[Waanie]

2022 was a great year for fitness: I found a gym that I enjoy going to, started lifting, got my chin-ups back, participated in my first powerlift meet and lifted very respectable numbers there (75kg squat/45kg bench/110kg deadlift). I even managed to lose all the weight again before the end of the year, ending a pound lighter than I started.

 

Just before Christmas I got covid, so I'm still taking it slow on the exercise front. This week I want to start using my bike for transport again, and then probably next week going to the gym. It feels like that I generally got the exercise-part of my life down by the end of last year, which is great!

 

This year, I want to continue with good exercise habits and decent eating-habits. On top of that, I want to get my chores-habits down. Because to be honest, our house is a mess. We have so much stuff, and we're often too tired to keep our house in good order. I also want to play the clarinet more, since I know that practicing really helps improving my play. For January, this means:

 

Goal 1: chores

• Weekly: do something that gets rid of stuff, e.g. clean out a drawer or cupboard or box in the attic
• Daily: tidy living room and kitchen (note: does not have to be clean yet)

 

Goal 2: clarinet

• Weekly (on Wednesday): choose a scale and play it every practice session that week
• Play at least 5 times a week, including lessons and orchestra rehearsals.

 

Goal 3: exercise

• Slowly build up exercise s.t. by the end of the month, I bike commute to work again and I go to the gym at least twice a week again.

 

Also, y'all, I got a new computer game that is very addictive and I will try not playing too much. It's called "Against the storm" and it's a rogue-like city-builder. It's ideal if I just want to do something relaxing, but it has eaten my last few days .

[KB Girl]

Ohh, that sounds like my kinda game! 

 

Happy new year  glad to see you doing a challenge after all. Love the getting rid of stuff goal. It's one of those perpetual goals, but always worth doing. 

[Jupiter]

Following!  

[Waanie]

11 hours ago, KB Girl said:

Ohh, that sounds like my kinda game! 

Careful, it's really addicting!

 

11 hours ago, KB Girl said:

Happy new year  glad to see you doing a challenge after all. Love the getting rid of stuff goal. It's one of those perpetual goals, but always worth doing. 

Yes, I totally hate the getting rid of stuff goal because it seems to be neverending . Still, after some years I really have to do it, since the stuff "komt op me af", i.e. is too much to handle. And to be honest, do we really need the things that we haven't used for the past 6 years and therefore are still in boxes?

4 hours ago, Jupiter said:

Following!  

Nice to see you here!

[Waanie]

Yesterday was quite productive! I restarted my BuJo habit again and made spreads for January in general and this week in particular, I got rid of the glass bottles and did both yoga and played the clarinet . I find that I like how I feel after doing a bit of yoga, but it's hard to get started. After orchestra rehearsal in the evening, I tidied the living room sufficiently for this challenge. It's not "my parents in law are coming"-tidy, but all the dishes were in the dishwasher, the tables and counters were mostly empty and the cleaning rags were in the laundry. Success!

[Alanna]

Happy New Year! Sorry to hear you got COVID over the holidays - hope the return to your normal training goes well this challenge. 

[Waanie]

53 minutes ago, Alanna said:

Happy New Year! Sorry to hear you got COVID over the holidays - hope the return to your normal training goes well this challenge. 

Thanks! I will go back to training tomorrow evening, since I'm slowly going crazy without training .

 

This morning I went to the library, and took a cookbook about beans, a hiking trails book, a very cheesy fantasybook and "Intuitive eating". I'm trying something from all categories . Anyway, I started reading "Intuitive eating" because there was a hype around it a few years back, and the tone left me gagging . So yeah, not reading that past the introduction. I haven't started the other books yet, we will see. I noticed that biking was not problematic anymore, even though I'm a bit slower than I was.

 

This afternoon I decluttered two drawers, so I did my decluttering for the week! It was mostly paperwork that is outdated and random stuff, since it was my "put it here for later"-drawer. I generally don't mind it being a little bit cluttered, since that's what it's there for, but it was getting ridiculous. It hurt a little bit, but I also tossed all my old notebooks/calendars/bullet journal, cause you know, I'll never use them again anyway. I also tossed all crappy earphones, since realistically I will not go running in the rain any time soon, and that's all I used them for.

[KB Girl]

12 hours ago, Waanie said:

And to be honest, do we really need the things that we haven't used for the past 6 years and therefore are still in boxes?

I couldn't possibly do this, but if you can then maybe just toss all the boxes without looking inside.

