Category Archives: Tough Stuff

Taking Things A Bit Easier (or No More Injuries)

Posted on June 13, 2016 | Comments Off on Taking Things A Bit Easier (or No More Injuries)

This past week of workouts ended up being a week of being cautious. I have no clue what happened, but on Monday morning last week I woke up with a very stiff knee. I didn’t do anything over that weekend that should make things hurt, so I’m wondering if I slept in a position that tweaked something. The knee pain is almost only at night (it wakes me up if I shift positions at night) and hurts a little in the morning when I get up. So since I was dealing with that, I didn’t go as crazy during my workouts because I didn’t want to hurt myself more.

Monday was a partner workout which was awesome because my friend Dena came try her very first Orangetheory class! So she and I partnered up together for the workout. During the partner time, the person on cardio controlled the switching. The cardio person did a 200 meter row and a run on the treadmill at inclines. The run was supposed to be .2 miles, but I know I can’t run that long nor did I really want to run on hills. So I decided to walk at inclines so I was only doing .1 miles each time. On the floor, while we waited for our partner to be done with their cardio work, we did arms, chests, lunges, and abs. We kept going the floor work until our partner came over and switched us out.

I have to say that Dena and I made pretty good partners for this. We were pretty equal on time for cardio, so neither of us was stuck on the floor waiting for too long. I was working on using some heavy weights on the floor, so I was mainly using the 20 pound ones for my work. At the end of the partner time, we had a small block that was like a normal block. While it was still hills on the treadmill, I did run during the 1 minute all out at the end so I got a little bit of running done.

Wednesday was an endurance, strength, and power day that didn’t switch between the blocks so I was on the treadmill for 30 minutes straight. It was an interesting day because all of the blocks were pretty short. Again on the treadmill, I walked for most of the time. I did run for the all outs again which were a minute each time. Running for a minute is getting a bit easier for me, but my heart rate is really high during it and I have a bit of trouble catching my breath after. I know that this will be worked out the more I run, but it’s a big adjustment to get used to.

During the floor, we had some lunges and arm work, but the big thing to me was the timed row blocks. We had 2 blocks where we had timed rows. One was for 3 minutes and one was for 2 minutes. I really wanted to do well, but I was also so tired after the cardio time so I knew that I wasn’t going to be hitting my best distances during those times. So I just wanted to get the minimum of what we are supposed to do, which is basically 100 meters every 30 seconds. For the 3 minute row, I got 606 meters which met my goal. But for the 2 minute row, I was just too tired to keep my momentum going and I only got 355 meters in. I know I could have probably gotten to 400 meters if I really tried, but my legs just weren’t having it (and a majority of rowing is leg power).

Friday was another strength day, but fortunately we were switching between blocks. Again, I walked almost the entire time on the treadmill. Since it was a strength day there were plenty of hills to work with and I really tried to keep my inclines where they needed to be. I did run during the all outs (either 30 seconds or 1 minute long), but while runners were supposed to run at a high incline, I kept it at either 2% or 4% (4% is the flat road for walkers). I’m really not ready to try to run at an incline where I’m still struggling to run at all.

The floor ended up being a really great day for me. We did have a 400 meter row, but rowing wasn’t a big part of the day. I was using 20 pound weights for my arm and chest work (including bicep curls) and during the burpees we had to do I was always adding in pushups. We also had an entire block just using the TRX straps. Most of the strap work was core work, so I was feeling pretty awesome t the end of class.

My knee did hurt throughout the week, but again it was almost only at night. I woke up almost every single night with pains in my knee while I was moving. In the morning, I would be very stiff but after an hour or so the pain would end. I never felt pain during the workout (that’s a good sign) but it wasn’t getting better or worse through the week. I really have no clue what I did and I doubt doing to the doctor would give me any guidance. There’s always a chance that my hip issues are causing the knee pain, but again, I can’t really do much to fix that. Over this past weekend, I pretty much did nothing to try to rest my knee and that seemed to help.

I’m hoping that this week, things will be a bit better for me. I would like to try to push myself a bit more in my running because Peak Performance Week is coming up soon. I know I’ll be doing the 1 mile challenge day, but I don’t think I can do the other treadmill challenge days because of my schedule. So I’m trying to focus on what I can do to prepare for that day and making sure that I have the best workouts possible leading up to it.

