Week 50 log – 2025

The space between endings and beginnings

This week, I closed a chapter of my life. I finished my last day at my job here in Thailand, left the country, and are soon on my way back home. It was a week of mixed emotions – the peace and relief of stepping out of something that no longer served me, and the pull toward beginning what comes next. Most of the week was spent navigating the space between those two states.

Week 50 metrics

Training
Workouts: 2 | Cycling: 2 hrs

Recovery
Avg sleep: 7:57 hrs | Sleep score: 84

Work
HG work: 6 hrs | Other work: 8 hrs

This log reflects how I’ve worked with the Hagen Growth philosophy in practice over the past week

What I worked on

This was an unusual week for me. For the past 1.5 years, I’ve been living and working in Thailand. On Tuesday, I had my final shift at my part-time job, and on Wednesday I left for a short vacation in Malaysia with my girlfriend before heading home alone tomorrow. Because of that, my focus this week wasn’t on building – it was on wrapping things up and closing a chapter of my life.

Hagen Growth and work

For the past months, I’ve been putting in the hours – both for Hagen Growth and for my job. For a long time, I’ve been looking toward this point: the moment I would finally be free of the job and able to start the next step with Hagen Growth.

This week gave me the first half of that. On Tuesday, I finished my last day, handed everything over, and officially closed that chapter. The shift was immediate. The moment I got home, I could feel my stress levels drop. I slept better. My body relaxed in a way it hadn’t for months.

But toward the end of the week, while still on vacation, a familiar feeling started to return – a kind of impatience similar to what I felt last week, but with a different shape this time. Last week, the impatience was specific: I wanted to publish the relaunch early. This week, it was more general. It wasn’t tied to a single action. It was tied to the past year.

For a long time, I’ve felt like I’ve been holding myself back. I spent months in a position where there wasn’t much room to grow – personally or professionally – and during that same period, I often neglected myself and Hagen Growth.

Over the past few months, that has slowly shifted. I’ve started to feel like myself again. The passion has returned, but it’s come with a sense of “making up for lost time.” A lot of my energy this past year was drained by conflict at work. Now that those conflicts are gone, that energy has come back – and this time, I can direct it into something meaningful here at Hagen Growth.

What went well

I have a tendency to overthink, especially when I feel passionate about something. I start imagining how I can improve it, what could be done, and how it might look. It often pulls me out of the moment. I spend too long thinking to be present, or I dive into detailed notes and plans that I don’t actually have the space or energy for. Both can be draining, and both need restraint.

I felt the same urge this week, but instead of going all in on planning or keeping everything in my head, I found a middle ground. When ideas came up, I wrote a short note on my phone, put it away, and moved on.

It was enough to keep the ideas without letting them take over. I stayed present in what I was doing, and at the same time, I now have all those insights saved for future work. In the coming weeks, I can go through them properly – in a context where they don’t pull me away from something else.

I’m happy with how I handled it. It’s an approach I’ll keep using. When I enter a similar state again, unless I genuinely have the time and energy to go deep, I’ll make simple, unstructured notes and return to them later. It’s the balance between capturing what matters and protecting the moment I’m in.

What could have been better

Overall, I’m happy with how the week unfolded. I finished my employment in Thailand, and it’s natural that it brought up some emotion. I handled it well, learned from it, and if I were to do it again, there’s very little I would change.

Training

My workouts last week were heavily affected by pain. This week was much better, but being away meant I didn’t have much time to train. I went to a small hotel gym twice for some full-body work and got a couple of hours on the bike before leaving Thailand. It wasn’t a week for progress, but it was enough to maintain things.

What went well

This week was dedicated to my girlfriend and to ending my time in Thailand on a good note. That was the priority, and it naturally meant less training volume than usual. But I felt at peace with it.

Of course, I missed the gym and my long rides. I’m eager to get back home and into my routines again. But there was no guilt, no feeling of falling behind.

At the end of last week, I decided exactly how I wanted to approach this one, and I followed through. Over the past months, I’ve been improving my systems and planning, and I’ve reached a point where I can plan ahead and then execute without overthinking – a skill that will matter with the intensity I expect in the coming months.

What could have been better

I followed the plan, but I hadn’t accounted for any mobility work outside my gym sessions. That left me a bit stiff after last week’s issues – not ideal before a 20+ hour journey home. The problem this week wasn’t execution but planning.

I could have looked ahead more clearly. I knew my body had struggled, and I know how much mobility work affects how I feel. Going forward, I need to treat it as its own session when necessary – something I can add to the end of a workout or do on its own when the situation calls for it.

Reflection of the week – The discipline of letting a chapter close

This week marked the end of my time in Thailand. For the past 1.5 years, this place has shaped how I lived, worked, trained, and thought. So when I finished my last shift and stepped into a short vacation before flying home, something opened in me that I didn’t fully expect: a quiet pressure to rush into the future.

Part of me wanted to plan, reorganize, build momentum, and prepare for everything waiting on the other side. It was the same feeling I’ve felt before – the pull to accelerate the moment something ends, as if the next chapter depends on how fast I move into it.

But transitions don’t work that way. Endings have their own weight. They need space.

What I noticed this week is that impatience during a transition isn’t actually about ambition. It’s discomfort with stillness. When a chapter closes, you’re briefly kept between identities – not fully in the old one, not yet in the new. That space feels fragile, so the mind wants to fill it with motion: plans, ideas, urgency. If you act on that impulse, the next chapter begins with noise instead of clarity.

The real work is staying present long enough to let the ending settle. Not rushing the beginning, not forcing direction, not mistaking urgency for progress.

This week taught me that ending well is its own form of discipline. Being present with my girlfriend, enjoying the days we had left here, and allowing myself to simply be in the last days of this version of my life – that was the right pace. Not because it moved me forward quickly, but because it allowed me to step out cleanly.

Most people underestimate the value of ending well. But how you close one chapter determines how you enter the next. When you resist the urge to sprint, you give the next beginning a chance to start with a clear mind, not exhaustion.

The lesson is simple: Growth isn’t only about how you move forward. It’s also about how you let things end.

Week 50 summarized

This week marked the end of my job here in Thailand. I finished everything cleanly and I’m ready to move on with a clear conscience and a fresh mind. These past 1.5 years have had their ups and downs, but now I’m genuinely excited to take the next step.

Next week’s focus

Next week I’ll return home, which means easing back into my routines and starting the next chapter with Hagen Growth. I’ll spend some time seeing the people I haven’t seen in months, but most of the week will go toward settling into my training and work rhythms again.

Training –  Three gym sessions (I’ll miss Monday due to travel) and five hours on the bike. Keep the intensity low and shorten sessions if needed.
Hagen Growth – Publish the relaunch of Hagen Growth and get all the updates live. Write both the weekly log and the newsletter as usual.

Read next log
Read previous log

Paul Hagen
Latest posts by Paul Hagen (see all)