Mistr makes time

[Mistr]

Week 3 report

 

How on earth did we get to the end of week 3 already?!? If I was tracking by projects done I would be behind.

 

As it is, I feel like I've made some real progress. My weapons partner was out of town this week. That let me get in an extra session of working out at lunch. Which makes up for not working out on Tuesday because I was a flake and forgot to take my gym clothes. I started up GMB Elements again at the beginning of week 3. The last time I actually followed their full plan was five weeks ago. I've done the warm-ups quite a few times. My knees are better and I can even get into a deep squat position without pain. Moving from a deep squat is something else again. I've gotten past the slump I had at the beginning of September and am back on track.

 

Monday and Wednesday aikido classes were the start of our fall beginner's course. Monday night I learned that the chief instructor was out of town. Happily, she had arranged with one of the senior instructors to cover for her. There were lots of people in class. That meant I mostly got to just practice. We have a set curriculum for the beginner's class so that students can go to morning, noon or evening class and still cover the same material. The senior instructor completely ignored that.

 

I heard from the morning class instructor that two people from his Monday class were likely to show up at my class on Wednesday. So I deviated from the lesson plan to cover some things which would be review for the morning class beginners and new for the evening students. And I threw in a lovely technique from the seminar last weekend. It uses a non-standard attack and totally standard aikido principles. I had a blast teaching. I hope the new people enjoyed it. This time we only had two beginners in the evening class and four in the morning class. Great if we can keep them all, but based on recent experience the odds of that are poor. All we can do is try to make it fun and be encouraging.

 

Overall my decision-making has been okay. I've done meditation all but one day. A couple times I stayed up late to meditate. The other time I decided that going to bed on time was a better choice. I've been moving in the direction of getting enough sleep. On Wednesday I had coffee for the first time in weeks. That helped me get stuff done at work. My work productivity has been between okay and good. I'd like consistently good, but I'll take it. I've made good use of my time at home.

 

Getting stuff done at home needs to continue to be a high priority. Dumbledore is feeling badly stressed about too much to do. That means he is not going to do anything extra at home. He's good about scooping the cat box and putting away dishes. Probably not much more than that. I'm going to talk to Elf tonight about how to make sure other things get done. My top priority for this weekend is to get the *&^%$#$$%^ budget and health care reimbursements done. Plus some spinning and reading so I don't kill anything. I got extra time because an aikido event moved back a week. I'm going to make the most of it.

[Kishi]

Well, my understanding is that getting life right is a process, and the rightness of it is a point where you're happy with that process. Given the nature of goals, that they shift and warp and change, there's probably never going to be a time when it's just absolutely perfect. But if you're at a place where you can say "It is well" and be content, well, then. You're probably doing just fine.

 

Besides, life would be boring if there wasn't something to fix.

[Mistr]

On 10/7/2017 at 3:53 PM, Kishi said:

Besides, life would be boring if there wasn't something to fix.

 

I have taken precautions against boring. My project stash extends out for years. Especially since I brought home my great-grandmother's stash of embroidery projects when we cleaned out grandma's house. Not to mention the books I haven't read yet.  

 

Saturday I made good progress on getting my financial records up to date. Sunday was supposed to be dedicated to health care reimbursements. Total fail. Part of the blame is on eating mocha ice cream for dessert Saturday evening. Apparently it had espresso bean chips. Whoops. I was not able to fall asleep until after 1am. I took some melatonin and got some reading done in the Zen book that puts me to sleep if I read during the day. Then I slept in until 9am. Good on sleep, not good on getting things done.

 

The afternoon was taken up with zen class, a walk with Dumbledore and gardening. It was a beautiful day. I intended to take advantage of that to do some weeding. I actually did some brush control and repotted the houseplants that were demolished by a friend's puppy. That used up all the daylight. I cooked dinner starting after 6pm. Dumbledore got home about 7 and we kept stepping on each other's toes. Not a fun evening. It was an hour past my curfew by the time I got everything ready for Monday morning.

 

I was tired, grouchy and hungry when I got to weapons practice this morning. It is amazing how being attacked with a sword wakes a person up. Half an hour of figuratively getting killed and I was wide awake and cheerful. 

