I want to start by thanking my inspiration for choosing the word Consistency as my word for 2023. I got the idea of choosing the word from the great instructional designer Stephanie Gerald, who I guess is now passing the bar to be a lawyer so soon-to-be great ID and lawyer! I have the amazing Betty Dannewitz to thank for the idea of using the word Consistency from her amazing episode on creating a brand with the expressive Tim Slade, who clearly stated the need to be consistent in your brand on the If You Ask Betty Podcast. Credit where credit is due!
In this Vlog post, I explain why I chose to create my own logo and argue why creating things for myself works for me and aligns with my brand. I backpedal to September 25th, 2023 which was the height of my 50 Pushups a Day Challenge for St. Jude’s Research Hospital. It was about that time that I completed the design of my logo and you can see it was first used on Day 26 of that same challenge where I also praised the use of our subconscious mind.
In this video, I have three reasons why I argue creating your own logo is the best choice. (If you are at all inclined and have the resources to do so.)
Creative Control
The first benefit of designing your own logo is that you are in control of what it is and what it becomes.
You are in control of the whole process from design to export.
You made the product, it is now a part of you. You are connected with it.
You know it’s strengths you know it’s weaknesses.
In the video, I explain you have to turn off the editor and invite the muse into the room to create something. Then invite the editor back into the room to resume editorial functions. I drew this concept from the book: “Art and Fear” by David Bayles, and Ted Orland.
This book is fantastic and I can not recommend it enough. I might talk about his book with people I know and people I meet on the street or in airports, more than any other book. I guess you could say at this point, “This is my book.”
Financial Benefit
I saved money. I didn’t spend any money, I only spent time.
Money saved = Money earned.
I paid myself to create this logo, by not paying someone else to do it.
As promised here is the Freakonomics Episode: “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Money (But Were Afraid to Ask)” with a super-smart economist about spending less on trash bags. (Well, the trash bag part might not be in there, I might have made the trash bag analogy up, or it was from another expert on Freakonomics.) However, this episode still supports my point that spending less is good and is the same as making more money. (They also talk about how to invest money too, so that’s always good!)
It would have cost me $5 to $100 per hour to get a logo.
Did it take me an hour? No, it took 5 hours!
Do you want to see it? I recorded the whole thing! Some of the music I was listening to bled into the recording so it is not viewable in all locations. Sorry! (I am sure a VPN would help if you need to see it.)
5-hour video of my creating my own logo. (Well, 4 hours 1 minute and 37 seconds s, but it took over 5 hours and my video capture function continued to crash after 30 minutes of recording because of my RAM.)
Now, I’d like to point out again here that I am not a graphic designer (as you might have gleaned from that 5-hour video.) It might not have taken a professional graphic designer 5 hours to come up with a similar product. The value lost in that time is offset by my third point.
Moment of Learning
I gained new skills, and I had a fun time doing it! I worked in Adobe Illustrator to create this logo. (Well, first I got lost in Adobe Photoshop, applied all the filters, and got to a spot that was kind of OK.) Then I went into Adobe Illustrator.
I am not very experienced in Illustrator, but I want to be!… with Adobe’s job aids, I was able to work through the flow at my own pace and build some confidence in designing in Illustrator.
In this way, I was building skills that I can use as an instructional designer or even a graphic designer if I ever choose to do that to myself…
“Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not.
It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it. It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.” You are either living as a monk or you’re not.
We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output.
The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.”
You might not be aware but for October, I continued my consistency challenge. I paid homage to the great Chinese philosopher Lau Tzu by consistently NOT posting on my blog for a whole month.
Sometimes the best action is to not take action and I must say, a break was nice, after a month of posting every day for my pushup challenge and posting as frequently as I could for a biking challenge.
Some pumpkins I carved with my kids. and some pictures of them moving in a slow shutter speed shot to look like “Ghosts.” Fun stuff as we prepare for Halloween!
What’s Next for Me!?
