I am the elderly. 3 / 90

Good morning, internet! (I re-read my first two posts and realized that it’s kind of rude to only say good morning to myself and not anyone reading this, so hey hi hello.)

In case it wasn’t glaringly obvious yet: I’ve never daily blogged before.

I watch a lot of vloggers on YouTube so I get the idea, but this is still very foreign to me so I’m not sure what to write about. For now, until I really get into the groove, this 90 day daily blog will serve as more of a journal for me and my weird, incoherent, stream-of-conscious style thoughts. (Welcome to my brain.)


So anyway, when I said yesterday that I was exhausted, I truly was exhausted. I tried to work on my novel a while right after work (Yeah, definitely did NOT write 50,000 words in November) but once that space heater is on in my office I feel like a little cuddled burrito and I had to go to bed lest I fall asleep at my desk.

I went to bed at 7:00pm, y’all. That is not okay.

Going to bed at 7pm is acceptable for three types of people:

  1. infants
  2. elderly
  3. college students who juggle 15 credit hours, a part-time job, and a social life and only have the time to sleep scheduled in their planner for a few non-party hours every two days.

But I digress.

Needless to say, I’m feeling pretty bright eyed here at six in the morning today. I think that if I do go to the gym I’ll take it easier, though. My problem (in life, just my main problem altogether) is that I jump head first into big projects or goals and don’t take the time to adjust for the long term. Does anyone else do that? I get so excited about what I want to do and end up going too hard for about a week and then burning out physically. It’s not my excitement that dies, it’s literally my lack of human function because I’m not used to going to hard! It’s frustrating.

I should do a full break-down of my workouts soon. Hmm… I’ll work on that for an upcoming post.

Typically I do about 3 minutes stretching, a 5 minute aerobic warm-up, 4 to 5 weight training exercises (I use an upper body / lower body split, not individual body part days), and 10 to 15 minutes of cardio depending how long I took doing my weights. I aim for being at the gym an hour maximum. If I do go today I will stick to 10 minutes on the stationary bike and maybe a couple upper body lifts.

As for yesterday, I definitely ate that Mexican food and it was delicious. Hey, I’ve got wiggle room in my “healthy eating” goal, I’m still on track! Let a girl enjoy her chori pollo!

In all seriousness, it is super important to take all things in moderation. If you deprive yourself of everything that you want, even when you’re on a “diet”, then you’ll crave it more and more and you run the risk of letting yourself fall into a binge mindset. Binge sounds like a scary word: It may not be anything dramatic, but when you allow yourself to finally indulge after being too strict it may be at the cost of 2,500 calories of Wendy’s in one sitting. (Can you tell that I’ve been there? It’s not as hard to get that many calories at Wendy’s as you may think.)

I am certainly not an expert, but I lost 40lbs pretty recently after being the chubby kid my entire life it was not by being a hard ass to myself about my diet.

What I’ve learned, really just this year, is that even on a diet and even trying to lose weight if you listen to what your body needs it will be more willing to compromise with you. Does your body crave ice cream? Give it a couple bites of ice cream! Maybe make it a healthier option that’s still tasty and satisfying (I HIGHLY recommend Halo Top, oh my God…), but give it some ice cream. And then when you have broccoli and plain chicken breast planned for your next meal it won’t seem so terrible and your body will be like “Ugh, fine I guess” instead of throwing a temper tantrum about wanting carbs.

All I’m saying is cut your body some slack and your body will cut you some slack back.

Your body is just out here trying to survive, it’s not the enemy, it doesn’t know that you want to fit into a size 8 or run a marathon for funzies (hobby runners my true idols). So be a little nicer to it. Explain your goals to your body kindly and with your actions, because I’ve tried yelling and cursing at mine and I don’t think it speaks English.

*Steps down from soapbox*
*Takes a bow*
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And that’s the tea… Oolong and citrus is actually this tea, but this post was the *tea* because I’m still cool and young and I don’t go to bed at 7pm every night. You get it. Okay.

This is *yawn* Great! 2 / 90

I’ve never been this exhausted in my life…

Good morning, me. Well, it’s morning, I wouldn’t exactly call it “good” but that’s okay. I’m awake! I set my alarm for 6:01am and snoozed it until 6:40am, but regardless I am out of bed now and moving on with my day.

I didn’t go to the gym today (refer back to first line) but yesterday’s workout was incredible. Among all my other things, I tried 2 new workouts: single leg dumbbell deadlifts and inclined dumbbell rows. I also saw a teeny tiny lizard on the track, but I can’t tell anyone, I don’t think he had a membership.

As for yesterday, I made the most delicious salmon with Chipotle Baja Lime BBQ Something Something marinade. That’s literally all I can think about. That and Mexican food. And chocolate. What can I say; when Aunt Irma comes to stay with me, our favorite thing to do together is eat.


I also got into Escape from Tarkov this past weekend and I’m obsessing over it a little bit. Honestly, I’d play it for 8 hours a day if I could, but I feel so guilty about not writing or doing anything productive when I’m playing video games.

Wait… Maybe I should dabble in streaming and kill three or four birds with the same stone!

  1. Play vidyagames all day long
  2. Not feel guilty about playing vidyagames all day long
  3. Be the stay at home dog mom that I’ve always known I needed to be
  4. Talk (which is my fourth basic need directly under food, water, and sleep)

 

Okay, new 2020 goal: Try streaming.

