Paranoid or cautious?

      In the past, I've had my fair share of catcalls, harassment, and being followed while out in public. I've learned to deal with it and present myself as not-a-target, to the point where I feel fairly confident walking around on my own, even after dark. The neighborhood we're in now has always felt safe, so as the days grow shorter, I've just kept walking at my usual time, despite it being definitely nighttime. Three events have happened in the last couple months that make me wonder if I'm being paranoid, or justifiable cautious, and if I need to do research on what sort of personal protection items are legal in this area. 

     The first event seems fairly innocuous, and I didn't really pay it much mind at first. I saw another person walking along the sidewalk I'd turned onto, so I popped out into the street to pass them; they were in regular clothes and clearly having a nice stroll and I was in workout gear clearly getting my cardio in. Parking along the curb is very common here, so I didn't really keep an eye on the person as I passed. For safety reasons, I don't have headphones or music playing while I walk, so I clearly heard the "hey, excuse me, are you working out?" when I'd gotten about 6 feet past them. I turned my head and politely answered in the affirmative, and the guy replied something along the lines of, "I thought so, 'cause of your outfit. It's clearly doing your body well, keep it up!" 

Dormancy

     Been a bit quiet of late. Some of that is that I've been busy getting things done, and some of it is that I'm simply becoming quieter. My opinion does not need to be given on every issue that comes my way, especially since I'm not completely informed on many of them. Unfortunately, since sketches are usually my opinion on things, that does mean I've done less drawing lately. It's not gone, though, no worries there.

     Anyway, as things are slowing down with the season change, thought I'd catch up here. In no particular order, here are things that I've worked on recently:

Sewing: Halloween outfit (Slytherin student from Hogwarts, and apparently this was the most people who've ever dressed up for Halloween at work), and work pants.

Exercise: Still doing boot camp two nights a week, and running twice a week at home. The Kenpo Karate class is on break until December; I'm enjoying that quite a bit.

Goodbye parkour, hello boot camp

     Parkour gym closed for good this past week. Unusually for me, I decided to stop in to the goodbye party on Friday night, and they were encouraging people to "sign off" on the floor - make your last mark, leave memories, etc. Never one to pass up a drawing opportunity, I added the below tags:

 A QM (quadrupedal movement) is any method of moving on all 4s. Proper form (back flat, knees off the ground) is rather strenuous to do, especially back and forth many times in a row.




My celtic knot didn't turn out terribly well, so I added words.

Being strong

      When I first got the urge to get in better shape, I searched to see what was available nearby. The first thing that caught my eye was parkour, because it encourages free movement, running, jumping, and generally being a kid again, playing out in the woods. At the time, parkour gyms were less prevalent than they are now, but there was one in my town, and offering adult classes. I contacted them, and they said the prereq for doing parkour was to show I could do: 50 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, and 50 pull-ups at one go. So that was right out (hint, I still can't do that). Instead, I joined Irish dance, and had a wonderful time getting in better cardio shape and kicking my shins black and blue.

     Unfortunately, when I graduated and moved to the east coast, I was unable to find another Irish dance team that I really liked. I mooched around feeling sorry for myself for a while, then I stumbled onto this website called NerdFitness, which attempts to break down exercise and being healthy into gaming and "nerd" concepts. The posts were awesome, bridging the nerd/jock gap, the community was hugely supportive, and I was frankly sick of doing more and more cardio workouts with less and less result, so I gave it a try. When I first tried the beginner's bodyweight workout, I could barely do two sets of a few squats, lunges, knee push-ups, dumbbell rows and planks. Nevertheless, I persisted, and was very proud when I was able to do a third set, and then started adding weights.

     In September of 2015, I managed to fracture my ankle while ungracefully walking down stairs. For two months, I could not work out at all, and then pushed to get into physical therapy (pt), get walking, and try to better than before. I've always brushed off my bruises and running into walls as just clumsiness, but pt taught me that it was poor flexibility and strength that made me clumsy. Here I was, 35 years old, and injured walking down stairs because I was too out of shape to avoid damaging myself. If I'm aiming to live past 100, this is not a sustainable plan.

     Although strength training at home through an online forum is great, it's not the same as getting in-person training and social time, so once again, I looked around to see what was available. This time, I found a parkour place not too far away that had zero pre-reqs: come in and try it out. I stalled for a bit, looking for someone to go with on the scary first endeavor, but once I finally went... I was hooked. Since so very many things can go wrong in parkour, the focus of training is safety first. First you learn how to fail out of a move, then you learn the move. Can't do the move yet? Here are the steps to work up to it. Everyone get in line, do the variation you can do safely. Go.

     I've been doing parkour now for a little over a year. When I started, I was doing one hour, every other week, and barely able to do a lot of the moves. Now, I'm doing 3 hours, every weekend, and holding my own on quite a few of the moves. Still lots of room for improvement, but I've come a long way.

Move	February '16	May '17
Precision jumps	-	Tweaking form
Cat hang	A few seconds	Working on cat hang pull-ups
Cat leap	-	Tweaking form
Quadrupedal movement (QM)	A few seconds	30 seconds, balancing a bar on my back
Easy vault	2.5' vault box	3' vault box
Safety/speed vault	2.5' box, climb over	3' vault box, working on speed vault
Kong vault	-	Standing jump onto a 2.5' box
Parkour rolls	Working on form	Still working on form
Kip-up	-	Can kip-up into back bridge
Handstands	Against a wall	Hold for a few seconds, free-standing
Running laps	Less than 1	2 laps without stopping

     One of the classes that I take there is like a full-body pt course - we do flexibility and mobility work, and if something doesn't work right, the teacher explains why it hurts, what's probably going on in your body, and how to do exercises at home to fix it. In winter of 2016, I learned I have a partially torn rotator cuff. Between regular pt and the stuff we do at parkour, it is not an issue, and I'm still doing crazy-fun things that, two years ago, I wouldn't even consider doing. There are still some aches and pains of getting older, but I can touch my toes, run laps, do back bridges, fall and roll in any direction, climb up and jump down from 6' boxes, hop over railings, and just generally have fun with my environment. 100 years old, here I come. 

