fae713

Okay so I finally sat down to review this (while at work...) and must say that after week two I had a super hard time following through on anything. My horrible sleep pattern (or lack thereof) plus classes starting plus work being dumb plus mild depression type symptoms all resulted in me huddling under the covers when not physically required to do something. I calculated my overall success here and would give myself a 21% or a double F, if such a thing exists. I plan on getting myself going for the next challenge using this exact same thing because really there was little enough headway in all categories and everything is still worth my time to focus on. Plus, the wee bit that has been done has resulted in pretty nice changes. My clothes fit better and I'm much more capable of responding to emergencies and whatnot at work without feeling winded. Those alone are good motivation to continue. Speaking of which, time to update MFP with my lunch from today. It's respawn time :-)

The way you structured your challenge is awesome. Makes sense since you've got a ton going on, but you've got some really good and reasonable goals. Keep it up!

I actually did get some cleaning done, just not quite as much as I would have liked. Doing laundry while listening to the Unfuck Your Habitat audiobook was interesting and oddly motivating and demotivating all at once. I've had horrible sleep this week though so I didn't do any workouts on Friday or Saturday. By the time I got home in the morning the absolute last thing I wanted to do was anything, even yoga. It's weird how being mentally drained can be physically exhausting while also making it hard to turn your brain off long enough to fall asleep. Though I may also have to recognize that exercising on days that I worked the night before and the night of are just not going to be good exercise days. It's too hard to fall asleep quickly after a work out, even yoga, and I've never been a person to wake up a moment earlier than I absolutely must. Ah well. This week class starts so I get to have something else to look forward to. Even better news is that in looking at the requirements for the nursing program I really want to get into I realized that if I take 3 classes in the fall and pass them I can apply for the 2018 class! So I signed up for another class this fall and will just have to accept it as practice for working and taking a full class load. The time I've spent doing classes one or two at a time has made it feel like I was never going to get to the point that I could apply, but now it's in reach. I have a time frame and a definite destination. I can do this! I think those rewards are going to be pretty consistent, maybe some tweaking on the percentages complete, but the yarn/fiber thing will be for sure only for over accomplishment. I need to get more solid sock yarns so that is decent motivation, too. Though I have two exceptions - Rocky Mountain Yarn Crawl in August and the Portland Yarn Train. I'm allowed to buy a semi-unreasonable amount of yarn for those two things. Because reasons.

Your goals all sound so pleasant, even the cold showers. I used to shampoo and body scrub in warm-hot water then condition, wash my face, and relax in cold water but then I moved to a place with only a few cm difference between "fires of Mount Doom" and "frozen waste of the North", so once I find a comfortable temperature I don't budge it at all. It's a wonderful experience/routine, hope you continue to find it so. Going from a haphazard routine like paleo or walking an hour a day to expecting it daily/for all meals is a bit rough. Hope you'll continue to give yourself some space to find what works for you each day, even if it doesn't necessarily match up to your goals here. It looks like you've been doing so well despite a few detours. Hope to see that you've continued to feel better about it as the challenge progresses.

Wow, you've got a lot of things to celebrate from the last week or two! The fact that you're still working on things while feeling off is pretty damn impressive. Related to meds vs therapy, one thing to keep in mind is that frequently you can start with medications while trying to find a therapist. The two work well together, especially since most medications for depression/anxiety take weeks for you to see much benefit from them. I pretty much tell my patients that they'll feel a difference in quality of sleep, energy, and motivation first, within 2-3 weeks, but the actual anxiety/mood benefits frequently aren't seen until after 4-6 weeks. It's frequently why providers will start meds first, if a patient is up willing to give them a go, then look at therapy. Some providers are also wary of immediately referring to a therapist because that can be more money than someone is able to pay, more so outside large cities where there are more community mental health centers. Good luck with finding someone that you can work with :-)

