Revisiting the reading list

Posted on July 23, 2010 by Cyndilou

I am about halfway through the Lifetime Reading Challenge that a friend of mine convinced me to take part in, starting back in February. As I read my way through my library again, I came to the realization that this is in some ways a short-sighted challenge. Yes, you revisit your personal history, but many things that feed into your personal history didn’t necessarily happen during your lifetime.

A friend and I had a conversation about church history this evening, and it reminded me of a section of books in my library that I do not read as often as I should. Works by C.S. Lewis and Martin Luther sit here, accompanied by more modern works of authors such as Lee Stroebel and Max Lucado. Books about church history and present – and written lectures, in effect, of why I believe many of the things I do. It is hard to know where to start diving back in to such a treasure trove of Christian works – I think I will begin with a chapter from Martin Luther’s collected works and move on from there.

Yes, God does move in mysterious ways. Sometimes that’s kind of cool.

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Clearing the mind

Posted on July 17, 2010 by Cyndilou

The first rule of managing stress is to get enough sleep. Yeah. In the last few weeks that’s been a hit or miss proposition for me, for various reasons. Sometimes it is me, messing around on the computer until far too late, and sometimes it is just the inability of my brain to stop moving.

Yet again this morning I found myself up much earlier than planned, so I went for a walk. Only three miles this morning, but it was time well spent on contemplation – of life, the universe, and everything. (42!) There is an admonition to “Let go, let God.” For most of us, this is not an easy thing. We like to be in control of our own lives, and when things happen to upset the delicate balance of that control we react by ignoring, denying, compensating, collapsing, or many other things except addressing what it is that makes us feel out of control. And we don’t let God in enough to show us what His plan is for us.

My walk didn’t solve world hunger, but with a little prayer and meditation it helped to quiet the hunger of my soul.

Next order of business: make a walking soundtrack that isn’t just a random selection of MP3s — having Shine (Newsboys) followed up with Born to Be Blue (Judds) doesn’t do a lot for your state of mind. :D

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Following Eleanor’s advice

Posted on July 13, 2010 by Cyndilou

Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.”

Today, my scary thing is getting back on the roller skates. I have fallen twice in my life hard enough to injure myself (cracked coccyx, yay!) – both times on skates. This evening I’m getting back on the horse that threw me. Additional reports will be forthcoming, and if I am extremely unlucky, pics. :D

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Mixing it up

Posted on July 11, 2010 by Cyndilou

Hm, so once again it has been an extended period of time since I’ve updated the blog. I suppose it is unsurprising that in eight years since starting my journaling online, I’d hit a few slow spots. Yes, the last week of June marked my blog’s eighth anniversary. I can hardly believe it has been so long!

Back in May I posted about starting the couch-to-5K program. Yeah…that hasn’t gone so well. I’ve kept up my walking, but between being busy at work and having quite a few bad excuses not to go running (although I’m counting the humidity and heat as a combined GOOD excuse!) I haven’t met my goals there. I’ve never been a runner, and I think I’m just mentally blocking myself from wanting to do it. Well, truthfully everything you don’t want to do is just a mental block, no?

So…here I am again to stir the pot, mix it up, shake the tree. Quite a lot of my discontent comes from being complacent in life – not challenging myself, but taking life as it comes. While being spontaneous is great, I think I was coasting – and now it is time to hit that accelerator.

A couple weeks ago I mentioned a goal of being able to ride several miles on the bike by the end of the year. To further that goal, I’ve been out a couple times on my new bike – and realized that I have another block. It scares me to death to think that I might fall and hurt myself – I suppose cracking my tailbone twice while skating (once ice, once roller) might have something to do with that. So far I’ve managed to get a little bit of distance in but I am nervous as all get out – clutching the handlebars for dear life. For working up to distance, I think I’ll be riding more on the stationary bike in the gym. Besides, it’s blinking HOT outside these days.

To overcome the fear of falling, a fear that I don’t recall harboring as a young person, I think I am going to have to strap on the skates once again. Tuesday nights are adult skate at a local rink – so this Tuesday I am going to head on over there and confront my personal demons.

God has placed a few road signs in my life lately. He has been reminding me that no matter what, I am His and He has plans for me. Sometimes I tend to forget this, and tread my own path – seeking personal change without involving prayer and contemplation. There are some things I want to do that involve quite a large leap of faith – and whether or not I pursue any of those plans, I’m going to listen harder for God’s voice in my life. Sola Dei Gloria!