Business is open!

     Hey all, hopefully this will be settling down here now that the business is officially open. If you haven't seen it, the website is here, and the store itself is on Etsy. Stop by and see what's been sucking my time away!

     In other news (yes, there is other news even with a new business),  I've decided to start my own dance group out here, as the ones I'd found aren't quite as demanding or graceful as I'd hoped. I made a deal with my old teacher out in Colorado, and we're going to try a distance learning thing via Skype/ video recordings. I've also switched to a Russian server in WoW in order to keep in practice, and boy does that help! It takes me about six times as long to do quests than it does in the English version, but my vocab and even grammar is getting one heck of a boost!

Quest log: I'm sorry, you want me to do WHAT now?

     In light of these and other changes, I've also decided to drop the online Masters classes I'd signed up for, until I know what my income levels will be. I'm debating a couple alternatives to keep me busy, such as kickboxing through the gym where I'll be dancing, and any number of language classes at the local community college, but that decision has to wait til I see how the business will do. If it takes off, then great! If it is a gradual takeoff, then I'll go sign up with a temp agency to keep me busy (and paid) until it's a means of support.

     So while things aren't super settled in yet, I have a couple plans, and feel like I'm on the right track. Thanks for your patience, and I'll be putting things up here occasionally, as life gets less hectic (ha!). Cheers!

The countdown begins

     This past Friday marked the six week point until I leave on vacation/ the trip to Russia. In general terms this is not particularly important, but for me, six weeks is the point at which things become real. And unfortunately, the current situation means that things also become worrisome.

Yeah, that's about how I feel.

     Everyone has some sort of calendar in their heads, used to keep track of what's going on and when. Some people are better at this than others, though the prevalence of technology has made this less important than in the past. My calendar is broken down into, roughly, a weekly basis: this week and next week, "soon" (i.e., within the next six weeks or so), and "eventually" (more than six weeks out). If something definitely will happen that is in the "eventually" section, I put it on my calendar with an alert, because I know I will forget about it before it happens.

Perfectionism and 'thank you's

     Have you ever been around a perfectionist? Once of those people who have to have everything just so, and have to be always on top of things, always on time, always exactly the way the think it should be? While I do have perfectionist leanings (what, my GPA is 3.8??? Unacceptable!), I have learned to calm down a bit overall. Perfectionists are rarely happy, because the world is not exactly so, and there will always be conflicting ideas of what needs done. Perfectionism assumes a certain level of expectations. If you fall below them, you will be criticized; if you meet them (however ridiculously high they are), well, that's to be expected. There is no such thing as going above and beyond, because perfect is the limit, so do not act surprised when you are not complimented or thanked.

     One memory that sticks with me pretty clearly is one day when I was a child, probably 8 or 9 years old, I decided to help my mom out while she was out of the house. I knew she didn't really like vacuuming, but with three kids, two dogs and a cat in the house, it was a chore that needed done on a pretty regular basis. So I dragged the vacuum out, hooked it all together (this was before upright, single-piece vacuums were common), and managed to get all three levels of the house done before she made it home from whatever errands she had that day. I even remembered to clean it out, rinse out the basin, and put the vacuum away, and was feeling pretty proud of myself.

It's that time of the year again...

     And if you have any connections to an Irish dancer, you know exactly what I'm talking about. For most of the year, we are forgotten, shoved aside, and largely ignored by most of society, unless it's a big gig like Riverdance or Lord of the Dance. We have our own shows, our own competitions, and quietly get by doing that which we love best in relative anonymity.

Riverdance

     But then here comes March 17th, a day that mostly carries connotations of green beer and shamrocks for the majority of the public, and is a source of both joy and slight dread for us dancers. St. Patrick's Day is the one time of year that the rest of the world goes, "Oh right! Irish dancing! That exists!" and subsequently demands that we do a show, parade, or performance at every possible opportunity. We dance indoors, outdoors, on existing dance floors and concrete pads, with generous room to move around or else cramped between tables as harried servers try to edge around out flying feet. This year is a little more sorted out, but last year we had a couple places that booked our group to perform, and then when we showed up they said, "what, you need a stage to dance on?" Sigh.

The ugly side of losing weight

     In today's body-obsessed society, it seems like everyone is concerned with losing weight and being thin. Fortunately, for a lot of sensible people, it's not a big thing- just that little "society voice" in the back of their head, reminding them that really, they shouldn't have that extra brownie for dessert. As long as that never gets out of hand, I think that's probably a good place to be. You can enjoy yourself and your food without guilting yourself or being overly concerned about having obsessions. Except tacos. Tacos are ok to obsess about.
     Anyway! For some reason, I've been losing weight this year. I don't have an exact number, but as of two months ago, I'd dropped thirty pounds off of my winter weight, without even really trying. Considering that I'd already come down another thirty pounds from where I'd been two years ago, I feel pretty good. I will be keeping track of it, just in case I've done something silly like picked up a resident tapeworm or something