Teleidoscope

Sun, Dec 30, 2007

Work You Love

Posted at 11:25 am MST to Miscellaneous

There is a link on Making Light to a great essay on doing work you love.

It strikes me that I have done a fair job of finding something I love to do, annoying though it is at times. My work is productive: I help people to get things done that they often could not do without my help. And my arms would be in a lot better shape if I didn't like playing with computers so much that I do it on my own time as well as during the time I'm paid for.

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Weight Bench

Posted at 10:38 am MST to Exercise

I got the weight bench cleared off yesterday. I still need to make more open floor space by moving the tubs of manga down to the basement.

Today's exercise:

AM Yoga for Beginners: 20 minutes. The twists went a lot better: Marti's work made a noticeable difference. My hamstrings are horribly tight (they always are unless I work on them regularly).

Whatever the arm equivalents of hamstrings are, are also horribly tight. Lying on the floor with my arms straight out to the sides, I feel a lot of pull in a strip just below my collar bones (worse on the right, where the surgery and radiation tightened things up, to the point of being painful) that goes away if I bend my arms at the elbows.

Lifting my arms over my head works OK when I'm standing, but not when I'm laying flat. But that's due to a different set of things being stiff.

Abs Yoga for Beginners: about a quarter of the 20 minute tape. I did more of it on Friday, but I'm still sore from then. Strengthening my abs is good for my back and bad hip, but I need to take it slow so I don't throw something out while the joints are relatively unsupported. Being as overweight as I am adds to the danger (my scale says I'm more than 40% body fat) because the weight distribution is off, and it pulls on my spine in the wrong ways.

Free weights: I just used 5 pound weights in each hand, more to check the range of motion than to really stress things. But I'm sure I'll be stiff in the morning, which will give me some incentive to do my AM Yoga.

I can't do a decent butterfly, due to the tightness mentioned above. But at least that means I know something to use to work on that tightness below my collar bones. There's another weight move (I'll have to look up the name) that should help the overhead stretches, too.

I didn't try any squats or lunges, even without weights. I think I want my abs and lower back a little more stable before I try those. I really don't trust the left leg and hip at the moment. I need to find a place in this cluttered house to do leg-up-the-wall stretches and get my hamstrings to extend a bit before I try squats.

My weight has been stable lately: I might have gained a pound over the holidays, but my weight is still within the range where it has been hovering for the past several months. I don't really eat very much, and my diet is fairly healthy since I do most of my own cooking. I'm not going to try to lose weight while I ramp up this exercise program. I mostly want to reorganize the weight I've got. But if some of it wants to go away completely, I won't complain.

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