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Learning things

Posted on May 15, 2010 by Cyndilou

Today I decided to try out the Couch-to-5K program as started by Cool Running. Certain truths made themselves very self-evident within the first few minutes.

  • Never, EVER, forget your water bottle. Especially in Texas at mid-day at the beginning of summer (Spring? What Spring?). Thankfully half-way along my route is a convenience store and I did not forget to bring ID and debit card.
  • Proper footgear is important. Yes, I already knew this one — but apparently the shoes that serve me perfectly well at a brisk walk are total poo when I try to jog.
  • Your form probably sucks. Get over it. I haven’t run — I mean really run, not just a sprint after a kid here or mad dash out of the rain there — since I was in middle school. I feel like I run in very bad form, lumbering along like a hulking beast. Then I see other people along the path — and guess what? We all run like crap. Even some of the really fit ones look like they are doing damage to themselves the way they place their feet and hips. Occasionally I see someone look graceful running around my neighborhood, but they are the exception rather than the rule.
  • Which brings me to…if you’re already sore, perhaps you should start a new workout at a slightly softer pace. I hesitate with this one, because it is the story of my life the past few years. A back injury caused my physical activity to drop to almost nil several years back, and getting the problem diagnosed and rectified has helped, but I still have a lot of weight to remove. It is easy to say that a workout is too hard because I am just a little sore from the last one (and thus perpetuate the cycle), but at the same time I have to balance the work so as not to truly damage myself again. A week worth of rehearsals has started a few spasms in my lower back again, although I can honestly say I was not stretching out my muscles enough to cover the extra work my back was doing this week; perhaps a jogging routine was not the wisest course of action. Granted, due to my shoes, I was only really able to jog the first couple of intervals – the others were more just upping the speed of walking.

I know I can walk a 5K – heck, I can walk several times that distance. This time I truly want to see if I can work myself up to running. As I noted before, I’ve never really been a runner. The middle school cutoff is not arbitrary: it is when I started to develop curves – ones for which I’ve yet to find proper support garments, despite the many brands I’ve tried. We’ve got the technology people; surely there exists a good exercise bra that I can get into without dislocating my shoulders, one that actually performs as advertised! One of my favorites pre-injury actually had so tight a band that I physically was unable to wriggle into it post-injury. Now that a few years (and a lot of rehabilitation) have passed, I might try the brand again, but I really wish there were better solutions out there.

All in all, I finished the workout about 5 minutes after the podcast I am using ended. I didn’t track the exact distance I covered, but the next time I will – I’m curious as to my speed over distance using the intervals. It’s a Christian Indie podcast, and it was nice to hear some bands with which I’m not (or less) familiar. If I can keep to the schedule, I should do another walk/run on Tuesday or Wednesday. That may depend more on whether I can find shoes that work well for me – otherwise I’ll keep to my walking for now, but it’s a start!

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I ATE’NT DEAD

Posted on April 20, 2010 by Cyndilou

With apologies to Granny Weatherwax, naturally.

Once again life has gotten ahead of me, and I find myself unable to use the technology at hand to keep a regular posting schedule up. Funny, that – since before I owned a smartphone I was able to post just fine. Now it’s all tweets and FB entries. :D

Even though my schedule is only slightly short of insane, I wouldn’t give up the absolutely fabulous rehearsals I have with the choruses in which I perform. Tonight’s rehearsal was a particularly rousing Thing of Wonder – from swahili praise songs I haven’t sung much since college to show tunes to sacred music that would move mountains, and back down to a somber note at the end in Cantos Sagrados – I couldn’t stop moving with the beat, feeling the pulse… I’m still dancing around, unable to get my fingers to still enough to tell the story effectively.

In short, I am THANKFUL for the opportunities I get to truly experience all these wonderful works – not as a bystander, but as a fully involved piece of the music itself. Two straight nights of exhausting but ecstatic rehearsals, which are but a small portion of the work we do for the concerts we’ll perform. The performances themselves will be nothing short of euphoric. God has truly blessed my life.

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Re-emerging

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Cyndilou

I never made my update at the beginning of the month with my goal updates. Life has been a little crazy lately.

Crazily enough, I traveled this week for work and then flew back to Austin on a plane with a bunch of people coming in for SXSW. So far I’ve had a blast with it, and I hope all of our visitors have, too!

Back to the goals – February was a plateau month, weightwise. That’s a little disappointing, as I didn’t make my planned 5lb loss, but I at least got a lot of workouts in, so hopefully March will be better. Of course, for the next few days I’ll be walking a LOT, but there will also be copious free drinks available, so we’ll just have to see.