I will say that I have not shaved for the end of October and I will continue that for no shave in November. So I will be consistently NOT shaving the hair off my face for November. I want to share my inspiration. (Please read my response to this initial FaceBook post.
So you can see below that I have gotten a bit of a head start. My social media is not flattering. I am very transparent about how amazing my life is not. Here I have tagged myself #iswalking. I walk a lot and it is my most frequent tag on Facebook:
Here I am at the checkout at the local “Schnucks- the friendliest stores in town” They are inexpensive and their produce is sometimes OK. I am back on not drinking alcohol, so this is a very special #iswalking selfie.
I think I should be consistent in this #iswalking. I did not do that when I started, but I think I might. Well, I should, just to be consistent.
That Will Not Be All
So, as you might have guessed, October was the month of consistently not doing. I will continue to not do something in November by not shaving, but I will continue to start writing again. I am thinking about how I did 16 days of learning to design in 3D and then I completed the training modules and worked on an art piece, had trouble exporting to other Adobe applications, and then just stopped. Well, I was feeling tapped out. I was feeling very vulnerable for not knowing how to export and I didn’t want to force any creative ideas. However, now I have some ideas I would like to pursue in that space so I plan to return to that 30-day challenge and even though it is not 30 days back to back I can at least still follow through and be consistent in completing the challenge.
Cycling through the woods is relaxing and enjoyable
The Cycling Oddysey Continues
So even though this was on October 10th, and my Cycling More Consistently in September Oddesy is over, I still recorded some video footage. In this episode, I make a recording while riding and then nearly flip my bike into a hole in the ground. I comment on how I need to get a better setup if I want to keep recording rides.
Then I turn onto the street, drive down a hill flip my bike and bust open my lip. I was holding the camera with my right hand so the sun would be on my face, and my left hand was on the bike and controlling only the front brakes. I noticed I was going a bit too fast down a hill and so I squeezed the brakes on my new bike. I have disc brakes now, not the old caliper brakes with the pads. These disc brakes are way, more responsive, and I knew that, but I wasn’t aware I was just slamming the front brake.
At any rate, this was a good lesson to learn. I need to focus on my safety and I am glad I only busted open my lip out in an open space and didn’t break a bone somewhere in the woods.
There is a biking school that has been marketing to me on Facebook and the advertisements are good. I have looked into attending classes but I can’t justify spending money on learning this when I am a learning and development professional. I plan to locate some good learning content on YouTube and double-check my LMS at work. As a long-term goal, I plan to volunteer at NICA (National Interscholastic Cycling Association). This program offers me an opportunity to become a coach in training in a local team of student learners, then when I graduate I can lead a pack of cyclist students and perhaps include my kids in the team if they are game.
Check out the video to see me bust open my lip and make video footage in a state of shock! LOL!
Getting There
This was easy. The bootlegger’s trail is a quick 5-minute ride from my house. Easily the second-ranked off-road trail in the Saint Louis area and is right next to my house. That’s lucky!
Where Was I?
The Bootlegger’s Run is a 4.7-mile trail through the woods of the upper level of Creve Coeur Park. All Trails has a lot of comments that it is not the best trail for hiking because there are a lot of Mountain Bikers. When I ran there the bikes didn’t bother me but I guess I am a walker and a rider.
One thing I have liked about these solo rides is they give my subconscious mind time to speak up. I have gotten several ideas while on these rides. Many of them are about the Blog or my day job as an Instructional Designer. One that popped up during this ride is especially interesting. It pulls on my background as an actor and an English as a Second Language teacher. I did a lot of theater in high school and received my BA in Theater Arts. While getting that degree I also studied Japanese using a curriculum called Japanese, the Spoken Language (Authors: Eleanor Jorden, Mari Noda) developed by the US government for spies and the like. It was a great language learning platform because it systematically used simple dialogues to reinforce crucial grammatical structures. You relearned how to think and build thoughts according to the Japanese grammar system. (*I used this concept a lot when I worked in Thailand for 7 lucky years teaching English as a Second language ESL.)
