The Big Reveal

I weigh myself pretty much every day, but for the last two months I took a break from actually looking at the data. I taped over the display on my wifi scale, broke most of the links that connect that data to other tracking systems I have, and just ate and moved. I tried to tune in to my body, and feel how things fitted.

Well, as an experiment it has inconclusive results. No great insights came about from having or not having the data. I didn't change my eating habits, and I felt like my clothes were getting tighter, not looser. I did up my activity levels somewhat, but not consistently. I started to get anxious about when I was going to look and see what happened. I was prepared for a big gain (five pounds in 2 months?) because that's what I felt like in my body. Also because I am a "worst case scenario" type - always imagine the worst, realize I can deal with it, and then be relieved when it doesn't happen. I was certain there was no magic "stop worrying and the pounds will drop away" going on, just from the way the clothes fit. I hadn't set a deadline, and I started to really obsess about it. Since the point of the experiment was to worry less, I decided today was the day to look.

So.... Nothing happened. During the last two months my weight essentially stayed the same. No big gain, no big loss, minor fluctuations from water and other situations. I lost a pound or two, gained it back on vacation. Inconclusive results.

Phooey. I was hoping for more drama.

Oh well, time to get back to "MOVE" as my motto for the year. Weight is a distraction. For now, I'm keeping the tape on the scale display, but won't worry about checking the online records when I feel like it. I did get used to not thinking about the day's numbers. I've always preached that a single day on the scale is meaningless, yet found myself reacting to it. This "don't look but record anyway" approach lets me keep the trend without short term reactions. So maybe I did learn something from the experiment.

Tucson

First cactus of the trip!

We had a little get-away to the desert. My girl had never been to the American southwest, which I consider one of the most exotic locales around - in many ways, more exotic than Europe. Certainly it's more different in its physical geography.

Sheer exuberance by my reserved girl!

We mostly had a great time. Seeing the cactus, and being outside in relative warmth (50s and 60s) was terrific. The "mostly" comes because my girl got sick towards the end, and so spent one day rotating between the bathroom and bed, and the trip home suffering from plugged and painful ears. I was in rude and wonderful health, and so had a better time. However, since we shared a bed some of the time, I feel a clock ticking and feel resistance is futile. So happy my first day back is a snow day - I'm catching up on my email, and doing laundry, and reading and commenting on an important paper. This is a little break from work.

This was the kind of low-key, low ambition, short getaway I really like. We stayed in an AirBnB in a very walkable old neighborhood in Tucson, and did one big thing each day - but only one. The rest of the time we chilled in the sunshine,  read books, walked, and ate locally.  I was raised to try to maximize a vacation ("the sights won't see themselves!"), and this chiller version is more to my liking. Never-the-less, I still got in enough physical challenges - morning limber-up exercises, many many steps - to not feel like a slug. Enough time outdoors moving to sleep well.

Saw a lot of these signs

So for the travelogue: Tuscon is a lovely small walkable college town surrounded by extensive suburban sprawl, with desert and mountains and national and state parks on every side. A car is really essential for reaching the parks and hikes. We ate casually but very well, at local coffee, sandwich, pizza, and (mostly) taco shops, all walking distance from our place. (The one day we'd planned a nicer restaurant was the day my girl wasn't eating anything.)  The weather was very nice - it poured the night we arrived, but then pretty much each day dawned around freezing and rose to fifties or sixties with brilliant sunshine. When we were moving, a light fleece was good. We could sit still in the sheltered courtyard of our place and soak up rays while reading.

Was so great to see them.

The first day was desert-immersion. We stopped on our way out of town at a pull off to view our first cactus close up. The rest of the day was spent at the Arizona-Senora Desert Museum, a combo zoo-botanical garden focused on local flora and fauna. We were tour-guided there by casual friends of mine from the sailing club, who used to split their time between summers on their boat in Maryland, and winters down there in an RV. For the past few years they've been full time RV'ers, and are now looking to settle down full time in an apartment in Tucson (but keeping the RV for road trips). The perfect native (almost) guides, as they have been volunteering at the parks for years.  And they invited us to their place to enjoy hospitality and marvel at their tiny house. It's funny how excited they are at buying furniture to furnish their two-bedroom apartment! And, how buying furniture and running electronics have changed in the 15 years they have been at sea or on the road. Do they need cable TV or should they just stream? They haven't done much of either ever, since they have been mostly remote without services.

