Dearest Sleep,
Engulf me, please,
For the next eight or nine hours,
So that I might awake
Refreshed and ready to go,
Ready to take on the world
And to use my unique talents and me-ness
To serve the world
By being myself
Fully,
For the greater glory of God,
I offer this prayer and this intention.
Amen.
Post-a-day 2019
I have found myself thoroughly enjoying my latest hard copy book, Jaws, much to my surprise (although also kind of not to my surprise – it is actually highly acclaimed by reliable sources, and it made one of my favorite films [we can get into the irony of that another time]).
I started reading it two nights before going sailing… and I strongly considered picking another book, due to the timing, but I really wanted to start reading Jaws, and I was determined that reading it would be no different from having seen the title and thought about it already…
And I was right… with both the concern and the thoughts.
It would have been very good for me not to think about sharks right before going out sailing, during which time I, at some point, would want to get into our cloudy, sand-filled water, and I would have had the idea of sharks in my mind just from having seen the book – whether I read it or not was of little consequence, because the damage was already done when I crossed it on my bookshelf.
And so, I struggled to get into the water while out sailing…, but I asked for company and we made it work… I didn’t stay in for long, but I still enjoyed being in the water for a brief bit, and it ended up starting a whole chain of people jumping in and enjoying the water, which was actually quite fun.
Anyway…, I’m liking the book a lot so far.
I love that 1) Peter Benchley has found a way to pursue and share his passion (sharks) with the world through his fiction and non-fiction books, and 2) he has a good humor in the introduction regarding the changes he made for the book to become a film.
And I am thoroughly enjoying the humor and style with which he writes (well, wrote, technically)… I’m actually laughing at terrible situations, because he addresses them so well as to bring out a sense of comic relief… and I, somehow, find it to be quite lovely, in its way.
(And I mean that… I actually laughed aloud at a scene where a body is found, it was so comically written, but incredibly tastefully so.)
I’m hardly more than a couple chapters into it (of around 15), but I highly recommended at least those first two and a half chapters. 🙂
We’ll see how the rest pans out, now, shall we?
P.S. We did have a good time on the boat, at least.
Post-a-day 2019
You know that exhausted state of delirium where, though it seems like you can process things quite properly, whatever the present topic, you suddenly find yourself standing in the middle of your room, wondering what on Earth you’re doing, and why you are standing pantless and why you still haven’t showered, so you can actually get into bed and go to sleep?
Yeah… exactly… this is my life right this moment… 😛
But it was a quite decent night of dancing + socializing… it was good for me on a few different levels… now sleep would be good for me on every level….
Goodnight… if I can get myself to remember what to do, once I eventually get myself into the shower, that is.
See, even this is hilarious to me, and I understand it quite clearly…, but I still can’t seem to get my body to figure out a good enough reason actually to move locations in a beneficial way to getting me closer to bed… humpf…
Oh, well… goodnight, I do hope. 😉
Post-a-day 2019
Productivity was on my side today, it seems… and I am exhausted… and I have to get up early for a workout…
Although, it isn’t like I’m actually going to be able to be competitive at it, even though most of the other people totally will be – I’ve relatively only just begun at the gym, and so I have to do a scaled down version of the workout, anyway, let alone have a competitive time of it…
PLUS, we don’t do pull-ups with kipping at our gym, so that already is going to affect people’s times strongly… the only people with whom I could compare my time would be those from my own gym… and, even then, there’s only one person who is comparable to me in the exercise at present, and she’s currently out at a bar, and so no longer plans to be participating in tomorrow’s workout. 😛
Therefore, I guess there really is no need to worry for myself – I’ll be totally okay, however I do on the workout… it needn’t be much different from any other day at the classes (for me, anyway… everyone else can be all pumped and excited for their times, but my goal is just to show up and participate to my fullest).
With that, I am going to shower and sleep now.
