Diet: fruit, vegetables, moderate sugar
Exercise: walking, swimming, chi kung breathing
Sleep: a bit late to bed, but good hours
Mindfulness: meditation, breathing
Spirit: meditation, breathing, walking in nature, sunshine, games, movies, friends, corresponding with family
One of the disadvantages--such as it is--to staying in a place where plants bloom in February is that some of these plants cause my immune system to go into complete fits. I think we're just coming up on poplar fluff season, which means the poplar trees are currently spraying their gametes over everything around them. So I suddenly find myself at the height of allergy season.
Fortunately I've been dosing myself with antihistamines which takes the edge off. Also, the frequent rains here do help keep the air clean on a regular basis.
Mark, Karen, and I watched the original Star Wars last night. It was interesting to compare and contrast to the new movie. In particular, I can see that the new movie copies the original even more than I thought, including the same arm on C3P0 being damaged. I wonder how the two movies compare on a beat-to-beat level--do they match timing as well as content?
I'm not sure this changes my opinion of the new movie, exactly. Sure, I'm less impressed with the new movie now, but the viewing strangely brought the original down a little as well. Something felt less magical about it than the last time I watched it. Sure, it is still a great, fun adventure flick, but it no longer makes me want to write "jedi" in response to my religion on a census form. Then again, it was always Empire that really brought the force to life, so we'll see what happens when we revisit that one.
I should probably write up a review of the new movie now that I've had a chance to meditate on it a little.
Thursday, 25 February 2016
Monday, 22 February 2016
Check-In: 2016-02-22 (Monday)
Diet: fruit, vegetables, moderate sugar, moderate wheat
Exercise: walking, swimming, light yoga
Sleep: late to bed but well rested
Mindfulness: light yoga
Spirit: walking in nature, dog, friends, corresponding with family, old Star Trek, Star Wars, imagination, ASMR, digging a hole, contemplating the future
Looks like a bit list under Spirit lately. Maybe I'll dig into that since the other categories are maintaining the fairly consistent refrain of the past year.
So first up is dog. Dog--in this case, one named Luna--is an interesting experience because she is such an emotion mirror. She tends to reflect back at you what you are feeling, though she does have her own feelings occasionally of course. But it is easy to get her to go on a walk with you if you can express your own excitement at the idea, getting her all excited too. It is also very easy to calm her if you project your own calm. It's interesting to have this constant emotional reflection.
Karen and I are still making our way through season 1 of the old Star Trek shows, with Mark swinging by occasionally for his favourite bits (he has seen them all so many times he doesn't need to watch the whole show). I'm listing this mainly for its entertainment value, and for the fact that I have seen many of them, but so long ago I only remember fragments. We just watched the first appearance of Khan, so now I'm interested in following up with Wrath of Khan. Probably after the end of the original series.
We also saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens for a second time on Friday. It is a flawed show, and there is a split in the house as to whether or not these flaws are forgiveable or not, with me and Karen in the forgiveness camp and Mark and Karen's son, Brendan, being less forgiving. The show is, as Mark put it, just a game of moving some archetypes around, and I think he is right. It is not original in terms of its plot line. But I find that the plot is well executed at least, and I really enjoy the texture of the archetypes, if that makes sense. I like the way the archetypes are expressed, and I find that expression emotionally effective.
Regardless, my interest in the Star Wars franchise has been rekindled after being turned off for many years by prequel garbage. I am now daydreaming about lightsabers again, and this has generally led to a desire to do imaginative and creative things. Which is why I have decided to walk to a coffee shop where I can do a little bit of blogging and email clean-up in the interest of getting back into the writing role, even just as a hobby for a bit.
The phrase "digging a hole" is code for "playing Minecraft", a game in which a lot of time is spent punching trees to turn them into wood, using the wood to build picks, using picks to mine rocks and gold and diamonds, and all of the above to build a giant LEGOlian monstrosity. I'm current constructing a giant marble tower with an enchanting table at the top for making magic tools. It's pure entertainment, but does provide some creative outlet as well. I just need to make sure I don't disappear down the hole I've been digging there.
