Solo Explorer Seeks Companions

[EaseActivate]

Hi peeps! I've been systematically leveling up my health & life for the past 8 months or so, but I've been doing it totally solo. I've been crrrrraving some community (like woah), and am ridiculously happy to have tripped over this site. It took me a few days to realize what a goldmine I had bumped into (sidenote: thank you for the introduction email series! that was perfect!), but now that I've found my way around, it's clear you're all exactly who I've been looking for.

 

My self-improvement process so far has been to pick an "experiment" for each month, focus on it as my primary objective, and let other interests fall into place. So far these experiments have covered meditation, cooking, reducing drinking, cutting back breads & sweets, decluttering my home, sleep, management skills (for work), strategies for learning, and exercise -- and I've succeeded at improving my habits in all of these areas so far (just... not always in the ways I expected to... heh).  I also lost 20lb without focusing on weight loss, which was a welcome side effect.

 

I'm excited about the 4-Week Challenges because they really seem to fit how I'm already organizing my growth. Can't wait to dive in!

 

 

For exercise, i'm keeping it pretty simple right now: religiously committing to three 15min sessions a week before work, and using that time for dancing/zumba videos, elliptical, or yoga. I'd like to expand my repertoire for things I can do in that timeslot, and especially learn about dumbbells (cuz i have some) and bodyweight exercises. Not ready to consider classes or a gym. In addition to focused sessions, I'm also rocking the FitBit and keeping my steps above 10k most days.

 

My other major goal is to turn my home into something that feels like a vacation home. I grew up in constant clutter with no appreciation for interior design, so I see the pristine joy of a rented vacation home as a symbol of freedom. I want to learn how to create feeling that in my own home. So far all I've tackled is KonMarie-style decluttering (and I'm about 50% done there), but at some point I'll learn about decor.

 

Fun facts about me: 

• I've been a web project/product/community manager for about 15 years.
• I'm a bit of a gender & sexuality culture nerd, and have worked on projects that support gender variance and non-conformity. (My current list of identifiers include: queer/bisexual semi-androgynous cis woman in a poly marriage)
• I had a shaved head for ten years. (Not anymore tho.)
• I'm a recovering slam poet.
• I'm kind of addicted to Tim Ferriss and his meta-learning materials right now.
• My husband is obsessed with international travel and Disney parks, so i end up on airplanes a lot.
• When I was 19, I dropped out of college and tried to move to China. I lasted 4 months and then came home.
• I'm in the SF Bay Area.

[Super Starling!]

Oooh! We talked about your home improvement project earlier! (Please don't take this the wrong way... but I recognize your dik-dik pic.) 

 

I'm struggling with a lot of the same things -- whittling down my home to just things I love, learning to cook, cooling it on the junk food. I've also, oddly, lost about 20 pounds in the past 6 months.

 

(I was trying though. I was trying so. hard.)

 

I'd like to be your bud. One of, hopefully, many buds. With luck, your other buds will have a variety of skills that I lack (such as useful weight lifting instructions). 

 

I have many other things going for me, though: 

• I have similar goals! 
• I have a big, plushy heart with oodles of feeling I'm perfectly willing to share with Internet people. I have best friends I have literally never met IRL -- one of whom introduced me to my partner of 14 years. (I've met him, to clarify.)
• I am good with dogs.
• As a graphic designer, I can identify fonts like whoa. Do you have font issues? I can assist.
• I speak charmingly limited French.
• You will never feel bad about, for example, your 5K run time, or your weights lifted. I am a penguin runner! (We ruined running!) I have noodle arms! 
  
• I live in central PA, so if you're ever like, "Wow, my big warm city is too big and warm and interesting," you can hear about my life in the cornfield. Refreshing! 

[EaseActivate]

*GASP!* I MADE A BUD?!?!

 

 

 

HELLO NEW BUD!

 

 

I GUESS I SHOULD STop yelling now. Eep! Got excited there for a minute!

 

But yayyyyy, thank you for your note, @Super Starling!! I'm so happy to meet someone on a similar path!  I checked out your posts and i'm so sorry to hear you lost someone close to you this week. I'm sending all my hugs and warmth, plus permission-from-a-stranger-bud to do whatever you need to do to feel safe and stable on your feet again. Self care comes in lots of forms. You'll find your way back to feeling strong and alive if you listen to your mind and body, and look for things you can do that will help you feel better in both this moment and a few hours from now. Promise.

 

 

And meanwhile, let's make a ruckus!

 

 

 

 

[Super Starling!]

9 hours ago, EaseActivate said:

I checked out your posts and i'm so sorry to hear you lost someone close to you this week. I'm sending all my hugs and warmth, plus permission-from-a-stranger-bud to do whatever you need to do to feel safe and stable on your feet again. Self care comes in lots of forms. You'll find your way back to feeling strong and alive if you listen to your mind and body, and look for things you can do that will help you feel better in both this moment and a few hours from now. Promise.

