Tag: cooking

June 2022 Newsletter: Hot boy summer

So we are now in June. The weather is supposedly nicer. It’s a time to wear tank tops and soak in the rays. My friends hate it when I call this summer hot boy summer but I’ve been working out and am in the mood to have a little fun. It is a packed summer and one that will hopefully conclude with the finishing of multiple professional certificates.

Getting Ready for July

July will mark the second annual sustainability month as I explore topics that are near and dear to my heart. For preparation this month, I am making it a goal to remind myself every moment I get to ride my electric bike, which I rode for the first time the other week! If all goes well, it’ll be a month of bike rides.

Mental Health Awareness Month

Mental Health awareness went really well! My goal with the series has been to measure my personal growth and push the limits of what I’m comfortable with. To that end, I achieved my goal. After I wrote ‘A tale of two Mikes’ I have made an active effort to go by Mike. I posted on LinkedIn regarding this change and think overall it’ll create a better me. It’s a small change but truly feels like a fresh start, where I can accept every aspect of myself. And of course I wrote about my Dad. When I finished writing the article, I felt a huge weight off my shoulders and I feel better than I have in a long while. It finally feels like my life will start moving forward after the last couple years.

Year of Desire

This year is about myself. A time to reflect and improve who I am. That’s not to say the other years I’ve neglected my well being but most of the time I don’t act. I wait and wait until feelings pass. So this year I am doing everything in my power to act. Other aspects of this year are my self image. I am working on body positivity this year! Already over the last couple months I have been feeling much better regarding my overall look. This has been primarily thanks to guided work at classes such as Yoga and Spin. It’s also a time to focus on dating and relationships over career. While I can juggle both at the same time, I feel in the past I have blatantly ignored my love life. An exciting year for sure and thus far I’m feeling good about my prospects.

For This Month

This month will be another relaxed month as I plan articles for Sustainability month in July. I may write an article later in the month if I have time but most likely it’ll have to wait till August as the series take a while to work on.

Outside the Blog

Life has been going relatively well. I’m making money, will be a day camp counselor in late June and have been working out with most of my free time. I joined an adult Co-Ed soccer league and played my first match the other week. I’ve been off social media for a while now and that includes dating apps. It’s overall been a liberating year as I do some much needed soul searching.

Cooking

Cooking has been going slow. I’ve made a few recipes here and there but took about a month off. The beet dishes have been my favorite while my experiment with eggplant went okay. For now, I might stick with beet dishes as I have a blast making them. For eggplant, I simply roasted them. In the future, I think I’ll need to prepare it in a salad and do a proper dish. Cookies have been fantastic and I seem to have a knack for baking. I have a lot of recipes planned, so I’m hoping for better cash flow over the summer so I can spend money on more dishes I’ll enjoy.

And thus ends this months newsletter. Next month will be Sustainability Month and with it three articles dedicated to a sustainable life. We’ll see how much I switch it up from last year and I’m excited to focus my efforts on the drafts this month. Come August there’ll once again be a Newsletter and we’ll gear up for the colder weather that comes with the changing of seasons. As always, thanks for reading!

March 2022 Newsletter: When Fortune finds you

Another month, another newsletter. The year will once again be ramping up as I prepare for April, May and eventually July and October. Articles are being planned, poems are being written, and stories are coming together.

A lazy month

I’m going to take March as a lazy month. The weather is nice and I’ve been working more hours at work. The sun is shining through my blinds as I write this and I am simply relaxing on my day off. With this month, it’ll only be this newsletter. April will be a month filled with poems so I’m okay with taking a break.

What have I been up to?

A lot of walking. I’ve walked more this year than I have in a long while. Pokémon Go has helped motivate going on walking adventures where I simply enjoy nice weather while catching Pokémon. This year in general has been a Pokémon heavy year as I play through Shining Pearl (the fourth generation of Pokémon) and gear up to jump into Legends of Arceus. It’s more or less been a celebration of Pokémon and I’ve been enjoying the journey as I keep myself busy.

Outside of Pokémon I hosted a game night with friends and it was an absolute blast. I opted for a combination of board games and Mario Party. I plan to do more in the future but it’ll be tough to do them monthly. However, it’s one of the best ways to keep in touch with friends so it’s worth the effort.

I boiled beets. This may not seem like a big deal but it marks the start of my ‘back to cooking’. My New York Times cooking subscription is paid in full and I will slowly begin to cook over the year. I have twelve months, so what could go wrong.