On the book reading front, I’ve read a few more for my Goodreads challenge, although only one or two more thst I’d never read before. Without being able to check for certain, I think that brings my total up to 6 of 10.

Now I am off for more SXSW shenanigans, so perhaps sometime this week I’ll have time to update more.

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Inspiration, Perspiration, Destination

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Cyndilou

When I got home from work today, I decided to go walk the neighborhood – something I haven’t done in a while. It’s sadly true that I can definitely make myself walk further when walking outside than when on the treadmill or elliptical. Something about the timer on the machine makes me feel like I’ve worked harder in a shorter time, whether or not it is true.

At any rate, today I decided to walk the back way: the way I usually drive to work. I knew where I was going to turn around and come back, and I sort of knew how the cross-streets connected…so I set out. Aside from the fact that the back road has no sidewalk and therefore is not a route I’ll be taking often, it added a good distance to the walk. After about a mile, I took stock of the distance I had come and realized that the total distance I was planning on walking would be about the same distance as a walk to work. Suddenly, it hit me — I could totally manage a walk to work! Perhaps I’d challenge myself and walk to work on Fridays.

Yeah. Then reality hit. Three-quarters of the way through the walk, I realized how winded and sweaty I was — not terribly on the latter, as it is pretty cool outside, but it was not a small amount of energy I was putting out. My overall walk today was about four miles – and it is about six miles to walk to where I work. In other words, it’s do-able if I absolutely need to do it, but it’s not something I will do every day, or even once a week. Perhaps if I had a gym membership at work so I could take a shower once I got there…. :D

One thing that did come out of today’s walk – my determination to walk several miles a day is reborn. Last year I was making the effort to walk an average of 8000 steps a day. We have a 10000 steps challenge through our wellness program at work, and I had not rejoined it yet this calendar year. Perhaps it is time for me to sign up for that again, as I’ve noticed that lately I was averaging about 6000 steps a day. Today’s total so far: 12,149.

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17 Days One Winter

Posted on February 13, 2010 by Cyndilou

So, there’s a little thing known as the Winter Olympics happening starting this weekend. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. I continue to be in awe of the athletes who can compete at which levels that most lesser mortals despair.

In the spirit of these events, I’ve undertaken my own Olympic Challenge. Well…two, actually.

First, I am competing in the second Ravelympics. My prowess shall be unmatched in WIPSdancing and SweaterboardCross. Okay, perhaps not unmatched — as a matter of fact, I am pretty sure some of the other competitors will blow my efforts out of the water. The Ravelympics are not about competing against each other, however – they are about setting and obtaining a difficult goal for yourself.

The other challenge is one that won’t be completed in 17 days. For this one, I have a time limit of one year and one half – to read one book from every year that I have been alive. This means I have to come up with a list of books published from every year since the year of my birth. Re-reads are allowable, so long as you actually read the book. I have yet to make my list, but I’ve got ideas for a few of the years already. This challenge fits in nicely with my goal of reading at least 10 new books this year. I’ve already read four new ones, but those were all published long before I was born, so I need to get cracking on my list.

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A bit late, but not too bad

Posted on January 3, 2010 by Cyndilou

I had intended to post this on Friday — my list of goals for 2010. Once again, I refuse to call these ‘resolutions’, as some are long-term goals. Besides, you’re expected to break resolutions – that’s the nature of the beast. You might fail to reach a goal, but if you are at least working towards it you should see some progress.

So, here we go.

  • Lose 5 lbs a month. This is different from my past versions of this goal. Yes, I want to get back to my high school weight, or even my college weight – this is a restatement of that goal in a way that helps me keep it sane. I’ve been working out and walking, and working with my dr on this, and I think it is totally do-able.
  • Read at least 10 new books in 2010. I have a large collection of books, and quite a few that I haven’t cracked the cover on. In the past five years or so I’ve been bad about keeping up with my reading list, although I’ve still collected books here and there that I intended to get to. Time to stop reading the fluff in bed (or at least read new fluff :) – which tends to be my major time for reading.
  • Get more organized. There are still a few boxes around here with books needing shelves, plus items that don’t always find their home again at the end of the day. I’ve successfully kept my apt from being a disaster area this past year, now I need to step it up just a little more.

There, that’s pretty much it. I could wax eloquent about some other things I should or want to do, but keeping it simple is more realistic. Gone are the days when I thought I could change my habits by some simple resolutions in the first week of the year.

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