Category: Self-Improvement

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The Fifty Mile Challenge

I just got back from my swim at the gym. They’re going to do the fifty mile challenge again.

Basically that means you swim 50 miles between May 1 and August 31.

Friends, allowing for summer vacations and the like, that’s about 6,000 yards a week!  Honestly?  I really should do it, as it would keep me active and motivated through the summer.  Thing is, I really don’t want to hit the pool but three days a week and I’m not yet back into form enough that a 2,000 yard (~80 lengths) swim is really reasonable.  Certainly it has never been a standard-length swim for me.    I only swam 1,000 this morning.  Yes, yes, I have until May 1 to get ready, and if I push it, I can probably get there.  I’m tempted to try to swim 2000 on Wednesday1, just to see if I still can.

Honestly?  I’d like to do it just to say I did it, you know.  I suppose that’s rather the point — to encourage people to set goals just, well… ’cause!

Goodness knows it’ll help me with my goal of getting to bed on time.  That kind of swimming schedule will have me sleeping pretty hard.  Not a bad thing, all told.

But, it’s work time for Mama Noël, now.  Deadlines and proposals and projects, oh my!

1Yes, yes, I’m supposed to work out every weekday, but as a swimmer, I really need to get some weight-bearing work in for bone strength.  If I were walking or running, I really wouldn’t sweat it, but at my age facing the concept of osteoporosis is no joke.  I have a date with the squat rack tomorrow.

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Excuses and Workouts

Today was One of Those Days exercise-wise.

I’d worked quite late yesterday and hadn’t even the faintest intention of getting up at 5:00 to get in the water.  Wasn’t going to happen.  I’d packed my bag and laid out my suit, putting it on under sweats first thing this morning, with the intention of swimming at my usual after gym work time of 7:30.  That would give me a good hour in the pool if I wanted it before they kicked out the lap swimmers for aqua fitness.

I couldn’t find my keys.  Now, I had other keys to drive the car, or could even walk to the gym, but upon those keys were also the key I used to open the gym on days that I worked.  Losing those keys was going to get me in hot water.  So I went on a much more massive and intensive search than I ordinarily would.  Found ’em. You know how it’s important to put away your keys in the same place every time? Guess who broke that rule?  I finally found my keys.  I’d put them in a purse pocket I never use and only looked in because I was getting desperate.  <headshaking>

I almost blew off the workout, ’cause I was stressed, ticked off and feeling stupid.  But I was wearing my bathing suit and somehow I couldn’t force myself to take it off, change and put it away without having used it once it was on my body.  So I had some breakfast and a cup of coffee and got some work done before I went to the gym after the aqua fitness class.  Had a decent swim, but I don’t think swimming on a full stomach is my favorite way to work out.

If I had not put on that suit first thing, I probably would have blown off the workout.   So, clearly putting on a swim suit under my clothes if I want to ensure  I take the damn swim is probably a Useful Tool.

Ordering my life so that excuses not to do things that are goals seems absurd is probably a Useful Tool as well.  Goodness knows I’m pretty talented at coming up with excuses to be lazy when I’m lookin’.

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Work From Home: A Fair Warning About the Course

The next lesson won’t be until next Wednesday, but I really feel this needs to be said and soon about the course.

You probably won’t follow through on this.  Chances are good you’ll quit.  Either you’ll decide that the insecurity is too much to take, you’ll look yourself in the face and realize that you need a boss to tell you what to do and when to do it, or you’ll get discouraged and disgusted and think I was “lucky” or am blowing smoke about this.    I doubt that more than one in a couple of hundred have the requisite character traits and skills to make self-employment a genuinely viable option.

Thing is, it’s not necessarily about self-discipline.   Certainly not in my case, as I’m hardly a self-disciplined person.  It wasn’t self-discipline, it was desperation.   I had a secure job with the best boss I’ve ever had, fantastic benefits and cool people to work with.  And the idea of spending the rest of my life in an office, even in what was genuinely a great working environment, made me gag.   I was willing to crash and burn hard if only I could say that I made a real, genuine, honest effort to be my own boss.  If you’re desperate and there’s Just No Other Way to bring in money, you might very well succeed.  “Root hog, or die!” has spelled the success of more than one entrepreneur!  But, I wouldn’t risk a nickel that anyone reading this will actually do it.