As for the future, I'm currently researching degree possibilities. I know I contemplated kinesiology last year, but my experiment with learning anatomy didn't go well, my interest instead being captured by tornadoes, meteorology, chaos theory, economics, French, artificial intelligence, and futurism in general. I'm beginning to think that I am more academic than I previously thought, and might enjoy a more academic career. To that end, I'm researching a little bit about Masters degrees. Though my list of mad schemes does still include the possibility of teaching Yoga in Edmonton for a bit--and these may not be contradictory schemes.
More on that later. For now, I need to go tidy my inbox and learn a little more about how Masters degrees even work.
Exercise: walking, swimming, light yoga
Sleep: late to bed but well rested
Mindfulness: light yoga
Spirit: walking in nature, dog, friends, corresponding with family, old Star Trek, Star Wars, imagination, ASMR, digging a hole, contemplating the future
Looks like a bit list under Spirit lately. Maybe I'll dig into that since the other categories are maintaining the fairly consistent refrain of the past year.
So first up is dog. Dog--in this case, one named Luna--is an interesting experience because she is such an emotion mirror. She tends to reflect back at you what you are feeling, though she does have her own feelings occasionally of course. But it is easy to get her to go on a walk with you if you can express your own excitement at the idea, getting her all excited too. It is also very easy to calm her if you project your own calm. It's interesting to have this constant emotional reflection.
Karen and I are still making our way through season 1 of the old Star Trek shows, with Mark swinging by occasionally for his favourite bits (he has seen them all so many times he doesn't need to watch the whole show). I'm listing this mainly for its entertainment value, and for the fact that I have seen many of them, but so long ago I only remember fragments. We just watched the first appearance of Khan, so now I'm interested in following up with Wrath of Khan. Probably after the end of the original series.
We also saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens for a second time on Friday. It is a flawed show, and there is a split in the house as to whether or not these flaws are forgiveable or not, with me and Karen in the forgiveness camp and Mark and Karen's son, Brendan, being less forgiving. The show is, as Mark put it, just a game of moving some archetypes around, and I think he is right. It is not original in terms of its plot line. But I find that the plot is well executed at least, and I really enjoy the texture of the archetypes, if that makes sense. I like the way the archetypes are expressed, and I find that expression emotionally effective.
Regardless, my interest in the Star Wars franchise has been rekindled after being turned off for many years by prequel garbage. I am now daydreaming about lightsabers again, and this has generally led to a desire to do imaginative and creative things. Which is why I have decided to walk to a coffee shop where I can do a little bit of blogging and email clean-up in the interest of getting back into the writing role, even just as a hobby for a bit.
The phrase "digging a hole" is code for "playing Minecraft", a game in which a lot of time is spent punching trees to turn them into wood, using the wood to build picks, using picks to mine rocks and gold and diamonds, and all of the above to build a giant LEGOlian monstrosity. I'm current constructing a giant marble tower with an enchanting table at the top for making magic tools. It's pure entertainment, but does provide some creative outlet as well. I just need to make sure I don't disappear down the hole I've been digging there.
As for the future, I'm currently researching degree possibilities. I know I contemplated kinesiology last year, but my experiment with learning anatomy didn't go well, my interest instead being captured by tornadoes, meteorology, chaos theory, economics, French, artificial intelligence, and futurism in general. I'm beginning to think that I am more academic than I previously thought, and might enjoy a more academic career. To that end, I'm researching a little bit about Masters degrees. Though my list of mad schemes does still include the possibility of teaching Yoga in Edmonton for a bit--and these may not be contradictory schemes.
More on that later. For now, I need to go tidy my inbox and learn a little more about how Masters degrees even work.
