Mike Wazowski: The Slow Build, Part 1

[Mike Wazowski]

What's up, nerds!

 

Here's a little about me, and the rough challenge plan:

I'm a competitive ballroom dancer, my day job is as a data and business strategy nerd for an energy company. I also teach college kids how to dance, and love spending time with my wonderful friends and/or BF in between all that stuff. I'm also a raging personal finance and econ nerd, so feel free to ask me a question and enjoy the rant that follows. 

 

It's been a rough past month or so since the new year started - a lot of excrement has hit the fan at work in terms of projects, and I got to file my first HR complaint (which has since been resolved, mostly to my satisfaction). I'm also recovering from a sinus surgery since last Thursday - have my post-operation appointment this Friday. I also caught COVID shortly before the surgery (don't worry, I was fully recovered and put no one at risk by getting the surgery). Recovery's been slower going than expected, but I already was planning on a fairly slow ramp back up to normal activity levels for this whole challenge as part of a larger physical conditioning plan (which I will post here, eventually). The gist is that this challenge is all about getting back to my pre-surgery, pre-covid, pre-winter holidays levels of dance activity. This won't really be tracked, per se, but I'll report on it via my daily active calories, as measured by my smart watch (do smart watches have documented measurement errors when they estimate calories? Yes. Am I assuming that the same watch is going to err similarly when the same person chooses from a similar menu of activities on consecutive days, and therefore I can still use it to inform my tracking? Also yes).

 

Other areas of focus will be, daily:

• Making time for sleep (7+ hours made available)
• Meditation (at least 5 minutes just calming down with my thoughts)
• Mobility (10+ minutes every day, both as part of an evening wind down ritual and as a periexercise activity)
• Planning out my time (in the morning, at the start of the day, and also on Monday morning or Sunday evening at the start of the week)
• Taking a walk outside (my mental health is way better when I leave my apartment and go outside every day)

 

Once the daily ones are back and ticking along:

• 3x a week, ankle prehab and a basic pilates routine for some work on the two highest leverage areas for me as a dancer
• Start experimenting with ways to take some of the biggest distractions that keep me from working deeply (aka "getting in the zone") during the work day and give them a set time and place in my day so that I'm not doing them willy nilly (e.g. refreshing email, social media, etc. - the usual offenders that let us do paradoxically both a lot and nothing at all during an 8 hour work day) (edit 02/11 - this was ambitious for this challenge, lol)

 

I'm hopeful that this won't be an especially ambitious challenge, and I'm also not holding myself to account on any goals until I feel more recovered from surgery - it's been slow going and while I *hope* I'll be fine by the end of zero week, the body will heal on its schedule, not one I try to impose on it.

 

EDIT: Adding in my yearly planning stuff from last challenge, plus some challenge plans (spoilered for length)

Here's what I laid out in late 2020 / early 2021 as the rough list of things I wanted to build this year - it starts with foundational habits, then builds to other life habits, and also some projects to tackle. Anything in blue is currently in progress and a focus, anything in green is a solid habit, anything struck through has either been completed (if it's also green) or deprioritized to "not this year" status.

Spoiler

First up: build good foundational habits -

• sleep,
• mental health maintenance (meditating, maybe journaling if I feel like it),
• mobility,
• making plans for my time so that it's frittered away less (and instead, I'm *planning leisure* which is a concept shift for me).

 

 

Then, lots of add-on habits (some of which are connected to a larger project, and realistically not all of these will get tackled this year):

 

For dance / athleticism / physical health:

• Solo practice time built into my week
• Nutrition dialed in to get and maintain a lean physique as it'll be advantageous in my sport
• Strength routine consistent, shading the focus towards building / maintaining muscle mass (while still doing fun stuff!)
• Aerobic / anaerobic conditioning routine consistent (probably running), because my sport pushes anaerobic endurance hard (competition rounds are 5 90-second efforts separated by about 30 seconds, and you'll typically dance 4 - 6 rounds or more in a day at a bigger competition)
• Core motor control and foot prehab work consistent, since they have high transfer to my sport
• High fiber diet, consistently (I feel better when bowel movements are consistent, the sex life benefits are a plus)

