Category: Brian’s Journey

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Rebuilding Strength with Patience: My Journey Back to 10 Pull-Ups

Written October 17, 2024

reviewed 10/27

Hello Dear Readers,

For the first time this season, I completed all ten intended pullups. During summer, I had physically intensive chores, such as lawn mowing, and I had to drop off some of my muscle training exercises. Pull-ups are one of the exercises that dropped out. Due to my kidney condition, I am restricted in protein intake. In early summer, I noticed that I had difficulties keeping my ideal weight. Since I can eat less protein than a healthy adult would consume. I suspected I lost my muscles. I made choices to keep running and less muscle training. I wanted to get back to it in the Fall. 

I had difficulty doing my pull-ups for the first time since I dropped out of the exercise after a few months. I had lost muscle endurance altogether. I felt that lactic acid accumulated quickly, and I had no power to continue. It has been some time since I added back pull-up and pull-over muscle exercises to my summer routine. I gradually gained back my muscle endurance and strength. Today, I had to drop off after the first 5, but after a short break, I finished them. I’ll keep trying to get closer to getting them all done without having to take a break, but as long as I get them all done, I’m pretty satisfied.  

With the compromising kidney conditions, I need to be patient with anything I will do with my body. No matter how much I want to gain my muscles quickly, exercising more than my body can handle could cause unwanted muscle loss or, even worse, an injury. I still need to get my pullover count back up to 10, but I’m sure that happen. I have to be patient. 

My journey to getting back to what I could have done continues. I’ll need to work out a new exercise schedule today. After I can increase my pullups and pullovers to sets of 10, I can add dips and leg lifts to the routine and eventually start doing bicep curls again. My wife noted that doing the same exercises daily was not a good strategy and that I should spread them out more instead.  This way, I think I’ll focus on a single exercise type each day of the week, and this may be something that I can maintain during the lawn mowing season, too.

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Celebrating Milestones With a Pumpkin Spice Latte

Written October 18, 2024

Hello Dear Readers,

I decided to skip my run today since we planned to celebrate the milestone of her citizenship journey by indulging in a trip to Starbucks for coffee. My wife had her citizenship test/interview early this morning. Shortly after finishing my winter exercises, she called me to say she was on her way home. 

Her test was at 7:35 a.m., so she left the house at 6:40 a.m., leaving her an extra 20 minutes. When she goes to the office, she usually leaves the house around the same time, so the time itself does not bother her. She was worried that she would get lost or have an accident on the way. 

She has been preparing for the exam since April, but she gets distracted by something she finds curious. For example, she learned about the list of cabinets for the United States. She can’t stop there. She would dig through what each department does. She says time is her most considerable enemy because she forgets about time. Honestly, the way she studies or does anything, no time is enough. She got into so many troubles when she was much younger. She had to compromise with the environmental forces to prevent what she wanted, such as time. So whatever she does is planned for a long time. Some of her goals could be traced over a decade. 

I could not believe it when she told me she had never tried the famous seasonal treat, pumpkin spice latte. She had just found out about it and was eager to experience it. Knowing she would be back in roughly 30 minutes, I did not have time to finish a run before she returned. I wanted to be ready to leave for our coffee whenever she wanted.  Since it was freezing this morning, I was not too upset about skipping my run; I’ll have to commit to the full 10k to compensate for today’s laziness.

My wife had a pumpkin spice latte. Since I haven’t had a pumpkin spice latte before this year, I tried the Pecan Crunch Latte. I prefer a pumpkin spice latte. My wife loved her pumpkin spice latte. She was wondering how the coffee tasted of pumpkin. 

We are planning to donate the materials used for the citizenship process. My wife was worried that she had written something in them, but I told her that some people could benefit. 

I am happy that she has reached another milestone, as I know she has wanted U.S. citizenship for a long time.

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Building Strength: A Journey of Patience, Progress, and Support

Written October 15, 2024

Hello Dear Readers,

I woke this morning to confirmation that I had put enough effort into my pullups. My subscapular muscles and my biceps were sore. Even last winter, the pull-ups gave me muscle aches, although the aches were much less intense than today. 

I wear gloves my sister gave me last winter to protect my skin. My wife gifted me the pullup platform over a decade ago before I had a brain stroke. Due to the brain stroke, I could not use the machine for several years. My wife did not get rid of it. She adamantly told me that she would use it if I could not use it in the future. She usually gets rid of things we don’t use without hesitation, so this was abnormal behavior for my wife. I thanked her for not getting rid of the machine, regardless.

