Shaeon Restores Balance to the Force

[shaeon]

I've been absent for a while, and the things that happened while I was absent have led me to return with a lot of changes regarding how I approach fitness, so it's time to start a new Battle Log. 
 

While I was gone, I spent 6 months working with a holistic nutritionist. It was challenging and ultimately rewarding work. I learned a lot about the power of mindfulness and meditation. I learned that when I am under stress, I tend to get out of balance very quickly. Also, I learned that when I'm in a time of great creativity where I'm inspired to put forth a lot of energy on my art, I get out of balance. 

Those 6 months were great, having the personal support of a nutritionist daily. But then a great amount of stress was introduced to my life, and guess what? I got out of balance. Way out of balance. I felt so lost that I went to get a tarot card reading. And the reader told me I was out of balance (well, that wasn't surprising, was it?). He also advised me to let go of some of the burdens I am carrying and be a better judge of how much I can carry at once. He said my values and goals were in the right place, but the execution was off. 

It made me realize that that's pretty much the story of my life; tons of good intentions, but a poor plan (if any plan at all) on the execution. It's no wonder that I'm so easily pushed out of balance. 

 

So, right now I'm in the early stages of crafting a plan to get back into balance. I'd like to have the first phase planned out in time for the next six week challenge. I'm also going to join the Druids during that challenge, because it's pretty clear that my goals are much more Druid-oriented this time around. 

 

Here are the things I need that I will build my goals around: 

 

• Sleep. Sleep is the first thing I sacrifice to overwork, or to creativity, or to stress. It makes each of those things worse, not better. I need to get enough sleep everyday, and the rest of my schedule must get out of the way of my sleep instead of the other way around. 
• Mindfulness and meditation. Once sleep is restored, I need to set aside space for daily reflection. Currently I write Morning Pages in a journal every day, but I need to make that time sacred and truly do them first thing in the morning, which is the intention. I need time for meditation as well, perhaps after work each day, or before bed in order to wind down. 
• Eating right. I need to give up processed food as entirely as is possible. I need to eat out only socially, during my weekly Artist's Dates if that's part of the date, and when travelling (I am currently in the habit of bringing food with me when I travel, but local cuisine is part of the joy of traveling, and being at Balance definitely means taking in joy. But of course, my dining out choices can also be good choices). 
  I also need to be eating at least 5 fruits and veggie servings a day, with an emphasis on veg. I need to eat a variety of veg, rather than just relying on the same favorites over and over. I need to eat nuts daily. I need real whole grains (brown rice, millet, and oats; not processed foods labeled "whole grain"). Honey instead of sugar. I need easy meal prep as well, because the thing that makes me give up healthy eating habits is usually time. 
• I need to exercise daily, at least five days a week. I need to get outdoors for exercise when I can. I need to start exploring good places in my area for hikes and long walks. I need to work on ways to exercise even during difficult times. I tend to sacrifice exercise right after I sacrifice sleep when I'm stressed and time is at a minimum. 
• I need to work on my art regularly. I'm an amateur leather worker, and so I need training time to build my skill. I need to work on orders I currently have, and on building up stock for an online shop. I need to make things I've never made before in order to get the experience. I also need scheduled play time where I just experiment with dye and tools, with the freedom to fail, to see what may come out of it. 
  I also need to find a way to balance exercise and art. Usually I feel like one of these crowds the other out, as if art and exercise are at war with each other. I need a peace agreement between art and exercise. They need to live in harmony. 
• I need to examine the burdens I place on myself that throw me out of balance. Why do I do that? What can I do to stop? How do I do a better job of saying no, or asking for help, or simply acknowledging that I'm making things harder than they need to be?

 

It's a lot, right? But I've declared myself a Jedi Apprentice, and I'm starting the work here and now (apologies for the color coding if it's unpleasant for you to look at; I'm doing it to make the categories easier for me to separate when I reference back to this post).

First off, sleep. I need to get to bed at 11 on work nights. On weekends, I need to get 7 - 8 hours of sleep, even if I stayed up late. This is my most concrete goal right now. 

