Well, the Holidays are over and the calendars have been changed out to 2020.

However, you notice that I am using the full 2020 whenever I put a date down. The local police departments are warning/advising us to do so because otherwise, it would be too easy for someone to change the date to an earlier one on documents you might sign by just adding a different year on to the end of the 20 ie. 2019, etc. So I thought it was a great habit to get in. It is great advice and I am glad that they put this information on their Facebook page. This kind of stuff is when Facebook is good to have.

Otherwise, it was a good week overall.

My favorite photo from last week was:

I am taking a nap, why are you bothering me?

I did figure out that I was attempting to do too much, especially when it came to reflecting on and documenting all the articles I read over the course of a day. It was a nice experiment, but it was simply too much, so now I still read a lot of different articles, blog posts, etc., but I am not going to try to reflect too much or share them unless there is a particular reason for doing so. Although I am still reading more from different genre books than I have for a while.

Right now I am plowing through “Lifespan” by David Sinclair and while I am finding the science part a bit over my head, I think I am following along enough to figure things out and the “why” behind what he is writing about. Most of which seems pretty reasonable, although there are some things that I read in other places that might put his partnerships and recommendations in a little different light than he gives at times. So far the book is making me think and I might look closer at a couple of his recommendations after I finish reading the book.

Something that I am enjoying is my reading each morning from “The Daily Stoic“, this book will take me all of 2020 to read, but doing it this way allows me to focus on one idea a day and reflect a bit on it. I might write about some of the entries, but not all and only if I feel they are things that appropriate to share online.

Running

I had a really good week of running and got back over my 30-mile weekly goal again, after easing off during December.

With the weather being pretty decent I have been able to run outside more than usual during this time of year, so that was nice. Although I did have a bit of quandary when preparing for Sunday’s treadmill run and couldn’t figure out which running shoes to wear for it and eventually just got out a new pair of shoes. You can read about that fun stuff here.

Speaking of running shoes, after that little episode my running shoe inventory will be significantly reduced by the end of this week, which is a good thing.

As of now, my running shoe rotation looks like this:

• New Balance Beacon v1 – Treadmill duty and later maybe my longer race day shoes.
• New Balance Beacon v2 – Outside on clear and nice days – the tread on them is almost gone and they will be retired when they hit 300 miles this week or next.
• New Balance Propel Gray – My primary outside running shoes
• New Balance 1400 v6 – faster runs outside or racing
• Nike Zoom Fly SP – faster running or racing on a clear day, although I am not crazy about the shoes, they will get me through the winter and then I will be looking to get something different that works better for me.
• Nike Wildhorse – nasty weather running and my everyday walking shoes
• New Balance Propel Yellow – Waiting for the gray pair to wear out in a couple months
• New Balance 890 v7 – Will come back out in the spring, they are definitely not winter shoes.

Notice a pattern with my rotation.

Yeah, I am finding that New Balance has changed their running shoe lines to the point where I like their products better than others right now. They just work well for me and how I run, but the best thing is that my feet do not bother me during most runs and I don’t suffer after-effects from running in them.

I am going to stick with what is working for a while.

Blogging

I am liking the switch over to Blogger. While it ain’t perfect and seems to be a bit of an orphan product in the Google line-up (which concerns me a little, with their past history of dropping products), the change in focus has me motivated to write more than just my daily running log. While I will still do that and journal some slices of my life, but not everything.

Yes, I am still wandering around with the newfound freedom and probably at some point, I will settle down into a niche that fits the direction that is comfortable for my blogging to go forward. However, I do not want it to become more than a personal blog and all the wonderful pitches I am receiving about how “I too can become a wildly successful professional blogger and makes lots of money while doing what I love” are being tacitly ignored.

I am not blogging for any particular reason other than I enjoy the writing process and how blogging allows me to write things out and makes me clarify my thoughts about what I am writing down. Which I tend to believe was the original intent of blogging, but that is a whole other story.

When I finish reading “Lifespan“, I will be going back to reading “Draft #4″. I know that my writing mechanics are not always great and that I can improve my storytelling abilities. Reading some books on writing and storytelling, maybe even a workshop at some point, are things that I want to do to improve my abilities as a writer. Does that mean that I plan to write a book someday?

Not really, but you never know.

The reality is that 

The start of 2020 has been a good start and many of the changes that I started back in December to get ready for this New Year have been good changes. I see a few more coming down the road and probably a couple of surprise ones as well, but we will see how things go and if I can get certain things through my thick head to do so.

As for the world, it seems that its resolution was to make life way too “interesting” and I have a feeling it is going to get a lot worse before things get better. I hope I am wrong, but the tea leaves don’t look all that great from where I sit.

About all, we can do is control what we control and do the best we can with the lives we have.

Enjoy the week ahead and keep smiling.

Originally posted on Aging & Retirement – My Thoughts, written by Harold L. Shaw, Jr.