Because I have been working on muscle exercises, my wife wants to gradually add muscle exercises to her workout curriculum. She is more of a cardio person but says that is not good enough. She runs to keep her body, especially her energy, high. Still, she would get hurt without a proper body to handle her energy. She’s started stretching to be more flexible. Now, she wants to have more muscles. She has so many things she wants to do, and she wants to have a healthy brain to do them at a later age. I know she does not like muscle training as much. So, I want to help and support her in her muscle training.

Despite this soreness, I did another set of exercises before breakfast. I wanted to see how well I would do today. Completing a push-up set was more manageable than yesterday. I could complete more before needing to drop off for a moment.  So, I expect to be at least as sore tomorrow. 

I have loved training my muscles since I was young and did gymnastics. My training is about something other than bulking up muscles, though. You would need strong core muscles to complete some gymnastics routines. 

As we age, our bodies act a little differently. For example, retaining muscles while maintaining them will be easier. I also understand that I have restrictions since my kidneys are compromised. For one, I consume protein like I used to, which hurts me to gain muscles. But I also understand it is not impossible to gain muscles even if I am aged or have compromised kidneys. I need more patience with my body. 

Eventually, my muscles will catch up to what I’m forcing them to do, and the soreness will fade.  It might take a week or two to reach that point, but I’m in no rush.

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Adjusting to Winter: Balancing Workouts, Cold Weather, and Health Challenges

Written October 14, 2024

Hello Dear Readers,

Last night, I decided to start my winter running routine early. The day is getting shorter, and the sun is rising past 6:40 a.m. now. I used to run a little past 8 a.m. to avoid the Nashville heat. The later the sun rises, the chilly the outside temperature is. The coldest temperature of some of the day was below 40F.

I started to shift around my workout schedule so that activities involving going outside are done much later in the day. I began adding pull-ups and push-ups just like before implementing the summer exercise curriculum.  After setting my breakfast bowl and coffee on my desk, 

It had just been a few months since the change, so I decided to do push-ups like I used to. In reality, that is not what happened. I found doing the pullups to be much more complicated than I remember them being the last time I did them. Previously, I remember being able to do a set of 10 without pause, but today I could only manage 4.  I completed 10 in total but had to drop off for a few seconds between bursts of effort. At least the push-up exercise was easy for me to complete.

It was a little disappointing. Now, I wonder how long it will take me to return to where I was before summer. I’ll just have to keep working on them and doing what I can until they’re more accessible. The only way I will do this is to increase the rep per set gradually. 

In summer, I had to do much more chores outside. The chores can be stressful for my body, especially with the steep hill in our backyard. Some days, I didn’t have enough energy to complete both, so I changed my exercise routine. I have kidney conditions, so I get tired much faster than a healthy adult. 

I started adding muscle training to my routine in the last two years. It was better in the first year because my reps and sets for each session were much smaller. 

For next year, I should schedule a little differently so I can still do my muscle training, like push-ups or pull-ups. There are some solutions to this. I could have yard work split not into two days but three days. I could also reduce the days I work out but keep doing them.

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Running Through the Roller Coaster of Temperature Swings

Written October 11, 2024

Hello Dear Readers,

The very chilly morning temperatures look like they’re about to bounce around chaotically over the next week. The weather may rise 10 degrees before dropping 20. We are riding a roller coaster made by some weather machine. I don’t like these swings because they don’t give me time to adapt.

Ever since my brain stroke, I have caused trauma in my hypothalamus, and I have lost control of my body temperature and the thermoregulation system. Our body is supposed to adjust heat by sweating, shivering, or changing blood vessel dilation. Brain stroke also damages the censoring system on my skin so that I can feel both cold and hot at the same time. 

My wife keeps the house temperature at about 65F (18C). She believes that being too hot in the winter or too cold in the summer would break our thermoregulation system. Living in Portland, we hardly used a heating or cooling system. This is not as possible in Nashville, where the weather can be hotter and cold. Since I have a problem adjusting my body temperature, this helps me greatly during hot summers or cold winters. 

I change how I dress to control my temperature by consulting the weather app on my phone. It can be critical when I go running. Sometimes, I do a 10km run and could be outside for over 60 minutes. I started to log my running speed; I noticed that the temperature greatly impacted my running performance. Sometimes, the temperature shifts to 10F while I am running. The volatile temperatures leave me either overdressed or underdressed.

