I can't believe it's been about... well, almost a year since the last time I wrote something more personal than what I like to read. It looks like I managed to turn my blog into a book blog for a good part of the year. And then we tanked. I pretty much have accepted that I won't be finishing my Reading Challenge and that I should have stayed at 20 books to make my goal possible. I could probably go and change my goal, but that would be cheating and I don't like cheating when it comes to books.
Blogging really has been the last thing on my mind lately. Basically, there are not enough hours in the day to do everything that I want to do each and every day. There's work (8 hours) and there's sleep (6 to 8 hours on good days). That leaves approximately 8 hours to get other things done... or so one would think. I now also take approximately 1 and a half hours spent at the gym to reach a very long drawn out goal. Then there's driving which takes about twenty minutes in one direction and another twenty minutes in the other direction. Half an hour in the shower, an hour winding down before I go to sleep and an hour slacking off before work starts up at night.
So in the end, I'm left with approximately 4 hours to spend my day (on work nights). I hate to look at my days in terms of time and hours, but that's just the way that America is structured anyway. Every single moment of your life is based on how much time you have to get from Point A to Point B, how much time you spend at Point B before you must return to Point A, and then how much more time you spend at Point A before having to move on to Point B again. In between, you calculate how much time you have to spend doing other chores or leisurely activities. You need to take half an hour or so to do the laundry, cook dinner, wash the dishes and take out the trash. You need to take a little more time if there are other things to accomplish: vacuum, finish the laundry, grocery shopping. And then maybe you have an hour or two to either relax and watch an episode of a series you're following, or just to chill around with your family and have idle chit-chat.
Or maybe you're like me and you're devoting an hour-ish of your extra time to doing some personal studying. I'm currently teaching myself Japanese and have been in the process of learning for about a month now. I'm not good at it, but I can break down a sentence and tell you what it says in my own way -- it'll just take some time. I'm also devoting some random moments here and there to improve upon my Chinese reading and writing skills -- I mean, really, just being able to converse in my native tongue is just not good enough for me and I feel like I should have learned how to read and write in Chinese ages ago.
So I guess unlike the last couple times I've posted a blog article, I actually have a lot more going on in my life than I give credit for. I mean, life still feels monotonous, but it's not like I'm not being productive. Take, for instance, my newest improvement: the regular gym-going routine. It's a miracle that I can even make it to the gym before my brain kicks in with laziness and I decide to go home instead cause I'm "just too tired for the gym this morning." It's a BIG feat for me to knock that thought out and subconsciously make myself drive straight to the gym anyway. And once I'm there, a work-out is pretty much cemented.
Now I'm not hardcore or anything when it comes to working out. I've tried that before where I force myself to work out until I collapse. And you know what ends up happening? I quit going to the gym for about three months before I feel guilty about being a lazy slacker and start up again only to recycle the same process. So I pretty much made a deal with myself where I wouldn't kill myself. If I feel like I've had enough, then I've had enough, because some activity is better than no activity. With that thought in mind, I've been able to slowly build my endurance and create a routine where NOW I can try to kill myself working out and not feel burdened by it.
For instance, today I did my usual cardio work-out followed by some questionable ab work-out that I may need to consult a trainer about, then I went and lifted for three sets of fifteen. Then I followed through with an intense Zumba class (which was tons of fun now that I can actually keep up pretty well).
I'm on a roll, so I intend to keep up this roll for as long as I'm motivated, which I really, REALLY hope is a long time to come.
Just this morning, getting out of the shower, I've decided to create a new, long term goal and to modify my current goal a little bit. Having it written down, however, I hope doesn't kill the foundation I've been building for the last two months (because a vacation and my period almost did it).
Long term goal: By this time next year, I will be my ideal weight and size. What that is, I don't know yet, but we'll figure it out as we go.
Short term goal: By the end of the year, I will hopefully be twenty pounds lighter and five inches thinner in the waist. I'm shooting for twenty pounds, but in reality, with only two months left to go, I'm pretty sure I'll only make it to fifteen pounds less than what I started at two months ago... mostly because some serious slacking and a vacation had only given me leeway to losing approximately seven pounds since I first made my commitment.
Maybe by some miracle there'll be some sort of strange logarithmic increase in the number of pounds I'm losing in the next few weeks to come and I'll reach my goal... and then some. But I'm not banking on it. I'm a realist and we need to stay within the reality scope of things.
Anyway... for having not written in so long, I guess I still have it in me to ramble on endlessly about things that probably no one else cares about. Ahhh.... the beauty of having a personal blog that no one really reads.
To end off my post, here's a little bit of my own achievement to boost up my spirits:
私の目的を見失わない. 頑張ります! I won't lose sight of my goal. I'll work hard!
(I hope I wrote that correctly. More than likely, it's wrong, but I didn't have any examples to work off of...)
Just in case, anyone out there who is interested in learning Japanese with me, has interest in learning Chinese with me, or is really good at either of the two languages (written, spoken, whatever) let me know. I could use a study buddy since my only other source (the little brother) is busy with school.
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