GTD #32: The Miracle

Haven't lifted weights in ages but the yoga has been consistent. Just as important, I've been eating more and cooking at home to get in the calories and protein that have been lacking for a long time. That's the biggest improvement for me mentally. I've got cast iron skillet, dutch oven, and a Ninja mini-oven - all of which are the right tools I need to find the joy in cooking that I've been missing. Now I get it, and it's fun! These are the milestones I've been lacking. I know, it's such a pathetic win but it's encouraging me to put as much energy as possible into training, now that I've got the right food sources to make the most of that energy.

More importantly, a new life has entered the world. As the old saying goes, "when the student is ready, the master appears." Everything has lead me to this moment, and it's another step in the journey of life. My dream from the beginning of this blog was to live as a yogi, to achieve union with the world. To really connect, to really feel, to really care. Now I have the biggest motivation of all.

I've come to recognize that I have to accept both sides of my self, the western explorer and the eastern wanderer. The knight and the monk. To remember the times of isolation and disconnection, of inner exploration, and to take those lessons back into the world to live as my fully integrated self. This too, is yoga.

May 1st to May 31st, 2026

Long story short: I'm training hard and talking about it. Hopefully you find this entertaining enough to subscribe, tell a friend and take on the Sendō Challenge.

Want the full story? Click here.

There's real heroes out there.

Here's one of their stories.

X

Eiichiro Oda and the Art of the Long Voyage

Most artists spend their careers searching for a masterpiece.

Eiichiro Oda has spent nearly thirty years living inside one.

When One Piece debuted in 1997, it looked like another entry in the crowded world of shōnen manga—a goofy pirate adventure starring a rubber-bodied teenager named Monkey D. Luffy. It was funny, energetic, occasionally absurd, and filled with the kind of optimism that defined many manga of the era.

Few people could have predicted that it would become one of the most successful stories ever told.

Not one of the most successful comics.

One of the most successful stories.

Today, One Piece stands alongside the biggest cultural phenomena on the planet. Its manga has sold hundreds of millions of copies. Its anime spans generations. Entire countries recognize its iconography. Yet the remarkable thing isn't its commercial success. It's that after all these years, it still feels deeply personal.

At its core, One Piece remains a story about a kid who wants to be free.

That idea sounds simple until you realize Oda has spent decades exploring every possible angle of it.

Freedom from governments. Freedom from prejudice. Freedom from expectations. Freedom from fear. Freedom to chase a dream that makes no sense to anyone else.

What makes Oda unique is that he hides these themes beneath adventure. Readers arrive expecting pirates, treasure maps, and ridiculous superpowers. Somewhere along the journey they find themselves reading about political corruption, inherited trauma, systemic oppression, colonialism, and the nature of justice.

And somehow it never feels preachy.

The world of One Piece isn't constructed like a traditional fantasy setting. It feels discovered. Each island introduces a new culture, a new conflict, a new piece of history, yet everything connects to something larger. Characters introduced years—or even decades—earlier return with renewed significance. Tiny details become major revelations. Plot threads that seemed forgotten reveal themselves as deliberate seeds planted long ago.

Fans often describe reading One Piece as watching a magician perform a trick that lasts twenty-five years.

The longer you watch, the more impossible it seems.

Yet Oda's greatest strength may not be his worldbuilding. Plenty of writers can build worlds. Fewer can make people care about them.

What keeps readers invested isn't the mystery of the One Piece treasure or the secrets of the world government. It's the people. Oda has an uncanny ability to create characters who feel larger than life while remaining emotionally recognizable. Their dreams are exaggerated, but their fears are familiar. Their victories feel earned because their struggles feel real.

This is especially true of Luffy, who remains one of modern fiction's most unconventional heroes.

He isn't the smartest person in the room. He rarely has a plan. He doesn't seek power, wealth, or status. What he wants is freedom—the freedom to live exactly as he chooses—and he inspires others because he grants them that same freedom in return.

In an era obsessed with antiheroes, cynicism, and moral ambiguity, Luffy's sincerity feels almost revolutionary.

The same could be said of Oda himself.

Modern storytelling often mistakes darkness for maturity. Oda has spent nearly three decades arguing the opposite. His stories contain tragedy, violence, and loss, but they never surrender to hopelessness. He believes people can change. He believes dreams matter. He believes friendship is powerful. He believes laughter is worth protecting.

Those ideas sound almost embarrassingly earnest on paper.

In practice, they're why millions of people keep coming back.