The temperature will not stop me from running unless there is a snowstorm. I hope to run a 10k tomorrow, but I’ll do so after breakfast.  It’s been several months since I’ve eaten breakfast before running, so I’m curious how returning to that schedule will feel.

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How My Wife’s Literary Journey is Shaping My Writing

Written 10/10/2024

Hello Dear Readers,

Over the last few months, I’ve noticed that my wife’s skill at analyzing literature has dramatically improved. After more than a decade of reading only non-fiction, she unexpectedly ventured into fiction again. Then, last year, she suddenly began to learn how to analyze literature. Along the way, she also started to learn how to write a novel, hoping she could reverse engineer works of literature one day. 

She started rereading classics she read as a teen. As people gain more knowledge and experience, their impressions of novels change drastically. She told me that her reading experience of those novels had shifted. My wife found that experience exciting. She also picked up other classics she had somehow missed reading while young. She talked about the books she had read with me. I’ve read some of her books in the past, so I shared my thoughts with her. We compared our experiences with the stories. 

Whenever something in a book piqued her interest, she researches the topic. All her findings are organized in her digital research notebook. She told me that writing about what she found out and organizing notes were the ways she retained her acquired knowledge. The method works for her. 

She still asks me questions about other books I’ve read, but she tries to understand my interpretations of literature. Our interpretations are often different since we have different knowledge and experience sets. She asked me why I interpret things that way when we have different interpretations. She also finds our differences interesting. I guess anything seems to make her curious. Her curiosity never seems to wane.

Meanwhile, I am writing a novella by taking Brandon Sanderson’s writing courses on YouTube. I’m already in several classes. It amazes me that we can learn anything from YouTube. He formally learned at University, so he gave us many valuable tips on writing. I always thought Sanderson was extremely good at developing his characters. I adore all the characters he has in the Stormlight Archives series. The course intends for people to write a novella by the time you finish the course. My wife told me she would take the course after completing the U.S. citizenship exam. 

I’ve already started working on my novel. My wife is learning literature criticism while she does all her research on books she is reading, taking note of any techniques she finds interesting in them. If I ever complete writing a story draft, I will ask my wife to help me improve by adding her thoughts. With her growing expertise in literature analysis, she can help me turn it into something truly worthwhile.

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Embracing the Chill: Adjusting to Winter Routines and Biological Rhythms

Written October 8, 2024

Hello Dear Readers,

I woke and dressed this morning, ready to go outside and vacuum leaves from our lawn. As soon as I opened the door, a sharp chill greeted my skin, biting my skin. Winter is definitely on the way. Shivering with cold, I quickly closed the door, leaving the cold weather behind the door. Let’s do the yard work after I eat breakfast. 

The weather in Nashville has gotten pretty chilly over the past few days, causing leaves to fall from the trees. We noticed some maple trees in the forest behind our house were changing color. Although the temperature rose quickly, by the time I’d eaten my breakfast, it had warmed by 10 degrees F. My biological thermostat has been broken since my brain stroke, so I am more sensitive to temperature change than ordinary people. After my breakfast, it was warm enough to tolerate, just like I had planned. 

There are two big trees—one on our property and one on our neighbor’s—that seem to be constantly battling to outdo each other with the amount of leaves they shed, leaving me to clean up after them. It took me nearly two hours to vacuum most of them. After nearly two hours of leaf collection, I decided that I had done enough. I’ll have to evaluate the yard again tomorrow after my run to see if I need to do another session on Thursday.

My wife mentioned to me that she felt like running at night even though she runs at 5:30 a.m. It’s pretty dark in the morning. She does not get to see any sunlight during her morning run anymore, and she feels that she does not get enough sunlight. She hopes the time shift will make some sunlight much more accessible. 

I am aware that my wife is struggling to balance her daily schedule with her biological rhythm. When the days are shorter, our biological clock changes. My wife had a restless summer and sleep problems, and now she seems to have the opposite. She just hopes for the timeshift so that her schedule is closer to her biological clock.

I, too, plan to shift my schedule to wintertime shortly. It’s almost as if I did a trial run of my intended schedule once daylight savings time ends, although I did not do the exercises I designed to do on that schedule. My body cannot tolerate the cold anymore, so I plan to run much later in the day to avoid the extra stress on my body.

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Running With Tender Toe and Chronic Kidney Disease

Written October 7, 2024

Hello Dear Readers,

A few days ago, I slammed my toe on a door in our master bathroom. Our toes play an essential role in our movement. The pain was so great that I couldn’t run today, although my toe was still tender. I thought it would go away shortly, but it persists.