 

General life maintenance - I envision most of these fitting into a block on Sundays:

• Regular cleaning of my apartment
• Regular laundry
• Regular meal prepping - and getting smart about a mix of easy and hard dishes to prep
• Finance habits - bill paying / budgeting / net worth tracking, this is actually already all dialed in (because you can't be the spawn of two accountants and not be decent at tracking your own finances)
• Weekly planning of non-work time to make sure time is set aside for what matters most to me

 

Friendships: build some sort of habit / system for keeping touch with in-town and long-distance friends and family, I have a tendency to be a little out of sight, out of mind with stuff

 

Career:

• Weekly work planning of what I'll work on and when (knowing it'll change, but this'll force me to make time for focused, deep work)
• Tweak usage of the internet to limit distractions and make time and space for more "deep work" a la Cal Newport
• Engage in regular project planning to keep all my stakeholders aprised of timelines and changes to those
• Build in time to prep for presentations, keep practicing the skill of getting better at spoken messaging so that I don't stagnate there (it's been highlighted as my most important development opportunity at work)
• Carve out regular time in the week for side projects related to my career (including my data science "micro-masters" certificate I'm currently working on)

 

While also tackling some of these projects (will all these get done this year? probably not, and that's ok):

 

Health / Fitness / Athlete:

• Lean body - tweak nutrition habits to cut (given my past experiences, I'll aim for a "minimum effective dose" approach here to avoid some pitfalls), then tweak habits to go into maintenance mode
• Lean body - rebuild baseline of strength and aerobic / anaerobic conditioning
• Dance - build up foot mobility and strength, especially in ankle plantar flexion and toe dorsiflexion (my genre LOVES the aesthetic of a high demi-pointe as it shows up in a lot of our movements)
• (Low priority) get back into practicing ballroom ballroom (I compete in latin ballroom) to stay well-rounded as a teacher; this might get punted til next year, or may never bubble up as a high priority, and that's OK - I'll learn as I go while teaching kids and college kids, probably

 

Music:

• Process a flash drive my partner gave me forever ago with a ton of dance music on it - spotify stopped working with my djay app, so now I need music on my phone to slow down songs for solo practice
• Make some running playlists that can go on my watch - currently I'm running to the tunes of one playlist I made in 2015 for a road trip with a friend (haha)

 

Clothing:

• Repair a few clothes in need
• Pitch some clothes beyond the point of repairs (looking at you, 6+ year old socks with holes in them!)
• Tailor some of my t-shirts, tank tops, and / or sweaters to fit my figure better (short and trapezoidal is a hard torso shape to find good clothes for!)

 

Career:

• Build a better system to manage reference info, including my own code files (we write a lot of SAS code for reporting and analysis)
• Get through remaining "micromasters" courses:
  • Machine learning - now - April (update: with covid, surgery and other shit, I'm going to reach out to course staff and ask to shift things by a session - by the end of this week to reduce my stress levels for the next two months) 
  • Big Data Analytics - April - July?
• Research areas of economics and data science careers - where, if anywhere, do I want to slowly start to pivot my career towards?

 

And here's some challenge plans for this one and future challenges:

Spoiler

 

Physically Taxing Stuff - Mike's Master Plan (all dates subject to change):

