Not that anybody has noticed, but I left Hive somewhere back in September last year. And this is not going to be a particularly explosive comeback. I just thought I'd discuss some changes in my personal health and growth in the time I've been gone.
I actually left quite a lot of things; discord, Substack, anything of substance I would use in day to day life, abandoned, while the mindless scrolly stuff took over for months.
It's not as bad as it sounds. It freed up some of my idle time to be more available in the real world. Even when I would otherwise be doing nothing, that nothing would be kind of blocked from productivity by several layers of other things requiring attention on screen that mattered to nobody.
Without them getting in my way, I could work on myself and some issues I've been dealing with. And although things like my own health aren't directly related to these larger life events, improvements in such things came as a side-effect and tbh it's been pretty huge, and great.
I've written on here several times about improving my diet and habits, and being moderately active, but I actually decided to take it further. I still hate gyms, so I dragged out the old box of weights gathering dust and starting lifting dumbbells.
These particular ones had an attachment that stuck them together to create a kind of mini barbell so I could even bench press at home.
It's funny looking back. I was genuinely proud of myself, even took a photo of the weights I managed to bench. A full EIGHT KILOGRAMS. Nine if you include the bar (yeah it's hardly a professional 20kg bar but whatever).
Yeah yeah laugh away. It really did make me take a step back and just see, in dense metal form, how bad things had gotten. How weak I was; perhaps it was that way most of my life without realising.
This truly felt heavy, My muscles would be sore for 2 days after this.
But it also showed something positive. I'd lost 8kg at the time too. I imagined Crumpling it all into a single block of iron or steel, and that's how much weight I had melted away from my body. That's kind of phenomenal, that I was dragging around so much extra weight. Just... wow.
As I continued life with 60% of distractions revoked, I started to add more weight plates bit by bit. The progress is always fast to start, they say, which I found to be very true. But more importantly I was actually getting into it. I felt better and better (other than the unavoidable old man pains in my back and such).
I bought a little more gear. More 5kg plates and cool adjustable dumbbells where you simply turn the handle and the weight changes in increments of 2kg, up to 20kg each. Expensive but a big space saver.
To this date, I'm benching 45kg in 3 sets of 12 reps. That's like a huge dog, or a small woman.
Ideally, you should do fewer reps with heavier weights, but since I'm at home, I don't really have a set up to do that safely, so I'm focusing more on doing fundamentals right and slow, building endurance as well as some muscle definition.
My chest flys started at 4kg per dumbbell and it was an agonising struggle in the same way. Now, I'm finding 16kg per dumbbell to be no problem. It's fricking cool but also depressing how much power I've been missing out on all these years.
Some of my t-shirts are stretching around my arms like the gym bros always show off, too, which is kinda fun to see. And I can do that chest bounce thing like Schwarzenegger but 140x more pathetic. That being said...
There's nothing serious right now crippling me per se, but the more I pay attention, the more I realise just how little I've cared for myself. My left shoulder, for example, is at least a couple of centimetres wider than my right, and when standing naturally, a good inch or so higher.
Have they always been like that? No idea! I never really looked in the mirror long enough to notice lol. Kinda madness, really.
This is likely down to a lot of habits over years; my backpack being one-shouldered over my left with 5kg of stuff every single day for years and years as I commute, for a start. My back injury - herniated discs x 3 - likely doesn't help, neither does my permanently bad right big toe. It all comes together to make me rely on my left side more and more, and it seems my left side, despite being right-handed, is much more developed.
This was subtle, and then increasingly obviously the case when lifting weights, as my left side consistently managed reps and sets far better and cleaner than my weaker right side. Though my left arm looks a bit smaller in the bicep-tricep territory, it seems the shoulders and delts are a hidden strength that my right side lacks entirely.
So, of course, I've made some adaptations to my workout routine for the next few months to try to balance things out more, and I guess we'll see how that goes.
Perhaps the coolest thing was when I decided to drop to the floor do do some push-ups. I remember my previous record being about five.
Now, despite my heavy, 183cm bulk, I've managed 25 push-ups, first time. Woo!
As I said, most of my exposure to the online had been reduced to mindless scrolling. Except, it wasn't really. It naturally catered to my interests through the algorithms, and rather than just a steady stream of thirst traps, I had my algorithm feed me health-based creators. Professional folk to improve posture, to use proper form, to inspire me with people like Anatoly, an insane, world-class powerlifter making silly videos which, thanks to his remarkably tree-trunk-dense frame, shocks gym-goers by making their incredible feats of lifting look trivial, as he acts like a janitor casually moving a 300kg barbell out the way so he can clean the floor with a 20kg mop and 30kg bucket. It's mindless fun, sure, but inspiring to keep me going on this particular journey.
My whole feed was helping me make this part of me, rather than just a passing hobby I'd quickly get bored of when I found it tiring. It also helps me think ahead and scare myself back into discipline.
Often, I'm shown elderly folk; late 60's all the way to centenarians, who are still doing pull ups, dancing and power lifting. Just recently, Dick Van Dyke turned 100 and is still on stage performing like he was 60.
On the flip side, medical videos demonstrate how, by not starting in early-mid life, things like Osteoporosis absolutely wreck your bones, eating away at them until they snap on a bad sneeze. By doing resistance training, you're adding downward pressure on your bones which keeps them reproducing cells, keeping them healthy long term.
