Aaron's Notes

I believe I stated in the last post that I was planning on making some regular fitness check-ins, and this will stand as the first.

When I first started typing this, I was calling it a “weigh-in”. I doubled-back and edited that to “fitness”. I’m going to just blow past that today, but I’ve remembered that it gets brought up by serious health professionals to not rely on your weight as the single indicator of health, rather a part of a system. From my own past, I remember being healthier when I was heavier than the dreaded BMI math wanted me to be, so I get it. I’ll have more to say on the subject, but that will have to wait for another day.

262. That’s today’s weight. In pounds, if you were wondering. I feel pretty good about that. Due to some serious health conditions, my weight has been all over the place for the past few years, well over 300 just a few years ago. That will all go in the future post I alluded to earlier. I’d planned to post that by now, but it seems I have a lot to say, so it’s taking me some time. But this is now, so let’s establish a baseline.

The heaviest I’ve been since the start of 2025 was 270. That was a few weeks ago, and that’s what we’re going to call my base. I’m fairly sure that at least five of those pounds were water weight, but I’m counting them. Water weight has become a real concern of mine, given my condition. Add to that I’m pretty sure I got above that weight while away from my scale. Not knowing what the actual top weight was, let’s stick with 270. Better to have something.

I’m planning to eventually present the rest of what I’m tracking, but not today. Today will be just the weight and a handful of fitness goals I know I’m going with. Before I do, however, I also want to log my Friday, yesterday, weigh-in of 261 pounds. Since we’re keeping track, let’s also note that Friday is my stated weigh-in day going forward. That’s the day that I log my weight on the spreadsheet where I actually keep track of all of this stuff. A pound or two drift here and there is expected, especially at my weight and age. Lot of reasons I picked that day, but the biggest is that Friday morning is my most reliable reading.

I plan to share that spreadsheet as well, eventually, but also not today. I’ve been using an old one I made years ago, which does just fine, but it needs both cleaning up and expanding. It currently tracks some stuff I don’t care about anymore and is missing stuff I now do. You get the idea. Plus, I’m out of my corporate job, which leaves me few outlets to stretch my well developed spreadsheet skills. Making a little “personal dashboard” seems like a nice side project. But I’m stalling, let’s go ahead and run down the current list.

Current	Short Term Goal	Long Term Goal*
Weight – 262	255 pounds (lose about 15)	200 pounds
Cardio – 60min+ Walk (some running)	Run (at all), 1x Week	Run 1 Unbroken Mile
Fit Check – Size 40 jeans, loose	Size 38 jeans, comfortable	Size 36 jeans, comfortable
Mobility – Okayish, I guess?	Undefined	Undefined

*You may notice I did not specify any time frames on my goals. I don’t know what they are yet. I’m planning my first major check in around my birthday, which is the middle of June. That’s about a month away. We’ll try and nail some specifics down by then.

Fit-check is my current shorthand for how I feel, which I’m struggling to define outside of how my clothing fits. Right now, I’m wearing an XL t-shirt and a size 38 jeans. The jeans are snug but they were uncomfortably tight not much more than a week ago. The shirt feels great, though could look a bit better. These are brands that run a little big, and for clarity, I have a pair of size 40 chinos that no amount of baby powder and shoe horns would squeeze me into. Sorry for the visual.

Considering it wasn’t long ago that I was busting out of a XXXL pair of gym shorts on the way to the hospital, I feel pretty alright with the current size. But I’d love to get back into my size 36 jeans and feel comfortable in them. Really, I just want to get rid of my gut, and stuff like jean size and weight are my best vitals to track along the way. Plus, around size 36 is where my best cache of good clothes lives. I have some amazing clothes in that class. Really show off the goods, and it would feel great to have anyone find me even a little sexy again, ya’ dig?

Mobility is another one. I was worried about this when I started pulling up to my 40s, but man, following my hospital stay, this now feels crucial. A few months after being discharged, I developed some serious shoulder issues, and I had a really hard time just walking. Stair were really tough for a few months. I’ve mostly recovered, but not entirely. I have had to face the very real possibility that I might not ever fully recover my mobility, so I’d like to get back as much as I can and hold onto it for as long as I can. I greatly value my ability to get around on my own, and when I lost that it was devastating. It crushed my sense of self. Any fix to that is worth pursuing.

My current routine isn’t too crazy. It’s pretty light compared to what I did trying to get in shape in my mid-30s and a far cry from anything I did in my early 20s. But hey, I’m not in the military any more. I’m old and injured. And so far it’s working, so I’m callin’ that a win. Here’s the basics:

Walk minimum 30 minutes 3 times per week
Interval Training (working toward run) 1 time per week
Strength Training – Modified GVT with focus on regaining lost muscle in major zones (will share in future post)
Calisthenics – not started / undecided.

Calisthenics isn’t required for everyone’s fitness routine, but the best results I’ve ever had always included them, so they’ll be going on the menu when I’m ready for them. I had especially good results the time I did them as HIIT sessions. I’ll probably do that again, borrowing from my friend Jackie and his success. I’m pretty sure he described his entire routine as exclusively and intensively doing Burpee HIIT. Burpees suck shit to do, which might be part of the appeal. You don’t just breeze through them, and the feedback is very rapid. So we’ll probably go with that, though mine will be more supplemental and likely much less intensive.

