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4th/Moving Out

I took last week off of posting due to the craziness of 4th of July weekend and the fact that I was not really settled in to my new living situation yet. I should be back to regular posting for the rest of the summer after this weekend.

Personal Updates

I am now fully moved out of my house for the first time since October, and it is very nice to have a change of setting. I was able to move into my room for the school year early which is really great for my summer workouts. I have done my covid tests and everything to be able to do workouts with my team on campus in the mornings and living up the street instead of an hour away at 6 am has made a huge difference.

Last week we were doing heavy singles on squat and bench and I was somewhat pleased with the results, I did not get quite as heavy as I would have liked, hitting 345 on bench and 435 on squat, but still am happy that I am moving past my injuries. I am now getting into a groove of doing the lifts and runs with my teammates which is an upgrade from lifting at Crunch. I am definitely looking forward to the season and getting to know all of my new teammates, given that half of the team will be guys I have not met before.

I have done a slightly better job at reducing my screen time this past week, but it is still higher than I would want it to be. I think working more and having more options for how to spend my time definitely helps, and I have started to try to learn poker as a hobby, so hopefully that will be a useful use of my time going forward. 

I still have not heard word from the alternate job opportunity that I am looking forward to potentially getting for the remainder of the summer. It has definitely been frustrating trying to communicate with the alum that I am meant to contact, but hopefully it will work out that I can get a sufficient amount of experience and exposure to know whether or not that line of work is something that I can see myself doing long term. 

I have also not really been able to do much work on my thesis unfortunately. I say unfortunately even though 

Books/Other

I have definitely slowed down in my book reading and also am quite behind on my podcasts. The craziness of moving in and getting settled have definitely been a contributor to me getting so behind. The other thing that has slowed me down a bit has been the fact that the current book I am on is a biography of Teddy Roosevelt and the audiobook is 36 hours which is quite a beast. I personally do not like all the monotony of autobiographies and historical accounts so I definitely have less motivation to get through this. That being said, I am almost through it with only a few hours left, and I am excited to move on to another book and catch up on podcasts as well. 

Gratitude

For this week's gratitude post I want to say that I am thankful for the opportunity to do service. I did a very small act of service this weekend for the first time in a while and it reminded me of a lot of the opportunities that I have had in the past and how they have made me feel. There is a saying that people use along the lines of "if you want to help yourself, start helping others." I feel that it is easy to get caught up in your own life and all of your problems even though there are a lot of people out in the world that are going through way more under worse conditions. Being in touch with the less fortunate helps me to appreciate all that I have and not get to the point where I am taking things for granted.

I think that as I stop playing football and have some more free time, I would like to try to find opportunities where I can do some volunteer work and work with people. I feel that I get closer with myself and with people in general once I am able to put myself in that type of position where I am giving of my time in a way where I know that I will not get anything back. I feel that it is a bit tougher now that I am not in high school anymore. There were a lot of opportunities that were easily accesible for me to give service, whether it be through the campus ministry or on various service trips. I am sure that there are plenty of similar opportunities on campus now, but unfortunately I have felt like I have not had the time to seek out those opportunites. I am interested to see if this feeling will still persist once I get back into the chaos of the school year.



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