Peace
Hannah
Post-a-day 2019
Graduation… tutoring to pass sophomore exams… baby reveal… photography session…
My head is achy, and I didn’t get to attend the workout class I’d intended to do this morning…, but it seems nonetheless to have been a rather great day…
I haven’t seen the photos yet, and my head hurts too much to strain to load and check them out tonight – everything is ready for bed and sleep at this point, and I want to roll with everything on this… sleep beckons me warmly, proffering a cool, damp, lavender cloth for my eyes and forehead to ease my pains and clear my sinuses that are now somewhat clogged…
Too bad I don’t actually have that cloth… oh, well… too much effort to make a makeshift version here – I have oil blends, but no lavender, and she has no wash cloths of which I know…, so we’ll let it pass for tonight… instead, I’ll simply go to sleep and pass… out…
😀
Post-a-day 2019
For some reason, I always seem to forget how important and how valuable playing music is to my life.
I get into these ruts of not feeling like putting forth the effort to play music on any of my instruments, because it’s usually just before bed that I have the real time to spend doing it, and I’m so tired that I want to get as much sleep as possible before I wake early the next day.
And then the one or two nights like that get me in the habit of not playing (and singing), and I go weeks or months without doing any music of my own.
And then, every time I get back into it, I rediscover how massive a difference it makes for me and my sanity, my mental calm.
It is like meditation, while also being an active mental workout, figuring out the notes and all, and casually committing things to memory from it all… and also an emotional catharsis… so it’s cathartic meditative exercise for the mind and body.
And I somehow always forget that, and I let myself not play and sing… dope… cut it out. 😛
I think my whole concern is that I love it so much, I always end up playing for so long – like an hour or so – every time I play, and that’s a lot less time to sleep, especially when the alarm is sounding in only six or seven hours.
You know what I mean?
So, I want to work on that… maybe I can manage some playing during the daytime some days… or maybe find a few select songs that satisfy fully, so I can spend just five or ten minutes before bed, yet be fully satisfied…
We’ll see… that’s my goal for this month, musically – to figure that out.
Post-a-day 2019
My protein shake thing had caffeine in it… I can still tell… twelve hours later… it is past one AM, and my eyes are only just starting to droop a bit, and my body grow slightly weary…
I have to get up to sub tomorrow, which means leaving home at around seven AM… which, rather, I suppose, is today, not tomorrow… and just thinking about it makes me feel exhausted…
I am so tired, so sleepy, but my eyes and body are not having it… the caffeine won’t let them relax.
But it is beginning, at last, to give in, ever so slightly…
So, I suppose, I shall see if it will allow me to fall asleep now…
Fingers crossed!
P.S. I bought a plane ticket today to visit Japan this coming winter… woohoo!
Post-a-day 2019
I started today with lots and lots and lots of tears… and a decent amount of snot, too….
And then, as though I had just ended a long-term dating relationship, I finished crying, cleaned myself up, and spent the day with my mom, my eyelids weary and, ever so slightly, burning…. every mirror glance made it look as though I had just been crying, though I hadn’t cried since hours earlier…
I felt a heavy weight had lifted away from me, one I had very much grown accustomed to being ‘normal’… and the ghost of a weight still lingers, as though my emotional and psychological muscles are gushing back to normal size, the blood finally flowing through much more freely again, oxygen reaching the muscles fully, at last… and a certain sense of nervousness at what is to come from this openness, this space that had been so large and so occupied (and heavy) for so long…
And I can feel how much my everybody wants this rest that tonight has to offer me in this big and cozy bed at my mom’s house… I cannot quite imagine what tomorrow will bring, but I can sense that there will be a sort of ‘other side’ I will reach, come morning…
Although, this dog that just began barking next door… could be a problem here… when the neighbors first got him, months ago, he barked all night long for days… and I slept almost not at all, until the dog went hoarse from the barking, and I couldn’t hear it anymore……… oh, goodie(!) – he’s stopped.
Anyway, I await happily the person I will be not only free but able to be tomorrow.
Thank you, God, for today.
It was terrifying.
And I think I’ve been working toward it for quite some time now…
So, it is nice to have it somewhat handled, at last.
