Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Goals and such

Alright, so who watched Biggest Loser last night? I did! (and my roommate did! lol) I'm getting excited for the finale, but I'm getting pretty into it. Obviously, I'm not at the same point in my life that those competitors are at in theirs. However, I do take a lot from watching the competition on tv. I feel like I've learned a lot through the show and I've become pretty inspired through watching weekly. I feel more driven, I guess.

For the past few years, most of my drive has been toward the same things, running, school, work... in that order. Recently, I feel like it has shifted a little bit. Actually, when I firt sprained my ankle, I felt like I lost a part of my identity, which seems a little bit silly. However, when so much of me was focused on running, I really needed to redirect my energy. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it literally took me months to figure out what to do with myself. I'm starting to figure it out, but I still haven't run again, which does disappoint me in myself to a point.

I signed up for a personal trainer a few weeks ago, totally expecting to be thrown on a waiting list. Nope. Twelve hours later, I got a phone call. No exaggeration. I barely had enough time to really think about it before they called me telling me that I was at the top of the list and I'd get a trainer assigned to me THAT day! Wow.

I haven't made an official decision about how I feel about my trainer yet. It's hard because of time constraints, so I haven't gotten to spend a LOT of time with him in the gym. However, he definitely does push  me beyond where I would normally push  myself... and I've actually learned a lot about working out and fitness in the past few weeks. However, I'm hoping that it gets a little bit better in the next week when school starts up again and we can get into a little bit of a more regular schedule.

However, as a goal oriented person, I have a number of goals for the next year, including my second Goofy's Challenge and a triathlon... on top of school, writing, working, reading, and so on. I also really want to join a softball league. I miss softball so much... I never was very good at it, but it was something that I thoroughly enjoyed for many years of my life. I want to be a part of a team like that again, but I don't know how to go about joining a league like that.

Sometimes I worry that I'm TOO goal oriented.. or perhaps TOO much of a perfectionist. For instance, I'm in the midst of a two week break from school before summer classes start. In these two weeks, I have a list of books that I want to read, pounds to lose, workouts to accomplish, on top of my usual work shifts... and the list goes on. When I look at my long term goals- like run across the country for epilepsy awareness or do an ironman... or write a memoir... I feel like I always have something to do next and I don't really take it easy. I don't know why my mind works the way that it does and I haven't ever spent a significant amount of time thinking about it either, I guess.

Anyways, today I spent an hour in the gym doing weights with my trainer, followed by an hour swimming laps in the pool.. an exhausting combination. My body is worn out.

until next time.....

1 comment:

  1. I agree that you are a bit of a perfectionist but I think a big issue is when you set all these goals and then you don't achieve them because then you feel like you are worthless and have let yourself down. At the same time, without the goals you don't push yourself and that's a problem too. I guess you just have to learn how to find the balance and I think that just takes time and experience to learn. I think one thing to help think about how to achieve goals is to really look at how your time is spent during the day and what time could be spent doing other things. I'm not talking just you, I'm talking about me and really everyone who is dissatisfied with aspects of their lives and feeling like they don't ahve enough time for anything. I thought that workout was really good today and I'm glad we were able to do that. I think it's good that you have that trainer because you are learning some good combinations of workouts to do and what you can push yourself to do. You can then take those ideas with you for your workouts without him too. I'm not all that impressed with him but I am glad he has been able to teach you a lot of things to help. That's all I have to say about that.

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