Stonesfl0w has run out of ideas

[Stonie]

Hullo. Me again. Doesn't matter if you don't know who I am. I've been back and forth on the Rebellion forums for years and it has always done me good to keep my life in balance. I haven't been around for a while because life's been crazy and I found myself "accidentally" ignoring the forums and my challenge goals. Other things to do. But now I feel like I need the structure of the challenges again to reboot the end of my year and stop this little funk I've been in for the last month or so.

 

Stuff about me in general:

I live in Australia. I identify as female. Roller derby is my team sport of choice. 

My fitness journey has so far gone like this:

Yoga --> BW --> NF --> more BW --> Roller derby --> gym --> Lifting --> Roller derby --> broken ankle --> sedentary --> rehab --> skatey --> gym rehab --> moar derby --> meltdown --> little to no cross-training --> now.

I'm at work and my brain is starting to turn to jello. 

 

Long Story:

SO. I have heard a lot of people at the end of the last few years (near the time of new year's resolutions) saying about how crazy their years have been and how it can only get better next year *insert 'hold my beer' meme* But the last few years for me had been fairly uneventful. Sure some things happened, but nothing unexpected and crazy.

 

This year? Well. 

January: Broke my ankle in two places. Surgery. A plate and 8 screws. Non-weight bearing for 3 months. 

March: Partner and I applied for a house loan - same day we went to sign the papers was the day he was made redundant. Partner is jobless for months. 

April: I could walk again, allowed back on skates.

May: Made it back onto the Travel Team for my local roller derby league. My Mum was (re)diagnosed with breast cancer. First time was when I was 6. Gets a double mastectomy.

June: Holidays. My parents had to miss out because my mum went through chemotherapy.

August: My old workplace of 3 years closed down. Lease ended and not renewed. I got a new job. My partner gets a new job too, finally. Told I was going to be a primary jammer (points scorer) for my team for big state tournament next month. Queue first panic attack about my lack of warning/training/practice/confidence/fitness levels etc... My mum gets half her thyroid removed as a precaution. Is otherwise fine - ridiculously positive and chirpy considering.

September: Big big big roller derby tournament. First game: went great. Second game: small panic attack, bounced back and kept skating. Third game (next day): Major panic attack meltdown nothing but nasty thoughts, thinking about quitting roller derby, etc.. Partner and I are finally able to re-apply for a home loan again after both starting new jobs. 

October: Sliding into a funk after tournament. But! Our loan goes through and our offer on a house is accepted. We are home owners!

 

Aaaand there are still 2 months left in this year to go. Holy hell. The burnout is real. Between the increasing roller derby commitments and moving house and learning a new job all I wanna do right now is curl up under something and not come out. But that's not productive or useful. Also, nothing gets done. So I'm going to start from the beginning here and build some basic habits that will be a good foundation to improve on.

 

TL;DR

Life. Madness. Had some panic attacks, been in a funk. Haven't been cross-training or eating like I should. Also decided I should really address my self-esteem issues. Gonna do it. Get better. Be awesome. Kick ass. etc.

 

Long Term Goals (very vague I know)

Food prep every week, eat less snacks, fuel body for athleticism

Cross-train in equal amounts to derby practice. 

Win an MVP award in a derby game next year

Be able to clean my house without getting all angsty about it

Stop being so mean to myself.

 

Challenge Goals!

This challenge is all about the hinge habits. Small habits I need to work on so that they can lead to bigger and better things. Like fitness, and a clean house. My motivator is monetary this time around. It's not very druid-y to be motivated by money I know - but heck, the warm fuzzy feeling of a clean house isn't doing it for me so I've gotta try something. My challenge will be scored in $1's. Every time I achieve something, $1 is added to my score. At the end of the challenge I'm going to use the total I've earned to buy something nice for the new house I've moved into. 

 

1. Stop Pity Eating. Replace bought snacks and soft drinks with alternatives.

Chocolate. There is always a fundraising box of chocolate bars at work which I have been snacking on WAY too often. it's time to stop that. They aren't even as good as I think they're gonna be. Instead I can bring a snack to entertain myself while at work. $1 for every time I go to buy a chocolate bar but have an alternative, or resist. I have to consciously think about buying the chocolate and reason myself out of it though. No just counting the amount of times I walk past the box. 

