"Mens sana in corpore sano"

That is the Latin phrase, often translated as "a healthy mind in a healthy body". The last two years have been tough for almost everyone. I know I have struggled like never before. I have managed to still go for a run every day (1145 day streak ATM), without which I would be an even bigger mess. At the same time, this has been an excellent opportunity to work on things we didn't usually have time for. For example, I signed up to Duolingo and learned thousands of new Greek words. I have also taken the opportunity to learn how to bake delicious bread, make my own pasta, and become the family chef.

Three years ago, we did a Java push-up challenge, where we tried to do 15000 push-ups in 5 months. I barely managed, but TBH I think it was too extreme and not sustainable. You can see the hall-of-fame of those who participated in that challenge over here.

This year, we are doing a much smaller challenge that I am hoping to be more sustainable. 1000 in December, 2000 in January, 3000 in February. Make sure to do other exercises as well, strength as well as aerobic. My personal goal is to do 8 sets of push-ups every day, building up towards 15 push-ups per set, but starting on Wednesday with 4 push-ups per set.

What I liked about the previous challenge was bumping into participants at various conferences and seeing the visible change that had occurred.

We are starting on Wednesday, so please join if you like.

And in case you only want to hear about Java, do make sure to check out Jack Shirazi's latest Java Performance Tuning Newsletter. Jack started his newsletter one month after me, but has been more consistent in sending it out every month.