Tei un-schedules

[tei_]

Last Challenge, I said that I was going to try to figure out something to do with scheduling this time. My situation is basically this: I am a professional musician with a full-time orchestra job. At the moment, I'm being paid to stay home; but I need to a) prepare for a livestream recital I'm a part of in a little mover a month, and b) keep practicing because eventually we're going to go back to work and I need to not suck. I'm also in school part time and have a bunch of hobbies that I want to do every day (including Assassining!)

 

So the format of my days is basically a whole bunch of stuff that needs to get done at some point, but none of it is really urgent, which is a bad recipe for productivity. For a while I've been trying to address that by scheduling; writing down every morning when I was going to do what things. This works... sometimes... the only problem is that I hate it. Something about the act of writing down when I'm going to do a thing makes me resent the thing and wish I didn't have to do it.

 

So, this Challenge, I am going to try... not scheduling? I think in order to make that work, I need to do two things:

1. Have enough time and energy to actually do things, i.e. go to bed on time and get enough sleep

2. Stay away from internet distraction vortices, i.e. most of web 2.0

 

So, my two main goals are to

1. Go to bed before midnight every night, ideally around 11

2. Spend 15 minutes a day combined on twitter/tumblr/instagram, only in the evening after most stuff is done. I don't really use those platforms much anyway in terms of posting, but I have *feeds* there, and once you click on it you end up sucked in for the next hour and then feeling useless and lethargic etc. etc. No time limit on websites that I actually want to use that don't suck me into despair vortices, viz. nerd fitness, dreamwidth,  discord, because I'm perfectly capable of checking those, saying something to someone and getting back to what I was doing.

 

Τhen, in the time that I hopefully have to fill my day with, there are eight things I would like to get done every day, realizing that some days not all of them will:

1. Practice bassoon

2. Make reeds

3. Work on my calculus class

4. Work on my linear algebra class

5. Write 1000 words of fiction

6. Work out (same goals as last challenge generally; flexibility, handstands, balances, walkovers)

7. Do some work on my volunteering with the OTW-- my role is on the Policy and Abuse committee, so I'd like to spend at least half an hour a day investigating abuse reports and keeping up with my ticket load

8. Go for a WALK every day. Now that I live in a house with my own space instead of the tiny apartment my partner and I were in until January, it's easy to spend all day inside. (Also because it's -30 outside. But hey I HAVE A HAT.)

 

[tei_]

(I'M GONNA TRACK THINGS. ✔️= complete,  ✅=partially complete, ❌=not done)

 

Today:

Practice ✔️

Reeds ✔️

Calculus ✔️

Linear Algebra ✔️

Write ✅ about 500 words?

Tickets ✔️

Walk✔️

Workout ✔️

Got 2 minute-long handstands with legs in both splits, some OK balances, and the best tick-tock I've managed so far (on the right leg, still collapsing every time when I try it on the left.) My backbending is feeling really good-- I even tried a bridge against a wall to see where I was re. armpits/chest being able o touch the wall but the answer is still nowhere close, ha.

 

(The video playing on the TV is... a calculus lecture, haha. Also-- look, FURNITURE!)

[Mad Hatter]

Wow 2 minutes, you got some hella endurance! And such pretty lines. 😍

 

14 hours ago, tei_ said:

So the format of my days is basically a whole bunch of stuff that needs to get done at some point, but none of it is really urgent, which is a bad recipe for productivity. For a while I've been trying to address that by scheduling; writing down every morning when I was going to do what things. This works... sometimes... the only problem is that I hate it. Something about the act of writing down when I'm going to do a thing makes me resent the thing and wish I didn't have to do it.

So much this! And now that I'm working remotely full time, and have no classes or barely even meetings I have no anchor points which makes it even harder. So basically I'm here to steal anything that might work. 😛 And to ogle your videos.

[Hazard]

8 hours ago, tei_ said:

Got 2 minute-long handstands with legs in both splits

 

Admiring your delts.   

 

[tei_]

4 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Wow 2 minutes, you got some hella endurance! And such pretty lines. 😍

Well, two sets of one minute Thank you! My shoulders in handstand are getting a lot better with all the backbending work.

 

4 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

So much this! And now that I'm working remotely full time, and have no classes or barely even meetings I have no anchor points which makes it even harder. So basically I'm here to steal anything that might work. 😛 And to ogle your videos.

Oof. Yeah, that sounds really hard. As much as I don't like zoom classes, I'm really thankful that I have them at least as a thing I'm theoretically supposed to go to.