• Rest of this challenge plus next zero week (through surgery post-op, basically): Just walk nearly every day for the NEAT and the "I'm out in the sunshine!" happy chemicals - plus dance practices with my partner as medical schedules allow and solo practice if I feel like it (update: surgery recovery was tougher than expected, so walks started a bit later, solo dancing barely happened - and that's A-OK!)
• Next challenge (02/12 - 03/20) - Keep up the walking, build back up to normal dance volume of 4 partner practice days plus 1-2 solo practice days, add in pilates for a bit of core / control work and ankle prehab each 3x / week; option to do light strength work 0-2x / week**
• The next two challenges (03/21 - 06/12) - keep up dance training volume, walking, ankle prehab, and pilates; add in a 12-week beginner running plan (None to Run, which is basically a slower building couch to 5k as best I can tell); option to do light strength work 0-2x / week**
• The next two challenges (06/13 - 09/04) - keep up dance training volume, walking, ankle prehab / pilates, and flip to near-maintenance for running; amp up the strength work to consistently 2-3x / week, trying to grow in strength / volume from week to week
• After that (09/05 onward) - TBD, possibly a conscious focus on cutting if it turns out my physique still has room for improvement after consistently training

I'll have to figure out how some of the non-physically taxing things slot in, plus some of the physical things that are less intense from a recovery angle (like focused mobility work on my feet since ballroom dancers LOVE their foot / ankle mobility for aesthetic reasons). 

 

**The light strength work option shows up because I genuinely enjoy strength training - it's not particularly important to be especially strong for my sport (aesthetics-oriented, bodybuilding style work is maybe of slight value, but even then, not much) but because I enjoy it, I incorporated it early and in a higher quantity than if I were purely optimizing for sport performance.

 

Non-Physically Taxing:

• 02/14 - 03/20: Rebuild foundational habits, plus some meal planning / prepping that I've been doing except during surgery week without making it an official goal
• 03/28 - 05/01: Add in my "general life maintenance" weekly habits - some TBD amount of apartment cleaning and laundry every Sunday (ideally, the minimum amount to feel like my life is well-managed and there's no backlog perpetually building in those areas) plus tweaking my meal prep to be more efficient and fit into a single session, ideally <=3 hours
• 05/08 - 07/24 (2 challenges): Add in my "career" habits - culling distractions, planning projects and informing stakeholders, making time to prep for presentations, making time for data science continuing learning
• 08/01 - 10/16 (2 challenges): Add in my "friendships" habit (also flesh out what it means, since it's currently quite vague)

Then maybe tackle projects with any remaining time - or some of those might overflow.

 

 

[Mad Hatter]

Another sane and sensible challenge? I'm so confused. Must be the post-surgery drugs.

[sylph]

17 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

Another sane and sensible challenge? I'm so confused. Must be the post-surgery drugs.

Right? This is at least twice in a row I've wondered whether I've stumbled into the wrong thread

 

 

Good luck with the recovery, Mike. I know it'll be worth it for you in the long run, but the interim sounds a bit hellish.

[Scaly Freak]

 

31 minutes ago, Mike Wazowski said:

I'm hopeful that this won't be an especially ambitious challenge, and I'm also not holding myself to account on any goals until I feel more recovered from surgery - it's been slow going and while I *hope* I'll be fine by the end of zero week, the body will heal on its schedule, not one I try to impose on it.

 

Excellent choice of priorities. First we heal, then we do the fun stuff.

 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Following with no promises of frequency of posting.

[Scaly Freak]

8 minutes ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Following with no promises of frequency of posting.

 

Speaking of wise priorities...  

[Epsilonte]

1 hour ago, Mike Wazowski said:

the body will heal on its schedule, not one I try to impose on it.

 

Wise words.  

 

And hey, at least sleeping enough is something, you could (and should ) do while you are still recovering.  

[Mike Wazowski]

5 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Another sane and sensible challenge? I'm so confused. Must be the post-surgery drugs.

Hahahaha. I have been too sedated to have any manic, stupid ideas.
 

5 hours ago, sylph said:

Right? This is at least twice in a row I've wondered whether I've stumbled into the wrong thread

Hahahaha y’all are toooo kind.

 

Quote

Good luck with the recovery, Mike. I know it'll be worth it for you in the long run, but the interim sounds a bit hellish.

Yes, I’ve had to focus on the long run a LOT the past couple days (weeks, really, if we count COVID recovery crap).
 

