Step Away From the Cake

 I feel like I'm at the point in my life where many things are in place. I have a career that I enjoy (most times) and am good at (most times). I have the house I want and live in a place I really do love. I have money in the bank and am not really wanting for anything. So what things would I like to do every day that would make my life better? That is the million dollar question. Let's spitball..... Reading. This is a great thing to do. It opens my mind and exposes me to new things that I may not have considered before. So this is a good thing to do every single day. The thing is, I read every night before bed. Does that count? Granted that is fiction, but it's reading. So do I count that or do I wish to add more reading on top of that?  Sitting in the front room. This is something I really enjoy doing. Yesterday I sat in one of my awesome chairs playing Animal Crossing and really loved it. I love looking out the front window at my awesome little cul-de-sac. If I added mor

 I woke up yesterday feeling absolutely amazing. Amazing!!!! My body felt good. My mind was clear and settled. Just amazing. I went to the chiro and then to the gym. Had a great workout. After we went to lunch at our usual place, Cold Beer & Cheeseburger. Came back home and I was feeling some sweets. I didn't give in, but I was really feeling them. Took a short nap in my reading chair. Came in here and started cleaning up my room. Took Mavy for a short walk, after the dog fight last night I wanted to make sure he wasn't going to be afraid going out. We ended up having dinner of soup and sandwich, that is always nice because it's light and not so heavy. Then I felt like dessert. Really felt like dessert. So much so that I drove to Safeway and bought some. We ate it, carrot cake, and then we went to bed. I didn't do my stretches like I've been doing for the last almost 2 weeks. Now the question is why. Why did I eat the dessert and why did I not do my stretches. T

 Lately I've been working on reducing my screen time and it's been going fairly well. The main problem is that I'm switching one screen for another. For example, I don't just mindlessly scroll Facebook anymore, at least not much, but I will play Animal Crossing when I really don't feel like it. So I'm going to work a bit harder on reducing my screen time even more. I don't really have a lot of time during the week (Mon - Thurs) to waste on mindless screen time, so I'm going to work on reducing that. Today I am going for no Facebook at all and no Animal Crossing. Whew, that's going to be hard, but I have a plan.  I get home from school around 5pm. Then I take Mavy for a walk. After that is when I usually come in here and veg out in front of a screen doing something completely nonsensical. Tonight I'm going to do something different. I'm going to fold the clothes, that have been sitting there for 2 weeks, and listen to podcasts. I'm going t

 I've been trying to make some lifestyle changes over the past few years. Things like working out regularly, not eating junk food, things like that. To do that I've been in a program called Diligent Mind Self Care. Every week we have a weekly focus that we work on. The weekly focuses are social comparison, rumination, fear, stress, there are a couple more but I'm too pressed for time to look them up. The point is that these things are psyche/time/motivation killers. Social comparison can cause you to beat yourself up for no real reason. Rumination can take days away from you, again for no real reason. These things can harm you because they make you think things about yourself or others. If you really dwell on that for a minute it makes no sense. I think things so I beat myself up, what?????  Anyway, it's a good program and I have learned a lot from it and come a long way, but yesterday may have been the kicker. On the podcast yesterday the guy talked about putting your

 Since last March, well honestly long before that, I've been having problems with my lower back. Last March and the sudden switch to online teaching really exacerbated the whole situation. I was sitting for long, long periods of time in a crappy chair and my back took the brunt of the punishment. The first thing I did was get a good chair, a gaming chair. That helped some. The next thing I did was go to the chiropractor. That helped a lot more. But my back still bothers me some. I've been doing stretching but have not been consistent with it. When I do it, it really helps a lot. Clearly some of the muscles are really tight. But also, I only know certain stretches and so was limited to what I could do on my own. Well along came the 21 hip opener challenge. When I heard about it I thought this is what I need. I know my hips are tight and that could be a large part of the problem. So I signed up. It started on Monday and can I just say Wow!!! The stretches are bizarre, at least to