 

Secondly, I need to audit my use of time, because clearly time is my biggest issue. It is lack of time that makes me do a poor job of balancing my life. If I were using my time wisely, for example, I wouldn't feel like there's no way I can both have time for art and for exercise. (Fun fact: if I could have a super power, it would be the power of multiplicity. I would be able to multiply into multiple selves. I would also be able to come back to a single body at will, and then absorb the knowledge of what the multiple selves did that day into a single consciousness. This would enable me to get a lot more done without time being a limit. As you can see, I've put a lot of thought into this. This is how obsessed I am with wishing I had more time). 

 

After that, I will work on a schedule for mindfulness, exercise, and art. I'm also going to be spending a lot of time looking at time saving ways to get good food easily. I've started making green smoothies, and they are great! It's a really quick way to get a couple of servings of fruit and veg all at once. I'm also going to look into gathering more slow cooker recipes and things I can cook ahead that leave-over well or perhaps can be used for multiple leftover meals. 

Sorry for the lengthy essay; this first post is mostly to set myself a starting point to reference back to. The quest for Balance begins here! 

 

[SevenofSeven]

Welcome back! Great job working all this out!

Wishing you all the success.

Like your idea of a super power too.

[shaeon]

Seven! Big hugs!!!

 

Yeah, basically I saw Multiple Man in X-Men: The Last Stand and thought "that. That is the power I want." Not because I want to be a bad mutant who multiplies in order to win fights, but just to DO much more stuff. 
 

[shaeon]

Morning update time!

 

Last night I watched The Walking Dead midseason finale, then went out shopping at Trader Joe's to restock on fruit and nuts. 

Shopping where I live is an issue where I need to pick and choose when to do it. The side of town I live on is known for having the worst traffic in town - there's a busy shopping center, and also there's a main highway (which I live on), with no real alternate routes to take. However, on weeknights I can easily avoid the traffic by going home and having dinner, then going out later. But the other issue is that my cat, Mike, recently had surgery on his hip. When I'm not home to supervise, he needs to be put up in a kennel so that he doesn't do any major jumping and injure himself. So going out means putting Mike up. Because he spends the day when I'm at work in a kennel, I feel sorry for him if he gets less time out at night than usual. 

So one of the things I've started doing to relieve myself of the burdens I put on myself that make me get less sleep is putting Mike in his kennel one hour before my bed time - that way he gets plenty of time out but if he starts to get playful right before bed (which often happens), I don't feel guilty about putting him up just as he's in the mood to get a little exercise. Because he had less time out due to my shopping trip, I left him out until bedtime but played with him a bit, and it wore him out enough that he took a nap until bedtime. 

I also read a chapter of The Soul of an Octopus in the last hour before bed, which really helped me to wind down and feel ready for bed at 11. Went to bed on time.

 

This morning I woke up an hour late. Basically when I thought I was snoozing my alarm, I actually shut it off. Whoops! Fortunately my other cat, Violet, wakes me up eventually if I stay in bed too long after the alarm goes off.

 

 

(not actually Violet)

 

I started a new food journal this morning. I had been shirking the duty of writing down what I eat daily, and I had also bought a new journal and decided to start recording my food in a different style. The method I used previously was to draw out a grid in a plain school notebook, recording when I ate, what I ate, my hunger level, and any comments. I want to start simply writing what I had to eat each day in paragraph form, noting anything that is relevant instead of fitting things into a grid. I also found a cool Kylo Ren journal a while back (I'm not a Sith, but the notebook has gray pages with red lines, which is pretty cool looking and is why I bought it) and decided it would be my new food journal when the old notebook ran out of pages, but I haven't been using the old notebook. So basically I decided to just start using the new journal, because one of the things that stops me from recording my food is that I want to stop using the old journal. 

 

I also added "bed at 11:00" and "cook dinner tonight" to my bullet journal for the day. This is a really good motivator, because I HATE not being able to check off a task in the bullet journal as completed. Those little X's give me a sense of accomplishment.

 

So that's pretty much it! In spite of waking up late, I did make it to work on time, and I'm feeling pretty good today! Time to start the day! 

 

[shaeon]

I didn't end up cooking dinner tonight. I was late getting home due to grocery shopping, and as a result, cooking would have had me going to bed too late. Soooo I got takeout. BOOO. 