I’d also love to bring back my “Church”. That’s the snarky and lightly insensitive way I used to label a short list of routines I’d dial up for my Sunday workout. It’s workouts that suck, like a sprint drill that goes directly into burpees and then flutter kicks, rinse and repeat. It’s awful. But many of the results are nearly immediate, and they are glorious. If you can manage this sort of thing once per week, I fully recommend you do so, and you don’t have to use my dickish moniker for it. For my own plans, if I can drag my ass out of bed early enough tomorrow, I hope to scout a nearby location for future sessions.

Alright I have more but this post has already gone longer than I’d intended. Let’s call it for today. I’ll check back in with a thing or two next week.

Today, I welcome myself back to my own blog. Hi, I’m Aaron, the titular note taker. I’ve had this website for many years, and used to update it with some regularity. The content and consistency of the website changed from time to time, but more or less functioned as a personal blog. Some years into that and some years back from now, I don’t recall how many, I became extremely burnt out and overwhelmed in my job and various aspects of my personal life. My mid-to-late 30s were pretty rough. During that burn-out period, my posts here become less and less frequent. Due to some extremely lackluster attention and follow through, I also had a bunch of half-written blogs that I hadn’t meant to go up end up publishing anyway. At some point, I realized just how little I was doing with this and then scrapped it all. Well, scrapped most of it, anyway. I not only stopped posting, I also cleared out the back posts, leaving up a placeholder for a while. I’ve now scrapped that.

I’m in my early 40s now, and once again have the urge to share what is going on in my life. I also have regained that old urge to write. Reviving my old blog seems like the natural course of action to satisfy both. I should give fair warning to anyone who somehow found their way here that I don’t have any real expectations for what this will be, how frequently I’ll update it, or even if I will keep it up at all. That’s the gist of it – I’m planning to start writing again, including here, and this is the first post towards that.

I’m in a bit of a transition period in my life, you see. I’ve had some changes, some by choice and some not, and I’m feeling introspective. More so than usual. I’ve also been sitting on some additional changes that I want to make but haven’t, some I’ve been sitting on for quite some time. Odd they haven’t hatched on their own… annoying that bit. I do journal personally, fairly regularly, but there is a part of me that wants to commit to the structure, rigor, and practice that writing to an audience (even just a perceived if not actually present one) has on one’s related skills. Before I move on, I should address the weight of the words at the first part of this paragraph – it’s nothing massive, world changing, person changing. Well, I don’t think so. It’s more stuff I’ve been doing or planning to do, like getting in shape, engaging my existing and underused skills, and picking up new ones. Plus just working on the whole me of it all. Like to be a (slightly) less shitty person. Not that I’m all that terribly shitty, in fact I think most people would say I’m quite nice. I think.

Also I was hospitalized at the start of 2024 and slightly died and haven’t fully recovered. And probably won’t. But I’m up and moving around again, so you know, that’s good.

The plan, at least for the time being, is to pop in here as appropriate with the things that are on my mind. You know, a blog. Remember those?

Lately, the things on my mind have been a bit too much to keep up with. So I’m hoping that, in part, this can act as a somewhat therapeutic exercise. Maybe a way to jot down something that’s bothering or exciting me, get it out of my head and let it live somewhere else for a while. I also want to use the blog as a bit of an academic booster, as I’ve been trying to play catch-up on my education and skill acquisition. I’m not sure exactly what form that will take, though right now I’m thinking I might occasionally use this as a sort of review of whatever I’m trying to learn at the moment. I’m also looking for something to be a quasi formal record of my current and previous efforts during this time, my struggles, strategies, and successes on various issues, such as my health and fitness. Lastly, one of the original focuses I had planned but rarely actually indulged in, was to talk about some of my hobbies, interests, passions… look, I’m into a lot of shit. Dumb shit, mostly, but that don’t bother me none. I like to tinker and screw around with stuff. I’m fascinated by the world and how it works. I like to try new experiences and I love to make things. And I need a place to talk about them, sometimes very briefly and other times at nauseating length. So you know, blog.

Some of these areas of interest are ongoing threats, which gives me the notion to set up a sort of schedule or likely something less formal, but some expectation to have semi-regular check-ins. Maybe more, but for now, let’s just say that’s what is likely to appear here, assuming anything else appears here ever again. Well, wouldn’t you know, it’s the first post in a very long time and it’s already longer than I’d intended. Sounds like I’m right back to my same old shit, yee-haw. Oh well, at least it’s relatively coherent this time.

Anyway, here’s a picture I drew of a thing I found that, now that I’m looking at it again, does look a lot more like a dick than I’d first thought. For reference, it was slightly larger than key size. I’m pretty sure it was a bottle opener. You can see it, right? Right?

I suppose it could have been a weird key. But, I mean, look at it.

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Fitness Check 1 – May 17, 2025

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