 

6 minutes ago, Hazard said:

 

Admiring your delts.   

 

 

👀 Thanks!

[tei_]

Practice ✔️

Reeds ✔️

Calculus ✔️

Linear Algebra ✔️

(I have midterms in BOTH classes tomorrow, back-to-back, the most nerve-wracking thing about which is trying to upload the goddamn PDFs to the school's servers in time to get a grade and then show up to start the next one. Ugh. So, most of my day was spent preparing for that, somewhat ineffectually.)

Write ❌

Tickets ✅

Walk✔️

Workout ✔️

 

I did a bit of handstand and flexibility stuff in the morning, and then went to gymnastics tonight. I was thinking on the way how lucky I am to be able to go-- if I were in any other province it would be shut, and arguably it *should* be shut, but everything that I don't like about my current gymnastics setup are also the reasons I feel safe going: i train by myself, in different parts of the gym from the only other group there at the same time as me, no training buddies, no coach. The head coach is there coaching a cheer group, which is why I'm allowed to come in, but even before COVID the deal was that I wouldn't bother anyone and I wouldn't have to pay anything.

 

I wasn't expecting much because I was pretty tired today (woke up at 5:30 worrying about my midterms and coulnd't fall back asleep, wooo!) But I ended up doing some good work on floor beam back handsprings, putting my roundoff on the low beam with a yoga mat for the first time in like a YEAR (I very briefly had it on the high beam! 😭 And then learned a NEW SKILL, which I started trying last week but actually succeeded with more than once tonight: I think it's called a stoop? Straddle on, switch hands, fall forward to kip. After I got comfortable with keeping my feet on the bar long enough to kip out of it, I started trying to add a kip before it, and discovered that this is probably a very good thing to work on if I want to be able to do a kip cast handstand eventually, because... my shoulders are not far enough in front of the bar coming out of the kip to fall forwards from a straddle on, most of the time. GOOD TO KNOW.

 

Soooo then I was driving home from the gym, in the new-to-us car, pretty sure my... third time driving it, in total? And got a flat tire. I am embarassed to admit I don't know how to change a flat, and should probably learn, but... even if I did, it was on the left side of the car on a kind-of-highway with no shoulders, on the outskirts of the industrial area of town where the gym is, and it was 10 PM, and also, well:

 

 

Soooo I called a tow truck, and a guy came and changed it for me. I meant to come home after gym and study some more and write, but now it is just bedtime.

[Mad Hatter]

Congrats on unlocking a new skill! 👯‍♀️ You know, every time I watch one of your videos I get super torn between "oooh shiny I wanna be flexy again just like Tei" and "uggh stretching sucks". 😛 

 

11 hours ago, tei_ said:

 

Gross. 

[raptron]

Ahhh, neat! Stoops are funnnn. I do not think I've trained them since I was pretty little, but I do think your logic about helping your casts is sound! There are a lot of cast handstand drills that basically encourage that same falling forward movement to get used to the (scary) shoulder positioning for a good straddle cast handstand. 

 

Sorry about the flat in the cold, though. 🥶

[Manarelle]

12 hours ago, tei_ said:

Soooo then I was driving home from the gym, in the new-to-us car, pretty sure my... third time driving it, in total? And got a flat tire. I am embarassed to admit I don't know how to change a flat, and should probably learn, but... even if I did, it was on the left side of the car on a kind-of-highway with no shoulders, on the outskirts of the industrial area of town where the gym is, and it was 10 PM, and also, well:

 

 

That's a big ol' nope, and I've changed probably a couple hundred tires. Not something you want to try to figure out in 1) hella cold, 2) dark, 3) unsafe conditions, and especially not in 4) all of the above. Glad you're safe. 

[tei_]

10 hours ago, raptron said:

There are a lot of cast handstand drills that basically encourage that same falling forward movement to get used to the (scary) shoulder positioning for a good straddle cast handstand. 

Yeah! I think this is also the rationale behind the kip to front hip circle being in... whatever level of JO routine it's in. For some reason it just never occurred to me that I, personally, could also do progressions for things

 

10 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Congrats on unlocking a new skill! 👯‍♀️ You know, every time I watch one of your videos I get super torn between "oooh shiny I wanna be flexy again just like Tei" and "uggh stretching sucks". 😛 

 

Hahaha it's TRUE.

 

10 hours ago, Manarelle said:

That's a big ol' nope, and I've changed probably a couple hundred tires. Not something you want to try to figure out in 1) hella cold, 2) dark, 3) unsafe conditions, and especially not in 4) all of the above. Glad you're safe. 

