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Robert Tamayo

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Documenting Energy Levels

I felt great in June, and I looked healthier, too. It was the start of Summer, and I had just come back from a couple of vacations. I was probably also a lot more optimistic back then.

I don't know why, but I'm not feeling 100% right now. It's nothing serious - it's just taking a little longer to recover from workouts and such. It's not the same as when I feel like I'm getting sick, either. It's closest to burnout, but I'm not sure why; I'm not particularly overwhelmed by work, studying, or side projects to feel that any of them are capable of burning me out.

I do know that some things have changed in my life since the beginning of Summer. I got sick around the end of July, and it was bad enough to warrant taking my first sick days off from work in about 7 years. But that was months ago - and I felt great a couple weeks ago, so it can't be the lingering effects of the flu.

I really want to know what is making me feel this way. One benefit of writing a blog post every day is that I can sort of keep track of what things I was doing around certain periods of time. In June, I was writing a lot of posts at MightAndMyth.com, and I was also just starting the Balloon Ghost project. It was the longest day of the year sometime in June, as well, so I must have felt great from getting extra sunlight. 

However, I still can't figure out exactly what made me feel so great. So, from now on, I'm going to start keeping track of a few things on a daily basis. What am I reading? What am I building? Is work stressful? What time did I wake up and go to sleep? What music am I listening to? What are my interests? What did I focus on?

Answering all of these questions daily in a short format will help me identify patterns that I would otherwise be unable to detect. Did a general mood change coincide with me starting to listen to more Deep House and Chill electronic music? Or did that happen when I started listening to more metal music? Did my gains in the gym coincide with better focus in my programming, or was it just the extra hours of sleep that I got that improved my attentiveness?

All of these questions and more will be able to be answered by me if I can continue to document these simple things daily. For now, though, I just have to guess. 
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