Climate and Thoughts

Woooooh~! The last time I wrote a blog post was in 2023 March – almost one year ago, right after the ASP Distinguished lecture series. I still had the motivation to write a blog, documenting my thoughts and reflections. Then, my entire body and mind was buried by the busy schedule of everyday work, which is very common for everyone in a big organization. Later, my wordpress subscription stopped in May, shutting down my site from public viewing, which gave me the “perfect” excuse to stop.

Now, I am back in2024, feeling much more refreshed & energized after the new year holidays and a trip from Hawaii (Yan was attending the AGU Chapman conference in Honolulu and I was there with her). I am thinking, maybe I can be more consistent about blogging (actually documenting) my life and work. In a world facing huge amount of changes, writing actually gives me more awareness and help me stay in presence.

Also, a big part of my heart deeply hopes the 2024 could be much different from 2023. I don’t have a clear description of how or explanation of why, just kind of have a short/blur/vague idea in my mind – Hope I can find out soon. The ultimate idea is to help me gain a peace of mind.

Peace of mind

What I really want to get in 2024 is the peacefulness in my mind – empowering me to deal with everyday routine and sudden changes.

I can think of 3 major themes for me in 2024:

(1) Lots of traveling/exploring/new lifestyle

(2) Financially awareness

(3) Keep on my running goal.

For the upcoming Mar-May, I will be doing a lot of traveling in the US and Europe. The last week of March, I will fly out to San Diego and help Yan pack and move to Boulder. This feels like a moving journey and can also count towards a road trip experience. I am planning on a three-day drive, first day from San Diego to Las Vegas. Second day from Vegas to Moab, which is surrounded by the famous Delicate Arch and Canyonland National Park. Lastly, the third day from Moab back to Boulder.

My first time on this road trip was back in the summer of 2018 with Gonzalo, now it feels so much different to me. At that time, we were camping along the Colorado River and the mosquito at night were crazy – I just opened my tent for 2 seconds and many were in and filled the tent. The summer in Utah was also very hot, more than 100F in the park. So I always wanted to stay in my car with AC and looked for shaded areas when we were at the park. But it was a very pleasant journey and I always knew I would come again for this.

In April and May, I will be attending the EGU conference in Vienna. I have been so excited about this EGU – I learned it from Gonzalo, he is always telling me how great the city Vienna is and EGU so friendly (compared to AGU). I like Vienna also for its fame in Classical music – a lot of great composers and musicians were in Vienna. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms… Just so many of them I like. Now I will have the opportunity to visit and sit in their city and listen to their music. (sorry I am all talking about music and travel, while I should be thinking about research and collaboration).

After EGU, I will visit Gonzalo in Santiago de Compostela, our long term collaborator and Noah-MP contributor. Gonzalo has been visiting us in Boulder for many years, now I have this opportunity to visit him back in Santiago in Spain. I am eager to learn what he is working on and he will also come again in the summer.

My second theme is on financial awareness.

This idea of financial independent (even retire early) FIRE has gone viral everywhere. I am so far away from actually “independent” and so long until retirement, so my goal is much easier to get more awareness of my money situation, especially with Yan moving in together after March.

My first goal is to build up an emergency fund of 3~6 months. According to how much I am spending per month, this will require substantial saving (up to 12k in total), given what I am saving right now, that will be about 9 months away. So my hope is to get there by the end of this year (2024). Then I will be more at ease, when I want to spend more money on trips or dinning out.

To look at my spending in depth, most of them comes from my travel – I have been moving around a lot last year and this year so far. Here is a short list:

• 2023 Mar: San Diego
• 2023 May: San Diego
• 2023 Jun-Jul: New York-Boston
• 2023 Aug: San Francisco-San Diego
• 2023 Sep-Oct: China
• 2023 Nov: San Diego
• 2023 Dec: San Francisco
• 2024 Jan-Feb: Canada-San Deigo-Hawaii

I spent more time traveling than doing research (Oh, now I am ashamed of it). I am not saying that spending money on travel is a crime, what I really want is to be more aware of them. The way and how much I have on them, really reflect the my desire and want. I didn’t even notice them until I am writing this blog to summarize my trips last year. So, at least starting from this year, I can be more aware of them.

My third goal is to keep on running – Here I will pull up my stats from Strava. The last big race I did was in 2022 Oct, the Toronto Marathon. The summer of 2022 was about training in Saskatoon, where I was doing 4 times running a week, with a running group coached by Harvey. That training period was my all time high in since 2021.

Then in 2023, I moved to Boulder, couldn’t go back to prime time ever. I can see a lot of reasons for this draw back, I was buried by work, stress, overwhelmed by meetings, and other sports too, i.e. Skiing in winter and climbing 1-2 times a week. I was taking running too seriously as I could have, like the year before in Saskatoon. I guess that is the downside about Boulder and the upside for Saskatoon. In Saskatoon, when there is nothing around, I was so focused on running, while in Boulder I can do climbing and skiing.

Coming to 2024, I definitely feel a recovery of body strength and motivation. I have some races in my mind – I signed up for the NYC marathon in early Nov, which will have a entry drawing rate of 12%. If not drawn, I plan on running the Boulderthon in late Sep. Of course, there is the BolderBoulder 10k in late May.

So far, I am training for 3-4 runs per week. Usually starts with reps on Mon-Tue in the Centennial Middle school in North Boulder, 8x400m, 4x800m, 3x1000m, etc. Then Wednesday InMotion Easy run 9-10k. Friday afternoon, I usually run with Naoki and Stefano, for fast tempo run 5k or 7k or 10k, these runs are usually hard! I am really pushing myself for them. And another easy run on Saturday or Sunday, 10-12k. So I hope my weekly mileage steadily builds up by 10%, at a comfortable pace that will not get exhausted or injured.

A side note on running is about diet and stretching – I am trying out a 16/8 intermediate fasting diet, eating only in the 8 hours I am awake and stop eating for the rest 16 hour. I am now trying – get up and drink a cup of black coffee, then small breakfast at 10 am (banana and bread), lunch at 12-1, afternoon snack at 3-4 (banana), then dinner before 6pm. So I am eating from 10am-6pm, making up the 8hours. After dinner, I will not eat until the next morning. I tried this schedule for a week and so far feeling good and losing weight. I will write a separate blog about this topic in the future.

Last thought to myself – I am not writing a big goal for 2024 in this post. Like find an ideal job, or publish in a top journal, or get married, or etc. What I try to achieve in this blog post, is to lay down some possibility at the beginning of the year (well it is 2months later), that are not very drastic changes and can give me hope and motivation and ambitions after getting there. This feeling of positiveness keeps growing and feeds back to my emotional and physical state.