75 baby steps

Hi, it's me again!

Writing a blog after years of writing nothing.  We really need to stop meeting like this!  

    I really need to get better at writing and create a schedule for myself to continue writing.  The way my life is going now, I am really missing having any creative outlets.  The band (KHP) has fizzled out and although we never actually called it quits, we have not played music together in quite a few years. So that means I have not had music writing as a creative outlet.  In June of 2019 I made the decision to retire my tattoo machine.  Working as many hours as I do on my dayjob, I felt like I was working my life away.  Since I quit tattooing, I do not have an artistic creative outlet anymore.

    Sure, I could pick up my Guitar and write a song, or I could grab a pencil or a paintbrush and draw or paint something.  The reality for me is that I need a push, a reason to get that fix.  Being in a band, I would be expected to write lyrics to a new song which would give me my creative outlet for music.  Doing tattoos, I would be forced nearly every night to create art whether I wanted to or not giving me a creative outlet for art.  Even if I wasn't in the mood, or dragged my feet, I would always enjoy what I was doing and would always be glad I did.  It is kind of like going to the gym.  Most people are not excited about going to the gym or going for a run, but nobody ever regrets it once they do it.

    63 days ago, my wife Jamie and I decided to go on a journey of self improvement together (btw we do everything together).  We sat down and wrote out a plan for ourselves.  For the next 75 days we would follow 5 things everyday to help us improve our lives and create some healthy habits.  The inspiration came from Andy Frisella's 75 hard program.  Andy's program is designed to create mental toughness, but our objectives were slightly different. The 5 things that we decided to check off daily were:

1. Follow a diet.  Any kind of diet.  We decided to do a caloric deficit and used https://www.loseit.com/ to track our progress.
2. Read 10 pages of a motivational book. Anything that helps with self improvement whether that is parenting, work, finance etc.  Audible and Podcasts don't count.  It has to be printed pages.
3. Work out for 45 minutes. It can be an intense workout or a walk.  Anything to be active and keep moving.  Often we chose to play pickleball to get in our activity and still have fun.
4. Drink 1 gallon of water. It is easier than it sounds once you get used to it. We bought these flasks https://www.amazon.com/IRONflask They are 32 oz flasks, so we fill them 4 times.
5. Take a progress picture. This has been the hardest and most pointless of them all.  After the initial 75 days, we will not be continuing that one! (and no, I will not share those pictures)

    After 63 days of this, we have learned so much.  Doing this together has made us closer as a couple.  Reading everyday has made us reflect on ourselves, our lives, and what we want in our future.  Working out everyday has made us feel better and healthier, the same has happened with drinking water.  There have been days that we didn't want to complete what we set out to do, but we did it anyway because we had boxes on our tracking sheets to check.  We are each others accountability partners and coaches. One of the books we both read during this time was Atomic Habits by James Clear.  The book helped reinforce what we set out to do in the first place.  Now we have both created a new checklist to do after our 75 days is over.  Each of us have designed our own specific plan of things that we want to make a daily habit.  We made a checklist/habit tracker so that we have to check off each item as we do it every day. 

    One of the big reasons that I am writing all of this into this blog is because the act of writing is going to be part of my new habits, and writing is going to be one of my new creative outlets.  I am going to write a blog at least once a month moving forward (I may start out more often than that).  I plan to write about our journey of our self improvement, changes in our life and family, maybe some blogs about a new hobby of mine... Whiskey collecting and tasting. And a big one that I plan to eventually add in is real estate investing (I will tell you more about that in the future).  Hopefully I don't end up writing another apologetic post about my absence a few years from now. Wish me luck!