Tidbits
- Full Consistency Guide posted!
- Spending the holidays in Santa Fe!
- If you’re looking for raw authenticity, definitely don’t scroll to the bottom…
December 2022
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| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 12/1 | 2 | 3 |
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
January 2023
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| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 31 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
Where In The World Was I?
- Denver, CO
- Alamosa, CO
- Santa Fe, NM
Final Preparations
Those last couple days, I put in some really focused work to finish editing my Consistency Guide video and post. It reminded me of what true flow is like – no distractions, single-task focused work. Just bliss.
Got my first haircut in over 2 years that I didn’t do myself. Special occasion 🙂 I figured it would 1. save me time and 2. get me a better product than trying to do it myself before heading south. I’d say it accomplished both. I also got a bonus social interaction from it.
☕️ – Wash Perk, Frank & Roze, Sweet Bloom (Westminster), Brew Culture
Heading South 🚐
I hit the road on the 21st.
and made it to Alamosa, CO where I stayed the night and had one last coffee shop session.
Consistency Guide Finished!
Shoutout to Milagros Coffee House in Alamosa.
Watch it here:
Read the blog post here:
It felt really, really, good to get some closure on this project before spending time with family in Santa Fe. It’s been rewarding to see this go from idea to reality and I definitely learned a lot in the process. I hope for this to just be #1 in the process, so more to come.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
After a short delay from my brother and sister-in-law getting over covid and my mom getting over a flu, we finally all made it to Santa Fe!
Food – Cowgirl, Iconik Downtown, Plaza Cafe Downtown, Coyote Cafe, Opuntia Cafe, Wok
Exploring – The plaza, farmers market, Christmas Eve canyon road farolito walk
Christmas Morning
The fam 💪
More Food – Blake’s Lotaburger, The Pantry Rio, Santa Fe Brewing Company
- Bought dad a cowboy hat
- Played sooooo many games of Settlers of Catan!
- Went to Meow Wolf
Went on a hike!
Even more food – 35 North Coffee, Palacio Cafe, Iconik, Leaf and Hive Brew Lab, The Ranch House
Apartment Life
Dad’s famous delicious crackers, homemade blue corn pancakes, CFD™️ tea, and lots of conversation.
COVID?
I started getting a bit of a sore throat and a headache on New Year’s Eve of all nights so I didn’t stay up… but 👀
Another hike!
COVID.
My mom got COVID unfortunately, but the rest of us somehow didn’t…
My dad kept his flights and left for home/work while my mom stayed in the apartment to finish getting better.
The Final Days
Surprisingly, more food – India House, El Chile Toreado food truck, Anthony’s Grill, Plaza Cafe Southside
Albuquerque
Mom finally felt better and left back for home.
Exploring Albuquerque – Owl Cafe, Historic Plaza, Sawmill Market, Turquoise Trail
Pecos National Historic Park
Harry’s Roadhouse
Sunday January 8th was my last night in the apartment. I hopped back in the van the morning of the 9th!
A 👀 Inside My 🧠
Just in case it wasn’t clear by the lengthy post above, I had a great holiday with my family and was very grateful to have been able to spend it all together.
That said, I’m learning to be more authentic online, so here are some more raw thoughts that I journaled about over these 2-3 weeks (for those that have ventured to the very end of this loooong blog post). I’ll hide my authenticity by giving you a large block of text to read 🤪. Small steps.
- By the end, my mental health was just trashed… Lots of time spent on the couch not being present and just deep in YouTube videos, a large part due to the temptations back into bad habits prompted by erotic artwork and curiosity. We’ll leave it at that for now haha. That’s not to say I didn’t have present moments, but I was getting back to that dopamine-fried state of mind where I couldn’t bring myself to do anything…
- If you keep up with my DailyVs, this is most of the context I talked about in my first day back https://youtu.be/rra2J1jODC0. The difference in my mental state is like night and day from what I’ve been used to.
- This also had some interesting learnings into apartment life again. I’m grateful for the discomfort that van life pushes on me. The comforts of apartment life are one of the things that pushed me out.
- We spent a good amount of time talking to/about dad and his work situation as well as my parents and the idea of moving to Santa Fe, which, isn’t surprising… I still believe there’s a logical piece missing that we can solve with my dad quitting his job before there’s some external event that snaps everything into perspective. An event like that will do it, but I don’t want to get there. Sorry for those who don’t have context for this, there’s just so much I’d need to provide. Maybe I’ll talk about it more in the future.
- In the past I’ve had the tendency to not last too long before I started getting really nitpicky and frustrated at everything whenever I was with anyone for a couple days or more. Surprisingly I didn’t really notice it come up, or maybe not as much this trip.
- I’d consider my family quite liberal/progressive. However that said, since reading Hard Times Create Strong Men by Stefan Aarnio, it was SO interesting to see the masculine and feminine dynamics in my parents and brother/sister-in-law. This is such a sensitive topic, I think because it can bleed into ideology about enforcing inflexible traditional gender roles so easily. But that’s not what I want to get into. Just learning about what masculine and feminine energy are has opened up my eyes quite a bit to what’s already out there.
- We ate out quite a lot, which meant trading off paying for quite expensive meals (as a sum) often. This brought up quite a lot of insecurities for me. I’m still in a quite frugal phase because I’m focused on sustainability right now. I felt like a hopeless little child not offering to pay for meals. I felt uncomfortable and restricted ordering multiple dishes, or an appetizer, or a dessert because I’d be financially burdening others. God, I can’t wait to have the “f*ck you” money so that I don’t have to worry about this.
- Last one. I started getting into watching MMA videos. I used to be so disgusted, so uncomfortable with fighting, boxing, MMA, etc. But lately as I’ve learned and been exposed to more ideas about what it means to be a man and masculinity, I’ve become more interested. I’ve started to loosen up. I want to learn how to be dangerous but know how to control it (that’s an idea from Jordan Peterson).