serinde

Today marks the end of two (work) weeks of the New Regime; I get out of bed at 6am, do half an hour of yoga to Dengue Fever's "Cannibal Corpse", make a cup of tea or coffee (depending on the day), and drink that while I write morning pages for half an hour. Then I get ready for work and all that. Weekends are slack-permissible. I have fought the lizard brain down and not missed a day, in spite of tiredness, malaise, and purring cats.

Therefore the lizard brain has developed a new tactic. "It's been two weeks," it whispers. "What's changed? It's not doing any good. You might as well sleep in, or lounge in bed petting a kitty."

This is, of course, arrant nonsense. No, doing yoga hasn't made me lose weight--but I knew it wouldn't; not even when I was doing an hour of it three days a week. That's what the bike is for. And yes, my left leg is still very weak and not able to keep up--but it will take more than two stupid weeks to make that happen and I know this because I have been in physical therapy enough to be clear on how long it takes to see progress, particularly with a chronically, multiply screwed-up limb like this. The yoga's purpose is to keep me loose and flexible and to kick-start my metabolism in the morning, and it is doing those things. Secondarily I'm wanting it to help me get into that meditative, Zen-ish state, but this is harder when I have to tell myself what pose to do next rather than just follow a teacher.

Similarly, no, writing morning pages hasn't cured me of mental wharrgarbl and emotional roller-coasters & confusion--but that's not what it does. It drags all of that out into the open to be looked at, understood, and hopefully addressed. Eventually, yes, one expects a milder internal climate, but this is an ongoing and extended process and not to be sorted in a couple of weeks.

Finally, it has not cracked me loose on more public writing; one notes that my last Foojournal post was the one describing what new regime I was enacting, and there's been nothing since, here or elsewhere. OTOH, I have been focused on sewing, and secondarily research. So mental things are moving, and I will take that as a reason for cautious optimism. Wait and see, I think.

The milestones I'm looking for sound something like this:
* Getting up and doing being a reflexive habit, not a mental dialogue every. single. morning.
* Signs of my left leg getting stronger. Right now, rising into high and then crescent lunge is very difficult and shaky. My end-goal is for it to be as stable as my right side, but I'll take any visible improvement to start with. (Hilariously, I'm perfectly fine in Tree pose on that side, which is generally considered much harder. i do not even.)
* When I have any kind of mental agitas, correctly identifying and using the right tools to deal with it; which, I think, exhibits as "not losing several hours/an evening to wallowing, moping, internet uselessness, or other unhelpful and unproductive behaviors". This doesn't mean I can't slack if I feel that's the right pill for my ill, but it should be an active and mindful choice. (I can actually point to a level-up here; on Tuesday, I suddenly felt un-obsessed with the dress I'd been working monomaniacally on, and was sliding down the rabbit hole of totally wasting the evening. I stopped myself, sat down, and wrote down a list of everything I didn't feel like doing. After that, I realized I kinda felt like finally organizing my contact synchronization and upgrading my laptop to Mountain Lion, both of which needed doin'. Profit!)

I'm hoping that when the weather breaks and I can ride my bike more, this will help reinforce the benefits I'm getting, too. It usually puts me in a better state for the day (and also reduces my appetite, yay).

(Where by "day 2" I mean "a week after day 1", on account of questionable weather + after-work commitments.)

First of all: backpack, massive improvement; no 20mph headwind, massive improvement. (Though I don't think the trip took much less time, if any.) However, in spite of the again-lower-40-degree temperatures and not wearing heavy clothes and a whizzo miracle fiber hiking backpack, there is still some sweating at the back. Presumably this will only get worse as the season progresses, so I had better take thought to that: either by having a complete change of clothes, or by offloading cargo to the bike.

In deference to $BOSS's warning that $OVERBOSS looks askance at jeans (though I have been wearing nice ones with blouse & jacket off-and-on the whole time I've been here), and also because I wanted to see how it did, I wore a skirt today, with a sleeveless knit top. I put my Layer of Authority in the backpack, along with nice shoes and my stockings, since I figure riding is going to be even harder on them than my usual thunder-thigh chafing. Not wanting to go commando, however, I dug out an old pair of leggings to keep the wind off of me. Attire was completed with pink sparkly socks, Skechers, and an embroidered stretchy denim jacket. I fear I looked too hipster for words, but the combination did work; I was comfortable for the whole ride, and my movements were not restricted. Nor was the load on my back too heavy, in spite of also carrying two apples, a quart of soup, and my usual impedimentia.

It is a beautiful, diamond-bright morning to be riding in the spring green along the blue, blue Hudson. Even the yucky industrial bits under the West Side Highway look picturesque. Another morning, when I have more lead time, I'm going to stop and take pictures along the way.

I have still not Let Go enough to lock my bike outside. Although there are many bikes there, most of them are beaten up, and I'm scared that my shiny new one will be the obvious target. Also, I think both of my wheels are quick-release, and I think therefore I need an additional wotcha to make sure no one walks off with the front one. (Does that happen? Would people steal just a wheel?)

