Monthly Archives: March 2021

Inside The Box (or Enjoying Some Virtual Theater)

Posted on March 3, 2021 | Comments Off on Inside The Box (or Enjoying Some Virtual Theater)

There are so many things I miss from a year ago. I’ve talked about missing my old life several times. Part of missing things is having something fun in my schedule and being busy, but the other part is that some of these things have become a bit of a routine for me. And I feel lost without the routine in my life. I know we are getting closer and closer to gaining those things back again, but there will still be time before things are fully up and running again (and that I feel safe to do them).

One of the routines I miss so much from before is going to see musicals. The last musical I saw in a theater was only about a week or two before everything shut down. And I remember thinking then about how close together everyone was sitting, but not being too worried about it. Now, I can’t imagine doing that until things are safer and I almost can’t believe that we were doing that right before everything shut down. I still have musicals to see from that last season, plus we already bought tickets for the next. But I don’t think they will be restarting for a little while. So finding ways to fill the live theater void in my life has been something I’ve been working on since the pandemic started.

I have done some virtual theater nights at home. These have been mainly watching recorded theater at home. Sometimes it’s just me watching alone and sometimes a friend is watching at the same time and we are texting back and forth as we watch. Even though I don’t talk when I’m seeing live theater, texting back and forth while watching makes it a less solitary activity and feels like I’m a part of something bigger. It’s not exactly like watching theater with a crowd, but it’s better than watching alone.

And I knew of some Zoom theater shows that had happened, but I hadn’t really looked too much into them. But I remembered hearing about a Zoom show called “Inside The Box” last year. This wasn’t a musical, but a word puzzle and game type show. My dad and I are both word and puzzle nerds who like things like crossword puzzles and Scrabble. So I told him about the show last year. But it was sold out and I didn’t think we’d get a chance to watch it. Then I heard the show was extending the run, and we decided to get tickets. Since it was over Zoom, my parents got one ticket for them (the tickets were per household, not per person) and I got one for myself. And I was super excited to have a fun and nerdy night of puzzles!

I didn’t really want to watch alone, plus I knew I might need help with some of the puzzles. So I invited my friend Dani over to watch with me. Since we are both being super cautious, I knew I could trust having her over at my house. We did still try to keep things on the safer side (not sitting too close together and keeping my door open so there is airflow), but it was a risk that we both accepted and we understood the trust we had in each other.

The week of the show, we were emailed a puzzle packet. There was one puzzle to solve before the show started and a few things to prep before the show. We also had to have one game piece to use and something red. Both Dani and I had options because we weren’t sure what we were going to use them for and we wanted to be prepared.

First, the one negative thing that happened that night. Unfortunately, my parents were having some technical issues and they ended up not being able to be a part of the show. That did upset me because part of what I was so excited about was to do this with my dad. But I guess it wasn’t meant to be. But I am grateful to the staff at the Geffen who tried really hard to fix the issue so they could join in and then refunded my parents when they were unable to participate.

But besides my parents not being able to be in the show, I have to say that it was such a great night! The host/star of the show, David Kwong, constructs crossword puzzles as well as is a magician. And while there wasn’t necessarily magic tricks in the show, it did have that feeling. Both Dani and I said it felt like a show at The Magic Castle. And it was really fun to learn the different bits of history behind different types of word puzzles. I know sometimes a show can feel slow when it’s going into the backstory or history, but this did not. It was really entertaining the entire time!

And I’m so glad Dani was watching with me. We worked together the entire time to solve the different puzzles. There were some games that we were doing a great job at figuring it out and a few that weren’t that easy for us. But we were having so much fun the entire time. And when you solved a puzzle, you waved your hands so the host could pick someone to call on to answer. We were called on a few times to answer, and fortunately we were right each time.

The show was about 90 minutes long and ended with one last puzzle that Dani and I were just stumped on. I think we were both overthinking the solution, but as soon as someone else said the first answer we immediately got the rest of it. So even though we didn’t really solve the last puzzle, we still ended on a good note.

