The document of compiled goals can be seen here. Feel free to add yourself if you have not yet done so. If you didn't participate in the past thread(s), that's okay too. You can also join in whenever you like, so go ahead.
Shoutouts, let me know if you wish to be added or removed: blackbootz ButterflyEffect byonic caeli Cedar coffeesp00ns Creativity Cumol doesntgolf elizabeth francopoli galen goobster jafle jleopold KARAMAZ0V kleinbl00 lil nowaypablo NSSTomato OftenBen psychoticmilkman Quatrarius thundara thenewgreen kingmudsy kantos
And thanks to rezzeJ for starting the whole mess!
May was a rollercoaster of suck. Never went to the gym, lost a buddy, hosted the parents and ate like crap to the point I gained all my weight back. Then work hit me. But my Uncle got his heart, I got to spend time with my mom and dad, and I got a clean house out of the deal. And I got elected to the board of directors of the astronomy club, so I have that new workload on my shoulders. Here is hoping June is better for all.
Yoga's going fantastic. I need it in order to feel 'normal' whatever 'normal' actually is for me. One day in the not unimaginable future, I might actually be able to meditate in full lotus position, how about that! Slipping up on some other stuff. Can't let that motivation turn into apathy and 'i'll get around to it eventually.' Including meditation. I seem to have lost the thread somehow, and I'm just not getting out of it what I used to. Back to focus on the breath I suppose. Back to basics. Now that summer is in full swing in Michigan I feel like I need to get outside more. Once or twice a week isn't cutting it. Considering I just got home from work and I'm not hungry yet, I'm going to take a walk/jog and try to enjoy the sunshine. Operative words being 'try' and 'enjoy.'
I've been considering yoga lately. As I run more often and longer my body is start to react less than great, and I think yoga might help with recovery and preventing some creakiness and pain? (Maybe WanderingEng can attest to something like this too?). Beyond meditation, do you find yoga helps you physically? Are you taking a guided class or doing it on your own?
I think yoga has helped me with the creakiness and pain. I do still have it, and other stuff like rest and not overdoing it is still really important for me. Even if it doesn't help or if it's a placebo, it certainly doesn't hurt. I've been using Yoga With Adriene on YouTube. While it's my only real exposure to yoga, I think she's brilliant. The 30 Days series is a great place to start.
That's a good one. I've used Yoga Practice Videos for a while now, and as long as you keep out of the woo-woo aspects, they have some really good routines.
So, most of the time my yoga isn't super meditative. I put a lot of focus into my breathing and getting a good stretch in. Once I get to the point where I'm not wheezing while holding a pose, then i'll think about meditation during the process because at the moment it's a purely physical effort. I do it all myself, I have a few routines that I do regularly that I found on youtube, and I try to do lotus flexibility exercises as close to daily as possible. I'm not opposed to doing a class, but I want to see what I can get done on my own first. I do know that yoga is so highly thought of medically that they have versions that are adapted for people in wheelchairs. I can definitely see why it would benefit any kind of endurance athlete. Some bodybuilder guys will say you shouldn't stretch too much before a hard, heavy weights workout because you don't want your joints as loose as they can be, but that hardly seems like a problem for cardio.
Jarring how many of my goals are externally driven ("mix two features" - the one that is in play isn't done, and the one that popped up last week isn't near ready for me to touch it) or no longer something I want to pursue. Having done four rounds of hot yoga I'm pretty much mad at yoga. Donating blood? I almost lit into the guy on the phone today. Give blood, and they'll call and remind you every six weeks. Give platelets? Which you have to set aside like four hours of your day? And chew Tums when your lips get numb? And squeeze when the thing beeps and unsqueeze when it beeps the other way? And answer 90 embarrassing and irrelevant questions ("No, Bloodworks, I still didn't receive a blood transfusion in Kenya between 1972 and 1987, thanks for asking again") every time? And get your blood pressure taken twice? And then feel like hammered shit for twelve hours after? Yeah. So platelets you can do every week. So they call you every week. And they ask if they can schedule you. For like tomorrow. And if you say yes, you go in, and you get the stinkeye from the lady because you just don't want to bring in her printed fucking barcode card because it disintegrates in your wallet and there you are, doing a good deed that is ruining your afternoon and wrecking your day and you're being castigated. And then they decide you're giving six units because fuck you, Charlie, and if you say your arm feels really, really bad they say "just hang on you're almost done" which means another 20 minutes. And if you made the mistake of under-hydrating you're going to be light-headed and headachey for 48 hours and utterly incapable of following the plot twists on The Price Is Right. And if you made the mistake of over-hydrating you're going to need to pee like a racehorse because they set your ass for 116 minutes, fucker. And then you get a cookie. And then, when they call two weeks later and say they want to schedule you, you say "didn't I just, like do that?" And they say "it's been over 11 days, Mr. bl00," like you're the asshole. And then you read that a burn victim likely needs 100 units of platelets for her grafts and here you are, pissed off at your involvement and you've only given eighteen, fucker, you aren't even a fifth of the way to a burn victim. And everyone around you, except for the phlebotomists, is a volunteer. And you know what? You've been the only person in there. For four fucking hours. So clearly they need you. But sweet holy jesus you think they'd figure out some way to show it. So anyway. I'm thinking of "retiring" some of my goals. Because I feel bad for resenting being tortured so I don't want to think about it. And all that sure doesn't make me feel like programming an Android app.
