Daily Prompt – Cause, Meet Effect

You can singlehandedly create a causal relation between two things that are currently unconnected — a word and an emotion, a song and an extreme weather event, wearing a certain color and winning the lottery. What cause would you link to what effect, and why?

Let’s create a connection between exercise and cake. Yes, cake. And when I say connection, I mean a positive connection, rather than a negative one.

Daily Prompt – To Do? Done!

Quickly list five things you’d like to change in your life. Now, write a post about a day in your life once all five have been crossed off your to-do list.

1. Sleep More.

2. Exercise More.

3. Write a novel.

4. Create a better connection with my family

5. Finish all my video games

It’s been a terrible couple of days, truly. It really does feel like such a burden having to get out of bed at 11am, after thirteen hours sleep, only to go to the gym and see that it’s empty. Y’know, that really is one of the things I love about mid-morning workouts, not having to WAIT for any of the machines.

On my way home from the gym I called my mum, and she’s well. Enjoying her part-time job and semi-retirement. Doesn’t really know what she’s going to do with herself though. I’ve suggested that she should look into revisiting her plans for writing her book. She started it, and I reckon she should finish it. It’s been a couple of years, she could look at it with fresh eyes and completely change everything, or change nothing. Just write something! Then I called my brother, and we have decided to surprise mum in a couple of months time. I’m going to be in Brisbane for a few days, and he and mum are going to plan a lunch, and I’m just going to turn up ‘out of the blue’. I’m looking forward to it. We haven’t been together for quite some time.

But I’ll also be using it as a celebration. Today I’m going home to write the final chapter of my novel. It’s only taken two years, but I’ve chipped away at it bit, by bit, and now, BOOM, I have a novel. I kind of need Mum and my brother to read it, because they’re mentioned in it, but it’s nothing that isn’t particularly true. I’m kind of anxious about finishing it, because it’s taken so long, and I actually didn’t think that I’d ever finish it, but I’m going to. When I get home, I’m turning off the phone, turning on the music, locking the door, and enjoying some writing time and some sunshine and some fresh Spring air floating through the windows.

I’m excited. And nervous.

I may also have a cake waiting for me – it’s my incentive for finishing it. Just me, a fork, and a cake. I’m not planning a party or anything fancy, I’d rather just quietly celebrate on my own. Well, technically, the celebration will be after the bath. The bath will be a long, long soak in the tub, then I’m going to give myself a mani / pedi, a face mask, a hair mask and smother myself in moisturiser, then kick back on the couch, with my cake, a steaming pot of tea and my PlayStation game. In the spirit of completion, I’m almost ready to finish this one as well. I’m at 88%, and I’m determined to finish this one as well, so I can add that to the list… and who knows, that might require another cake as well.

And then once it’s all done… I’ve got a date with the ocean!!

…in HAWAII!!

 

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Jan 13: Strength

Eleanor Roosevelt said: “A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.” Tell us about a time you felt your strength.

I remember when I was in my early twenties. I was still in a period of recovery from a spinal injury, and I had moved house, and I’d finally plucked up the courage to look at joining a gym.

There was a gym down the road from where I lived, and up until that moment in time, all I’d ever done was dance. But now that I couldn’t go back to dancing just yet, I had to begin a very long and slow process of rehab and strength training in order to get my body properly functioning again.

That process was initially quite painful and frustrating. Frustrating because I ended up going through three different trainers before I found one that would actually cater a program to what I wanted to do and what I could actually do. The others just had a set basic program that they gave to everybody, but because I had so many physical limitations due to my spinal injury, I was very limited in what I could and couldn’t do.

This particular trainer came along and was very thorough in her assessment and her program – she took things slow and gently pushed my limits, and over a couple of months, my progress became quite noticeable and I was quite surprised at what I was able to do.

Just as I was beginning to make real progress, my trainer left, and none of those other wankers stood up the standard that she had set… they just seemed so…. dumb.