 

 

But I'm making the best of it. I'm cooking right now so that I'll have food ready to heat up after work tomorrow. Tomorrow, dinner will be home cooked! 

 

But here's what went well: 

 

• I had a really productive day at work. Like, REALLY productive. I'm burnt out at work which is making it hard to be productive, and I'm looking for a new job (in fact, about to put out a couple of applications after this update). But today, I got a LOT done. 
• I felt alert all day (which helped with the productive). Getting more sleep is helping!
• I used my food journal all day and recorded everything I ate. The paragraph style of recording what I eat is also working better for me. My thoughts just flow better that way. That's important, because the best I've done on balancing my work, exercise, art, and diet has been when I'm practicing good mindfulness by writing down what I do and thinking about it. 

So in the words of my personal hero, Kelly Sue DeConnick, "Yoda was a dick. There is a try. Having the courage to try and fail is maybe the most important skill there is." 

 

 

(Deal with it, Yoda). 

 

[shaeon]

Last night, I did not go to bed at 11. I did get 7 hours of sleep, though. I work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays so that allows me to sleep in on those days if I need to. My sleep wasn't good, though. I use the Sleep Cycle app, and this morning's results showed all the signs of disturbed sleep. But also, I really didn't need the app to know that. I woke up a lot, and I just didn't sleep restfully. Not sure why. Just one of those nights. I think I need to try reading before bed whenever possible, because that does seem to help as a way to wind down before bed. I have to admit that I feel basically fine this morning, though. It's not the being awake that's a problem, it's the prying myself out of bed.

 

I also didn't apply for jobs like I planned to. I'll do it today. 

 

Which is a good place to talk about my obsession with perfection. I have a really hard time with very simple things like saying "I said I would apply for jobs last night, but I didn't" and feeling ok with it. In fact, typically I have two speeds: accomplishing what I set out to accomplish and kind of being smug about it, or not accomplishing it and completely giving up. Although there's another speed, which is not really accomplishing something at all but making up brilliant excuses about it and lying to myself about how really, I am accomplishing things because I can't deal with "I'm doing my best" all that well. I'm really hard on myself. It's even worse when the stakes are high, like keeping a job and getting the bills payed. I actually had a therapist tell me to "try failing at something" when we were talking about my stress levels at work. 

 

I nearly had a panic attack. 

 

 

So part of what I need to do to restore balance is accept imperfection. 

 

Which sounds awful. It was hard even just to type that. I think the basic problem with being a perfectionist is that it's hard to understand what the value in not being perfect is. I can logically agree with everything that can be said about stress levels and health, and with the basic idea that nobody is perfect. But when I fail at something, it affects my ability to get up and try again. And part of what's hard is just saying "OK, I failed" which also stops me from getting to the "I will try again tomorrow" part. Instead I pretend it's fine. Or I have a tantrum like Felicia Day up there, and just quit trying altogether. Or I go all "why can I not be amazing at everything???" like Hermione and get really upset about it. 

 

 

So I'm working on imperfection. I'm mainly going to deal with it now by just making myself write about it here when I fail. I have to say "I didn't accomplish this yesterday, but I'll do it today" or next week or whatever. I hope that by just facing it, it will help. 

 

Anyway, positive stuff. Streaks of productivity at work tend to make me concerned that productivity is some magic thing that I often do not have these days, and that two days of productivity are just me being visited by the Productivity Fairy. She was probably lost and floated over my desk on accident. However, today once I finally got myself out of bed, I was thinking about how much I want to get knocked out at work, because it's not that much really in order for me to get ahead again, and once I'm on top of my work I buy myself a lot of free time. So maybe this regimen of talking things out and balance-seeking is already having a positive affect on work? I hope so. I also like this morning ritual of updating my battle log right before I get started on my work for the day. It's a good grounding exercise. 

 

Alright. Time to start the day! 

 

[shaeon]

Today's morning post is more of a lunch time post. Which should give you an idea of how the day has been going. 

 

I actually need to keep it short, but basically yesterday went pretty good. I ate home-prepared food all day, with the exception of a snack I had. I made a really good stir fry for dinner. I did not get to bed as early as I wanted to, but I did get 7 hours of sleep. Still not great at making the last hour before bed sacred time to get ready for sleep, which seems to be the best way to get good sleep. I did sleep better than the night before last, though. 

