After seeing how good it felt to wake up early for my 8am Swerve cycling class on Monday, I’ve decided that I need to stop being lazy and wake up earlier. I used to do this all the time from age 27 through 30; I don’t know how my laziness took over me again. I would wake up at 5:50-6am every weekday from Monday through Thursday to make it in time to my gym near Herald Square for an hour-long workout class, followed by another half hour of working out solo. Some days, I even woke up at 5:30 to make it in time for my 6:30am Bikram yoga classes. That took some massive grit on my end.

I only managed to make it down for the gym at 7:40 this morning. My goal is to continue my 7am workouts again. Let’s see how I fare, especially with these dark mornings and shorter days becoming a thing with autumn settling in and winter around the corner.

While walking the streets of New York and taking the subway here and there to see as many sites for Open House New York this weekend, we went into and transited through a few subway stations that had notable subway art in the form of mosaics and tilings on the walls. Along the yellow lines at Prince Street, if you look at the walls, you can see details of silhouettes of different people, some carrying shopping bags, purses, pushing baby strollers, even hauling Christmas trees. At 8th street along the yellow lines, you also see many multicolored mosaic art, from flowers to faces, and it’s clear that a lot of thought and creativity went into these designs. The only sad thing is that given the daily hustle and bustle of New Yorkers, so few of us actually stop to truly appreciate all this notable art, self included. I usually notice them in the evenings when I’m on my way to and from meeting a friend for dinner or drinks, or on the weekends when I’m less in a rush. There’s actually a free walking tour you can do of the subway art that is still on my list of touristy things I’d like to eventually do one day. Too bad Chris doesn’t want to come with me because he doesn’t want to hang out with a bunch of tourists.

My company held a customer marketing event with Swerve Fitness recently, so as a “gift” back to us, they offered a free Swerve fitness class for any employee who has never done a class with them. I’m not a big cycling fan. I don’t really care for biking, nor did I ever love any of the spinning/cycling classes I’ve taken, whether they were at Crunch or at Soul Cycle. I just did them to vary up my routine. But I figured that since it was free, it would be good to take advantage of this (especially since rides cost anywhere from $21-40 each, and there was no way I’d pay for this given I have a gym in my building, plus I pay for my Aaptiv fitness app, which I love). So I took the 8am class this morning before work at the Flatiron location just a few blocks away from my office.

The first thing I will say about my experience is that I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, and I like the concept of Swerve so, so much more than Soul Cycle. It didn’t feel like a cult. It didn’t feel overly pretentious or like people were judging each other based on what brand leggings or sports bra she was wearing. I like the competitive team element and how the instructor calls out the top performing bike number in each class. I also like that the volume is not deafeningly loud like at Soul Cycle and that the lights do not flash constantly like a club throughout the entire 45 minutes. It’s also a given that at any cycling class that within that 45-60 minute time frame that Beyonce will eventually come on. I like that about 10 minutes of the class is devoted to upper body with light weights and that there’s an assistant on standby in the beginning of class who ensures everyone is set up properly and safely on their bikes.

I don’t love spinning shoes. I hate that there are actually “spinning shoes” that you wear that “clip in” to the bike pedals. That is just so weird to me. I took plenty of spinning classes at Crunch where you could just wear your sneakers, and you’d be completely fine. Yes, it does feel different, but unless I am a die-hard spinner, I cannot fathom buying spinning-specific shoes. You could not wear these shoes for any other activity on earth; they are a hazard to wear even on flat flooring given the buckle on the bottom of them.

I also did not like the facilities. There were only three showers and limited bathroom counter space to get ready. Plus, some of the lockers in the locker room didn’t work, so I had to drag my stuff from the lockers outside in the entrance area into the locker room to get ready for work. Granted, most of the people taking these classes would live in the neighborhood and likely go home to shower and get ready for work, but I took class near my office, which meant I had to take my change of clothes, makeup, laptop, etc., with me. And then I remembered how much stuff I used to carry with me before I had a building gym, and I feel very grateful that I don’t have to lug all my dirty gym clothes, sneakers, and all my stuff around with me all day during a weekday.