This is not something you can do because you’re looking for the easy way to do something.  If you are out of a job and you’re not combing the want ads for work, pounding the pavement and knocking on doors and willing to turn your hand to anything honest, if you turn down jobs that aren’t “good enough”, skip it.  Stop reading.  This isn’t going to do you a bit of good.  You have to have a passion to work – either for the idea, or because you don’t want your kids to go hungry.  If you’re thinking, “Oh it might be nice if…”  or  “I could pick up a little money doing…” you’re not coming from the place that will really work.  You need all the focus of “I WANT” that you did when you were two.  You have to be on fire to make this work.  Though, sometimes that fire can be banked coals…

To give you an idea of what I mean, I’ll give you a little story.

My family goes to Virginia Beach every summer.  We’ve been doing it since I was a small child.  So, this was our week at the beach.  I was sitting on the balcony about sunrise, with the bright orange disc beginning to push over the edge of the water, lighting a glistening golden path between myself and the horizon.  It was a clear morning with a gentle, rhythmic surf, and weight of the damp, bone-soothing heat you get on Southern beaches in August.  I had a cup of coffee at my elbow, laptop in my lap, writing an email to a client while my family slept behind the sliding glass door.

My father came out on the balcony with his laptop and a cup of coffee[1].   He opened up the machine, looked over at me, nodded to my computer and grinned, commenting, “That’s been a lifelong dream, hasn’t it?”

Yes, it was something I’d wanted and worked for from childhood.  That’s passion.

[1] Yep, I’m second generation work  from home.  Part of my unsuitability for offices was probably a result of specific training!


Intro to Work From Home Course

A Fair Warning About the Course

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Leechblock and Time Analysis

Yesterday, I commented that I’d been told about a blocking add-in for Firefox called Leechblock. You enter the sites you think you shouldn’t visit and when (or for how long). I mentioned that I was going to do an experiment and see what happens.

I’m gonna be honest, I’ve only been doing it for a morning and the results are already embarrassing. I’ve discovered that for a woman in my profession, I permit myself to context switch far, far too often! See, context switching kills concentration, and what does a writer do most of all, boys and girls? Right.

While I didn’t get a whole day’s worth of work done in a quarter of the time, I certainly did get a lot more done than I ordinarily would if I were hanging out on LJ, Tribe, Twitter, and Facebook all day – jumping online between paragraphs. I’ll probably finish up the day a little early, but I’ve got a project that’s been hanging fire for weeks that I’m going to get to, anyway. It’s not paying work, but might turn into paying work, and if I’m gonna set myself strict office hours, I suppose I’m allowed to work on projects when I’m done with my paying work, right?

I have also been using Rescuetime to analyze my computer usage and have discovered that what they call time-wasters are actually often genuine research for me. I’ve also found that I’m spending considerably less time on email than I’d estimated – less than an hour a day. That shocked me, but I realized I won’t have a clear picture until someone starts a heated discussion on PolyFamilies again!

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Need Some Help with Self-Control? Try Leechblock

A friend of mine on LJ1 turned me on to a Firefox plugin of epic usefulness – Leechblock.  It prevents you from accessing sites that, in your judgement, are timewasters during specified periods of time.  It’s not like a nanny software that blocks sites forever, but gives you the option of limiting time on a specific site or banning those sites from being accessed during certain hours.  If you’re really worried about self control, you can also choose to set it to prevent you from accessing options until the banned time is over.

Now part of my job really kind of is to screw around on the net.  Most of my clients want me to write for the web, so I have to be aware of web trends, understand what makes a good blog post or not, and other things of that nature.  Not only that, but I do use the Internet for research.2 However, when you’ve hit refresh for the fiftieth time in an hour on Livejournal, are grinding your teeth at the stupidity Facebook’s latest TOS fiasco, or have posted that you’re clipping your toenails on Twitter, things have gone a bit far.

I consider myself reasonably self-disciplined.  I meet deadlines.  I finish my to-do list for work.  I manage to scrounge enough money to keep me from having to get a “real job” and that really does take some self-motivation.  But I’m going to try an experiment.  For the next week, I’m going to block some sites from my browser during office hours3 with an hour break for lunch and see what it does to my productivity and client base.

I’m guessin’ we’re gonna see some positive results.  Whatcha think?

1 (Thanks sheelangig!)
2You’d be amazed at how inexpensive a single PDF download of an article from a technical or medical journal can be sometimes!
3 6:30-3:30 is usual for me to work.

