Tag: Goals

Long-term plans

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

There’s an old saying that says “when humans plan, God laughs”. Yet, I believe in long-term planning. I know, it’s often just nonsense. So many things can go wrong. You can be struck by lightning. The path can lead to some other place. You can lose the ability to execute it. Things can go wrong. I get it. It can be a bad plan. The longer a plan takes, the less likely it should be to accomplish it.

But there’s a trick with long-term plans. Essentially, keep showing up. Like a drop falling over and over at the same spot until it carves the stone. Showing up changes things. That’s something we can normally do. We can manage ourselves, we can be the drop no matter if it will eventually carve the stone or not.

And while you keep showing up, you learn, you set the bar for persistence, you give an example, and you may add 0.01% to someone else’s inspiration. If you do that a hundred times, the 0.01% becomes a full unit of inspiration. Just like reverse-buying chocolate. Bring that home, eventually everyone will eat it. Don’t bring that home, who knows. Maybe nobody brings it home today.

If the goal is worthy, the world becomes a better place even if it’s not fulfilled.

Speaking of goals, despite the series of injuries, I’m still showing up to the pull-up challenge. I started taking selfies on day 18, missed some. This screenshot is also missing some. But it captures my general belief.

Rep

~ Veselin ~ 11 Comments

I set myself a goal to do one pull-up by the end of the year. I made some progress yesterday. My one rep is not a clean pull-up. The grip is neutral, and my legs are touching the ground from the moment I started pulling. I didn’t jump, but it’s not entirely clear from the video if I really pulled all of my body weight completely unassisted by my legs.

In any case, I’m not too far off. So far, the number of injuries exceeds the number of pull-ups. Honestly, I didn’t believe I’d get that far, let alone so soon. I was hoping I could achieve something within a year or two. Achieving a somewhat recognizable repetition in less than two months of practice is a big surprise to me. I’ll think about adjusting the goal once I do a clean rep.

Fitness Goals

~ Veselin ~ 19 Comments

Sharing your goals on a public blog adds extra pressure to actually complete them. Thankfully, most of my friends and family don’t know I blog, so the embarrassment is not too big. I set some goals last year, and now is the moment to look back and see how well I did.

  • ✅ I’ll try to climb Vihren (2 failed attempts in 2024) – success
  • ✅ I’ll try to keep an average of 10k/day for 2025 as well but increase the difficulty by doing more hiking and less city – success for the steps and mostly for the hiking as well
  • 🚩 I’ll try to add 1h/week of gym time, starting with body weight exercises like push-ups and plank. – failure

Honestly, the Vihren goal was too optimistic and we stopped doing hiking after it. I don’t know what happened with the gym idea. I did a grand total of under 1 hour of exercise. I don’t have an explanation, it was never part of my todo, had zero interest in spending time on it, and just dreaded the idea that I’m going to do that. But, reality is, that I need to find a way to do it.

So, for 2026, let’s try again:

  • 10K steps on average for the year – it is at risk because one of my knees doesn’t feel right
  • Get back to the mountain and post 3 bean soup blog posts. The mountain misses me
  • Make one pull-up

Wish me luck.

A year in steps

~ Veselin ~ 17 Comments

I started building a walking habit about 2 years ago. I had this crazy annual goal to average over 10K steps per day for the whole of 2024. Happy to share that I could make it with room to spare.

Life is much easier if you don’t need to count your steps every day. It takes time and is often unpleasant. I tried all sorts of tricks, from waking early to spinning the treadmill in the evening. It was all inconvenient. Was it worth it – probably yes. Walking is like mild gym plus mindfulness combined. It unlocked hiking not just for me but also for my family. Helped me with the blog as well – lots of cool things and cats are just hanging out, waiting to be spotted.

My fitness goal for 2025 will be more complex.

  • I’ll try to climb Vihren (2 failed attempts in 2024)
  • I’ll try to keep an average of 10k/day for 2025 as well but increase the difficulty by doing more hiking and less city
  • I’ll try to add 1h/week of gym time, starting with body weight exercises like push-ups and plank. The 1h comes from the 7-minute-workout, 7×7 is 49, or roughly 1h. The idea is to build a habit this year rather than achieve any weight loss or body composition change.

Wish me luck.