Very well-trodden trails

We did hiking in different parks on our own the other days. They day my girl was sick I hovered helplessly but sympathetically, and as she started to recover I ventured on a series of walks around town - scoring in total the most number of fitbit steps in one day since last April! Just walking and looking is one of my favorite things ever.

The last day was a daytime drive to Phoenix (cheaper flights), with a brief stop at "Biosphere 2" where, in the 1990s, folks tried to live sealed off completely from earth's atmosphere and supplies, pretending to be on another planet. (The story is interesting, but the habitat didn't click with us. Too crowded, too cranky, too far still to go.)

Colors were vivid and always-changing

That night we went to the botanical garden where there was a unique art installation - seven different light-and-sound events that used the plants, and even a whole hillside, as the canvas for painting with colored lights. I have a gazillion pictures, and will try to limit myself to just a few representative ones. We spent a couple of hours just gazing and taking it in.

Imagine this pulsing through the colors of the rainbow with atonal music 

It looked like sea-anemones, almost like snorkeling. Cactus!

Where Does the Money Go?

As I face retirement, I continue to be concerned about money. My rational mind says I'll be fine, though not wealthy, and I've got contingency plans to keep me afloat if bad things happen. (As in: live on small boat, deliver food on Vespa. Also less drastic approaches.)

The recent government "lapse in funding" (aka shutdown) caused me to attempt to be more frugal. It didn't go well. I managed to spend nearly $9,000 in 35 days! When I was trying to be frugal! When I retire, I can't afford to routinely spend that much every month. So I needed a deep dive.

I track my spending on-line, automatically, as I am virtually cash-free. I use Mint as my collector of data. I down-loaded my 35 days of the shutdown and went over the transactions carefully. (I'm quite sure the only cash I spent during those days was for tips at the hair salon, so this is a complete record.)

First, because the shutdown started on December 21, my spending included Christmas gifts and food, and year-end giving to charities. It also included a check written much earlier for basement renovations, and paying bills for my knee surgery. (Despite what I consider excellent health insurance, my out-of-pocket for the surgery and associated visits is over $600, just during this period. Some bills take longer.) So if I back out Christmas, charity, and surgery, I'm still left with over $4,500 as "routine". I know I'll still have healthcare, home improvement, Christmas, and charity in retirement, but it won't be in those amounts monthly. This is one reason I need to set up my budget tracking to account for annual totals and year-to-date towards those totals, versus the regular "monthly" amounts most automatic programs look for.

Further on the deep dive, I can back out about $900 as being purely expenses driven by work. These include parking in my building, daily dog-walking, and lunch out every day. (I actually fairly often carry my lunch to work, but during the shutdown I deliberately went out to the local small businesses taking a huge hit and spent money and wished them well. It was a perverse way of thumbing my nose at the whole sordid situation. Convoluted logic.)  Of the remaining less scary sum, I would characterize more than half of it as required, and the rest as discretionary. This is arbitrary and fuzzy. For example, I have "food" as necessary, but since most of my food shopping is at Whole Foods, there are ways of cutting that down. During the shutdown, I continued to shop there, but I was much more conscious of food waste, and much more likely to eat from my freezer or my cupboards than to run out and get something fresh, so maybe it is representative.

So with trying to cut back on things, what did I still spend about $1700 on in 35 days?

Clothes. I've written about how my pants don't fit. While we were pretty casual all during the shutdown, I still need decent clothes for work (and for life, for that matter). From my many years of enjoying "What Not to Wear" on TV, I decided the single best factor in how you look is to have clothes that fit properly. The fact I can zip up my pants with a quick inward gasp does not mean that I should leave the house with stretch and strain obviously showing. So I bought a dress that I wear weekly, and two pairs of on-sale black pants that are also appearing weekly. Then, completely unnecessarily, I bought a dress I saw on the internet because it had airplanes and I like it.

