Call to Action

I have been in a super blah funk lately. I am not even excited about figuring out what to wear for Halloween. I have no friends at school and see other friends once a week, maybe. I have not been exercising nor eating any raw foods. I've been spending too much time at home, not my apartment. And, I have not started outlining yet. One or two of these problems would be fine, but swallowing the whole lot of it all at once is no good. Hence, this call to action. If I can at least go through the motions of getting of grip, perhaps I'll be able so swim to shore before a full-fledge rescue is in order.

I've printed a list of reasonable goals to accomplish in the next 2.5 months. First and foremost are exercise and outlining. If I can kick my ass into gear about exercising, feeling better, eating better and having more positive energy will naturally follow. I bought a desk calendar and input all of my upcoming deadlines and have planned out a schedule that will allow me to have my outlines significantly finished before reading period.

As for the social aspect, I am going to go to the school party this Friday. It'll be the first time all semester I've done so. I need to start getting to know people because I need to find a study group. As the event will be at a bar Friday and I only seem to make friends when drinking is involved (me sober is apparently too much to bear sober!), hopefully that'll get the ball rolling. I also need to do a better job of hanging out with my other friends. I will plan a game night soon. Not being at home some often would free up a lot of my time, so I'll have to be more firm about that. Always easier said than done though.

This all looks good on paper! Hopefully I'll be strong in my resolutions. I even feel a little better already :)

Run a marathon

Sometimes, when I get certain ideas into my head, for better or for worse, they materialize. Even though I only started outdoor distance running in April, I decided that I was going to run a marathon while I was 25. I started with the 12k Bay to Breakers in May, graduated to the San Francisco Half-Marathon in July, and decided to sign up for the Bizz Johnson Trail Marathon in October. In theory, this is ample time for someone who is reasonably athletic and diligent about training to do just fine. And I was, more or less, until after the half-marathon, when my lackadaisical training approach paid off surprisingly well with an easy, unwinded 2:15. I felt pretty good. I signed up for a full marathon and a trail one at that, which is harder. Then, in the inconsistency that consistently defines me, I stopped running.
Initially, I had hoped to finish in around 4:30. Didn't even sorta happen: 5:28. While disappointed, I readily recognize it could've been MUCH worse, considering I have only run nine times since July, the longest distance being the SF-half. Whoops!
The marathon was in Lassen National Park in Susanville, about 5.5 hours north of San Francisco. While a forgettable and vaguely sad little town that surely had its last heyday when Indians still roamed the frontier, the scenery for the run was gorgeous. Alanis Morrisette also ran the marathon! (Though she is pushing 40, she passed me before mile 1, but details, details.) The first 6 miles were a gradual uphill and the majority of the remaining 20 were a steady downhill.
As I have never run on a trail before, and had not trained AT ALL, I decided to run-walk. (Though by the end, it was mostly walk...) I was one of the youngest people running, the majority of the marathoners being at least in their 40s, but this did not stop most of them from passing me. My strategy was to pretend the race was only 13 long miles demarcated by the 2 mile apart aide stations. I walked through each one grabbing a gulp of water or Gatorade and an orange slice. I felt a little dizzy around mile 6 (couldn't tell if it was from the altitude or only having had an apple for breakfast [I can't do athletic activities on a full stomach)), but hit my wall around mile 11, where my right arch decided to bail and I limp-jogged along in a club-footed manner for a bit, cursing my abject stupidity for not training so that my muscles would be more acclimated to the tremendous endurance marathons require. I talked myself into continuing after passing the halfway mark, thinking if I could just make it to 16 miles, 10 more wouldn't seem so bad. I focused on not letting the people around me get too far out of range, forcing myself to jog until I caught up with or passed them if they did. At 17 miles, my right leg started randomly spasming, but I jogged on, determined to at least finish. I was really starting to regret running at this point and it didn't help that this 70 year old man in front of me was wearing a shirt that said "Start slow and taper off," which I had to force myself not to read as "just quit now." I made it to mile 20 in just under 4 hours, but then I hit another wall. My asthmatic lungs were doing just fine, despite constantly inhaling the dust of all the runners ahead of me, and the weather was perfect but my legs were not happy campers. Running a mile seemed to take FOREVER and willing myself to jog more instead of walk was a purely mental battle accomplished to varying degrees only by picking arbitrary points to jog to, admiring the beautiful scenery of rock ridges, colorful leaves, mountain springs, foot bridges and railroad tunnels, high-fiving trees close to the trail and passing people clearly over 50. The last 2 miles seemed never ending, my knees starting to ache, but I managed to sprint the .2 to the finish line, legs numb.
Every joint from my lower back down to my toes aches. I am limping around like I was ravished by a herd of elephants and I'm sure I won't be able to move or walk tomorrow. A Thai massage would be soooo nice right now! I was even considering some Bengay or Tiger Balm, but decided RICE and ibuprofen were better than smelling like an old Asian man. (I also kinda like feeling as if run over by an 18-wheeler. It makes me miss rugby!) I know I vowed never again, but I am curious too see how I can do if I allow myself adequate training... such is the price for my half-assedness!

