We are going back to the office and in-person meetings, and that means it’s time to lose some pandemic weight. I recently bought my first pandemic suit but I refuse to replace my button-down shirts.
So here’s to a summer of getting it together — and more Fiona Apple shirts!
I am a week into my membership at the local Equinox gym, and it added some unexpectedly refreshing structure to my daily routine.
Equinox requires advanced scheduling for both solo workouts and classes, providing me with a solid deadline either to end work and leave for the gym, or a strict bed time (in the case of morning workouts).
Being forced to leave my apartment for an appointment also helps me organize my day, because I cannot allow work to sprawl into the late hours of the evening.
So after I restarted my workout kick, I quickly realized that my apartment building gym would not cut it. The gym is pretty small and my neighbors have no problem packing in the room.
After some hemming and hawing, I decided to join the Equinox gym in the neighborhood. The gym is large and the distancing is pretty decent for Texas. I also like that the membership comes with unlimited classes.
It has been about a week and everything hurts — I forgot that working out means constant soreness. Hopefully, this is just a learning curve and I’ll be less miserable in a week or two. But for now, it’s constant whining and griping.
The good news is that I haven’t quit halfway through a class or puked yet, so that’s a minor victory. And, several of my neighbors are considering joining the gym, so maybe soon my workout misery will have some company. 🏋️
I’ve never heard of “cedar-planked salmon” before, but the package at the grocery store convinced me to give it a whirl.
I made the salmon with a bed of bacon-infused rice, which turned out to be the best part of the meal.
My work from home desk looks a little different in Dallas — I figured since I stare at a screen for 10+ hours a day, I might as well get some exercise while doing it.
I rigged a DYI bike desk and decided to decorate the wall a little bit…
At least in D.C., the fashion trend for the past few years has been very short shorts.
The problem is that with my “pandemic 15,” the short-shorts tend to make me look like a fat baby. However, now every time I try to wear what used to be normal-length shorts, I feel like I’m dressing like the lead singer of a late-90s rock band.
I may be old, but these biscuits are not definitely limp, so, fat baby look it is. 👶
Just prior to shutdown, I was halfway through a modified version of the “75 Hard” exercise fad.
The gist my routine was that I worked out twice a day for a minimum of 45 minutes per session. It was a big commitment, but felt great (most of the time).
I never subscribed to some of the more arbitrary rules of the 75 Hard program — like the requirement that one session has to be outside, or that you can’t make-up missed sessions when work gets crazy. Even I understood that flexibility is needed for thunderstorms and client demands. I also wasn’t going to take 5 minute cold showers every day because that’s clearly nonsense.
The point of this fitness spurt was to train myself to understand that exercise is something to be prioritized. Scheduling two exercise sessions per day instead of just one also makes it very hard to skip working out altogether. In short — I was on a roll.
After nearly a decade, I finally purchased new pairs of Vibram FiveFinger Shoes. My toeshoes inspire horror and side-eye from my friends, but they are my new go-to for dog walks. The only downside is that the mesh coverings make Vibrams unwearable if it’s wet outside, which is quite often given the weather this summer.
This is one of the few pairs of shoes that I’ve actually worn into the ground. I had to get new pairs because my original Vibrams had holes in them toward the end. The new shoes are still fresh, but will they probably not last another 10 years given how much I’m wearing them, but we’ll see. đź‘
Gyms recently opened back up in the District for the first time since the lockdown began, but I am not sure when I’ll be back.
After first hearing about Soylent years ago, I finally bought a case from Amazon on a whim.
Soylent is a meal replacement drink that purportedly contains 20% of your nutritional needs in each bottle.
The only good thing to come out of last fall’s Samsung cellphone recall saga was that I received a free Samsung Gear Fit2 with my phone as a pre-order promotion.
I had to give back my Note 2 because of the recall, but Samsung never asked for the watch back. (Could you imagine?)
This was also around the time when my Fitbit died for the second time, so I was in the market for a new watch anyway.
After about six months with the Gear Fit2, I am still happy with it and do not miss my Fitbit at all.