5 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

Excellent choice of priorities. First we heal, then we do the fun stuff.

 yes, though this healing could do with some speeding up!
 

5 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Following with no promises of frequency of posting.

Completely understand, given that you follow an insane number of threads.
 

3 hours ago, Epsilonte said:

Wise words.  

 it was a good spur of the moment realization during a reflective patch this afternoon.
 

Quote

And hey, at least sleeping enough is something, you could (and should ) do while you are still recovering.  

Oh yes - something I should do, though some combo of pain and pain meds and not being allowed to sleep lying flat (I’ve been told to sleep pretty propped up) has made my sleep heavily troubled. Last night was a “good” night - there was a whole 4 hour stretch that I think was undisturbed. I’m hoping that this trend of progressively better sleep continues, and fast.

[Harriet]

Here to nod approvingly at your recovery.

[raptron]

22 hours ago, Mike Wazowski said:

 

It's been a rough past month or so since the new year started - a lot of excrement has hit the fan at work in terms of projects, and I got to file my first HR complaint (which has since been resolved, mostly to my satisfaction). I'm also recovering from a sinus surgery since last Thursday - have my post-operation appointment this Friday. I also caught COVID shortly before the surgery (don't worry, I was fully recovered and put no one at risk by getting the surgery). Recovery's been slower going than expected, but I already was planning on a fairly slow ramp back up to normal activity levels for this whole challenge as part of a larger physical conditioning plan (which I will post here, eventually). The gist is that this challenge is all about getting back to my pre-surgery, pre-covid, pre-winter holidays levels of dance activity.

Fingers crossed recovery ramps up for ya. 

22 hours ago, Mike Wazowski said:

This won't really be tracked, per se, but I'll report on it via my daily active calories, as measured by my smart watch (do smart watches have documented measurement errors when they estimate calories? Yes. Am I assuming that the same watch is going to err similarly when the same person chooses from a similar menu of activities on consecutive days, and therefore I can still use ? Yes.

I sent a complaint/feature request to my activity tracker about being able to hide the horribly off kcal estimates (mine thinks I only burn 1400 calories on a lifting day. 😂 😂 😂), but if you start with the flawed data, it's ok to compare against other flawed data, yeah? I get this strat! 

[Mike Wazowski]

12 hours ago, Harriet said:

Here to nod approvingly at your recovery.

Welcome aboard! Hopefully there will be many occasions for nodding.

 

19 minutes ago, raptron said:

Fingers crossed recovery ramps up for ya. 

Yes please! I am definitely noticing things get better, but in a non-linear, noisy fashion so it's hard to tell (also, hard to quantify pain OR the ratio of blood to mucus that comes out when you rinse your sinuses OR the volume of said yuckiness in a given rinse).

 

19 minutes ago, raptron said:

I sent a complaint/feature request to my activity tracker about being able to hide the horribly off kcal estimates (mine thinks I only burn 1400 calories on a lifting day. 😂 😂 😂), but if you start with the flawed data, it's ok to compare against other flawed data, yeah? I get this strat! 

Hahahahaha was that the whoop? And that was its estimate for *total* calories burned (i.e. including BMR)? I remember you saying it called your lifting "active recovery," but didn't realize it was that bad. So far, my apple watch has performed ok with strength stuff (though I also never take powerlifter levels of rest mainly because I get bored), and it at least spits out directionally believable results in general (e.g. my most intense dance days are the ones it says I burned the most active calories). So good enough for me, for now.

 

Recovery Update:

• Less than 48 hours til post-op! The countdown on the chalkboard is giving me hope.
• I'm officially through the full prescription of pain killers - using tylenol has so far been good enough, if not perfect, for letting me get through the days.
• I'm getting faint hints of smell from strongly scented stuff - fresh ground coffee, some stuff in my bathroom, you get the idea - which is an encouraging sign that my sinus tissue has healed.
• I've been able to go on some morning walks and have built back up to my old 1.4 mile loop around the neighborhood with no ill effects. The past two days have been active cals of ~500 vs. a post-surgery ~400 and a pre-covid / surgery ~1,000. So still a long way to go to get back up to old levels of activity, but progress is being made!