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Working Out

I’ve resisted posting about working out lately until I was properly back in the swing of being active again. I’d noticed so many posts about how I have to get my butt in gear and likewise until I was tired of writing it. I decided I’d shut up mostly until my butt actually was back in gear where the working out was just feeling like a normal part of my daily routine.  I know I’ve gotten there when I pack my gym bag right before I go to bed, and realize I haven’t used my bathtub at home all week because I’ve been soaking in the hot tub at the gym and showering there.

I’m still wishing I could find some good waterproof earphones so I can listen to audiobooks or music as I swim.  Then again, I’ve always found that I had to tweak technique when I did that, so maybe it’s just as well to concentrate on what I’m doing when I’m working out.  Though it’d take a crowbar to get my iPod away from me when I am lifting.  Dream Theater’s Learning to Live at the squat rack is a holy, deeply spiritual experience1.

Tomorrow, it’s lifting.  I’m still sore as hell from Tuesday’s session, but I really want to get in at least two full body workouts this week.  Next week, it’s gonna be three, and my muscles are just gonna have to stop whining.  Thank God swimming is a good recovery workout.

I’ll be glad when my strength comes back, too.

1Not a joke. Music and physical activity is a direct contact with the Numinous.  I’m sure it’s why I love to dance so.

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Self-esteem in the Locker Room

There is nothing so good for my self esteem as the gym locker room.  It’s nice to be somewhere where you realize that there’s no such thing as the “perfect” body  short of a studio shoot and some serious Photoshop work.  I’ve gained some weight and was feeling badly about myself.  I hadn’t been exercising, so my brain was getting sluggish, too.  However, half an hour in the pool swimmin’ laps is enough to put my mind right.  ‘Course it doesn’t do my body any harm, either.

But, the reminder that there’s no such thing as perfect is a good one and it helps keep me from getting down on myself.  The gym I go to is a community gym, so you get everyone from the competitive athletes to the old ladies who swim gently to stave off the walker just one more month.

I’m kind of in between.  I do my swim and it feels good, but I’m no competitor.    I like to keep active because I have a sedentary damn job and if I don’t move, my brain stops working properly.  Since my brain is my major asset, I really can’t afford to let that get sluggish.

One of the women in the gym today commented as I was blow-drying  my hair, “I don’t see how you can have hair like that and be a swimmer.”

Apparently, she’d never heard of the Conditioner Trick:

Wet your hair really well in the shower. Work a small amount of conditioner through your hair.  Don’t use too much or your head will be too slippery and your cap will fall off while you’re swimming.  My hair is pretty thick and down to my waist and I only use about the size of a silver dollar’s worth.  Put on your swim cap. If you’re working out hard enough to get red in the face, your head is hot enough that you’re getting a great deep conditioning treatment. Don’t put the conditioner on the dry hair as you want your hair to have absorbed the water without so many chemicals in it first. The conditioner will seal out the chemicals from the pool then.  After your swim, shower and wash your hair, but if you have to use a hair dryer1, don’t dry your hair all the way.

Of course, this doesn’t stop me from looking really goofy when I put the swim cap on.  It’s  like those old Samurai topknots, getting my mane up into those little latex caps.   I guess if you’re a serious swimmer, you have to resign yourself to looking like a damn dork working out.

I need to find myself a weightlifting buddy in a couple of months, though.  I’m working back into working out more often and I want a little accountability, I think.   I want someone strong enough to spot me, though.

1It’s 10F outside today. Yes, I’m going to mostly dry it before I go outside to go home!  I’ve actually neglected this before and had my hair freeze on me.  I doubt that’s very wise for one’s health.

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Working at Home and Self-Discipline

I’ve had people comment from time to time that they don’t have the self-discipline to work from home or be self-employed.

Ironically, it’s not unusual for me to get this comment from people I consider more self-disciplined than I am1.

I think that it has a lot to do with one’s view of  “should” v. “want to”.  I like working from home and having the freedom that I do a whole lot.  I might be a good writer, but to explain how much I like it would be difficult. I don’t know, necessarily, how much self-discipline it takes to do what you passionately want.  In fact, I’d say it doesn’t take all that much discipline, really.

That’s something I think we often miss in our lives.  We don’t separate out what we think we should be doing or should want from what we passionately want with all our hearts and souls.

Does this mean we should necessarily make our livings from our passions?  No, not really.  When you can, it’s really cool.  I’m not gonna lie about that.  Thing is, it looks a lot more virtuous than it is.  When you wake up excited about doing something, and that something is your job, you look all focused and motivated and virtuous and disciplined.  Friends, going into a toy store and grabbing everything in sight is about as far from disciplined as you can get!