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Default ThumbnailMore Progress And Steps Back (or Trying My Hardest) Default ThumbnailA 4 Workout Week (or Only A Few More Weeks Of 2015 Workouts) Default ThumbnailA Full Workout Week (or Sticking With My Plan) Default ThumbnailBusy Workout Week (or Maybe Overdoing It A Bit) Default ThumbnailUnexpected Injuries (or I’m Still Doing My 5K Tonight) Default ThumbnailStill Taking This A Bit Easy (or Not Going To Push Too Hard)

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Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff

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Finding My Way Back On Track (or A New Balance)

Posted on June 9, 2016 | Comments Off on Finding My Way Back On Track (or A New Balance)

I have been doing pretty great with my food lately. I’m cooking a lot at home now. Most of my meals are pretty boring, but I’m ok with that. I’ve found that with the boring food (like veggies and a turkey burger) I don’t get as bored with the food as quickly as I do when I make fancier things. I’m not sure why that is, but I can totally eat a turkey burger every day without issue when I can’t eat 3 days of leftovers. I’m aware that I might be in a bit of a rut and I’ve been trying to remember other things that are easy to make (and I can make 1 serving of) for other meals, but I’m pretty good with how things have been going for a while.

But then last week, I got off track pretty badly. Fortunately for me, being off track now is not as bad as it was before. I’m still not ordering delivery food (although I was craving Chinese food the other day) so if I want to eat “bad” food I have to go out and get it. So those bad days are not as bad as I know they could be. But they are still pretty bad and I’m still having issues coming back from them.

This time, my bad days lasted a couple of days before I was able to pull myself out of it. Ironically, it was the meal at the Hollywood Bowl that got me on track again (even though that meal wasn’t that great). I’m not sure what triggered me to get back to what I should be eating, but I am grateful that it happened. It did have an effect on the scale, but because I’ve been doing better lately my bad days were a weight that was my good day weight in the past. I’m almost back down to where I was before the bad days, so that’s a relief for me.

I know that it’s totally normal to have good days and bad days and that they have to be balanced out. That’s totally normal for everyone, but since I’ve never really had normal eating habits it feels really weird to me. I’m trying to remember that slip-ups are a part of life and they don’t have to make the rest of my day/week/month just as crazy food-wise. It’s a new system that I’m trying to figure out and it’s still very foreign to me.

Sometimes I do wonder if living alone makes things tougher on me because I don’t have someone to use as an example, but then again when I had roommates I actually had worse eating habits than I do now. With roommates (and none of them that might be reading this are the ones I’m talking about), I found it almost impossible to cook or use the kitchen. There were never clean plates or dishes and the kitchen was such a mess that all I wanted to do was grab my food and get out of there (again, any of my past roommates that would read this, know that this isn’t about you). At least now, all the messes in the kitchen are my own and I try to do my dishes every night (or the next morning if my evening gets too full).

I’m trying to keep myself accountable for my food choices and I’m doing ok with that. Even on the worst days, I’m still maintaining 100% food tracking accuracy. I’m not always tracking where I can see the calorie counts, but I’m writing down everything I eat in an app that allows me just to write the food and track any feelings I want to put down. I’m not hiding from what I’m doing like I’ve done in the past. I have to confront exactly what I’ve done every time I have a bad day.

Finding the balance between eating foods I’m craving but still staying on track is tough, but each time I find a new way to keep myself accountable helps and makes me feel like recovery is possible. It’s also made me think about what recovery will actually look like for me, and I’m finally letting go of the idea that recovery means no more bad days or cravings. That’s not ever going to be my reality, and letting go of that idea that has been in my head for years (and decades) is tough. But it’s also made me much more hopeful for what my recovery will look like and the idea that I might be closer to it than I thought.

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Default ThumbnailThe Good Outweighing The Bad? (or When Will I Get Back On Track?) Default ThumbnailGetting Back To Better Food (or Finding My Own Balance) Default ThumbnailFinding A Balance (or Eating Healthy And Fun At The Same Time) Default ThumbnailFinding A Work/Life Balance (or Preparing to Not Be Unemployed) Default ThumbnailTrying To Keep All My Good Habits (or I Need To Get Back On Track) Default ThumbnailRoutine Time Again (or Getting Back On Track)

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Posted in Food, Tough Stuff

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A Fresh Budget (or Starting Over With YNAB)

Posted on June 3, 2016 | 1 comment

I’ve been budgeting with YNAB for almost a year now. I’ve been pretty good about entering every expense and paycheck into the system (I’ve even had some fun laughs with friends when we are out to dinner and we both pull up our apps to enter our expense when we pay the bill). It’s been good for me to be accountable with every dollar that I spend and to have a more realistic view on how much money I’m making.

