Year end challenge :: Update

Its been a week since I decided to do the year end challenge to live like Casey Neistat and it has been a huge failure so far. Maybe I picked the wrong time to take up this challenge or I just am not determined enough to make lifestyle changes.

The very first thing I wanted to try as part of this challenge was to wake up between 4:30 to 5AM and since the past one week, I havent been able to do that even once. Its december and it started getting a little cold and 4-6 am happens to be the time when we get the best of the sleep. That made it really difficult for me to wake up. So that threw my attempts at studying and learning something new down the drain.

The second thing I wanted to do was go on daily runs. In the past one week, I went only once and after that work got to me which made it very difficult to push myself to the gym and a bout of cough and cold added to that. I also thought I will blog daily. That didn't happen either. This isnt an excuse but it was more because of lack of a subject to write about rather than the time factor.

The silver lining though was my plan to do intermittent fasting. I did manage to skip having any carbs after 8pm and from what my parents say, I did reduce a little. Its weekend and this also has taken a toll again but I will persist with the fasting and will take it on till the end of the year and hopefully make it a lifestyle. I feel I wake up much lighter doing this and since there is a long gap between having my last meal and sleeping, it is also helping me sleep better.

Its a long weekend for us here and so far it has been quite productive. Lets see what else I can do this weekend and I vouch to keep up with my year end challenge into next week.

Will keep the blog updated. 

Year End Challenge

Its the last month of the year and its that time of the year when people go into a retrospective to assess what went right and what didn't go right this year and its also the time when people start preparing to make resolutions for next year. The same old "New year", "New Me" thing that happens year after year. I am also guilty of making resolutions, some unrealistic, some outright naive and some over enthusiastic ones and sadly I have not kept most of them.

There is one resolution I made at the beginning of the year and that was to be a medal collector and surprisingly I have been able to partially keep it. I wanted to earn a medal a month which meant I would've earned 12 medals this year but instead I managed to participate in the most famous running events and I earned medals there. I started with this enthusiasm at the beginning of the year and participated in some not so famous events and I could see the difference. Hardly any people participated in these small time events. There was no organization what so ever and even the medal I got was some cheap flimsy one which are given in schools. So im never going to participate in these small events every again. Anyways I'm quite happy with the progress I made. I started the year with a 5K and ended it doing two awesome 10K's in the Airtel Hyderabad Marathon and the Freedom 10K run. I plan to participate in many many more events next year.

All this aside, coming back to the title of my blog. Yesterday I happened to watch a video on youtube in which one of the vloggers, Sorelle Amor made a video of her trying to live like one of my most favorite youtuber, Casey Neistat for a week. You can watch the video here. Casey is a very famous and an extremely successful youtuber who captured the hearts and minds of millions of people by making daily vlogs where he shows snippets of his day in a very interesting way. His work ethic, his fitness mantra and most importantly his story telling has become extremely famous and he is quite an influential person and people are always super anxious to meet him. This lady Sorelle did a marvelous job of trying to live like Casey for a week and it got me thinking. Now that sounds super interesting and very achievable, why don't I give it a shot as well?? The good thing was that it is just for a week and that seems like a reasonable time frame to try something new. Better make resolutions for a reasonable realistic time frame rather than for the entire year during which we become tend to become complacent and end up not being able to keep up the resolutions.

Casey has this really tight, yet interesting schedule each day which I intend to follow with some improvisations and it goes like this :

Casey	Nitin
Wakes up between 4:30 to 5 am and does some work. His work involves editing youtube videos or responding to mails	In my case it would be to wake up at that time and study and update myself on new technologies
He is very fitness conscious and goes for long runs (usually in the tune of 10kms) almost every day.	I love running too, so I could do something similar by hitting the gym after an hour or two of studying
He always eats healthy. Of course he goes on the occasional binge but he drinks a lot of green juices.	In my case I am going to try intermittent fasting where I am not going to eat any high calorie diet after 8pm.
Family time is important for him. He always spends time with his wife and kid after 6pm.	I'm not married yet and even if I come home by 6 pm, my parents aren't home, so I thought instead of family time, I will do daily blogs.
He goes for a late night gym session.	This is the only thing from his routine that I wont be able to do but I will try to incorporate something.

I thought I will start this today but I had come back from a 500 KM drive yesterday night and couldn't wake up. I will surely start following this routine from tomorrow and instead of a daily vlog, I will write a daily blog. Lets see how it goes.

Casey Niestat

I cant believe I haven't followed him all this while.

A few years ago, I saw two different videos of Casey, one where he shows how the first class section of some airline looked like and the other one where he and his wife Candice go to an Indian wedding. I never thought that he was so huge. I got hooked on Video Logs, vlogs in short since only a few months ago. My actual intention was something different but then as you know, YouTube is such a treasure trove and I found this gem as I dug deeper. I was in-fact looking for bike and car reviews as I was planning to buy a new car and a bike and in the process I ran into this guy named Sriman Kotaru. He's very good and I love the way he vlogs and then one thing lead to another and I ran into Casey. Casey's been around for more than a decade and there is so much of his content that I have to catch up on.

The funny thing about Casey is that hes not much of a looker but his content and the way he presents it is just magical. I feel like his vlogs are like a netflix series which we just cant get enough of. The good thing is that there are no seasons and I don't have to wait for years for the next one (GOT for example 😉) .

This guy Sriman I was talking about seems to have been heavily inspired by Casey. I love Sriman's content as well but the more I look at Casey's vlogs, the more I feel that Sriman kinda lifted off the entire idea from Casey. The signature on this vlogs, the way he unpacks stuff, the way he makes time lapses everywhere, his love story and all that bear such uncanny similarity with Casey that I feel there is a slight lack of originality. Well I'm not worthy of saying anything against either of them but I at least have freedom of expression. I think this warrants a bit of a disclaimer now.

DISCLAIMER: Sriman, if ever you read this blog, I want you to know that I do not mean to offend you in any way what so ever. I just noticed that uncanny similarity between Casey and you and just pointed it out that's all. I just love your content and I hope I run into you sometime in the city.

Anyways, coming back to my main topic, Casey Niestat. I've been a petro head since as long as I can remember and I think now is a good time to jump into the vlog scene. I may not have explored moto vlogging as much yet, but I feel there is a huge gap in that area. I see that most of the vloggers are rich kids who own or are somehow connected with guys having super bikes or cars and their vlogs revolve around that and normal guys like us end up drooling over these costly machines and kinda wish that we had something like that. I know these super cars and bikes will attract a lot of eyeballs, but I feel a majority of viewers are normal people who own normal bikes and cars and I feel the need to fill this void.

I am currently doing my homework to prepare myself for taking this plunge. I know competition is huge and I will really need to come up with stellar content. I hope in the near future I will be able to fulfill this dream of mine. Lets see how it goes.

Wish me luck!!