In this JSL curriculum, the learner looks a small clumps of very useful conversations and memorizes them one line at a time. These are backed up with well-written explanations of the grammar being introduced. Then you listen to recordings of native speakers saying these lines. After that you work in class and the teacher sets up given circumstances that support the same language (notice the teacher term I used there?) Once the scene is set the students take turns acting out the dialogue with the teacher. The benefit is you get to hear the dialogue multiple times in class and you get to participate. My basic conversational Japanese is not bad to this day, if I had pursued it I would have been set up for success. Instead, I decided to start over and learn Thai from scratch while living and working in Thailand.
So, my idea would work at this point in the curriculum. I came up with the concept to call “Play Right”. At this point in the language learning the students would take the simple sentences that we learned in class and each week, create a video of them speaking the dialogue with themselves or other students in a real setting. Throughout the class, the students could build a video scene of their achievements. This could even become an online resume of sorts the showcase their language skills. Very useful in a country like Thailand where tourism is a large part of the national income. With English being the universal language, That is one of the most useful languages to support tourists.
Another thought that I had that brought more of the theater into the idea was using simple plays as the dialogue. Like a fun play by David Ives. This part may maybe more of a useless pipe dream, but I think it could open the door to more creative results. The Tourist application would be more useful for a resume, but using actual plays would be more valuable for artistic or aesthetic reasons, which is what I am more interested in.
Music
Polo & Pan – Ani Kuni (CC)
Music by To Hot to Play, Lobo Loco, Free Music Archive (CC)
So even though this was on October 1st, I will consider this the final ride of my Cycling More Consistently in September Odyssey. We drove over an hour and a half total for a 1-hour ride along the Katy Trail just North of New Haven, MO.
That being said, this might be the last official tour of the challenge but I have already recorded the next installment of Improvement Dave cycling. It is in the woods, it is mountain biking and there will be blood (literally). So, yeah, I am not going to stop cycling or making cycling videos anytime soon.
Video Evidence of the Ride
This Video Highlights the Content Below
Getting Thereis Half the Fun
Google Maps recommends a route that is just over an hour.
We took the scenic route for 41 minutes.
My daughter threw up right around Balducci’s winery, which was one of our favorite wineries and pizza spots until it was bought by a large conglomerate and they ruined it. Sorry, not going to pay top dollar for frozen pizza. Now the only thing useful at Balducci’s is the dumpster.
We stopped at Quick Trip to get coffee and slushies. (The slushy and the crazy backwood roads are probably what caused my daughter to “blow chunks”.) …at any rate, I was so very excited to see that the bill was exactly $5.55 after tax. I explained to my family that 5 is my lucky number.
Why is #5 My Lucky Number
In the United States (and most of the West) 7 is lucky. In China, Thailand, and most of the East 9 is lucky. So I figure I can like any number I damn well, please.
The number of men is “5”. (6 being the number of the Satan, and GOD is 7 in traditional Judeo-Christian thought.)
The number I swam for as captain on the J.V. water polo team in high school, was “5”.
Our numerical system is based on repeating 10s so “5” is the center, to me this represents the “middle path” or the “straight and narrow”.
I spent 7 lucky years in Thailand and saying #5 in the Thai language is “Ha”. So “555” is synonymous with laughter or happiness.
I don’t really have a 5th reason, but I want a list of 5 reasons for why I like “5”. So, I imagine being 5 years old probably is one of the best ages to be. Self-aware, but you still have that “Child’s Mind.”
Where Were We?
Well, on my Google Maps, I dropped a pin long ago and named it “Riverside Jamz“. More specifically, we were north of New Haven, MO, due west of St. Louis, MO. Just south of a little town called Pinckney, MO. If you have never heard of Pinckney, that’s because it is in the middle of nowhere. Neither Google nor Wikipedia have a single picture or even a population count. Google Maps does not go through Pinckney and the best picture I could find online was this. (below)
Setting Up
When we arrived I started by getting all the bikes set up.
