Day 150

Steady rain, a grande Peppermint Mocha, dark by six o'clock and a chill in the air. If I didn't know any better, I'd think it were November back home. But don't feel too bad for me....I still managed to enjoy the Little Italy farmers market, go for a two mile walk and avoid wearing anything heavier than my Flatbush hooded sweatshirt. All in all, my 150th day in San Diego is heart-warmingly cold and gloomy, if that makes any sense at all.

150 days. Amazing.

Time is starting to really pick up the pace. While it still feels like I just got here in some respects, it boggles my mind to see that nearly half a year has gone by since I got here.

I was recently asked why I was counting the days. The short, flippant answer: Doogie Howser. Ever since I powered up my Commodore 128 back in 1980-something and saw that flickering, monochromatic cursor awaiting my every keystroke, I thought I could be as cool as Doogie Howser with his computerized journal and never-ending thoughtfulness. Who didn't? When you think about it, he was blogging before there were even blogs.

The longer, more convoluted answer: I'm on a mission. What I've found over the years is that trying to come up with something deep and insightful (or just plain coherent) on a daily basis for the purpose of a journal or modern-day blog is a daunting task. Life's just not that exciting on a day to day basis. Well, to be accurate, at least my life isn't. Or so it seems. When I look back now and try to retrace even the large, monumental events in my life, I realize more and more that it's those mundane, microscopic moments that I truly missed. I always find it easier to tell what happened, but not why, because the details have slowly washed away. It's like finding a paint-by-numbers portrait whose colors have faded over the years along with the underlying numbers. There's no going back now and restoring it as it was.

Going forward, however, I am trying to teach myself the value of daily goals and reassessment. Seeing the overall cumulative effects of seemingly innocuous events throughout one's life makes a statistics nerd like me wonder what kind of change I can create with just a little bit of incremental deviation from the mean over time. Do I have the ability (and attention span) to commit to something on a microscopic level, all the while keeping my eye on the macroscopic? And if so, where should I be applying this?

Needless to say, some of these activities I've chosen aren't earth-shattering. There is nothing much deeper to this blog than me sharing a (nearly) daily photo from a strange and distant land. At minimum, it helps me to appreciate my surroundings and teaches me to take nothing for granted during my time here. At most, it proves to me that I can commit to a (nearly) daily ritual, even if it just involves a few seconds of clicking and typing. As you can tell, I've been (nearly) perfect.

On a more personal level, I've decided to use this new sunny, year-round-outdoor-friendly environment to my advantage and commit to a few healthier daily habits in an effort to alter my long term prognosis, which if you put into black-and-white terms for someone my age wasn't looking too good. Watching what I eat by getting back on the Weight Watchers wagon allows the nerd in me to record, chart, analyze, predict and model my eating habits on a minute to minute basis (if I'm so inclined) using online and iPhone tools, weekly by attending my AA-esque meeting, and eventually on a broader level down the road. I've set my own long term goal of "35 by 35", meaning a 35% percent weight reduction by the age of 35. But rather than try to attack it all at once and set myself up for a miserable failure, like in the past, I'm breaking it down to more reasonable weekly and monthly goals. Combine this with the opportunity to do something as simple as nightly walks (and eventually jogging, or biking) all year 'round, as opposed to spending upwards of six months hibernating through cold, miserable weather, and I feel like I have my first good shot at affecting some change over the next few years.

Oh, and did I mention my wife coming back in 24 days? Talk about healthier prognosis. If 150 days of being in San Diego "boggles" my mind, can you imagine what nearly 700 days apart has done to it?

I've put together a little montage of snapshots over the last two years as a reminder of the events, both big and small, that transpired since Girlfriend went to Grenada in January of 2009. It's a hodgepodge of weddings, funerals, pregnancies, births, holidays, seasons, milestones, and daily mundane events that managed to make a paint-by-numbers type of life into a vibrant tapestry I would proudly hang on my wall.

See you in 50!

Jerry.