Juliebarkley keeps herself on track

[juliebarkley]

I have made schedules in the past; I have ignored schedules in the past. Why am I trying this again? I realized last challenge that without some (self-imposed) structure to my days, I actually get less done on my days off than on the days when I have work. I am too eager to tell myself that I have lots of time - and then waste that time doing nothing much. Then I complain in my head that I never seem to have enough time. 🤦‍♀️ Making this schedule has brought home forcefully that I do indeed have lots of time - some free time every day, in fact! - but that it is still limited. Habits, side hustle, and all the other things I want/need to do also take up time (even if you wish they didn't). The hope is that by setting aside time for them, in writing, with annoying reminders, they will happen more often. Sometimes you need the things you want to accomplish in life to smack you in the face so that you'll pay attention to them.

 

I also decided to give GMB Elements a go this challenge round to try to reignite a love of movement. I used zero week to work through the free 5-day course that they send you when you join their email list, and it was indeed fun. Good sign!

 

For this challenge period, I also have one big project. That book pile from last challenge, that needs to get put up for sale and shifted so I can get shelves and fix up my recording space, and set that whole chain of events in motion? Still there. By the end of this challenge, I want it to not be there so that I can order my shelves.

 

Otherwise, this is going to look a lot like last challenge.

 

STR: 3x per week with Elements; currently scheduled for Mon/Wed/Fri.

DEX: Stretches on all the days of the week that are not Mon/Wed/Fri.

CON: Walk every day. Just to the mailbox and back; 30 minutes. Temporary reprieve if it is both raining AND freezing cold, because being soaking wet in 3 degree weather is enough to sour anyone on the joy of walking. (I don't remember where, but some day in the schedule this replaces DEX, because although I love my night walks, I'm not going to schedule one on purpose at 3am.)

INT: At least one focused reading session of 30 minutes or more per week.

WIS: At least one prayer, reading, or something every day. I got some apps that send out annoying reminders at prayer time, a daily Quran verse, and a built-in basic Quran translation. This didn't feel right to schedule in rigidly, but the reminders should help my poor sieve-like memory. Ramadan starts in like two weeks, so I need to try something. I need a lot of work, sadly.

CHA: Together time with my son two days per week. This was a lot of fun last time; totally worth the effort, and is therefore scheduled in as non-negotiable.

Occ.: Work on side hustle every day for at least 15 minutes beyond practice. I have 90 minutes set aside daily, but a lot of that is going to go to book listing. Still, I need some time to move myself forward here. 15 minutes isn't much, and it might be little enough to convince me to work on some of the suckier tasks.

Art.: Continue music practice daily. The book thing doubles for this category too. I am also joining in the decluttering mini, and put inbox tasks in my schedule (15-30min daily; a misc. assortment of todos, really), so I will report what gets done in that time. Close one random tab per day.

Lang.: Continue the current habit. Duo streak is growing! Try to keep the Esperanto D&D game alive by finding another player.

 

Challenge starts now!

[Scaly Freak]

53 minutes ago, juliebarkley said:

For this challenge period, I also have one big project. That book pile from last challenge, that needs to get put up for sale and shifted so I can get shelves and fix up my recording space, and set that whole chain of events in motion? Still there. By the end of this challenge, I want it to not be there so that I can order my shelves.

 

Will you need to ship the books as you sell them as well?

[Rurik Harrgath]

3 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

I have made schedules in the past; I have ignored schedules in the past. Why am I trying this again? I realized last challenge that without some (self-imposed) structure to my days, I actually get less done on my days off than on the days when I have work. I am too eager to tell myself that I have lots of time - and then waste that time doing nothing much. Then I complain in my head that I never seem to have enough time. 🤦‍♀️

 

Well well well... that sounds familiar 🤣 you could all too easily be targetting me through that entire paragraph lol but I know I'm hardly a unique subject case in that regard.  It's very tempting to fall into the I'M GONNA DO ALL THE THINGS day off mindset only to sit back, relax, and end up doing none of the things.  I rarely make a super concrete schedule for my days off but I make sure to start with a walk or run, get an actual workout in, and then try to tidy something.  Yesterday I got most of the kitchen squared away and I must admit that felt pretty darned good.