Soft Drinks. Not gonna lie, my partner and I played the McDonalds monopoly game hard. I know fast food is bad for me, so that's why I usually eat much less of it. But to begin with I'm going to work on cutting out the sugary soft drink part of it. $1 every time I have the chance to buy a soft drink and choose an alternative. Like water. Or tea. 

 

2. Just do some damn exercise.

I know I should cross-train. It makes me a better derby player. I've just lost the motivation. And now that I've moved house I don't drive directly past any gyms so I can't even guilt trip myself into stopping by on the way home from work like I used to. So I'm going to start with the basics. Push ups and single leg squats on alternating days, with one run on the weekend. Following the 50 pull ups system for the bodyweight exercises so I do the form and work my way up. And following the C25K system for the run so I can work on my cardio endurance from the ground up again. 

$2 earned for every push up I can do at the end of the challenge.

$2 earned for every controlled negative pistol squat I can do at the end of the challenge - that's just the going down part.

Asking myself to do a full pistol in a month is probably asking a bit much. We'll see.

$5 for every km I can run non-stop at the end of the challenge.

Bigger bribes here because I really, really, really want to get better at roller derby. 

 

3. Keep the house sparkly. 

We bought a house. It's brand new. An ex-display home. No one has ever lived in it. You know those cartoons where they clean a room and the whole thing literally sparkles? that's what it's like. It's absolutely beautiful. And I want to keep it that way. Working sort of off the Flylady system of house cleaning, I'm going to focus on keeping one area of the house spotless every week. 

Week 1: Master Bedroom/bathroom/walk-in robe

Week 2: Living space and dining room

Week 3: Entrance and outdoors

Week 4: Kitchen

$1 for every day I clean something in the right zone. Maybe bonus points for doing extra. I dunno yet.

$1 for every box of stuff I unpack during the challenge. Right now I feel like I'm camping in someone else's house.

 

4. Brain Train. Toot toot. That's the sound of me tooting my own horn. Read those Sport Psychology books you fucking downloaded for fucks sake.

After my meltdown one of my teammates suggested a sports spychologist* psychologist might be able to help me work on my lack of self esteem. And being that I live in a small country town, there is no sport psychologist. So I googled it. Found some books. Downloaded some books. Read one and it really resonated with me so I started another one. But I've stopped reading them lately. No time? that's a bad excuse I know. 

Books to work through:

The Brave Athlete: Calm the Fuck Down and Rise to the Occasion (currently half way through) - by Simon Marshall & Lesley Paterson

The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck - by Mark Manson. Read the sample and sounded real good. 

Unf*ck yourself: Get out of your head and into your life (re-read) - by Gary Johnn Bishop. If I finish the others I would like to read this one again. 

I'm sensing a theme.

$1 for every night you spend some time reading about your brain. 

 

*it's late. my typos are getting bad but that was too funny to delete. what do you think a spychologist does?

 

Like I said. total $$$ scored is how much I get to spend on house stuff. There;s already a list of things I want and will probably buy but if I see something I just want just 'cos, that will be my goal. I like to track my challenges on a spreadsheet so I can see how many days I've skipped. Also excel does the math for me. yay.

[Stonie]

Okay. Day one is in 35 minutes so I'm going to bed in a moment. 

 

Week 1, Day 1, plan.

Get up at a reasonable time. Stop rolling over and dozing off. 

Eat some breakfast. 

Get dressed for biznis. Power through the emails and phone calls I have to make re: new house shit

Cleaning Zone: Master Bedroom - make the bed. sweep up the towel lint in the bathroom.

Food shopping for snack prep.

Push ups when I get changed into my training gear. 

Monday is derby training night.

Read the Brave Athlete after trying out the new bathtub for the first time when I get home from training

Go to bed. 

 

 

[Stonie]

Day one happened. Having a shiny new house is actually somewhat motivating to keep it clean. 

I was up at 9.

Tried out the BBQ to cook some eggs on toast. Made coffee. Got dressed.

Tested out the Dishwasher and Washing machine for the first time. 

Phoned and emailed all the people I had to. 

Went food shopping. Did push ups when I got changed to go to training (2,7,5,5,7 negative push ups. I'm feeling it today!)

Read The Brace Athlete in between push up sets.

Went to training. A teammate broke her leg :S it's not a regular occurrence. I was standing right there and saw the whole thing. At least I can say I know exactly how she's feeling today. 

Cooked pad thai for dinner. 

