Time Marches On...

Can you believe we are already at the end of March?

And conversely...

Can you believe it's only March?

Depends on if you are talking about your personal life or the slog through the current Trump presidency. But this is MY March recap so we're going with Holy Cow time flies!

It really does. And it drags. Both still are true. I cannot believe it was just the beginning of the month that we were in Hawaii. It seems like that was ages ago. But it happened, and so I'm going to look at my numbers with that week out of routine and with tasty treats in mind.

So reading...I was behind on my books last month and realized I set my goal higher than I intended so I lowered it and now I'm...well I'm even more behind. I was hoping to catch up on vacation but I brought a long fiction book and a nonfiction book (which are always slower reads for me) and so that did not happen. I'm also realizing that I just read slower than I used to. Part of it (as I mentioned last month) is the difficulty in focusing on anything as the horrors they persist, but I think part is that I just read slower now. And the fact that I'm doing more nonfiction, and like MEATY nonfiction isn't helping. Maybe over the summer I'll ditch my learn something deep nonfiction for let's read a celebrity memoir nonfiction and see if I catch up. If not then I'll just realize that my goal numbers need to be lowered because I'm just slow.

Otherwise...I read four books this month. Two nonfiction, two fiction, one owned. So still on track there. The nonfiction were The Separation of Church and Hate, it was good, not great, but good. I'd recommend Jesus and John Wayne over it as a book in the same "How did we get here?" vein. I also read Selfie: How the West became Self-Obsessed. I was listening to Radio Lab and they were talking to the author of that one and I thought to myself, "This sounds really interesting. I can't believe I've not read it yet." Then took a second and checked my library and yeah...I owned it. So bonus. It was not the book I thought it was going to be, but it was interesting (and infuriating at times) anyway. If you want to know how (Ayn) Randian philosophy took over the US Government read it. If you want to be blissfully ignorant on how incredibly self centered those in our halls of power really are, then skip it. I'm going to say that book paired with the other one did not make for a really uplifting nonfiction month.

Now, after all of that rationalizing about being behind I might actually catch up in April. I've got three graphic novels waiting and a book coming from an author I usually read in a day so I might actually make a dent after I finish the books I've got going right now. Though the nonfiction is an Ibram X. Kendi book so it will take a bit of time. He's so good, but really slow reading for me as the ideas he hits you with are dense and thick.

Writing: After this blog I will have written 18 blogs this month, plus two more sections to Dana. I wrote three fiction pieces for the blog so with the work ahead last month I'm still on track for that. Even with being gone a week, I wrote more days that I didn't this month so I'm thrilled with that.

Workouts/Weight: My official weigh/measure day for February was the Friday before we left for Hawaii and my official weigh/measure day for March was this past Friday and my weight on those days was exactly the same. So a week off for vacation (and the food, glorious food) and then about a week off/light workouts from being sick and ended up where I started more or less. The less being I lost a bit of muscle. Our scale is very fancy and breaks down your weight like that. But I will still take it as a win for the month because I didn't end up with a lot of weight gain and only a small bit of muscle loss.

Which leads into April. Anyone who knows me knows that as soon as I wrote about the whole workout system I was thinking about buying it was as good as bought. If for nothing else than to quit obsessing about it. But I did do what I consider pretty solid due diligence around it. I read a ton of reviews and I also did one of their no equipment workouts off of YouTube to see if it was any good. That workout led to some solidly sore muscles so I decided to give it a try. The whole thing was delivered over the weekend so I started on Monday.

Which is perfect.

I have my baseline March readings and now I can see what happens in April doing the new system with a little cardio added in. My guess is that I will need to add in more weights in May, but we will see. And that would be fine. I just need something to break up the boredom and more tools in the box is perfect. So far the first two workouts (Learning how to use all of the equipment this month) have been challenging. Part of it is the new equipment, part of it is that it's a lot of standing balance work while doing everything else. I wanted to work on balance more and this is definitely doing that!

Language/Masterclass: Still going. Finished the one on Sleep that I started in March and then the LeVar Burton one. Very enjoyable. Not sure which one I'll pick up next. Still perusing my choices. I have two more LeVar Burton ones so no hurry just yet. The bossy Owl continues to boss me around and I continue to do those lessons with no expectation of being fluent. Especially as we do all of the verbs. Ugh.

So on we go to April. I'll keep plugging along on my little benchmarks. I'll work on the garden. I'll take a deep breath when all of the college winter sports are done and it's just soccer for a few weeks. I'll keep trying to catch up on my reading. I'll keep an eye on what is happening in our government while trying not to drown in despair over it all.

Take care of yourself.
Set some goals you can reach and give yourself a gold star or two.
Eat some wonderful food.
Move your body in fun ways.
And as always...

Fuck ICE

And remember that I love you.