 

3 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

STR DEX CON  INT WIS CHA etc

 

I love that you're using stat points to summarize all of your goals.  As if that's a surprise!

 

You got this!! 💪

[WhiteGhost]

3 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Challenge starts now!

Following now!

[Jupiter]

Following!  

[juliebarkley]

6 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

Will you need to ship the books as you sell them as well?

Yes, I ship them myself. If I end up with a ton listed, I will look into sending them to Amazon to deal with (I only have a couple hundred up right now). But that comes later.

 

6 hours ago, Rurik Harrgath said:

Well well well... that sounds familiar 🤣 you could all too easily be targetting me through that entire paragraph lol but I know I'm hardly a unique subject case in that regard.  It's very tempting to fall into the I'M GONNA DO ALL THE THINGS day off mindset only to sit back, relax, and end up doing none of the things.  I rarely make a super concrete schedule for my days off but I make sure to start with a walk or run, get an actual workout in, and then try to tidy something.  Yesterday I got most of the kitchen squared away and I must admit that felt pretty darned good.

This weekend was SO BAD though. Those nonograms @Mad Hatter mentioned on her thread were my undoing. And it's just so much more fun to read my book than do some chore that either makes my eyes glaze over in five minutes flat, or is big and complicated, so it's easier to just leave it for Tomorrow Me. (Tomorrow Me doesn't like Yesterday Me very much, I'm sure.) Congrats on getting your kitchen sorted!

 

6 hours ago, Rurik Harrgath said:

I love that you're using stat points to summarize all of your goals.  As if that's a surprise!

 

You got this!! 💪

It really covers all the bases when you add in the extra stats! (And I like D&D )

 

3 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

Following now!

3 hours ago, Jupiter said:

Following!  

Welcome, welcome! (The one helping me fight zombies and the one trying to kill us with zombies; it's perfect!)

 

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Started Elements today. It was an easy start - just a movement evaluation. I can tell Frogger will be my least good movement already. The movements and stretches we did ran the gamut from "even at the maximum extension of this movement I feel no stretch at all" to "well this is rather harder than I thought it would be" but nothing was too terribly taxing. I did feel it in my wrists afterward though. Got a walk in today too even though it was both windy and cold!

 

Tab closed, music/VO practised, Duo done, check! Inbox tasks were paying my ambulance bill, scanning and sending in a form I've been procrastinating on, and buying my GMB stuff. Took half an hour easily, maybe more even, though it looks like it should be less when I write it out.

 

Nothing on WIS yet. Looks like it will come down to prayer before bed. I don't like waiting till the last minute though. Something to work on.

 

[Mad Hatter]

1 hour ago, juliebarkley said:

This weekend was SO BAD though. Those nonograms @Mad Hatter mentioned on her thread were my undoing.

Hahaha sorry. 🤣😂

 

8 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

I have made schedules in the past; I have ignored schedules in the past. Why am I trying this again? I realized last challenge that without some (self-imposed) structure to my days, I actually get less done on my days off than on the days when I have work. I am too eager to tell myself that I have lots of time - and then waste that time doing nothing much. Then I complain in my head that I never seem to have enough time. 🤦‍♀️

Nailed it! Except that instead of complaining that I don't have enough time I end up feeling ashamed that I have so much of it, and wasting it all.

 

1 hour ago, juliebarkley said:

I can tell Frogger will be my least good movement already.