Dog Training!

It’s finally time! After years of having Abby, my Golden Retriever, she will be going to training. She is currently three but better late than never I suppose. I am doing classes with my brother and mother which start on the 23rd; who knows, I might even start writing about my dog if I enjoy the classes enough.

Dating

I’m considering making dating a top priority once more. I have a couple of dating apps as my lifeline for a man adrift at sea and I’m seeing where it leads. Ideally I have a meet-cute where I bump into someone in person but as I get older I don’t know how likely that’ll be. 2020 was supposed to be my year of dating and while I had found success, the Pandemic turned it into a year of self reflection. Will there be more dating articles, who knows? People seem to enjoy when I talk about the follies of love, so nothing is off the table this year.

April

National poetry month! The format is set and this year will be a good one. April is not like my typical poetry. It is the only month where I dive in a little deeper and explain the meaning behind the poem. It’ll be three poems and this year is set to have a good variety for each. I’m feeling a love poem for April, so stay tuned.

And that’s a wrap for the March Newsletter. The next newsletter will be in June. Get ready for an awesome year of writing and content. And as always, thanks for reading!

February 2022 Newsletter: Is Love in the air?

How’s it going?

February is moving along. It’s a strange time in my life right now. I’ve finally found some stability amidst the chaos and I am able to take it one day at a time. I work about 13 hours a week and for the moment, the extra free time has been nice. No more 40 hours a week, wake up at 3am and get home by 1pm. Just simple evening shifts and a morning shift on Sundays. I know this cannot last forever but it’s been nice during the Pandemic to finally have a chance to catch my breath. Eventually, I’ll need to be working fulltime again and even consider continuing my education to add more capital to myself.

Outside of work, I have been doing a lot more walking as per my new years resolution. I’ve gotten way too into Pokémon Go and have been battling my way across my neighborhood for the last couple months or so. For whatever reason, I’ve been getting more shinies in the last year than I have in my entire 20 years of playing Pokémon.

For the blog

This month is going to be relatively low key. My ‘State of the Blog’ post took slightly longer than expected and landed into the first week of February rather than the last week of January. Nothing too crazy there. The plan is consistency and this year should have everything I want to write about finalized. For this month I’ve been brainstorming a poem and while it’s not quite ready yet I’m excited to be writing a poem since it’s been a hot minute since my last one.

Other Things

I tried Yoga for the first time the other day! It was surprisingly enjoyable. It involves stretching (which I suck at), exercise (been a hot minute) and a mix of meditation (which I have been rocking). Cooking has yet to manifest itself but I grow tired of frozen burritos and potstickers so I imagine it’s only a matter of time. My bike is prepped and ready to ride, so now that I have a job I’ll probably try commuting to work everyday.

Thanks for reading! As we gear up for March, the blog will start to pick up. April is National Poetry Month, May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and July is my Sustainability Month. For now, I get to take a breath and enjoy the calm.

New Year, New Mike: The wheel of reinvention never stops.

Yes, it is January. And what does that mean? Reflection but of course. My blog is one big ode to my self improvement. Years ago, I had the brilliant idea of using my blog as a way to keep track of my New Year’s resolutions. A look at what I want to be and a way to hold myself accountable. Since then, I’ve been able to look back at years past and see if I accomplished what I set out to accomplish. I’ve had surprising success writing out my resolutions this way and I’m excited to share what I have planned for this year.

What I’ve Learned

Since I’ve started posting my habits on my blog, I’ve kept my goals as continuous goals. It’s not a one and done list! Instead, I modify and adapt. As such, my goals aren’t shear chaos as they were in years past. They are a constant and I’m glad. With each passing year, they become more focused and refined.

I have started using January as a planning month. Instead of running to the gym come January first, I take my time to carefully consider what I want to do. Since I’ve only started doing this quite recently, I have no idea what the end result will be.

Not a French Kisser

One of my goals for last year was to learn French. My German has become much improved since my youth and I found it time for a new language. I have a French friend and one of my dreams is to make my triumphant return to Europe, not as a boy but as a man. So I’ve been practicing French. The great news is that I’ve started. The bad news is I haven’t been practicing as much as I like. So this year, I’m doubling down. Lessons every day, more French shows, and listening to podcasts. As an added goal, I want to do more to measure my success with languages. My reasons, pardon my French, are rather dorky. I am learning Japanese simply for the sake that I’ve played Nintendo games my entire life. French is to impress my friend. And German was so that I wouldn’t starve to death in the airport when I did study abroad.

