So yeah…the news is finally out. I’ve taken a new role at work – Director of Product Management. It’s a pretty big step up for me and something that I’ve been hoping to do for many years. With this new role, I’ll have multiple product managers reporting to me and my focus shift from our retail platforms over to building the new wholesale platform that will take us well into the next decade.
Well, the Blue Jays lost. It was a great game, and a great World Series. They came so very close to winning it all, but came up just a bit short in the end. That’s sports. Keeping it all in context is important. We’re all just watching these guys play and it’s entertainment and escape and a shared experience that our city and country can have together. But it is just sports.
The Blue Jays are in the World Series against the Dodgers and tonight is Game 7. One team will win, one team will lose. I hope we win, but I’m also fine if we lose. Sports is just sports and this has been a season to remember for fans of the team and for the city of Toronto. I was lucky to attend Game 1 of the ALDS. We went to the Rogers Centre Watch Party for Game 4 and the Scotiabank Arena Watch Party for Game 6.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve been weighing a pretty big decision. More on that in the coming days, but making decisions is always a challenge for someone who is both a very analytical thinker and also someone who leands very much towards “realist” with a healthy dose of pessimism baked in. Since the early summer, I’ve been seeing a therapist fairly regularly. One of the things we’ve really focused on in those sessions is to try to understand the things that send me for a loop and the reasons why.
I’m currently somewhere over Iowa at about 36,000ft on an Air Canada A220 (née Bombardier CS-300) heading to Denver and then onwards to Newport Beach, California. I haven’t set foot in the USA since March 18, 2023 and quite honestly, I had zero intentions of visiting until the situation there changed for the better. But some recent changes at work meant that I was invited down to take part in some meetings.
This is not something I usually do, but I was watching the various baseball games, I listened through the new Taylor Swift album a couple of times. Yes, I realize it’s out at midnight tonight. I saw something fall out of the back of a truck and, well…here we are. Track 1 - “The Fate of Ophelia” Good start to the album. It’s a bit moody out of the gate, but with a fairly catchy chorus.
Back when Twitter imploded under the weight of new ownership, I initially fled to Mastodon. It was a reasonable choice at the time as it had some momentum, the techie/geek users that I wished to follow and interact with were mostly there, and the federated nature of Mastodon and Activity Pub were appealing to me as a fan of the open web. But Mastodon growth generally stalled after a time and it never went mainstream.
Lately, I’ve been experiencing some pretty bad symptoms of burnout. It’s not the first time I’ve found myself here, but this time it feels a lot heavier than ever before. I’ve reached out for help in the form of psychotherapy to try to better understand the root causes and also how to manage things. It’s been very beneficial, but I’ve got a ways to go still. For many years, running has been a helpful refuge from this kind of work/life stress.
I’ve done a variety of streaks over the last bunch of years. I find the whole streak concept to be a decent motivator for things like fitness, daily tasks or trying to establish or break habits. But sometimes a streak can be less than positive and for that reason, I think it’s more valuable to “break” a streak if you find it isn’t providing positive motivation anymore. An example of this for me is something like the Wordle streak or completing the New York Times crossword.
My daily routine for the last little bit has been to wake up, go for a swim, make a coffee, do the Wordle, The Mini and the New York Times Crossword. Now that we’re not at the cottage anymore, the swim part of that routine will have to go away since I don’t have easy access to a lake or a pool. I could replace that with a 5km run, but I don’t think I want to run every day for a while.
We’re just back from a lovely week at a cottage down near Perth, Ontario. It’s on the north side of Christie Lake which is a very nice, clean and deep freshwater lake. We were at this cottage last July as well and as I did last year, I made a point of doing some “wild swimming” every morning when I woke up. Wild swimming is what I call swimming. Over the last few years, people have seemingly discovered that you can swim in lakes, rivers and even the ocean!
I live in what would be considered one of the more walkable areas of Toronto - the Upper Beach, or Birch Cliff area. We have a streetcar line (503) about 600m from our front door that runs to downtown. There is a bus route (12 & 117) about 100m from our front door that goes to a subway station (Victoria Park) that is 1.5km from our front door. The regional GO Transit train stop is 1.
I’ve always just used the standard(ish) formula to determine my max heart rate and then the various heart rate zones to train in. The one I liked is the 207 - 0.7 x age method. For me that results in a max heart rate of 170bpm. Recently, I was watching some YouTube videos that suggested it would be far better to determine your actual max heart rate through an informal or formal fitness test.
We humans tend to notice milestones. Turning 37 is not a big deal but turning 40 means a special party. It’s nothing special when the stock market hits 9,642, but at 10,000? That’s a big deal. I remember the massive parties around the world for Y2K including a massive fireworks show at the Toronto waterfront. In 2001, there were no fireworks off the CN Tower and we probably just went to bed early.