Diet & Nutrition

After a few years of trying to figure out why my anxiety had been steadily getting worse and why eating seemed to be causing me distress, I finally figured out the issue!

After starting anti-depressants, and the background anxiety was removed, I was still noticing pain, fatigue, anxiety and extreme bloating after meal-time. Turns out, I have celiac disease! Now that I follow a strict gluten-free diet, all of my symptoms have gone away. Barring the occasional glutening, which brings them all right back.

Creating content

This isn't my first attempt at content creation, but I think this time it'll stick.

I know myself better now, which means I know what I need to sustain a creative endeavor. And for me, that's following what I want to do, not forcing myself to do something that I think will perform well. If it's not fulfilling to me, I'll drop it very quickly.

The YouTube channel I've started is a personal dump about trying new things, learning, failing and trying again. I'm always trying to learn new skills or have weird obsessive moments where I want to learn everything about a topic. So, I figured, why not film it and try to get better at telling compelling stories.

You can find the channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@alextriesthings

Woodworking

I've become more and more interested in tactile skills. They offer an amazing way to disconnect from the digital world, and force you to focus on the present. So, I picked up woodworking. It's mostly been functional for now (many renovations to be done, and quick builds), but I'm excited to start creating more carefully crafted goods in the coming months.

Watches

As part of the tactile hobbies/skills, I recently fell into the watch rabbit hole. I'm not that deep, yet, but I'm slowly building a collection and learning about the intricacies of horology. Not to mention some of the... interesting stories behind the pieces and companies that make them.

I suspect I'll end up modding a few Seikos, and probably try and get into repair/restoration. We'll see. I'm a bit of a hobby collector, so who knows how long this will actually last.

Reconnecting with photography

After YouTube sent me down the film photography rabbit hole, I got my parent's old 35mm cameras and went all-in. Having shot on digital since I was 13, it's been a wonderful change.

The slow, imperfect and physical nature of it all really spoke to me. Much like how manual pour overs and pulling espresso shots require focused attention, so does film photography.

You can check out some of my work on Instagram → @graingiant.

I've also started posting my work to Unsplash → @alexcaza

Lifting weights

After fixing my diet and realizing I was EXTREMELY low on the protein intake scale, I have so much more energy again. Not only that, my recovery is 10x better than it was previously since making this change.

Now that I can actually recover after pushing my muscles, I decided it's time to hit the gym and lift some weights. I don't have concrete goals right now, other than putting on some muscle mass, and making sure I'm training for functional strength and movement.