My goal right now is to learn French, German, Spanish, and Japanese to fluency. Outside of those languages, I may or may not pick up sign language but only time will tell. My Spanish is rusty and needs work. German I can understand but like Spanish my goal is to learn it so I can hold conversation. This is going to be a year of polish and I’m excited to see where it takes me.

Coding

Coding went surprisingly well. My main focus this year is web development. I’ve been lazy the last couple of months but I found coding material that is not only practical but enjoyable. But tough. Very, very tough. If I build a game, great, but web development comes above all else. I’m putting no pressure on myself for this, I am simply treating it as another skill to learn. It could take years or weeks, but my pace is my own.

Piano Man play me a tune

One of my goals has been to hone my musical craft. In my effort to be the smartest man in the room, music is one obstacle I haven’t quite been able to tackle. Motivation is key. So I reviewed instruments and landed on piano. It’s a social instrument and meant to be shared. I can walk into a building and should I find a piano, nine times out of ten I can sit down and play. The other aspect is lessons are easily available. Piano song guides are plastered around the internet and if I want to learn a song, I can. Try doing the same for violin and you’ll find much more of a headache. I still have my Skillshare account, so I’ll be doing lessons over there. It’ll be off and on but I’m hopeful something will stick eventually. The goal is to make it fun and slowly but surely I am getting there.

Cooking

An elusive habit since I’ve moved back home. In college, I learned how to cook. I made many dishes during my studies and found that cooking was not only cost effective but also a tastier option to eating out. So this year, I’d like to ease back into cooking my own meals. The plan currently is to sign up for a New York Times Cooking subscription and to start looking through a cooking blog I only recently found out about, Food52. I am going to slowly integrate cooking as a lifestyle choice rather than simply force myself to cook for the sake of cooking. There is no set plan for my meals but I’m starting the year by simply looking at interesting recipes. Life is a little chaotic right now so I don’t know when I’ll go shopping but I have faith this year I can really get back into making delicious meals.

Big Picture Goal

Individual, SMART goals are great, but they’re not enough to move someone forward. As has become tradition, I’ve been theming my years. A year of Assertive here, a year of New there… These frameworks help set up the plan for the year and help bring together my “Why”.

So this year I want to be my year of Desire. Desire in the sense of asking myself what I want and setting out to get what I want. When I became an Eagle Scout, I picked out a silver coin of one of our laws. In that moment, I picked courteous as I thought it best represented who I was. Always thinking of others, trying to please everyone to the best of my abilities. Later in life I learned that if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. And now I’m ready for the next evolution of that concept; being courteous to myself. So this year is about my goals and getting ahead in life. It’ll be paying off my student loans, helping with as many events as I can and eventually transitioning to project management roles. It’s time I stop sidelining myself and focus on my success, whatever it takes to get there.

Other Goals for the Year

While new skills are a blessing to learn and typically what I choose to focus on, I also want to instill other habits beyond simply building my human capital. For that, I have two goals for 2022. And those two goals are more walks and riding my bike again.

Walking

In Corvallis, I opted to walk every day to class. It gave me time to think and enjoy simply being in the moment. I could walk everywhere and it was great. Now, when I try to walk, I find I have no destination. So I’ve been looking to change that. I’ve recently gotten into Pokémon Go this past year and downloaded Pikmin Bloom as a way to encourage walking. Now going out has a destination and I couldn’t be happier. This year, I want to ramp up my walks and make them more rewarding. Between the two apps, I think I’m on the right track.

Biking

I bought an electric bike. Right before the Pandemic… The good news, last year I finally put it together. How many times have I ridden it? Once… I went from biking every day in college to nothing. So this year, we are going to course correct. I want to ride and I’m going to use my brother to help me get back in the habit. He’s started riding a lot this last year and he clearly has found a motivation I am lacking. So the easiest way forward is to join him. Sibling outings until I’m comfortably riding on my own again. I’ve felt rather homebound for the last couple years with my anxiety, so I’m hoping bike rides will help restore some of the freedom I lost. It’ll be nice to bike to work instead of taking the bus and should I need to get somewhere, it’ll hopefully be less of an ordeal than it has been for the last two years.

Happy New Year! That’s it for the article! Overall, I’m hopeful 2022 is going to be a great year. I’ve taken a lot of time for myself during the Pandemic and have come away better for it. Cheers to 2022!

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