02/27/2025 - A Battle for the Ages

Today's Rating: 7/10

Song of the Day: All's Well That Ends - Rainbow Kitten Surprise

Current Book: Secrets of the Stoics - Jason Hemlock

The fact that I am rating yesterday as high as 7/10 is truly remarkable given a bit more context. I don't think I really fell asleep until ~4 AM and only slept till about 7. In reality, I must have slept (at least partially) between the hours of 10 PM - 1:30 AM when I initially decided to get out of bed, but I would not be surprised if I didn't. Typically, these low sleeps day are some of the lower rated days, so a 7/10 low sleep day is basically a 10/10 normal sleep day.

As I mentioned above, yesterday I woke up around 1:30 AM and got on my phone for ~ 30 minutes to see if I could get tired enough to go to sleep. I tried to fall asleep one more time but decided to call it around 2:30 AM. I brought my Kindle to the office to try to read some of my book to see if that would help, but I actually never opened it. I got straight on my computer and started watching various YouTube videos (I don't remember them all but they ranged from Fireship videos to van life remodels). I got really hungry around 3:30 so decided to make some food (a bowl of cereal or three) and continued my Youtube binging. Around 4:15/4:30, I felt the urge to sleep and decided to try my luck on the couch. I'm not sure of when exactly I fell asleep, but Maddie ended up waking me up sometime around 7.

I immediately went to the office since I was "late" for work and logged into my computer. Luckily, no issues there. I got my hot bean water and sat down to write the worst blog post yet while I waited for the wake-up juice to do its thing.

I had a relatively light day planned for work that day (for anyone else that works in DevOps/Cloud jobs you'll know that a plan for the day is about as useless as your opinion on tech debt to leadership). Somehow, my day ended up even lighter than I had planned with the two meetings scheduled for that day being cancelled: standup and a PI planning meeting. My friend Bryan texted me to see if I could play tennis that evening (I swear he has a sixth sense for when I don't sleep well because he always asks me to play on those days). After checking with the warden (love you Maddie), we scheduled to play around 6. I gave my updates for the day in chat and went on my walk to try to wake up even further. Despite being tired, it was a beautiful day outside for a walk which perked me up for the remainder of the day. In total, I walked 3.36 miles in 59 minutes.

I got back from my walk and made myself lunch. I've been working through our freezer at the moment, so I've had frozen Ramens everyday for the past few days along with a piece of fruit.

In the afternoon, I continued the hard work of moving my mouse every five of so minutes to keep that little bubble green on chat.

I did handle one small request for my least favorite client, but it required minimal effort. I actually closed my computer on time for once and proceeded to play an hour or so of video games with two of my friends. After video games, I watched an episode of Invincible until Maddie got home.

We have new neighbors moving into the house next door to us, so Maddie and I greeted them for about fifteen minutes. I actually had met them already when they had come earlier this year to look at the house. As I was walking out for my daily walk that day, the lady (she's kind of a character but I liked her) had greeted me by saying "I'm not trying to sell anything I just have a few questions". I proceeded to tell her about the neighbors/neighborhood and various things like that. She and her husband seem really nice/friendly. We've lived here for ~2.5 years and these are the first neighbors that we've had more than a one second interaction with.

ATTENTION ⚠️⚠️🚨: If you don't care about tennis, you should stop reading here. You should also reevaluate that opinion but I digress.

After that, I proceeded to leave for tennis. I had no clue what was in store for me last night. Bryan is one of the best players in town (I believe he used to play lower level college tennis), and we always have extremely tough matches. I've won the last few matches that we have played, but prior to that, we would typically alternate who won each time. Despite being powered by 4ish hours of sleep, I was playing surprisingly well although I could feel that I would run out of energy soon than usual. I managed to take the first set 6-2. That score line does not do justice to the games in the first set. I believe that almost every game went to multiple deuces except one or two.

At this point, I was not tired at all as the blood was moving. The second set started, and I continued playing really well. Less of these games went to deuce, and I went up 5-2 with mostly one-way traffic. He managed to hold his serve fairly easily to make it 5-3 meaning I was serving for the set. After dumping a regulation forehand in the net on the first point, I played three good points to make it 40-15 giving me two match points. At this point, Bryan decided the following:

He proceeded to save eight match points in that one game and broke back to make the set back on serve. At this point, I was gassed. Just dead and tired. But I also didn't really want to lose. If you've never played tennis before, it is the absolute worst thing in the world to lose a match that you had match points in. He held his serve easily, and I mustered up the remaining energy I had to hold my serve to send us to a tiebreaker. I gave my best in the second-set tiebreaker, but he seemed to find an infinite energy source and won 7-4. This was already 2 hours into the match, but Bryan looked like this:

while I was mostly like:

This meant the match had to be decided in a 10 point tiebreaker. This was not good for me. Not good at all. He quickly jumped to a 8-5 lead in that tiebreaker and had the the opportunity to serve it out on his next two serves. I think he started feeling the pressure though because he double-faulted (out of character for Bryan making it 8-6). This gave me an unexpected boost of energy and light at the end of the tunnel. I managed to win the next point as well making the tiebreak back on serve (7-8). I won my first service point but lost the second giving Bryan the first of his match points. I managed to save this first match point evening the score at 9-9. For tiebreakers in tennis, you have to win by two meaning that this tiebreaker was going to extra innings. After swapping some more match points back and forth, I managed to win 15-13. In total, I believe he had three match points, and I had eleven before I finally managed to close it out after 2.75 hours of playing (almost as long as I had slept that night!).

I had originally told Maddie that I would be home around 8 which is typically how long a singles match is. She joked that Bryan would need to provide free couples therapy if he kept me that long again 😆. I made it home and proceeded to eat dinner and watch some Youtube with Maddie. I read a few pages of my book and fell asleep around 10:30.

Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow!