Almost no one could expect what would happen in the year 2020. This pandemic hit us hard. Many people lose their jobs and their loved ones, businesses are closed, majority of people can’t go out, travel, and have a blast party anymore. I’m stuck at home, can’t go to the office and it’s harder to meet my friends. But I’m thankful enough since the company I’m currently working for is not impacted much by the virus.
It’s been 8–10 months since the pandemic happened. Most of my time is spent working my ass off until 10–12 pm. There’s no boundary during remote work. I still need to be available 24/7 if anything urgent requires my full attention. But there’s one thing that I just realized remote work is a feasible work lifestyle that I want to keep doing in the future. It creates more reasons for me to become a digital nomad, though. I can still perform my work even though I don’t have to meet my co-workers. I can manage all of the stakeholders in my work by doing hangout/zoom calls or just online chats and having all documentation recorded on some online tools.
Even though it feels fine, two things are missing that only office time could provide: office chat/laugh and ideas discussed. Being able to meet, chat and laugh with your colleagues is fun. It reduces stress, makes you feel less lonely, and makes work more enjoyable. It creates life in the work life. It increases mood and motivation. Ideas also flow through the office discussion that sometimes needs to be added during hangout/zoom calls. Sometimes to tackle these issues, I set time with some of my colleagues to come to the office and just work in the same room as we used to. It feels great!
Aside from work, I now have more time to play games during the weekend. I explored my old hobby again and played perfect games. The feeling you get when you play a perfect game is fantastic, and it helps me to forget the time and anxiety I feel during the day. Some worthy games I played were Final Fantasy VII Remake, The Last of Us Part II, Divinity 2: Original Sin, and Hades. I also tried to watch some series on Netflix, HBO, and Amazon Prime. Found good ones, though: Watchmen, Succession, and The Boys. I even moved to a new place just to feel fresh again.
But those things sometimes are still unable to make days feel so alive. It’s just a dopamine hit, and then it’s gone. Those are not sustainable activities that I can do to feel great. It’s so close to the screen that we all will feel fatigued by too much looking at it. Sometimes I think so hard to wake up. I know I have to do something to fix myself and feel re-energized again. Until I realized that I had to create a new habit that had been missing for a long time. That is a workout routine. I also found an interesting podcast about How to Instantly Achieve a Calm State by Sam Harris. He says that at least we must do fundamental things to have a clear mind, including workout/exercising, socializing, and eating a good diet.
Workout is like a snowball habit.
I did have a post where I started to run continuously and how it made me feel good. But then, it only happened as frequently as it used to when I restarted it during the pandemic.
The way it started was spontaneous, with no preparation. I made a pre-commitment to track my workout activity 30 days forward, calculate how many days I managed to work out, and track post 30 days whether I can sustain the habit or not at least a year ahead. It’s still in process, but the result now, what I can say confidently, is good!
I create a series of tweets where I track my workout habit and express my feelings. So I can revisit it at any time in case I want to avoid working out in the future or just want to understand how much change has happened since the first I started.
During 30 days of pre-commitment, I managed to get 16 of 30 days doing the workout, which also sustains the next month. Now I feel good about myself with less anxiety, happier, more energized, and able to be more focused on work. There’s an influx of energy post-workout that I can’t miss, enabling me to create more reasons to keep doing this. A few times, my body felt like screaming and asking me to move it, and it’s becoming a fun thing to do as compared to the first time I started it when it felt like a duty I needed to conquer.
I’m starting to understand why an athlete is an athlete. Once you’ve begun workout routinely or intensely, it’s hard to go back to pre-workout life since it doesn’t feel good. It’s like betraying yourself to do something you are meant to do. I’m not saying I’m in that state, but I’m going to that state. I want to be physically active, so I can have a healthy body and mind that will enable me to live a better and more fulfilling life.
Our ancestors were men who used to move their bodies a lot through various activities such as walking, farming, hunting, swimming, and building. But as the modern world started to take over and create more jobs that had not existed before, modern work now involves less physical activity and more brain activity. The gym was introduced as a place to fulfill your physical activity need until the pandemic hit, which forced all gyms to be closed and left people unable to work out as frequently as they used to have.
This is when I feel my physical activity falls to the ground. I’m at home, working, eating, and sleeping most of the time. It is more concerning that those activities are reachable in just 3–5 steps. Compared to pre-pandemic, I need to walk more, maybe 50–100 times, just to have my drink and food or just take a short break and talk with colleagues.
With those activities gone, I know I need to run again. Most of the time, I started doing it indoors in the afternoon on a treadmill, but then I changed to the morning since I feel my energy has run out in the afternoon due to work. I think morning is the right time to work out, though it’s more challenging as I need to wake up earlier. But I feel more energized and have longer energy to do the work or anything that consumes energy throughout the day.
Then I started outdoor running at GBK, but at the outer circle of the stadium to avoid the crowd of people who run in the inner circle part. GBK is the best place to work out. The area is so open that sometimes seeing people running and exercising can become a source of energy to keep my run longer. Outdoor running makes me high every time.
Shortly after, I tried trekking with my friends, which was amazing. The sunlight, the view, the path, and the sweat made me feel great and satisfied with the activity. This was because I spent almost 8 months indoors. So the impact of this was just multiplied. In addition, at the end of the road, we closed the short trip by swimming at a small waterfall. By reflecting on this, I will likely do more of this thing again by making a mountain trail.
But trekking and outdoor running are something that I can only do sometimes I want as I need to go to the place which will take more time to get there, it could be more efficient. So what can I do more to get the sweat at the same amount of those activities? Then I came across Body Combat, and so I did it. This thing makes the whole body move in a very intense way. It feels so good.
To sum it all up, those are my stories of making my mind clearer and my body more energized to seize the day. Now I feel easier to make my body moves. It’s a great experience, and I want to be more physically active in the future since I already saw the impact of it, which makes me feel good about myself and boosts my energy.
Making our body move consistently is fundamental to having a healthy body and mind that can help us do things that we always want and want to do. This post will repeatedly remind me why I started it first and why I should keep doing it.
