The Wanderer

Chapter 1

Welcome to the first real post of the Wanderer! As I’m writing this I’m sitting in my hotel room. I’ve spent the last 6 months traveling every week to sunny Oakdale California for work, and for about the last 2 months I’ve had some variation of this king suite in the Hampton Inn in Salida, CA. Living out of a hotel room is a surreal experience. Initially its exciting, you don’t have the daily struggles of owning your own living space. I ate out every day, I had no dishes to worry about, and the room service would clean my room daily. But as time went on and I found a rhythm with work, I yearned for stability in my living space. Every week I would have a slightly different room, a slightly different car, a slightly different life. Any time I started getting comfortable the week would end, I would fly home, and repeat the process with a whole new arrangement. But, as life always does, I found a way to make it work. For me, working out consistently was my key to finding peace on the road.

At this point I had been fairly consistent at the gym. I was active as a kid, in high school I was on the swim team and the crew team, so I was familiar with the gym and finding workouts to do, but I didn’t truly begin my fitness journey until senior year of college. The key for me was consistency. I found a time that worked for me every day and stuck to it. I treated the gym as just another class that I needed to ace. Luckily my friends also began their journeys around the same time, and having a consistent gym partner in my roommate was vital to my success. I quickly started progressing in the gym which led to one of the main drivers of success in self development: physical progress. A few months in my arms were bigger, my chest a little fuller, and my general fitness much improved. Graduating college was a major transition for me. With my classes over and my routine broken, my good habits fell off. Small motivational events like seeing my friend’s progress pictures and booking flights to Europe brought me back to the gym, but this was almost entirely superficial. At this point I just wanted to look good in pictures, which is great if this motivates you to keep a consistent regiment, but for me it wasn’t enough.

When I moved to Chicago I bought a gym membership with my roommate. The set up was simple yet effective: We would finish work around 4 or 5pm, work out together for an hour, no more no less, and come back to shower, eat dinner, and wind down before bed. This routine, while great for the work week, crumpled entirely over the weekend, where we would occasionally fit a workout in around a boozy brunch or a happy hour. Eventually our lives got busier and the routine faded as well. As work became more intrusive in our lives, we had less energy to work on ourselves. And then I started traveling, which completely ruined my routine. For months I wasn’t working out, I was gaining weight eating fast food for every meal, focusing solely on work and doing whatever I needed to do to survive. My coworkers and I would go out for a drink often as well, which didn’t help my routine building skills. Eventually I gave up on working out entirely. I knew I needed to change. It took a lot of effort to break out of my old habits and find solutions that worked for me, but eventually I was able to not only create a routine that worked for my situation, but also learn ways to adapt to any environment I’m in and prioritize my personal development. So now as I transition into a new role, I can move forward with confidence knowing that my priority will always be myself. This is the story of how I did it.