#67 | "Strike while the iron's hot"
Focus ~ Seasons ~ "Say no to everything after 40"
I spent April thinking a lot about care. Namely, about how I show up in the world and what I put my attention, time, and effort into. As the old adage goes, you are what you pay attention to. In April, I took a beat from all of my usual routines and reflected on if they were really how I wanted to spend my life. I’ve made some changes.
In March, I’d previously written about how when you’re childless, the burden then falls entirely to you to orient and structure your life properly. April was a continuation of figuring out new routines to orient me towards the things I actually care about: health, exercise, my writing. And equally importantly: shedding all the habits and behaviors which did not contribute to my north star.
On the health and exercise front, I’ve abandoned ChatGPT and have switched over to Claude now. I use Claude to snap photos of what I’m eating so I can more granularly track my calories and protein with every meal.
I’ve given up volunteering and attending random meetups and book clubs. I used to think a varied life was important to my writing — that by acquiring new experiences, it would contribute to content for me to write about. This year I’d originally planned to go walk the Camino de Santiago in Portugal. It’s been on my bucket list for a while now and I thought this year when I turned 40 would be when I finally did it. I’ve decided to not do it.
“Strike while the iron’s hot”
When I reflect on my thirties I now realize one thing very clearly: the passions that motivated me that decade now no longer move me. I no longer feel the itch to travel or “see the world”. On the contrary, with the little travel I have done, I now thoroughly feel I’ve seen enough of the world. Where I am right now, the world no longer interests me. Life moves in seasons and if you miss a season, there’s no going back and to relive that era of your life. Whatever drive you may have felt during that season of life with those priorities have passed and a new season has dawned. One advice I would give to my younger self was to honor my impulsive emotions more. Maybe it wasn’t the right time in terms of money to travel — but that didn’t matter because emotionally I was in the mood then. It would’ve been more prudent to travel poor at that time in my life than to travel not poor now. We change as the years and decades pass and I’m no longer the person I was back then. You never step into the same river twice. Now I do actually have the savings to travel, I no longer even want to. The idea of getting on a plane for nine hours or spending a night not in my own bed seems outright awful even if it’s a high class hotel. This was a revelation I felt when I was in Paris for the first time last summer. The people were nice and many of the sites were beautiful, but I honestly just didn’t want to be there for most of that trip.
The rest of the year
My perfect day now entails following my routine which has become pretty strict. A very narrow and specific diet to burn belly fat (trying to get to 15% body fat), a religious walking and gym lifting routine, and lots of writing, rewriting, and organizing. For this season of life I’m currently in, I’ve really taken Atul Gawande’s advice to heart:
“Say yes to everything before you’re 40, and say no to everything after you’re 40.”