There was only one picnic table in the shade and the table top was not level. I didn’t get a good picture of the table before I started to level it with the pile of limestone rocks nearby, but trust me it was not useable. I then leveled out the benches as well. We threw a quilt over the table and had a nice lunch of spring rolls, salad, and melon.
While we ate a few families drove by the road on little buggies, and then a family drove up in a truck pulling a pontoon boat. This made the trip feel like a short vacation away from our normal routine.
The Ride
After we ate we packed up our picnic stuff and got on the bikes. For a 41-minute drive one way we did a nice 1 hour ride on our bikes. So, that was a lot of driving for a 1-hour bike ride, but we just really liked this spot because of the old bridge right on the river. We have stopped at this little spot on the side of the road 3 or 4 times now.
The only issue we had on the ride was that a chain fell off the gear so we had a fun time working on getting that put back on as a team.
We found it one time while driving home from my uncle’s farm out in Osage County, MO. This is also known as the middle of nowhere, MO.
It was another perfect day. Living life to the fullest, sucking the sweet marrow out of life, and making great memories.
Music
Polo & Pan – Ani Kuni (CC) Polo & Pan – Feel Good (CC) John_Kensy_Music from Pixabay Mindfulness Relaxation & Meditation Music (CC) To Hot to Play, Lobo Loco Free Music Archive (CC)
Hello, this is improvement Dave, and I am David Kolmer. I used and continue to use the WordPress platform to build this blog. There was a prompt on my WordPress dashboard of an idea for a blog post which was “Describe your best week “, or maybe “Describe your perfect week”… something like that. I didn’t click on it, but then realized last night that I had started one of the best days ever.
At any rate, I am going to use this prompt even though I didn’t click on it and submit it to the WordPress Metaverse officially. I will alter it a bit and narrow the scope to 24 hours.
Exposition to the Perfect Day
My perfect day involves me :
Supporting my kids
Supporting my wife
Supporting myself
Initially, in that order of importance.
I had a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to purchase myself a new bicycle for my September biking challenge until I purchased a new bike for my wife. My wife has gone through a few bikes, and they were all gifts or someone else’s bike, and none of them fit her. She’s not an avid biker, but I can tell that our lives would be better if we all had decent bikes.
Wait, What About the Kids?
I should state that I have purchased two balance bikes for my kids since before they could walk. These are bikes that do not have pedals so they can get used to riding without worrying about pedals. Let me see if I can dig up a retro photo…
Look at that handsome dude rocking that balance bike! Proud as a pig in mud!
So, when the kids did get pedals they learned to ride in about 24 to 48 hours. If that doesn’t sell you on a balance bike then you hate children!
Last month, I bought my son a brand-new bicycle. It was a trek pre-caliber at the TREK store. It was what he wanted for his birthday. He shared that his perspective is that I always get him something secondhand and that Grandma and Grandpa put down real money for the big ticket items. (Well, this is my extrapolation. What was said is that my mom bought me a Game Gear portable Sega gaming system for $130+, and he stated, “You never bought me something that expensive.”) So when the grandparents offered to buy this bike I said, “I am buying this one.”
The TREK storeon Manchester Road was very well-equipped and very clean. The service charges for tune-ups and the price for components seemed expensive. Or at least they cost more money than I want to pay. Anyway, purchasing my son a new bike provided my daughter with a very nice silver hand-me-down bike.
We bought her a Unicorn bell that she got at my son’s birthday party to make it more of a “her” bike…
She also got some nice flashing lights.
She wasn’t getting the hang of the pedals so I hooked up the Co-pilot by Wee-Ride and she felt better about pedaling. Just watch her RAWK that for the first time.
SO BOOM MY KIDS ARE TAKEN CARE OF. I HAVE SUPPORTED THEM IN THE MISSION OF HAVING QUALITY BIKES.
