October 4, 2013: Me Day - Age 28

The second year I've done this. While last year's traditions were oriented around 1) taking a personal inventory and 2) relaxing in the beauty of nature down in Sunnyvale, now that I've moved up to San Francisco, nature yields to indulging in the action of urban life.

6:45, 63˚, shivering in delight. The horizon is a yellow promise through a veil of rooftop plants. Everything is asleep except me, the elevator, and the birds winging overhead.

Create a piece of art.

I inflicted typography on a page of Chloe's hilarious quotes that I've written down over the years. When she's not concerned about what other people might think, she says really crazy things. Too bad it's private; you can never know the depths of her mind except by marrying her, I guess, and I beat you to it.

Measure physical stats and take fitness pictures.

9.9 lbs lighter than this time last year. I was slightly trying to slim down instead of last year where I was trying moderately to bulk up. Lost 3.1 lbs of fat and 6.8 lbs of muscle. Oh well. It's too bad I have to lose strength, but I like being lighter. Once again I look exactly the same despite the ten pound difference.

Measure my max push-ups and pull-ups.

41 push-ups, +4: fast, strict, chin touching the ground.
19 pull-ups, -1: fast, no kipping, chin above bar.

Take a long walk.

Instead of taking a walk, I took a long cruise on Alex's electric longboard today: from Bearbox up through the heart of SF to the blood lab, then to a café, then to South Park where I read my book while a Chinese family sat at a picnic table with me--the parents approved of the girlfriend after the young couple left, unaware that I understood them--and then home. I love the electric longboard and can't wait to get my own Boosted board.

Read from a favorite book.

Pulling one of my favorites from high school for something beautiful today: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. I read it ten years ago and wondered this morning, could it possibly have been so good?

Yes, yes! It is gorgeous! Thrilling! I love the exuberant, experimental style.

Get blood tests.

I ordered the same blood tests from last year from DirectLabs.

Results: I have them, but I hate interpreting them, so these are just going to sit here until I find someone who likes researching this stuff.

• BUN was high but is now normal (12).
• LDL went from 139 to 179, which is high. HDL went from 79 to 94, which is really high. Triglycerides still low at 59. I'm eating lots of grass-fed meat.
• TSH pretty high at 3.79, up from 2.93; kind of hypothyroidic. Total T4 also up to 7.3 from 6.3, but free T4 slightly low at 2.4. T3 pretty high at 35. What does this mean? I don't know; I hate trying to interpret this stuff.
• WBC, which were low last year, are now slightly higher (5.7) and no longer in the "low" range.
• Eos, which were high (9%), are now even higher (11%). What are those?
• Neutrophils are now low, being slightly lower than last year at 38.
• Serum iron increased; TIBC, UIBC, and Iron Saturation are all really bad right now. Too much iron. I need to give blood, but I went to China, so they won't let me. Crap.
• Testosterone: serum 609 -> 895, free 11 -> 17.9; that's good!
• Vitamin D 59.8 -> 48.9, still on the decline. Bad.
• Fibrinogen, which was low last year, is now slightly higher (217) and no longer in the "low" range.
• SHBG is very high again (71.8), like it usually was except for last year's measurement. No idea what that means, either.

Count my possessions and get back down to 99.

Lots of churn since last year. Mostly continuing to minimize old things while adding more, nicer clothes.

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Take stock of finances.

Skritter iOS app revenues really started kicking off after we dropped the iPad app eleven months ago, so income is up 64% from last year, and net worth is up 66%. Pretty sweet! I've been trying to increase spending, but I'm a bad consumer, except for, now, Ubers and sushi.

(If you're me, you get to see stats here. Since you're not me, you see nothing.)

Do Quantified Mind testing.

I started this monthly general cognitive testing battery a year ago to track my long-term cognitive performance. Now I've done thirteen of them, I checked to see if there any significant results. There are a couple, but they don't survive multiple correlation adjustment. This makes sense, as there are only thirteen sessions, and is actually good, because the longer I don't see any changes, the longer I've apparently held off the aging decay of my brain.

Call my family.

Had good conversations with Mom, Dad, and Bro. All is well.

Have a spectacular dinner with Chloe.

Chloe took me out to super premium omakase sushi at Nama, where I stuffed myself rotten. They busted out the dry ice and sushi bridge and a bunch of other stuff. Mmmm. I ate as much as I could, but there was one raw shrimp left, so we smuggled it home in a napkin and seared it as a delicious joke.

Reflect on the past year

I sat down with my journal and evaluated three areas: what went well, what didn't go well, and how my relationships are now.

What went well? This past year, I:

• Proposed to Chloe, ultra-romantically, finally
• Got married, with a better-than-perfect wedding
• Finally got an adventurous trip to China in (for the honeymoon)
• Sold thirteen times as many copies of my book as I had predicted
• Started a new startup with George and Scott
• Moved to a sweet pad in SF, living privately with Chloe for the first time
• Completely overhauled my wardrobe and style, finally having clothes that fit me
• Learned to use Stoicism to endure discomfort and appreciate things
• Moved much closer to producing offspring
• Dragged George across the country to SF
• Made way more money
• Ate, as planned, only one dessert in 2013, vanquishing all such unhealthy treat temptations
• Optimized my reading selection process to read better books
• Improved my nutrition and cooking a little
• Finally found a shower routine that works for me
• Started flossing and have maintained it easily
• Got better at spending money through a ritual
• Hung out with most of my family (mostly at the wedding)
• Improved nickwinter.net steadily
• Did a few cool side projects: the Telepath HUD, Bantling, Chirp, the wedding website, and the percentile feedback thing.
• Connected with a bunch of interesting people and networks in the Bay Area
• Kept doing Skritter and Anki consistently, and got rid of useless knowledge
• Improved my skin
• Didn't even bald that much more
• Reduced habit load to an easily manageable amount
• Reduced Skritter feedback/email load
• Have been spending just-right amounts of time playing fun video games with friends

What didn't go well?

• Exercise has not been nearly as good as last year; muscle and strength went down because I spent much less time on it
• Injured my foot and was less social for months as a result
• Personal growth was lower than last year, since I'm mostly doing things I know
• Still not extra practiced on smiling, speaking clearly and eloquently, being a good conversationalist, and standing all day
• Slow laptop has been lingering far too long
• Faraway thinking hasn't been as easy to do
• I haven't had any interesting Quantified Self discoveries despite continuing to do some experiments and am not really sure what it's for any more

How are my relationships?

(The detailed list is me-only, too.)

Organize my files and computer desktop.

I just archived screenshots, moved code foldes into subdirectories, put some things in Dropbox, deleted other things from Dropbox, put some other things in Hog, and changed my Terminal window group settings. I'll probably mess with this more when I buy a new computer. Soon.

Add at least one tradition.

Let's formalize the dinner-with-Chloe tradition, and also add a new surprise-wife tradition.

Destroy at least one habit.

It's time to ruthlessly cull down my end-of-day Google Docs spreadsheet tracking. I'm also going to put things into tabs by year so that each tab doesn't get horribly long.