Today marks the 32nd post in the 100 days of blogging challenge. This also marks the second month of the challenge with today being June 1st. I have written here a few times about the challenge and my approach to it. Mainly I am trying to write something more coherent than what I journal about, but I am also trying to keep it as a hobby type activity. The goal is the activity.
Staying Active
One of the most important things I have learned about myself is that I need to be active. Physically and mentally I need a challenge and a goal to shoot for. When I don’t do these things I get moody and generally unpleasant.
For physical activity I have an Apple watch. The daily rings keep me focused on: moving calorie burn, exercise minutes, and standing for a few minutes each hour. Right now I have hit the Move and Exercise goals everyday since Dec 31st, or 154 days. I had a good streak going with the Stand goal too until last Wednesday. Hitting these goals gives me a few boosts: 1) I have been active all day and 2) I close the little red, blue, and green circles and remember the simple joys of life.
One of the things that recently got me into hitting all those goals has been the sharing aspect of the watch. Anyone else you know with an Apple watch can share their daily activity with you. You don’t get the GPS of their run or bike, but you do see that they did a type of workout and for how long. You can have notifications let you know when someone has completed a workout or reached a goal. Its like having a workout buddy, but you don’t have to wait for them at the gym.
The blogging challenge has had a similar effect. When I see someone else’s blog post I am encouraged to write. I also have the camaraderie effect of not wanting to let them down and miss a post. The variety of posts has also helped me think of new things to talk about and ways to express them.
For a little while I dreaded writing these posts some days. That was when the habit of writing hadn’t formed and I was also overthinking things. The habit has formed out of sheer will power to sit at the computer and write at some point everyday. The overthinking things was overcome when Kate reminded me that I am doing this for fun.
By being physically active I am helping to calm myself enough to sit and write. The activity also helps me find things to write about. If you do enough things in the day something memorable has to have happened.
We have 67 more posts to complete the challenge. I still struggle to write these posts because I want to write something interesting, but I also want to go to bed.
Workout detail
I hung the last of the drywall this morning before work. Kate took the day off to help her dad and brother start the taping and mud process. After work I grabbed my rake and built a new section of trail. This part connects from the start of Kiss of Cactus. Then it meets up with the lower half of another new trail that is still in development. Then Kate and I went on an after dinner stroll to survey what has been built so far.
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