A Moment of Weakness
While I was at the TREK store shopping for my son’s bike, I noticed the Marlin. Now this is a bike that I have read about, and I know that the marlin is a quality bike at a good price. However, I also discovered that Roscoe, which is a higher-level mountain bike with a Hardtail, costs significantly more money. I ordered one of those in the view and then the TREK store never called me back. Exit Trek store stage left.
I ALREADY DISCUSSED BUYING A NEW BIKE WITH MY WIFE FOR MY BIRTHDAY AND WE HAD AGREED THAT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA HOWEVER, SOMETHING DIDN’T FEEL RIGHT ABOUT IT. LATER, I REALIZED THAT I SHOULD BE GETTING HER A BIKE FIRST. OK SO THAT’S ALL OF THE PRE-LOG OR EPILOGUE AND NOW WE’RE GONNA GET INTO THE PERFECT 24-HOUR PERIOD WHICH I STARTED LAST NIGHT.
The Perfect Day Started Last Night
Last night I drove with my whole family to pick up some sandwiches at Potbelly. We had some gift cards, so essentially, I paid no money for them, which is pretty awesome. We eat the sandwiches in the car, which is something my family loves to do because it’s somehow wrong but then so right.
We drove to Billy Goat Bicycle Co.down on Manchester Road in St. Louis Missouri. This bike Shop had been recommended by one of my daughter’s friends’ fathers at my son’s birthday party as the most awesome bike shop in St. Louis to go to. I guess it pretty much qualified as that because when I walked in, they had the marlin eight that I was interested in in the dark blue to dark gray fade in my size. They also had a Marline that was very small, which also had incredibly nice coloring from more of a blue to yellow fade which fit my wife perfectly. We did some test drives in the front parking lot. I was wearing sandals, but I didn’t let that hold me back from curving and carving some banks covered with grass on the apartment complex behind the bike shop.
After some amazing discussions with a man called Ben, who was wearing a T-shirt that had bandit from the show, Bluey and the word “DAD” on it, I found I had learned a lot about bikes, gotten some very quality advice on the downfalls or potential pitfalls of tubeless tires, and essentially purchased my wife’s bike moments before I purchased my bike.
Hers
His
So now we both have brand new bikes, and we can fulfill our destiny of taking family bike rides together. Now, that was just yesterday evening.
As I’m writing this, it is only 5:30 a.m. It is raining outside, and I have a window open. Rain is a big part of the perfect day for me.
So far, I have woken up at 4:30 and finessed the water I had in the 32-ounce mason jar next to my bed. I brewed a cup of coffee while I was filling the jacuzzi hot tub in the new basement bathroom with hot water and Epson salts. I noticed that all these push-ups and all these bike rides have made my body very stiff, and my muscles seem to be filled with lactic acid and they’re sticking themselves. Now after exiting the hot tub and dictating this blog post into my phone in the basement to play some of my favorite video games on the PlayStation 3 which I never give myself time to do. It is called PixelJunk shooter, and it is the best game ever in the history of everything.
After that, I plan to do 30 minutes of yoga. After that, I will help put my daughter in the car and give her a Dum Dum sucker and kiss her goodbye kiss my wife goodbye. Then I’ll hang out with my son for about 30 minutes, and brew some more coffee. He’ll probably watch some Minecraft on YouTube kids, that is, he will watch someone else play Minecraft, instead of playing a game himself, (which is normal these days), I think.
While driving to school I saw they were tearing down that old house on our street that was an eyesore!
Then I will go to work in my basement. I recently put together a spare bedroom with an egress window that doubles as a study and a bathroom in the basement and this is my home office.
Today I have finished adding audio to the four modules of EPEC BRONZE for the National Association of Electric Distributors. Next, I will look at the script and enter all of the new script into the notes section of the Articulate Storyline file. This way I can easily print out a user guide PDF because the screens will be updated, and the notes will match. I’ve already aligned all the screen animations with the audio, so the last step is going to be pretty easy. I plan to break my fast at 12 but will probably wait until 2 or 3 because I drank whey protein powder last night at 8 p.m.