Thank you!

 

Practice ❌

Reeds ❌

Calculus ✔️

Linear Algebra ✔️

Write ✅

Tickets ✔️

Walk✔️

Workout ❌

 

Ugh, preparing for my midterms/doing the midterms/being upset about the midterms pretty much ate my whole day, haha. They weren't terrible, but. I am still upset about the Linear Algebra midterm because I really like the actual content of this course, but in practice it is so frustrating because everything I do is riddled with fatal arithmetic errors that I just... don't know how to eliminate. I try to write everything out in excruciating detail and check even simple sums and products on a calculator because I know I make these kinds of mistakes, but when the test is 50 minutes it comes with the built-in assumption that you can do these things quickly and without reams of paper, or else you're never going to make it. (While also showing that you have done it and not just plugged it into Wolfram Alpha.)

Anyway, I spent the entire last fifteen minutes of the test with everything else done but absolutely tearing my hear out plugging in the same things into an equation over and over needing to get 0=0 and never managing it, becoming gradually more convinced that the question must be wrong and going off on elaborate tangents trying to figure out whether that was even plausible. Then after the time ended, I asked my partner to look at it and they was like "wow you seem real sure that -2*-1 = 4." And the thing is, I was sure. I started and re-started that part at least five times. And every time my brain was like "4, yep, no other option."

 

[tei_]

Practice ✔️

Reeds ❌

Calculus ❌

Linear Algebra ✔️

Write ✔️

Tickets ✅

Walk✔️

Workout ✔️

[Mad Hatter]

On 2/11/2021 at 6:24 AM, tei_ said:

Anyway, I spent the entire last fifteen minutes of the test with everything else done but absolutely tearing my hear out plugging in the same things into an equation over and over needing to get 0=0 and never managing it, becoming gradually more convinced that the question must be wrong and going off on elaborate tangents trying to figure out whether that was even plausible. Then after the time ended, I asked my partner to look at it and they was like "wow you seem real sure that -2*-1 = 4." And the thing is, I was sure. I started and re-started that part at least five times. And every time my brain was like "4, yep, no other option."

Ahhaha I hate when that happened! (Waaaay back when when I did maths.) I'd usually start from scratch if I couldn't spot the mistake, the brain has an uncanny ability to stop seeing after a while.

[tei_]

Practice ✔️

Reeds ❌

Calculus ✔️

Linear Algebra

Write ❌

Tickets ✅

Walk✔️ (I'm counting going outside for any purpose for this, and today it was walking to the shop to pick up my car. It counts as the day's walk when it's -30 out!)

Workout ✔️

 

Behold today's artistic product: the world's most boring workout video, handstand holds to a soundtrack of trigonometric substitution.

https://vimeo.com/511877198/06ea7e4105

 

[Mike Wazowski]

Here and following! Can’t wait to be inspired by awesome handstands.

 

Are the math classes part of your hobbies? If so, rock on, as a fellow math nerd!

 

Are you able to take in the lecture while handstanding? If so, impressive!

[tei_]

7 hours ago, Mike Wazowski said:

Here and following! Can’t wait to be inspired by awesome handstands.

 

Are the math classes part of your hobbies? If so, rock on, as a fellow math nerd!

 

Are you able to take in the lecture while handstanding? If so, impressive!

Kind of to both! I'm currently doing a part-time degree very slowly, so it's kinda a hobby that will hopefully one day lead to a career change/more career options. And... I can't say I thoroughly absorbed the information in the background. It was more a "turn unknown unknowns into known unknowns" kind of mission. It's reading week next week and I need to go back and re-learn a whole bunch of trig that I missed when the we lost a week of school to the very first COVID shutdown last year, which happened to be Let's Learn Trig Identities week in my precalc class.

 

Practice ✔️

Reeds ❌ I really really really need to make reeds tomorrow.

Calculus ✔️

Linear Algebra ❌

Write ✔️

Tickets ✅

Walk❌

Workout ✔️ five rounds of squats/pushups/whatever this compression exercise is called:

 

 

[Mike Wazowski]

Ah gotcha - well rock on with the math learning, then!

[Manarelle]

How did reading week go for you? I did trig back in high school and can pretty confidently say I have no recollection of it at all (math is not my strong point). Were you able to solidify that topic in your head?

[fearless 2.0]

hi fellow musician, Cellist here. We often play the same stuff in orchestra...hehe... only found your thread now and liking it over here! cheers, fearless