I’m going to be taking a trip down to visit my family soon.  I’m taking the train at least in part so I can work on the way down.   I love being able to do that.  It’s hard to describe the kick I get out of it.   The kick I get out of sitting here in my writin’ chair listening to Dire Straits (playing Money for Nothing, ironically enough), and working on a project for a client feels so very good.  I used to dream of being able to do exactly this when I was a kid.  I’d read science fiction stories about people with hand computers (and remember these were written when computers were as big as a bedroom!) able to access datanets anywhere, write stuff, do work and go anywhere while they were doing it.

I wanted that so badly.  It’s part of why I wanted to be a writer in the first place.  When I was a kid, it was the only portable profession I knew about.  Being a computer professional wasn’t yet all that portable — as  I well knew when I watched my father leave the house as I got up to get ready for school.  But I’d take my notebook into the woods behind my friend Mindy’s house, write, and fantasize about the day when I’d be making a living doing that.

When you want something that badly, when you dream about something so much that it stops being a dream but just an internalized part of you waking and sleeping, discipline isn’t the issue any more.  It’s just… what you do.

1 I actually consider myself pretty undisciplined, really. I’m just pig-headed.

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I haven’t been in the mood to swim or lift weights lately, so I’ve been walking to make sure I get enough exercise.

I came across an interesting site in my fits of nerdliness and compulsive Internet research (hey, I have an excuse.  It’s my job).  It’s called Walkscore and it’s supposed to be a rating of how “walkable” your house is.  The basic principles of it are that you plug in your home or work address and find out how many amenities you can get to from your house.

My own address has a score of 68.  It’s moderately walkable.  The house I grew up has a score of 38.   You’re pretty much car-dependent.  (True!).  I checked out a couple of addresses where I’ve lived as an adult.  I used to live on Caroline Street in Fredericksburg, VA.  That has a high walkable score indeed — 86.  (The best you can get is 100).  I remember really enjoying being able to go out of my front door and walk just anywhere.  If I ever moved back to Freddy’s Patch, I would do my best to live in town if I could possibly manage it, even considering the atrocious parking.  Being able to walk to the train station and take the VRE into Washington DC for the day was always really nice.

But lots of people don’t live places where walking to do errands is even reasonable.  I mean, I could eschew a car and do all my grocery shopping at the little town grocery store.  In fact, this month, just to force myself to walk more, I’m doing the French thing and going grocery shopping every day and walking.

It’s quite a change from someone who used to do Power Shopping.  But I’m not trying to save time in shopping for a large family.   This is to force myself to take a half hour walk every day.  So, I suppose in a way it’s a little bit of a time saver, as it’s exercise and grocery shopping all in one.

I can see where this would be a real money sink if I didn’t make sure, though, that I had a meal plan and stuck to a list!  It does increase the chance at impulse purchases.

You’d be amazed at how much you can fit in a backpack. I don’t carry groceries home in sacks because I like my hands free.   Last week I carried home about 20 lbs of pork loin and chickens on sale.  So that’s meat for quite a long time.  You don’t entirely throw out buying in bulk.  However, it’s quite a change from the warehouse store mentality.  It’s not that my kitchen shelves are empty.  They’re not.  I can still concentrate on stocking up on something if I need to, but that stocking up will be that day’s trip.

I’m lucky to live in an area where walking is a reasonable choice to get out and about.  I do like it!

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Eatin' Cheap

in experimenting with the idea of trying to work out a way to eat on a buck a meal, I was doing some calculations on food prices.  I’d always heard beans and rice were a cheap meal.  I often wondered about that and did the math.  You know, if you make it from dried beans, you’re looking at about a $1.20 for a pretty filling meal. That’s figuring in onions, garlic, peppers, spices and all that smack.  I think beans and rice are going to show up in the menu rotation a lot more often. At least, unless someone in the household complains too much.

I then did the calculation on my typical breakfast.  This wasn’t looking for sales, but simply what I got.  I usually have steel cut oats, nuts and some sort of dried fruit.   The oats themselves are about .21/serving.  The nuts and dried fruit (if I’m not eating raisins and I usually don’t.  Dried berries or apricots are GOOD) drive the price up to somewhere around $1.75/serving.   I think I need to get my lazy ass to a bulk food store at some point because I know I can do better than  that.   Still, not too bad when compared to the Starbucks liquid dess^h^h^h^h^h drinks so often favored by the rushed among us.

Still, it was sobering to realize that’s still considerably over a buck a meal.