And after the show was done, we got some Chipotle delivered to my house. It was kind of the opposite of what we do when we see musicals because we normally have dinner first. But I’m glad we got dinner because it really did make the night feel almost normal for what we do. And it’s so good to see someone face to face these days. I wish I had more friends that I could do that with, but I think everyone understands why I’m being so careful and nobody is upset that I have such strict rules about things. But I am looking forward to when that won’t be something to worry about again.

I would love to find more virtual Zoom shows to get to watch. This is a part of what I want to do with my monthly challenge this month. Watching this show was one of the best nights I’ve had in the past year. And I know that I was so much happier the next few days because of it. I just have to put the effort into finding more shows and events, and that’s something I’m working on doing. And hopefully whatever I find will be just as fun as it was to be a part of “Inside The Box”!

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Default ThumbnailStill Celebrating Halloween (or A Virtual Costume To Go With A Virtual Party) Default ThumbnailA Virtual Musical Night (or Trying To Replicate My Routine) Default ThumbnailSo Many Virtual Movie Nights (or Thank Goodness For Technology) Default ThumbnailA Tasting And Theater Night (or Enjoying A Fun Night Out) Default ThumbnailEnjoying Movie Nights (or Watching My Screeners) Default ThumbnailEnjoying The Emmys (or This Awards Show Will Be A Bit Of A Time Capsule)

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Scheduling And Joy (or Continuing To Plan For When Things Are Coming Back)

Posted on March 2, 2021 | Comments Off on Scheduling And Joy (or Continuing To Plan For When Things Are Coming Back)

Last month, my monthly challenge was to work on writing a schedule for each day so I wouldn’t forget to do things I need to do. It’s been a rough adjustment from being out of work to being back to a full day most days. And even though I didn’t have a ton of stuff to do outside of working and my workouts each day, I was still noticing where my days were being wasted doing things I didn’t need to do and where I was forgetting to do things I wanted to get done. So creating a schedule for each day seemed to be a good challenge.

I had an old notepad that was designed for doing daily schedules on, so that’s what I used. It had a few sections on the page that I didn’t really need or wanted to use, but it was easy enough to use it. And for the most part, it worked. I started off strong with doing the schedule every day. Then I realized I only felt like I needed it when I had other things to do in my day. If I just had my work and workout and nothing else to do, then I didn’t do them. But when I had work meetings, things to make sure I was watching, or other tasks like doing my taxes; then it was perfect.

And I think that’s exactly how I want to keep using this idea. I don’t always have to create a daily schedule (although I am getting better at setting alerts for things that go into my calendar app so that’s helpful). But when I have something different or extra in my day, this is the best way to make sure I get it done. Even if I just make a to-do list with tasks, that’s helping me to remember to do things. And I know that as my schedule starts to fill up in the future, doing this is going to help keep me on track and not let things slip my mind.

And connected to the idea of my schedule filling up, I want my monthly challenge this month to be about finding more joy in my life. I’m still pretty isolated and lonely, but last month ended up being my most social month in almost a year. My parents were here for the day. I got to spend time with a friend (who is being as safe and isolated as I am). I did a few other fun things that I haven’t written about just yet. I felt like I was starting to have a life again. And even though I have known how badly I needed this, I don’t think it really hit me until I allowed myself to have more joy in my life again.

It’s still going to be hard to find ways to do this. I have very few friends that I could see in person right now because many of them have jobs that require them to be around a lot of people. Or they have someone in their household who is extremely high risk and they can’t risk seeing anyone. I am not going to take too many risks these days because I know we are getting so much closer to the end of the pandemic. I don’t want to slip and then get sick. People are still getting sick and dying every day. But at the same time, I have seen how much better I feel when I have things that feel much more like my old life back.

I’m going to look into more online events that my friends and I can all watch together. I might look into outdoor things too, but that might be a bit more of a risk than I want to do just yet. I have been wanting to do this for a long time, but this is the first time I have this push after experiencing a small bit of my old social life back again. And I think knowing what I’m missing and not being so separate from it is going to help motivate me to try harder.