 

5 hours ago, Waanie said:

I also tossed all my old notebooks/calendars/bullet journal

Oh! wauw. You are stronger than me! x) 

[Waanie]

7 minutes ago, KB Girl said:

I couldn't possibly do this, but if you can then maybe just toss all the boxes without looking inside.

This is something I cannot do, but I have heard that advice before . Most things can be useful... one day. I wil also allow myself one nostalgia box in total.

 

9 minutes ago, KB Girl said:

Oh! wauw. You are stronger than me! x) 

Some of them are, like, 5 years old? And it's mostly todo lists, which somehow don't change so much over the years .

[KB Girl]

2 hours ago, Waanie said:

Some of them are, like, 5 years old? And it's mostly todo lists, which somehow don't change so much over the years .

I'm keeping mine forever and ever and ever  Though to be fair I include a lot of good memories type of stuff. 

[Chris-Tien Jinn]

22 hours ago, Waanie said:

so I did my decluttering for the week!

 

Awesome!!  I'm also slowly decluttering in preparation for moving this summer.  So many books and papers that will never be looked at again.

[Waanie]

1 hour ago, Chris-Tien Jinn said:

 

Awesome!!  I'm also slowly decluttering in preparation for moving this summer.  So many books and papers that will never be looked at again.

Thanks! I haven't even started on my "PhD-box"... I have no idea how many papers I kept . It's funny, isn't it, what we keep and never look at again. Where will you move to this summer? I must have missed your announcement .

[Waanie]

Today is the last day of my winter-vacation, and I'm being extremely productive . I cleaned and tidied a lot of things and I feel really accomplished. It helped a lot to listen to an audiobook about productivity. Somehow I feel more proud of myself when listening to a productivity audiobook when cleaning or to a fitness podcast when hiking. It usually makes me more motivated to do those things, even though there's not really anything new in those books or podcasts. I guess it's the tone? Anyway, I'm glad that I got all those things done.

[KB Girl]

Sounds like a great last vacation day  

Any podcast tips? 

[Mad Hatter]

On 1/2/2023 at 3:48 PM, Waanie said:

Also, y'all, I got a new computer game that is very addictive and I will try not playing too much. It's called "Against the storm" and it's a rogue-like city-builder. It's ideal if I just want to do something relaxing, but it has eaten my last few days .

What haha I just started playing it too!  Saw it on an StS stream and it looked so cozy I even installed bootcamp for it. Worth it! Reminds me of Settlers II, I think, I was very, very small back then.  

 

On 1/4/2023 at 4:28 AM, Waanie said:

I wil also allow myself one nostalgia box in total.

This is what I did too, and I feel very good about that compromise. Unless you count books. 30+% of my leftover belongings are books. 

[Waanie]

On 1/5/2023 at 10:21 PM, KB Girl said:

Any podcast tips? 

Hmm, I forgot which are okay and which I actually like . The Fysiocast (in Dutch) are generally nice, and I think you'll enjoy them too. I seem to have listened to a lot of episodes of the "Jeff Nippard podcast" and "Jordan Syatt Mini-Podcast", so I probably liked them as well. If you want more feminism-centered podcasts, then I like "Visible women" and "Geen kleine man" (in Dutch).

 

23 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

What haha I just started playing it too!  Saw it on an StS stream and it looked so cozy I even installed bootcamp for it. Worth it! Reminds me of Settlers II, I think, I was very, very small back then.  

Jup, I also learned about it from an StS stream. I've never heard of Settlers II, I might check it out after this .

 

23 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

This is what I did too, and I feel very good about that compromise. Unless you count books. 30+% of my leftover belongings are books. 

Books never count .

[Waanie]

This week I've been exercising on Wednesday and today. It was not great and I had to take it somewhat slow, but it was also not too bad . Today was handstand-day with actual handstands, which are not too taxing for me. Biking to work was a bit too optimistic this Thursday, the last 10-15 minutes were exhausting. I'm sure it will come back pretty quickly again though.

 

I have not played enough clarinet yet, so I'll have to play tomorrow as well. The scale of the week is Bb since the piece for my lesson is in that key as well. This afternoon there will be an extra rehearsal for orchestra because of our shows next week, I hope it will go better than last Monday .

 

On the cleaning front, I have failed to tidy the living-room and kitchen yesterday; I was just too tired. Still, in general our living room is now much tidier than it used to be, which is an amazing feeling . I hope we'll be able to maintain that in the next few weeks.

 

Oh, and I can still do a single chin-up even after training 💪.

