Today I realized that I have been waiting for my life to get back to what it was in 2018. If I'm going to read the books I own (and the ones I keep buying), get in better shape, and lose weight, I need to figure out what works with my current circumstances rather than be annoyed that my life isn't as easy and low stress as it was 7 or 8 years ago. I'm tired of fitting in a just long enough to feel worth it run or squeezing 10 pages of book into the time before I go to bed. I need to set up a system to read more, get in more miles, and improve my diet.
I always set reading output goals (read a certain number of books over the course of the year). How much time do I need to spend reading to realize this goal? Let's say I set a goal of 25 books. That's roughly a book every 2 weeks. If an average book is 400 pages, that would require me reading about 200 pages a week. If I read about a page a minute, I would need to read about 3.5 hours a week. That's reading for about a half an hour every day. My reading goal this year was 36 books. I would need to read for about 45 minutes a day to achieve that goal. If I started reading around 10 or 10:30 every night, I could read for 30 to 45 minutes a day. Making it a point to read a bit on the weekend and I could get there. I could also read while Tiffany is doing stuff for her classes. There is time, I just need to make sure I'm prioritizing reading over scrolling on my phone or watching TV.
I need to make better reading decisions in 2026. I read decent books in 2025, but my bad decision to stick with The Bee Sting for way too long prevented me from reading other (and almost certainly better) books. Starting my year with a Brandon Sanderson behemoth also limited how many different books I would be reading. I don't have good records on this, but I also tried reading a few different books and ended up not finishing them for one reason or another. I'm actually working on finishing a book that I read the first half of earlier this year. I skipped through a YouTube video this morning of some guys top 10 books of the year. I was only familiar with a couple of them. He was very excited about a few of these books. They were mostly genre fiction and nothing that would be considered prestigious reading, but he enjoyed them. Isn't that kind of the point? There is value in reading challenging books, but mixing in a few easier genre books that go quickly and are a pleasure to read could be a nice palate cleanser between more literary works. I wasted 3 months reading a piece of crap just because it was short listed for the Booker Prize. I could have read 3 or 4 fun books in that time. I would argue that reading the fun books would have been a better use of my time.
I'm harping on reading because picking up and reading a physical book has become a subversive act. Engaging in any activity that does not feed the algorithm with behavior and consumption data undermines societal control objectives being pursued by the global elite. Reading books written a few decades ago is an even bigger violation of the new tech dogma. Spending slow time with a physical thing produced by a person for consumption by other people disconnects us from technological monitoring and engagement tools. Reading makes us better people rather than more efficient consumers. Reading an ebook is better than not reading at all, but it keeps us engaged with monitoring technology. Kindle and other reading apps have gamified data collection that makes the activity of reading about more than just consuming fantastic writing. It's about keeping a streak or earning a badge. People were able to engage with novels for hundreds of years without the additional motivation of earning some electronic cheerleading. I want to spend this year getting back to that kind of relationship with reading. It's not about reading a certain number of books or hitting some daily reading target. It's about finding joy and pleasure in an analogue activity.
I know I have said this before, but I need to start doing the things I'm going to do someday. That pretty much applies to every aspect of my life, but it's a pretty big piece of reading as I have lots of books that I plan to read someday. My Book Shelf Zero project was supposed to be about reading the books I say I want to read rather than just adding more books to the pile. Adam the Woo's death has put a new urgency into living for today. He had all kinds of plans and things he wanted to do. He no longer has the opportunity to do those things. I am basically the same age as Adam (he's little over a year older than me) so his sudden death has impacted me more than I would have expected. I haven't been watching his videos regularly for months, but I did watch them regularly for years. I feel like I knew Adam. I met him at a Rays game and saw him at a couple of others. He was a part of my life, but now he's gone. I can't wait to keep doing things that look interesting and fun. I plan to spend this year finding ways to keep adventure and discovery in my life. Adam travelled to find new adventures. I read.
Adam's death also brings a greater focus on my physical fitness. His official cause of death has yet to be determined, but my first guess was a heart attack. Watching some clips put together by Tim Tracker only reinforced that initial guess. He was pretty heavy for quite a few years. I've been saying I want to lose weight while doing almost nothing to actually lose weight. Running more is one way to start changing the direction of the numbers on the scale. My running mileage goal this year was 750 miles. I will have a little over 600 miles at the end of the year. That means I averaged about 11.5 miles a week rather than the 15 or so I would need to reach 750 miles. I would not need to dramatically alter my current running plan to hit 750. If I do 4 miles on Tuesday and Thursday, I would only need to do a 7 mile run on Saturday. I had the goal to do a thousand miles in 2022 (my first full year in Florida). That takes about 20 miles a week. You can get that in 3 runs a week by doing 5, 5, and 10 miles. That sounded like a realistic plan, but doing 5 miles means getting on the road pretty early during the week, and you need to be out pretty early for the long weekend runs to beat the heat once you get into mid-March. Both of those require getting an early start, which means going to bed relatively early. I also didn't consider how often I would be going back to Virginia to get my family moved down here. It was an achievable goal, but I did not make getting in runs at those distances a priority. I would run, but it was more like 3 or 4 miles with 5 or so on the weekend. That's better than not running, but it's not going to make running the Disney Marathon less painful.
Running more should make me weight less, but weight loss is really all about diet. I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but my preferred strategy is to focus on eating more whole foods and cutting out processed foods rather than cutting calories. I have a plan for lunch (I just need to actually do it), and I need to figure something out for breakfast (hard boiled eggs?). I will just do whatever the family does for dinner and avoid dessert during the week. Cut down on snacks during the weekend will be one more step to improve my diet. We'll see where my weight levels out if I can stick to that plan.
This New Year's transition feels different. It may just be wishful thinking, but the focus on reclaiming my energy from the churn of daily demands feels like the missing ingredient in my inability to build a solid and satisfying Florida life.
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