#1 - The Return
This is a return to my roots as a blogger. So to catch any newbies up to speed. I began a blog in October 2008 that was sporadically updated. It evolved into a travel blog I called In My Footsteps in January 2010. That blog was meant to be professional. Each post was a specific town I visited complete with photos, places to visit, stay, and eat.
Along the way, I noticed that I’d end up with some funny anecdotes from my road trips and just from life in general. I decided to create a second blog in May 2010 to highlight these funny and sometimes unbelievable stories. I called it Initial Impressions as I thought each post would deal with my first reactions to road trips and random events with little in the way of rewrites or taking time to let more lucid opinions form. It was purely spur of the moment.
Over the ensuing years, the blog evolved into a chronicle of my running career before slowing down and eventually being rarely updated.
In the fall of 2023, I created a Patreon page for subscriptions to support my content. One bit of exclusive content I created was a podcast where I reviewed and tried to shed some light on the fever dream that was the Initial Impressions blog. It was so much fun to relive and I enjoy creating new episodes of that Patreon podcast monthly.
Recently I thought that since I enjoyed recording those podcasts so much, and since my life is still filled with weird, funny, and odd stories, why not start crafting new Initial Impressions blogs? So here we are in February 2024 with the first new Initial Impressions blog in almost 12 years.
These will start as a sort of weekly recap, rather than specific days. It gives me more time to experience more craziness and form odd opinions, and maybe a cryptic post or two.
1. I am a member of a Planet Fitness gym. At times while I’m there a commercial for Planet Fitness will come on one of the TVs. I have to laugh because I’ll look around and say ‘Hey, we don’t have any equipment like that here. No battle ropes, no TRX, no medicine balls, not even any foam rollers.’ It’s like seeing the pristine food in a fast food commercial and then when you get it it looks like someone just stepped on it.
2. I never thought the sound of the Recycle Bin on Windows would be something that brought me nostalgia until it was accidentally turned off for months. When I turned the sound back on and heard that crinkling paper it got me right in the feels.
3. It’s funny how even in a small community if you work hard enough you can avoid seeing someone you don’t want to see for many years. It takes talent to be this good at avoiding someone.
4. I have found myself over the last several years in a constant state of working on, editing, or marketing various creative projects in the hopes of a bigger breakthrough. At times it feels like being on a treadmill where no matter how fast I go I don’t get anywhere.
5. As I look around my place here in the first week of February I see Christmas lights up(well, white string lights), and my mini Halloween pumpkin going strong. I also have sliced turkey in the fridge but not from Thanksgiving.
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| The Nightmare Before Christmas at Thanksgiving Dinner |
6. I highly recommend Exercise With Oxygen Therapy(EWOT) for anyone who has access. The 93% pure oxygen you breathe during cardio has so many benefits, a major one for me is allowing my body to run like it used to, even briefly. The oxygen tricks your brain into thinking it’s not working as hard as it is, thus you feel you can go harder. Here’s a link to explain more: Superhuman Protocol
7. If you had told teenage me that I’d be listening to a ton of downtempo music in my mid-40s I’d have likely shook my head in embarrassment and said I’m getting old. While that is true I find that music triggers something in my focus and creativity, plus there are some great beats.
8. I was training a client the other day, a nice older lady in her early 70s. It was going great until she got irritated at the ‘hip-hop’ music I was playing during the session. The song that was playing? Mickey by Toni Basil from 1981. Jay-Z or 2Pac it was not.
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| Hip-Hop? |
9. Driving down a quiet road in the early morning on the way to work I encountered a raccoon walking directly toward me along the yellow median line. I stopped and eventually, it moved. I had to play chicken with a raccoon. I am now waiting for the day that I play raccoon with a chicken.
10. I have come to realize that some people will just never be happy. They could have everything they want exactly the way they want it and they would still find a reason to be upset. It’s as if they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they didn’t have something to be angry about.
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| Wise Words at the Sagamore Bridge, Cape Cod, Massachusetts |