Yoga has been really, really good for me over the past year; and since sometimes the exigencies of duty have kept me from going, it seemed to me that I might profit greatly from doing some at home in the morning. I have found many excuses not to do this thing, ranging from "bleh morning snrk argh" to "wood floor is haaaaaaard". To deal with the latter whinge, I bought a Real Yoga Mat (which has koi on it! How can you not be inspired by staring at koi? ... ) about a month ago, which has sat idle since; the new excuse being "but I'm doing morning pages! I can't spare the time for both, not unless I want to get up super super early, and then what's the point of living so close, wah wah wah wah and anyways I'm going thrice a week and that's good". Well, okay; but the last several weeks, between vacation and the student email migration and lack of personnel and what-not, I haven't been going thrice a week. Sometimes I've been lucky to go once a week. And lo, yesterday I was up a pound from the holiday festivities; and I am feeling sniffly in my head, which I never seem to get sick if I'm exercising regularly; so this morning I had a nice tall glass of Shut The Fuck Up, rolled out the mat, and did a 20 minute workout from yogadownload.com. And it was Good, although lord does my balance and flow ever suck rocks right when I get up.

Back to running today. 4 min. warmup, 21 min. running--of which I amped up .5 mph for the last third of it--, 5 min. cooldown. The effect of the amping-up was somewhat drastic; I came much closer to overheating, and am much more tired than I would otherwise be. Other than that, though, I found it entirely delightful and joyous. My various traitor body parts seem to be holding up well, too.

I want to curl up in the sun and snooze now.

( Warning: Womb fluid content ahoy, and not the porn-y kind. )
[*] or other nationalities' representatives, don't step on my jokes

I am clearly not in as useful a yoga place on Fridays. At first it was much hard; and then I found myself attempting to phone it in. Now, you really can't do that in vinyasa even if all you're doing is keeping up, but I don't feel as well-worked as I have the other sessions. Still a good workout, don't misunderstand me! But I didn't get as much out of it today, and I know I have no one to blame but my lizard brain.

Showing up is still good.

Different teacher today, but same style (namely, vinyasa). And the class wasn't any more difficult today--that is, more or less the same sequence of poses was happening--but I had a much harder time with it, for some reason, and had to return to child pose for a Post-12 a few times. (And then felt myself starting the self-flagellation of You Big Pansy, You Can't Keep Up, but stamped it down with the large foot of This Is Not Competition.) I don't know if this was a result of not stretching beforehand, or exhaustion from the week, or the curse of Eve, or all of the above.

There is an awful awful lot of Downward-Facing Dog, and I had some worry whether this would make my wrist worse. I seem to have escaped further ouchies, however.

Woke up at 6:30 and couldn't get back to sleep, oh well.

Exercise Win: 1 hour 5 min. of Wii Fit, followed by a half-hour walk. I'm sorta sleepy now, but that could also be onaccounta NO COFFEE YET.

Later, I shall have lunch (or tea, really) with caelfinn, and then we will meet elibalin at the Met. You can come too! Text me if you think you might.

After a good deal of advice and input after my post earlier this week, I have modified things a bit. First, adding stretching. Second, per the Mayo Clinic, I'm going to aim for 12 reps of any given weight, whereat the twelfth rep should be barely do-able.

This ended up being a little disjoint, as a) I was pressed for time and b) there were a lot of zombiepunks bogarting machines. IT'S SUMMER, CHILDREN, GO THE FUCK HOME.

5 min. elliptical
Stretching. I went through the usual round of pre-aikido stretches, which cover most of the body.
Lateral pull-down: 12 reps @ 50 lbs
Modular shoulder press: 12 reps @ 4 lbs <-- higher
Leg extension: 12 reps @ 3 lbs <-- higher
Fly: 12 reps @ 2 lbs <-- hard.
I started doing the pullover, but I'm really convinced it is just too large for me. I'm feeling it in all the wrong places. So I gave over.
Seated Row: 12 reps @ 40 lbs.
Assisted chin-up: 10 reps @ 100 lbs. <-- higher
Assisted dip: 10 reps @ 100 lbs <-- higher (Remember, these two are counterweight-operated, so the less it's set to the more of your own weight you're dealing with.)

It's college, and from what I can tell university, policy that for the middle chunk of the summer--end of June through early August (but not the week of Independence Day; don't ask), roughly--the place is Closed on Fridays. You can either work 8-5:30 and take a 45 minute lunch, or you can chalk the days up to your vacation balance; but you Do Not Show Up For Work On These Fridays.[1]

This year, the season starts on June 23. Unless you are the school gym, in which case summer is now, and anyone who wants to work out for the first three Fridays of the month is just screwed.

I am deeply vexed. I can't even go for a long walk for lunch, as my knee starts objecting[2], and the last thing I want to do is make it any worse; so weights, leavened with a judicious amount of elliptical, are my only option to burn off energy without committing mayhem.

[1] I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Fridays off, Holy Shit!. On the other, my transit suddenly becomes a Goddamn circus; I may end up forced to the 6:30am train, fuck you very much. We shall have to see how it shakes down.

[2] Yes, I'm getting it looked at. I can haz referrals, and I have a sports-medicine specialist appointment next week.