goals

What A Start

Wow. 2021. We’re off to….a start.

It’s been a long time. Shouldn’t have left you. Left you without a FUCKING PRESIDENT for the last four years. Oops. I got a little excited there. But yeah. America. Dust yourself off and try again.

Ok, ok, the country on fire isn’t what I wanna write about today.

Did you make New Year’s resolutions (NYR)? I did not. Eff that madness. I’m all about New DAY resolutions (NDR). I’m all about knowing how I work. It’s been 47 years so I think I have it mostly worked out. I know that I’ll fail at NYR before the end of January so why would I set myself up for that?!?! Why would you? Why would anyone?

I suppose if I were making NYR, it would look something like lose 10 pounds, have a better handstand, write a book, get better with my flow toys, and be a better person. LOLOLOLOL, right? It’s so general. And so many people try to run their NYR that way and then in January of the next year wonder where they went wrong. I’m trying to break out of that rut with the NDR.

I’ve spent enough time in Corporate America hell to know how to set goals. SMART ya heard. That’s specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound if you haven’t heard the spiel. What I listed before as NYR – not SMART. I tried to make my NDRs SMART. I guess really that I have five mini goals to get to my big daily goal of finishing my tasks. Every day, five quests upon which to journey on my way to GoalLand.

  • Exercise or do yoga – 30 min min, 60 min max
  • Meditate – 5 min min
  • Practice handstands – 5 min min, 10 min max
  • Write/blog – however long it takes to expel the word vomit
  • Flow (rotate through the poi, wand, hoop, fan, pole through the week) – 10 min min, no max

Those five things don’t seem like a lot of things and they aren’t. But like I said, I know how I am. I need to build a habit before I add something else to the mix. So I’m not stressing myself if I don’t make it to GoalLand every day. I know I won’t get to a blog post every day. We’re in the middle of a pandemic so I don’t really leave the house much. I love my home life, but there simply isn’t that much that happens that would merit a blog post. Of course I have a book of writing prompts and I thought I might combine the week of prompts or just pick one to do for the week and if I like more than one, I would write more than one post. Nooooo pressure on me. No pressure = I start enjoying writing again. I’m really hoping that happens because as I’ve said before, I have books in my head that need to get out.

The exercise/yoga is the easiest one. I’ve been in that habit for over ten years. I’ve been a fan of the BeachBody programs since the P90X days. They keep me (mostly) focused and typically produce results. The fasted workout is how I start my weekdays. Saturdays get studio time (and also counts for flow for the day). Sundays are for rest. Or golf. Or a hike. But I try to rest a day. I’m 47, remember?

Is the best way to get out of your head by going into your head? I hope so since I’m adding this mediation goal. Hubby’s job offered up a Headspace subscription so duh, of course I’m gonna take advantage of that. And the guy has a great accent so it’s pleasant to listen to him.

Acouplafew years ago, I had a really strong handstand game but for whatever reason, I fell out of my practice. I want those stripes back and the only way to get them is to put in the work. I know you’re looking at those numbers and thinking that 5 to 10 minutes doesn’t equal putting in the work, but I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. WRONG. When I first started self-teaching this, that’s all I would do. Go out there and give it a shot for 5 to 10 minutes. As I got a little stronger, I started going to workshops to learn more. And although every workshop lasted no less than 60 minutes, we were never on our hands for all of that time. The constraints I had instinctually placed on myself turned out to be the knowledge passed on of not doing hour upon hour of handstand work at a time. Wrists aren’t made for that sort of pressure, so you gotta ease em into it. Like anal.

Ahh the flow toys. I think it started when I won a hoop on Instagram and snowballed pretty fast from there. Then I needed another hoop. Ooh, look a wand…it’s like magic. Oh, hey, where are my old poi? One more hoop won’t hurt. LED lights for the end of my wand?!?! Yes please! Yeah, I need twin hoops for doubles. Hey Christmas! Thanks, hubby! LED poi! So yeah, that’s kinda how it went. Now I have a lot of toys and I’m working to get better at them all. Nope. Never one at a time. All the things, all the time.

Those are the things. Accomplishing them all in one day gets me a ticket to GoalLand. For all intents and purposes, we are through the first week of the year and I have yet to get that golden ticket. I’m ok with that. I feel pretty good about getting four out of five by February. Change takes time, folks. You don’t have time? I bet you have more time now than you would next year when you’re looking back saying you shoulda started then.

Get started.