 

Edited to add: Oh shit, that's right. My partner quit his job today too. The new one, he'd only had for two months. They were fucking him around badly so I'm glad he did for his own happiness. It does mean that I alone am responsible for our house loan  It's fine. We budgeted for this. But now the not spending excess money on snacks and whatnot becomes even more important. 

 

---

week 1, day 2's plan

prep food for lunches for next few days and dinner for tonight. 

unpack a box of clothes from the walk in robe.

Do some squats. 

Go to work.

Don't eat the chocolate bars.

Come home, eat. sleep. repeat.

 

[Stonie]

Day 2. Went good. Had to not let my partner being home now derail me like it often does. All the housework is exciting at the moment while I learn to use all my new appliances.

 Steamed chicken for lunches and chucked chicken in the slow cooker for soup for dinner. 

Unpacked 2x boxes from the wardrobe. I've just about worked out where I want all my clothes in the walk-in. 

I only did 3 of 5 of my set of negative pistol squats. I got distracted trying to get my food prep done. But I'm working on habits and I did it so that's okay. 

I took salad and a few squares of a block of dark chocolate with me to work so I wasn't tempted by the chocolate bars at work. It worked. I was tempted once by getting a snack from the cafe when I realised I hadn't eaten breakfast, but I just ate half of my lunch early and that worked. Yay!

Read some of The Brave Athlete after dinner. 

 

 

Week1, Day 3's plan.

Get up reasonably. Do some washing. Unpack a walk-in box. 

do some yoga, maybe. 

Pack lunch. Go to work. 

Eat, sleep, repeat. 

Gonna go a bit easier tomorrow because I've done well these last two days. And my arms hurt from push ups. ahaha. Rest day yeaaah

 

 

[Sunmage]

Looks like you are having a good start!

 

There is nothing wrong with moneygoals.

Of course you can work on losing your attachment to money, but I the end it is just a (probably finite) resource you have to spend wisely. Like your time and your energy. So 100% druid...

BUT: It is the only one you can increase and save over longer time or make it work for you.

So definitely worth spending some insight time about, isn't it? 

 

I like your goals! Have a good time here

 

[Stonie]

Thanks Sunmage  I definitely need to be more aware of where all of my moolah goes now, with my wages being responsible for the all of the mortgage and bills currently. My SO is being proactive at finding a new job which makes me worry a lot less about our financial situation. We have made the money work for us and allowed us to own our own personal space so that's pretty cool  I just need to remember to think about whether the purchases I'm making will truly make me happy or if they are just a waste xD

 

Day 3 went. Nothing spectacular happened but it went. We spend the morning at the old house grabbing the last of the stuff there. I did a load of washing and put a load away as well as organised another box of my clothes in the walk-in. Still working out how I'm going to organise my accessories and shoes. 

Work was eh. I went. Did my thing. Nearly succumbed to the box of fundraising chocolates after I ate my stash but knew it wouldn't be as good as I thought it would be, so I didn't.

 

Tomorrow is Thursday, My plan is.

 

Get up, drop car off at mechanics. 

Help SO wash mate's ute as thanks

Do small food shop. 

Do a load of washing. 

Wipe down sinks and bench in bathroom

vacuum

Do push ups before going to training

go to training

eat

sleep

repeat

 

I have to say, I was much more excited for my day off before my SO walked out on his job. I'm glad he did, but I also need my own personal space without him occasionally xD ahh well. 

[Stonie]

Diid all the things today except for push ups. Whoops. Fell asleep on the couch before training; probably because I had to get up early to go drop my car off at the mechanics. I wasn't terribly motivated to go to training but I did pull off some pretty neat single leg transitions on skates so I'm pleased with that.  

 

Week 1, Day 4 (Friday)'s Plan looks something like this.

Get up, drink coffee.

Do some squats before work.

Go to work with a packed lunch

Mop part of the tiles somewhere in the house. 

