Waanie

Having fun while exercising is always good . I love everything about this challenge, it's great! What will your workout T-shirt look like?

Oh hi, you're back . This inspired me to do the same for my challenge . Is yours a long list?

I love your challenge and the idea of 3 daily subquests! I hope your hip will feel better soon .

I'm glad that last challenge worked so well for you, and I'm stoked for your next challenge!

Wow, that's so cool! Although working in academics is probably never easy, this topic is very actual and the field is probably really hot. There's also plenty of side-projects you could do with that knowledge if you want to retire early. Omnom salads. I love that we can eat differently every season, and summer food is one of my favourites .

Today it was solved because I had clarinet lesson only a few hours later and that improved my mood a lot, otherwise I might have looked into things like that, yeah. In general, it works best for me to just do something escapist (reading, watching youtube, etc). I acknowledge that I feel bad, but decide to not put too much effort in determining why; especially with me changing job, there's a large chance that my mood swings will solve themselves and they're not so bad that I really need to do something about it.

That teambuilding sounds like fun, how was it?

Thanks! I'm still really happy that I did the run . Saturday I took another restday since I was still very sore. Sunday I did first a kettle bell class and decided that the strength training class would also be fun. It was a little bit too much, mostly for my central nervous system, but it was a lot of fun and I don't regret it. I feel like I'm getting the hang of KB movements, even though I know that my technique has a lot of room for improvement. It's now good enough to just participate in the training, and I feel like I'm making progress. My grip strength for deadlifts afterwards was not great, as expected, but that's fine. It's good to know that 7x3x80kg is not a problem for the rest of my body at all . Monday I went to work during the day and orchestra during the evening, so there was no time for exercise. Still, quite some biking was done. Tuesday I got the first week of my new programme from my trainer, and I like it so far. It's a combination of strength training with some KB work in, so that I can prepare for the KB longcycle competition and also generally just get stronger. Everything felt relatively light, except for the negative pull ups and rolling pistol negatives. I liked it. Today my mood is going up and down like crazy, which makes me realise that I'm not quite yet in the mental space where I want to be. Tipping my cup of tea so that it fell on my keyboard really broke my mood, but fortunately all keys still work. The keycaps are of poor quality, so I actually had to repair some of them by glueing a tiny plastic thingy to the keycap. I managed, all seems well, but I'm now still in a shitty mood. It will probably pass some time around clarinet lesson, so that's probably alright. I will take it slow today, and hopefully be full of energy again tomorrow.

It's hard, isn't it? I had to do it at the end of my PhD as well, and even though I still have a copy of most files backed up, I have never even connected that drive to my computer. I think it's good that you did this, and hoefully it will also help in letting go of this job. I might have missed it, but what will you be doing next? You blood pressure sounds really nice by the way, I think it must be close to the ideal. I hope you can at least lower some of your medicine soon!

Awesome! 💪

No injury, and just a little bit of soreness . Surprisingly, most of the soreness is in my abs and back; I might have braced a bit more than I expected during my run . Official time between start and finish is 17:57 (10.75 km/h), which is amazingly fast for how much I've trained. I was very nervous on beforehand, so I'm glad that everything turned out so well.

Awesome . I also really liked the song of Duncan Laurence, and you still hear it regularly on the radio over here in NL. There's plenty of other good music, although not as much as there is bad and/or terrible eurosong music. Anyway, you're doing great! I'm glad that your snacks are now gone, that makes it much easier to not eat them.

Great . Today I ran the race of two miles, and it went amazingly well . I don't know my official time yet, but it's faster than the 19 minutes I aimed at. It was a lot of fun, and now I'm considering if I want to join more races in the future... who knows. I even had no trouble biking home afterwards, so I have the hope that I did not get any injury .

Our wedding rings are in, so we started wearing them . It's strange to wear a ring, but somehow I feel even more adult now. I still like the design, and hope that I'll still like it for decades to come .

I'm glad the move went well and you're settling so quickly already .

Oh wow, that song is quite cool! I always like eurosong as a social tradition in my family, and sometimes the songs are nice too. I had actually heard "blood and glitter" on spotify before eurosong, because spotify has decided that I like LotL . Anyway, I like this cover of Cha cha cha! Have you introduced your kids to Hardrock hallelujah already? It is still one of my favourite eurosong songs.

I'm taking it a little slow these days, since tomorrow I'll go running two miles. The logistics are a bit complicated, since the company is offering dinner but not transport, but I think we've figured it out . I'm somehow still mentally exhausted, also because I have to tell many people that I'm leaving the company. I tell most people that I'm leaving for the money, which is a fine enough reason. I've started saying my goodbyes to people I'd worked with in the past, and all in all it's a lot of social stuff. Today is a bit busy again with clarinet lesson and picking up our wedding rings this afternoon . There's also plenty of chores to be done, but I think I made a good start at that. My new bujo came in, and now I kinda want to make it into something more structured than my current one, but I suspect I won't hold to the structure for more than a few weeks... Life's hard! I guess that my mental tiredness is making this kind of decisions harder than they should be, but oh well.