It's a great movement though! It will prep you for gymnastics, handstands, parkour, all the fun things. 🙂

[Scaly Freak]

8 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

This weekend was SO BAD though. Those nonograms @Mad Hatter mentioned on her thread were my undoing. And it's just so much more fun to read my book than do some chore that either makes my eyes glaze over in five minutes flat, or is big and complicated, so it's easier to just leave it for Tomorrow Me. (Tomorrow Me doesn't like Yesterday Me very much, I'm sure.) Congrats on getting your kitchen sorted!

 

We've all been there, I think. This whole adulting thing is very difficult at times.

[Teros]

20 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

I am too eager to tell myself that I have lots of time - and then waste that time doing nothing much.

Youtube

 

 Oh shit, I did nothing.

 

[juliebarkley]

22 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Hahaha sorry. 🤣😂

Don't worry, I threw myself to my destruction with my own two hands. At least I had fun doing it.

 

22 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

It's a great movement though! It will prep you for gymnastics, handstands, parkour, all the fun things. 🙂

That's pretty much what I was thinking while doing the movement: "Hey, this is a prep for kicking up into a handstand!" I've never been able to come remotely close to kicking up into a handstand (I climbed the wall instead). Can't even cartwheel decently. It's not really a surprise that this movement was tricky, but it's good that it's there to improve those things!

 

16 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

We've all been there, I think. This whole adulting thing is very difficult at times.

They can't all be good days. (Though at least it was fun.) Still, I would still like Tomorrow Me to be less pissed off with Yesterday Me in the long run.

 

11 hours ago, Teros said:

Youtube

 

 Oh shit, I did nothing.

 

Oh, I did things ... just not the right things.

 

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I had no inbox or exercise on my schedule today because it just didn't fit in if I wanted some unscheduled time, but I did a bit of shoulder stretching. (Tuesday is the big book-moving day at work, so I often come home with shoulder pain. One of the stretches in the free GMB course was the first time a stretch really helped that ache.). A nice walk was also had.

 

Duo was practiced. VO was not practiced at its scheduled time, because I was working on some things in the history chapter I had to read aloud, so I called it good. Fiddle playing was squeaky, so squeaky - I'm not bowing straight and I lost a couple of weeks of practice so I'm making sure I remember all the fingerings instead of plowing on ahead.

 

Closed my tab, but it made me open five more (it was a list of resources), so I tried to close five more. I lost count, but I think I made it? I won't always be able to do that though. Got a prayer in and felt like I wanted to do it, too! That was happy-making. I got an email from Amazon at 4am saying that I was approved to sell so I think I'm good there, but I did no book work today because I need to get this script read and samples recorded tomorrow or Thursday.

 

In our D&D session, we made out surprisingly well in our zombie smashing and found a strange room full of strange statues that just aren't right. The wrongness of the various rooms in this temple is creating a great "WTF, creepy" atmosphere. I also made friends with a small animated statue and my thievery has awakened far more dangerous-looking enemies that we will all fight next time (and I didn't even get the bracelet! Boo.).

[Jayniana Jones]

I’m following along. I can relate to your struggles with schedules. I wish you luck on finding one that mostly fits. I say mostly because there are days when a break from the plan is needed for survival.

 

What are you reading at the moment?

 

I hope your week is going well.

[juliebarkley]

13 hours ago, Jayniana Jones said:

I’m following along. I can relate to your struggles with schedules. I wish you luck on finding one that mostly fits. I say mostly because there are days when a break from the plan is needed for survival.

 

What are you reading at the moment?

 

I hope your week is going well.

Yup, there's no such thing as a perfect schedule! My plan is that if I have an appointment, extra shift, etc., then anything assigned to that time is just overwritten for that day. It all repeats often enough, so it's not a big loss. And I can move stuff around on any individual day - like if it looks like rain later, move my walk earlier and put something else later. All good. And now and again it will all fall apart, as you say. The main idea is to see what I have already kind of committed myself to and plan ahead to fit those things into my day.