I say almost because the primary activity is really sprinting after foul balls before the labradoodle gets to them.
Ingrid the labradoodle hoarding a tennis ball.
Gunter at the Craddock Park tennis courts in the Perry Heights neighborhood of Oak Lawn.
The Katy Trail is a long biking and walking path that cuts through Uptown Dallas. You can take the trail toward downtown Dallas or Highland Park.
We typically go for 5.5 miles in the morning and 3 or 4 miles in the evening.
My Fitbit friends must hate me.
A good week on Fitbit, mostly due to our rambling Katy Trail walks.
It’s ass-hot in Dallas during the summer, so we typically have to start our morning jaunts around 5 a.m.
There is no incidental exercise for me in Dallas.
I work from home. There’s a grocery and liquor store across the street. There are two dog parks in my complex, and 20 gay bars and restaurants within a few blocks of my apartment.
Long dog walks are also tricky.
It is routinely over 100 degrees in Dallas during the day, so I long walks have to happen at 5 a.m. or 10 p.m.
Before Fitbit, I relied solely on smartphone-based apps such as Map My Run. All of these apps were clunky and required me to manually log workouts.
I finally made the leap to wearables after seeing (the one and only) Zachariah Schnaap broadcast his workouts on Twitter and Facebook. It seemed cool, I had an extra $100 to spare…so why not?
I have tried a few other wearable fitness gadgets but the Fitbit Flex remains my favorite for a few reasons:
A screenshot of the Fitbit.com dashboard. The app experience is very similar.
Last month was probably the busiest month I’ve had since law school finals. I was in a different city every weekend, constantly stuck at airports, and stringing together 14-hour workdays during the week.
Oh, and attempting to move out of my old apartment.
My sleep schedule was awful, my love handles entered Precious-territory, and I had stress-related neck pain that caused the bottom part of my jaw to go numb.
In short, it was not cute.
I renovated my approach to work this month and my life has become drastically better. I made five simple changes and wiped a lot of unnecessary stress from my plate.
After watching a Claremont Colleges TEDx talk, I dusted off my old Moleskine notebooks and started carrying at least one with me at all times. Productivity coach David Allen recommends writing down every nagging “to do” or worry so it is not hogging mental bandwidth.
This casual note taking allows me to be fully available for tasks as I do them. It’s like anxiety meds that you don’t have to creep into CVS for.
“Don’t use your mind to accumulate stuff and avoid it. If you do not pay attention to what has your attention, you will give it more attention than it deserves.”
Every morning I do the most irritating or dreadful projects first.
If I don’t get them out of the way first, they are just going to stress me out throughout the day.
I inevitably find myself starting these put-off projects around 6:30p.m. at Dunn Brothers, completely burnt out and hating life.
I also get annoyed because procrastinated projects are rarely as awful or time-consuming as I expect.
It reminds me of that Brenda Ueland quote from If You Want To Write:
“When you will, make a resolution, set your jaw, you are expressing an imaginative fear that you won’t do the thing. If you knew you would do the thing, you would smile happily and set about it. And this fear (since the imagination is always creative) comes about presently and you slide down into the complete slump of several weeks or years – the very thing you dreaded and set your jaw against.”
The gift and curse of being a content strategist is that there always a million things I could be doing. One moment I’m writing a press release or article, another moment I’m tweeting or syndicating content on Google Plus.
I do my heavy writing in the morning when I’m feeling fresh and invincible. As the day progresses, I switch to more tedious and less mentally-challenging tasks like scheduling out tweets, looking at analytics, or clicking through workflows. This allows me to maintain productivity even if I’m tired.
I prefer just eating at my computer and continuing to work, but I’ve stopped doing this. If I work through lunch, I’m completely burnt out and drooling on myself by 3 p.m. – what I do instead is drive somewhere to pick up lunch. The quick drive is usually enough of a break for me to feel refreshed throughout the afternoon an into the evening.
Instead of working until my head hits the keyboard, I try to enforce a hard stop at 13 hours. I then go to the gym for an hour and cook myself dinner and eat while doing some non-work activity – like blogging for myself or watching Top Model. (Or both!)