Move into my very own apartment

Well, even though I am less than 4 miles from home, I am now out of the house! Because it really is a ridiculously small world, my mom's first apartment in San Francisco when she came here 35 years ago was the same one and same--she lived in the unit directly above me! Even the landlady is the same! Quite the circle of life and proof to the argument that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I am slowly starting to get used to having my own place and starting to feel less like I am playing pretend and more like a legitimate adult. The downside will be shopping for food (right now there is a only a case of Blue Moon and a pint of ice cream in the fridge...) and actually having to cook on a regular basis, but I feel there are infinitely more worthy things to complain about. I still plan on coming home to do laundry and pouching toiletry and some food supplies (because they are FREE), but I feel these are things that most young adults who have good relationships with their families and live close enough to home do.
While I still have some knick-knacks to pick up for my apartment, it is coming together quite nicely and I look forward to having people over for game nights (I have no t.v.) and cooking dinners (that way, I can shirk doing so!) Pleased with myself am I indeed =)

Do 50 sit-ups and 20 push ups everyday for one month

I have been quite the lazy mofo, setting foot in a gym to exercise a whooping 3 times in past 6 months. I embarked upon this goal to help tighten up my abs, tone up my arms and inject some self-discipline into my life through daily repetition of the same task. While I can do 50 sit-ups in my sleep, doing them daily has noticeably tightened my stomach. I have pitiful upper body strength, and have an irrational fear of ending up like this:

if I engage in more than minimal strengthening exercises, but, I figured 20 push ups probably wouldn't get me there. It was a sad struggle at first, but then became almost easier than doing the sit-ups. My arms feel stronger and look a little less wobbly. I plan to try and maintain these exercises on at least a tri-weekly basis, as they really only take less than 2 minutes before I hop into bed. Next stop, getting into some semblance of an exercise routine!

Read one full newspaper article daily for one month

This goal was actually a throw back my youthful potential, the time before I squandered my attention span and developed an unsettling addiction to instant gratification. I used to read the newspaper daily and then stopped, advanced adolescence and crippling indolence taking a mighty toll on my aspirations to be a well-informed and voracious reader.

I made this a goal to help combat my growing impatience with reading articles that required turning or clicking over to the next page. News snippets and headlines had become my sources of information, my depth of understanding of matters consequently plummeting to shocking shallows. While the ready availability of information makes news instantly accessible, it also led to my glossing over details and making snap decisions based on my own preconceived notions, not allowing for developed counter-arguments to ruminate, nor for anything more than superfluous analysis of relevant information. This only helped increase my self-induced ADD and further my path to becoming Jack of all trades, Master of none.

I allowed myself to read any article, so long as I read the entire thing. I started off on easy, entertainment/gossip nonsense, then worked my way up to financial, scientific and political articles. I found my ability to focus on the task at hand increased and was surprised by how much I actually enjoyed and comprehended what I was reading. It was also an excellent self-discipline exercise to do something consistently, for an extended period of time. While I haven't necessarily kept up with this practice daily, I do now read articles from start to finish.

Get a Blackberry, or similar device

I finally succumbed to the scorn and dismissal of others for having a phone without internet/photo/color capabilities and got a Blackberry Tour. (Though NOT T-Mobile, VERIZON. But, now is not the time to discuss my predilection for brand loyalty.) I will miss my cradle charger and being able to toss my phone into bags with reckless abandon, but I do enjoy having a mini computer at my beck and command. I'm sure it helps that I don't associate my Blackberry with employment, more pretending to be all grown up. However, they do say fake it till you make it...

Read "Factotum"

This book is a fairly quick read that chronicles the misadventures of Henry Chinaski, a chronic alcoholic who stumbles in and out of shitty jobs across America during WWII. He is an aspiring writer with zero life aspirations aside from nursing the bottle to help bear the cross of his existence. The writing is succinct and though Henry's trials are repetitive and predictable, Charles Bukowski maintains the reader's interest with enough humor to add variation. This is definitely not a novel you feel you've wasted your time reading, provided you find the storyline appealing.

Some memorable quotes:

"Her triangle of cunt hair was hidden by her dangling, bouncing stomach."

"I was given instructions by a toothless elf with a film over his left eye."

"[Y]oung Mexican girls with beautiful skin and dark eyes; they wore tight bluejeans and tight sweaters and gaudy earrings.... In fifteen years they'd weigh 185 pounds and it would be their daughters who were beautiful."

"Because I had claimed two years of college on my application, I got the job as Coconut Man."