2013/2014 Pt2: Health and Fitness

Having realised, in 2013, that taking on too many things is a bit dumb (yes, I know it's obvious, but that doesn't mean I have to expect/accept it), I'm thinking of taking advantage of a more sensible study schedule by taking on too many things.

I'm currently tossing up between adding Softball or Judo to Fencing as an extra sport this year.  They're both sports I have previously "played" (Softball being something we'd do at a cut-down level for school sports in primary school, Judo being something I did for a couple of years in high school).

Softball has the advantage of tapping into my current obsession with Baseball (but, hopefully, being a bit less blokey than Baseball was the last time I looked into it).  It also has a dual advantage/disadvantage of being a team sport, which would mean a level of commitment to other people that I usually avoid.  It will either be good for me in terms of my growth as a human being, or it will be the undoing of the whole thing.

Judo has the advantage of being reasonably useful as a self-defence thingy and the cheapest martial art available in The Ville.  It's also an individual thing so, like Fencing, I can miss a couple of sessions without disadvantaging anyone other than myself.  It has the disadvantage of being a lot less kicky and punchy than I was hoping.  When I was considering martial arts at the end of last year, I thought Judo would be a bit to pacifistic to be truly useful as a form of self-defence.

Taikwando would probably be closer to what I want than Judo, but Judo is cheaper, would fit into my existing schedule and tap into latent things half-remembered from childhood.

I just suspect I'd probably enjoy Softball more - useless though that may be as a form of self-defence.

And, speaking of useless martial arts, in 2013 I let Fencing slip a bit (well, a lot), so in 2014 I want to make more of an effort to actually pick up some skills and game time.

I'd still like to take up Lawn Bowls more seriously, but that's something I can come back to later.

I have an overall goal of building a better athletic base.  Whatever sports I end up doing, I want to feel as if I'm actually trying to be a decent athlete.  In 2012, when I started Fencing, I was really committed to building that base - but I let it slide when my workload jacked up in 2013.

I'm starting, perhaps counter-intuitively, with a short walk.  Everyday.  It's my goal to make it my "Normal" to step away from the computer and get outside for a walk (if nothing else) sometime between the hours of 1700 and 1800.

If I desire to replace that walk with a swim, a gym session or a run, then so be it.  If I legitimately have something else to do (desk shift) then that's okay, too.  But I'm going to make it a habit to get that walk in every day.

This will hopefully stop me saying "I'll go for a run this afternoon!" and then deciding that, because I don't want to get changed or I'm a bit too tired for an actual run, I just won't do anything.  Instead, everyday (God willing), I'll just stand up and leave the building.

In terms of other health related things, my goal for 2014 is to make more of my own junk food (so it's slightly less junky), and be kinder to myself in regards to what I put into my mouth.

Whether or not I take on anything new, it's my primary goal to take the things I'm already doing and try to be just a bit better.

2013/2014, Pt1: Studies

Well, 2013 was a bit of a bust, in the end.  I deliberately bit off more than I could chew, just to see if I'd rise to the challenge.

A little bit yes, and a little bit no.

On reflection, I gave myself too much to do in the one year - which actually didn't work out as badly as it could have, all things considered.

I think, if I hadn't been stupid enough to take Education (with a capital E) subjects again (knowing, as I do, that I'm well shot of them), it wouldn't have gone to brown so badly towards the end.  The practicum was one straw too many - the kind of challenge that needed a lot more from me than I had left in the tank to give.  Without that, I probably would have survived my stupid workload after all.

This year I've resolved to scale back my insane plans and only take two subjects a semester instead of three.  In the end, I started to let my actual job slip down on my list of priorities, and I wasn't happy about that.  I know this means I'm going to have to keep studying for another trimester longer than I had planned, but that gives me the opportunity to take a subject that isn't offered in 2014.

2014 will see me return to a mode of study where no one gets hurt (except my pride) if it turns out I miscalculated what I can do.  I like it better when the worst that can happen is I scrape by with a Pass.

I'm also going to try to apply a few more of the Autonomous Learning practices I keep telling my students to use.  I think the only reason I did as well as I did last year was because I was being tactical about my studies.  This year, I'm going to try to build on that.  See if I can be just a little bit better.

Esperanto word of the day:

Mojoseco

(mo-yo-SETS-o)

It means "awesomeness".

Find someone you admire today and say:

"Mi amas vin pro via mojoseco."

(I love you because of your awesomeness).

Directions

These are the actual directions I gave someone last week:

Ah.  The thesis you want isn't in Special Collections - it will be with the others in the main section of the building, down from the reference collection.  

Do you know where the reference collection is?  No?  Okay, do you know where the naked man is?  Yep.  He's standing right next to the reference collection and facing the direction you want to go.  

Just keep going down that way and it goes reference books, then atlases, then theses, then microform.  If you hit the little boxes you've gone too far.  

Oh, and the theses have call numbers but they're actually in alphabetical order by author's surname, so ignore the labels entirely.

If you get lost come back and get me.

The good that I would...

