This Week
- What it’s been like going to coffee shops in the morning lately.
- The new YouTube video process I’ve been experimenting with.
- A very demotivating experience in the gym this week.
March 2026
| Su | M | T | W | Th | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/1 | 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 | 4/1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
Where In The World Was I?
- 🚐 Salt Lake City, Utah
Metrics From The Week
FINALLY my body/heart is adapting and acclimating… After only like 4 months of training here in the U.S. lol. I’ve been doing a lot more Zone 1-2 aerobic activity – stairmaster, treadmill jogs. And I think it’s finally actually working.
Snaps From The Week
It’s been fun dressing up well. I went to Honeysuckle Coffee this week, haven’t been here yet this year. I was asking AI for other coffee drinks to order and asked for a ristretto (shorter espresso) but they don’t do them so got an espresso anyways.
Love coffee shop mornings (which happens to be every morning lol).
Ate outside one afternoon for lunch, that was fun. It’s been gorgeous out, sunny, warm.
And had a lunch out this week at Spitz.
It’s kind of funny my memories from Spitz… There was a big group of maybe 15 people in there this time, all in their business casual dress and it reminded me of this story from Spitz downtown The Week That Saved My Ski Season (March 5th, 2023). Again I thought… “yeah I don’t miss that.”
And speaking of business casual, I shipped my backpack off for repair and bought a briefcase (I don’t have a pic)… Feels like a step up in style, but also starting to feel a bit corporate hahaha
Coaching
Mostly the same this week, but a couple things to note.
I tweaked the way I do my DCEs, I had been giving away the actions/frameworks on these calls and after some analysis realized I need to hold that back and keep the loop open with people. So I did that this week and it went wayyyyy better.
And I’m back to posting on YouTube, but with a tweak to my process. I wrote about the resistance I was feeling in last week’s post The Week Of Deep Inner Work, Laptop Issues, and Warm Spring Days “202603211046 Journal about resistance with YouTube videos – Salt Lake Roasting”
So this week on two of my walks, I had these ideas to come my head, almost around the exact same point in my walk around Liberty Park. I voice noted some ideas to expand on it, then turned it into some bullet points, grabbed my DJI osmo camera, and then walked into the park, hit record, and just started sharing.
And editing these took me less than an hour, WAY easier to create and edit. So I’m liking this new process, my bottleneck right now is honestly just giving myself enough space for the ideas to come and to synthesize the ideas to speak about.
Which speaking of, I’ve found myself just spending more time outside. With these recording sessions and recording reels under trees, I’m spending more time in parks just chilling, sitting on a bench or the grass, looking off into the distance. Feels good.
This content is not ready to be made public yet.
Demotivating
While in the U.S., one of my focuses/goals has been to continue working out, building muscle, bulking up. If you’ve been following these posts for a while you’ll know some of my struggles with this journey lol. I think it’s probably been about 4 years since I intentionally starting working out with the goal of building muscle and bulking up.
But my weight has been ever so slightly inching up over the past couple months.
However, it’s hard because I don’t weigh myself consistently (friendly reminder that I live inside a van and not a house with my own scale, just in case you forgot or something), sometimes it’s in the morning, sometimes it’s after dinner right before going to bed. So my weight log fluctuates a lot.
One morning though I stepped on the scale and saw about 4-5lbs lower than the lowest I’ve been seeing. My lowest weight since May of LAST year, about 10 months… and nothing much has changed. With all the inconsistencies, it’s hard to not believe it.
And this was instantly demotivating. I’m bro like why am I here? Why am I spending all this time in the gym if it’s just not actually doing anything…
Still showed up for a workout but did a bit less, my brain kept looping “why should I try?”
