New Year, Same Old Me

The drops of blood on the floor in the morning were proof that it happened: I rang in 2024 by nursing a bloody nose.

I had awoken around 11:30 pm with a stuffed-up right nostril, tried to rub my nose, and sort of stretch out my nostril (?) to loosen it up. The next thing I knew, I was rushing to the bathroom to contain the blood pouring out.

Earlier, I had passed out in bed around 8:30 pm—that wasn’t my plan for New Year’s Eve, I swear—because my back had been bothering me all day. It’s not only that my back hurt, it’s that I was annoyed that it was still acting up despite all the working out I’ve done over the past four months. Strengthening my back and core to relieve the annoying, persistent, tenacious pain I’ve dealt with for years (decades?) was part of my motivation for starting to work out in the first place. Yet, no relief was in sight.

As I was groggily wadding up tissues and plugging my nose to try to contain the blood, my mind wandered to New Year’s resolutions. This, even though I dislike the idea of resolutions in the first place.

I reflected on how the most common resolutions are to lose weight and get fit, yet I felt proud of how far I’ve come in the last four months on that front, despite the minimal effect it has had on my back issue.

Getting myself into a regular workout routine wasn’t the result of a lofty fitness goal. Instead, it was due to a confluence of events—a comment from a friend, years of prodding by my wife, seeing my age never go down—that led me to—finally—realize that I needed to prioritize my physical health.

Back in August, I gave my first F45 class a try. F45 stands for “Functional 45” because you do functional high-intensity interval training for 45 minutes in each class. I liked how each class wasn’t too long, I was accountable for showing up at a specific time, and the stations were already set up with all the various workout equipment needed. I could get in and get my workout done fast. And everything was timed down to the second, so I couldn’t waste time dilly-dallying between sets. I was quickly hooked.

Then, only a few weeks later, I blindly agreed to complete a DEXA scan with my wife, without knowing much about it beforehand. A DEXA scan, for those unfamiliar, shows you how much body fat and muscle mass you have. The test results confirmed—as I’ve joked around for most of my adult life—that I was a skinny fat guy.

Now I’m happy to report that after just over four months of hitting the gym, combined with cutting my sugar intake and focusing on consuming enough protein, my latest scan showed that while my weight has remained steady, I’ve lost eight pounds of body fat and gained eight pounds of muscle. Seeing the numbers was validating. I still have a little ways to go to get them within the healthy range, but, clearly, my hard work is paying off.

At 46 years old, I feel stronger than I ever have before.

I’m confident that if I had made “Get My Ass in Shape” my New Year’s resolution, I wouldn’t have been nearly as successful. And I know this because it happened with something else over the past year.

As many of you know, I’ve been working on a memoir book project since before I even launched this Substack over three years ago. Almost exactly a year ago, amid the New Year’s resolution season, I fell for the allure of setting a big stretch goal (that in my mind I justified as somehow different than a resolution?) and felt the urge to recommit to the book. I sat down and wrote a post about beginning to work on it again. I even made a plan with some smaller, seemingly more attainable goals included in it too.

And then, I basically did none of them.

Okay, that’s a bit harsh. I did get some editing feedback from a generous writer friend on the first section, which I still think is quite good, and I wrote a few more scenes and chapters. But by the end of February, some life things came up, and I ran out of steam on it and didn’t touch my manuscript again until November. Every time I thought about it, the project felt heavy. The goal was too big and amorphous. Instead of writing a book, it felt more like Writing an Important Book that Defines Me as a Father, Husband, and Writer. In other words, not exactly the best recipe for letting my creativity flow unabated.

If I had set a similarly large fitness goal and immediately started working out five times per week, like I do now, I wouldn’t have kept it up. I would’ve been so sore I could barely walk. I might’ve even injured myself. And—I can’t believe I’m about to write this—it wouldn’t have been as fun for me as it is now. But since I eased into it and started more sustainably with a couple of workouts per week, I was able to build upon that to where I am today.

Some of you might argue that I did the thing where I broke up my big goal into smaller goals with working out too. I supposed I did. But it didn’t feel like I did. When I think of working out now, I don’t think of having to hit five workouts each week, and if I don’t, I’m a failure. I think of it more like I’m just a guy who works out regularly now.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen many writing friends and coworkers sharing their word of the year. My word for 2024 is consistency. It’s not too dissimilar from my mantra for 2023: the extraordinary emerges out of the ordinary. The idea is that if I keep consistently showing up to the things that are important to me, then transformation will undoubtedly occur. I have all the ingredients in me already.

If I want to be a guy who writes books (or even one single book), I need to find a way to make doing the work more sustainable. Maybe I can start by not calling it work. And if I don’t feel called to write a book right now, or ever, that’s okay too.

If I want to be a kind guy instead of a nice guy, I need to continually make the choice to be more assertive and stick up for myself.

And yet, no matter what I do, I’ll still be the guy who tends to get a bloody nose in the cold, dry air of winter.

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Thank you to my writing circle groups at Foster who listened to me read small snippets of a draft of this piece.

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