I have plans.  Great plans.  Good plans.  Plans well founded in theory, well intentioned and reasonably well thought out.  Plans that are entirely reasonable, entirely achievable and not even remotely falling into the "you're-asking-too-much-and-this-will-never-work" category.

I have the same slight flaw with all of my plans - I don't actually do anything about any of them.

I know exactly what I need to do in order to revise my language stuff ahead of next Trimester.  It involves simply, but practically, going over a few exercises every day and brushing up any grammar rules I might have forgotten.

I've been intending to do this every day since the beginning of November.  So far, I've done it once (and then, only half the amount of work I intended to do that day).

I know exactly what I need to do to achieve the perfectly reasonable fitness goals I've set for myself.  It involves going for a 20 min walk every day and replacing that walk with a run (or a swim, or something else if I feel like it) three days a week.  Good plan, right?  Perfectly achievable.  Nothing too taxing about that at all.

I get through entire weeks without managing more than a single run and a couple of incredibly slow ambles up the street with my incredibly slow dog.

I know exactly what I need to do to improve my productivity at work.  It involves writing short lists of achievable tasks and scheduling time dedicated to doing nothing but a single task on that list.  So very rational and doable - every second magazine article on time management will give you this sort of advice.

Most days I barely remember to write a list.  By the end of the day, I can rarely cross anything off it.

In my head, I've got it covered.  I know exactly what I need to do, I've given myself achievable goals and all I have to do is pick the low-hanging fruit to make my life 100% more useful and effective.  Once I get the ball rolling, and the habits formed, I'll be miles ahead.

It's just getting the ball rolling that's the problem.

I think I might be sitting on it...

Support your local sport

I've been thinking about local sporting teams lately.

Following on from my fritterings in November about being more locally connected, my latent desire to support the sporting teams in my neighbourhood by occasionally watching them play has been growing.

I have this strange, half-formed concept of team-based sport as a sort of social glue.  A bit like the role being in a parish is supposed to play.  In theory everyone in a neighbourhood goes to the same church/chapel/rectory/what have you and, in doing so, we build a sense of "belonging to each other".  By coming together to regularly devote time and attention to the same thing, you build a sense of community and shared lives.

I think sporting clubs should, traditionally, do something similar for a community.  They provide this focal point that we can gather around in order to share something in common with the other people in our radius.  Some people might play for the team, others will be involved in various ways (coaches, volunteers, drivers), but there's also a role for people to just show up and watch.

To sit there, with other members of your community, and cheer on "the team" must do something for your connection to the people around you.  You might not know a soul on the team... at first.  I expect, after a while, you'll know a lot of people by name or sight.

You may actually get to know your neighbours, and form a network of people who might notice if someone dies - thus alleviating the growing problem of people's bodies being discovered some time after death (it's a thing:   Community groups call for system which prevents unnoticed deaths, a-lively-city-where-death-is-unnoticed).

It would probably make the people on the team feel pretty good, too.  You know, having people care about they're doing...

I don't know about you, but I'm not doing any of this.  I barely know what sporting teams are even in my neighbourhood, let alone go watch them play.

I'm not going to take the blame for this entirely, though.  If you're not actually playing sport (or related to someone who is), it's nigh impossible to find out when a game is on in time to go watch it.  The clubs themselves don't bother advertising at all.  Heck, nine times out of ten you can't even get that kind of information from their websites (if they have one).

I'm a librarian - I find information for a living.  If I have difficulty finding information about when and where a game is going to be held, then how likely is it that the other ordinary souls in the community will turn up to watch?

Ideally, the local newspapers would come to the rescue.  Once a week they would have a column somewhere between the classifieds and the sports section telling us what games are coming up on the weekend.  Then, anyone who has a "maybe I'll wander down to the park and watch that" moment would have the opportunity to do so.

As it is, my "local" newspaper barely even reports on the local competitions after the fact.  They devote most of the sports pages to what's happening at a national level.  I wonder if part of that is because my city has a few teams in those national competitions?  We have "local" teams competing at the national level, so maybe we can't be bothered lowering our gaze to follow what's happening in less lofty circles?

Many people in my city support those teams competing at the national level, and there is a sense in which the "big" teams bind us all together...  But I'm not convinced we're doing ourselves any favours by ignoring the grass-roots teams just because we have the "big boys" playing in town.

And, besides, my sucky newspaper can't even tell us when the big teams are playing half the time.  The other day they ran a story on a WNBL basketball match that was happening later in the week, and didn't feel the need to tell us when and where the game was going to be played (as previously noted, News Ltd journalists are bad at their jobs).

Maybe the local newspapers in smaller towns are more engaged in their local sporting teams?  I'd like to think so.

I'd also like to watch stuff, occasionally.  Surely it can't be that hard to find out when a game is going to be played in a park near me...?

Dolly Rocks

Dolly Parton is a bit of a legend.  Not only is she a pretty decent singer and a kick-ass song-writer with a wicked sense of humour, she's a champion of reading to children:

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2013/11/25/3898166.htm

You gotta love that.