I knew it was close, but no app presented me a special badge or flashed any award. It was rather anticlimactic when, adjusting a formula on an Excel spreadsheet, the resulting number displayed 731.

Oh.

I intended to write about hitting two years of consecutive 10,000 plus steps on the actual day I hit the milestone, but I missed it. And that’s okay – after two years my daily routine includes 10,000 steps in the same way I manage to get dressed and feed myself. It’s inevitable. It’s going to happen. It’s habitual.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. Or unremarkable.

It just means I don’t dwell on it on a daily basis.

Part of that is because when I do dwell on it, when I stop and think about this accomplishment it really messes with my head – I did that? No… that’s not something I’m capable of. Not Jordy…

I switched from a FitBit to an Apple Watch a little more than a month ago and if I had stuck with the FitBit it probably would have celebrated my step-iversary. But as I alluded to at the top, I keep my numbers in a spreadsheet. Which allows me to drop some astounding numbers:

• 731: Number of days with at least 10,000 consecutive steps
• 9,645,850: Number of steps during this streak.
• 4,508: Miles walked since the streak started.

I went back and read what I wrote last year on the first year of 10,000 consecutive steps. The number totals have changed (obviously), and a lot of the sentiments there are very similar to what I started to say here. In fact, there I listed the most steps I’ve taken in a day (41,180) which I haven’t beaten since then, nor have I really lost any more weight than I mentioned there, either.

So, on paper—rather, on spreadsheet, by the numbers, this last year of consecutive 10,000 steps seems quite workmanlike. Routine. Expected.

Except this year has been anything but routine, and putting those numbers in context is important for me to recognize it. I got married (and managed 13,476 steps that day)! I went on a cruise for the first time this year and while Akilah and the rest of her family was getting sick from a particularly rough patch of sea on the way up to Alaska, I was on the treadmill in the gym in the bow of the ship (14,515 steps and no seasickness!). I lost a toenail at the end of that trip and still kept the streak going. On road trips with Akilah, I walked around rest stops to manage to get my steps on long days in the car.

So, to the ever-present doubting voices in my head, yes, Jordy, you did this. You’ve fought for this, and you should be proud of yourself. And I am.

But, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take Allie out for a walk – I still have 1,500 steps tonight to get day 732…

It’s a few hours before I turn 49, and I just got home from the gym. I’m still on my 10,000 step streak (more about that in a few days…) and I knew it’d been a pretty lazy day and I had some catching up to do. Okay, a lot of catching up to do. But I was also feeling excited – not necessarily for my birthday in particular, but I’ve been enjoying my first real weekend off in a long time – it just so happens to coincide with my birthday.

So, I stepped on the treadmill, started my Apple Watch (thank you, DE), and pressed play on “1989 (Taylor’s Version)”. An hour later, and Taylor was in the middle of the “From The Vault” track, “Slut”, and I was done. According to my watch, I had run a little over seven miles straight.

I’m not writing this to say how amazing it was – I’m gearing up for a 10K later in November, so I’d better be ready to run this kind of distance! But more so because I’m really proud of myself and how far I’ve come. I started this journey of physical self-improvement in earnest two years ago, and finally felt I could start running about a eighteen months ago.

My progress this year – 2023, that is – has been hampered by a lot of major life events. I summarized it pretty well in the first 31 Ghosts entry this year, but just to review: “I got married, I moved out of Guerneville after living there for more than 19 years, did another Tough Mudder 5K obstacle race, went on my first cruise, and through all of it I managed to keep my 10,000 step streak going.” And now I can add to that I’ve managed to write a ghost story for the last 28 days while working my day job and sometimes doubling up catering bartending shifts on top. Oh, and my 10,000 step streak is still alive.

So, if my weight has ticked up a few pounds instead down a few pounds like I’d intended, I’m willing to cut myself some slack.

But, as I said, in a few hours I turn 49. And while I’m not particularly sensitive to the big Five-Oh, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t started giving thoughts to who I am and what I’ve done and what I still intend to accomplish as my count of times around the sun ticks up to a big round number.

I don’t feel like I’m about to turn 49, and I certainly don’t feel like I’m on the glide path to 50. But here we are. So I’d like to direct this next part to 50 Years Old:

I’m coming for you. Not the other way around – I’m actively coming at you. You’ve got a little over 366 days (it’s a leap year) to get ready for me, because I know who I am right now and I know how much I can accomplish in a year. 50, I don’t think you’re ready for this. A lot of energy has shifted in this 48^th year, and just wait to see what I do in 49. So, dear 50 Years Old, ready yourself because I’m coming for you like a freight train.

