The balancing act

(Cool image found on the intertubes. No copyright infringement intended.)

Or is it the juggling act? Or is it juggling-whilst tip-toeing-across-a-fraying-tight-wire act?

Whatever the analogy… I just can’t seem to get everything moving in the right direction at the same time. If I’m exercising enough, I’m probably not sleeping enough or taking the time to cook healthy meals for lunches and dinners. If I’m trying to get more sleep (“enough” being elusive, for someone who wakes at the drop of a hat and is often up 4 times/night), it’s because I cut my morning exercise and tell myself I’ll do a fast walk at lunch or after work. If work gets busy, the lunch-walk doesn’t happen… or if it does, I use it to decompress and end up ambling along taking pictures of birds and butterflies. Then I hurry back to my desk and – most likely – eat something highly processed and wash it down with diet Coke. If I do a good walk after work, I get home late and famished – and eat something fast and stupid. If I’m exercising in the morning and trying for more than six hours of sleep, then I’m definitely not cooking healthy meals. The only constant is that for much of any week day, I’m sitting on my tuchus – on the job and through a long commute – and that fact spurs my desperation to eat better and exercise more. Constant sitting is hazardous to your health.

I also find that when I try to establish a good new habit or ritual, I’m totally committed until I have to travel for work, or have a long push to a special deadline. Then it all blows up and I forget I was even trying. It takes only 21 days to establish a new habit; wouldn’t you think I could find 21 consecutive days to pull that off?

I wrote those first two paragraphs earlier this week, before having a freaky little stress-related episode of short-breath, light-headedness, and some chest flutters that convinced me to visit urgent care (out of an abundance of caution) to make sure I wasn’t in a-fib (a family tradition). Now, suitably chagrined, I’m sitting with my calendar, once again plotting out a combination of daily meditation or yoga AND daily (or almost daily) exercise. The same ritual I said I was going to nail down last summer. Suddenly I’m feeling a little more motivated!

Before I blew up, I did manage to complete my 500 mile cycling challenge! And thanks to generous family and friends, I raised almost $1300. Over all, 80,000+ riders raised nearly 8.5 MILLION DOLLARS for children’s cancer research. That’s pretty darned awesome. The challenge organizers will announce the precise final total at the end of this month.

I do well with challenges – they focus me – so maybe my next one will be a 30-day yoga or meditation challenge, to cement the habit. Join me? Here are some suggestions and calendars for a meditation challenge, from DoYouYoga, Livestrong, and Bulletproof. For yoga, I sometimes feel like I would benefit from the commitment of a regular class, but it sure is convenient to have a gentle and FREE teacher like Adriene on Youtube, who offers a huge variety of routines of varying lengths for varying abilities and circumstances.

A business note: I’m letting the 50forte.com URL expire this month, and I’m not sure what that means for the blog – but I think it will revert to https://50forte.wordpress.com. Actually, I thought this was going to happen last summer; apparently I paid for two years! (Nevermind… I renewed it.)