So far I've only managed to keep up with my workouts every day with the exception of Friday, I just couldn't convince myself to drag my ass out of bed a moment earlier than I needed to for work. I... haven't gotten anywhere with cleaning. I'm going to schedule that after I'm finished here; I need to update my bullet journal since I still haven't gotten June written yet. I blame the fact that I was at work for the month change and had trainees with me the first two of my three nights. I have been sleeping at odd times the last two days in the hopes that I can be awake during day-walker hours to clean between now and Thursday. Being on the 2nd floor of a condo complex makes it hard to clean at night if I want to not piss off my neighbors. The guy below us is a grumpy old man and I'd like to avoid a complaint. Blocking the first 3 WIPs will happen today just before I start cleaning. I should be able to get a pair of socks, a cowl, and a poncho blocked and possibly dry by the end of the day. That will leave me with 2 or 3 more cowls and another pair of socks for tomorrow. Wednesday should be just a pair of socks and something else I'm sure I'm forgetting about right now. Which means I'll have hand knit socks to wear to work on Thursday! :-D I've come up with some ideas for rewards: If I complete my 4 week challenge with 50% accomplished I will reward myself with a nice pen, ink, or set of markers. If I accomplish at least 80% of my 4 week challenge I will schedule myself a massage. If I complete it with greater than 90% accomplished I will reward myself with an outfit from Fabletics. If I overachieve I get to buy yarn or fiber. I really, really don't *need* more but I'm sorta like a dragon when it comes to such things.

So far I've at least managed to keep my workouts on schedule. Yoga had to be bumped a bit since I spent nearly all of my waking hours on Tuesday in a car with my dad halfway across the state. The cleaning schedule hasn't been made yet. I'm hoping to get to it either at work on Friday or after I wake up Saturday. It all depends on if I have another trainee. Anywho, yoga then sleep! Thank you for checking in, @fleaball :-)

Thank you all for the welcome! I've slowly started to poke around the forums and have started a 4 week challenge in the Rebels group. It's great to find other crafters here. I've a handful of friends that craft and do gym stuffs but the only one that also knits at the gym is doing powerlift stuff and she typically only knits between reps when there's a competition like sock madness - 7 rounds of knitting socks to a pattern in 14 or 10 days per round, she's usually in the first five done in the international competition. Sadly though she's all the way up in Wisconsin so all I get to see are her pics of her "purling in the squat rack" which is just amusing to think about. Gemma, you chose a perfect time to visit! It's been sooooo green the last few weeks of April/May because of all the rain/hail/snow we've gotten the last few weeks. It may have been more cloudy than usual but so pretty. Good luck to everyone on your challenges and accomplishing goals!

Okay, here goes an attempt at 1 - actually writing down my goals, 2 - using a calendar type system Overarching goals/quests are 5 main categories: Nursing program, house cleaning, fitness/nutrition, fiber craft, measurements 1 - Nursing program: I've got an LPN/LVN license but it was through the army so I didn't complete any normal pre-reqs so I've been stuck doing them one or two at a time. In the Denver area an LPN license is the nursing equivalent of having a high school diploma. You can get a job but the options are limited, potential advancements are nil and the pay is... okay, but I'm already maxed out on what I can get based on experience. I'm almost done with my pre-reqs (6 classes left) to get into a BSN program but there are still things I need to do prior to finishing them. 2 - House cleaning: I'm super organized at work which means my home is a disaster. It's frustrating for me and distressing for my husband so it is high priority for me to do something to fix it. 3 - Fitness/nutrition: this includes making a schedule, continuing to do research, and continuously improve upon the previous week. I've been working on this for the last few months so I'm not exactly at the total newbie stage, I just hit a plateau super early in this particular iteration of "improve Fae's physical and mental health". 4 - Fiber craft: I knit (and very rarely crochet) and have at least a dozen WIPS (works in progress). It's getting ridiculous and I need to finish things so I can use them or give them away. 5 - Measurements: This is kind of related to fitness/nutrition but is separate in my mind. Fitness/nutrition is for my overall health and well being while considering changes in hips/waist/arms/thighs/clothing size/weight type stuff is secondary. Things I'm focusing on for this 4 week challenge: 1: Make a calendar for individual tasks of the stuff above - workouts, cleaning, homework, WIPS, BSN program tasks etc. Utilize bullet journal and exercise journal resources Initial calendar will focus on workouts and cleaning, adding homework/BSN program after 1 week, and WIPS after 2 weeks Calendar starts today, 5/28/17 and will initially be for just the 4 week challenge. I will add 2 weeks of future planning for every 1 week of this challenge that I have completed. Difficulty: medium 2: Document my successes and hiccups on the calendar with at least 50% success rate - hey, it's my first time trying this thing, I'm giving myself a lot of leeway to see what happens Documentation includes recording what I did - number of reps, weights, percent of room cleaned, percent homework finished, number of WIPS finished, etc Includes an assessment of completeness every week Difficulty: high 3: Keep up with NF academy and NF yoga plans. Initial plan is for 3 NFA workouts a week with basic yoga in between Review these daily - each new workout will include either reducing the kind of assistance I use or increasing number of reps per set Difficulty: medium 4: Figure out rewards for accomplishing different tasks, goals, and quests so I, you know, follow through. Difficulty: low These steps are broken down further in my workout journal so it may seem like some are ambiguous here, but I promise, there are micro steps in there too. Much of this is also to help me figure out what expectations are reasonable for me while working full time, doing school part time, and being aware of my tendency to procrastinate on everything when I can. These will become more specific with each successive challenge.