1-2-3 1-2-3 Drink

 

Happy Monday. You know, I’ve known this song has been around a little while, but I never paid any attention to it. The only reason it popped up this morning is because I started my last week of Cize and this is the song. So wait, last week of Cize?!?! That means that for the last five weeks, I’ve been diligently getting up in the morning to go down to the dungeon and make my best attempt at dancing. That means that the last routine is so freaking hard that I will spend two weeks on it, making it weeks six and seven.  That means it will be seven of the easiest (mentally) weeks to get up and work out. And I don’t usually stick with things for that long, but I’m trying to change those sorts of bad habits.

Back to Sia. Have you ever listened to this?

Party girls don’t get hurt
Can’t feel anything, when will I learn
I push it down, push it down

I’m the one “for a good time call”
Phone’s blowin’ up, they’re ringin’ my doorbell
I feel the love, feel the love

1,2,3 1,2,3 drink
1,2,3 1,2,3 drink
1,2,3 1,2,3 drink

Throw ’em back, ’til I lose count

I’m gonna swing from the chandelier, from the chandelier
I’m gonna live like tomorrow doesn’t exist
Like it doesn’t exist
I’m gonna fly like a bird through the night, feel my tears as they dry
I’m gonna swing from the chandelier, from the chandelier

But I’m holding on for dear life, won’t look down won’t open my eyes
Keep my glass full until morning light, ‘cos I’m just holding on for tonight
Help me, I’m holding on for dear life, won’t look down won’t open my eyes
Keep my glass full until morning light, ‘cos I’m just holding on for tonight
On for tonight

Sun is up, I’m a mess
Gotta get out now, gotta run from this
Here comes the shame, here comes the shame

So how’s that for a gut punch? Not so much for you? Good on ya. Hit me like a truck. I used to live this way. No need to point fingers or any such madness. I’ve grown beyond that point although it took a long, long, LONG while. Drinking to not feel the pain, drinking to feel included, drinking to the point of not caring, drinking like the party girl to not get hurt, “fly like a bird through the night, feel my tears as they dry”, “gotta get out now, gotta run from this; here comes the shame, here comes the shame”. Yeah, that pretty much wraps it up. I could go into detail about feeling like that, but that’s another blog post for another day.

On to lighter topics. Last night, I carved my first pumpkin. Ever. Sounds crazy, right? To be coming up on 42 years old and to have never carved a pumpkin? Well, it’s true. And to be honest, it’s fucking gross. The inside of pumpkins smell awful. All those pumpkin guts are nasty. There was no way I was going to toast those seeds. I just couldn’t see putting that in my mouth. Yuck! However, we got a book of stencils and we have at least four left which means that we’ll be doing a second round before Halloween shows up. Here’s round one:

wpid-20151004_192207.jpg

Lovey did the bat, and I did the other..thing. You can tell more from this shot that it’s two people holding hands than it’s also a skull. Gotta get that from just the right angle to see it in that way. Overall, I’m good with how these came out. Even though the pumpkin head on the left actually lost its head and it’s held together with toothpicks. I guess I won’t be quitting my day job to become a pumpkin carver any time soon.

Last thing I want to touch on before I move right along with my day is positivity and getting shit done. On the forward-facing front, I do well with the positivity. We all have problems and hearing mine doesn’t make anyone’s day better so I keep that shit to myself. It isn’t that I’m trying to present myself as something I’m not, I just internalize a lot of stuff. Then there’s that getting shit done part. Another of my weak points when it comes to my own personal life. At work, no problem. I’ll tackle my tasks, your tasks, her tasks, and his tasks, and likely get them all done. But when the only overseer is me, I slack. That’s right. You heard me. I slack on myself. Probably the worst possible place to be slacking.

All of this when I have goals, or at least things that I know I should do. Things I know I can do if I just put my mind to them. Things I know I can do and do well if I would just get out of my own head. Things that would get done if I could simply let go of this fear of failure. Because you can’t fail if you never start, right?

But that isn’t how I want to live my life. That’s not how anyone should live their life. I’ve been trying to ingest some positive vibes to keep myself on a good level and to encourage me to do what I know I can do. What I’ve been told I can do. What’s waiting for me on the other side of that door if I just grow up and open it. Starting today. Starting now. So, for the two people whom I “scope” the most, know that my effort is real. My effort is sincere. And my effort is for me. Here we go.

