Zak Greant

My wife and I painted one wall (except a 10” border) in each room of an old apartment a different colour (except the bathroom, which was completely bright acid green and the kitchen, which did not have a wall suitable.) The living room got a nice dark taupe. The bedroom wall was light blue. The second bedroom received a sort of banana-y yellow.

Guests were usually stunned by the bathroom. Every wall and ceiling surface, except the tile in the shower, was roughly this colour: greeeen

The down side is that it was also difficult to cover up afterwards. :^/

I wrote a reference book on programming and, while the book took a tremendous amount of effort, it was rewarding in many ways.

I became a better communicator, I learned a bunch about the programming language in question, I built a career off of it (with the help of some very kind and wise friends), made my mother proud and so on.

However, it was not that financially rewarding – it was hundred of hours of work for relatively little direct compensation. Of course, the indirect compensation (like being able to get much better consulting gigs more than made up for this.)

My sedentary lifestyle is really starting to show – both in how my back feels at the end of the day and in how pear-shaped I am becoming.

The first thing to do is start walking for about 45 minutes every day. Thankfully, we sold our car last year, so the walking thing is nearly a requirement… err.. at least, it would be if I did not work from home about 50% of the time.

Once I have been back at walking regularly, I will start including some light jogging to increase my cardiovascular fitness (while not punishing my knees too much) and then a light routine to improve my core strength.

In the past, I have tended to push myself too hard – as if short bursts of overexertion could erase for months of torpor. This time I will take it slower. :)