It’s hard to believe, but my sabbatical is now halfway complete. Week 7 was a usual week at home in Arlington and Week 8 was a “vacation” week in Cape Cod with Emily. Yes, even folks on sabbatical can take a vacation, apparently.
I said at the end of my Week 5 and 6 Retrospective that I wanted to see myself meet with a personal trainer, take my new road bike out for a couple rides, use my new gym membership, and do a couple sessions with my golf coach. I absolutely did all of these things — plus some more. Let’s dig into some highlights from the past couple weeks:
Attended two 1-on-1 golf lessons with a new coach. They went really well and his teaching approach connects with me much more than the fellow I worked with last fall. I understand on a much more fundamental level what I need to be doing and what I’ve been doing wrong up to this point. For the first time in awhile I’m feeling optimistic about my golf practice and I can see myself getting better.
Took my new road bike out on a couple long (for me) rides. I love having an actual bike and getting outside on it. I’m excited to explore more of the routes near where I live.
Emily and I had our third salsa lesson. It’s still feeling very cognitively demanding and overly mechanical, but there were a couple brief moments where it felt natural and like actual dancing. I’m finding myself surprised by how much I’m enjoying it.
Had the usual biweekly coaching session with a client after we both took all of July off. This is my one very thin umbilical cord still connecting me to the world of work and The Ready.
For getting to the Cape, we flew into Hyannis rather than Boston like we usually do. This involved taking a super small plane from Nantucket which was a really cool experience. There were 4 other people on the plane and the pilot gave us the safety briefing by turning around in his seat and talking to us.
I rented a road bike while I was on the Cape and used it to explore the Cape Cod Rail Trail a couple times, including a 30 mile ride with Emily.
As part of my focus on my physical fitness, I went on a couple runs and even did some actual open water swimming in front of the house where we were staying.
I ate some seafood basically everyday except one while on the Cape, I think. Man, I love seafood. Also, Frosted Mini Wheats. #vacation
We ended up cutting our trip a day short so we could fly out before Hurricane Henri hit the area.
I did some work thinking through and writing out different “hooks” and organizing principles for a potential book project I’m working on.
While I managed to read everyday over the past two weeks, I feel like I didn’t really get into many, if any, deep and long reading sessions. My reading felt a little disjointed and inconsistent these past two weeks. I only finished one book, Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness and I also started Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, even though I’m still reading a bunch of others. That means I have four books currently in progress which is definitely the upper limit of what I can handle. Time to finish some!
TV-wise we’re excited Brooklyn 99 is back. We watched the first episode of the new season as well as continuing to watch each episode of Ted Lasso as it is released. I also played a game called Overboard a bit after hearing a podcast I really enjoy talk about it. It’s pretty cool and I’ll probably end up investing a bit more time into it. I played a bit more Starcraft 2 in Week 7 but don’t think I’ve really made much more progress in moving out of Platinum.
I didn’t publish anything. No issue of The Deliberate, nothing on SamSpurlin.com, and not even a new Fields of Work episode. Not ideal, but not the end of the world since I did do some good unpublished work on the aforementioned book project.
Personal Metrics
My standard metrics for the past two weeks are as follows (format = week 7/week 8)
Average hours slept per night: 7.53 /7.53
Average “quality” hours slept per night: 5.43/4.8
Average deep hours slept per night: 1.98/1.63
Average sleeping heart rate: 50/49
Average steps per day: 12,286/7,220
Average weekly weight: 209.19/208.8
Days exercised (out of 7): 7/5
Days read (out of 7): 7/7
Days written (out of 7): 4/2
Days meditated (out of 7): 2/0
A few thoughts: Weight doesn’t look good, but it’s a lagging indicator and I actually feel good about a few of the leading indicators that I track. It’ll get headed in the right direction, soon. Steps were way down during vacation week, but I did go on several long bike rides. Meditation practice is in shambles.
Weeks 9 and 10
I’m writing this article from the airplane that’s taking me to Nashville, where I’ll be working on my brother’s farm for the next week. My primary intention this week is to dive as deep as I can into his world, ask a ton of questions, and learn as much as I can. Other than that, if I’m able to get some runs and swims in and maybe pick at some writing a few times over the next week, I’ll be happy.
Week 10 is a bit of a hodgepodge. I’m driving to another part of Tennessee on Monday to see a friend and hopefully go for a bike ride. Tuesday I’ll fly back to Virginia before turning around and flying back to Buffalo Thursday night through Sunday night for another family member’s wedding. As with all fractured weeks, I’m looking to not completely lose my daily Anchor Habits and move through all the travel shenanigans and family expectations with as little stress and as much grace as I can muster.
See you in two weeks!