The Year of the Refit

There is something visibly obvious when someone watches the classic TV show Star Trek and then watches Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In the movie, the USS Enterprise looks really different. The ship retained the same basic shape and the well known rooms are effectively in the same places, but the interior and exterior of the ship are all updated and upgraded to function better, faster, and more efficiently. In real life, aircraft and naval vessels undergo similar revisions and those are called refits.

USS Enterprise from the Original Series

USS Enterprise from the Movies
                                                                                  

I am not the sort of person who does New Years Resolutions. I never have been and I have written about that before. On the podcast, Cortex with Myke Hurley and CGP Grey, they talk about yearly themes. The difference between a resolution and a theme is a resolution is a specific set of actions, like go to the gym 4 times a week, or stopping smoking. A theme is a set of parameters that a person chooses to make their decisions based on. A theme around spending more time with family would use that as a factor in deciding what projects to take on or say "No" to. A person who has chosen a theme around learning new skills may choose to read a book instead of doom scrolling Twitter while standing in line at the pharmacy. Another difference between a theme and a resolution is that a theme can start and end whenever and can always be restarted. In the case of New Year resolutions, someone misses a day and then they feel justified in giving up. 

For myself, my theme this year is the year of the refit. 

Physical: The last couple of years have been really hard physically and mentally. I think that statement would be echoed by most people. My running speed, endurance and stamina have all gone down since I broke my toe and, even though I have recovered, my running mechanics have not returned to the previous form. While my speed has gone down, my weight has gone up. That is a factor in my running performance, but it is also a factor in my mental health. I have gained all of the weight back that I lost when I started running 5 years ago. Having to put clothes back on that used to fall off of me broke something in my brain. Also, my weight has an impact on how my medications work, so there is another avenue were my mental health has been effected. 

So in an effort to correct all of these numbers going in undesirable directions, I am going to take steps, in some cases literally, to close all of the rings on my Apple Watch. For those not informed on what that means, there are 3 rings on the Apple Watch displays that track 3 different indicators. The blue ring is for the number of hours in a day where you stood for at least one minute. The green ring tracks how many minutes you exercised and the red ring tracks how many calories were burned doing physical things, called active calories. It is not calculated the same way as a physician or dietician would do it, but closing those rings on a daily basis is an indicator of taking positive steps to living a healthy lifestyle. As for my settings, the goals I have are based on my activity for the past 3 years, since I collected data on an Apple Watch. My blue ring is set with a goal of 12 hours. That was the default setting for a long time. It is also the easiest of the three rings to closed daily. My green ring is set for 30 minutes of exercise per day. The red ring is set for 950 active calories. Other things that can be tracked are a target of seven hours of sleep and drinking a gallon of water per day. How the rings get closed is not the point. I can run, lift weights or practice yoga. The diversity of exercise will help to balance my training.

The other factor is behaviors that I will not do. I will not eat anything that could be purchased from a drive thru window. Another one is not eating after 8:00 pm. That is not just about reducing snacking, but I don't sleep as well when my stomach is full.

Intellectual: Another down spot for me in 2020 was being laid off for six months. While I am well educated and have of 20 years of experience at my day job, the competition for jobs has been really challenging. I needed to find ways to keep my problem solving skills sharp and learn some new things. I started to learn to write code, and I have been having fun with that. I am also going to put more non-fiction in to my reading routine. I read 14 books in 2020, but almost all of them were fiction. I am not dropping fiction completely, but I am aiming to read 12 non-fiction books this year. A mind is like any other muscle, it needs to be exercised, or it will atrophy. The books that I am planning to read are ones that I already have. More about that in another post.

Spiritual: It is well known that depression and anxiety are them Siamese twins of mental illness. One the areas that I have the hardest time with is finding ways and space to relax. I am going to make a greater effort to meditate. I have heard it said that a person needs to meditate for 10 minutes a day. If they don't have 10 minutes they need to mediate for an hour. My issue has been setting up daily triggers to make meditating top of mind for me. The hope is that with doing it daily, I can get better at it as well as create some peaceful space in my day. l am also going to continue to study Stoic Philosophy. I have found it helpful in keeping my focus and attention on things inside of my control and to set aside the rest. 

Under ordinary circumstances, there would be a social component to the refit, but a lot of that is outside of my control. Even though I am an introvert at heart, there is something missing in only seeing people on computer screen and reading their words instead of hearing their voices. I am going to work that in as the health of the world allows. 

Expected Results: The way I will be able to measure the effectiveness of the refit will be in the simple things. Weight reduction and 10k times reducing, VO2 Max data increasing are just a few indicators. Also, my flexibility will improve my current, monolithic, state. I will feel calmer and not as anxious or depressed. It is no substitution for being treated by professionals, but, it cannot hurt. I also derive some happiness in learning something new, so that will be a plus. Part of the way the theme works is in how all of the elements are interconnected. The theme addresses where I am and where I want to be in the next twelve months. The numbers are just the measure, not the goal in and of themselves. If I lose 20 pounds, as opposed to 40, that is OK. It is acceptable if I get through nine non-fiction books. Since the theme will a part of my routine doings, I expect that I will write about how it is progressing. 

I recognize that this is a really big theme. While all of the different elements are complicated in and of themselves, they are all interconnected. Physical activity helps with my mental state. The intellectual pursuits help to stimulate my mind as well as giving my mind something else to focus on, so that depression doesn't get a chance to take a foothold. The spiritual aspects work to clarify my thinking and to reduce my stress, which in turn, positively impacts my mental state. This will be a work in process, so I expect that there will be some slips. It is the _year_ of the refit, not day or week of the refit. I think that is an important thing for me to remember so I can more easily give myself grace.