Monday, 15 February 2016
Check-In: 2016-02-15 (Monday)
Diet: lots of vegetables and balanced meals, relatively low added sugar
Exercise: walking, yoga, chi kung, (swimming recently & later today)
Sleep: good hours, sometimes late to bed but returned to a reasonable hour today
Mindfulness: yoga, chi kung, meditation
Spirit: friends, running with a dog, walking in nature, love & acceptance exercises, Star Wars
New format again! This time incorporating a lot of an old format, but with some tweaks. I find I really like breaking things down like this because each of these elements are such an important role in my well-being. As for tweaks, I've first of all taken away the judgmental pass/fail element, since that seems to turn into an exercise in guilt, which isn't helpful. Instead, I'm just listing things I have done recently that contribute to the category, emphasizing the positive, because I really liked that aspect of the old format.
I have also changed "love and support" to "spirit" because I have been contemplating things of a pseudo-spiritual nature a lot lately and I want somewhere to track it, and I think this overlaps nicely with the positive feelings I get from social connection.
The pseudo-spiritual things I have been contemplating are generally of an intuitive nature. For example, it is apparently quite good for our mental health to walk in nature, especially when there are trees, and I find that my intuition is aware of this. That is, if I go out into the woods here and meditate a little bit, I can tell that the presence of the trees is pleasurable and stimulating yet calming. Similarly, Mark talks metaphorically about "house spirits". For example, when the fire is going and Karen and I are reading near it while the dog is curled up on the carpet chewing on a bone, he says that this makes the house spirits happy. Basically, I think we have a long evolutionary history of things that feel good emotionally, such as family, friends, warmth, trees, fresh air, clean kitchens... whatever. This all fits under the category of Spirit in this case (in the previous check-in I believe I called it Magic--which means I probably keep re-explaining these ideas... let's call that "drill").
As for what I've been doing, the walking has continued, of course. I'm still doing 15,000 steps a day, which is a nice pace for me. I could do more, but 15k feels balanced along with the other exercise and my other interests. The swimming has been continuing, though we only attend Monday to Thursday.
I've also been doing "sympathy yoga" so that when Mark is at pilates, I'm doing some exercise as well. I'm not batting 100% on that, but then it isn't necessary to--it's important for me to exercise the amount that I need, not the amount that Mark needs. Having said that, I am enjoying the chance to play with yoga and chi kung again.
I had an interesting experience the other day with my lungs. I did some stairs the other night in an attempt to get 50 "staircases" (my new Fitbit can measure vertical distances). I only got to 49 before midnight came and the target reset. In the attempt, however, I activated my exercise-induced asthma, which manifests as a feeling like my lungs have been lightly seared in a frying pan. As an experiment, I tried doing some chi kung breathing exercises, including lifting the sky and carrying the moon. I found that the symptoms very rapidly disappeared, and also that I felt great in general, from nose stuffiness to body aches going away as well. Since then, I've been practicing those exercises a lot more, and I have fallen in love with them again.
On Friday night Mark, Karen, and I met with Leslie and Bruce for dinner. Leslie is a prof from when Mark and I were at Macewan, and Bruce is her partner. Leslie is here for a year on sabbatical, living in a boat at the harbor and writing a book. They are both odd people, in a good way, the way that smart people can be delightfully odd. We are going to visit bookstores and bakeries on Wednesday.
On Saturday I went to the Café Croissant put on by L'Alliance Française, listened to some conversation in French (I didn't have the ability to participate much, but I could keep up with most of it just listening), then walked downtown to a restaurant called Floyd's Diner for some food and to read some Astérix, then walked to a movie theatre to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens. My thoughts on this are somewhat complicated, but generally speaking I really enjoyed it. Nice to see that the Star Wars franchise is making Star Wars movies again, instead of poorly written Muppet Show movies.
Anyway, Mark is going to pilates soon, so I will go prepare for some sympathy yoga.
Exercise: walking, yoga, chi kung, (swimming recently & later today)
Sleep: good hours, sometimes late to bed but returned to a reasonable hour today
Mindfulness: yoga, chi kung, meditation
Spirit: friends, running with a dog, walking in nature, love & acceptance exercises, Star Wars
New format again! This time incorporating a lot of an old format, but with some tweaks. I find I really like breaking things down like this because each of these elements are such an important role in my well-being. As for tweaks, I've first of all taken away the judgmental pass/fail element, since that seems to turn into an exercise in guilt, which isn't helpful. Instead, I'm just listing things I have done recently that contribute to the category, emphasizing the positive, because I really liked that aspect of the old format.