The most important part of this “me time” is that I do not allow myself to feel guilty about it. The work laptop is closed and off my mind until 6 a.m. the next day. I do break this rule occasionally for my California clients, but for the most part, if it’s not a true “fire,” it can wait until tomorrow.
Exercise and unwinding before bed are also apparently good for you. I am no longer staying up at night fretting about a procrastinated task or big project – that’s what the Moleskines are for.
I finally fell into a sustainable workout routine, started spending more time at home, and I have a boyfriend again.
I met Abo at Lush. He’s from Minnesota and, like so many of the other Minneapolis gays, he’s a Target boy.
We spend a lot of time walking the dogs around Lake Calhoun.
The dogs are a little salty with me right now because I dragged them on this epic, 12 mile walk today around Cedar Lake, Lake of the Isles, Calhoun, Linden Hills and Lake Harriet. Anyone from Minneapolis knows what a ridiculous trek that is. It’s unseasonably warm, so the four hour walk was gorgeous though.
“Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.” – Brenda Ueland
Living in the present is something I’ve done a lot lately because my schedule finally filled out. I go to bed early, wake up for personal training at LA Fitness around 5 or 6 a.m. and then go to work. Evenings are filled with dog walks, tax training, or a second trip to the gym. Then it’s a beverage and a T.V. show.
The Netflix show of choice was Damages but now I am onto The Kennedys, which is ironic considering one of my favorite books is Libra.
Some changes are in order though. I need to get back to the Jillian Michaels / natural foods diet and redouble my efforts at the gym. I want to lose my stomach so I can walk around the office with semi-high-waisted pants like Leo in Revolutionary Road. Minus the cigarette of course…
I also need to get back to my Ableton time. It’s been too long and I need to finish my album.
Things pleasantly busy though, and I feel fortunate.
My second-round interviews for the job are also this week. The position sounds amazing and I just hope the second-round interviews are as fun as the first-round interviews.
These certainly are exciting times, even with the lack of high-waisted pants.
Oh, and randomly, here’s my song of the moment…
Things are looking better. My finger finally stopped throbbing, although it started to hurt again at the end of the workday. I go back to the orthopedist tomorrow morning, but I’m not sure if they are going to take out my stitches.
I know, I know. I watched Food Inc. a while ago and didn’t make the switch to organic meat. It turns out that rampant animal abuse wasn’t enough to get me to switch to organic meat, but salt was.
My grumblings about salt started a few weeks ago and culminated last night when I realized that our canned soup from Target had 111% of the daily recommended allowance of salt in it. I also realized that every processed thing in our house was bathed in sodium or high fructose corn syrup.
Even our 98% fat free turkey hot dogs are packed with sodium. One turkey hot dog link has 470mg of sodium or 20 percent of the daily recommended value. I was grossed out so I decided to switch to organic meat. Besides not having the hormones and animal abuse associated with it, organic meat also has considerably less sodium.
Buying organic meat at the local grocery store was difficult. I couldn’t find it at first until the butcher lady informed me that they only had “natural” chicken and small packets of organic ground beef hidden somewhere amongst the normal meat.
I eventually found it. What a miserable little package.
Despite the cosmetics of the package, it was delicious.
I then had the problem of a pantry full of canned food that I wasn’t not going to eat. I looked over the cans and realized that seven were already expired. Canned food takes a long-ass time to go bad, so I obviously don’t eat enough of it anyway. I gathered the good cans and brought them to the Aliveness Project, the local HIV/AIDS food shelf.
And yes, I realize the irony in donating unhealthy food to sick people, but I didn’t want to waste it and the food shelf doesn’t accept fresh food in anyway.
Also, to ease my guilt about donating the sodium-filled cans, I called the food shelf and offered to buy the kitchen fresh food. The cook thought it was a rather bizarre request and told me that he’s never had anyone offer to buy food for the kitchen before. He only requested lemons and cilantro, so my healthy contribution was rather meager. Maybe they’ll want something more substantial next time?