 

[Stonie]

Okay, so friday wasn't great for all my goals. I succumbed to the chocolate box at work. tsk. And I didn't get a chance to do any squats because I slept in. Double Tsk. And I'm sure I cleaned something but it may not have been in the bedroom. I am currently working on trying to do all my laundry because it feels more efficient with a washing machine that doesn't take half a day to do a load of washing. Woo. So that's sort of bedroom related. I also almost went tits-up in the bathroom that morning because the shower screen isn't actually sealed on the bottom where it meets the floor (what's up with that) so there was a small river running towards the drain. My unemployed bf is going to work on getting that fixed. /handball

 

Saturday has gone okay; ended up getting up early to go clean our old rental because I'm having issues contacting a cleaner and someone wants to look through it already. Yeesh. So that was a good 3 hours of my morning gone. Spent the afternoon alternating between sitting on the couch and doing a basic tidy of our house because we have people coming over tomorrow and I've lived here a week; I have no excuse to have a clean house. TBH though It's amazing how much easier it is to keep a clean house clean before you let it get gross. Who'd have thought. Ran the mop over most of the tiles, vacuumed, and cleared the paperwork off the dining table. I do feel like I'm the only one doing any cleaning but that's a fight for another time.

[Stonie]

OKAY so the weekend wasn't great for my goals. My lack of goal-crushing has had me down all day except that reading through everyone else's struggles here for week 1 made me feel a bit better. Not that everyone else was struggling, but that I wasn't the only one. I shouldn't be so hard on myself. Home ownership has been full on for the first two weeks. Between trying to move in properly and keep up with derby training and go to work and be a social butterfly... I am knackered already. 

 

I didn't run on the weekend, but I did spend three hours cleaning our old rental, and spent a bit of time cleaning the new house so we could have visitors. I did resist most snacks until Aunday when I baked a chocolate cake and had a few glasses of champagne at our mini-housewarming. I'm not going to feel guilty for that. I bought a damn house, I'll eat the damn cake.

 

I also wrote a small piece of writing based in a sci-fi world I've been planning/writing as a way to explore one of the characters and that was good. 

 

Monday: my plan was to go to work, come home, do push ups, go to training. 1/3 aint bad. 

I skipped out on training tonight because last week 2 of my teammates broke bones on skates. One right in front of me in a very similar way to how I broke mine; So the idea of three hours on skates just had me feeling much to anxious to be able to convince myself to go. We also have the coach on our backs about coming despite it being the end of the year - which would fine if she wasn't being so passive- aggressive about it constantly. And also the countdown to our big game against one of the Metro teams is starting to weigh on me already. it's 5 fucking months away. Anxiety, go away. 

 

Nobody likes you.

 

And as much as I like to think I'm comfortable with my physical form I am annoyed and slightly depressed that I've put a bit of weight on recently; I know full well how to fix it and what's caused it - I'm still just struggling to do things when I lack the motivation. And considering that's exactly what I've been reading changing in The Brave Athlete - I'm even more annoyed at myself. hnnnnghghg. 

 

I did today however spend 2 hours scrubbing the walls in our rental so, you know. I'm not doing nothing. But cleaning just isn't as good a way to improve my skating fitness. 

Tuesday tomorrow. As much as the lack of ideal start has me wanting to just give up; I'm not going to. 

 

I'll be at work from 6:30 - 2:30. early mornings fuck me over so I'm going to be knackered by the time I get home. We have to go and finish scrubbing the old house so we can finally be done with it. Fuck, I really wanna be done with it. xD

I'll probably have a power nap and instead of trying to do all my squat sets at once I'll spread them out throughout the evening. 

[Vibrantella]

Wow, you've got so much stuff on, and roller derby seems so demanding, not just physically but mentally too!  You're doing great, actually!  

[Stonie]

20 hours ago, Vibrantella said:

Wow, you've got so much stuff on, and roller derby seems so demanding, not just physically but mentally too!  You're doing great, actually!  

 

Thanks Vibrantella. Mostly I just think I'm overreacting to the amount I'm trying to do in life and that other people just do stuff constantly without angsting about it - but I can't know how other people cope with their lives and how they feel so I should stop assuming I'm doing a terrible job when I'm probably not. xD

 

Tuesday:

Tuesday I worked all morning and came home - my SO had done some housework and finished cleaning the walls in the old house while I was out so we didn't have to do that when I got home. I did have a small power nap (20~30 minutes ish) and didn't do any squats that night. I did however manage to incorporate some basic squats into my day at work whenever I had to access the lowest file shelves - something is better then nothing. I did small putting-things-away leaning chores today - Week 2's zone is the living room & office so I'm trying to stop the clutter creeping up on coffee tables and benches and stuff.

 

We did count out our huge stash of coins last night to put in the joint bank account and came up with ~$300 - nearly a week of our home loan! I was pretty chuffed. We put the coin tin back out to start filling up. 