They all offered the same generic information, but then I soon realised that they all had completely different opinions about what I should be doing / eating etc. In the end, I just threw my hands up and thought ‘fuck this, it’s too difficult’ and just continued to do what I’d been previously doing, and every now and then increasing the reps before I started feeling too comfortable. I still took my time, and used the mirrors to make sure that my technique was always right, but for me, just being in the weights area was always so intimidating, because everybody else there was already so fit and muscly and ripped, and I was just a skinny little weakling by comparison.

I hated going to the gym, but it was something that I had to do in order for me to recover and get better if I wanted to have any possibility to get back into dancing.

Until the day I joined this gym, I had never done any weight training whatsoever. I’d never even set foot inside a gym, or lifted weights. I felt so completely out of place. Then all of a sudden, I find myself doing leg presses and I’m pressing 90kgs. That was heavier than I was. I couldn’t believe it.

I also struggled to walk for a couple of days afterwards.

Achieving something like that was incredible. I was so impressed with myself, and I realised that, you know what, I actually can do this ‘working out’ thing – I can feel the changes in my body, and I can see those changes as well. I felt great.

 

Jan 2: Pressure = Obligation

What are you currently feeling pressure to do that you don’t particularly enjoy?

Well, I’m currently on holidays, so I’m not actually feeling much pressure to do anything. I really want to get my lazy arse up to date with all my blog posts – and I must say, yesterday I managed to smash out a whopping 16 blog posts one after the other… That was something that I felt a lot of pressure to achieve, and I really wanted to have it all done before New Years, but I just didn’t get a chance to do so.

But now that I’m home alone (Hulk is back @ work), it’s now 12:10pm, I’m still in my PJ’s on the couch with my laptop, listening to some music by Medina (Check her out on iTunes, she’s got a few really catchy tracks!)

One thing I’m feeling pressure to do is to be more social. It started with New Years Eve. I had no intentions of going out whatsoever because I couldn’t stand the thought of being squished into a nightclub, sweating my hole out, surrounded by stinky drunk disgusting gays and the aroma of smoke, alcohol and b.o. NO THANK YOU.

However, Hulk had made the decision that we were going out much to my dislike. The reality was that it wasn’t as packed as I had anticipated, which was good, and we were out with some great people, which made the night much more bearable. So I ended up enjoying myself…

My problem is that, generally I just don’t like people that much. There’s only a select few of people that I know that I could quite happily spend hours with, without wanting to slowly bleach my retinas, or gouge my eyes out with a piece of rusty tin.

But that’s just a constant in my life. I dislike people in general, which is kinda bad, because it just makes me want to interact with people less and less. I really should change that.

However, given that I’m now getting over the festive season, I do have one underlying pressure I’m placing on myself… to lose weight. Ugh.

Seeing as how for the last two weeks of the year, all I’d done is eat myself stupid… the pinnacle being Christmas Day / Boxing Day, as well as far too much chocolate, I have now got a healthy bouncy little food baby… and I’d like to get rid of it.

However, in order to do so, it means I have to do excercise… but the type of exercise that I absolutely loathe… weights. And I don’t lift weights. I can’t think of anything more boring… and I feel so incredibly self conscious about doing weights in a gym, so the whole thing becomes a complete nightmare.

See… this is what I basically anticipate happening. I know that it won’t because I physically wouldn’t be able to lift anything more than my 5kg baby weights… but it’s the only image I get in my head. That, and the constant intimidation of being surrounded by all these fit muscly guys all watching me and judging me. Fuck that. It stresses me out too much… and how do I deal with stress?? Eat. And what do I have a table full of, waiting to be eaten? Chocolates. And thus, the vicious cycle begins.

I recently stepped out of my comfort zone to try a fitness class I’ve never done before, and it nearly bloody killed me… and I was sore for days afterwards. If anything, I might do that again… start off with something achievable…