I do still want to be hopeful that it won’t be that much longer before things are safer and I won’t have to work as hard to find ways to have joy, but I’m not going to depend on that hope. I’ve done that for almost a year now and I know that for my mental health, I can’t keep putting it off any longer.

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Default ThumbnailBack To More Scheduling (or Seeing How Much My Time Unemployed Affected Me) Default ThumbnailScheduling Life (or Trying To Remember What Day Of The Week It Is) Default ThumbnailTrying To Not Let My Stress Get To Me (or Continuing To Find Ways To Cope With Isolation) Default ThumbnailRemembering To See My Friends (or Actually Scheduling Hangouts) Default ThumbnailDoing The Opposite Of My Monthly Challenge (or Continuing To Focus On The Good) Default ThumbnailScheduling Without A Schedule (or Hoping To Make The Most of My Unemployment)

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Sticking With The Same Workout Plan, For Now (or Continuing To Work On Weightlifting)

Posted on March 1, 2021 | Comments Off on Sticking With The Same Workout Plan, For Now (or Continuing To Work On Weightlifting)

Last week, I wrote about the most recent change to my workout plan. I decided to stop worrying as much about cardio and just focus on doing strength and weightlifting work. This was a huge change for me. I never have been great about strength work on my own. When I belonged to a regular gym, I rarely did more than cardio unless I was working with a personal trainer. And while I loved doing the strength work at Orangetheory, it always felt like a part of the reason I loved it was having someone coach me. I was always doing strength work in my home workouts, but it didn’t feel the same.

And I wasn’t expecting dropping cardio to focus on strength work to make a huge difference because I knew how I had been feeling before. But somehow, it did! I don’t know if it felt like there was less pressure on me or if I wasn’t feeling as overwhelmed or tired. All my focus was on doing my weightlifting work and I didn’t have to think about much else. It was a change that I clearly needed to feel better about my workouts again.

Since it worked so well for me the first week, I knew I was going to keep doing it again last week. I didn’t feel the need to try anything different or make changes. I just wanted to feel as good as I did the week before with my workouts.

I did do the exact same plan last week, and that might not have been the most ideal thing. I know the exercises might need to be switched up, but for now, I’m not worrying too much about it. The exercises are a full-body strength workout and that’s important. I don’t have to worry that I’m only focusing on upper body or lower body. Maybe in a week or two, I will work more on finding workouts that I can alternate so I have different muscles working on different days. But again, I’m not too concerned about it. I’m still in the mindset that doing something is better than doing nothing. And if I’m not doing the best workouts possible, that’s ok as long as I’m doing something.

I was still dealing with some nausea issues, which did affect my workout. Some of my nausea is still connected to medication, but I’m also getting my monthly nausea again (which will likely hit me full force by the end of this week). Very few of the exercises in the strength routine are ones that make me feel worse, and when I was getting more nauseous it was easy enough for me to either skip that exercise or do a modification to make it easier. Since I wasn’t following along to a video, I didn’t feel the need to stay at any particular pace. My breaks didn’t feel like lost workout time, but I still tried to keep breaks to a minimum. I feel like some of the pressure and stress I had been putting on myself wasn’t as bad in these new workouts, and that’s something I didn’t realize I needed.

So my plan for now is to keep doing what I’m doing. I might do some research on other strength workouts to try, but it depends on how I feel this week. I am prepared to have a tough workout week with pain and nausea, and I’m not going to put any unnecessary pressure on myself when I have something that is working right now. And like I’ve said several times before, who knows how long this workout plan will last. I change things up a lot, and I’m aware that next week I might have something totally different. But I’m enjoying this for now and I’m going to keep doing it!

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Default ThumbnailA Full Workout Week (or Sticking With My Plan) Default ThumbnailA Weightlifting Week (or Of Course I’m Still Changing It Up) Default ThumbnailMore Proof I Need To Plan My Workouts (or Wasting More Workout Time Than I’d Like) Default ThumbnailI Hate Having A Hard Workout Week (or Not My Usual Workout Recap) Default ThumbnailJust A Bad Workout Week (or I Need To End The Year Better Than This) Default ThumbnailFinally A Good Workout Week (or Continuing To Build My Home Gym)

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