Tonight’s Plans
This evening I will pick up my son from school, then pick up my daughter and we will ride home in the Honda Odyssey. Then I will pull some fresh vegetables out of the fridge and some eggs and stir fry that all up in the Thai style I’ll probably fry some tofu as well and heat some of those smoked ribs that I have in the air fryer. Then I will drive to the YMCA with my son, or he will take a level five swimming course while my wife and my daughter ride bikes after that I will ride home in the Honda Odyssey with my son where he and I will probably ride bikes, then we will probably eat some ice cream. (Well, I might not have any ice cream because I am back on my ketogenic and intermittent fasting diet.) The kids will take a bath and we will take our showers. We will read some dog man turn on some colored, moving lights and the kids will go to bed. Now on some days, I would turn on some TV but for the perfect day, I would choose to not do that, instead, I would go to bed early at around 9 PM after drinking some chamomile and mint tea or some decaf coffee.
That will take us to about a full 24-hour period for the perfect day. What was interesting to me is my perfect day started last night and I’m not even halfway through it, It is not yet written, but maybe that’s the most important part of my perfect day. Much of the day is still in the future. It is unwritten, it has potential.
Conclusion
You know what? On second thought I don’t think I’m going to play that video game after writing this post I feel like it’s time to do my first 25 push-ups (of 50) do some yoga and Brew, and some more coffee.
The Best Day Ever
After I wrote the above content, I did some YOGA, My daughter woke up and then we walked outside in the twilight and enjoyed the rain.
We went back inside, I made her some hot chocolate and made a pinky promise that I would do some My Little Pony Cosmic Kids Yoga with her, but we did 15 minutes of the Frozen Yoga by Cosmic Kids featuring none other than Queen Elsa of Arendale.
My daughter said,
“This is the best day ever.”
She says that a lot, and she is always right.
Music by RoyaltyFreeMusic Nver Avetyan from Pixabay Technology Dubstep
Music by To Hot to Play, Lobo Loco, Free Music Archive (CC)
My goal WAS to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023. It has been one week since I completed this challenge. I have done at least 50 pushups a day past the 31-day challenge. On day 36 (yesterday) I did 100 pushups! Then I took a hot bath and had to ice up my arm.
Comparing Day 1 to Day 31
Today I compare what my 1st day of pushups looked like up against my 31st day.
Here are the main points I make in this video:
(I am sorry they are not composed as learning objectives! HAHA!)
In the video, I fail to mention that this 50 pushups a day challenge not only made me commit to holding myself accountable but I was also motivated me to build other skills.
For example, I wanted a logo for my blog but have not been very active in developing it. The energy generated from this project motivated me to sketch out my logo, scan it in, and then design a PNG file in Adobe Illustrator with a transparent background. I actually recorded my screen while designing my logo and plan to release that video next week. Once I got the ball rolling on the pushups, other projects didn’t seem as daunting as they did before. The first step is the most difficult.
Not Too Late to Give to the Children!
I did more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
I am feeling better today than I did yesterday. It got down to 65 degrees here in Saint Louis, MO so I decided to do the pushups outside. I am trying to trim the videos down shorter now so there is less dead time and less talking time.
My goal is to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023. My stretch goal is to do 50 quality pushups in a single set. Today I did two higher-quality sets of 25 pushups, for only 50 quality pushups in total! I think this is the best approach overall to do an actual set of 50 by the end of August.
I did a 5-minute breath work session between the two sets, which is available to view after the two sets of pushups. In this video, I do the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on the exhale.
I’m Doing more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
I am not feeling very well today. In this video, I declare, “That is the thing about consistency, you still show up even when you are not feeling well. I am going to give my 100% even though I don’t have 100% to give. I am going to give my full 83%.) My kids both got Hand Foot and Mought Virus over the weekend, and as our Nurse Practitioner warned, there is now a strain that adults get. Maybe it is the offspring of the Omnichrom Carona 19 virus. I am not pro-vax or anti-vax.