Thank you. 🙂
Post-a-day 2019
I’ve done my first day of mandatory abstainment from the gym and stretchy yoga instead… and everything still hurts.
The plan was today and Friday off and yoga-ed…, but are two days in a row better…, or even enough…?
So, now, I must determine if my bodily exhaustion is genuine overworking, or if it is a bit of laziness and/or fear regarding returning to the gym.
At the warm yoga class this afternoon, I struggled with just about anything that used muscles beyond merely standing straight upright… which was almost everything – my muscles were just so tired.
It has me wonder if I needn’t take tomorrow off, too… and possibly Friday, even, if they don’t improve much by tomorrow night…
I for sure am going Saturday – that encourages me.
But I’m also mentally tired, and kind of want to take a break, anyway… taking the next two days off still would have me at doing three classes in the week… my self-esteem struggles with this idea, of course, because 1)it wants me to do better (in this case more) than most other people, and 2)how will my body get awesome results if I don’t put awesome effort into the exercise program?
As my mother mentioned, there is rather the matter of wearing myself out, as well as managing enough protein for so much of this type of exercise… I really need to check how much protein is important to have each day with these – I could be severely under-nourished, despite my increase in protein intake recently… an extra ten grams doesn’t necessarily compensate for an hour of pain and gain, plus biking to get there and back.
I don’t know…
I guess I’ll just see how I awaken in the morning, and go from there.
Separately, but related, my bruises are all over and do look quite terrible at this point… perhaps that can be reason enough to take an extra day of pause from the workouts – I’ll only earn more of them, if I’m tired too soon in the workout. 
Well, we’ll see mañana, I suppose.
Post-a-day 2019
We did some CrossFit tonight – or, as I sometimes like to call it, XFactor.
I also started menstruation today.
Not that I initiated it or anything, of course… it just began.
Usually, if I have any pain, it is right at the beginning of menstruation, Day one or Day two.
And, naturally, Day one this time around opted to give me a bit of pain.
Not much, but some pain, nonetheless.
Add to this my significantly lowered energy level – yes, this is totally normal for menstruation, in case anyone was unsure – and the high humidity and heat of this afternoon, and you can imagine a tough workout ahead of me when I arrived for the class.
So, the sprints for the first fifteen-ish minutes were tough, but I made it.
And the weight stuff was okay – I was just generally weaker and shorter-winded than usual.
But the plank stuff at the end – by the way, plank is usually no big deal for me at all – was one of the oddest experiences I’ve ever had with all of this.
You see, plank was fine… it was when we continued from regular into what light have been called a marching plank, where you put one arm stretched in the air in front of you at a time, while keeping your back flat, legs wide, and butt still low, that I hit a tiny bit of trauma…
For that part, followed by mountain climbers (still with the butt low), a lot of the lower abdomen ends up being used.
… a part which had not clicked for me ahead of time…
And so, as I struggled through my second round of the plank combo, and was on the marching plank things, I actually had to stop – something I’ve never done in plank work – for the extreme and intense pain that felt like my ovaries and uterus were about to explode forward out of my lower abdomen… I skipped over the rest of the marching things and just finished the mountain climbers before stopping, but it was still enough to leave me almost rather paralyzed when I sat back, crying.
I’ve never cried in the middle of a workout before, but I did it about three times today.
Yes, the one cry could have been enough, but I had to make sure I wasn’t just being lazy, wanting to get out of the hard work simply because it was hard, and using the excuse of my menstruation to get out of it… and it turned out that it was a combination.
So, I did a few of the marching things and all of the mountain climber things each round afterward, thereby still putting in the work, but not putting myself in unnecessary and useless pain.
I know I have lower energy at these times, and so I have aimed recently to allow for that (and rather successfully for the most part).
Tonight was just the first time I had to factor that into my goals of becoming more fit – I always push hard when my fitness is on the line these days, and it was surprisingly hard to scale back tonight, despite the fact that it was necessary and good for me to scale back.
Anyway, speaking of all of this, nature calls, so I’m off.
Sweet dreams, World at large.
Post-a-day 2019
hannah ananas 