Photos
For brunch today, we wanted to try a new cafe in the neighborhood that looked interesting. It was small and loud with conversation and beats. We waited for our veggie burritos - 20, 30, 40 minutes. The sign on the door said they take some time to make food, so we were patient until the table that got in after us was served the same dish we ordered, while we only had our tea and coffee still.
Turns out the waitress, even though she nodded and repeated our order to us when we oredred, completely forgot to put it in the system. A dog owner walked in and sat next to us, and when the dog started barking loudly, I felt the blood drumming in my ears, and I excused myself for a minute outside. The food, which was disappointing (it was OK, but more of a breakfast veggie wrap with nothing on the side, not a burrito with extra rice and beans), finally arrived. We swallowed the food without a word, paid, and left.
As soon as I walked into my apartment, I felt the calm surround me. The relaxing feeling was even better when I got into my room and stepped on the rug I got, colored in blues and brownish-coffee colors 📷 . It’s incredible how such a simple thing can affect my mood so much. I don’t know why I’ve waited so long without having one.
Snow march
I woke up after a solid 6.5 hours of sleep, the first time since last Wednesday, and felt energized. It was a crisp day outside, cold but not bitterly so, with fresh snow on the ground.
Running was a bit too much, as I haven’t run in months. I also didn’t want to fall on ice and hurt myself, especially now when we’re packing and moving. So I went for a “snow march” instead - the idea was to push harder than my usual walking speed.
It was around 35 degrees this morning (almost 0 degrees celsius), so I dressed up as if it was 45, to account for warming up: a light coat, hoodie, cozy home pants (it’s not like anyone was up at that time on a snowy Saturday morning), and my Timberlands boots that I usually wear at this time of the year.
The goal was just to get out there. To move, walk, and stay out for a while, with the idea of completing four laps around the local park (the size of one block).
The snow was shallow and melted a bit, making that “crunch crunch” sound when I walked. I stomped my fit a bit, forcing more of my boot into the snow with each step, partly to increase my heart rate a bit but also for stability and to avoid ice.
It worked out nicely. I started warming up toward the end of the first lap and needed to take my beanie off. When I was hot enough to walk with my hands out of my pockets (I forgot my gloves…), the additional momentum from my arms' movement added to the exercise and warmth. It felt good. On my march, I spotted three miniature snowmen:
With Trainwell, the workout app I stopped using, I would have probably skipped this fun morning exercise. If I already pay a hefty sum for a workout app and a coach that comes with it, I should improvise and come up with my own ideas. Meanwhile, the app doesn’t count as an exercise, and I would need to send screenshots from my Apple Fitness to my coach to review. Because the app wouldn’t count the walk, it would still push me to do the routine for the day, making me do the usual leg exercises even though those’s the muscles I already worked on in the morning.
This flexibility is important. If I want to work out later, I’d probably concentrate on my upper body, doing isolated exercises of pushups, crunches or pull-ups without starting a whole new workout.
What’s more important now is that I did /something/. I got out there. What I did and how I did it doesn’t even come second - that sport is reserved for consistency. Picking up the habit. What I do and how I do it comes next down the line; I know that if I keep this up, I will push myself further and harder by instinct and the motivation I’ve developed, and things will fall into place. I know this because that’s been my experience since I started exercising.
The woes of flexibility vs. structure
I paused my Trainwell subscription, my exercise app. I didn’t give up my exercise routine if that’s what you’re wondering, though it has suffered in the last couple of weeks. As I explained to my excellent coach on the app, there were two reasons for that.
The more immediate and simple one is everything going around me: I’m moving out, and I am now tasked with working both in my new position and my old position, which I left a few months back since there’s no one else who can do it at this point. These two things with an additional few recent stressful events cause my insomnia to spike, and I often wake up after 4-5 hours of sleep, which messes up my ability to work even further, putting me in a vicious cycle of trying to make up lost for time and energy.
The longer, more complicated reason is the lack of flexibility. Trainwell is an exercise app with a limited number of exercises and a busy coach who can’t remember and adjust everything about you. Things like meditation and even running are not handled well by the app, at least not yet, and I have to look elsewhere for those. Since Trailwell costs $100 a month, I expect more from it, and it can’t deliver.
I have very limited space in the apartment to exercise, so some exercises and stretches don’t work for me. On top of that, the app works by introducing new cycles each couple of weeks, and these come filled with mostly new exercises that I haven’t done in the previous cycle. I tried to navigate away from exercises I didn’t want and keep the ones I did with limited success. New cycles usually mean a period of adjustment and learning, and I realized that this is starting to damage my routine. Instead of improving what I do slowly, I’m starting something new.
