Year of Metal, Track 6: The days, they blend into the nights

[Harriet]

Well, the low-motivation slug spell lasted an entire challenge. My sinuses are not clearing up, I am sleeping badly, and I am tired and unmotivated every day. I have to consider the possibility that this is my own fault for taking up the habit that I quit two years ago, of drinking alcohol every day. It interferes with my sleep. How can I get better if I’m sabotaging my sleep every single day? I ought to know this already, but I have a tendency to rationalise that no one day of drinking wine is harmful in itself. This doesn’t help when the problem is frequency rather than quantity. I will report every day whether I drank the night before, because I’m sneaky as fuck about making excuses now that my main motivation for temperance is gone. (I miss you, barbells.)

Also, my plan to start lifting again failed, so obviously I have to lower the bar even further. I often feel so tired/unmotivated that the prospect of changing into my workout clothes is what stops me. (You know, it’s actually somewhat difficult to get those tight leggings over my... posterior chain.) This is obviously the most pathetic, indolent excuse invented by any lifter ever. But berating myself doesn’t motivate me. So I’m going to try sprinkling KB lifts throughout my days so I can lift in my pandemic-issue sweatpants and pandemic-knit sweater and socks with holes in. Not having enough activity negatively impacts my sleep, but increasing my walking beyond about 40 minutes per day messes with my knees. So adding some KB lifts to my days is a necessary investment in my sleep, and hence, in my getting better.

 

Lastly, I’m moving continents. Over the next four weeks I need to pack up and ship out. We’ve been here for two years, so I have to clear out some things. I’ve already sold my bike for an astonishingly low amount. I also need to give back library books, donate some clothes that don’t fit or are unwanted, throw out the sketchbook I filled with figures, and generally clean out the nest of stuff that has accumulated over the last two years.

Quests:

Water on weekdays
Lift Bells

Sort inventory

Sleeeep

 

Amorphis: Sampo

 

[Jupiter]

Great goals. Following.  

[Scaly Freak]

2 hours ago, Harriet said:

Lastly, I’m moving continents. Over the next four weeks I need to pack up and ship out. We’ve been here for two years, so I have to clear out some things. I’ve already sold my bike for an astonishingly low amount. I also need to give back library books, donate some clothes that don’t fit or are unwanted, throw out the sketchbook I filled with figures, and generally clean out the nest of stuff that has accumulated over the last two years.

 

This is a very stressful process. Be kind to yourself as you deal with this.  

[cd667]

Yes, that's a massive shift. Moving house is a lot. Moving continents? That's big stuff. Where are you going?

 

I struggled for years with booze. Still do, actually. It doesn't have as strong a grip on me as it used to, but for a few years it dominated many of my life choices.

 

I am not qualified to give any kind of help beyond that, but I can definitely relate to your situation. I just want you to know you aren't alone.

[h3r0]

Ugh, moving is the worst and terribly stressful. Be kind to yourself during this process. Moving tends to take over everything else around it and remember that carrying and stacking boxes is a workout in itself. 

[Big_Show]

Which continent are you moving to?  I shifted from the UK to the Middle East for a few years before returning and found it big shift!

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Following along. I hate moving, so you have my sympathy.

[Harriet]

Thanks, everyone. We're heading back to Germany. We deliberately didn't acquire too much stuff, and we already have a furnished apartment that we left behind, so there will be no boxes and not too much fuss; we're just going home. I'm looking forward to seeing friends, my brother, my kittens, and not reading/painting/writing/living on the sofa of one sad, slightly dark room that is simultaneously Mr Harriet's workplace and the kitchen. Oh, and also having a kitchen with everything I need for cooking, and enough space.

 

[Mistr]

I agree with what others said, moving is a LOT of work. Even when you don't have to move furniture and worry about setting up a new apartment, there are lots of decisions to be made.

 

I'm glad that you have a nice place and many good things to look forward to.

 

I hear you on having a hard time starting a KB workout. I feel good once I get going, but boy, oh boy, do I procrastinate on starting. If I figure something out, I'll let you know. One nice thing about quarantine is that clothes don't matter. You can where anything you like or nothing at all, no one is going to see you except Mr. Harriet. I'm partial to the old tank top and shorts look, myself.

 

I also endorse doing something as being better than having ambitious goals that are intimidating. I did core yoga this morning instead of KB because I knew I could get it done in 20 minutes. If I'm good, I'll make the time to do KB tomorrow. Just a few wall push-ups and hip bridges are better than nothing.

[Harriet]

3 hours ago, Mistr said:

I'm glad that you have a nice place and many good things to look forward to.

 

Thank you  

 

3 hours ago, Mistr said:

If I'm good, I'll make the time to do KB tomorrow. Just a few wall push-ups and hip bridges are better than nothing.

 

Right. Something instead of nothing. That's the way.

[Harriet]

Water: I haven't had any alcohol for a few days. Drinking kombucha instead to fill the behavioural void. 

Bells: I did some KB carries.

 

Today I felt a bit more motivated. I went for a 35-min walk, finished a book (Down Girl by Kate Mann) and an article ("The professor of parody", about Judith Butler's cynical and obfuscatory writing and how it undermines the core projects of feminism, by Martha Nussbaum--one of the philosophers responsible for developing the capability approach).