It seems to me like just getting the virus is a vaccination in its own way. Probably more risky than a vaccination but it’s cheaper! and I love a good value! Still, I’d rather just get a vaccine if I can afford it and it doesn’t make me sick. So, now that I have polarized my reader base, let’s move forward to the video where I try to do pushups even though I am not very fit and I am sick!
My goal is to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023. My stretch goal is to do 50 quality pushups in a single set. Today I did two higher-quality sets of 25 pushups, for only 50 quality pushups in total! I think this is the best approach overall to do an actual set of 50 by the end of August.
I did a 5-minute breath work session between the two sets, which is available to view after the two sets of pushups. In this video, I do the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on the exhale.
Please Donate to The Children
I’m Doing more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
It was especially nice outside so I decided to do my daily 50 pushups on the deck behind our house. It was windy and I got a lot of pops and clicks on my microphone. I had the foam wind guard on my mic so I am wondering if it was the wind that caused that. I have never had that issue before.
My goal is to do 50 pushups every day for August 2023. My stretch goal is to do 50 quality pushups in a single set. Today I did two higher-quality sets of 25 pushups, for only 50 quality pushups in total! I think this is the best approach overall to do an actual set of 50 by the end of August.
I did a 5-minute breathwork session between the two sets, which is available to view after the two sets of pushups. In this video, I do the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on to the exhale.
In this video, I brought my small digital kitchen timer to help time the breathwork. I have been using my laptops for timers but that is cumbersome and a few times I have left the computer in random spots in the house and then not known where it was. I recall my time at Wat Chom Thong, in Thailand’s Chiang Mai province where I did a 10-day Vippisana Meditation retreat. We used timers like these at that meditation center. More information about that center here: https://northernvipassana.org/en/
After the breathwork, I place my hands together and raise them to my forehead, and as I do that the church across the pasture rang its bell for 2 PM. I was not anticipating that but for some reason it tickled me. I went on a tangent about how small moments of coincidence or magic like that should be allowed to make us happy. All things are connected in ways we can not understand. I go on to claim that the world is a single organism and we are like the microbes living in that organism. I then made a statement that there are more bacteria in the human body than human cells, but I edited that part out because I looked it up and technically it is not true. If you take into account the red blood cells, the human body is 50% bacteria and 50% human cells. If you think about that, that’s still incredible. The mass of the bacteria is smaller than human cells, so the mass is not 50/50 but the number of human cells to bacteria is estimated to be about half half.
Today again was a very rough day of doing 50 push-ups a day for Saint Jude. I make a good point in this video that you know if I was just healthier and if I had been doing this since I was young, this would be easy. I then get on my soapbox and preach how it’s never too late to start.
I’m going to be honest my cheat day has turned sort of into a cheat weekend. Saturday night, I had a couple beers, and a glass of wine and didn’t eat very well (Pizza, ice cream, Peach cocktails, etc.).
Normally, this really wouldn’t affect push-ups the next day, but since I am old, and I have been eating, very healthily and not drinking alcohol, I can really tell the difference when I do add these things back into my routine. You will notice that in the second set, my kids come down to help in my first set. You can hear them screaming upstairs in the bathtub, but please don’t worry my wife was watching them.
I did a 5-minute breath work session between the two sets, which is available to view after the two sets of pushups. In this video, I do the basic 4-count in, 4-count hold, and 4-count exhale. Then when that feels comfortable I up it to 8-counts for all three. Normally I would do a 4 or 8-count hold after the exhale but having just done pushups and preparing to do more pushups I do not tend to hold on the exhale. In this video, I didn’t do the full 5-minute breathwork because I was very pressed for time.
I am doing 50 pushups a day for August 2023. I am now including all my breathwork in these daily video updates and owning the fact that this is a form of meditation. I am sharing my experience with the practice and the benefits I receive from it.
I’m Doing more than 1,550 Pushups for St. Jude – Please donate to my fundraiser!
Improvement Dave 