I learnt that professional physiologists can determine with almost 100% accuracy whether or not you'll be able to climb stairs on your own aged 70, based on your physical abilities in your 30's. That fact scared me straight!
I still remember my idle grandmothers, one who died from smoking when I was a child, and the only memory I really have of her is her sitting, decaying in a chair in front of the TV, smoking.
My step-grandmother, after her husband died, had nothing to live for. Not in a depressed way. She just knew nothing outside of serving him, I suppose. She started to age at an incredible rate. It took her 30 minutes, escorted, just to get to the bathroom, and another 30 minutes back. Imagine that.
My dad and his wife could never go out together because somebody always had to be there to make sure she was ok. When I visited, her brain was as good as gone. Not in a dementia way, just in a 'I've given up' way. It would take her a few seconds to turn her head to talk to me, and her whole room setup was just a chair and a TV. She could barely walk without her frame. She was in her 70's.
That's like 30 years away. Geeze. So I'm nipping that in the bud if it kills me. Of course, everything in moderation. I don't want to work so hard I grind away my joints and end up struggling to walk like some bodybuilders and such. A careful balance.
I've taken it upon myself to cook more. Shanghai makes it remarkably easy and cheap to order high quality food faster than you could ever make it and for a fraction of the price. But, of course they add tastiness like MSG, sugars, carbs and all sorts. Maybe it's not all bad but the fact that I don't know exactly, means I can't track or control anything.
By using this Obsidian note taking app (super cool btw, highly recommend), I've collected a growing folder of my successful recipes, ranging from Chinese Kung Pao Chicken to Mediterranean Shakshuka, English Shephard's Pie, Japanese Miso Soup & Greek Tzatziki. It's somewhat therapeutic once you get used to the stress of missing ingredients and such.
In reading order: Steak, Mapo Tofu, Carbonara, Flour-less blueberry/banana/peanut butter muffins, Shepherd's pie, Chicken soup, Potato Fondant, Apple & Cranberry crumble.
By far my favourite is a rather complex Chicken Soup but it's just an absolute winner for sick days, or just any time, really. It's going to be the recipe I bury with me.
I still get food delivered a lot; there's just not enough time in my week to cook and clean every day, and it's not like I'm constantly ordering junk food.
I've always felt some weird personal pride that I was an excellent sleeper. I never needed to get up to pee even at my somewhat advanced age where friends of mine do. I never wake up at all, I reckoned. I never had sleepless nights. All good.
But after I found out some family history means I'm in quite a bit of trouble with hereditary cancers and heart diseases, I thought it would be smart to pay closer attention to my inner workings as well as my external muscles and stuff.
So I bought a posh 'smart ring' or health ring or whatever, that can detect your heart rate & variability, blood oxygen, step count, sleep pattern and more. It's not medical-grade accurate but it's incredible anyway. It detects a 20 minute nap at work, for example.
This has taught me I was talking shit to myself and there's a lot more that I need to work on. It seems during a work week, I barely get 5-6 hours sleep. The quality of sleep is a whole other kettle of fish.
I'm subconsciously waking up frequently, and my blood oxygen drops way down to hazardous levels you'd be told to rush to a hospital for. I'm unconvinced, as the ring can also test for Sleep Apnea, and 6 days of testing came negative which means I'm not exactly starving myself of oxygen. But what is happening, is I have a long term habit of sleeping on my arm until it goes completely numb.
Occasionally I wake up with two completely dead arms, and I'm stuck in place like a fish flopping around on the beach, until my circulation returns. I dunno why tf I do it, but I never really consciously paid attention because by morning I'd mostly forget about it.
But cutting the blood off like that makes my ring register a low SPO2 every night. Ultimately, the quality of my sleep ends up pretty poor, too. You can see where I clearly roll over and cut the circulation off:
This, along with alcohol intake, I've noticed, reflects on the quality of my following day quite a bit, and now I need to somehow train myself to not numb my arms when I'm unconscious?? Maybe a series of ropes, pulleys and handcuffs??
My journey in life has changed significantly, with a hell of a lot more emphasis on myself. I no longer just want to float through life with a vague sense of self-improvement through learning and reflection, something I've been doing my whole life.
I want to move forward in a direction where I am not a slave to background voices of fear and failure.
'Oh my herniated discs, I'm destined to be messed up, might as well accept it'.
I don't need these voices in my life.
I've got so, so much free time for somebody with a full time job. While I wouldn't say I waste them per se, I value the learning and growth I've gotten from this fortunate way of life, but I'll be damned if I can't fit in twice as much accomplishment as I previously did.
I'm still me, introverted beyond all but the most psychotic American school shooters. I still have a dark sense of humour, I still inquire about literally anything in the world to the point that people keep accusing me of being autistic (I'M NOT!)
But I reckon I'm a vastly superior person than I was 6 months ago, even though I feel like I have more shit than ever to get in order before I even match an average middle-aged man. I mean, struggling to bench 8kg... seriously.
Obviously I wish I went through this in my 20's, but no point dwelling on that now. Just, if anyone in their 20's reads this, pay a-fucking-ttention. I'm the perfect example of failed potential desperately trying to crawl his way back. Don't be like me!
Anyway, I'm gonna try and start writing blogs again. I know there's no audience and Hive is down the toilet probably forever now, but I like writing so whatever ;)
