Losing Steam Before the End

It's the top of the 13th, a week before the end. The home team, Productivity, has struggled scoring points this season, though they seem to have picked up the pace during the latter half of the game, while the opposing team, Slumpton, gained the lead early on and has played a mean defense against their opponent. Team Productivity is gonna have to keep Team Slumpton from scoring any more points if they have any chance of winning this game, but with Team Slumpton up to bat, it's anybody's game. Who will come out victorious at the end of this season?

No, but seriously, I decided I was going to rewrite Cael's journal for the 2nd of Nudon because, while fine the way it was, I wanted more punch! More emotion! More of Cael's vengeful side to surface!

It's been a train wreck and has put to a halt my editing and posting momentum. My only saving grace is that I've kept pace writing most of the later journals, so if I can clear this hurdle before too long, I should be able to resume the marathon.

Days 2 and 3 of Week 4 for Couch to 5K have also been mildly disappointing. As I suspected, the breather I wrote about in last week's post made a tremendous difference in overall jogging pace. Day 2's pace, which was on Sunday, was 6'02", and Day 3's was 6'05" on Wednesday. This is for kilometers. Miles is just too depressing a comparison. It feels much more impressive to say, "I ran 5 kilometers!" than it does to say, "I ran, like, 3-ish miles?"

However! The silver lining in all of this is that I've consistently walked over 10k steps every day this past week. It's just too bad that that's really...my only true accomplishment from the week.

So, what happened?

Looking at my journal, my afternoons derailed. Hard. Mornings I primarily focused on editing/rewriting, and then in the afternoon I would go for a jog or walk. When I returned home, I wouldn't record much else for the rest of the day's hourly time slots.

Monday's session cancellation affected Tuesday, which was a rescheduled session day that also had to be canceled. In the past, whenever our session days were held solely on Sundays, the weekends where my fiancé worked, I wouldn't write or transcribe or edit, because 1) I didn't want to tire myself out sitting in Cael's head all day before session time, and 2) I didn't want to sit in the head space of a different day's Cael, because I feared it would affect the present Cael's mood. Was I overthinking everything? Probably.

Regardless, that old habit made trying to concentrate on editing their journal this past Tuesday more difficult. Then, Wednesday, I made the "mistake" of going for my jog in the morning, when that's usually the only time I can focus well enough on editing/writing to make any significant progress. I have no idea what I did after lunch because I failed to journal that section yet again. I just...fell off the bandwagon.

However, I did learn from Wednesday's jog that I exhibit symptoms of EIB (exercise-induced bronchoconstrictions)! I've always felt short of breath while jogging, though not detrimental by any means, and I have phlegm build up when I push myself especially hard, causing me to clear my throat multiple times during my jog. Coughing, if it happened, was always after. All of this would start a few minutes into the jog but would never last too far beyond the cooldown.

Since it's just something that I've always dealt with, I never really considered it a problem, but if I had to harbor a guess, it wouldn't surprise me if this was a consequence of suffering from severe bronchitis as a kid to the point of needing a temporary medical inhaler. Knowing this makes me wonder if taking a rescue inhaler before my jog will help the oxygen flow in my body and thus allow me to improve my overall time. I'm eager to see. I'll include an update if I go on my planned jog today.

Continuing on with the analysis, however, Thursday threw off my schedule completely because I woke up earlier than usual. Why? I've no idea. My brain simply decided, "Okay, it's time to get up now!" and so I did, which meant I sat down earlier to write, and that was almost too much of a shakeup to my routine. So, pulling my focus together was like trying to herd cats.

This next week is the home stretch and the end of yet another 13 week journal. Therefore, the focus of either the next blog or the blog after that will be on honestly reviewing those 13 weeks: overall accomplishments, lingering tasks, what's working, what isn't, goals for the remainder of the year, etc.... I like the idea of creating a meta-analysis of the 13-week journal and noting where the peaks and valleys occurred throughout. I think it'd be especially fascinating to see it all on an extended line graph, not only for the 13 weeks but then how each 13-week journal compares to past and future ones, though by what metrics I'd measure all that, I'm not sure.

I'll just put it on the list for potential future projects.

Post-Jog Update (~18:45)

• I'm not sure how much taking the inhaler 15+ minutes beforehand helped.

  • Could breathe more deeply, but my breath control still sucked; could just be something I need to develop again

  • Still some phlegm during

  • Slight wheezing, though mostly after the jog, & primarily if I breathe in through my mouth instead of my nose

  • Minor coughing, again mostly after

• But!

• Look at that time~ Now, granted, it's neither under or over 6'/km, but given that I pigged out on pizza this morning, I must say that that's not too bad. Fingers crossed for Day 2.

Questions for Contemplation & Discussion:

• How often do you experience the final stretch "surrender"? That is, when you're close to finishing a project, and you're just like, "Yeah, I'm...done. I know how the rest of this is gonna turn out. I want to move on now and do something else."

  • Why do you suppose this happens? What's holding you back from finishing?

• "The struggles of today are the jokes of tomorrow." Would you agree or disagree with this statement?

  • What problems have you come across in the past that you can recall and laugh about now?

  • What past struggles still cause you distress today?

  • What struggles have you faced that seemed like they could be world-ending at the time but wound up just being a small blip in your overall life experience?

The Wawfuls:

• Mailing a package to my friend in Japan. I seriously hate the post office here. The last time I went, the people there were unnecessarily rude. Yay for conflict avoidance on my end.

• Finishing my site setup. It's constantly niggling at the back of my mind, but if given the choice to work on it or continue writing, I'm more akin to choosing the latter. I still find that, unless I have concrete deadlines like those given by professors, I have difficulty splitting my attention between multiple simultaneous projects long-term. Starting on the task for the day is honestly the hardest part.

  • This includes figuring out how to fix bugs with formatting and all that fun stuff as well.

  • Much of the issue stems from that need in the beginning to develop the necessary discipline.

This Week's Obligatory Cat Pic:

Self-imposed timeout in the corner of our sofa.

(We didn't put her there, I promise.)