2024 Recap

Does anyone know where Daslas is?

We settled into a new normal with lots of travel for Cat, a big tech job for me, and the kids transitioning schools. It was a busy year overall, but still marked by pretty good progress — let’s dive in my 2024 goals.

Successes

Track my mood for 200 days (326 total): Here is a day-by-day breakdown from my tracking app.

Most days are OK. I can identify extremes — I know exactly what happened on days that I felt awful.

I also tracked mood and sleep “activities”. I haven’t slept well this year and felt tired most days. It might get a some sort of digital sleep tracker.

Too many days of bad sleep makes Kayur something-something.

Eat less than 183 processed, fried, or red meat meals (141 total): I tried to cut down to one “bad” meat meal. Healthy protein options like grilled chicken or fish were OK. In all I made my goal but may have eaten more meat than last year since I added chicken. Here is a monthly breakdown.

Every other day is about 15 meals per month. Strong start, but my adherence flagged during the holidays. There were a lot of steak houses in the all inclusive in Mexico.

• 2 friend trips: We went to Mexico for Thanksgiving, and I also took the family to visit my friend Alex for his 40th birthday.
• 2 family trips: We got three trips in. We traveled to Chicago for my cousin’s wedding, Dallas for the eclipse, and unfortunately a funeral in North Carolina.
• Create a wardrobe: My new uniform: Levis 514 jeans, ascolor classic tees, Balega Enduro quarter socks, and all black Nike Pegasus Gore-Tex shoes. My dresser isn’t completely capsule. A few rogue, free-shirts have entered rotation. I need to prune them out. Cat is also gently nudging me towards a few nicer pieces. For Christmas, she got me pants and a button up that go with the clothes I have. I’ll probably expand now that I have a solid base.
• Create an attic space for kids: Cat moved a bunch of stuff out of the attic. I spent a few weekend days organizing. We made space, set up a TV area, and activity tables for random kid chaos. We’ll have to decorate, but it’s solid; it’s functional; and the house feels much larger.
• Organized and functional playroom: Bins were labeled, and toys were pruned. But all things tend towards entropy. Our kids aren’t great at maintaining the system, and Christmas toys have not been sorted. We’ll have to do yearly updates, but these are minor challenges compared to where things were at before.

Partial Successes

• Run a marathon [with Cat]: I ran a marathon, but this was originally stated a joint goal with Cat (and Ian and Saleema). Everyone dropped out except for me. The marathon went great until my body broke down. And it remained broken for a while — I couldn’t walk up stairs for weeks, couldn’t run for months, and one of my big toes lost a toenail. Even so, I think I’ll try to do another marathon next year.

See if you can spot the exact moment I fell over with a full body cramp.

• 30,000 pushups and 30,000 sit-ups (18,052 pushups, 18,566 sit-ups): Here is a progress graph. I started off strong, but soon after my shoulder started hurting. In November, my physical therapist and personal trainer both told me to lay off the pushups. A good idea, but in the future, I need to work in rest.

I started feeling weaker and wasn’t improving my per-day pushup count. If the goal is to be stronger then I was doing it wrong. I need more rest, especially at my age.

• Go on 18 dates, just [me and Cat] (15 total): Considering Cat’s travel schedule, I’m counting this as a win. Nine of these were dinner dates, three of which involved a bike ride or a long walk. We also went to two adult birthday parties, a cooking class, a movie, a science writers event, and a couples massage.

• Read or listen to 6 books [with Cat] (4 total): Audiobooks are long, and Cat doesn’t like to listen to them on more than 1x speed. We listened to The Scholomance Trilogy and This Is How You Lose the Time War.

• Leela can read: Leela can read — we have videos to prove it — but she doesn’t enjoy it. If you put a book in front of her, she’ll claim she can’t read words she knows how to read. The resulting fight results in tears and everyone feels miserable. We’re gonna wait until she wants to read.

• Pravin and Leela can swim (Pravin can swim): Pravin swims and that came in handy when in Mexico. Leela is no longer afraid of getting her hair wet, can kinda tread water, and probably won’t die if she needs to swim for 2 meters. But left to herself, she’d probably drown.

• Pravin can make his breakfast: He can prepare a waffle with almond butter and honey. Which would be enough if we didn’t add a controlled amount of tahini to his waffle every day to work on his sesame allergy. Independence delayed until we’re done with EpiPens. If you’re curious, this is the protocol we’re following.

• Sort through all our books: The books, for the most part, are out of upstairs storage. Cat’s been great about this. She sorted through most of her books, and I really appreciate her effort in making progress here. But most of mine are still in storage, and I need to spend some time pruning them.

• Read 26 books (44 read). 10 books from existing collection (4 read): I only read four books from my existing collection. Time to be more aggressive about pruning old books when I sort through them. A strange thing occurred this year — I started reading and enjoying the same books Pravin was reading. We’re currently working through the Amulet series (strong recommend).

Misses

Some goals never left the starting line:

• Do one rep of 10 pull-ups: My shoulder had other plans.
• Do a knee rehab program: Nope.
• Redo website and blog: Punting to next year.
• Frame and hang artwork: In storage now.
• Take an art class: Found one, didn’t take it.
• Update photo wall: Made negative progress here, cause the photos I had picked probably should be replaced with new ones.