 

I went hard on the food yesterday, but even as I was eating it, I was like "this isn't going to bring my boss back. He's not going to appear. Even if I lure him in with his favorite foods. In fact, it was probably his favorite foods that were the problem."

 

My boss died, unexpectedly, in his sleep. He was 65. He never smoked or drank, and though he was overweight, he exercised regularly and could pick up the heaviest shit imaginable. He was solid. Everyone was shocked. The autopsy results haven't come back yet. We think it was probably a heart attack. His parents died kind of young, too, if I remember correctly.

 

Regardless of how he died, everyone's wandering around crying, and it's our company's busy season, and there's FOOD EVERYWHERE. It's like "how can you make the perfect storm for weight gain?" 

 

 

Sorry we made friends during a tough time. I swear I am normally a huge delight. 

 

 

Uhhh, I mean... 

 

 

(I don't even like clowns all that much. I have no idea how I got started on that. I think I liked the illustration style on the top gif. The legs are flying out of the side of the skirt in the most hilariously inaccurate way. I am charmed.)

 

Can you tell me more about moving to China? If it makes you feel any better, I at one point tried the same thing with New York City. But China's so much more interesting. Do tell all.

[EaseActivate]

20 hours ago, Super Starling! said:

My boss died, unexpectedly, in his sleep.

 

Holy crap, that's a nightmare, I am so so sorry. It's hard to even figure out how to make sense of something like that. Ugh. All the feels. All the hugs. All the permission to do what you gotta do, find meaning and lessons where you can, and just accept that you're gonna need to rely on time to help heal this one. Ooof.

 

 

20 hours ago, Super Starling! said:

Can you tell me more about moving to China? If it makes you feel any better, I at one point tried the same thing with New York City. But China's so much more interesting. Do tell all.

 

Sure! I took an intensive chinese class my first year of college (an expensive liberal arts school), and part of the deal was that we'd study in china for five weeks during the summer. But a few weeks into my first semester, some planes knocked over some big buildings in NYC and crashed the stock market along with it, and it screwed up my family's finances and my college fund pretty badly (along with, you know, a lot of other things). My first year (and the china trip) were already covered, but I couldn't afford to enroll for a second year, so I just floated through the year with no plan for what came next. When I got to China, i realized that living there would be extremely cheap, so i put 2 and 2 together and decided to just not get on my plane home. My mom nearly lost her mind.

 

I got an apartment with an Australian woman, found some gigs tutoring English under the table, and hung out at an American-themed bar every night where there was a strong community of ex-pats. I was proud of myself and I managed fairly well, but I had never been on my own before and the cultural differences made Adulting way harder on me than it might have been otherwise. By the time my student VISA expired, my nerves were shot and I didn't have it in me to navigate getting an extension (even though some of the businessmen from the bar were offering to... I think bribe some officials for me?). So I went home, got a job at a Chinese restaurant, and enrolled in the cheapest state school I had access to. I transferred and dropped out a handful more times, and finally graduated this year at age 33 -- really just because it was so important to my grandfather. I had already built a strong career without a degree.

 

 

How was NYC?

[Super Starling!]

My dream was always to live in New York City. I applied to NYU and Penn State; but when I got accepted to both, I decided to go easy on my family's finances and pick the in-state public school. (I have a little brother.) I figured I'd move to the city after I was done. 

 

 

Fast forward several years, I landed an internship gig at a magazine there, moved there, and... hated it. OH MY GOD. I HATED IT. I couldn't deal with the smells, and the people shoving each other, and the rudeness, and the constant noise, and the long lines, and the fact that I couldn't afford anything. I was walking everywhere (to avoid spending money on transportation) and eating mostly pizza (also to save money) and I got all skinny. (It wasn't gainz skinny. It was... icky.) I was overstimulated, all the time, and kept getting sick. (Each area has its own Petri dish of diseases. Imagine a big city I'd never been to.) I kept escaping back to my apartment and watching Doctor Who and eating cereal. 

 

 

To be fair, there were a lot of things about New York that were amazing. I got to see one of my favorite authors read live. I got to see Philip Glass's music performed live over a silent horror film -- for free. I visited so many bookstores, had so much wonderful food, saw friends, watched street performances, people watched, explored the city, and had a conversation with a priest about how loud the peacocks on his grounds were. (He gave me the impression he thought God was testing him with the peacocks.) 