The next morning, same time, literally the day after… I was 10lbs up from this weight, 10lbs!… about 4-5lbs higher than what I’d expect from a morning weight… I was like alright whatever idk what’s going on 😂 🤦♂️
Thoughts From The Week
202603250730 Unexpected learnings from 4 years of life on the road
#learnings #travel #journal
AI prompts:
**1. What did you think van life would fix that it didn't?** What problems followed you? What did you assume would disappear once you were "free" that turned out to be more complicated?
- my phone use habit
- my avoidance of social situations and being seen, of fear
**2. What do you miss that you didn't expect to miss?** Not the obvious stuff — what's the weird, specific thing? A grocery store layout, a smell, a ritual, a type of person?
- a fucking laundry machine in my house
**3. What has gotten _easier_ over time that most people assume stays hard?** Loneliness, logistics, relationships, money, sleep — where did you find your footing in ways that would surprise someone on day one?
- bro logistics, doing dishes, the general problem solving skill
**4. What's the thing you never talk about publicly that's actually a consistent part of the experience?** Boredom, monotony, bodily inconvenience, social weirdness — the unglamorous texture of the day-to-day.
- the daily worrying about how I'm seen, not going to the same park or same parking spots two days in a row
- sometimes walking into Anytime Fitness and going straight into the bathroom to shower and then walking, knowing full well someone on the treadmill is like "wait, huh?"
**5. How has your relationship to "home" actually changed — not conceptually, but sensorially or emotionally?** When do you feel most at home now? What triggers that feeling? What used to trigger it?
- home is people and community to me, but also some familiarity
- there's a bit of a sense of home in the van, but more syntactically "familiar," alongside my routine here in Denver/SLC in the U.S.
- Kuala Lumpur felt interesting last year returning, not quite home but again familiary
- But leaving Bali felt like I was leaving my family... that felt the most like home
**6. What have you learned about other people — not yourself — that surprised you?** How people react to you, what they project onto you, what they envy vs. what they pity, what questions they never ask.
- A lot of people are NOT curious... "yeah I live in a van" "oh, interesting..." I'm like bro there's so much I could talk about, some people ask how I got into it
- I project my interest in other people onto other people... and it really just doesn't seem to match up to reality. Most people are so focused on themselves.
**7. Where did the fantasy meet reality hardest?** A specific moment or season where the gap between what you imagined and what was true was most jarring.
- the 3 overnight knocks I've gotten
- Hauling all my apartment stuff from my storage unit back across the country, moving my couch cushions from my bed to my counter every single night
**8. What's a belief or value you held strongly before that the lifestyle quietly eroded or upgraded?** About stability, ambition, relationships, success, comfort — what shifted without you fully choosing it?
- the desire for stability, comfort is not needed, in fact is maybe detrimental
- discomfort is a requirement for growth - maybe my biggest belief shift
- relationships take a lot of effort and time, they aren't like HS and college where you see each other literally every day
**9. What does your body know now that it didn't before?** Sleep, weather, temperature, seasons, physical space, nervous system — anything somatic or environmental.
- I sweat a lot and run hot
- Everything needs to be organized and exactly in its place
**10. What would you tell someone 30 days in vs. someone 3 years in?** The advice gap reveals what actually takes time to learn vs. what sounds true but isn't.
30 days in
- you're probably over the excitement hump, this is where the real routine is built, the real challenges of living in a small space and on the road
3 years in
- do you still want it? is it still serving you in the way you expect?
202603250749 Things you probably didn't know about me
#journal
List of things you probably didn't know about me, for sharing in content:
- I've gotten the knock 3 times
- There's a constant background worry about my van, about how others perceive me, about a Karen coming and complaining about me parking somewhere
- I've been journaling obsessively for about 6 years now, my Obsidian.md vault has over 6,000 notes
- I've been writing blog posts for the last 187 consecutive weeks capturing my life
- I'm driven a lot by the idea of memories and what you'll actually remember about your life
- My coffee order: 90% of the time it's a double espresso, 5% is a cold brew, and now just started drinking a traditional macchiato
- I graduated top 2% (?) of my class in college for computer science
- I have a travel map where I document all of my travels for the last 4 years
- I've been to ~23 countries
- I value my health and sleep a lot, what I eat, sleeping 9 hours every night for years
- That I'm constantly on the move and love moving cities and countries, it's actually a pain in the ass.