Behind that optimism lies an extraordinary amount of discipline. Oda's work schedule has become legendary within the manga industry. Week after week, year after year, he has continued building one of the most ambitious fictional worlds ever attempted. The scale is difficult to comprehend. Most creators struggle to maintain coherence across a trilogy. Oda has maintained it across decades.

There is a tendency to describe artists like Oda as geniuses, as if their achievements emerged fully formed from talent alone. But One Piece is not the product of a single flash of inspiration. It is the result of persistence. Thousands of pages. Thousands of decisions. Thousands of days spent returning to the same dream.

That's what makes his story so compelling.

Not that he imagined a great adventure.

That he stayed the course long enough to finish it.

And perhaps that's the lesson hidden within One Piece itself. The treasure at the end of the journey matters. But what truly transforms people is the voyage—the years spent pursuing something they love despite uncertainty, setbacks, and the possibility of failure.

For nearly thirty years, Eiichiro Oda has invited readers to set sail toward the horizon.

Millions have followed.

Not because they know what awaits them at the end.

But because he convinced them the journey would be worth it.

Great content from around the world.

How an enslaved, shipwrecked African became the US’s first great explorer

Nearly 500 years ago, a Moroccan man walked thousands of miles from Florida to the Pacific Coast, becoming the first known outsider to see the American West.

BBCEliot Stein

Don't go anywhere! Sendō: GTD will be right back after a short word from our sponsors.

This Month's Sponsor: Me!

The vision for Sendō Worldwide is far beyond the blog of a low-level corporate stooge, it's a worldwide mission to transform myself and others for the better.

Support the future of what we're building here by subscribing to get an email when new posts drop.

Back to Sendō: GTD! We missed you.

Unedited ramblings, typically after a run.

Please feel free to skip to the end.

5/1/2026

Aiming for 15+ yoga sessions this month. Let's go! Finally between the Model Y Performance and Rivian R2 Performance as my next vehicle too, so that's exciting. I'm throwing in the Kia EV9 as a backup.

5/5/2026

This will be my last chapter, and my last week in life, before I take on a new job. It's the most important one of any human's life, generally speaking. I'm not scared, and while I didn't necessarily have an interest in it, it's an important part of life and I'm looking forward to the next era of adventures my crew will have together. Sure, I just wish I was way richer and had a mansion back home, but other than that, I'm as ready as I could be. Here's to bringing another yogi into the fold.

5/6/2026

First 30 minute yoga session in a while. Hit some poses I haven't seen in a while, that one where you have to balance on one leg and stretch the other leg out - wow!! Total ass kicker but it's worth it. Getting in a good groove this month, my big focus is eating as much as possible and staying consistent with yoga. Going to work in some weightlifting this month and honestly, chasing my dog around the park the other day was pretty fun so I might even sneak in a couple runs. We'll see how it all shakes out but I'm eating more which is great.

5/14/2026

Back home after a wild ride in the amusement park called life. The next few chapters are going to be interesting, but at least I know I'm headed in the right direction. Life is truly incredible, and you realize how sacred each life is, and how important and how difficult it is to bring life into this world. You get it, right? So anyway, I'm learning to get a bit more serious about things in life. I recognize the things I have to sacrifice, the things I still want. The dream I still have, that I gave up on for years. Got a 20 minute yoga session in today, and that was brutal. The last few days and nights have been sleepless, exercise-less, and essentially a mind-bending trip of endurance. So for the first time in years, I came close to restarting in yoga. I fell over several times, felt like I was going to pass out, and generally just struggled to do the same poses I've done for years. I totally get how older folks must feel - it legitimately felt like torture, but I did feel the muscles loose and stretch, and the practice helped to ground me in the real world. Let's see what happens next.

5/19/2026

Getting sort of used to the new normal. Finally decided on the car I want - the Mazda CX-70 Turbo S Premium Plus. Feels a little weird going back to gas but honestly there's no EV right now that's a worthy upgrade. The new Tesla Model Y is alright but not a massive leap in technology, and the Rivian R2 is basically the same as the Model Y with better ground clearance, and it ain't smart to be spending $64K right now.

For yoga, I've been doing a solid job this month with longer sessions. And by longer, all I mean is 25-30 minutes, but it's a start. I think I can hit 15+ sessions the goal is to do at least one 45 minute session. Maybe 5 weightlifting sessions too. I was working through my 12 week PTP2 program, but I've lost so much muscle mass that I'll just restart the PTP1 program. The goal is to live through the program and refine it further.