 

I spent a little time working on my resume and my LinkedIn page (previously, I had done nothing more than just start a LinkedIn account. Yeah....). I didn't put out any applications, but I did reply to an email from a job recruiter who found my resume on the job site I use most often and wanted to put it out to one of his clients. That was nice. 

 

I've also decided I need a daily goal of getting at least a LITTLE leather work done every day. Doesn't have to be much. If all I do is a few minutes of prepping or cutting or even tracing out a pattern, whatever - it's still progress. So I did get a little practice in yesterday on a design I want to put on a few bracelets and place up for sale, and I also did some experimentation with a dye technique I haven't tried before. 

 

So yeah! Pretty decent day. 

 

Off to get more work done!

 

[SevenofSeven]

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! Seems like your getting through this one victory at a time!

Would love to try leather work, far too expensive here, then again, I suck at time management, so probably wouldn't get to it anyway.

Doing great. Shaeon.

[shaeon]

Leather work is expensive. Totally. I sell things occasionally, but I'm not even at the point where what I sell pays for what I buy just to learn to make new stuff. But I started leather working 2 years ago in order to make leather armor for a steampunk costume, and I fell in love with it. So far, I'm endlessly excited about learning new things with leather, and I've tried tons of creative pursuits but never had the same reaction to them that I've had to leather working. But yeah, still working towards the earnings goal of my art paying for itself. 

And good advice on one bite at a time! Yesterday I was planning to work on my resume and apply for new jobs, and I realized that I really need to just have the goal of working on my resume until I'm satisfied with it. With the spare time I have right now, it's not realistic to assume I'll finish that in one night and still have time to put out new applications afterwards. I'm working on not trying to do too much all the time. Slowly but surely, trying to learn not to expect so much of myself that I get overwhelmed. 

On that note - yesterday, I didn't feel very good at the end of the day at work. Stomach aches are somewhat common for me - I have an incisional hernia as the after effect of an abdominal surgery, and at times it leads to abdominal muscle pain and there's not much to do except lie down for a bit. So I went home and lay down for a bit, which of course set back my evening schedule a little. I was also distracted by a few conversations with friends, which normally would be a good distraction, but in this case one of those friends and I ended up in an argument (being frustrated at someone is so much more distracting than good social times!). Due to all the setbacks, I also did not get to bed on time. 6 hours sleep. I feel pretty alert today though, so that's good! And because I've been really productive at work all week, I'm having a pretty relaxed day today because I'm on top of everything. So yay!

Tonight's plans involve meeting up with my dad to get a Christmas tree, which I always enjoy doing. I'll also go to the store for a few essentials I need, and try to get a little leather working done. I'm basically having a nice, easy-going Friday.

 

Also been watching some Steven Universe on my lunch break today. Garnet is so awesome. 

 

[shaeon]

And back to Monday. 

 

The weekend was a bit up and down. Friday night, my dad and step mom helped me pick a Christmas tree and we watched my dad set it up while helpfully saying things like "more this way. No. The other way." Then we ordered pizza (because I don't know, guys. I need to figure out what you eat when you're eating with your parents that you can also get fast which everyone enjoys, when your parents still eat bread and cheese and you avoid bread and only eat cheese sparingly. In hind sight, barbecue. Could have gone to the barbecue place across the street). Anyway. The pizza made me feel bad, because I was already cramping.

 

And then I felt bad for half of Saturday, because cramps. Which led to me getting take out on Saturday for my meals, because I just wanted to lay around.

 

Hooray for being female. 

 

 

Anyway. Sunday was way better. A friend came over. We got lunch together, but it was good lunch, a much better dining out choice than I'd been making that weekend. And we watched a couple of Jessica Jones episodes, which was awesome. I spent some time wondering where I could find that infinity scarf. 

 

 

And then I went to bed really late, for no good reason. In fact, according to my Sleep Cycle app, I got 4:51 hours of sleep. Good grief. I'll be changing that tonight. 

