New Year, New Me?

I’ve been doing a lot of my blogging over at Kikay Runner these days as that persona has evolved to become my public face. But I still keep this blog around. Why? Maybe to remind myself that regardless of how much running/triathlon/fitness is a big part of my life, there’s more to me than just that.

However, when a dear friend asked me once “What is it you do for fun?” all I had to answer him was the stuff I currently do anyway: running, racing, blogging, reading, traveling. I’m not sure if I have more bandwidth to do other things. Sure, I do indulge in everyone else’s pastime of binging on series over streaming services; it’s a way of unwinding for me. But that’s basically it for me aside from spending time with family and friends. (I blame Metro Manila traffic for draining away what other time I have.)

I feel like there’s huge pressure to do, and do, and do, and do. “Turn hobbies into hustles. Ensure every minute is productive. If you work from home then you surely have more time to come up with new ideas or to implement them.”

This sort of mindset has choked me so much that I end up pushing the other way. I spend entire days doing “nothing” too mentally drained to use my brain so I just put work off until the next day. Thankfully the nature of my job allows me to work in short sprints when motivation and energy is high, but everything I understand from productivity books tells me this is unsustainable and unreliable. And yet the downtime is the space I need to “clean house” so I can work undistracted.

So just to make sure I stay on track with work things as well as stay sane, at the start of the year I did tarted doing something I haven’t done in a long time: I wrote my to-do lists down.

As someone who has redeemed countless Starbucks planners and have only gotten as far as March in each of them, I’m reusing an old planner, scratching out the dates and just using the paper as somewhere to write down ideas and keep track. (Something about writing stuff down for specific dates always made me anxious and averse to my old planners. I guess the hipster inside me likes not actually using weekly calendar pages for their intended purpose.)

I don’t have to look at this everyday, but in general it’s a way to set goals and make thoughts concrete.

I’m about to open this “planner” up again after two weeks and know I can cross some things off certain to-do lists. I will also start some new lists for the next month, and next, and next. So hopefully this is the beginning of an actual system I can use consistently. It gives me space to unwind and recharge but still helps me stay on track.

Will check back in here in a few weeks just to stay accountable and see if this works. LOL. I do need to start writing about things other than running, and it’s nice not having to promote my posts on here. They’re still public to read, but not really part of whatever livelihood I earn.

/end word vomit

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