[Mad Hatter]

3 hours ago, Waanie said:

Jup, I also learned about it from an StS stream. I've never heard of Settlers II, I might check it out after this .

Haha I doubt you can even play it on anything without an emulator it’s so old 😂

[KB Girl]

4 hours ago, Waanie said:

Still, in general our living room is now much tidier than it used to be, which is an amazing feeling . I hope we'll be able to maintain that in the next few weeks.

That sounds very good! I hope that for you too

[Waanie]

4 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Haha I doubt you can even play it on anything without an emulator it’s so old 😂

Oof. Maybe not then? I'm in a "reading books"-phase now anyway, the intensive gaming phase seems to be a bit over already .

 

3 hours ago, KB Girl said:

That sounds very good! I hope that for you too

Thanks!

[NightWatcher13]

On 1/3/2023 at 2:43 AM, Waanie said:

Yesterday was quite productive! I restarted my BuJo habit again and made spreads for January in general and this week in particular, I got rid of the glass bottles and did both yoga and played the clarinet . I find that I like how I feel after doing a bit of yoga, but it's hard to get started. After orchestra rehearsal in the evening, I tidied the living room sufficiently for this challenge. It's not "my parents in law are coming"-tidy, but all the dishes were in the dishwasher, the tables and counters were mostly empty and the cleaning rags were in the laundry. Success!

Sounds like you were INCREDIBLY productive there!

On 1/7/2023 at 5:36 AM, Waanie said:

This week I've been exercising on Wednesday and today. It was not great and I had to take it somewhat slow, but it was also not too bad . Today was handstand-day with actual handstands, which are not too taxing for me. Biking to work was a bit too optimistic this Thursday, the last 10-15 minutes were exhausting. I'm sure it will come back pretty quickly again though.

 

I have not played enough clarinet yet, so I'll have to play tomorrow as well. The scale of the week is Bb since the piece for my lesson is in that key as well. This afternoon there will be an extra rehearsal for orchestra because of our shows next week, I hope it will go better than last Monday .

 

On the cleaning front, I have failed to tidy the living-room and kitchen yesterday; I was just too tired. Still, in general our living room is now much tidier than it used to be, which is an amazing feeling . I hope we'll be able to maintain that in the next few weeks.

 

Oh, and I can still do a single chin-up even after training 💪.

Sounds like you did a lot, and you're still making progress while also needing to heal still. 

[Waanie]

17 hours ago, NightWatcher13 said:

Sounds like you were INCREDIBLY productive there!

Sounds like you did a lot, and you're still making progress while also needing to heal still. 

Thanks! I feel that the healing is going incredibly well . My fitness is not yet at the level where it was, but that just takes some time . Mentally it's a rollercoaster, but that might also be because it's shark week and my cat is still not better...

[Jupiter]

Hey, Waanie, how are you doing? 

[Waanie]

On 1/26/2023 at 5:44 AM, Jupiter said:

Hey, Waanie, how are you doing? 

Hi, thanks for asking!

 

The past few weeks my mood and energy levels have been up and down and down again, so it was a mixed bag . At some point I was exercising well again, and then last week there were some schedule changes and I was basically gone. Same with cleaning the house and playing the clarinet: some weeks were good, some weeks were bad.

 

Especially in the past week, I've been so TIRED. I don't know if it's leftover covid, residual cat-stress (she still has to get medicines 3 times per day), general dark/gloomy weather or anything else. Any change in plans can set me off, even if they're positive. For example last week Wednesday I had planned to get a new IUD, but my doctor told me that it can be changed after 8 years instead of 6. I was totally prepared, painkillers, pads and all, and then it turned out to be not necessary. Instead I did too much other stuff that day and was exhausted for the rest of the week.

 

My weight is slowly creeping up again, which is not surprising considering I'm eating a lot of comfort food. It's still below the weight of this fall, and I now trust that if I get my mental space under control again, my weight will go down again as well.

 

In positive news, I'm really enjoying the Tuesday night body control group again (well, except for yesterday because I was exhausted ). It's mostly women at the 7PM group, and the average level is much friendlier than that of e.g. the Thursday evening or Saturday morning group. I know that everything can be scaled back, but it's annoying to have to ask for a scaled back version of the scaled back version. The Wednesday evening group is also still nice, especially now that we are with a small group of women of the same strength and the same height.

 

Today I'm going to try to pick up "ideal" life again, with cleaning and groceries in the morning, clarinet lesson and hiking in the afternoon and strength training in the evening. We'll see how it turns out!