I have also changed "love and support" to "spirit" because I have been contemplating things of a pseudo-spiritual nature a lot lately and I want somewhere to track it, and I think this overlaps nicely with the positive feelings I get from social connection.
The pseudo-spiritual things I have been contemplating are generally of an intuitive nature. For example, it is apparently quite good for our mental health to walk in nature, especially when there are trees, and I find that my intuition is aware of this. That is, if I go out into the woods here and meditate a little bit, I can tell that the presence of the trees is pleasurable and stimulating yet calming. Similarly, Mark talks metaphorically about "house spirits". For example, when the fire is going and Karen and I are reading near it while the dog is curled up on the carpet chewing on a bone, he says that this makes the house spirits happy. Basically, I think we have a long evolutionary history of things that feel good emotionally, such as family, friends, warmth, trees, fresh air, clean kitchens... whatever. This all fits under the category of Spirit in this case (in the previous check-in I believe I called it Magic--which means I probably keep re-explaining these ideas... let's call that "drill").
As for what I've been doing, the walking has continued, of course. I'm still doing 15,000 steps a day, which is a nice pace for me. I could do more, but 15k feels balanced along with the other exercise and my other interests. The swimming has been continuing, though we only attend Monday to Thursday.
I've also been doing "sympathy yoga" so that when Mark is at pilates, I'm doing some exercise as well. I'm not batting 100% on that, but then it isn't necessary to--it's important for me to exercise the amount that I need, not the amount that Mark needs. Having said that, I am enjoying the chance to play with yoga and chi kung again.
I had an interesting experience the other day with my lungs. I did some stairs the other night in an attempt to get 50 "staircases" (my new Fitbit can measure vertical distances). I only got to 49 before midnight came and the target reset. In the attempt, however, I activated my exercise-induced asthma, which manifests as a feeling like my lungs have been lightly seared in a frying pan. As an experiment, I tried doing some chi kung breathing exercises, including lifting the sky and carrying the moon. I found that the symptoms very rapidly disappeared, and also that I felt great in general, from nose stuffiness to body aches going away as well. Since then, I've been practicing those exercises a lot more, and I have fallen in love with them again.
On Friday night Mark, Karen, and I met with Leslie and Bruce for dinner. Leslie is a prof from when Mark and I were at Macewan, and Bruce is her partner. Leslie is here for a year on sabbatical, living in a boat at the harbor and writing a book. They are both odd people, in a good way, the way that smart people can be delightfully odd. We are going to visit bookstores and bakeries on Wednesday.
On Saturday I went to the Café Croissant put on by L'Alliance Française, listened to some conversation in French (I didn't have the ability to participate much, but I could keep up with most of it just listening), then walked downtown to a restaurant called Floyd's Diner for some food and to read some Astérix, then walked to a movie theatre to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens. My thoughts on this are somewhat complicated, but generally speaking I really enjoyed it. Nice to see that the Star Wars franchise is making Star Wars movies again, instead of poorly written Muppet Show movies.
Anyway, Mark is going to pilates soon, so I will go prepare for some sympathy yoga.
Tuesday, 9 February 2016
Yoga Log: 2016-02-09 (Tuesday)
I began today with some Chi Kung, specifically Lifting The Sky and Carrying the Moon--two stretches that give the whole body and gentle wake-up. I paused for a drink of water and a chance to clear my nose (I often find myself quite stuffed up at first), and then found that I was in the mood for some spontaneous movement exercise.
The spontaneous movement started as a gentle shaking out of my limbs, then the start of a massage of my scalp, but I soon found myself stretching my legs in the splits (as far as my legs will go into one, that is) and transitioning to planks, including some side planks. I then stood up and continued the massage from head to feet.
