Books
I'm working on my goal of reading 116 books this year and I'm still on track.
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| A woman inside a ginormous book reading at night. |
Here's a list of the books I've read since my last book update:
Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets
Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods by Suzanne Collins
The Joy of Pi by David Blatner
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards
Fables Volume 10: The Good Prince by Bill Willingham
Fables Volume 11: War and Pieces by Bill Willingham
Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy by Maggie Anderson
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
Wuthering Bites by Sarah Gray
Specials by Scott Westerfeld
Extras by Scott Westerfeld
We Are Market Basket: The Story of an Unlikely Grassroots Movement that Saved a Beloved Business by Daniel Korschun
Blindspot by Jane Kamensky
El Deafo by Cece Bell
Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Les Soleils des Indépendances by Ahmadou Kourouma
Un Papillon dans la Cité by Gisèle Pineau
Les Hommes qui Marchent by Malika Mokeddem
Mean Little Deaf Queer by Terry Galloway
Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
Diet
In case you forgot, my dietary goals were:
* Drink 8+ glasses of water a day
* Take a daily multivitamin
* Stick as closely as possible to the macro- and micro-nutrient breakdowns I set in myfitnesspal
* Avoid soy, MSG, and foods with long lists of unpronounceable ingredients
* Only eat when sitting down at a table with no distractions
* Stop and assess whether I'm actually hungry before eating or getting seconds
* Eat every four(ish) hours on a breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner schedule
* No food after 10pm
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| Chart of the dietary breakdown for vegetarians in the form of a plate. |
I've got the water drinking, multivitamin taking, and soy/MSG/unpronounceable food avoiding down pat. I've also been really good about eating at the table. The biggest problems I've had are with meal timing and nutrient breakdowns. My work schedule is weird and includes both morning and night shifts, which makes eating on a regular schedule difficult. Sometimes I fail to eat breakfast because I'm just not hungry yet, and I frequently wind up eating random crap when I get home from my night job because my dinner was seven hours before so I'm starving by the time I get home. So starting this week my new strategy is to have a protein shake for breakfast every day. It's fast, it's easy, and I can grab it and take it with me. On days where I have more time and energy I can blend tasty healthy things into my shake and on days when I'm dragging myself along I can just stir my protein powder in some water and call it a day. And my new strategy for avoiding the nighttime binges is to bring a small healthy snack with me to work at night. I'm hoping this will tide me over until I get home and I can just go to bed instead of eating. I think that both of these strategies will help me avoid feeling overly hungry so I'll be able to make more intelligent choices about what I'm eating - aka sticking to the myfitnesspal goals - since it's really hard to plan a meal when you're too hungry to think of anything but shoving food in your face. And if I'm not too hungry to think, I'll have an easier time sitting down for a leisurely meal where I check in with my body as I eat.
Exercise
I've done an awesome job of keeping up with the structural changes. I take the stairs whenever I can, I walk all over the place, and I take public transit whenever possible instead of using the car.
My specific goals have proved harder. I've stayed more active than before, a lot of which is due to the help of my swolemate. But most of that activity has been in the form of walking around more or running about with kids rather than any of the exercise goals I had. That said, I did take ballet as planned and found I really like it! But it's almost over.
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| A large asian man dancing ballet. |
I think the next goal I'll focus on is yoga. It turns out there is a yoga studio near my friends' house in France that looks really good so my plan is to try out yoga on my trip. My other goals were: do a handstand, a cartwheel, and a split; run a 5K; and do 25 pull ups, 50 pushups, 200 situps, and 200 squats. I did start doing the couch to 5K program but I slacked off when finals hit and frankly I think this experiment may have shown me that I truly dislike running. I'm considering abandoning the 5K goal because the point of exercise is to have fun and get health - not to torture myself. As for the gymnastics - I found a place nearby called Esh Circus Arts. It looks amazingly fun and the studio is named after my cat! Well, not really but I can pretend. So I want to check it out. Fortunately so does Joy. And she wants to check out the kickboxing studio too! Hopefully when I get back from France we can try both of those things out. Now all I need is a rock climbing buddy. I actually do have a friend who climbs, but he's really in shape and really good at it so I feel (needlessly) intimidated. I know he'd be willing to go with me and he's probably the least judgmental person ever but I'm still embarrassed about the idea since I'm convinced I'll be bad at it.
Finances
And last but not least, my financial update. Nothing much to report. I'm still chanting my money motto ("I am a money magnet!") to myself and I think it's very slowly beginning to work. I'm on track with my car, credit card debt, medical debt, timeshare, and student loans. I'm still happy with my decision to switch my Roth IRA to Vanguard. I'm less thrilled with it debiting 5% of my income every two weeks when I get my paycheck, since I'm feeling the money crunch. I'm not sure how I'll increase it to 10% like I plan to do in September. At any rate, I'm sure my elderly self will be thanking me later. Still not doing so hot with the rainy day fund. My goal is to contribute 5% per paycheck so I eventually have $10,000 in there. But I keep wiping it out. Ugh. I'm hoping this will get easier in September when I'm back to full time work. At any rate, I still need to automate this and stick it somewhere less accessible so I can do the whole CD laddering thing.
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| Picture of a roll of money. |
In a bit of financial posting that deserves its own paragraph, I'm still really happy about my $20/week charity donations. I've gotten into a rhythm where I donate somewhere every other week so I can give $40 each time. I'm hoping to increase that to $50 every other week soon. Last update I had given to Roxbury Youth Orchestra (an inexpensive learning orchestra for inner-city youth), Second Chance Animal Shelter (a nonprofit no-kill animal shelter that also does low-cost spaying/neutering, and subsidized veterinary care), Youth On Fire (a drop-in center for homeless and street-involved youth ages 14-24), and Trans Lifeline (a nonprofit crisis hotline for trans people). Now I've added to the list: The Network/La Red (a survivor-led social justice organization working to end partner abuse in LGBT, BDSM, and poly communities with organizing, education, and support services), Daily Table (which I posted about here), IMPACT Boston (gives self-defense classes to women, children, people with disabilities, abuse survivors, and LGBTQ people, plus they collaborate with schools and organizations to do abuse prevention programs), and Mass LEAP (aka Massachusetts Literary Education and Performance Collective which puts on youth slam poetry festivals and works in schools to promote and support youth slam and spoken word poetry).
Bucket List
You'll notice that I haven't updated on my bucket list. That's because no progress has been made. All those goals are HUGE and I'm nowhere near done with any of them. Also, I've been focused on other things. I do plan to get to them, though.
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| Drawing of a bucket with a yellow background. The bucket says "Bucket List" on it in red letters. |
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