Nick Like Food

We had no idea, but it was fun. CBR

[nicklikefood]

Jam of the day - discovered on a Bandit Running playlist. Not a bad playlist actually

[nicklikefood]

Chasing My 5K PB

Got within two seconds of my 5K personal best on the weekend and I’m feeling pretty stoked about it.

I’ve been following an 8 week Runna plan focused on improving my 5K time. I’d used Runna before to train for a 10K, which led to a PB too. Though to be fair, I’d never properly tried to race a 10K before, so that one felt like low hanging fruit.

This 5K though? Different story. That PB was set way back in 2017, on a random lunchtime run in Tuggeranong. I’ve questioned the legitimacy of that run ever since. Was it a fluke? Was the GPS off? But it’s been the benchmark, so I’ve had to respect it.

The plan itself went really well. I hit all the paces, completed every session, and honestly loved the structure. I’d never done any formal training before and it was kind of addictive. The interval and tempo workouts were hard, but I really enjoyed the challenge.

All up, I’m proud of how far I’ve come and more motivated than ever to finally break that PB. Onwards.

[nicklikefood]

Hey, how’s it going?

[nicklikefood]

This article really hit home for me.

For me, It came to a point last year where my wife finally said to me that she’d noticed a slow and gradual change in me, I wasn’t the happy person she’d married, lost interest in doing social things, that she couldn’t be the one to keep the relationship healthy and I couldn’t be relied on anymore. It’s difficult with a busy home and work life to find the time/money for therapy and I found myself relying on my wife for emotional support and running the household which made things way harder for her and it wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t that I thought therapy is sign of weakness or anything like that but I thought that I was doing just fine. The slow nature of the depression crept up on me and I didn’t even notice. I’d lost interest in things, I found it hard to answer questions like what do I even like these days? What direction do I want to head with in my career? It’s not clear and without a sounding board I’m finding the answers challenging to say the least. After having my father pass and my mum being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s within quick succession I really needed an outlet that wasn’t my wife. I’m mostly to blame for that with pushing my emotions back and trying to keep myself busy with life and failing to reach out to friends for a chat. When anyone asked how I was doing, I was always great, happy, loving life but underneath it wasn’t so rosy.

I started seeing a therapist about things but the cost became prohibitive and I stopped going. I found that to be useful but only having gone to about three or four sessions, I’m pretty sure that I haven’t sorted out all (any?) of my issues and I still need to talk to people about it. Group therapy didn’t really occur to me as an option and I have a feeling that my problems aren’t that bad, there are people who are far worse off than me, talking about my issues would just be boring to someone else. It sounds weird but it’s almost like imposter syndrome; “I’m not depressed enough!” but I need to get over that and just reach out and look for like minded individuals in a safe space to open up and live my best life

[nicklikefood]

Jam of the Day - An oldie but a goodie.

[nicklikefood]

The twins turn 1

The twins turn 1 today. We made it, we survived. So much has happened in the last year that I’m surprised that we’re all still standing, but as the saying goes, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. There’s still so much to get through still, the second half of 2016 doesn’t look like it’s going to get any easier. Hopefully it does, though. We’re physically and emotionally drained.

The twins are doing pretty well, despite the chicken pox and chest infections, they’re getting bigger and doing more. Ted’s not crawling yet, I”m putting that down to him being lazy, he’s more than happy just to sit and be. Olive on the other hand is crawling at a million miles an hour, getting into everything and being so proud of her mischievous adventures. They’re almost polar opposites in terms of their activity levels! I’m sure Ted will catch up soon enough, I mean, he’ll have to if he wants to keep up! 

Happy birthday, Olive and Teddy. You’re awesome, cute, demanding, cheeky and fun, sometimes all at the same time. Big love, guys!

[nicklikefood]

Jam of the day. I heard the intro of this in the WWDC keynote when Bozoma Saint John was showing off the updates to Apple Music (which is worth watching just to see how she owns it on stage! Watch it here) Also, it’s on Fool’s Gold! Fooooool’s Gooooold!

