Week 9 was all about working on my brother’s farm in Tennessee. I flew out there on Sunday night and went back to Virginia the following Sunday. The best way to hear about everything we got up to is to listen to the latest episode of Fields of Work where we talk about what the week was like. In a nutshell, I got a quick crash course in what it's like to run a small organic, no-till, market garden-style farm. We harvested vegetables and prepared orders that were placed via individual customers online, we prepped some larger restaurant and charity orders, we prepped for and sold at a local farmer's market, we prepared "shiitake logs" for growing mushrooms, we prepped beds for new seeds, we did major cleanup on a pepper field suffering from disease, we picked a field of butternut and honeynut squash, and took care of a bunch of other miscellaneous tasks that emerge when you're trying to dance between the needs of the plants in the ground, the customers, and the weather. All in all, it was a great week and it has made me excited for the day when I can do some of my own gardening.
The original plan was to wrap up this week by driving down to Sewanee to see Will and go for a bike ride, but just like last time I decided to modify my travel plans to get out of the way of a hurricane (Ida).
The first part of Week 10 was spent at home in Arlington where I was finally able to get some focused training (namely, time in the pool and on the bike) in for the triathlon I’m hoping to do in the spring. While I technically started training for it in Week 9, all the travel had been making it a little difficult to stick to the plan. Thursday night we flew to Buffalo (again) for another family wedding. I kept up my training pretty adequately by going for a couple of the longest runs I’ve gone on in the past few years.
In between the travel, training, and family responsibilities I was able to squeeze in a few more things:
I found a few books that I had started reading a long time ago and somehow never finished: Why Are We Yelling? by Buster Benson and Shapers by Jonas Altman. I also finished Foundation by Isaac Asimov (which means I’m prepared for the upcoming Apple TV+ show) and The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo. I’m still working on (and will be for awhile) The Count of Monte Cristo, The Enlightenment, and Noise.
I made some progress on the book proposal I’m hoping to sell by the end of my sabbatical. I realized I needed to do a bunch of organizing of thinking and writing I’ve done in the past to really figure out the shape of this thing. Which brings me to my next bullet point…
Despite having written about my skepticism of “digital gardens”, I invested some time in learning how to create a Zettelkasten environment in Obsidian. For the first time I think I’m really seeing why it might be worthwhile for me to invest in creating this for myself. I’m not saying I’ve gone completely into this world of personal knowledge management, but I’ve taken some tentative steps in that direction…
Personal Metrics
Average hours slept per night: 7.65/7.27
Average “quality” hours slept per night: 4.9/4.98
Average deep hours slept per night: 1.58/2.02
Average sleeping heart rate: 48/51
Average steps per day: 8,953/14,607
Average weekly weight: —/207.1
Days exercised (out of 7): 3/7
Days read (out of 7): 6/7
Days written (out of 7): 3/1
Days meditated (out of 7): 1/1
I knew my weight would start trending down soon! Not super surprised about the general inconsistency in my Anchor Habits considering how much of the last two weeks was spent outside of my usual routine. Ideally I’d love to get to a place where those numbers are 7’s across the board regardless of what’s going on in my life, but I’m not there yet.
What Has My Attention In Weeks 11 and 12?
First, and maybe most importantly, I have no travel scheduled for the next two weeks. I’m excited to dig back into my home routines.
The last few weeks have been all about shedding commitments and expectations so that I can focus on a few key essential projects. I’m no longer investing much time in Starcraft 2, I’m not worrying about writing other articles for my website, I’m not trying to publish new issues of my newsletter, I’m not going to teach myself how to code, I’m not going to dive into a research project that’s specifically about anything I’m doing at The Ready, and I’m not going to invest as much time as I thought I might in becoming a better golfer. All of these things are being almost entirely set aside, for now, in favor of two things: triathlon training and book proposal writing.
I’m working with a coach and targeting competing in an Olympic distance triathlon in April 2022. I have a long way to go, especially with my swimming. I’m training six days a week and loving all the “newbie gains” that I’m experiencing across the various disciplines. In the past couple weeks I have gone for the longest bike ride, swim, and run since my 20s.
Second, I’ve finally started to truly clarify an idea that I think actually pulls together the many intellectual threads I’ve been obsessed with for the better part of 10 years into something coherent and book-worthy. My goal is to get a proposal into the hands of an agent by the end of my sabbatical (but sooner if I can manage it). I’m committed to spending ~3 hours per day over the next couple weeks getting this proposal written and shipped.
That’s it. After 10 weeks of exploration and limited expectations I feel like I’ve coalesced around two lines of effort that are distinct from each other yet reinforce each other in useful ways. The physical exhaustion of triathlon training seems to calm my brain to the point where it becomes easier to follow and corral complex lines of thought and the tough intellectual work of trying to write a book gives me the itch to get outside and swim, ride, or run.
I feel calmer and more focused than I ever have during the course of my sabbatical thus far. I’m excited to see where this newfound clarity and concentration takes me over the coming weeks.