Summer Polestice

Ok, ok, so I’m a few days late with it. On the actual summer polestice, I was shoving bacon down my piehole like there was no tomorrow. There was so much tasty stuff at the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival that, at times, it was difficult to make choices since I couldn’t eat everything. I did find that since I’ve been trying to eat better, greasy items were not appetizing to me. One bite and I either didn’t want any more or I wanted to spit it out. I mean, it’s bacon, it certainly can be greasy, but it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes being healthy is no fun.

On the topic of pole, an item that has been on the bucket list that I don’t really have is to submit for a competition. I did it, since now I can attempt to play with the big kids, aka the Master’s division, aka the over 40s. I won’t know for another couple of weeks if I’m actually going to be in the competition. Like some other folks I know, and probably some I don’t, I go back and forth between ‘I hope and get in’ and ‘OMG what did I do, please gawd no!’ These two sides are fighting it out on a near daily basis in my head. The yes side has a song picked out; the no side is thinking about how much more trapeze I can do. The yes side keeps me stretching and doing cardio; the no side said ‘have a cinnamon roll’. So I’ll keep fighting it out internally for a few weeks until one side wins, and by wins, I mean I get an email saying I’m in or I’m not (assuming you get ‘hey, you suck’ emails, lol).

Footnote: I’m certain that no one will get an email saying, hey you suck. I’m just goofing. There may be letters of ‘not this year, try again next year’ or something else that will soften the blow. The pole world is really supportive and encouraging.

Having been off the pole for a while, I’m making my way back to some semi-advanced tricks. Stuff that was escaping me in my previous pole life. I had the absolute toughest time getting into Superman then. The first time I needed to do it recently, boom, there it was like it hadn’t been the bane of my existence for a long time. Imagine that. Other fun stuff I learned that I can do include sitting up out of both an iguana mount and a brass monkey, fun shoulder mount holds, shoulder mount to brass monkey(!), and handstand press-ups with both hands on the floor and with one on the floor, one on the pole. These things are exciting to me and make me wonder what else I can get my body to do. Russian split? Maybe. I mean, I understand the positioning, it’s just a matter of whether or not my legs are going to cooperate. I think with the stretching on the regular, I might just get there, torn labrum be damned.

I’m keeping it realistic here and I’m completely open and prepared for the no option to be a reality. With that in mind, I’m thinking about what, if anything, I want to accomplish at the rig this year. I really should work on returning to the board and not being such a chickenshit. It would help me in being lazy and not having to climb the ladder so damn much. I need to solidify my split and maybe see if a whip can be in my arsenal. My layout is in a fairly sweet spot, so I guess I should start taking it across. Hell, I should start taking any/everything across since I haven’t done any of that since at least last season. Perhaps some twisty or flippy tricks will show themselves this year. Could this be the year the forward over returns? Duhn, duhn DUHN!!! If I could whip, I could flexus, right? Yes, right. Only positive vibes. Let’s see how much of this positivity I have tomorrow morning after T25 (I hate you, cardio, but I love you because you’re the only thing that makes me skinny) and yoga. Positive thoughts, y’all!

These are my not-so-random thoughts this fine Tuesday morning. Those plus ‘write a damn book already!’ are my thoughts. Baby steps will get me there. Wish me luck. See you tomorrow…maybe.

Another Day in Pair Of Dice

 

No, I’m not in Vegas and it isn’t looking like I’ll get there in 2014. We certainly want to go back,though. It’s been 4 or 5 years since we’ve gone. This time, we’ll do it in the summer though so we can check out the pools. No swimming in January, that’s for sure (at least not for me).

Others on my list of places to go include, from near to far more or less, Garden of the Gods, Crested Butte, Park City, pretty much anywhere in Cali since I’ve never been there, Banff, New Orleans, the northeast adventure (PA/NY/DC), and pretty much all of Mexico. I’ll leave my outside of North America list for another day. Have passport, will travel!

Yes, I’m on that vacation kick because, well, I like vacation and work is slowly driving me insane and I STILL haven’t even started doing the new position yet, at least not full time. When I get to doing this full time, they may very well put the pedal to the metal and bump that mother up to 100, making my drive to insane a heck of a lot shorter. I’m hoping that isn’t the case, but a very wise man once told me “wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up faster”. Translation: yes, it’s gonna suck. You said you’d go all in for a year so have at it. Just keep dancing.

