Welcome to Erebus Growing, a weekly email where I share little snippets of life to help you change and grow into your highest life.

This coming week is going to be a doozy and super busy, but I will be looking forward to my upcoming semi-vacation the following week and then the holidays not long after.

I’ll still be working at the part-time, but being able to take time to rest in advance of the upcoming half of 2024 with all of the changes I’ll be going through, it’s an important thing.

We’re also expecting our first potential snow-storm of the season in the next 24 hours, so we’ll see how everything goes.

👨🏻‍💻 Meditation

This past week for the 9-5, I was tackling a fairly specific issue. How to get a Google Form submission to populate into a templated Google Doc.

It’s somewhat simple if you know what you’re trying to do and know how to ask the question.

(The best-kept secret about being talented with technology? Knowing how to ask effective questions and search for answers from Google.)

I did manage to find someone who had done what I was trying to do and was able to copy their basic solution.

But now comes the hard part…expanding and improving on the basics.

The concept is simple, you have to understand what you are doing before you can start experimenting.

In cooking, one of the first things you should do is know and/or taste everything you’re using.

Not sure what a new ingredient tastes like? Give it a try and then you learn how it plays into the dish.

That’s what will happen this week with my current Google experiments.

I know that I can get it to push basic data into a templated document, but now I need to build a way for it to tick off checkboxes. A more complicated task.

The same is true in building your life; you start simple and become more complex.

My morning session of rowing would not exist if I had not started with just rowing every day.

I can look back and tell you how my life started changing. It was in mid-summer 2021.

I started by going for a walk daily and then wanted something that I would be able to do during the winter months. I decided to pick up a water rower after a lot of deliberation.

In December 2021, on a whim, I picked up a virtual challenge that was 2,183 miles long and committed to row it throughout 2022.

In mid-2022, I started journaling daily. I had added to the complexity of my life.

For a very long time, rowing and journaling were the only two things that I did every single day.

(There were a handful of days that I was away from home and did not row, but those were very intentional days and I knew they were coming. Often, I rowed extra meters ahead of time.)

In 2023, I added this newsletter, Erebus Growing, as the next level of complexity to my life. We’re three weeks away from a full year of writing a weekly newsletter!

For 2024, I believe that I’m adding three new items to my life complexity.

1. A daily social media practice.

2. A daily meditation practice.

3. A daily yoga practice.

Social Media Practice

Last January, I was on Twitter (now 𝕏) and posted consistently for a few months.

But then I realized that I was getting into the habit of posting because I needed to check something off my to-do list for the day.

I didn’t feel like I was accomplishing anything or building anything.

This year, I’m going to revisit it on 𝕏 and Threads.

Why?

I have a much better understanding of myself and am confident now that I will be doing this because it will benefit my future and is not just an item on my to-do list.

Meditation Practice

I know and have learned of the benefits of meditation over and over.

For me, it is a chance to take time just to focus on my mind and body in this moment—in the present time and place.

It is something that I have not been doing that I want to do.

I want to build it as a healthy practice to help manage my mind and ground me in the present moment.

I plan to start with five minutes and then build up to ten minutes over the year.

Why?

Because it’s a lot of work to go too hard and part way through the year. There’s a resulting sense of failure if I stop before I want to.

Yoga Practice

Contrary to rowing which is a very repetitive motion that builds my body, yoga has and will force me to understand in real time where my body is at.

It is another way to practice being present that provides a level of meditation and another form of exercise.

This past year, I’ve dabbled here and there with yoga through Asana Rebel which is where I’ll get my start again this week.

Yoga forces me to slow down, similar to meditation, and move my body with intentionality rather than urgency or routine.

The complexity of your life is created by the simplicity.

The more simple your life, the more complex it can become.

When you understand what different things in your life affect (like your diet, your sleep, your exercise, your learning, etc.), you can begin to experiment and build your ideal life.

But it’s on you. It’s always been on you.

In the end, I can’t necessarily rely on someone else to build my Google Form/Google Docs script that allows the data to be put into a template.

I’ll have to let my mind work and sort it out.

📚 Inspiration and Resources
Every week we all consume content and I share my favorites here.

Creating.
There are some truly amazing people out in the world. Yesterday, a video on YouTube popped up that reminded me about one of them: Reynold Poernomo. Poernomo was a competitor on MasterChef Australia. He is undoubtedly one of the world’s best chefs for desserts. I won’t say anything more but share the link. Give it a watch here.

📓 Journaling Prompt
Journaling is one of the most important things to do when exploring our own lives. A new prompt for you to use this week is below.

What are you looking to build in your life in 2024?

Until next time, I wish you enough and send you off with love and a sense of urgency in your life.