I used to hate cilantro as a kid. Growing up, I had the seemingly common affliction of finding that it tastes like soap. Whenever someone put cilantro in a dish, even the smallest amount, I always noticed it right away and couldn’t take another bite. It was truly the worst.
But then, the first Chipotle in France opened up right by my high school. I would eat there a lot, like a lot. Sometimes four times a week. It was all fun and games until one time, I accidentally ordered the white rice. Now if you don’t know, Chipotle’s white rice has cilantro in it. I noticed it right away, and at first I was disappointed, maybe even disgusted. However, I kept eating it (mostly because I used up all my lunch money, so it was that or nothing). By the time I finished the burrito, I realized I had in fact enjoyed it. Cilantro made sense in this instance. I finally understood cilantro.
Fast forward to now, I no longer hate cilantro. I am cured of my cilantro-hating affliction. That one random lunch in high school was truly a transformative experience (as is any experience at Chipotle). All I had to do was find an instance where I liked cilantro, and then I was cured. I now like cilantro. I even cook with it pretty often, and I now get white rice every time I go to Chipotle.
Now what does this have to do with this newsletter? Well, I have a new thing I hate: I hate working out.
Last week, I chose to focus on two goals I was behind on: Work out once a week and Consume less, create more. In order to do better on these goals, I set out to keep my TikTok watch time under 20 hours for the week, and workout twice. I’m happy to announce that I watched only 17 hours of TikTok. Unfortunately, I still have not worked out once in 2021.
I think working out is my new cilantro. I need to find a way or a context in which I like working out. I tried running. The appeal is there: wherever or whenever, you can just put sneakers on and go. Problem is, I don’t like running, and I’m not particularly good at it. I enjoy running with friends, but it’s not very often that I get the chance, and I tend to just hold them back. I like swimming, but without a nearby pool it’s hard to do consistently. Group sports are a lot of fun, but Covid and “groups” don’t go together. This basically leaves good ol’ working out on your own, and that is no fun.
I need to find a way to make working out a longterm part of my life. I can’t go on wanting to work out, then being consistent for three days and then doing nothing for three months. That’s not good. So I need to find a way to make working out something I want to do. Or find something I like to do that happens to count as working out.
So that’s my goal for this week: try something new that counts as working out, and see how that goes. I bought a jump rope off Amazon. It looks fun when people work out with a jump rope online (but then again so does running, so we’ll see). I’ll report back next week on how that goes. My goal is to try at least once. I won’t push myself to try and catch up on my late workouts until I find something I like doing consistently and that I would want to do more than once a week. Until then, we’re just trying things.
In other news, I passed 100 followers on TikTok! Now that’s not much, but it’s 10% of my goal for the year, and we’re only 4% through 2021. I posted another video as well. So on the TikTok front, we’re good. Once again, I’m just slightly behind on reading for this week, but I’ll catch that up today or tomorrow, so that’s fine. All in all, I’m doing pretty well on my goals, other than the working out. So that’s my main focus for the week.
What I’m Reading
I finished “Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids about Money” by Robert Kiyosaki this week. Wow! Truly a fantastic book. In a lot of ways it changed the way I view the world. I don’t agree with all Kiyosaki’s opinions, especially when he goes full capitalist fanatic (e.g. “Robin Hood is a crook.”). Regardless, he shows how rich people make and keep money, and simply knowing how they do it, even if you don’t believe it is a good thing, is very valuable. I understand why it is the number one best selling business book of all time, and I think everyone should read it. 10/10 would recommend.
Here’s what I’m still in the process of reading:
“The Empty Nest” by Sue Watson.
“The Best of Me” by David Sedaris.
“Start With Why” by Simon Sinek. During my first two weeks of training at my job (back in August), we were trained on how to give a good presentation. One of my “mentors” (that’s what the company called them, not me) recommended a few books we read to continue our training. This book was one of them. It seems really great so far, although I’ve only just started it. I’m excited to talk about it in this newsletter when I finish it (subscribe to see that).
Please leave any book recommendations in the comments and add me on Goodreads.
Statistics
Newsletters posted: 3 (+1)
Newsletter subscribers: 15 (thank you ❤️)
TikToks posted in 2021: 3 (+1)
TikTok followers: 102 (+3)
Minutes read this week: 90 (catch up from last week) + 160
Workouts this week: 0 😥
Hours spent on TikTok: 17 (-7)
Thank you so much for reading another issue of my newsletter! I’m pretty happy with how consistent I’ve been with this. FYI, I started writing this at 8pm on Sunday. I want to be able to write these newsletters in under an hour, so that they don’t take up too much time away from my other goals, and also to make sure I don’t write too much.
Anyway, if you’re new, please:
Please leave a comment if you have any suggestions or remarks you’d like to share.
Thanks again for reading. See you next Sunday ❤️
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/02VadVyxx0S8nLZFp1GDcj?si=QAHxr9RYTSS8Dd0hnEXkRw workout to this !!
Get a rebounder/trampoline!