 

I'm reading three different books: a lunchtime book (French practice), an eating at home book (anything with short sections, usually non-fiction), and one I can get lost in (longer chapters). My French book is Magouilles et magie by Marcus Sedgwick (a translation of a British children's book; for whatever reason we often only seem to have British children's books in French); my mealtime book is Cracks in the Ivory Tower by Jason Brennan and Phillip Magness (it's interesting but pretty niche; it's a sociological study of the American higher ed system using an economic lens to evaluate incentives); but the one that keeps drawing me in is the (sadly) last book in the Johannes Cabal the Necromancer series, The Fall of the House of Cabal (by Jonathan L. Howard). I've been putting it off for so long because I didn't want to face the end of the series. If you like black humour, British humour, rich playful language, and/or antiheroes, I highly recommend the series.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So far, so on schedule. Except for where I chose not to be, which I did a few times today.

 

Elements today was practice of the A-frame position and Bear movement. I am loving the Bear - it is a great stretch for my hamstrings without hurting too much or being boring like so many other stretches. And it helped with my shoulder pain too! We moved an entire wall of picture books and nearly the entire juv fiction section onto carts so that the walls can get painted tomorrow. Picture books are heavy, and even though the fiction is not heavy, it is a repetitive lifting and turning motion that often results in achy shoulders/mid-back for me, especially on the right. I'm pretty sure this is exacerbated by carrying a heavy bookbag on my right shoulder throughout my five years of high school; any physical exertion, even walking, will now often give me pain in the mid-back on the right. Must move wrong or something. Bad habits die hard.

 

Walk, check. Tab, check, twice. Duo, check. No prayer, but a little Quran, so check I guess. VO practice, check - though I skipped the scheduled time because we did a ton of practice in the meetup today. Fiddle playing, half check. I read the next part of the book, had a look at the fingering and ran through it in my head. Unfortunately, the Bear may have helped my shoulder, but it gave me a slight headache (or rather triggered it, since I'm pretty sure the real cause is not enough calories) and I didn't want the noise of the playing. I swapped my NF block with my work block, which is why I'm posting before it's done, because I want to eat while I read my script. It'll happen though - I need to finish it tonight. (Edit: finished!) There won't be any books done until that reading is done. No reading that was my personal choice reading.

 

Inbox task is to list some clothing items that do not fit me and are not returnable on eBay. That is not a one-session task. I talked to my son about listings (he knows way more about it than me) and convinced him to use his background to take pictures for me. I downloaded stock photos from the interwebs to show buyers how they look on, since they don't fit me, which also meant finding the style names. So now they are all ready to list and hopefully make someone else very happy.

 

 

[juliebarkley]

I fell way behind on my schedule, so some things didn't get done. Ah well.

 

I tried out one of the little mini-programs, Resilience, that I bought along with the Elements package for active recovery. Today was wrist strength and flexibility stuff and man, it was rough. They want you to do a plank on the backs of your hands, but I am not yet at the point where I can have the backs of my hands down with arms straight without scooching them towards my knees a bit. I nerfed a lot of the exercises. I didn't realize I was quite so bad here. On the upside though, there's a lot of room to grow.

 

Wore a winter coat for my walk, but it was otherwise all right. Tab closed, Duo, all check. Quran, VO practice and fiddle practice were eaten by my inbox item today - ironing. I have three items I would like to sell that required ironing, and let us just say that the last time I ironed, I think my son was still at the crawling stage. It took more time than I care to admit to find the ironing board, find the iron, and actually do the ironing. But it's done! (If you happen to like vintage flower-print maxi dresses and also happen to wear about a size 4-6, let me know! I just want them to go to a good home because I actually really love them.) Now I just have to get my recording done and sent to my client, and I'm done for the day.

[juliebarkley]

Today was a free day off work, so I got bonus time off! Unfortunately, I spent a decent chunk of that bonus time asleep. Waking up for work tomorrow might be tricky.

 

Elements today was a little intro to the Monkey, then more Bear. My wrists don't like the Monkey. This session gave me a flashback to Squatmas, as there were six minutes devoted to squats and I surely did at least fifty.