 

Other than that particular misstep, I have done fairly good at getting more sleep. So this week I'm going to work on mindfulness. I'm going to start adding "meditate after work" to my bullet journal and hopefully, that will help me to actually start doing it. I'm also going to start auditing how I use my time when I'm at home after work to see where I can make better use of that time. 

 

Oh! And! One of my facebook friends posted a link about a news blog for women that is interested in paying for articles about a number of things that are right up my alley, such as pop culture critiques and LGBT issues. And a friend of a friend contacted me about commissioning some leather bracelets, which is nice. Honestly, the only down side to any of these opportunities is finding the time to do it all, so this is definitely the week to audit my use of time. 

 

Alright, time to get going! Happy Monday everybody!

 

[shaeon]

I just had a thought. 

 

One of the things that had been working for me with my nutritionist was that I checked in with her every two weeks. I could email or text her throughout the time between appointments for tips or advice, but every other Monday, I did a progress report. I discussed what those two weeks had been like, including how I'd slept, how I was managing stress, and any highs or lows in my weight loss (I weighed in daily and used an app to track overall progress in order to compensate for daily weight fluctuation). 

 

I was just thinking how that check in every other week worked really well for me, but unfortunately the only way to get that back would be to pay for another 6 month contract. But maybe what I really need to do is just look at my progress in two week blocks, and report it as such. Otherwise, I think reporting on goals daily is a bit much for me. I can stop by and talk about things, and of course post to other places in the forum for things like recipes, stress, exercise, etc. But I think I'm going to back off on feeling like I need a big update every day, and just post the big update every other week. Then of course, once I join the next 6 week challenge I can do updates there as well on the goals that I set for that. 

 

[SevenofSeven]

My original post disappeared!

However I hope your challenge goes well and I look forward to your catch up posts!

[shaeon]

Thanks Seven! I need to go dive in to the forums and find out when the next challenge starts. It can't be too far off now. 

 

Things are going good now that I'm more concerned with success over time instead of daily goals. Got a LOT of leather work done. Making some beautiful stuff. I'm going to have to post pictures at some point soon and link to my Etsy shop (uh, once there is actual stock in it). I've got three custom orders right now, which is nice. They are all Christmas gifts, so gotta hurry! 

 

Things going well with you? Are you doing challenges at all? 

[SevenofSeven]

All good here, having a break from work until the next series of swimming starts on the 19th of Dec. Actually managed to clean the family bus out! Woohoo   AAANND get some house work done! Woohoox2

 

Not currently planning any Challenges, they seem to get me stuck and worried about completion and obsessing about stuff, so have decided for now just to keep my Daily Battle Log and cruise along checking in on friends and stalking people!

 

Pictures of your leather work would be brilliant.

 

Success over time vs daily goals, excellent idea! I will be keeping an eye out for your Challenge. Have you decided which Guild?

[shaeon]

Woohoo indeed! My house is a wreck right now. I could use some of that housework energy.

 

Yeah, that's my concern with challenges too. It's easy for me to bite off more than I can chew, and it's also easy for me to get discouraged over failing to complete goals. I'm strongly considering what my goals will be and the measure of success, to ensure that it doesn't get me stuck like you said. But at the same time, challenges offer a place for community, and that is helpful. 

 

I also have a big issue admitting that something isn't working. It's a lot easier to just quit and not post updates when I'm not losing weight and not eating right. When I was seeing my nutritionist, partly I was in the situation where I had to speak to her every other week during our set appointment. I couldn't skip that without breaking our contract. And partly, I figured if I was paying for this personalized service, I needed to learn to admit when I was having problems, because the whole point is to have someone to discuss the setbacks with and work through them. That method ultimately worked better for me than anything else ever has - along with having general guidelines rather than a strict diet, and using mindfulness (writing down what I eat and how it made me feel after just to be aware of it) rather than tracking (recording data of everything I eat in order to determine success or failure based on math). 

 

It helps that she was supportive in a way that works for me. She's not a cheerleader, which is perfect because if I'm feeling overwhelmed, "you can do it!" doesn't make me feel better, it makes me feel like the person cheering me on isn't hearing me say I'm overwhelmed. (Sadness was my favorite feeling in the movie Inside Out. Not very surprising, I'm sure). 

 

 

So yeah. I need the community, definitely. And I need success over time, not daily goals. 