And, you know, “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” will likely drop next year, so you’ve got that to contend with, too.

I woke up sore yesterday. It seemed fitting for the last day of 2022. The day before I ran on the treadmill at the gym because it was pouring rain. But I ran — something I couldn’t say I could do at the beginning of 2022. I wanted to run a solid hour, but my body told me I shouldn’t push that long yesterday. So, I listened to my body (something I didn’t do a great job of last year).

When I got off the treadmill, I was a little disappointed I didn’t get as far as I wanted to but I was quick to remind myself of just how much I had accomplished — again, at the beginning of last year I wasn’t running at all. Three and a half miles is an accomplishment, but my mind tends to focus on the negatives… it’s just the way it works. It’s something I’ve been working on. Last year I hiked Mount Umunhum, Mount Saint Helena, and Mount Tamalpais. But what I think about most is how I didn’t finish Mount Diablo, getting sick just a mile from the summit. Didn’t listen to my body. (But look at what you did do!).

I started my own company – Think Dude Think LLC – and used it to publish my first book, the first three years of 31 Ghosts (which [shameless pitch] is available here at Amazon). For the record, I put it together myself – all the layout and design – that’s me. Months detached I can at least appreciate the effort. These are lifelong goals I can check off! And yet, I’ve been beating myself up over not getting the audiobook done before the end of the year, or really writing anything since finishing October’s run of 31 Ghosts (my god, the sixth year I’ve done that – another accomplishment I don’t think I’ve let myself appreciate).

And let’s get back to being able to run and hike, shall we? Back in November I wrote about accomplishing one year of consecutive 10,000 step days. Well, I’ve kept up on that – I’m on my 416^th consecutive day of at least 10,000 steps now. Isolating 2022 – because this is a year-in-review kind of thing – I walked (or ran or hiked) 2,249 miles over the course of the year. That sort of thing can change a guy – I also lost 34 pounds. I’m now down to a weight I haven’t seen since the Clinton administration.

But in June I was shocked to discover during a routine physical that, surprise! I’m diabetic. Type II. I didn’t take it well. I haven’t written about it at all, and if this is the first you’re hearing about it, don’t feel bad – it took a month before I could mention it to anyone other than Akilah, and even then I don’t think I told anyone outside of immediate family. I went on medication, I dramatically changed my diet (and the combination was key to losing most of those 34 pounds), I logged my glucose twice a day (as well as a weight, resting heart rate, temperature, blood pressure – I was not going to be surprised by my body again!), and I kept up the exercise. I have a series of short videos of me staring into my phone sweating and panting at the top of various mountains saying, “Fuck you, diabetes!” And my work paid off – when I went back in September, my A1C dropped dramatically – technically I’m “pre-diabetic” now (so… post-diabetic as pre-diabetic…? Am I my own prequel?). And yet, I was hounding myself leading up to the most recent test on Friday because it had been a super stressful quarter and my diet had slacked more than it should have and I knew I was going to regress because I’m a horrible person, and… look, I know I’m not a horrible person. But this is what goes on in my mind. And, for the record, the results came back and I was actually .1 point lower than the September number. Not much, but the needle moved for the better.

I made a deliberately over-stuffed list of things to do over the week I had off between Christmas and New Years – there were bigger things like “build a spice rack” and clean various rooms mixed in with less intensive things like “meditate” and “go for a motorcycle ride.” With just a day left in my vacation I didn’t get even half the things (big and small) checked off, and that’s fine… mostly. I countered the negative voices by telling myself I should make a list of the things I did that weren’t on the list. One of the things I didn’t check off was “Take stock of 2022.” This post is part of that, though outside of just rolling the events around in my head I didn’t really wrestle with it too much outside of writing it down now.

Part of the problem has been exactly what I’ve put down here already – as soon as I acknowledge, “I did this,” part of me immediately comes back with “Yes, but you didn’t do that.” Voltaire wrote that “Perfect is the enemy of good,” and it’s damn well one of my worst enemies as well. As much as I’ve battled my weight, and putting a book together, and diabetes, I’ve battled myself more existentially on this front. I think I’m winning – I don’t think I’d be able to chalk up as many items in the “win” column this year if I weren’t – but it’s a slog. I’m getting better, but this is my chief adversary again for a productive 2023.

In years past I’ve put together not resolutions, but goals. I’m not going to do that this year. I have some ideas of what I want to accomplish – both vague and concrete – but if these last few years has taught us anything it’s to expect the unexpected. We’ll see what 2023 has in store. One thing I can guarantee is that I’m going to keep moving and evolving.

Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow
Things should start to get interesting right about now.
– Bob Dylan, Mississippi