Boredom kills, even without kender nearby.

[Lalie Fanyarendil]

Hello! I am new! Therefore, stuff. I had thought to start out by explaining my history of health and injury, but it turns out that takes about ten paragraphs, so instead I've condensed it into a list and not bothered to indicate overlap. It kind of speaks for itself. Positive things have exclamation marks and negative things have periods. Thingy things only appear in the most recent Muppet movie and are therefore not relevant here.

 

Gymnastics! Spondylolysis. Martial arts and fencing! Mononucleosis. Multiple psychiatric disorders diagnosed! Ostracized at martial arts school. 4-year chronic insomnia. Tonic-clonic seizure. Broken collarbone + fractured wrist + bruised kidneys. I can sleep again! Jogging! Chemotherapy. (aka The Year I Spent Asleep.)

 

Over the past ten years or so, it seems like every time I've found an exercise thing that I like, some health-related icky thing has happened to get in the way. At times my ability to work out had been limited to walking down to the end of the street and back again. (Thankfully, that started improving two or three years ago, a year after the year of chemo.) But! I finally managed to pay off student loans and move out of my parents' house this year, and I'm astounded at the difference in my quality of life.

 

I can cook whatever I want, which means that I'm actually eating enough food. In retrospect I can see that I had an unhealthy relationship with my food, mostly in the form of skipping a lot of meals because I was so bored with them. (Parents don't like all the spices and ingredients I love.) Food didn't seem like it was worth the time to eat it. Occasionally I'd cook things I liked just for me, but that felt selfish although nobody cared that I did it. Really, this became laziness. Food is exciting again. Curry! Cloves! Five-spice! Seaweed! Orange food! (I hate the color orange, but I seem to love orange-colored fruits and vegetables.) I also have a great flatmate who shares the cooking duties and my overall ingredients philosophy (spices are awesome, things that have been processed to be low-fat/fat-free are not) and is willing to eat anything I experiment with at least once.

 

I can exercise whenever I want, which means that I'm walking a lot more in the spring/summer/fall--I really enjoy going after the sun is halfway down because of the heat. I can try out exercise things that sound interesting; there's nobody around to ask what the heck I'm doing and why. I've been intrigued by the barefoot running thing for a long time now, so I think I'm going to give it a shot once I obtain some sort of minimal foot covering. (I go through a neighborhood, I don't want to step on broken glass and get stabbed through the foot and die without ever having been to a Comic-Con.) Walking through the park was nice, but it got boring FAST. And I can get enough sleep--I need a full 8-10 hours of sleep at night, and now there's nobody giving me a hard time for going to bed between 9:30 and 10:00.

 

For the first time since I was 13 (28 now), I actually feel good. I feel like I can realistically have exercise goals again.

 

My current overall goal is to try to get back where I was before the spondylolysis hit. I know that it'll take me years because it took me years the first time. I remember where I used to be in terms of strength, stamina, and flexibility, although I'm still trying to figure out how to define it objectively. I've actually managed to retain a fair bit of the flexibility and balance I had, but the strength and stamina are shot. I think the exercise style I'm liking is sort of an Assassin/Druid multiclass right now--generally Assassin in methods and goals, but a fair bit of Druid methods thrown in there too. I've realized that boredom with exercise routines had also been a big obstacle for me. So now that I have more exercise freedom I'm finding a lot more motivation to do something exercisey every day. Thankfully, weight has somehow not been a problem for me. I'm a little under 5'2" and am 125 lb, which I'm guessing is good because my doctor has never said anything about it.

 

When I first started browsing the site I didn't think that the Paleo thing would be for me, but I'm seriously reconsidering because all the recipes sound so TASTY! (And I would enjoy not feeling guilty every time I eat bacon.) I wonder if this would help my horrible acne. So, now I'm thinking about trying out all these recipes and seeing what happens.

 

My current goal is to identify areas in my life that have stagnated due to boredom so that I can start trying to find ways to improve them. And then I will probably have questions for everyone here, depending on what comes up.

 

Edited to fix a typo in the title.

[Hulk In Nerds Clothing]

Hey, welcome to the forum and to a life less ordinary (or boring, but that wouldn't be a cool reference...soo )

[kirstenanke]

Welcome and nice to meet you!! Sounds like you've been through a lot so here's to new beginnings!