No other big updates. Might get around to long-term goals planning later this week. Maybe - if not, it's NBD, I've got til the end of the challenge to have a plan for the next one.

[raptron]

18 hours ago, Mike Wazowski said:

Hahahahaha was that the whoop? And that was its estimate for *total* calories burned (i.e. including BMR)? I remember you saying it called your lifting "active recovery," but didn't realize it was that bad. So far, my apple watch has performed ok with strength stuff (though I also never take powerlifter levels of rest mainly because I get bored), and it at least spits out directionally believable results in general (e.g. my most intense dance days are the ones it says I burned the most active calories). So good enough for me, for now.

YUP! The whole day including BMR -- this was a bench and deadlift day.

 

I almost wanted to include a photo of me flexing and being like "yo, you can't become THIS by eating 1400 kcal a day 😎" but I did not, ahahah.

 

18 hours ago, Mike Wazowski said:

Recovery Update:

• Less than 48 hours til post-op! The countdown on the chalkboard is giving me hope.
• I'm officially through the full prescription of pain killers - using tylenol has so far been good enough, if not perfect, for letting me get through the days.
• I'm getting faint hints of smell from strongly scented stuff - fresh ground coffee, some stuff in my bathroom, you get the idea - which is an encouraging sign that my sinus tissue has healed.

Very encouraging sign! And getting close!!

[Mike Wazowski]

4 hours ago, raptron said:

YUP! The whole day including BMR -- this was a bench and deadlift day.

LOL that seems highly implausible!! Guess it's just a sign that wearable tech still has *plenty* of room to improve.

 

Quote

Very encouraging sign! And getting close!!

Yep! Under 24 hours now on my chalkboard countdown - I'm happy dancing every time I see it (I know, I won't magically feel 100% after the tubes are taken out, but it'll solidly put me into the next phase of my nose healing). Also, because I'm a dork, the chorus of "final countdown" plays in my head every time I update my little chalkboard tracker.

 

Wednesday (yesterday): Work was pretty solid - I got a roughly two hour stretch of focused working time in, which is a minor miracle after a couple weeks of really not being able to muster the focus (and I got some work I'm proud of done in those two hours, which is also a big win in recent weeks). Over lunch, I took a self-guided tour of a unit in my building that seemed like it'd be an upgrade in spaciousness (and with a balcony and view) for the same price as my current place, but came across a couple deal-breakers for me that left me deciding to contentedly keep my current place for now, and explore other complexes closer to my lease expiring (the specific dealbreakers, for the curious: the bedroom had only a single window instead of the double in my current place, so my bedroom wouldn't be as much of a bright and sunny oasis; the doorjambs were arranged such that I *couldn't* hang my pull up bar anywhere but in my bedroom; the kitchen pantry was right between the range and the fridge, leaving the range flush to a wall of wood on one side vs. the little staging area I currently have; there were a couple other things that weren't a strict upgrade, but would've been live-with-able, but taking that tour made me realize just how *ideal* my current place is for my bachelor pad needs). Presented my work well to my boss after lunch, then promptly lost all energy and focus (I'm taking this as a "the narcotics have fully worn off, now your body's gonna let you know how exhausting surgery recovery has been" sign).

 

Then it was D&D (or more precisely, Pathfinder) time after work! Session was entirely focused on downtime between adventures, with characters stocking up on gear, crafting stuff, and retraining options or training for new multiclasses. My monk's highlight was getting into a flaming staff dance battle with someone who'll train him to be even better with his flaming staff, and it was a pretty cool scene to role play. Also a nice low-energy session which is totally what I needed as I'm still ramping up my strength.

 

Daily activity continues to tick upward encouragingly - kicked off today with a grocery store run (by car) in lieu of a morning walk, but I'll try and get outside over lunch as the temperatures tick above freezing (my part of Texas is going through a harsh cold spell, by our standards - there might even be multiple days where temperatures don't get above freezing this weekend!).