That’s it.

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I understand those feels, Holly… I understand. *yawn*

Day 1 / 90

Good morning, me! I actually did the thing that I said I would do and got my butt out of bed at 6:00am. Hooray! *whines*

Maybe it was a dumb idea to start this 90 day thing 4 days before thanksgiving and a month before Christmas, but you know what? I’m doing it. I’m gonna be a big ole baby about it most days, but I’m doing it.


Okay, GOALS:

    • Blog every day (preferably morning)
    • Drink at least 3 liters of water every day
    • Eat healthy meals all day long for at least 5 day per week (Are you happy now, Thanksgiving?)
    • Exercise at least 4 days per week, either at the gym or at home

Easy! That’s it. I have to focus on 4 things for 90 days.

STARTING FIGURES & FACTS:

Weight: 191.8 lbs
Body Fat Percentage: (idk, but I want to remember this so I can get a scale to tell me)
Neck: 35.5 cm
L Arm: 30 cm
R Arm: 30 cm
Chest: 111 cm
Waist: 103 cm
Hips: 113 cm (measure 2 inches below belly button)
L Thigh: 59 cm
R Thigh: 59 cm (measure 2 inch below crotch)

I also want to write down something I can’t stop thinking about each day from the day before. I will figure out a clean, concise title for this eventually, but it’s currently 6:49am and I can’t right now.

YESTERDAY:

Jacob took Papa to a UK basketball game yesterday and I can’t stop thinking about how if I had a daughter I’d want her to marry someone exactly like Jacob. (Is that creepy? That sounds creepy… My bad.)

Okay, that’s all.

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My baby toes succulent bloomed a couple days ago!

 

Welcome, fellow dabbler

Thanks for joining me! I dabble in things, so this website will be a catalog of all my dabbling.

My credentials:

    • I’m a hot mess, clearly
    • I have a real live Art degree (useless, but it makes me feel better)
    • Dog mom
    • Plant mom
    • Wife
    • Homeowner (This is the most difficult endeavor I’ve dabbled in)
    • Amateur gamer
    • Writer (Though I haven’t made it anywhere with that yet… Again, only *dabbling* adult)
    • Office administrator (I totally made it up and it worked, Pam was right)

I also:

    • Cook
    • Craft
    • Kayak
    • Crotchet
    • Can’t think of any more alliterations
    • Hike
    • Weight lift
    • Play the violin (since I was 7)
    • Read
    • Paint
    • Make pottery
    • Breathe (most of the time)
    • Sleep (all of the time)

So yeah, I dabble. I don’t think anyone cares, but if you care then hello friend! And welcome!

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” — C.S. Lewis

 

Literary Comas / “The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry”

Does anyone else fall into literary comas?

When I finish a book (or even a short story for that matter) regardless of how the story treated me or my emotions, I have to give it the moment of my life to sink in before I move on. For me, my time to mull over the book after I’ve finished it is almost as important as reading it.

“The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry” by Gabrielle Zevin has put me in my most recent coma.

Disclaimer: This is not a book review, but only because I do not know how to write a book review and I don’t want to be judged on my lack of proper things that appear in a book review. In all reality, I’ll be talking a lot about this book.

 

Even though I don’t think I understood a fraction of the literature references in this novel, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I caught a few nods to “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Great Expectations” but I could feel the subtleties and intentionally askew passages going over my head. Zevin also did a wonderful thing where she crafted A.J. as a pretty snobby person from the very beginning (not that he is an unlikable character, surprisingly!) so it lightened the sting of the references that might have normally come off as condescending. Clearly Mr. Fikry is more well-read than I am, but Zevin was not patronizing me for it.

Back to the dilemma of my coma, I have never been so torn between needing to give “The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry” it’s time and feeling the intense need to dive into another book this very instant. This was a story clearly written by a book-lover, about book-lovers, for book-lovers, and it was the best book I could’ve read at this specific point in my life. If you want to fall back in love with reading, this is a nostalgically, charmingly, motivational book. To be 110% honest, the writing style wasn’t my favorite, it came off slightly dry with a lack of description and emotion in parts, but even that preferential disconnect between Zevin and myself did not overshadow my enjoyment of all the other elements of her story. She truly made me want to reread classics I’ve studied and discover everything on the “new-release” racks of my local bookshop.

And yet, I can’t commit to the investment in another work before my moment on Alice Island feels resolved. I say “moment” with ambiguity because sometimes I need just enough time to get a good cry in, (like finishing Divergent, not that it wasn’t WONDERFUL, but it required less of my brain power to comprehend and move on from than others) and other times I need to stare at a blank wall for a couple hours and be alone with my own mind for a couple days (which was truly how I felt when I finished “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. For literal days. Holy cow.)

That is one of the main points of this sporadic post, I suppose; to contrive resolution without having to wait for it to come naturally. That sounds silly, and this will sound even sillier, but I don’t want to cheat on a book that I have dedicated hours of my life to. But discussing it and writing about it has worked better than I even expected. Now that Mr. Fikry, and Maya, and Amy, and Lambaise, and Ismay have a concrete presence in my life, I think I am ready to let them all rest on the Island and move forward.

I think I will make this a regular occurrence.

Now what to start next?