Health

Ah, writing. It’s one of the skills that I’ve consistently been praised for throughout my life. I’m pretty good at it, and I think that’s because I enjoy it. It led me to getting an academic degree in English Literature and Culture, simply because I was following the things I was naturally good at. However, just like any other skill, you can only become better at it through consistent practice. This morning I read a wonderful little blog post on writing regularly, and I was touched by his words: ...

Dopamine Listened to an interesting podcast on Dopamine by Andrew Huberman. I always enjoy his content because he is completely driven by science, not by personal opinion. He is truly objective as far as I can tell. Dopamine is often misunderstood. It is not necessarily associated with good feelings after you pursue an activity. It is more related to motivation to engage in certain behaviours. Rewards Scientists did an experiment where they observed children of kindergarten age, and later reproduced this in adults. The children were monitored during school days, where they had blocks of structured time and free time. During structured time their activities were managed. They had to sing or write, for example. Then they had blocks of free time where they could do whatever activity they liked. ...

I noticed multiple times now that during my workouts my mind is generating lots of new ideas for coding projects or blog posts. It is a well known fact that walking stimulates areas in the brain that which will in turn stimulate creativity. But I’m noticing that it starts to happen with strength workouts as well. Although I don’t struggle with the motivation to get myself to the gym, I sometimes feel “guilty” for not spending that time on coding or studying. I’m realizing now that this is a very irrational train of thought. ...

Yesterday I reached a significant milestone. I ran my first 5K! I’ve always been on the heavy side. I did a lot of weightlifting from age 18 to around 27 and I was always rather bulky, but very strong. This meant I was very good at working in the woods or helping people move house, but I’ve never been able to do any running or endurance because my knees would start protesting very quickly. However, I always admired endurance athletes and I had the desire to be able to run more than a few minutes without feeling the urge to die on the spot. ...