Ketamine and Halo Top

Good evening y’all!

I took a day off from the newsletter yesterday. It’s good to be back.

While I was on this mini sabbatical, I was contemplating my week.

It hasn’t been the most optimal week:

• Went under the surgeon’s knife (Grandpa speak for “I had surgery”)

• Couldn’t work out because of the surgery

• Got hit with some additional expenses I wasn’t expecting

• Missed a few (small) deadlines on a side project because of 9-5 work stuff ramping up

It happens.

While all this was going down, an image kept bumping up against the edges of my consciousness.

A picture of a graph from one of my past computer science classes:

In class, we had to find the the local min/max, and absolute min/max of a function by writing an algorithm. During lab while working problems, the professor would always be like “No no, you’ve only found the LOCAL minima, not the absolute minima.”

While I was wallowing in my self-pity because my serotonin levels weren’t optimal from lack of sauna and heavy deadlifts, it hit me: this was a local minima.

Absolute minima would be something like being homeless without the use of my legs or something else that was a way worse situation than I am currently in.

In the moment, the local minima felt pretty minima.

But the simple act of stepping out of the situation and framing my “problems” as a local minima that was part of a larger journey made a huge difference. My perspective shifted 180 degrees.

And it’s a reframing I plan to revisit more often.

Just remember, you’re at a local minima, the absolute minima is behind you, and there is a high spot coming up.

Life isn’t always going to be ketamine and Halo Top ice cream. It’s going to suck sometimes.

But it’ll get better. And we are all going to get there.

I guarantee it.

Swanagan “or your money back” Ray