But even though I was doing all the work, there was a serious disconnect with me happening in my budgeting. I have no clue why I was so disconnected, but something wasn’t right and I couldn’t shake the feeling. I had been trying to figure out what was wrong, but I just kept feeling like something was wrong and I couldn’t fix it.

I started to download a bunch of other budgeting apps. There are dozens of free budgeting apps and some of them seemed ok, but none of them were fitting what I needed (the biggest issue was finding one that didn’t expect the income to be a steady amount). YNAB has actually changed a bit since I got it and the new version is more of an online system (instead of it connecting via Dropbox) and you pay a monthly or annual fee instead of paying for a 1 time purchase. I don’t want to get the new version yet because I want to feel comfortable with the version I have and I really don’t want to have another expense added to my life right now.

So after a few weeks of feeling lost and frustrated, I finally decided to get rid of my current budget in YNAB, delete everything, and start completely over. When I started over I also re-watched all of the videos online about setting things up and how to use them efficiently. I learned things that I missed the first time and I was setting up my budgeting categories into things that make sense to me.

YNAB Categories

I kept the debt, monthly bills, and everyday expense categories because those are pretty basic and they haven’t changed. I still have monthly bills, everyday expenses, and my debt to pay off. But the rest of my categories have gotten more specific. I’m breaking down my expenses by different aspects of my life and the priorities I have with them. Some of my acting expenses can be sacrificed for my day job expenses (classes aren’t as important as paying my estimated taxes). Splitting the expenses in the categories does help me see where I need to save and spend versus where I want to save and spend.

I know that some people have very limited categories in their budget, but I think for me the specifics are really going to help me. Sometimes, I forget about the annual expenses that I have that add up all the time. I only pay dues for WIF and one of the casting submissions sites once a year, and I don’t want that amount to shock me anymore. This way, I can save a little bit each month for those annual expenses and I will see exactly what I’m saving it for (compared to before where I listed it as annual acting expenses).

So far, this new budget is working out well for me. I’m feeling more connected to my money and I’m more aware of what’s happening. I’m trying to set up my monthly savings for my annual things, but I’m still working on how I want them to be organized. In the past, I probably would have just given up with things got hard for me to figure out. But now I really do want to make this work. I know that budgeting has helped so much this past year and that it can be doing so much more for me. And once I get that figured out, hopefully I can start paying down more debt and start saving so I can take another amazing vacation sometime soon.

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Default ThumbnailWorking on Budgeting (or Spending Money To Save Money) Default ThumbnailGoing Back To An Old Habit (or Finding Control With Budgeting) Default ThumbnailAnother Monthly Challenge Down (or The Prosperous Heart) Default ThumbnailFinding New Money Issues (or Looking At Doing A Fresh Budget) Default ThumbnailBudgeting and Spending (or Sharing YNAB With A Cashier) Default ThumbnailTrying to Budget for Disneyland (or Does Someone Want to Give Me an Annual Pass?)

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Posted in Fun Stuff, Saving, Tough Stuff

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Hoping To Fix My Computer (or Can The New MacBook Pros Please Come Out Soon?)

Posted on May 20, 2016 | 1 comment

This is totally not the post I was planning on writing for today. I’ll write about what I was going to write about next week, but today’s post is all about my computer frustrations.

My laptop is my life. I run multiple jobs off of it, I run my blog off of it, and I do most of my online work on it. It’s really that important to me and I need it to work the way it should work. I understand I do a ton of multi-tasking (when I’m working I must have about a dozen windows open), but it should work just fine. But my laptop is also 6 years old. That’s not a horribly old laptop, but when you do as much work on it as I do every year counts. I try to stretch the lifespan of my technology as long as I can, but there are limits.

Over a year ago, I ran out of storage on my laptop. The new models have a baseline of twice the storage I have now, so clearly I don’t have that much space on my computer. I’ve gotten rid of as much as I can (all my old blog posts that are freelance articles are deleted and no movies are actually stored on my laptop), but I’m still down to less than 10GB of storage left. I’ve tried to find more and more to delete, but I’m pretty limited in what I can get rid of and still be able to work.

