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Grind

I haven't had too much going on in the past few weeks. This feels like more of a grinding period in my life where I am just kind of keeping my head down and moving forward. This would be part of the video montage if my life was a movie, not worthy of major screentime.

Personal Updates

Continuing in the theme of talking about my body, I feel somewhat at peace that I have figured out what was causing me trouble in my hip. I have made some alterations to my workout regimen in order to address the underlying problems, and although I feel very weak and am not able to do the numbers that I could do before the injury became problematic, I think that it is better to build a solid foundation even if I will have to do some slightly embarrassing weights for a while. 

I also feel like I have slightly been sliding in my strength gains and so I am going to try to make some modifications to my diet to get into a rhythm of eating the right things more consistently. This will include trying some different foods and ways of getting to my target calories and macros. 

A few updates on other developments in my life for both my thesis and my work. I am starting to narrow down a topic for my thesis and my advisor has been extremely helpful and communicative which is a huge step forward from my experience with my advisor my Junior year. I am excited to put some more work into that over the coming months and hammer something down before the start of the school year. For my work I was tasked with reviewing resumes, interviewing, and hiring/training some new interns which has been a cool process so far. It has definitely given me some perspective as I go through the application process elsewhere

Books/Other

I have not been reading a lot of books recently relative to what I was doing in previous months and I think that is for the best. I really had not watched TV or movies for quite some time, and it is good to take a bit of a break and sort of reset before diving into some more books. I think trying to maintain a balance is a good strategy where I do not feel like I am forcing myself to continue getting through books especially as I am no longer prioritizing a number of books. 

That being said I have enjoyed going through Meditations especially because I recently subscribed to the Daily Stoic and have been reading and listening to the content that they put out. It is cool to learn about the different philosophies and ways that people throughout history have thought about all of the varied problems that we encounter in our daily lives. It is helpful to take a break from the craziness of life and the constant barrage of different media vying for my attention and I think stoic philosophy and meditation would be a good way of accomplishing that goal. 

Gratitude

I think for this week's gratitude post I will say music. I believe I am lucky to live in a time where I can find just about any song from any time and play it more or less for free at any time. I really like listening to music and it has the capacity to help me deal with different emotions, distract me while I work, and add a little bit of spice to my life. I have not really been in a situation in quite some time where I am able to listen to music in a group setting which is also very nice, but I am looking forward to the day where I can do that again.

Over the past year or so I feel like I have gotten more into music for a number of reasons. An alum from Princeton developed a music sharing app that made me listen to music in a different way and led me to create some new playlists which has been a fun experience. In the past few months, I have been listening to music slightly less just because I would opt to listen to a podcast or an audiobook instead, but as I have slowed down my reading I am making more time to listen to music which has been nice.
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