In addition to better tracking and discussing my running, one of my reasons for starting this blog was to better...take control of my life, for lack of better words. Which is not to say that life isn't awesome! I really truly look around and realize how lucky and amazing things are right now. And for once in my life, I'm really feeling like I have enough free time to do all the things I want to do, but I don't feel like I'm using my time well. I end up watching mindless TV or, more frequently, surfing blogs and not realizing that a good 90 minutes has passed me by and it is time for bed. Frustrating! So, I want to take control of my leisure time.
...By first taking control of my work life! Totally logical, right? For me, it is though. I know that currently I am not giving 100% at work by a longshot. I get my work done, and people seem reasonably pleased enough. But I never feel like I really hit a project out of the park, and more often than not, I'm scrambling to do things at the last minute. I'm never finding that oh-so-desirable flow in my work and often just feel like I'm waiting for the clock to tick to a reasonable leave time.
[For what it's worth, I know some of this is a symptom of just not totally loving the work/tasks I have to do. But a) that's life, and sometimes that happens, and I need to deal with it better, and b) I'm hoping to go back to school next year in order to become better equipped to do more interesting work! Also, I really do enjoy where I'm working and want to stay there/grow there for a long time--I just need to get that advanced degree + promotion to get to some of the more interesting work that we have!]
Lacking focus at work and constantly procrastinating the big things I have to do is ultimately causing me major amounts of stress/anxiety, which creeps into my non-work time and psyche as well. I leave work feeling like I should keep working at home, or at the very least check my email a couple of times at night so that I can appear "engaged" (because if you know you aren't acting engaged, then maintaining the appearance of being engaged seems super important). I feel embarrassed when I think about the fact that I'm not working to my full potential, and that sinks into my self-esteem, which seems to affect EVERYTHING. Soooo. I need to get refocused at work!
And that's where Gretchen Rubin's inimitable Happiness Project comes in. I'm going to start doing a theme per month, much like she did in her first book. More on other themes and ultimate goals for the project in another post, but for now, here's my "resolution chart" for this month:
I'll be using this to track my progress daily on the theme for the week. If you are unfamiliar with the Happiness Project (if so, read the book!!), the idea is that you introduce one goal related to an overall theme per week. Each week you track yourself on the new goal, and any of the previous goals. Hopefully by the end of the month you've made them habits! I've included two sub-goals for each overarching weekly goal since they seemed to match together nicely. More on the goals for this week and progress later this week!
Workout
Ran 4 miles after work. It was another new route near my office, and it had the same issues as the one last week--too many turns, too hard to find my groove. There wasn't a clear way to get to the planned 4 miles I had, so I had to keep doubling back or looping up to try to add mileage, which is the WORST. I feel like a hamster. I just prefer having long stretches on my routes to really get my legs moving!
Add to that the fact that the satellites were possibly wonking out due to the turns, rain, or the fact that a lot of the route wasn't on real roads/was in a wooded area. Either that or I was running slower than I ever have. Considering the fact that my level of effort felt like my regular pace, if not a little faster, then I have to believe something was getting screwed up with the distance measurement, not that I was running 13+ min/miles. But I'll just call it 4 miles, I suppose.
Food
We went out to lunch today for a project celebration to an Indian buffet, which was DELICIOUS. No pictures though. Tonight was a standard post-run meal. Some combination of leftovers + a veggie side.
Here we have leftover pizza from last night (which I accidentally microwaved for too long) plus a salad on the side. The salad was delicious, featuring leftover items from the family event--blue cheese, figs, and blackberries. Tasty! Although this wasn't super filling, so I just had a slice of leftover peanut butter pie. Way more tasty.
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