Meeting myself as I did yesterday and today happens once every couple of years. It turns out the wild blueberries I thought I was picking were black nightshade. Black nightshade apparently comes in edible and toxic varieties and I seem to have eaten the toxic kind. First things first. If you see these adorable looking berries, I recommend thinking twice. It was hard for me to type the word adorable[…] Keep reading →

I love sports and believe they bring people together. They can help bridge cultural divides. Having played ultimate in North Korea, I’ve seen it in action. Here’s Jordan Harbinger with a kid throwing a Frisbee we brought to the first International tournament in Pyongyang, North Korea. Sports also help us find our potentials and reach them. They help keep us healthy by promoting fitness. I read that the Olympics involves[…] Keep reading →

My spreadsheet said I hit 175,000 burpees yesterday. I don’t record each one. I programmed in how many I do each day. I update the date and it tells me how many I’ve done. So I’ve done more, since occasionally I do extra without telling the spreadsheet. A decade ago, I’d record what felt like big milestones like my first six months of doing them daily or the first ten[…] Keep reading →

Today, picking up litter, it occurred to me that the more I act, the more I care about what I do. The less I act, the more indifferent, apathetic, and complacent I become. It could apply to picking up litter, avoiding packaged food, or many things I learned to do after childhood. I care (second) because I act (first). If you want to get technical, caring and acting are parts[…] Keep reading →

People dream that if they eat unhealthy things, they can eat something healthy to average it out, as if broccoli had negative unhealthiness that averaged with ice cream’s unhealthiness to zero unhealthiness. Broccoli isn’t negative unhealthy. It’s normal. There is no negative unhealthiness. You can’t undo eating something unhealthy. If you’re just worried about empty calories, you can exercise, but it won’t undo all the unhealthiness of the ice cream.[…] Keep reading →

Everyone who knows me knows every morning I make my bed, cross the room, and turn off the alarm before it turns off, meaning within sixty seconds. I have other sidchas, like picking up litter daily, which I’ve done without fail since 2017. People ask why, which seems obvious. Doing something with a measure of quality and a time limit gives a sense of purpose. For a cash cost of[…] Keep reading →

I exercise on a five-day rotation between lifting, resting, and cardio so months with 31 days give me an extra rest day to experiment. This time I decided to try to recapture my nearly five-year-old achievement of 5,000 meters in 20 minutes on the rowing machine, which means averaging 2:00/500m for 20 minutes. A well-trained man in his 20s or 30s could do it easily. A serious competitor might not[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday, walking south along the Hudson River, I saw a guy running sprints on a pier. The temperature hovered around 50F (10C). It had rained on and off all day and was raining then. He was alone, running sprints in the rain. I call that commitment where no one would know if you didn’t glorious. I was out on my daily walk to pick up litter. I was taking a[…] Keep reading →

Here’s an exercise, just to imagine something: Imagine 24 hours without ingesting any doof—that is, without putting anything in your mouth whose primary pleasure comes from added salt, added sugar, added fat, or convenience. Nothing packaged. You know you can do it. That is, you know you possess the ability to do it. You know humans lived that way for almost all of human history. I’m not saying doof is[…] Keep reading →