 

 

But it just wasn't for me. I thought I knew what I wanted, but it turns out, that wasn't it. So when I wrapped up my internship, I came home, wrapped up my degree, and stayed in central PA. WHERE I LIVE TO THIS DAY. I live in a town where I've literally seen this happen: 

 

https://i.imgur.com/yxj27Z6.mp4

 

I think it's weird how sometimes what you think you want is... not what you want. You'd think you'd know yourself best, but sometimes that's not the case. 

 

My brother, oddly, lives and works in NYC and seems good there. All's well that ends well. 

 

How are your fitness videos going? Do you use the free ones you get OnDemand, or do you use YouTube videos? What's your game plan there? I get overwhelmed by all the choices on YouTube. And then I tend to pick, like, the weirdest one -- accidentally. I chose a yoga video at one point that had us doing "Happy Baby" for WAY TOO LONG. 

 

 

She was like "EMBRACE THE BABY" and encouraged us to do this (above) while rocking back and forth. It went on for a VERY long time.

 

I was like "I pray my husband doesn't come in here while I'm doing this because he is going to DIE OF LAUGHTER." 

[EaseActivate]

That is an awesome story about finding what you want and realizing it's not what you thought you wanted. I have a friend who used to say "I don't like what I want" a lot when she felt out of sorts. I think figuring how to like what you want, rather than want what you like, is the key. If that makes any sense.

 

 

For cardio videos, it's totally been a crapshoot so far, but I've found a few i like (ex: this one's short but has great energy). The real gem, though, has been the Yoga With Adriene channel. Recommended by a friend, it's been great quality with clear explanations, plenty of permission to enjoy myself, and just enough sneaky challenges to make me realize it's actually making a difference. Solid place for a beginner.

 

I just got through the challenges organizer sheet (google doc thingie) and am getting ready to jump into the Challenges boards (even tho the current one is almost over).  Stand by...

 

 

[SkyGirl]

I have found two new GIF wizards!!

 

 

@EaseActivate, I really thought you said your husband was into Disney pranks, and I was so confused ... Disney parks makes a whole lot more sense!!

 

@Super Starling!, young Ranger, welcome to the family! I'm so glad you'll be joining us on our quests and misadventures! Ease, if you need a guild, please come over and check us out - we do adventures, rescues, long walks in the rain, climbing things, picking up heavy things, yoga things, running, aggressively avoiding running - ALL THE THINGS. Come and see what we're up to!

 

 

 

And both of you, in case you haven't see this yet, here is the place where we organize all the rules and how-we-do-things for the challenges and guilds - you can check them out and hopefully things will make more sense!

 

 

I'm so glad you're both here and I can't wait to see what awesomeness you unleash as you begin your challenges in a couple of weeks! 

[EaseActivate]

Thank you for the warm welcome and invitation, @SkyGirl! Ranger actually sounds like it suits me perfectly -- see you there!  (I'll be aggressively avoiding running, but sign me up for a multi-hour walk or hike any day!) 

[SkyGirl]

1 hour ago, EaseActivate said:

Thank you for the warm welcome and invitation, @SkyGirl! Ranger actually sounds like it suits me perfectly -- see you there!  (I'll be aggressively avoiding running, but sign me up for a multi-hour walk or hike any day!) 

 

 

 

Welcome to the family, Ranger! You're going to fit in perfectly!!

[Super Starling!]

Oh come on, the occasional run is good for the spirit. 

 

 

@EaseActivate - I've added Adrienne to my YouTube channels and I am very hype to give her a look-see. If you want to see something funny that I don't specifically condone, precisely, but delight in, behold: 

 

https://www.youtube.com/user/BroScienceLife

 

 

This guy has me in TEARS. My ranger-ing is mostly based on gaining some strength & flexibility, though I'd also like to be faster, a bit. I basically want to be: 

 

 

Wonder Woman, more the abstraction than Gal Gadot specifically. Though can we all agree that she is a cupcake with sprinkles that we can all get behind?

[EaseActivate]

ROFLMAO, just watched the Crossfit rant. He is hilarious!

 

And do keep working on me; you might get me to run someday. I'll remain open to the possibility of someday being open to the possibility of... someday... being open to the possibility... of maybe someday running. Fair deal, penguin?

 

 

 

p.s. i still haven't seen wonder woman and really need to fix this!

[Super Starling!]

Can we try "brisk walk" and see what happens from there? 

 

 

I've only done Crossfit once but I really enjoyed it. It was one of those "open to the public beginner class" things. I was slower than everyone else, but they were really supportive, which made me feel included.

 

[SkyGirl]

Weirdly, I just discovered Yoga with Adrienne yesterday. So strange you should mention it! I tried her "Yoga for Detox" and one of the bedtime routines, and they were much harder than what I had tried before, but I felt amazing when I finished. I'm going to do the bedtime sequence again tonight before I go to bed!

 

And GAL GADOT IS BAE, @Super Starling! ...