I don't quite recall the order of the exercises after that, but I did some isometric poses from Kung Fu, more planks, horse stances, downward- and upward-facing dogs, bridges, and inversions (including plow). Speaking of dog, the house was empty except for me and Luna, so Luna heard the exercise and came over to sniff at my nose, do play-bows, and generally get riled up thinking I was going to play. It was actually really adorable, and I felt bad when I told her to sit on the side and then proceeded to ignore her. Alas.
I finished the workout with a variety of my favourite stretches from yoga, like half-pidgeon, butterfly, and some single leg folds.
One exercise that came up was a bit of jogging. Because of my lungs, I find I still can't jog very far outside when attempting to cover distance, but a little bit of jogging on the spot is a really good sensation I find. It exercises the springyness in my legs and feet, and lets the rest of my body relax and get gently shaken from the bounce. I find this really helps loosen muscles that are having trouble relaxing, as a sort of alternative approach to massage.
After the workout I tried to enter shavasana (corpse pose, where you lie on your back and relax) but Luna got far too worked up by it, so I instead sat in lotus on the couch (well, not quite lotus because lotus is actually quite hard on the knees, which are not good things to be hard on, so I was just in a comfortable cross-legged position). I found myself contemplating the bottlecap ninja, Love and Acceptance, and I found it really advantageous to relaxing. Because I was focusing on the acceptance of my feelings before anything else, I didn't have to struggle very much with feelings of judgement or perfectionism. This allowed me to simply relax and enjoy that relaxation, so the meditation was physically quite deep. Mentally, I did a fair bit of jumping from thought to thought--which I cheerfully accepted before relaxing my mind again. So the mental aspect of my meditation wasn't incredibly deep, but I found it pleasant and calm, if a bit distracted.
During this practice I decided that it would be good to start recording my yoga practices, as I originally intended when I set up the Yoga tag on the blog a year ago. I'm not sure if such logs will be of interest to anyone else, but they are cathartic for me, so I'm going to try them for a while to see how they go.
The spontaneous movement started as a gentle shaking out of my limbs, then the start of a massage of my scalp, but I soon found myself stretching my legs in the splits (as far as my legs will go into one, that is) and transitioning to planks, including some side planks. I then stood up and continued the massage from head to feet.
I don't quite recall the order of the exercises after that, but I did some isometric poses from Kung Fu, more planks, horse stances, downward- and upward-facing dogs, bridges, and inversions (including plow). Speaking of dog, the house was empty except for me and Luna, so Luna heard the exercise and came over to sniff at my nose, do play-bows, and generally get riled up thinking I was going to play. It was actually really adorable, and I felt bad when I told her to sit on the side and then proceeded to ignore her. Alas.
I finished the workout with a variety of my favourite stretches from yoga, like half-pidgeon, butterfly, and some single leg folds.
One exercise that came up was a bit of jogging. Because of my lungs, I find I still can't jog very far outside when attempting to cover distance, but a little bit of jogging on the spot is a really good sensation I find. It exercises the springyness in my legs and feet, and lets the rest of my body relax and get gently shaken from the bounce. I find this really helps loosen muscles that are having trouble relaxing, as a sort of alternative approach to massage.
After the workout I tried to enter shavasana (corpse pose, where you lie on your back and relax) but Luna got far too worked up by it, so I instead sat in lotus on the couch (well, not quite lotus because lotus is actually quite hard on the knees, which are not good things to be hard on, so I was just in a comfortable cross-legged position). I found myself contemplating the bottlecap ninja, Love and Acceptance, and I found it really advantageous to relaxing. Because I was focusing on the acceptance of my feelings before anything else, I didn't have to struggle very much with feelings of judgement or perfectionism. This allowed me to simply relax and enjoy that relaxation, so the meditation was physically quite deep. Mentally, I did a fair bit of jumping from thought to thought--which I cheerfully accepted before relaxing my mind again. So the mental aspect of my meditation wasn't incredibly deep, but I found it pleasant and calm, if a bit distracted.
During this practice I decided that it would be good to start recording my yoga practices, as I originally intended when I set up the Yoga tag on the blog a year ago. I'm not sure if such logs will be of interest to anyone else, but they are cathartic for me, so I'm going to try them for a while to see how they go.