Fair enough! It works very well for me, since I can now gauge quite accurately how much mental energy I will be expending in a week, and cancel things early on if it's turning out to be too much . The FOMO is still strong, but at least I'm managing my energy levels effectively. This week was busy but satisfying: I gave notice of leaving at my current job, got two strength workouts in and went for an amazing hike today. All my colleagues understood my decision to leave the company, although they are sad to see me go. I'm actually also a little bit sad to leave my colleagues, since they are amazing, but the pay gap and corresponding esteem is just too big (with otherwise more or less the same benefits). My neck seems to be holding well this week, which means that the volume of hanging was not too high. The main lift this week was squat (on both workouts), and I did 5x3x60kg for the first time . I'm almost at bodyweight for my sets of 3, which feels amazing. However, after a solid 4 hours of exercise (strength training + 15km hike), my legs are now complaining, so I will take some rest now .

KB group class was fun! I managed to complete the entire training without having to take extra rest breaks, and I can feel my technique improving training-by-training. While I'm still using only 8kg bells, it's starting to feel more natural and tiring but not exhausting. I expect I'll be a little sore tomorrow, but nothing too bad . On the other hand, I think I did too much strength training in too short a period this week; during the warming up this morning I noticed that my neck-mobility is getting worse again, and I expect I'd get dizzy from any hanging at the moment. I will need to give my back/neck some time to calm down again, so I'll skip body control class on Tuesday and just do some strength training on Wednesday and Saturday. This way I can also incorporate some more running, since June 1st is getting scarily close and I only ran once this week. Speaking of weekly planning, am I the only one who makes quite intricate weekly plannings, so that I know when I can be spontaneous and when I have to preserve energy? I always feel like I have to constantly monitor my energy-levels, both in any moment as cumulated over a day/week/month. So I try to check on Sunday what my week is going to look like, what special activities there are, when to get groceries, etc. I have the idea that very few people do this, and I feel a bit self-conscious about it, but on the other hand I know it's likely I'll either go over my limits or miss out on activities I could've done if I plan this way. It's still hard to say no to certain activities, but at least now I know whether or not I have the budget for it. Is my life too full? Or is this fine if it works for me?

I guess the day is already over, so I cannot suggest something like painting .

Your day yesterday sounds lovely . Your spread from 2019 looks so pretty! How's the 5000km challenge for this year going? Ow, that's just the worst! I hope that in the end, you slept decently after all.

Thanks! It's just that sometimes it feels like everything is falling behind? We have tons of laundry still to do, our garden needs to be weeded and chopped, the house is a mess, etc. It makes sense, since interviewing for jobs is such an intense process, but I still don't like it. Yesterday morning I was outside all morning, and that really helped my mood . Yesterday the weather was perfect for a bike ride + hike, so I was gone basically all morning for that. There is this beautiful park at 20 minutes biking from my home, and because it was morning it was not too busy yet. It also helped that the podcasts I listened to were actually interesting, which is always a bit of "hit or miss" when trying out new ones. I might be a bit of a nerd, since I enjoyed the one about code quality the most . We played some Frosthaven in the afternoon with the difficulty dialed back enough that we won the scenario, and it gave us lots of rewards. I'm still sharky and have to take care not to lash out, but oh well. I skipped my run yesterday since my calves told me I hadn't biked + hiked for such a distance in a while, so I wanted to give them some rest and will go to KB group class instead in an hour or so .

Your gym is just such an awesome place .

Oh, noms! Homegrown tomatoes, peppers and herbs are so delicious . Also, that's a LOT of meat compared to only one loaf of bread .

Thanks guys! Yesterday I decided to start running away from zombies again, after I'd heard a podcast about gamification of exercise. It was fun, the 15s intervals felt like nothing at all and I ran the full 10 minutes of free-form run without too much effort. I lazily stretched and foam rolled afterwards as well, which is something I should do more often. I noticed that I really enjoy the current weather (15 degrees and sunny) and that there are flowers blooming everywhere . Today is not my day... I'm tired and cranky and I just don't wanna anymore. It started with the group strength workout being more pulling than I'm comfortable with, and I feel lucky that I don't feel dizzy (with this workout it's about 50/50). I picked a deliberately low weight for my deadlifts, 5x8@60kg, since I also did deadlifts on Wednesday evening. Then when I got home, we played a game of Frosthaven and lost spectacularly, without even seeing how we could win this scenario in a 2-player game. Then I was annoyed at my partner since this was the third time in a row where he said he'd make dinner-plans and he hadn't done it and couldn't do it in a reasonable amount of time. BLARGH. On top of all that, my stomach and back are hurting and I'm eating everything in sight... I guess shark-week is starting.