- Ah, that I'm incredibly organized and "put together," that's been something that's come up from meeting people in person.
- That I do taoist power locking and have been working on sexual energy management for about 2 years.
- I've made well over a thousand videos (original dailyvs, then phone videos) talking to a camera that have never seen the light of day.
- That I made 268 daily 5 minute videos before I published a single video online.
- I get a lot of software job inquiries that I don't even acknowledge anymore.
- How lonely it is living in the van.
- Oh, that people think van life is living out in the forest, but about 95% of my time doing van life the last 4 months has been living in cities and urban van life, stealth camping, mostly because I've been working in coffee shops, going to the gym, and skiing when there's snow. I'd be up in the mountains if the weather were better.
- The number of checklists I have would give you headaches - skiing, hiking, every single item in my van, every single item I take when I'm living out of my two backpacks.
- Oh [name] didn't know that I've had the van almost 4 years now, that I left it for 11mo last year while I was abroad.
- My social skills log, everyone I've met sees me as a very social or socially normal person, but I've struggled with starting conversations for years. My social skills log of interactions like "said hi to the barista"
- How meticulously I budget, I've tracked every single dollar in and out of my life for over 5 years
- I collect one "story-worthy" moment from every day before going to bed, and have been for almost 3 years now without missing a day.
- Oh, I've been physically journaling every night about my day for I don't even know how long, since 2017? what's that 9 years now?
## Related
[[202505151024 Video - 10 of the weirdest systems I have about my life]]
202603281026 Brain dump - Honeysuckle Coffee
#journal
Wassup.
Came to Honeysuckle this morning because Google Maps AI recommended this place as having good espresso.
Tried to order a double ristretto to try it out, barista said they don't do them, so got a regular espresso and it was good.
Fun little side quest.
Feeling the weight of admin creeping up... Leaving the U.S. in like 3 weeks for another probably 9 months abroad. So much shit to do before then.
- [[202511220936 Current admin task list board]]
- [[202508091731 Things to do when I'm back in the US]]
Had a bit of a demotivating blow yesterday at the gym, weighing in at 188.1 in the morning. It was helpful to talk it out and express the feelings.
This morning? 198.2... I'm like brother what is going on. Maybe my workouts are working after all... who knows. Hard to know when the scale and my weight measurements aren't consistent.
Anyways, want to do get back into some youtube video ideating. Last week's video where I just grabbed my osmo and talked went SUPER well in terms of friction and editing. Look me like 30 minutes to edit. And it's at 103 views, view % duration is down but otherwise pretty solid. Just imagine if I could crank out two of these per week... [[202603212128 Video - Your dream life is closer than you think]]
What's NOW stopping me from doing this?
Ideas. I think I'm not giving myself enough blank space right now in my days, I'm filling it with my phone and videos still.
I'm like what if I just had some peace and slowness, like Dan Bolton in his New Zealand cabin... just a pen and paper. Kind of dreaming of that feeling.
So I dunno, I also don't think I _need_ this, which feels also out of reach right now.
The deep inner journaling went well. I think it's this feeling again of... I have SO MUCH STORED KNOWLEDGE that I could share, it's just a matter of PULLING it out of me that I need help with.
I also like the idea of leaning harder into speaking literally about my coaching calls, having that subtle or not so subtle social proof. "Someone I worked with said X" "I was on a coaching call and they said Y" which I did in the last video.
Which means... I can use a constraint here... Just only pull from coaching calls. And good thing is? I've got all the transcripts. And the [content repurposing] is quite good. I just didn't like the hooks as much for using them literally.
- [[202603170919 ♻️ Project - Content Repurposing Engine with AI]]
What’s Next?
Same same.