 

Walk, music, VO, Duo, tab, prayer, all check. Caught up on the mini by getting rid of 12 things - all but two pairs of earrings to the trash - and found myself a box to put donateables into. For my inbox task I didn't feel like continuing to work on the eBay listings, so I rolled a new one and got rid of an investment document that just needed a brief bit of research (it's nice when they're easy!). Did a little work on sorting out audio samples, and now I'm going to list a few books on Amazon.

 

Oh, and I got my recording done for my client yesterday, and she got back to me today. She gave me such lovely feedback and said that I made her cry when I read her letter to her father. She makes it easy though - her writing is so direct and personal that it's very easy to get into the emotion of the moment. Still, it is always nice to hear someone else say that you're good at your side hustle.

[juliebarkley]

Resilience was squat variations. So many squat variations.

 

Walk, Duo, tab, check. No WIS yet, and I may be about to blow off music and VO because I really want popcorn. I will do work afterwards though. Yesterday's session kind of made its point - if I want to get the piles done, I have to put in the time. They are big piles, and this should have been a no-brainer thing, but, you know, brain wants me to believe that waving my hands and saying I'm setting time aside for it means it will get finished (rather than just worked on). I really do want to get these piles finished this challenge if I can. But now I'm really not sure I'll be able to even if I pour every second of free time into it.

[WhiteGhost]

On 3/31/2021 at 2:00 PM, juliebarkley said:

my thievery has awakened far more dangerous-looking enemies that we will all fight next time

I was pleased to see you putting your thievery skills to work.   For a thief she hasn't had much chance yet to put those into actions in the year or more that we have been playing this campaign.    

[juliebarkley]

14 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

I was pleased to see you putting your thievery skills to work.   For a thief she hasn't had much chance yet to put those into actions in the year or more that we have been playing this campaign.    

Yes, the do-goodering and monster-clearing from the last campaign were just the price that Alethra was paying to find the Lost Mine, which was the whole reason she came to this part of the world. Then that proved disappointing, though she made a good connection out of it. Now she has the opportunity to find interesting artifacts and solve mysteries. There's even been some opportunites for deception and manipulation along the way. She's much more in her element. Now I just have to keep her alive.

[juliebarkley]

All right, where are we today?

 

Active recovery was the first lesson (session? unit?) of Mobility. Resilience is not quite what I thought it was - it's going hard on one specific body part, which is great, but is also not Active Recovery. Mobility should be way more flexy. Still, there were a few where there wasn't much of a stretch. (If you lift your arms straight up in the air, elbows locked out, do you really feel a stretch? Where?)

 

Today's walk was a thing of beauty. The sun was bright and warm - I even took my jacket off for a little bit. Very cheering. Much nice.

 

Duo, VO, music, work, all check. Tab involved opening 13 more tabs, so good thing I was a bit ahead on this. Regular Zoom/D&D called off for holidays, so I got some reading in. More Amazon listing still to happen. Something for WIS also still needs to happen. All still doable. I just got distracted by emergency math is all.

 

I also realized I accidentally missed my Inbox times both today and yesterday, so mayhaps they should be moved.

[WhiteGhost]

1 hour ago, juliebarkley said:

If you lift your arms straight up in the air, elbows locked out, do you really feel a stretch? Where?

I do this stretch a lot because it is one that really helps me a lot.  The key is to make sure you don't arch your back as you lift (I usually keep my lower back pressed against a wall).  The main stretch is for my lats and rotator cuffs

[Scaly Freak]

8 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

(If you lift your arms straight up in the air, elbows locked out, do you really feel a stretch? Where?)

 

Not if all I do is lift, no. However, if I lift my arms straight up, and then reach/push upwards with them as far as they can go, it tends to stretch in my upper back and the shoulder area. If I arch my back, that's all it does. If I keep my back straight, it also stretches along the sides of my torso and a little bit on the sides of my lower back.