Monday, 8 February 2016
Victoria Update: Caps and Plants
I realize I'm keeping a very loose schedule with these posts, but I think that reflects a theme of unstructuredness this trip. There are routines, like the morning coffee, hashbrowns, and eggs (often accompanied by bacon) and the swim nights from Monday through Thursday (except today, which is family day). But otherwise I'm making things up as I go along. Sometimes I do a little reading in French, or watch a movie in French, or listen to a World War I documentary on YouTube. Yesterday I walked a couple of kilometers to Dairy Queen to get ice cream and had some edamame salad at Planet Organic on a whim.
My ninjas this trip have been full of surprises too--which, as I type this, I realize is what ninjas are all about. But my first ninja, intended as a statement of "I am here!" instead turned into a sleepy ninja. The next one, depicted above, was meant to be a recovery, a taking of action. This one would also change its message, however, when Mark noticed that it was "a bit pole-dancey" if you turn it slightly:
I figure that's fine though. Nothing wrong with a ninja willing to flaunt what they've got, I figure. More seriously, this came represent the accepting of mistakes. Because while the ninja ended up being a pole dancer rather than a polearm wielder, I could either get upset about it or I could call it serendipity.
For the most recent cap, I decided to give in and whole-heartedly embrace emotions and other mushy stuff, because even ninjas need mushy stuff now and again:
Yep. That's a ninja holding a sun and a heart while prancing on a rainbow. Some interpretations see the sun as a bouquet of flowers. Still works.
And more seriously, it represents the notion that I've had recently that people need to be accepted and loved for who they are. We place a lot of emphasis on earning things like love and respect and acceptance, but I'm more and more convinced that it works the other way around. People who have emotional support are far more able to get things done than people who lack that support, and our society is unhelpful by emphasizing the reverse, as though love is a transaction to be bought with some kind of correct-enough behaviour. This seems especially important when it comes to self-acceptance and... well, I would say self-love, but I think that would lead to another unintended meaning.
Wednesday, 3 February 2016
Check-In: 2016-02-03 (Wednesday)
Stamina: medium / half-full
Focus: medium / full
Magic: medium / full
I seem to be tired again today. Then again, I'm back into the swimming cycle. Mark and I did the deep water aquafit on Monday and just regular swimming last night, plus our usual step amounts (Mark also did his Pilates).
Yesterday I was able to get Windows 10 installed on my laptop in preparation for getting Unity installed on it. I don't think I'll do more on that today since I'm feeling pretty tired, but maybe I will get to it tomorrow.
Poor Luna the dog has been unwell for several days now, having some trouble with keeping her food down. She still seems reasonably peppy all things considered, but I do hope she starts to feel well soon.
On a more positive note, L'Alliance Française here is having a Café Croissant this Saturday. I may try to drop in for some additional French practice. And since I didn't do any French reading yesterday, it would be good if I could do some more of that today.
Sorry for the lacklustre report. I'm just a little pooped from the swimming. Though my body seems to be getting faster at recovering from the exercise. Aquafit is just that much more intense. My mood is quite good.
Focus: medium / full
Magic: medium / full
I seem to be tired again today. Then again, I'm back into the swimming cycle. Mark and I did the deep water aquafit on Monday and just regular swimming last night, plus our usual step amounts (Mark also did his Pilates).
Yesterday I was able to get Windows 10 installed on my laptop in preparation for getting Unity installed on it. I don't think I'll do more on that today since I'm feeling pretty tired, but maybe I will get to it tomorrow.
Poor Luna the dog has been unwell for several days now, having some trouble with keeping her food down. She still seems reasonably peppy all things considered, but I do hope she starts to feel well soon.
On a more positive note, L'Alliance Française here is having a Café Croissant this Saturday. I may try to drop in for some additional French practice. And since I didn't do any French reading yesterday, it would be good if I could do some more of that today.
Sorry for the lacklustre report. I'm just a little pooped from the swimming. Though my body seems to be getting faster at recovering from the exercise. Aquafit is just that much more intense. My mood is quite good.
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