I also can’t upgrade my operating system because of the lack of storage, so not everything is running as smoothly as it should. My computer can be very slow and laggy at times, especially while I working. It’s so annoying to always have to tell customers on the phone that they have to hold while a website loads on my computer.

Obviously, the clear answer to my problems is to get a new laptop. And that’s totally my plan. I have enough money for a new one (thanks to all the money I saved for my taxes that I didn’t end up needing) and I pretty much know exactly what I’m going to get. I want another MacBook Pro and I’ll be upgrading the storage and memory (which will be quadruple what I have now) so the new laptop lasts me at least another 6 years.

The only problem is that the most recent MacBook Pro was released about a year ago. They are no longer current machines and a new one is supposed to be released really soon. But really soon is a pretty open-ended phrase. I thought they would be released before the holidays last year. Then I thought they’d be released in April. Now the rumor is they will be released in June.

I don’t know how much longer I can wait on getting a new laptop. My current one with no storage is getting to the point where it isn’t very functional for me. It would be a perfect machine for someone who doesn’t have several thousand photos that they keep on it. And I’m hoping a friend will buy the old machine from me when I get the new one because it really is a great laptop for someone who doesn’t have the same storage needs as me.

But for now, I’m dealing with a pretty glitchy set up. And last night, because somehow 4,000 of my photos disappeared, I spent my night watching my computer restore itself to an old backup in the hopes that whatever happened will be fixed.

Computer Restore

I will probably be jumping for joy the day the new MacBook Pros are announced and will be ordering one the second I’m able to. I can’t wait to be impressed by how much better a new computer will be for me!

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Default ThumbnailLooking Forward To Some Big Spending (or Needing New Technology) Default ThumbnailSplurging On Technology (or I Guess I Had To Get A New Phone) Default ThumbnailA New Computer (or Out With The Old And In With The New) Default ThumbnailRestoring My Computer (or Glad For A Backup) Default ThumbnailMore Computer Frustration (or Trying To Let It Go) Default ThumbnailTrying To Cut Back On Clutter (or Why Won’t My Computer Do What I Want It To Do?!?)

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Posted in Shopping, Tough Stuff

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Missing Out On Some Fun (or Flexible Time Management)

Posted on May 12, 2016 | Comments Off on Missing Out On Some Fun (or Flexible Time Management)

This week has been a pretty crazy busy week for me. I’ve been very busy with the day jobs, including learning how to do a new task for my research job. I now have 4 extra hours a week plus a new aspect of my job that takes up 50% of my hours. I’ve done some phone training, but we’ve also had a bunch of technical issues and it’s required so many phone calls and emails back and forth (I’m so grateful that my boss is chill about all this).

I’m very happy to have the new tasks and the additional hours because the extra money helps and I want to make sure that this day job continues beyond when my contract ends in October. But learning new things and trying to balance the hours split between the two jobs for one job has been a bit much. I’m finally starting to get into a good groove with the new work and things are much more normal, but that definitely affected the beginning of my week.

And the beginning of this week was supposed to be pretty packed with social events. But because of the stress I was dealing with from the job, I had to make the decision not to go to them.

I’m not too happy about missing the events. Both of them were actor events. And I know I’m been slacking a bit with my acting career lately. I need to make more of an effort to make my career a priority. But that’s not easy when the money-making jobs need to happen too. I thought I had figured out a good balance, but all the technical issues really made me have to reorganize my time and figure out what things had to be sacrificed. And sadly, the free acting related things had to be sacrificed over the money-making jobs.

Time management isn’t usually my weakness, but I’ve realized that flexible time management is. I get my schedule set for the week (or day), but I don’t allow for issues to come up. I have to get from one thing to another really quickly at times, and if there is a delay it can affect multiple things at once. The delay isn’t usually traffic (I typically give myself double the time I’m expecting it to take to get somewhere), but something in my life that stops me in my tracks and requires my attention before I can move on. Sometimes, these things aren’t avoidable like health issues (panic or gallbladder attacks can easily ruin an entire day). But I need to be aware of other issues that might need extra time and to build that into my day at some point.