[juliebarkley]

11 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

I do this stretch a lot because it is one that really helps me a lot.  The key is to make sure you don't arch your back as you lift (I usually keep my lower back pressed against a wall).  The main stretch is for my lats and rotator cuffs

3 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

Not if all I do is lift, no. However, if I lift my arms straight up, and then reach/push upwards with them as far as they can go, it tends to stretch in my upper back and the shoulder area. If I arch my back, that's all it does. If I keep my back straight, it also stretches along the sides of my torso and a little bit on the sides of my lower back.

I'll play around with it. I just tried it with my back pressed against the wall, and felt a slight stretch in my upper arms, but only very slight. Trying to reach higher actually made it go away. It could be that I'm doing this stretch wrong, or it may just not be an area where I need a lot of stretching right now.

 

My son tried it and can't get his arms up all the way while keeping them straight, so my initial disbelief was clearly unwarranted.

 

[Scaly Freak]

18 minutes ago, juliebarkley said:

I'll play around with it. I just tried it with my back pressed against the wall, and felt a slight stretch in my upper arms, but only very slight. Trying to reach higher actually made it go away. It could be that I'm doing this stretch wrong, or it may just not be an area where I need a lot of stretching right now.

 

I've been told that my shoulders are <insert complicated latin-derived word for "a lot more flexible than average">, and I often have to get creative with shoulder mobility exercises to get anything out of them. The fact that the stretch I described in your quote stretches my torso more than my shoulders, even when the shoulders get involved, is probably a symptom of that.  

 

Why are you stretching your shoulder muscles? Chances are good there are alternative exercises that can help you achieve your goal, that are more effective if you already have a lot of flexibility/mobility in those joints.

[juliebarkley]

31 minutes ago, Scaly Freak said:

Why are you stretching your shoulder muscles? Chances are good there are alternative exercises that can help you achieve your goal, that are more effective if you already have a lot of flexibility/mobility in those joints.

Just following the program. It was one of the exercises on the list for the first session of that program. I don't have a better reason than that. I'm trying different things to see what happens, and some stretches do a lot while others don't. I did find a different shoulder stretch that gave relief when I had shoulder/back pain from work a couple of weeks ago, for instance, but does nothing at other times. The arm lifting stretch functions as a warmup if not a stretch, so it's not a total waste.

[juliebarkley]

Elements today was quite hard - floating tabletop to squat, oof.

 

Walk, Duo, music, tab, check. Inbox was just a bit of web research which didn't end up in a new tab, yay! VO was handwaved with reading a history chapter aloud. WIS is still up in the air; the annoying alarms are working less well than I had hoped because I have to leave it plugged in a lot because the battery is not in the best of shape. Work stuff will happen after this post; I should really just officially switch them.

 

I am currently listening in on a bunch of old American campaign ads, because my son has weird hobbies. If you want a laugh in a "what did I just watch" kind of way, check out Adlai Stevenson'sTV ads, especially the one with the two hearts. Or just really all of them. Lyndon Johnson's ads against Goldwater are fantastic; very effective.

[WhiteGhost]

10 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

I'll play around with it. I just tried it with my back pressed against the wall, and felt a slight stretch in my upper arms, but only very slight. Trying to reach higher actually made it go away. It could be that I'm doing this stretch wrong, or it may just not be an area where I need a lot of stretching right now.

It could be that you just have very good overhead mobility (which is what this stretch is designed to help improve).  One other thing I do (as recommended by Jen Crane aka CirquePhysio) is to use a heavy resistance miniband around your wrists as you do it, maintaining pressure on the band throughout the whole range of motion.  If even that doesn't give you a good stretch, you probably either don't need the exercise or have found a compensation somewhere without realizing it.

 

Oh, one other thing to try is in addition to keeping your spine pressed into the wall, also try keeping your shoulder blades flat against the wall as well.