Today is my 13,881st day in existence and the first day of being 38. I have a lot to be thankful for, but also a lot to work on. I’ve never written one of these birthday posts before, but I’ve been trying to blog more. I thought it would be a good way to hold myself accountable for the things I want to improve on.

My Day

My day went much like most days lately: busy. I spent my morning at the soccer fields coaching my daughter’s U6 team before watching my son’s U8 game in the next time slot. With the both kids old enough for the various sports and activities available, it’s a constantly full schedule. Dance, karate, soccer, baseball, softball, Futsal, zoo camp, after school art club. I think I got it all, at least for now.

The 1 or 2 nights a week where we don’t have somewhere to be are very welcome. Though my couch would tell you that I end up falling asleep watching TV after about a half hour on most of those nights. If you have kids, I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about. And if you have more than 2, I have absolutely no idea how you do it.

After we got home I played with Leo in the yard for a bit. He tried out lacrosse for the first time (thanks Jeff for the Boston Cannons stick)! He did pretty good considering he had never even heard of lacrosse. While every age has aspects that are fun, he’s at the age where he has enough coordination to avoid getting frustrated and bored after 5 minutes when trying something new. We try to encourage the kids to try as many new things as possible so they can find what they enjoy.

I grilled some steaks for dinner and enjoyed a new beer that my family picked out for me. I also just realized that I’m only 2 away from 1,500 check-ins on Untappd! After dinner we had some chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting before getting the kids to bed and watching some football on the couch that I’ll probably fall asleep on shortly after publishing this.

Fitness & Health

I think that 35 was the first year where I began to feel as if I was starting to fall apart. The last year really confirmed that. Over the last three years I’ve had surgery to address carpal tunnel syndrome and De Quervain syndrome, both on my right wrist. I’ve also been learning to live with and manage some mild arthritis in my back. Some mild arthritis in my shoulder that I’ve had under control for about 4 years has been flaring up again recently, so that’s another issue I’m having to work around.

Earlier this year I experienced plantar fasciitis. Some physical therapy helped to get that under control to the point it went away entirely. But I’ve been starting to feel it in my opposite foot lately. I’ll be trying to get some extra stretching to try and avoid physical therapy this time around.

I definitely can’t just get by without putting in the work anymore. Improving my muscle pliability (though not necessarily with the TB12 method) is on the agenda for 38.

Going dairy free

This past year, I have also gone full in on a no dairy diet. I found out I had a mild milk allergy while trying to figure out some stomach issues. I still don’t know if that was the root cause, but eliminating dairy has definitely seemed to help. This has been a pretty tough adjustment for me. I was never a big milk drinker, but ice cream, a bagel with a heaping portion of cream cheese, and pizza are a few of my favorite foods. I also miss trying different types of cheese on a good cheese board.

I try to avoid it as much as possible, including in sauces such as ranch. It seems to not be as big an issue when cooked, so I haven’t cut out things like cookies and cakes in moderation. The vegan cream cheese replacements are decent, and I’ve switched to oat milk for my coffee. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with oat milk ice cream as well. But nothing replaces a pizza with real cheese.

Caffeine free

In September I gave up caffeine. It’s still too early to really report on this, but I do plan on continuing this experiment as long as I can. While it doesn’t quite hit the same, I still enjoy some decaf coffee throughout my day.

Switching to standing desk

Earlier this year, I made pulled the trigger on purchasing a new desk. I went with an Uplift standing desk and I love it. I wasn’t sure if I’d stand up much with it, but it’s been about 7 months now and I find myself standing the entire day almost every day. I plan to write a separate post about this in the coming seeks, so I’ll save the details about this for another day.

Other goals for thirty-eight

Here are a few other things that I’d like to accomplish during my 38th year:

• Read more. I’ve been trying to mix in some reading here and there, but still have a hard time drowning out the noise enough to truly focus on what I’m reading.
• Better sleep habits. See section above about busy schedules. This usually means taking care of various tasks after everyone is in bed and leads to later nights when I just want some time to myself at the end of the day.
• Better organization. I’ve recently started using Trello again to track both the work and life tasks that I need to do. It has helped me avoid jumping around so much, and to not be as forgetful (I dump everything into a card immediately when I think of it). But I still want to get better at prioritization. Having full autonomy to decide what to work on can be intimidating, and easily lead to failure if you’re not properly prioritizing and not trying to take on too much at a time. There is so much to do in open source.
• Branching out. In November, I’ll be speaking at the EvolveDigital summit in New York City. This will be the first non-WordCamp event that I’ve ever spoken at. I’d really like to branch out and attend or speak at more events outside of the WordPress bubble.
• Blog more. I have been blogging more, but I still a number too many cards in the backlog of my Writing board on Trello. I’d like to get better at going from idea to publish. But at the same time, ideas are ready when they are ready.
• Be more present. Phones make it too easy to not be in the moment. Especially when around my kids, I want to do a better job of putting the devices away and enjoying the time I have with them.
• Get away from the screen more. One way that I encouraged myself to step away from behind the screen this past year was returning to making puzzles again. I also started building a workshop in my garage. It started out as building shelves for storage, but I chose these plans as my inspiration. I enjoy building things with my hands, so it made sense to have a space for this to organize my tools. I’m not really sure what I’d build or spend my time working on, but I wanted to have a space that I could use to create things away from the screen. I plan to write more about this when I finally have the time to finish my carts. But I hope to continue this and find new ways to “get away.” Being outdoors more and going on more hikes is also in this category.

I think that’s all for now. This ended up being a bit longer than I anticipated. I’m going to go walk the dog and get to bed at a reasonable hour to start off on the right foot with two of my goals.