 

Wednesday:

I think I'm going to re-think my workouts and instead try working them into my daily routine / work days. Tonight I am working the overnight shift, which means I'll be needing something to keep me awake anyway and there won't be many people in the office so I can dick about and do exercise-at-work without feeling self conscious about it. I've done food shopping and a bit of food prep so I have healthy food to eat and snack on. I've unpacked another box in the walk-in and pretty much cleared it of boxes; yay! I still need to finish organising it so it's all nice and neat - like my shoes needing to go on a shoe rack - but I can walk all the way into it now. 

 

Thursday will be a bit of a write off because I'll be asleep all morning and a bit dozy in the afternoon - thanks night shift - and then at training in the evening - which I'll do my best to get to this time. Two hours of training is a bit less terrifying a thought then three.

[Stonie]

Spending my night shift dinner break reading The Brave Athlete and I'm up to a chapter that's really hitting home. "I don't cope well with injury" - I know that part of my mental break in September was leftover resentfulment due to breaking my ankle and being so far behind compared to the training my teammates had been doing while I was off-skates. This books has lots of practical exercises to do so I thought I'd do one on here for the sake of something to do on a lunch break and the thought that I'm talking my problems out with someone. Even if no one is listening ***

 

*** it's 2.30 am. If this makes little to no sense, I apologise.

 

The Brave Athlete: Chapter 7, Exercise 3: Confront the Bullshit you tell yourself about your injury

Things I Currently say to myself about my inury

1. my injury has stopped me from improving

2. My injury has stopped me from ever being a good jammer

3. If I hadn't injured myself I would have played much better at the state tournament

4. my other teammates think I am weak and a liability to the team 

5. if I haadnt gone to the skate park I would never have hurt myself

 

Evidence to the Contrary

1. I have still improved at my skills. I just put expectations on myslef at the start of the year and haven't met those expectations because I was off-skates for a long time and thats okay. 

2. I have not been able to put specific effort into practicing as a jammer so of course my skills aren't going to be as good as the roller hocky / ballerina / calisthenics champion teammate I have who is an amazing jammer because she has a lot of prior experience. my injury has very little to do with my current jammer skill level

3. I was never alone on the track and my teammates were equally responsible for the outcomes of the games we played. 

4. People have verbally stated that they are impressed with my recovery and that I can skate as well as I can considering I was off-skates for 4 months. Teammates commend my efforts in coming to training despite being unable to fully participate - which has led to me being able to understand strategies and tactics despite not always having practiced them physically. 

5. roller derby is a full contact sport on roller skates and I knew the risks when I started playing. I very well could break myself at any time, skates or not, skatepark or otherwise. it was a freak accident that was mostly out of my control. 

 

 

Also on a completely irrelevant note, Champs is on this weekend ! Yeahh! NO weekend sleep ins for me cos I'm watching VRDL crush all. 

[Stonie]

Wednesday night at work went quite good. I made myself do a negative push up every time I had to access either of the bottom shelves while I was pulling files. I don't have an exact number for how many I did but I incorporated it into work and it went well.

 

Snacks-wise I took an apple and some home-made chocolate spread to curb my sweet craving at 3am while I was trying to make it through night shift. 3am is the slump time. Much like 3pm in normal day time shifts. Who'da thought. My dinner was salad and a few sausage rolls I'd made myself. 

 

Thursday

I slept for 5 hours this morning - from when I got home just before 7am and woke up at lunch time. Had coffee, had some pancakes I'd prepped yesterday as a snack. Went into town to buy a shoe rack so I could finish organising the walk in and bathroom. I've now completely unpacked the walk in robe and put all my clothes and shoes in places. Yay! I know that part of the struggle with keeping my old house clean was not having homes for things to go away when Iw as done with them and I'm trying to find homes for everything now I'm in this new house. I also organised some of the knick knack type stuff we had that we now have a specific shelf for in the new house it lights up and everything. #fancy

 

Went to training; wasn't terrible. Only 7 of us turned up so it was kinda nice. I did lots of good backwards skating tonight - weaving and on one foot - but the ankle work required for that made my titanium ankle a bit cranky so I stopped a few minutes early and did a good proper stretch. I made Pad Thai from scratch for dinner when I got home. Not as good as the first time I made it but still good. So Thursday wasn't as much as a write off as I thought.