 

Since my methods are much more about mindfulness and controlling the non-food factors that make it hard to stay on track (stress, etc), and because meditation is a big part of that for me, I'm going to join the Druids this time around. I'm thinking of giving yoga a shot too since I've never really pursued it very seriously. I've had some joint pain issues, and I'm still going to be weight lifting but I have decided to stop pushing that in the direction of rapid increase of what I can lift. I feel like yoga probably has a lot to offer me in terms of helping with the joint issues.

[SevenofSeven]

Yoga sounds really good. I have been meaning to look into it, but I am just a big fat chicken heart when it comes to real life "just do it!" I have seen yoga do some really good things for people on here

My own excuses are, driving into town, time of day, early mornings or evenings, both of which see me doing the family thing, money and trust, then the Internet yoga is a no go because we are on satellite and Croatia has faster, better internet than I do. I think that about covers it.

Druids sounds like a good fit

[shaeon]

Aw. That sucks about the slower internet connection. I am totally going to be doing online yoga. If I like it and want to explore it further, I might go do classes. But for starters, I'm sticking to online because of also being a chicken. 

 

And even the yoga place near my home only has one class per week I could actually make it to on time. There's also that.

[SevenofSeven]

The buzz is the NF yoga is pretty cool.

[shaeon]

So I hear! I'm starting out with a site called Do Yoga With Me, because it's free. I did two tonight while my dinner was cooking - one to relieve back tension, and one for leg cramps (both problems I've been having lately). I liked it a lot! I may try out Nerd Fitness Yoga after doing this for a while, if I want to expand to something new. 

[shaeon]

Rawr. Long time no post. 

Technically I was supposed to do a 2 week check in on Monday. It's going to have to wait. I'm covered up trying to finish a Christmas order and also Christmas shopping, and this weekend I got sick and I still am having stomach problems from that. Yay, good times. 

 

Updates as soon as possible. Which... may be after Christmas.

[SevenofSeven]

Well I will wish you a Merry Christmas and shall see you on the other side!

[shaeon]

Merry Christmas Seven! 

[shaeon]

Christmas was kind of exhausting, by the way. I was sick the weekend before Christmas. I genuinely thought I had the flu, but it turned out to be a short but fierce stomach virus kinda thing, I'm not really sure how to classify it. Like stomach flu, only really really fast. It left me with a sensitive stomach for days. I kind of went on a modified version of the BRAT diet for a bit; I basically stuck with white food for a few days. Chicken, bread, potatoes, rice. Lots of chicken noodle soup. I lost a few pounds due to not being able to stomach a lot of food, but of course it wasn't exactly good weight loss. 

 

I also had a commission to finish up, which I delivered to the customer on December 23. So up to the very last, I was leather working nightly when I came home, and losing sleep to get it done. I had Christmas Eve off, and at first I planned to go see The Force Awakens a second time that morning. Then I woke up that morning and realized I was so tired I really just wanted to go right back to sleep. 

 

Top that off with Christmas floods and tornadoes, and you can see that it was an exciting and stressful holiday this year. 

 

Anyway. Things are better now. The bad weather is supposed to be headed out this week, so good! I got in to the leather shop on Saturday just to work on skill advancement instead of needing to complete a commission, and that felt good too. I'm getting more sleep. Moving steadily towards the new year, and the next challenge. I'm thinking of what my goals will be in the next challenge. Definitely some meditation. Definitely yoga - in fact after a little bit of time on a yoga site online, feeling frustrated that there's no real starting place and I don't know what I'm doing, I've decided to try Nerd Fitness Yoga. Definitely throwing leather work in as a personal goal. I need to choose a thing to complete during that time. Maybe the intermediate class. I should probably add sleep as a goal as well - although getting 7 or more hours of sleep is ALWAYS hard for me, so it frustrates me to choose it as a goal because I feel like I'm setting myself up to fail. 

Anyway. Speaking of sleep, I should go. 

More soon!

[SevenofSeven]

I see the Challenges are changing. Only 4 weeks instead of 6, this just might be a good thing. Get in, do Challenge, get out. Fast and furious!

[shaeon]

I noticed that last night too! Yeah, should be interesting.