This is a little uncharacteristic and off-the-cuff for me, but I have a lot going on in my life outside of this small powerlifting bubble. Some of it good and some of it not so good. All of it, I think, will be positive in some way even if it doesn't feel like that right now.

The not so good, in no particular order:

  • I'm some combination of frustrated, anxious, and scared about my hamstring. Mind you it was not at all a bad injury, but I'm anxious to get back to squatting and deadlifting and I'm worried that I'm not doing ALL of the right things to heal up and even if I do will I be prepared in December?
  • I'm struggling in a relationship with someone who means a lot to me. Communication does not come natural in my experience...sometimes things have to be pulled out of me and sometimes I make selfish decisions. It's obvious that if you want to be in a strong relationship you have to put the needs of your partner even with or ahead of your needs in some cases. I haven't been doing that and I'm working on fixing it. I was recommended to read "The Wisdom of Insecurity" by Alan Watts. I may choose to update my log with notes as I read it.
  • I work in the oilfield. Oil hit $39 per barrel recently. For those of you that aren't familiar with economics...that's bad. That means a lot of people lose their jobs. I'm good at what I do, so I'm fortunate for the time being to not be worried about losing my job. But in corporate America you never know.

All of these things have combined to add a little more stress to my life than I'm accustomed to. And they are all very minor problems in the grand scheme of things. Just like training, they present another test, another obstacle to overcome.

The good:

  • My youngest pup is ready for week three of training. He's a 5 month old English Mastiff that weighs about 60lbs. He's in the beginner class because he was too big for the puppy class. He'll likely be about 200lbs when it's all said and done. My dogs make me happy if you can't tell by my IG account.
  • I'm looking at starting a gym. I have a few ideas and I'm picking JL's and David Allen's brains. There is a local gym that is for sale and I have some ideas about other locations, but the first key is to come up with a business plan. Slowly working on that between everything else.
  • Todd Hamer and I did a podcast tonight for Fast and Jacked. It's a few local guys that are starting a website and podcast and we were happy to help them out by giving them a couple hours of our time so we could tell stories and shoot the sh*t.