 

ETA: Oh, and my wall-mountable dip bars arrived yesterday (or Tuesday, heck if I can remember). Humorously, the wall-mounting hardware has not yet shipped, nor has the rack to hang the bars when they're not in use (gotta love multiple SKU's from multiple warehouses!).

[Mike Wazowski]

For anyone who loves reading long introspection and planning things, my yearly goals plus slotting them into challenges has been added to the first post. For anyone who doesn't enjoy those things, you're under no obligation to read them (it's mostly copy-and-pasted from previous stuff I posted last challenge, I just added some color coding - so you're not missing much).

[miss_marissa]

Glad to hear of the productive block at work! Very nice!

[Mike Wazowski]

Week 0, Day 4 (Thu):

It was a meeting packed day at work! I still managed to get in one hour of focused work on a technical problem, and one hour of thinking on Diversity Council stuff while taking a brisk afternoon walk (it's not what I envisioned when I said I wanted to get more deep work in, but it's also a Cal Newport endorsed strategy, so 🤷‍♂️). I was able to advocate for some good Diversity ideas immediately after that with my committee working group - and the camaraderie is growing, I'm learning more about folks who are quiet in a 30-person meeting room and it's sweet - this is really a great group of people (unsurprisingly - we all volunteered our time to make our company better at Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). Can't remember much other than that - though I did also teach my beginner latin class for college kids and it was nice to get back into the groove for that (very tiny turnout for my class, but it's cool - I missed these kids, they're all pretty great). Total activity level was up from previous days - watch said I burned ~700 active calories yesterday (typically the lowest I'd get before the holidays / getting covid / sinus surgery). I'm cautiously optimistic that I might be able to ramp up to a baseline, non-surgery recovery activity level sooner than expected (I figured I'd need at least all of the next week to ramp back up).

 

Then THIS MORNING WAS THE BEST MORNING EVER! I had my post-op appointment about two hours ago to get the splint tubes that were keeping my sinuses set where the surgeon put them:

1. Breathing through my nose now feels amazing. I literally keep thinking "Is this how most people's breathing feels ALL THE TIME??!?"
2. I was ALARMED to find out how long the tube things that have been up my nose this past week were (like, I think 5-6" in total). Suddenly, constant headaches from the past week make a LOT of sense.
3. I've been feeling so much better since getting home that, I kid you not, most of the past two hours have been bits of working interrupted by longer bursts of a one-man dance party (a mix of some ballroom stuff and some "Mike's a raging dork" stuff).

 

 

 

Also, since zero week is fast approaching its end, time to design how I'm gonna track my stuff - I'll put numbers in starting Monday of week one:

 

Mobility (10+ minutes a day):

Mindfulness / Prayer (5+ minutes a day):

Walk (at least 0.5 miles outside per day):

Daily Plans Made (at a minimum, every work day):

Weekly Plans Made (no later than Monday, or Tuesday if Monday's a holiday):

Running Weekly Average Hours Asleep (no set goal per se, but will course correct as needed):

Running Weekly Average Active Calories (no set goal, just collecting data): 

Ankle prehab (3x / week):

Pilates (3x / week):

Bonus! Mini Strength Workout (ideally 2x / week):

Bonus! Solo Dance Practices (ideally 1-2x / week):

 

Typing all that out - are y'all sure this isn't a typical "Mike got hella ambitious" challenge? Lol.

[Scaly Freak]

41 minutes ago, Mike Wazowski said:

I've been feeling so much better since getting home that, I kid you not, most of the past two hours have been bits of working interrupted by longer bursts of a one-man dance party (a mix of some ballroom stuff and some "Mike's a raging dork" stuff).

 

It's reassuring for me to know that raging dork dancing is not limited to those of us who don't teach or compete in some kind of dancing...

 

Glad you're feeling better!