[chemgeek]

I find if I can drag myself to martial arts, no matter how bad a mood I'm in when I get there, I'm in a better mood when I leave (that said, if it's a kid-heavy newb class, I'll sometimes keep myself away because the crankier I am, the more noise-sensitive I am, and the reality is that you can't put a dozen or so kids under 10 together without noise happening). 

[sarakingdom]

19 minutes ago, Mistr said:

I was tired, grouchy and hungry when I got to weapons practice this morning. It is amazing how being attacked with a sword wakes a person up. Half an hour of figuratively getting killed and I was wide awake and cheerful. 

 

Why can't I start every morning this way, damnit?

[Mistr]

On 10/9/2017 at 12:53 PM, sarakingdom said:

Why can't I start every morning this way, damnit?

 

Apparently this is why people like morning class. I'm not quite ready to go that far yet. I can get up at 5:00 and be out of the house by 6:15 to be ready to practice at 7:00am. Getting to the dojo by 6:00 and having to drive to work at 7:15 would be more of a stretch. I've made it to morning class once in the 12 years I've lived here.

 

I've been struggling with stress and sleep. On Tuesday night I was worried about scheduling conflicts between an aikido seminar and going up north with my brother's family to shut down our lake cabin. Everything I hadn't done at work came out of my guilty conscience to play along. Meditation techniques helped a little. I still woke up stressed out.

 

I managed to get nearly all of the actual problems resolved Wednesday. My brother was tremendously gracious and let me off the hook on going up north. That saves me 12 hours on the road plus however many hours of work at the cabin. I promised to save the date for opening the cabin and doing spring cleaning in May. On top of that I got all the medical insurance statements downloaded and took care of a couple fraught customer issues.

 

My eating has been crap. Meals are still healthy but I've been hitting the coffee and junk food at work again. And lots of chocolate. A sure sign of stress. I need to get back on top of things. Tonight is date night with Dumbledore. Hopefully we can take time to just relax. We've both been stress puppies. This will be a needed break before we go off to (separate) out of town events this weekend.

[Kishi]

You know, I've been leaning into the coffee a bit much too. It doesn't help any that my grocery stores started selling the High Octane stuff, and while I've not been using it as an excuse for poor sleep, I don't like the feeling that I've needed it either.

 

It's tough. :\ I hope you get to feeling better and get rid of the stress. Hope the date night goes well!

[Mistr]

Challenge Wrap-up

 

Four weeks is just too short. I feel like I was just getting into this and it is over.

 

Assessment:

Things went better the first couple weeks. I had good results with alternating interesting and tedious things at work. I got back on track with meditation.

 

Week 4 was Not So Great. Not enough sleep, lots of stress, lots of stress eating.

Poor decisions because of the above.

 

Saturday I went to a one-day aikido seminar at a neighboring dojo. Sensei had us do a lot of exercises facing the mirrors to check our form. I did okay on keeping my center facing forward as I struggled to punch with correct form. I noticed that I looked like a ghost - pale with dark circles under my eyes. A closer look after class showed double bags. I didn't feel terribly tired. That was probably due to adaptation to ongoing stress. I went to bed early Saturday night and slept 11 hours. And was still tired Sunday morning.

 

I did do better on not stressing out about getting ALL THE THINGS done. Dumbledore and I went out for dinner Thursday, then worked in parallel on getting caught up. That made a huge difference for both of us. He ran a board retreat this weekend and had prep work to do. I took it easy on Sunday and chose which things to get done. I did a bunch of batch cooking and made peach cobbler. We've been wanting peach cobbler since peaches first came in season, but never got a enough of them ripe but not too far gone at the same time. Dessert attained. I also cooked 8 chicken breasts, baked a squash and a pumpkin and made bone broth. I made progress on the finances and filing. I still need to submit those *&^%$#@ health care reimbursements. At least all the paperwork is in one pile now.

 

Overall I think I'm on the right track. Next challenge is going to be about putting sleep first. Last week proved that 7.5 does not equal 8.

[Kishi]

Well! Three weeks of good work, and it doesn't sound like the fourth week going sideways was enough to derail things. And it doesn't even sound like the 4th week was all that bad - it sounds like you had a good date and even though you weren't stressed about it you still got a lot of things done.

 

So now the name of the game is to slow things down even further and get some shut-eye. I have a feeling that's useful to all of us. At least the cold weather should make sleeping easier.