Likewise for nutrition, I was struggling with getting my protein in. I had yogurt, but honestly it's so much work to eat yogurt, which is truly pathetic to say but that's how it goes. So instead I'm switching over to yogurt drinks, which I can chug two of and it's 40g of protein. So from a nutrient perspective, at least I've got something to lean on. I'll still consume a protein shake after workouts but this will be a great injection of nutrients every morning. Building back better!

5/24/2026

Time, space and sleep have lost all meaning after having a baby. It's crazy really, I've absolutely never been pushed to my limits before like this. In fact it's made me realize how easy I've had life up until now. Now I feel the real responbility of life in my hands. Before this, I could always run away, start over, escape my problems, get stoned and sleep on the couch from 8PM onwards. Not anymore. But oddly enough, I don't feel scared. I don't feel overwhelmed. I actually feel like all of the meditation, breathing exercises and yoga have prepared me for this moment. The screams don't bother me. The random waking up is exhausting, but not overwhelming. And all of the awful ways I have to contort my body to feed the baby - not so bad with all of the training. So I'm going to keep on training, keep on pushing myself, to handle this bigger responsibility that I'm part of.

Now the tradeoff is that I was eating and sleeping poorly for this first two weeks of this new chapter in life, and I've never felt weaker. But today was a turning point - loaded up on Trader Joes food and starting to cook as much as I can. I haven't lifted weights in a while but I figure if I eat as much high quality food as possible, it'll give me enough energy to function to manage the baby and get some real meaningful workouts in.

My entire mindset has been shifting with this experience, and I realize I can't waste any more time. I think of my parents, and my partner's parents, and when I see all of us together with the baby, I felt on a spritual level that this is what life is all about. And at that same time, I realized that our chapter in Austin, Texas was over. Whatever comes next, I don't know, but the most important thing in life is to raise life around the people you love, and this side quest in Texas isn't the future I want. I love the nature and the freedom, truly and deeply, but if my family can't be here, then there's no point. I need to push myself, harder than ever, to escape this small town and get back to the Big Apple. Feels like I'm in Pallet Town in Pokemon Red and I need a lot of money, training, luck and experience to make it to the big city. Life's full circle.

5/28/2026

Dreading going back to work, but this time has been excellent motivation to move forward in life. That's the whole idea of union that I've been looking for in the last few years. Wanting to reconnect with the world for a purpose that feels 100% genuine and 100% me. There's this old saying: "When the student is ready, the master appears." I feel that way with this baby. Taking care of a new life, in every moment of every day, is forcing me to be 100% present and also deeply considering and acting on what I want my future to be like. There's no more hypotheticals - just pure action.

I'm taking a second stab on the Sendō training app - super proud of the MVP I put together as it hit all of the main goals I was aiming for. But now it's time to work on a 2nd draft that's a bit more fleshed out and personalized. And I've got a new name that's perfect for it: Go Beyond. How cool is that? So that's one of my main goals that makes sense over the next two weeks - get another solid MVP of the app going, maybe even shoot a basic ad/promo for it and see what happens. But there's a lot of ifs and buts in between now and then, so let's take it one step at a time and see what happens.

5/31/2026

Solid 35 minute yoga session this morning. I've seriously stepped up the amount of eating I've done this month, which obvs sounds weird to say, but I seriously have struggled with eating lots of food consistently my entire life, even more so since going vegetarian/pescatarian. But I'm feeling stronger each day this month - even with the exhaustion of having a baby, especially because of it, I've accepted that I need to eat to have the fuel to take care of my family. It's not just me anymore, living every 2 weeks for the next paycheck to pay off a little debt and think about running away to the desert. I'm back in the fight called life, but I want to do it my own way.

So - eating a lot more which has been good for me, and it's starting to give me enough strength to get back into weightlifting. I think running won't be in the cards for me for a long while, but I know the combo of yoga and strength training is the right balance of Midori Sendō for me right now.

This month has brought me to the biggest change of my life so far. It's led me to finally accept what I need to do, not just think about, to get ahead. This is my story, and I'm building it one chapter at a time. It's going to get even better.

Last thought for the month - oh never mind, the baby's crying. Till next time.

Subscribe to get updates on new content, merch, events and more from Sendō Worldwide. You'll get one email a week at most.

Check out some Research: our free collection of training plans, workout guides, nutrient-dense grocery lists, pace calculators, and other tools to support your quest.

Have a tip, story, or idea? It could end up in a future post. Email me anytime with questions, thoughts, or even confessions — we're all in this together.