24: My Life is Dope
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June has been quite the month:
Traveled to NYC for my friend’s birthday
Took a full week of PTO to go to the beach and just ~chill~
Traveled to Washington, DC for Rachael’s cousin’s wedding
Interviewed on the NoCode Wealth Podcast
Paid my Q1 and Q2 self-employment taxes!!! (so much fun)
Celebrated Father’s Day with 18 rounds of golf with my Dad
Celebrated 2 years with Rachael by eating tapas and going to see John Mulaney
Finished 3rd in my beach volleyball tournament and won $47!
Traveled to Austin, Texas for work
Nonetheless, I have a ton of great stuff to share with you all.
TL;DR
Here’s what we got in store for this month…
Balancing sports and working out
What is the meaning of travel?
Bye-bye social media
This quote changed my life
The only thing that matters at the end of the day
Let’s dive in.
Physical Health
I’ve been playing a lot of beach volleyball recently. Three to six hours during the week and eight hours over the weekends. It friggin ruins me. Which is great! But here lies the problem.
I want to make sure I’m still working out and lifting during the week so I maintain my strength throughout the season. But when am I supposed to work out when I’m playing so much volleyball?
I’ve made this mistake in the past and I think a lot of athletes can probably relate.
You’re hooked on lifting and following your program, but you also want to be able to compete in your sport. The issue is that if you continue following your program, and then you layer your sport on top of it, you’re likely going to get injured or burn yourself out.
If you find yourself struggling to balance working out and your sport, here’s what you’ve got to do…
At the beginning of your season, you kind of have to make a choice: “What is going to be my main priority this season?”
At the beginning of every beach season, my friend Tom and I always make a pact that beach volleyball is going to be our main priority! If this means pulling back on lifting, so be it! We want to be able to compete in volleyball at the highest level for the whole summer!
This pact isn’t easy, especially if you have other fitness goals in mind. To be honest with you, this is the first summer that Tom and I have actually stuck to our word on this, but it has totally been paying off.
Last week we finished third in Open, and won $47 worth of prize money!
This doesn’t mean I have forgone lifting entirely. In fact, I’m still lifting and working out, but it’s much different than my typical workouts.
I’ve been following my typical programming, except substituting heavy, low-volume lifts with light, high-volume lifts.
For example, instead of doing a 5 x 5 of deadlifts at 80% of my max, I’ll do a metcon of 21-15-9 pushups and 50lb dumbbell deadlifts.
Mental Health
The other day Rachael and I were talking about travel.
“What do you get out of traveling?” I asked.
She hit me with a beautifully articulated answer that only a well-traveled person could have responded with. But it puzzled me.
I haven’t done much traveling in my life. My family vacationed in the same place every single year; Santa Cruz, California to visit my family. It’s my favorite place on planet earth, but outside of that, we didn’t vacation to many other places.
To be honest, I’ve done more traveling in the last 2 years with Rachael than I have my whole life. I don’t know if that’s a function of dating someone with the travel bug or from moving out of my parent’s house; probably both.
“What do you get out of traveling?” she asked.
“I really don’t know,” I said.
I’ve been thinking about my response ever since.
I’m the type of guy who enjoys routines. I like knowing where my first cup of coffee is coming from, where I can pound out 1000 words of morning writing, and where I’m going to be able to get my morning workout in.
Traveling makes those things variable as opposed to certain. And if I’m on vacation, I want to be able to do the things that give me the most joy! Do you feel me?
This is what makes me a little weary about travel in general, but listen… If you can give me a beautiful Airbnb or hotel with good coffee, a quiet place to write, and a sweet place to work out, I’m all in!
But although I’m a routine guy, I love the spontaneity of travel. There is nothing I enjoy more than exploring an area I’ve never been to. The architecture. The shops. The food!
This past week, I was in Austin, Texas. I spent over five hours just walking around the damn city.
I had no plan but to walk around , and it made me happy. It was just completely stress-free. It also gave me a ton of time to think about things to write about.
I’ve realized whenever I’m traveling, I have much more time to be curious and to just think. At home, I’m stuck in the same routine every single day. This doesn’t give much room for spontaneity. I kind of have to create it with new experiences and meeting new people.
However, when traveling, I literally need to force my brain to shut off because I just have so many ideas and things to write about. New experiences. New people.
Travel just turns on the ideas faucet.
This has been a ton of rambling, so let me wrap it up.
“What do I get out of traveling?”
As long as I have my morning coffee, writing sesh, and workout, traveling brings me peace, opens my mind, and feeds my soul.
Social Health
I deleted Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook from my phone.
If I don’t respond to your snap or DM, that’s why.
I’ve been spending more time than usual on these platforms and I’m realizing the more time I spend using them, the less happy I am. I’m not deleting these accounts, so it likely won’t be forever, but I think a break will be good.
Vocational Health
Yesterday, I was listening to the My First Million Podcast - highly recommend if you don’t listen to it - and they were talking about an interesting quote from Kanye West. I’ve never been a huge Kanye Fan - I know many big Kanye fans, but I’m not one of them - but this quote really stood out to me.
“My life is dope. And I do dope shit.” - Kanye West
This might sound ignorant, but let’s think about it for a second. Yes, Kanye might be a little full of himself, but if you asked 100 people “Do you think your life is awesome?”, how many people are going to say “Yes?”
Maybe some people will hit you with a half-hearted “Yeah, my life is good.” But I guarantee you, most people aren’t happy or satisfied with their lives. Most people don’t think their lives are dope.
But full stop, what would the world be like if everyone thought their life was dope? Seriously!
Suddenly my senior year quote “Success is a journey, not a destination,” doesn’t sound nearly as cool anymore.
Financial Health
The other day I came across this tweet from Nat Eliason. Made me stop and think…
Like this is pretty real. If you have the fortune of having grandkids, don’t you want to be able to tell them a bunch of cool stories?
Building wealth is important because it buys you time. And time is the most valuable resource on the planet. When you have more time to do cool stuff, you’ll have better stories to tell your grandkids.
This is some pretty long-term thinking for me, especially at 24, but picturing myself years from now, amongst playing volleyball and doing CrossFit in my 70s, I want to be able to tell my grandkids some kick-ass stories.