Chronic kidney disease often delays our healing ability; we are also considered to have weaker immune systems. We live with restricted foods, in some way, since I have a lot of restrictions with my foods. We try as much as we can with our lifestyle, but the damaged kidneys can’t repair themselves without a lot of work. My kidney improved from level 5 to level 3. So, I know kidney conditions can be improved even if we cannot repair them.

My wife was worried that I might have fractured my toe. My toe is neither swollen nor bruised. I just hit it hard, and my kidney conditions prevent me from healing fast enough. 

After a few days, I started running. My toe still hurts, mainly when I apply pressure to it. Adding to the pain in my toe, I have muscle soreness from squatting while painting our deck yesterday. I still managed to do some running today. I got within 30 seconds per kilometer of my target pace, so it was not too bad. 

I will watch my toe. My wife, who recently twisted her ankle, started running without allowing it enough time to heal. She was pretty upset about the event, as she missed the 150 KM challenge by 8 Km for August / September. 

We have less than three months to complete this year. I had some trouble achieving my goals in the summer and am now dealing with a toe injury. I am still okay with it because the important thing is the process of working hard toward my goals, not the output itself.

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Almost Done With Our Deck Project For The Year

Written October 6, 2024

Hello Dear Readers,

Today, I plan to finish this round of deck painting. We have been working on this project since August. Preparing for the painting took a lot of time, but we were nearly finished. For the last part, we have to work on touching up the painting. Once the paint is dried, we can see the spot we missed during the initial coat painting. 

Our deck already looks good with the dark paint we picked. There is something we learned about the paint the other day. There are so many types of paint, but for an aged deck like ours, we must use solid color paint on it. We picked a great one. My wife had sympathy for our deck. She still carries Japanese culture, and she automatically sees that things we use also have spirit, sounding like spring from Sanderson’s Stormlight archives, right? It is exciting and fabulous at the same time. Despite our cultural differences, we still married happily.

After breakfast, I’ll work on painting our deck. Unfortunately, we cannot work on the vertical railing supports at this time. That requires serious cleaning and replacement. One of the supports near the top of the railing post was rotten to the point that the support system needed replacing the part. My wife tried to stop rotten by grinding them out and sealing them with the wood hardener; however, she says this is like a temporary fix that needs serious fixing in the near future. Due to the time restriction, she did not want to stop the deck painting process. The morning temperature goes below 50F some days, worrying my wife. 

We will start working on the railing and railing support once the temperature rises above 50 degrees F in the morning next year. Of course, we will paint them as well. Once we’ve repaired the steps, more painting will be done in the next few years.

 My wife and I have sore glutes today from all the squatting we did yesterday while painting the decking.  My toe is feeling much better, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to run again tomorrow.  I was able to walk normally by last evening.  Putting on socks and shoes has been the most painful task thus far, so it takes me a little longer. 

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Dealing with Unexpected Setbacks To Better

Some days are full of disappointments. Today is one of those days. Last night, I banged my toe on a door. I thought the pain would go away, but it got even more painful. It was just one toe on my left foot, but I struggled to walk. I could not run this morning because of the toe injury.

Even more disappointing. I lost my 648-day streak on my language learning app, not because I missed a day. Yesterday, my language app was acting strangely and initially wouldn’t load the day’s lesson.  It eventually loaded, and I completed it, but apparently, it didn’t record that. I know it is just a streak on the app. In reality, I actually did not even miss a day. It is still disturbing. 

Meanwhile, this situation is getting worse than I thought. I mean, I just hit it on a door! All I was doing was putting away some freshly laundered towels, minding my own business, and next thing I knew, my foot was too close to the closet door when I opened it—bam, right into my toe. With the pain, I had great difficulty walking, but I am trying to walk with as normal a gait as possible to avoid additional injury. An additional injury is the last thing I want at this point. Who expected a little banging to create so much trouble? My wife was worried about my toe. Although, I don’t think the injury is so severe that I will need any professional attention now. 

On a day like this, I try to remember the moral points I learned from books. Have you ever read the book, “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”? Well, the story is like the problem the protagonist faces. Arthur was freaking out about his house being bulldozed, and meanwhile, there was a plan to eradicate Earth. The book is comical, but it teaches something. Maybe the problem you think is so bad may not be that bad. In other words, avoid getting so caught up in the little problems. Thinking like this makes me feel calmed down. 

Hopefully, I’m feeling well enough not to feel forced to skip additional runs. I don’t want to miss any more runs because of a tiny injury on my toe, and I miss it. Well, time will tell.