Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 4

Stop Trying to Be Productive

The New York Times:

“It’s everywhere,” said Julie Ulstrup, 57, a photographer in Colorado. “It’s in blog posts, it’s on social media, it’s in emails I get from people like, ‘use this time productively!’ As if I usually don’t.”

But in the midst of a global pandemic that has upended nearly every facet of modern life, people are finding it harder and harder to get things done.

A few weeks ago, the optimistic thought was that it would only be a few weeks. I’m just as guilty of everyone for trying to get too many things done. I thought that by eliminating my commute I’d have all this extra time. But I don’t, and nobody else really does either. It mostly just got filled up with worrying.

The New Normal For Life Under a New Plague

ganzeer:

While I understand the need for people to believe that for the benefit of one’s own comfort and sanity, but that’s only if you’re frightened by the notion of adaptability, of needing to make lifestyle changes in order to adapt to a new reality. We, as a species, do it all the time though! We’ve even done it within our own lifetime(s) (it should be as clear as day to anyone above thirty). That is a reassuring thought, isn’t it? We’re good at adapting. We can do this. The difference this time is that the changes we make are going to have to be relatively drastic and enacted at unprecedented speed.

I hope a lot of this doesn’t happen but I fear it probably will. I already miss so many things.

An encyclopedia of appreciations

Robin Sloan:

The thing about blogging is, you can just write about the things you love. A “professional” “critic” (scare quotes because who even knows what words mean anymore) has to do something else, something more difficult: manage a kind of unfolding… aesthetic… worldview? Balance one thing against the other? A blogger suffers no such burden. A blogger can simply

love a thing, and write about it.

I began blogging again around the beginning of 2018 again after taking many years off. It began because I found blot.im, which simplified the process to the point where all I needed to do was open a new text document. But it took me a while to find my footing. I’m realizing that finding footing is kind of the point.

Peloton after 9 months

Last time, I said I’d dropped the habit a bit. The new year was approaching, which was prime time to get back on a horse. I think I did, but not because of the new year.

I almost want to seperate this post out to Jan-Feb and then March, but this is already a lot of work. I’m glad I’m doing it, though. These 90-day checkins are useful and I’d recommend them for anyone doing any sort of fitness regime. Especially if you’re an RPG-kind of person and like to see stats back up your work.

This is the data just for the last three months.

Number of types of workout



Fitness Discipline
Count




Cardio
7


Meditation
8


Strength
30


Stretching
3


Walking
1


Yoga
19


Grand Total
68



Workout Type



Workout Type
Number of classes




Bodyweight
3


Core
5


Dance Cardio
1


Emotions
4


Full Body
8


Full Body Stretch
1


HIIT, Cardio
6


Lower Body
1


Relax & Sleep
1


Restorative Yoga
1


Stretch
1


Upper Body
13


Upper Body Stretch
1


Warm Up/Cool Down
1


Yoga Flow
18


Zen in Ten
3


Grand Total
68



Calories Burned (this would be massively approximate)



Fitness Discipline
Calories Burned




Cardio
265


Meditation



Strength
2005


Stretching
50


Walking
16


Yoga
1174


Grand Total
3510



Time Spent in minutes



Fitness Discipline
Minutes




Cardio
80


Meditation
80


Strength
580


Stretching
35


Walking
10


Yoga
410


Grand Total
1195



Instructor Frequency



Intructor
Number of classes




Aditi Shah
9


Andy Speer
2


Anna Greenberg
6


Becs Gentry
2


Chase Tucker
4


Denis Morton
3


Jess Sims
3


Kristin McGee
6


Matty Maggiacomo
8


Multiple Instructors
1


Oliver Lee
2


Olivia Amato
4


Rebecca Kennedy
3


Robin Arzon
6


Ross Rayburn
3


Sam Yo
2


Selena Samuela
4


Grand Total
68

So! Some notes.

I removed “Live vs On-Demand” classes because the result was 0 live classes again. My condo just doesn’t have the bandwidth for the live classes, and they always fail. I often have to pre-load the class in order to watch it without buffering. This isn’t the case with literally any other streaming video service.