 

I also did some painting for the first time in several days. I think my observation and brushwork are adequate for now, and I would like to work on design, so I am taking a mini class on that. My homework was to pick an animal, any animal, and draw a good and evil version of it using, um, shapes. Apparently triangles are dangerous? I'm hoping to learn more in later lessons. Anyway, I was going to pick something like a bear, but then I thought it would be too easy, so I picked a sheep. I was going for heroic-good rather than cute-good, cos I thought a cute sheep would be a doddle - they're basically fluffy blobs. Well, here's my attempt:

Spoiler

 

[Scaly Freak]

Whoa. I think the aggressive one in the lower left was in a Dark Souls game!

[Jupiter]

12 minutes ago, Harriet said:

but then I thought it would be too easy, so I picked a sheep.

 

Very cool!

[miss_marissa]

Cutting drinking it hard, but so worth it! You got it! Also I agree with Mistr, that workout clothes are optional for a workout. 

[Harriet]

1 hour ago, Scaly Freak said:

Whoa. I think the aggressive one in the lower left was in a Dark Souls game!

 

I haven't seen the game, but I guess there are a limited number of ways you can make a sheep baad. 

 

1 hour ago, Jupiter said:

Very cool!

 

Thank you!
 

15 minutes ago, miss_marissa said:

Cutting drinking it hard, but so worth it! You got it! Also I agree with Mistr, that workout clothes are optional for a workout. 

Thanks! Honestly, trousers are optional for a workout these days. 

[Scaly Freak]

1 hour ago, Harriet said:

Thanks! Honestly, trousers are optional for a workout these days. 

 

There, fixed that for you.

[Sloth the Enduring]

Trousers? Ain’t nobody got time for that.

[iatetheyeti]

I don't envy you moving continents, though I'm glad you've things to look forward to at the other end of it.

 

Also loving your evil sheep  

 

[Harriet]

Water: no alcohol last night. 
Bells: snatches, cleans & jerks with the 12kg bell

Today I actually felt like doing stuff for the first time in weeks. My general mental state was 'okay, what's next?' instead of 'how long until I can go back to sleep?'. It must be the kombucha. Alcohol is a 2-hour buff followed by a 24-hour debuff. It's borrowing from tomorrow. I should try to remember this.

I finished the design class. It was tiny and there wasn't much else to it. But I found a character design class for beginners, on Udemy, and it was reduced from $100 to $11. I nabbed it. It has an entire section on fantasy armour. And another section on sci-fi armour. Yip yip yip. I also took some library books back. I went for a 30-minute walk. My knee hurts. Tomorrow I should see if my clothes actually fit into my bags. 

 

I also started reading Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth. It's not really about vegetarianism so much as it is about agriculture. It is profoundly sad, but I am happy to have found a real life druid-philosopher. Today I learned that plants eat animals. The soil needs nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, and if you don't get these from manure, blood and bone, you have to get it from fossil fuels and mined rocks. I learned that perennial polycultures (ecosystems with lots of trees & loads of other things) maintain the topsoil and support diverse, self-renewing lifeforms, but annual monocrops (mostly grasses) firstly require the destruction of everything else that lives in a place in order to move in, and then deplete topsoil as they're farmed. And they need water from elsewhere. Unfortunately, agriculture seems kinda necessary for, you know, all the humans we made. Also, apparently, grasses domesticated us with their addictive properties, and basically civilisation has just been one huge mistake. It would be Terry Prattchet-like, if it were intended as a joke.

[Sloth the Enduring]

I feel like civilization was a mistake too.

[Harriet]

4 hours ago, Sloth the Enduring said:

I feel like civilization was a mistake too.

 

Not sure if joke or serious
Also not sure how to undo

[GodzillaKong]

7 hours ago, Sloth the Enduring said:

I feel like civilization was a mistake too.

 

But it did give us Civilization the game, so it's not all bad. 

[Mad Hatter]

Always so sneaky with the new challenges.  But I'm glad to see you're feeling a bit better!

 

The characters are really cool, sounds like a fun little course. The second one looks a lot like a gnu, but it's definitely scary! You see the triangle shapes in evil villains ALL the time in movies, particularly animated ones, and it definitely works so there does seem to be some truth to the idea that sharp spiky, clawy, bity things are dangerous. Super excited to see your armour!!

[Harriet]

5 hours ago, GodzillaKong said:

 

But it did give us Civilization the game, so it's not all bad. 

 

There's some good stuff, right? Books, video games, cake. 

 

41 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

Always so sneaky with the new challenges.  But I'm glad to see you're feeling a bit better!

 

The characters are really cool, sounds like a fun little course. The second one looks a lot like a gnu, but it's definitely scary!

 

Thanks! Ha, yeah. I definitely sacrificed some sheepiness for some sharpness. I'm sure a better designer could keep both but this is one skill I'm quite behind on.

 

Quote

You see the triangle shapes in evil villains ALL the time in movies, particularly animated ones, and it definitely works so there does seem to be some truth to the idea that sharp spiky, clawy, bity things are dangerous. Super excited to see your armour!!

 

Yeah, the sharp stuff seems fine. But there must be so many other things, too, and the class didn't mention any of them. I'm thinking tentacles and twisty shapes, drips and oozes, sinister colours... I don't know. 

[raptron]

I love good sheep evil sheep. They certainly both agree humanity was a mistake but not much we can do about it now. We're here, after all.