[nicklikefood]

Jam of the day. Can’t stop nodding my head to this one.

[nicklikefood]

Jam of the day

[nicklikefood]

Jam of the day. In fact, the whole album, Perfect for the grey weather of late. 

[nicklikefood]

Today would have been my Dad's 80th birthday.  I know how it would have played out, I would have asked what he wanted and he would have said 'I like anything you think I like'. I would have asked where he'd like to go for dinner, he would have said the Hellenic Club, or that he was just as happy to have dinner at home, to spend time with all his grandchildren. If we went to the Hellenic Club he would have ordered the Jumbo New York Sirloin, 'no one can do a steak better than the Hellenic Club'.  It would have been quite a milestone, one that I was really looking forward to celebrating with him, he came so close yet so far. I miss him. I miss that I can't share these days with him and I'm sad that he can't see how excited the kids would have been to have a birthday party with him. Happy Birthday Baba.

[nicklikefood]

Oh life.

In the last month or so we've had a broken oven (still broken), broken dishwasher, a car that cost 2k in maintenance costs, thrown Henry a 5th birthday party, Till was officially made redundant from work, had 4 out 4 kids with chicken pox, one who threw up multiple times, one who is still fighting a chest infection, a parent with a sinus infection (and now likely a chest infection) and another parent who can't shake this stupid cough. Add to that all the shit we've been through over the past 6 months or so and the general day to day parenting, life and work duties. It hasn't been easy. But. We got through it. And we're still managing a smile. I don't wanna say that we've got some kind of magical powers to make it through all that, but I think we've got some kind of magical powers.

[nicklikefood]

Jam of the day

[nicklikefood]

Till was sick so I took the day off to help look after Alfie, Teddy and Olive. Even with only 3 of 4 kids home and with some help from Till, when she could, I realised just how hard it is to be at home full time with children. I don’t know how Till does it day in day out, and big respect to her for doing it and doing it incredibly well! It’s so much harder than any of the work that I do at work, it’s no wonder Till is exhausted by the time I get home.

Anyway, while at home, Alfie and I sat down to do some paining with water colours. It was really fun to go through his ideas of what he was painting and his thoughts on how I could make mine better. He’s such a cute little guy!

So here are our amazing pieces, both of our backyard in all it’s autumn glory! Here’s to more painting!

[nicklikefood]

Jam of the day

[nicklikefood]

How great is the Arboretum playground. I went down the slide for the first time and it’s kinda scary! Pitch black inside plus I kinda got stuck for a second. 

[nicklikefood]

The things you see when you venture off the trails. 

I've been trying to get some runs in during my lunchtime, the weather has been perfect and working so close to the lake I've got many options as to where I can run, it’s so beautiful around here. 

While running past the Yarralumla Yacht club the other day, I noticed a trail that went into the bushland across the road, ‘why not’ I thought, could be fun for something different. What surprised me was a number of small signs around the place saying that there used to be cottages, tennis courts and shops around. Venturing a little further up the mountain, there’s a random chimney, it’s very much out of place and still in good condition. I thought that it must be a remnant from one of the old cottages. After researching a little bit it turns out that it’s actually an old sewer vent built in the 1920’s. The whole area, now known as Stirling Park, used to be one of Canberra’s first Suburbs, Westlake. Worth having a read about, if you've got a spare half hour.

I thought it was pretty cool that I stumbled across a little bit of Canberra’s history but what’s even cooler is that reading a little more about the area I learnt about the Indigenous scarred trees. The local indigenous people would remove sections of bark from trees to make things like coolamons, shields and canoes. Apparently there’s a number of them in Stirling Park, so the next day while running around kept my eyes peeled and managed to find one! I find it amazing that there’s so much history around and you don’t even know it, especially seeing that Canberra’s history dates much further back than the centenary celebrated last year.