As I sit here on a rock on the beach at nearly midnight with the waves lapping over my feet I can hardly believe I’m here.  I could not have imagined I would be looking out over the Panama bay horizon glowing from the lights of container ships tonight.  I can’t help but to think that despite the chaos of life and my own personal ability to cause havoc that my life would be so ideal at this moment.  

Like many of my life’s wild adventures I did not make an intentional effort to be here today.  My presence is absolutely the result of the people I have surrounded myself with.  Specifically, my amazing wife who made this happen as a gift to me.  But as I pull this iPad closer to avoid the incoming tide and the splashes that come with it, I am ripped with questions.   Why have I been blessed with such a great life?  How does Z know how to bless me with amazing experience yet I can hardly gift her with a good scent?  

I want everyone around me to have an amazing life but I feel like my answer is always to work harder but I miss the intricate detail everyone is working harder for.  I am very proud of the ability to work harder and longer but I am disconnected by the inability to acknowledge why my closest of family are absolutely grinding. 

BAH!  The iPad has water running down it from the rising tide splashing against the rock I’m sitting on and I am completely soaked having spent the last hour thinking about these few words.  It’s time to post this and head back before I lose it and have to swim.   

I pray everyone can work hard and ponder their existence on a beach in their own head….  

I navigated my way back to the resort and resolved that you actually need a Z.  I have one, so you are are on your own.  

If you had asked me if I had any idea what I was getting into, a solid “no” would have been the most appropriate answer. 😂 I received the keys to our house back on October 1st and given the circumstances, Z and I decided to renovate! During this round we chose to replace all the flooring, trim and paint. We will be remodeling the kitchen cabinetry and bathroom amenities in a future remodeling round.

After renting our home to some awesome people for two years, it’s time to head back to Scottsdale and get it back in shape so we can get ready to move back in! We likely wont move back in until after March but we’re excited at the thought! Hopefully it’s in great shape!

Life is really good. Maxine learned how to swim earlier this summer by spending a lot of time at the pool and just figuring it out on her own but she really got to flex and have a lot of fun late this summer as we went to Scottsdale where it was still over 100 despite the fall temperatures kicking in northern Virginia.

How do you team build with a remote team? Despite daily meetings and being virtually connected through chat all day every day there’s clearly a huge opportunity to bring people together face to face, which doesn’t happen like you would experience in a normal office setting.

Wow, I can’t believe how fast time flies. During our short excursion here to the New England area of the United States, Mason was born in our home and advanced through the first year of his life. It’s hard to even keep up. It’s impossible to spend enough time with the precious humans that are our children.

One of the pitfalls of moving around a lot is that time can blast by before you realize you haven’t seen your greatest friends in half a decade.

What’s going on?

I’m trying the carnivore diet because, like any diet, it seems like it could have a positive impact on my life. I don’t imagine I will permanently damage anything by eating just meat and eggs for 30 days. I’m really curious how I’ll feel on this hyper-keto diet. This is of course not a very scientific reasoning but it works for me.

I’m going to log how I feel along with the food I ate. I’m training to compete in triathlons this summer so I may share some details about how I feel exercising but will save the exercise log unless it becomes relevant. On average I burn about 1,200 calories a day exercising 5 days a week. I’m weighing myself daily and will drop a graph of the time period at the end. I wear a Garmin Phoenix 6 so if there are any other neat changes to the metrics it’s measuring, I will share those at the end of this exercise. I’m also not logging all the extra salt I put on food. The only seasoning I’m using on anything is salt and I’m using a lot of it.

When this is all said and done, I will get the Walk-in-Lab Wellness #2 Essential Blood Test performed and see how broken I am. My cholesterol is already a bit high but all my other markers are within normal measurements. Here’s to hoping I feel great!

I fell off the bandwagon after nearly three weeks and my blog editor was throwing an error so I abandoned the completion of the project. I did however start to come around and feel pretty darn great after two weeks so I will come back to this and try it again.

We took the Amtrak Auto Train again to introduce Mason to great grandma and celebrate her 87th birthday! This time we upgraded from coach to a pair of roomettes and the experience was awesome!