Funny story about blood. I have a moderately rare blood type. I went in while in my 20's to do a good thing and donate. So, they sit me down and ask me the 1000 questions. Then They go down the childhood diseases list. "Oh, yea I had XX when I was about 10." XX was so bad at one point I was on a lot of medication, some of it was just out of experimental; my name is in a medical research thesis somewhere out there. Oh, we got to test for that. They ran blood in a machine and then dipped a strip into the non-plasma part of the blood via. The strip turned purple. The nurse went, very close to "well shit son, never give blood. Ever." Thanked everyone and walked out with the buddies I took to the Red Cross. Three weeks later I get a phone call. Explain the situation to the lady on the phone, all is good. Three weeks later, another call. Two weeks later, more calls. Finally I have to call the blood center to either take my fucking blood or stop calling. The calls stopped for about a year, then we went through the whole thing again. I had calls until I changed phone numbers 5 years later. It's nearly 30ish years later, and now that I am thinking about getting tested again and signing up for the full organ donor and bone marrow donor lists, but man, the ghouls are aggressive.
Me and pretty much every gloom'n'doom trader not in New York. It's funny watching the spin - apparently last week the Dow had its "first 4-month winning streak since 2014." Which, really, means that the number at the end of four months was more than the number at the beginning of four months. Which illustrates how rarely that's happening anymore.
francopoli, I wish to be added to the shout out for next month. Thank you in advance!
Dancing: Went to a Noisia concert last week and re-injured my knee and could barely hear for a day. Worth it, but need to work on getting the pluses without the minuses for next time. Climbing: Pretty consistent at this point, may learn to lead this summer. Thesis Proposal: Rounded up my committee this week. Debating putting one extra heavy-hitting name on the list, but otherwise I have a pretty solid team. One good cop, one bad cop, and one new hire whose position on the lawful good to chaotic evil matrix is TBD.
Some of my goals and priorities are changing, I'll have to make some edits soon to reflect that. At the same time, it doesn't feel like much has changed in my life as of late. Thinking I'll have to try out bhrgunatha's advice.
It's interesting to see the up and down of all of my things. I can see I only have so many fucks, and when I focus too much on one thing, all the other things fall to the wayside.
Sounds like you're piling too much on your plate. I'm sure I've written about this before but I can't find it. What I did find though is that hubski likes the physical object compass and the philosophical object moral compass. But I digress. There are infinite shiny things to grab your attention. Whether they're physical objects, like a new car, an Apple watch (ha - only kidding), physical accomplishments like getting healthy, losing weight or waking up early, or mental accomplishments, like learning a new language. musical instrument, writing a book, being content or happy. They never end and so obviously you need to choose which to pursue. But how to choose? Compass > Clock There isn't enough time to accomplish everything. The only alternative is to cut down the number of your goals and to focus on only those goals which are the most important to you. The two tricks here are to choose your goals wisely and relentlessly, incessantly stop paying attention to the endless other goals your mind will bring up. Everyone has different ideas about what's important. You need to sit down quietly with yourself and ask yourself what's really, seriously important to you. This is extremely hard. You'll no doubt need some techniques to help you with this. Here are a couple for starters, but look for others along the way, try them out and see if they're useful. Technique 1: Take some time (15-30 minutes) to think and write down anything resembling a medium or long term goal or ambition for you. Cross out all but four +/- 1. What's left are your cardinal compass points that you use to guide you through life. This can be difficult, but if you are finding it difficult to decide what to cut and what to keep, you should look to your intuition or your subconscious. For example if you find it difficult to choose between 2 things, toss a coin. If it's literally impossible to choose between 2 things then a coin toss is as good a way as any. But pay very careful attention to your feelings when you get the result. If your immediate reaction is negative it's really highlighting your attachment to the other choice. In other words, you've just uncovered your hidden desire. Go with that, because deep down that's what's more important to you. Technique 2: Close your eyes and imagine what your own funeral will be like. Imagine it in as much detail as you can - where is it - what can you see near you, medium distance and far away. What can you hear in the foreground... in the background. What can you smell, who is there, what are they wearing? Make it as real as possible. Most importantly, what are people saying about you and your life? It's probably going to be painful because apart from a few egomaniacs you will probably imagine plenty of negative things. Never mind, embrace that mental pain because that it's telling you where your life is drifting away from where you really want it to be. Now choose four +/- 1 things you would want people to say about you? You need to do lots of things to survive and thrive and they can't be ignored, but when you aim for something new, just make sure they align with your compass and don't lead you elsewhere. Every single day, you need to re-focus your mental attention away from whatever leads you astray, in particular when it's another interesting looking goal. That's not to say you can't have quests and adventures along the way, that's the whole purpose of life. Just make sure they align with your compass. Your mind will throw plenty of shiny, new goals at you. They're all excess mental baggage. You'll need to do this continually. There is an uncomfortable truth that whatever you pay attention to, grows. Positive or negative, when you feed it attention, it gets stronger and greater. Pay attention to something else. This is another incredibly difficult task. With practise it gets easier though. The human mind is complex and changeable - what seems important one day is less important the next, what to speak of months and years later. You can and should repeat this type of exercise and re-calibrate from time to time, for example every year or two, but the idea is to try and find anchor points that don't change very much and use that to help you steer your way through life.
thanks for your thoughts. A lot of this is also coming from a reoccurrence of Depression /dysphoria so I'm trying to pay better attention to my mental health.
I have a limited amount of fucks to give as well so I tend to pick my top 3 things to focus on. Three is a good number, it's not to high that you feel overwhelmed but it's not to low so you don't feel like you aren't doing enough. Also I have an app that tells me when to do everything because I'm so incredibly bad at routine and self discipline that I need my phone to nag me. The way I see it, the robot overloads have already taken over.