 

Friday I am free to do literally whatever I want so I should make a plan. I want to unpack at least one box from the study space, have a bit of a clean out of my car, and do some squats. Cleaning-wise I want to dust the living room and do a load of sheets as washing. Easy. 

[Stonie]

Friday

I did mostly nothing all day. Remembered at about 5pm that I had a plan and that I should probably do something. (I got stuck into stardew valley =/ ) But then I did get stuck into a bit of cleaning while I cooked dinner. Did a load of washing bedding. Wiped fingerprints off the stainless steel stuff in the kitchen. Purged a bit of clutter building up on the kitchen bench.

what FlyLady would call a "hotspot" - we have a kitchen island bench that drops down into a dining-table-height breakfast bar which gathers our clutter out of my handbag and paperwork and stuff. Which is fine, I just need to remember to not let it get out of control. So far so good. 

 

Saturday

I've done a fair bit of cleaning throughout the day in-between other things; wiped the shower down while I was in it. Wiped the bathroom sinks while I was in there. Wiped the kitchen sinks while I was waiting for the kettle to boil. I finally got around to dusting the living room, and vacuuming most of the house - most of the house is tiled so if I keep up on the vacuuming with my dandy stick vacuum it doesn't take long - and unpacked 3 boxes from the study area. It's almost usable in there now.

 

I'm trying really hard to build the habits of doing tiny bits of cleaning constantly while I'm starting out with a perfectly clean house that also happens to be beautiful - it was hard to want to keep a 30 year old house clean when the kitchen was salmon pink and the bathroom pastel baby blue, and the carpets dirty no matter what you vacuumed them with. The house itself motivates me to want to clean. Also, I have a friend coming over to have coffee and see my new house, so there's that  

 

I also played a fair bit of Grand Theft Auto V, so balance. 

 

And I'm thinking for week 3 I will focus on the spare room that currently holds all our miscellaneous stuff that I haven't unpacked yet and work on getting it all away, and cleaning the outdoor area, instead of the dining / entrance like I was going to as I sort of rolled the dining room and entrance into keeping the living room tidy; thanks open plan house. 

 

[Stonie]

Sunday:

Slept in, did very little, went to work at 2:30pm. Did take some food prep with me and ate, half of it. Also succumbed to the fundraising chocolate on the bench for the first time this challenge. Shark week - gets ya every time. 

 

Still no exercise this weekend. I'm still trying to work out the correlation between having my partner home and my lack of will to do exercise. Also, on that note, I'm feeling very mentally drained because of his constant presence around me. I love him but my introvert brain needs physical time away from him to recharge. Also Mr. Unemployed Bum likes to complain about every small housework thing I ask him to do despite him not having anything else on. Like, hello? I have to go to work and shit but you don''t see me whinging about doing housework. Agh. Never mind. Things are just bothering me because I'm mentally drained. I'm going to have to work out how to get some me-time without offending the poor guy.

 

Monday:

Slept in again. Worked at 2:30pm. Spent most of my waking hours in the morning tidying up around the house because if I don't do it constantly the house will devolve into chaos like the last one. And there's no point me waiting for my SO to do it because it will just get worse and then I won't want to do it. xD 

[Sunmage]

1. Fall to the ground
2. Get up
3. Rearrange crown
4. Smile

You are doing great!  

 

Do you like skating outdoors?

Great me time for me! Just you, nature and the road. The secret for me is not to have music and other distractions...

 

[Stonie]

On 11/7/2017 at 10:38 AM, Sunmage said:

1. Fall to the ground
2. Get up
3. Rearrange crown
4. Smile

You are doing great!  

 

Do you like skating outdoors?

Great me time for me! Just you, nature and the road. The secret for me is not to have music and other distractions...

 

 

Thanks Sunmage

 

Now that I've moved back to suburbia I am near actual smooth pathways so I'm thinking about outdoor skating again. But I half dismantled my old skates to turn them into franken-Doc-Marten Skates and got distracted with the whole house move; so my skates aren't currently wearable (and my new skates are too nice to wear outdoors!) - But it is almost summer again and the weather has been nice. 

 

Maybe I should make my mission for the weekend to finish my skates. Realistically all I have to do is dremel off the old screws to get the plate off, buy new screws, screw the plates on the doc boots... sounds simple. Probably won't be. xD Then during the week I can just go. 

