at least plausible.  Nothing for certain, though.

What I am certain is that what I’m doing is working.  It might not be taking the weight off me at a rate I would like, but as I keep stating here and reminding myself, that’s just an indicator not the real deal. I feel, frankly, pretty damn good.  I mean, there’s the underlying pain and discomfort that are always there, exacerbated by the health problems of the past few years, but man. I’m out there, able to get regular exercise again, and that’s rad. And my fit check continues to improve.  I recently bought some shorts off the internet and had to guess at my size. When they came in a few weeks ago, they were very tight. Unpleasantly so, to the point that I would not wear them out. I figured it would take months of dedicated weight loss to squeeze my fat ass into them. But I was able to slip into them this week and was surprised to find them loose enough to require a belt. I’d call that a win.

But wait, there’s more.  I don’t much like looking at myself in the mirror. Not sure if you can relate, but the guy I see in the mirror is not the guy I want to see.  I wouldn’t mind the aging aspect of it all, in fact I rather enjoy the grey creeping into my hair and beard. But my face and body have been so very big and out of shape that it’s been tough to just see the state of myself. I’m a stranger to myself, and I don’t like it. Given the effort I’ve been putting in over the past year, it’s not just demoralizing, it’s downright soul crushing.  I’ve had to keep watching my stupid shitty body get bigger and less defined every day, even as I cut calories and add exercise. And then I also have to see my stupid face, distorted, distressed, and depressed. Nothing like the man I see in my minds’ eye.  But not this week.  This week, at least a little here and there, I saw my actual face.  The feeling was uncanny. It was exactly the boost I needed.

I’ve been working on getting back up to speed on math for the last few months.  Okay, in truth, I started this more like a few years ago, but if we’re talking serious concentration, it wasn’t until the last few weeks.  You know what?  None of that matters.  What matters is that I’ve been giving it another honest go, and this time things have been working.  Though not perfectly.

Wanting to get a college-level understanding of a few subjects has lead me to believe I need to do the same with some math. This is definitely true if I decide to go for that paper, but it would be pretty useful even if not. I’ve been staring down the barrel of a Stats class I’ve been meaning to master for a while, and that would absolutely be helpful in any direction I take my career. But in looking at that class and thinking about taking others, I have been feeling pretty behind. So I tried some problems that I found online to figure out where I am.  Sort of like giving myself a “placement test”, I suppose. It seemed reasonable to start pretty low, so I did, going through a bunch of simple arithmetic stuff.  That stuff was, thankfully, pretty easy, and I was honestly worried it wouldn’t be. I kept working up the scale of difficulty and continuing to be surprised by my success in each level. It was starting to make me cocky, frankly. I got particularly cocky when I found I could still do quite well in Algebra.  I managed most of the problems pretty well with little to no refreshers on the subject. But as I continued through the work, it started to highlight some holes in my knowledge.  Those holes grow as I continued and it reminded me that there are some lower level things I’ve never really been good at.  I thought about stepping it back again to refocus on those lower level topics, but decided to keep on moving forward. This has, so far, turned out to be the right choice. it turned out that the Algebra classes and practice problems already included a mix of those arithmetic problems I needed to work on. Better yet, the more abstract ways that Algebra presents problems work better for my way of understanding things.  

Fractions are a good example.  I’ve never been great at them, which is tough because they are absolutely foundational. You can do higher math without them.  I remember doing OK with fractions in grade school, but when we moved past them and they showed back up a just part of bigger problems, I struggled. Something about how those classes on fractions were taught and tested didn’t really get me up to speed and basically allowed me to bullshit through the answers. I would later find that other classmates experienced something similar, though for different reasons. They had all memorized things, important and useful things. But I’m not a memorizer.  This is a big drawback for early math learning, and many of my classmates sailed through early math because they could memorize to the point they sounded like old pros. But memorization has never been my strong suite. I do better when I understand something on a more fundamental level, really getting all up in its conceptual guts. What I now know better as “intuition” – a term it seems I’ve long misunderstood. Anyway, I really started to lag when I not only didn’t have the memorization skills to just fudge my way through nor to build intuition off of. It’s really hard to build your math skills when you lack the memorized foundation of basics like times tables, formulas, and identity rules.

I’ve been working on writing this post for weeks and keep getting lost in it.  A big part of that was trying to list out my various Math pitfalls.  I have many, and the more I think about it, the more I think I should take each of those on in their own posts.  I think maybe the next time I talk about Math, I’ll talk more about my problems with fractions.  Today is more of a statement of where I’m at.

I am in Trig, I think.  Let’s back up.

So when I settled in on Algebra, I picked a couple of online learning platforms to try and catch up.  The main ones are saylor.org and mondernstates.com.  I had looked at the lectures and coursework from big colleges, much of which is free (like MIT’s Open Coursework [https://ocw.mit.edu] – Algebra I [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-701-algebra-i-fall-2010/]), but I was looking for something a little more interactive and structured.  Given that, the logical next step would be to go to a learning system like Brilliant.org.  I’ve used Brilliant before and liked it, so that seems fair.  A few years ago, I got a deep discount from my job for an annual subscription, but I was busy with work and didn’t have much time for it.  Then it lapsed and they didn’t offer the discount the next year.  The little I did do I liked, but it was never an immediate “click” for me. Still, I could see myself going back in the future if I have another pitfall. But what I’m using now is really working for me, so we’ll continue with that until further notice.

