Flustered, Focused, and Still Rowing

Today was messy before it even began.

I was looking forward to trying out my new headphones at the gym—but they wouldn’t connect properly. I got flustered. Frustrated. Caught up in the tech not working.

And hovering over everything was a work situation: a conversation with my boss that I’ve been dreading. I’m pretty sure a mistake’s been made—not a massive one, but one of those frustrating, vague gaps where I should have documented something and didn’t. Now it’s fuzzy. And it’s on me.

Old me would’ve taken all that as a reason to skip the gym.

But today?

I rowed anyway.

500-meter intervals at a 1:50 pace.
Low stroke rate—24 to 26.
Tough, focused work.

And even with everything swirling around in my head, I stayed in it.

The gym didn’t fix the problem. It didn’t make the conversation disappear.

But it grounded me. It gave me something solid to push against. And it cleared enough space for me to walk out thinking:

“Okay. I’ve already done one hard thing today. I can handle the next one.”

And that’s what this experiment has really become.

Not just about pace.
Not just about rowing.

It’s about how I show up when things get messy.
It’s about handling it, instead of hiding from it.
It’s about pushing through the noise.

Flustered. Focused. Still rowing.

This is the Sub-7 Experiment.