Dancing. Exercise. Zumba. I love that class. And now I have something additional to work on because I can’t just go in there and move around and sweat and be satisfied. I want to actually LOOK LIKE I’m doing it right. Tough one since I’m not Hispanic nor do I have more than one ounce of rhythm. Such a shame. I did get a hint to help me along my way from my instructor (whose hips NEVA lie) who is also a Samba dancer. He said, and I’m making this up paraphrasing, get out of your gringa ways and move your hips in the way that is completely unnatural to you! Yeah, yeah. I get it. In my head. Now what my body wants to do is a totally different story. Just keep dancing, just keep dancing.

From dancing to other fun physical stuff: handstands. They’re something that I’ve wanted to be able to do for quite some time. Why? No reason. Just thought it would be cool to be able to bust one out whenever I feel like it. Maybe on the mountain with my snowboard on, who knows? I suppose I’ve just never really put the effort into working on them (and this week I haven’t been putting in effort to working out very hard), BUT, Aerial Amy (over there in the blogroll in case you don’t want to search for this post again) mentioned how she’s going to do the 28-day handstand challenge. We have different obstacles to overcome, but she’s starting on Feb 1 and so I think I’ll join her. Perhaps Nina would like to join too. 🙂  Still a couple days to figure it out. Yes, I am going to add one more thing to the daily repertoire. Workout, stretch, handstands, write, breakfast, work, lunch, work, Zumba/pole/aerial, dinner, write, sleep. Totally do-able (insert eyerolling emoticon here). If I were feeling really outrageous, I’d add the 750 words a day challenge for February as well, but I think I’ll stick to just getting some (at least 100) words down a day.

Yesterday I realized that I hadn’t broken my goals down by month. Today seems like a good time to do that since there are only a few days left here in January. So let’s see. What should we do in February?

  • 28-day handstand challenge
  • 28 days of working out. Preferably P90X3, but snowboarding can substitute if I ride hard
  • 12 split-specific days of stretching, 20 minimum total stretching days
  • 28 days of blogging
  • 28 days of writing lab assignments
  • Set up private and find my place in PDP with the L’Ru ladies

I’d go on, but I’m sure that’s ENOUGH! Just goals. I’m going to aim for them but I’m not going to beat myself up over missing any of them. Maybe blogging, but not the others because these are lofty goals. I swear a goal should be to clean the house top to bottom, but boy is that not fun. It isn’t even that it’s so dirty, just dusty mainly, but that’s gonna have to wait until a warm day where I can open windows and not be a dust-sneezing monster. I’m not entirely sure why this house has so much dust, but it does. It’s literally dusty within an hour after cleaning. Air ducts need cleaned much? Probably. Are we going to pay for that in a rental? No. And neither will the owners so we just have a dusty house.

You know how I enjoy my morning chats with you four, but the time has come for me to get a move on. Happy Hump Day!

Open Says Me!

If I could go back in time to when I was, oh, let’s say under 16, I would tell that me to stretch. And to be serious about it because in 10 years, you’re really going to want more flexibility when you start learning the flying trapeze. If I could go back to when I was about 26, I’d again tell myself to stretch and stick with it because 26 isn’t too late to start and it would be really helpful with this flying trapeze stuff, and in about 10 years, you’re really going to want more flexibility when you take up pole dancing. And if I could go back to when I was about 36, I’d give myself the same damn lecture about how 36 isn’t too late and you can still be flexible if you just commit to working on it! Now, at 40, I’m looking back and kicking myself because if at any of those times, I had just stuck with it, I would be so much better off now! But alas, my name is not Stewart Gilligan Griffin and I do not have a time machine. As such, I am left with stretching to the best of my ability and attempting to foam roll the scar tissue that’s built up around my hips. I need to get it Graston-ed out, but I’m not interested in another trip to the crazy hip doctor that just wants to cut me open. Oh well. More foam roller!

Sidebar: I’m standing in the kitchen looking at the sunrise through the blinds. It’s so crazy red out there! I’d take a picture but it just wouldn’t do this sunrise justice.

Now that I’m a boss, of sorts, I will make this promise: I will never be ambiguous about calling meetings. I know that I’ve hated when a manager scheduled a meeting with no inkling as to why. It’s a natural human reaction to be concerned that you’ve done something wrong. I promise to not leave people hanging, and if you did do something wrong, I’m going to let you know up front that is going to be the topic of conversation. No hiding shit for me.

Work is pretty much a madhouse, which means I am falling behind with my PHP learning. I see now that I am going to have to designate more time at home to learning. Blah! I do still need to remember, however, that we are only halfway through January and there are 11 more months in the year still. I want to finish PHP and SharePoint by December 31. Reasonable goals. And so, I’m off to achieve! How are you doing with your January/2014 goals?

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