I also had trouble with Airplay 2 and Chromecast. Eventually, I gave up and bought an Apple Display Adapter just for the purposes of plugging my phone into my bedroom television.

I took 68 classes in 3 months. That’s another reduction in class amounts, which is not what I would have guessed before I checked the data. It feels like I’ve been doing Peloton everyday. To break it down further, I took 32 classes in January, 15 in February, and 21 in March.

I’m doing more yoga, less strength, and more cardio. And even though I took fewer classes, I burned more calories than last time. This seems to be attributed to the yoga. And though I took 21 fewer classes, my time spent in Peloton is almost the same as it was in the fall.

This tells me that I’m taking longer classes, and the data bears that out. I think that’s a sign of progression. I began with 10-15 minute classes last summer and now I’m regularly doing 20-30 minute ones. A 30 minute class doesn’t seem as daunting as it did 9 months ago.

I’ve been quarantined for the last three weeks just like everybody else, but I’m not sure this set of data really accounts for much of a behavior change yet. However, I bet that the 1-year data set will show a difference. That’s my guess for next time.

Randy Savage vs. Bret Hart

My longtime friend Jason Mann has me on the newest episode of Wrestlespective:

Jason is joined by longtime friend of the show K Sawyer Paul (@ksawyerpaul) to discuss the first meeting between the Macho Man vs. the Hitman.

I don’t think we missed a step even though we hadn’t done one of these since 2016.

Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card

I just got an email from the Toronto Public library listing 38 Ways to Use the Library from Home:

Since library branches are closed, and we’re all staying home as much as we can, we want to make sure that you’re stocked up with things to read, watch, listen to, learn and do. Here’s a quick guide to all of the online services you can use with your library card:

Here’s what I’ve been using for years:

Hoopla for TV shows and movies
Kanopy for movies
Overdrive for books (through the excellent Libby). These books will sync with your Kindle or Kobo as well.
RBDigital for magazines
Flipster for magazines
Pressreader for newspapers
Lynda.com for video courses

God, our library rules.

Link Blog, March 2020

A Text Renaissance.
HBO’s The Outsider Has the Best Cast on TV.
Life-Hacks of the Poor and Aimless.
Here’s What You, Personally, Should Do About Coronavirus.
Perfect Stovetop Popcorn.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is tearing my family apart.
‘I Like My Values Better’: An Interview with Daniel M. Lavery.
The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What’s Coming.

Cura, March 25, 2020

Note: The playlist embedded above will always be the most recent playlist and might not match the list below.

Cura is my Spotify mixtape. You can listen to it and subscribe here. I keep it as one playlist so it’s easy to subscribe to. I update it fairly frequently, but I also keep an archive playlist so you don’t have to miss a thing.

I hope you like it. I made it for my friend Liane, to give her a bit of a Tom Waits survey after she came into the office one morning and was like “who is this guy? Do only Men like him?” and I said “Yes, that’s the law.”

Here’s the track listing for this week:

Big In Japan By Tom Waits

Clap Hands By Tom Waits

Blind Love By Tom Waits

Singapore By Tom Waits

I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You By Tom Waits

Hold On By Tom Waits

Ruby’s Arms By Tom Waits

Make It Rain By Tom Waits

Come On Up To The House By Tom Waits

Falling Down By Tom Waits

Lucky Day By Tom Waits

The Best of Youtube, March 2020

Youtube is a bad place, but every now and then a good video appears. Because I can’t seem to stop going there, I can at least make it easier for you (and future me) to see what was worth it.

The Lighthouse, Twilight, And Masculinity.
The Magic Of Final Fantasy 7’s Plot Twists.
When can Mario retire?.
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Anchor just made it easier to start a podcast while we’re all social distancing

The Verge:

Anchor, the podcast-making app now owned by Spotify, is launching a feature today that’ll make it easier for friends to record shows together from afar. The feature, called Record With Friends 2.0, allows people to record a podcast from their browser, even if they don’t have an account with Anchor. Up to five people can record at once, although the host still has to use the Anchor app.

Holy crap. If the audio is good—and that’s a big if—that’s a major hurdle in podcasting that Anchor just overcame.