I understand why people like Swerve and why they like spinning. But I do not like spinning or Swerve enough to justify paying these class packages or drop-in costs when I have my own gym and app I enjoy using for daily exercise. I’m a bit spoiled now, and if I were to pay for fitness classes, I would likely do Bikram yoga because I really enjoyed it when I did it, plus there’s value I get out of the class that I could not get in my building gym (there’s no hot room like that in my building).

I popped into Trader Joe’s today to see if they had the German grapefruit beer from Schofferhofer that Chris and I like, but unfortunately, it looks like the entire beer shelf was cleared out in favor of all things “autumn ale” and “pumpkin ale” related. Even a lot of the regular beers they typically carry were no longer there except for a small handful.

I’ve tried to give a few different pumpkin ale beers a chance quite a number of times, and I really just do not understand them. They may have pumpkin in them, but you’d really be stretching it or lying if you told me that you could immediately get that flavor out of a sip of that. The pumpkin spiced-everything is definitely on overdrive once autumn rolls around, but the pumpkin ale bandwagon is just pointless to me.

Our company is pretty focused on going public. As a result of that, all focus is on selling, selling, and more selling. And when that is the focus, what tends to happen is that culture tends to decline. As culture declines, people start leaving in droves. That can be a good and a bad thing. It’s good for the people who you don’t like because it means you don’t have to deal with them anymore. It’s bad when it comes to people who were genuinely amazing to work with, who you believe had high integrity and were just all-around great colleagues.

Another colleague on my team announced that he was resigning today. I’m not surprised, as I expected he would have left sooner if he had gotten the “right” offer. I honestly could care less that he’s leaving because as sad as it sounds, he ended up being one of the biggest disappointments I’d ever worked with. He was really smart and eager in the beginning, easy to get along with when he first started. When something didn’t go his way internally just a few months into being here (which had nothing to do with any of his peers, which includes me), he decided, pretty much overnight, to completely disengage with all of us. This meant not eating lunch with us, not speaking with us to our faces and only sending us messages over Slack, not joining any meetings in person in our conference rooms and instead “joining” by dialing in at his desk, and when approached in person, fully refusing to make eye contact and only looking down at his computer or phone. It was one of the pettiest, most immature treatments I’d ever encountered.

Good luck to him. It’s unfortunate to meet people who believe that the world should revolve around them, and that when things do not go their way that they should take it out on completely innocent people around them which had zero to do with the problem. The sense of entitlement is truly stunning to me.

This afternoon, we went to Chinatown for massages. I have not always really thought massages were particularly useful; they seemed more self-indulgent than anything. But in the last year or so when I have gotten injured from exercise, I’ve realized more how beneficial they can be and have enjoyed the experience much more. I find myself zoning out more and thinking about all kinds of different things during massages. Falling asleep during a massage, while that may sound relaxing, seems like a bit of a waste of money and time.

The other reason I think it’s important is that in a day and age when we are always so busy with endless distractions, social media, our love-hate relationship with our mobile devices, it’s important to have time for self-care and self-reflection. Massage time is perfect for both.

Unfortunately for us, the glorious night markets that grace cities as delicious as Taipei, Kaohsiung, and Chengdu do not happen in the U.S. at all. But for New York City, we’ve come to address that by creating our own version of a night market right in Queens in Corona Park. It happens annually and runs from the summer months through the end of October and seeks to offer diverse foods from around the world. Tonight, we met up some friends and enjoyed some Burmese tea salad, Taiwanese pork belly buns, lamb skewers, among other tasty things.

It is actually a bit frustrating that as diverse as Queens and all of New York City are that there aren’t more and better Burmese, Cambodian, and Malaysian options. There are a number of Malaysian spots that just haven’t lived up to their hype. Burmese restaurants are pretty much nonexistent outside of pop-ups and night market stalls. And Cambodian… they are mostly pseudo-Cambodian that have mostly Thai or semi-Vietnamese menus. The best Cambodian food we’ve had to date in the U.S. has been in Cleveland, Ohio, of all places. I still think fondly about that meal and how delicious it was, with herbs and fermented fish pastes that I’d never quite had before.