[Mike Wazowski]

16 minutes ago, Scaly Freak said:

It's reassuring for me to know that raging dork dancing is not limited to those of us who don't teach or compete in some kind of dancing...

Oh god no - if anything, most dancers are even more awkward in the club because we have juuuust enough awareness to know that we probably look ridiculous in that moment.

 

16 minutes ago, Scaly Freak said:

Glad you're feeling better!

You and me both!! The initial energy spike was followed by a crash, unsurprisingly. My body is very excited to sleep tonight now that I'm able to properly breathe through my nose (and either lie on my back or my side, not in pain).

[Mad Hatter]

1 hour ago, Mike Wazowski said:

• Breathing through my nose now feels amazing. I literally keep thinking "Is this how most people's breathing feels ALL THE TIME??!?"

Yayayay!

 

One dork dance parties are the best! 

 

12 minutes ago, Mike Wazowski said:

Oh god no - if anything, most dancers are even more awkward in the club because we have juuuust enough awareness to know that we probably look ridiculous in that moment.

I find I win at club dancing simply because I dance and don't just bob my head up and down.   😂 The bar has been loooooow in every place I've lived.

[Scaly Freak]

27 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

I find I win at club dancing simply because I dance and don't just bob my head up and down.   😂 The bar has been loooooow in every place I've lived.

 

I move when the music does. I've been told this sometimes is thought of as dancing. 😛 

[Mad Hatter]

11 minutes ago, Scaly Freak said:

I move when the music does. I've been told this sometimes is thought of as dancing. 😛 

Anything goes as long it involves more moving body parts than the head and the beer hand. 😄

[Scaly Freak]

20 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

Anything goes as long it involves more moving body parts than the head and the beer hand. 😄

 

[Mad Hatter]

13 minutes ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

Now we're talking.

[sylph]

21 hours ago, Mike Wazowski said:

• Breathing through my nose now feels amazing. I literally keep thinking "Is this how most people's breathing feels ALL THE TIME??!?"
• I was ALARMED to find out how long the tube things that have been up my nose this past week were (like, I think 5-6" in total). Suddenly, constant headaches from the past week make a LOT of sense.
• I've been feeling so much better since getting home that, I kid you not, most of the past two hours have been bits of working interrupted by longer bursts of a one-man dance party (a mix of some ballroom stuff and some "Mike's a raging dork" stuff).

This is some good stuff.

[Mike Wazowski]

Week 0, Day 5 (Fri): Other than the previously mentioned awesomeness of having my sinus surgery post-op, yesterday was a solid day all around. Had an allergy shot early in the morning, pre-post-op, always fun to get stabbed with stuff you're allergic to. Between medical appointments, snuck in a brisk walk and grabbing coffee at my local shop (my espresso bean stockpile ran completely dry after making coffee on Thursday  - but more is being delivered later today!). Didn't get a ton done at work, and that's ok - I made some valuable contributions in a meeting to frame up an analysis I might get handed off to me (I HATE "boil the ocean" type analyses that my department lightly tends towards - basically just doing a ton of univariate cuts on two populations to look for differences without zeroing in on the difference that really matters the most - and I was able to steer the focus on one part at least to what I consider the crux of the issue). And then it was time for dance! Had a nice long warm-up, then my partner and I did some brief partnering drills before our lesson. Lesson was really solid and teed up lots of cool ideas (and had a push to be even more autonomous in our practice approach, which is gonna be interesting). Ordered a pizza feast on the way home, made someone's day with my Baby Yoda mask as I picked it up, and enjoyed the heck out of it while watching the latest WandaVision (really like where it's going, and loved a couple sassy one-liners).

 

Total activity was WAY higher than I was expecting / aiming for - just shy of 1,100 active calories, which is about the highest I've had since the holidays (and typical to slightly higher than a typical Friday pre-holidays). I felt exhausted when I got home from dance, so I won't be trying to hit that level of activity on repeat this weekend, but if it happens, it happens (and sleep will also need to happen afterwards, natch).