Speaking of routine, I’m now at a point where I want to exercise without being forced into it. It’s a good part of my day, with the key (that I keep forgetting) of doing just a little at a time and doing more after I start if I can and have the time. Doing a short 10-minute daily exercise is always better than not doing anything because I’m intimidated by an intense 30 minutes of weight lifting. Yes, I can adjust my exercises on the run and work with my coach, but that in itself is cumbersome, and I don’t always want to explain why I did one thing instead of the other every time. I asked myself: if I’m already adjusting and switching exercises to fit my needs, then what use is the app in guiding me anymore? And the last couple of weeks were based on adjustments to my crazy schedule.
So, I decided to return to my old workout sheet with the addition of a few exercises I’ve learned in the last months. Here’s a portion of it:
However, I quickly learned that a simple spreadsheet is problematic. I want to measure daily exercises (in the image, you see the page for February. I have a sheet for January and will keep going for a year), so I’m using the Y axis for the exercise names. I wrote the specifications for reps/sets/weights next to the exercise’s name (it will take too much room to specify for each day), but it is an issue if I want to change the number of sets/reps I’m doing on the fly. For example, if I join pull-ups and chair dips, I probably want to lower the number of push-ups I do that day since they overlap the same muscle groups. Another issue is that different exercises may have different data altogether - for example, running records speed and distance, not weight and sets. Yet another problem is that the list of exercises becomes longer, and finding the exercise I want to do on a certain day and joining it with others becomes confusing, so I need to start color-code those, which means I need to be more picky about which colors I use when I go up in sets/reps during the week…
you get the idea. It just doesn’t cut it, and I have issues already.
Meanwhile, I have my Apple Watch, which I’m trying to utilize for all of this. It comes with Workouts, but those are basic pre-determined activities that don’t allow me to add weight or follow sets conveniently if I break for rest in between. There are other apps out there I could use, but then I run into the same problem I have with Trainwell and flexibility: if the app doesn’t have a certain workout, it’s annoying to use it just for some things and not everything.
I don’t like the lack of structure in my exercises, which is why I need the table on one hand, but on the other hand, it’s not flexible enough to do what I need. It’s starting to sound like “I’m holding it wrong”, not an app or a sheet problem, if you get my meaning.
Still, the exercises I end up doing are good and fit my routine better than the ones I followed on the app, as in. At least I’m doing something. I need to figure this out.
Inwood Farm, in Inwood, Manhattan.
A nice and cozy place right next to Inwood Park, with good food options, a cafe bar, and a drinks bar 📷.
Nat knows me well 😂 An early holiday gift. 📷
If you’re interested, it was made by a local collective of metal artists: www.metalpark.org
Big city lights 📷
This spot is calling my name 📷
This has been quite a week… 📷
I like effective things, and my big, bulky wallet was up for an upgrade-downgrade. A gift from a talented friend 📷:
Leather. The strap pulls up the cards (no more than 3). A back pocket for cash is sewed in the back.
An afternoon walk is all you need sometimes. 📷
I’m still figuring out how to use my notebook for different things. For now there are four main things: reminders, bigger tasks, points before a meeting and taking apart bigger ideas, or brainstorming.
NK, on the other hand, has been using notebooks for years. Being the colorful person they are, they develop creative ways to write down their thoughts. One of the ways they choose to enclose lists in days is in circles. I’m not sure I’ll adopt this system myself, but it does look good.
Here’s a look 📷 of two days from our vacation, with their permission:
Time to leave later today. It’s been grey since we got here, but somehow it added to the charm of the place with Halloween and everything. X-files trees and stormy-like beaches 📷
We were told these little “coffee huts” are everywhere in gas stations here. I like the idea:
On the beach, this quiet small town was bathing in the sun. 📷
A trip to Rosario Beach in the afternoon finally turned on the “vacation mode” switch in my mind. Walking the trails near the cliffs and being surrounded by quiet and nature, and not a single piece of trash in sight, it’s shocking. New York parks are so dirty 😔
A warm-up photo with my camera 📷
In Washington, it seems there are parks around every corner. A park for a walk. A park for sitting on a bench and relaxing. A park for you and your dog - and then a dog park inside that park as well. There’s even a spot for gnomes.
Fun times. 📷
On a walk around west village, we saw this little guy looking at us through the window. 📷🐶
A quiet weekend away from the city is a remedy every New Yorker should take every now and then.
📷
I enjoy these walks that end on a bench somewhere, looking at the leaves, feeling grateful for places such as these. 📷
After waking up several times with thoughts and brainstorming sessions during the night, I decided to work with a pocket notebook 📓 again. 📷
Unlike my phone, it doesn’t have emails and messages waiting to grab my attention, or a screen to shine into my eyes.
I’m not an art expert, but this looks like a piece of junk they pulled out of the water. It’s an eyesore in this otherwise green park. 📷