'ello! Awkward introductions go here, yes? F/30/married/Colorado... oh right, probably not what was intended here. Let's see, I'm a nurse with 8 years experience in different levels of psych, 1 year in med-surg/labor and delivery, and a little over a year in corrections. I had the distinction of being the youngest person in my class to test for the NCLEX; I got my license only 3 months after I turned 20. I kinda cheated though because I was in the US Army and they have a program for medics to get their LPN/LVN license in a little over a year. I got to skip those pesky pre-reqs like English and statistics and all that. I'm suffering for it now though as I'm back in school part-time to complete those pre-reqs so I can get my bachelors in nursing. Eventually. At some point. Maybe? There's even a chance that I'll continue on with the intent of completing a psych nurse practitioner program. The actual fun part of my life though is definitely spent in the geeky type pursuits. I'm surrounded by Star Wars and LotR legos, book shelves with books double-stacked, dice and character sheets, and all the yarn and knitting things I can keep out in the front room before the husband gets grumpy. Actually, I probably passed that a while ago... Since I discovered the joy of knitting (courtesy of a pirate at a local con) I knit everywhere. Literally everywhere. including at the gym, though mostly on the bikes or ellipticals, since when I do go to the gym it's empty so there's no waiting for space/equipment. I've documented it too because I find it amusing: It may be hard to tell but it's blurry because it's really, really hard to hold still for a selfie while on an elliptical, especially if you're concentrating on something else. Also, that was right after work and I had already used my daily allowance of give-a-fucks. Especially since it was so bright out. I only started exercising again recently when I discovered that I had lost nearly 25 lbs in less than 6 months without making any obvious lifestyle changes. Stress was likely the overarching cause for the weight loss, so it was nearly all muscle. Not good at my age since it just gets harder and harder to build and maintain muscle mass. Things needed to change and since school and work aren't likely to go away any time soon I needed to do something different. Something active and good for stress reduction and not take forever and a day. Actual full body exercises! That's the answer! Except I had/have? no clue what in the world to do that wouldn't bring up memories from the Army including the hours and hours of physical training without a good focus; just getting through until it ended wasn't exactly the most inspiring. Enter Nerd Fitness with tutorials and pictures and videos and plans all with a fun gamification thing. Totally my style. My goals are to gain back and add on muscle mass, increase my stamina so that running up the stairs at work won't leave me more winded than my patients, and generally keeping my sanity and mental health while doing work and school and life. Part of using the NF forums is to have some form of accountability since my husband and cats aren't too keen on joining me, and my friends all live in different parts of town and are as busy, if not more busy, than I am. The other is because, really, who wouldn't enjoy getting to RP while doing something that can, let's face it, be kinda tedious and unpleasant at times? Anywho, I've kept myself up too late as it is, this night owl is off to sleep. Hope everyone has a good day/night, and thank you for reading. :-)