My category called "entertainment" is the second biggest category here. I continued to buy books, movies, and apps, including subscriptions. I consider all of these discretionary, though I don't think I would ever want to cut it down to zero. I do use the library for a lot of kindle books, but not for all my reading. I have Netflix, extra streaming services through Amazon prime, high speed internet and cable TV. My cable TV bill was totally out of control, and I called Verizon to turn off TV while keeping internet. As is not unusual, the able salesperson on the line talked me into keeping TV, while cutting my bill more than in half. (Conventional wisdom around here is that one should call Verizon every year or so to re-negotiate.) So with that bill going down, I still need to review all the add-on subscriptions I've got from Amazon and from various iphone apps, and lower it.

My single biggest expense in the discretionary column is personal training and my gym membership. I struggle with what I want to do with this. I adore my trainer, and I am continually reminded why this works for me. I show up more often and work harder for her than for me. I have converted the new small bedroom in the basement to a workout room at minimal expense, since I already had a treadmill and weights. It's lovely, but I need to show up there more often. I probably could cut my training bill in half, switching to once-a-week or maybe cutting down the duration. I have skipped months completely (like in December because of the knee) but not tried to cut back. It might be like Verizon - just re-negotiating might lead to a better deal. And, my trainer is in great demand, I don't have to feel any guilt for her.

The best thing on this expense review? NO MORTGAGE PAYMENT!!!!! This is the first month since I paid it off!!!!  I will need to set aside money for the not-inconsiderable property taxes and for insurance, which is relatively smaller. I need to sit down with my insurance agent (or find a new one) and review my coverage. My bill might actually go up, because I believe I'm under-insured for total catastrophe, but it will be manageable.

I think, after this review, I'm much more comfortable that I will have enough money in retirement. When will that be? It seems elusive, and much less concrete than I thought a month ago, due to issues at work and my feelings of obligation to certain people. But, it'll happen.

Activity

I've slowed down some over the years, for a variety of reasons. I'm busy looking at the history, remembering why I was as active or inactive as I was, and wishing my current numbers were up.

This trend from 2015 to now shows how I was steadily more active in 2015 (when I started running), slowed down in 2016, trained hard in early 2017 for my hiking vacation in Italy, and then declined steadily to the low point of last December, when my knee was operated on. There was a gyration about a year ago, as my back went out in stressful March 2018, and then I determinedly got up and moving and invited a friend to come walk with me in April. But I was distressed at how hard and painful it was to move that much (what had been normal just a year ago). The summer was ok, but when fall came around, and my knee was hurting, I just allowed myself to sink into my chair. Since the operation, I've been up and moving, and as the weather gets better (and if I can ever untangle myself from work) I feel like I can keep this up. I'm hoping for running again soon, at least a little bit.

The calorie history tells a similar story, except 2015 does not stand out as being a good year for activity, in contrast to the step history. On this graph, it shows a build to the hiking vacation in early 2017, and last year does not look so bad overall, except for the dip at the end. I think the difference must reflect time at the gym and doing things like gardening, that don't add steps but take effort. (I show the data differently, with the stairsteps being the average burn for the calendar month.) It shows my recent up-tick, but puts it in a perspective that says I should strive for more. I will!

The sun is shining, it's above freezing, and I'm sitting here blogging about how (in)active I am.

With a motto this year of "MOVE" I should probably be doing something more active, but I want to get a handle on how much I've slowed down. I got my first steps-and-activity tracking device back in 2010, but I had to switch out to new technology and the trends don't show cleanly across time. To be clear - I'm not at all sure any device is accurately counting calories or steps, but I don't care. The trend is what matters, and as I stick to one device its trend from day to day is at least consistent. And for the years shown here, it hasn't been the same device, but at least the same company with its own algorithms.

Dog is restless, I can get a few steps in before the sun sets.

Time Management

I started this post back on January 19 and I'm just now getting it finished. So think: three day bad weather winter weekend.

I don't know how freelance folks manage to get anything done. I have always, since my earliest memory, had days structured by outside forces. My worklife has been a constant barrage of squeezing original work into the cracks left from a barrage of emails and phone calls and folks walking in the door. So faced with the prospect of retirement, I'm terrified I'll spend my day with the ipad on the couch and never get anything worthwhile done at all.