I made it through all of the Modern States – College Algebra course and most of the Saylor stuff.  I also picked up some books on the subject:

• Algebra Workbook for Dummies, Mary Jane Sterling [https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/algebra-workbook-for-dummies_mary-jane-sterling/256815/#edition=4274999&idiq=2893122]
• Algebra Essential Practice Workbook…, Chris McMullen [https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/algebra-essentials-practice-workbook-with-answers-linear–quadratic-equations-cross-multiplying-and-systems-of-equations-improve-your-math-fluency-series_chris-mcmullen/9175043/#edition=9125188&idiq=12479764]
• Algebra for College Students, Mark Dugopolski [https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/algebra-for-college-students_mark-dugopolski/348912/#edition=5405451&idiq=693198]

They are all helpful, though the first two have mostly been as additional practice problems.  Anyone who has gone through a few books of the “for Dummies” variety will likely agree they are pretty hit or miss.  This edition is from 2005 and some of the phrasing really shows it, but I’ve found it helpful.  As it is, it’s a great backup to reference in case the structure and wording from my other sources just aren’t doing it.  

That last one, though, is an actual textbook, and it is fantastic.  I know this is something teachers and dedicated academics already know, but textbooks are sort of amazing when it comes to documenting and transferring knowledge.  There was a subject near the end of the Modern States course that I was just confounded by.  I can’t remember what it was exactly, something in the logarithms and factorials zone. I just couldn’t get there, and I was starting to think that this whole experiment was coming to an end. Just too stupid to move forward.  I watched the Modern States lecture, read some of the materials from there and Saylor, and even watched some of my favorite youtube teachers.  I just wasn’t getting it.  But I wasn’t about to give up just yet and figured it was time to fall back onto what has worked best for me thus far – trying and failing.

So I cracked open that textbook and flipped to the section that went over the offending subject.  I decided to go for a practice problem right away.  I tried two.  I bombed both.  That feeling of failure was creeping back in, but I was still determined.  I went to the front of the chapter and read through it.  I still didn’t get it.  But I came across a couple of problems with the work shown and explanations of the work with it.  That completely cracked it for me. Bam! Just like Emril and a fistful of cayenne, it suddenly made sense.

I had a few more stumbling blocks, but between all of those materials and some youtube teachers, I got through the rest of the course.  There is just the final exam, which I haven’t taken yet. I think I’ve still got a little polishing left on a few subjects, and I also found that I better understand each level work if I can start putting it together with the next level up.  For that, I figured it was time to make the jump to Calculus.  I decided to go with the course from Modern States again, which started out pretty well.  And then I failed the shit out of the first two tests.  Between the two, there were something like 8-10 questions.  I got one right.  Yikes.

But this isn’t a give up point either.  Instead, I recognized that many of the questions included information that I am just not familiar enough with.  Stuff I vaguely remember from years ago, but not enough to actually use. Reflecting on my past, I can’t exactly remember what classes I took in high school. I remember doing calculus and doing pretty poorly in it.  What I don’t have any memory of is a full pre-calc or trigonometry class.  In fact, I’m now pretty sure that I skipped those, which if true is fucking batshit. That leap to Calculus is massive, and it is crazy that some people can just make that leap. Absolutely nannercakes.

The thought brings me back around to that missing set, the memorization and intuition that I had to rebuild for Algebra. What this informs me now is just how dependent each new piece of math is dependent on the previous sets.  What I do remember of Calculus, it seems like everything up to this point is basically just learning the language and syntax, and it isn’t until Calc that you really apply it. And I’m definitely missing something between the end of Algebra I and Calc I.

So I decided to fall back again, but this time on a different familiar platform – Udemy.  I have, in truth, some mixed feelings about this platform.  I’m not going to get into them now, but maybe we add that topic to the ever growing list “for another day”.  What I will say is that they regularly have sales and discounts (which sure seem shady) that bring expensive courses down to reasonable prices.  Most of these courses are basically overblown youtube playlists, but some of the presenters really go above and beyond.  A great example of that kind of presenter is Krista King [https://www.udemy.com/course/calculus-2/?couponCode=ST21MT30625G1#instructor-1].  I really like the way she presents things.  Her courses are set up to follow the standard academic categories, which is pretty common.  What’s different is her style, which I’m afraid I don’t have a good description for. It’s like a teacher that doesn’t feel condescending.

Within the courses, she breaks topics down with a video, some reading, and a quiz.  She also provides a great handout with some of the stuff you should get familiar with.  The combination really helps to build up both confidence and intuition, so I’m pretty into that.

Okay, this post is going longer than I’d meant it to and I’ve got some CS50 coursework I need to finish.  But before I go, here are a few of the free youtube teachers that I’ve also really liked:

• Mr H Tutoring – https://www.youtube.com/@mrhtutoring
• Black Pen Red Pen – https://www.youtube.com/@bprpfast
• NancyPi – https://www.youtube.com/@NancyPi

These are each great. Their styles are all a little different from each other, but they all share a sort of “here’s the thing, just give it a go and you’ll get it”, which is an attitude I can really appreciate.

Alright, Imma fuck off for today. Peace.