 

Week 3 has been okay; most of it has been taken up by work and cleaning and meal prep and I still haven't done any extra exercise. I have however signed up to play social soccer once a week starting next tuesday. I am definitely a cross-train with a reason kind of person. Maybe next challenge I'll re-consider doing a group fitness class and do some investigating. 

 

For the rest of the challenge I am going to let my workout plan go and work on an even smaller habit. Have a set of workout clothes set out before I go to bed every night. Ideally I Will even put them on when I get home from work. I do have an awful lot of fitness clothes so I might as well wear them. 

[Stonie]

So I've been trying something, and I think it's working. 

One exercise in The Brave Athlete was about creating an alter ego (I know right? Easy for us rebels) and getting into that alter ego when doing the scary sport thing you need to do. I do find I am a better skater when I am confident in my abilities and I love a good alter ego so I was down for this. 

 

I also know that as a teenager I used to spend hours daydreaming about a cooler & better version of myself out smiting orcs and badguys and stuff (LOTR fangirl here) which sort of went hand in hand with some intense anxiety and depression symptoms - so I often retreated into my mind to ignore those feelings. Eventually I stopped needing to daydream and made my way through life with different ways to cope with my feelings - until I ended up panicking during two roller derby matches in September.

 

The Alter Ego exercise made me think of ways to get into character so I created a spotify paylist to pump me up and started to channel the scary anxiety feelings back into summoning my alter ego. Instead of falling prey to the anxiety I'm trying to use it as a weapon. 

 

We had an intra-league game for our league tonight to welcome our newly passed players and it was great. I've started to become anxious about all derby things so I've been really trying to work on the confidence building. And it was good. 

 

Other stuff that happened this week; 

 

I've been setting out my fitness gear but apart from an hour of scrim tonight I haven't done any extra workouts. I am starting to feel the urge to lift stuff again so I'm going to have to work out how to do it on the cheap, because house loans and stuff. And also none of the local gyms are between my home and work anymore so I can't guilt myself into going to the gym by driving past like I did with Anytime Fitness.

[Stonie]

Sunday was pretty much a write off. More of a complete rest day. I did very little. NOthing got cleaned, but I did wear my fitness clothes around the house in a small attempt at doing something. Didn't work. Did very little cleaning. Thought the unemployed bum living in my house might have done something? Hah. 

 

Monday I was at work all day and then went to training for 2 hours in the evening. It wasn't structured training as it's near the end of the year now but at least I went. Practiced some stops and transitions and stuff. Still very little cleaning. I probably had time but my brain needs to stop occasionally too y'know?

 

Tuesday I was at work again during the day, and went and played social soccer in the evening. Which I was more nervous about then playing roller derby xD We lost spectacularly, but it was pretty fun nonetheless. but I got my 40 minutes of cardio and that was half the reason I signed up to begin with. I did wrangle my sister into playing with me cos she's an actual soccer player and my anxiety needed someone I knew well to be near me when I went and talked to random people I hadn't met before and kicked a ball around with them. It was fun. I also vacuumed the kitchen / dining / loungeroom and mopped the tiles too. 

 

 

[Stonie]

So this challenge went okay! I think I got about a 56% success rate for everything averaged out. That's a pass, I'll take it.

 

 

My new house is still clean - to the point where I don't have to panic clean when someone wants to come over! Yay!

I still managed to not do a whole lot of exercise - which let's be honest, doesn't surprise me a whole lot because I don't have the willpower (yet) to exercise at home. And I still haven't solved the problem of making it to a gym that isn't too far out of my way home from work. Bah. 

I stopped reading as much as I should have. I wanted to do the exercises and I wanted to do them with a real pen and paper and I never went back to them at a later time when I said I would. But now that the derby season is over for this year I am feeling a bit more rested and I can work on my mental toughness a bit more. I was up to a chapter that explained how to do that in The Brave Athlete so I'm going to work on that over the christmas break.

Snack-wise I actually did okay. I only bought chocolate bars from work probably 3-4 times, and stopped buying soft drink when we had takeout for dinner. The next step to this is to do more meal prep and probably start tracking my intake again with MFP.

 

Next challenge I plan to focus on body weight exercises again, now that I've organised a room in my house for fitness, and track my food intake with MFP. I also want to make use of the nice weather and get outside and do some skating so I can be a bit more agile and not lose my skills when I go back to training in January.And probably work on reading the sports psycology books I havent finished yet. yeahh.