For this three day stormy weekend, I'm hunkering down and trying to get things done. I'm also experimenting with a time management system:  I went old school analogue!  No fancy gadgets for this $0 paycheck baby!  I'm using the tools available to me, and having fun with visual cues, which so works for me.

At the start

I started this morning with the brainstorm, and laid out the schedule on the whiteboard in my bedroom (yes, I have a whiteboard in my bedroom, I am a visual nerd), and on postit notes listed out all I wanted to get done. The list is both incomplete and aspirational - I fully expect I will do things not on the list, and I will not do everything on the list.

Then, I put the few fixed-time stickies in place, then tentatively scheduled some of the other things. Now, as the day progresses, I'm putting in things I'm doing and tentatively scheduling some others.

10:15 am Saturday

My intention is to keep this post draft, and update it through the weekend. We'll see how I do.

8:00 Sunday 1/20

How did I do yesterday? Not so bad. But I need to plan specific things in specific slots for today.  I also discovered that my first pass at "tasks" didn't include any fun things. I thought about it, and added "reading" to the stickies. (A book I was waiting for from the library came through and I downloaded it Friday night.) As it turns out, I also watched some TV. That was on my list - catch up on season 3 of The Good Place - but I had planned to do it while filing paperwork. Instead, I vedged out, and was surprised when the first show was an hour instead of a half hour, watched the whole thing and then called it a night.

Now, catching up on February 2...

While I didn't keep up with the blogging about this, I did keep up the technique for the weekend - and even beyond. How I ended up using this continued to be as both planning and tracking. It continued to be unrealistically aspirational, as many things did not get addressed. But, I also kept on adding things to the board as they came up. I'll post a series of pictures of how it evolved over the weekend at the end, but first, some reflections on how it did or did not work.

What really worked for me was its visual cues, and being right at the entrance to my bedroom. It's oriented so it faces my closet, so I pass it all the time but it's not looming over me as I lie in bed - I think that would be too much. I looked at it every time I passed by, and I paused to see where I was and what I planned to do next. It is big, and colorful, and a novelty, all reasons to look rather than treat it as part of the furniture. It kept chores and projects front of mind, and forced me to schedule them. It's so easy at the beginning of a weekend (ie now) to have list, most often just mentally, of all the things I'll get done this weekend. But time slips away. I was constantly putting my postits into specific time slots - I'm going to start this by 2 pm, or else it's likely to not get done today. I was unrealistic and ambitious, but I have no doubt I got a lot more done than I would have otherwise. Part of it was just a reminder - so easy to forget something that isn't a habit but rather an occasional chore - stop at the dry-cleaners on the way to the grocery store.

I think it's the time management aspect that really helped boost how much got done. And, I would adjust the stickies to reflect what I actually did, keeping the history up to date, so I would be realistic about how much time I spent on various things.

I've kept the stickies, and have been using them to manage the weekends since. During the week I pretty much go to work and that's it, though I've added weekday slots and am trying to get one chore a day done.  So it's a technique that has promise for me, and one I'll keep playing with for a while.

As you look at the photos below, I think it's less about what is written on the stickies than how the weekend filled out, and different things in different colors got added, subtracted, and moved around.

For those who scroll to the bottom, there's a look at another project tool I use.

So here's how the weekend evolved:

Sunday 8:30 am

Sunday, 3:30 pm

Monday, 8 am

Monday, 7 pm

Weekend over

The following weekend, when done

 To close, I want to show an ipad screen shot from some software I have used that in some ways inspired my whiteboard. I really liked having the big, colorful, right there board. But for more complicated projects, especially those with longer timelines and/or involving other people, there is free with paid upgrades tool I use: Trello. It's commonly used in software companies, where there can be "job cards" that get moved around, annotated, assigned, etc.. Even the version that I have, which I'm pretty sure is the free version, allows syncing across mobile/computers and sharing between at least a couple of people. Here's a screenshot of my boat board (which will get updated for the coming season soon, I hope)

Trello