I am glad I stayed home to work on the things I had to do, but I can’t help but feel that there may have been another way for me to deal with them and still make it to the events that I want to go to. I’ve been looking at my upcoming calendar and the fun events I have planned. I want to make sure that I can add in some flexible time in there to help make sure that I can do whatever needs to be done without missing out on the events.

I think the reason why this has never really been an issue for me before is that I’ve never been as busy as I’ve been lately. I miss the days where I only had 1 day job and that was it. It was super easy to schedule around that because my hours were pretty set and nothing would change. While my box office job hours don’t change (unless they need me to cover for someone or I have to make up hours), my research hours can be at any time. I try to do them around the same time as the box office job, but sometimes they have to be done late at night. I try to keep things as stable as possible, but life happens and since my job isn’t restricted to certain hours I can’t say that if I miss work at a certain time that I get to skip it. I have to find the time to make it up.

I can’t go back in time to fix the scheduling issues so that I could attend the events that I wanted to go to. All I can do is learn from the mistakes that I made (or the issues that I experienced) and try to make things better for me for the future. Hopefully, I can find a great way to balance out life and work and I can make acting events a priority in my life again.

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Default ThumbnailStaying Super Busy (or Another Job) Default ThumbnailBack To Normal (or Catching Up On Life) Default ThumbnailI Got A New Day Job, Sort Of (or Maybe I Won’t Be Unemployed For Long) Default ThumbnailProductive One Way And Slacking In Another (or Working On Finding Time) Default ThumbnailGetting My Butt In Gear (or Missing Out On Fun Stuff To Work) Default ThumbnailFitting It All In (or Getting Better At Time Management)

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Posted in Acting, Tough Stuff, Work

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Baby Steps Of Improvements (or Getting Ready For The Dri-Tri)

Posted on May 9, 2016 | 1 comment

First, I will share that I did do the dri-tri at Orangetheory this past weekend. That is going to be tomorrow’s post (I think that event deserves its own post), but my workout week this past week was all about getting ready to do it. I decided on Monday morning that I was going to go for it, so I focused my workouts on how each thing was going to get me ready for it.

Monday’s workout was a switch day that had endurance, strength, and power. I signed up for the dri-tri just before taking Monday’s class, so I went into class feeling a bit nervous about if I did the right thing signing up for it. So I was not only grateful that we had a switch day, all of the blocks were on the shorter side. The treadmill portion of class went ok for me. The improvements in my speed that I had made recently were short lasting so I was back to my usual speeds on the treadmill. It’s frustrating when I was doing really well for a while to be back at my old speeds, but I just have to focus on what improvements I can make. On Monday we also had 600 meter rows, which aren’t sprints but I was grateful for them because I knew I’d have a long row during the dri-tri. The floor work was a lot of arms, shoulders, squats, and abs.

But at the very end of class, we had a little bit of time left so we all partnered up for a quick challenge. One person was holding a squat with their hands out while the other partner did high knees to hit their hands. I was able to keep a pretty low squat so my partner didn’t have to do too high of knees, but when it was my turn I knew I couldn’t do the running style of high knees. So I just pretty much marched in place and tried to get my knees up as much as possible.

Wednesday was a strength day, so that means hills on the treadmill. Hills are not my favorite thing to do, but I’m really trying to be better at them. This time, I’m pretty happy with how I did. My incline was between 4-10% for the entire time (10% isn’t that easy for me), and even though I was supposed to be at a higher incline at times I think I did a pretty good job. I was also able to do some speed increases on the hills which made me happy. After the treadmill work was done, we had a lot of heavy weight stuff to do on the floor. For my arm work and my lunges, I was holding 20 pound weights. For some arm things, I’m getting close to being able to use 25 pound weights, but I’m not quite there yet. But to do lunges with heavy weights makes me happy because for a long time I wasn’t able to use the weights while doing lunges. It’s still tough for me because of balance issues, but I’m starting to build my core up enough so that it is helping me build better balance. We also had a 500 meter row that day. 500 meters isn’t a long distance, but I was still feeling a bit tired at the end of it. And in my head, I just kept thinking that 500 meters is only 1/4 of what I have to do during the dri-tri, so that got to me a bit. But I just tried to focus on getting the row done and figured that since the row is at the beginning of the dri-tri I would feel different then.

Friday was another switch day with endurance, strength, and power. Again, the blocks were relatively short (I think the longest one was 8 minutes) so things were a bit easier for me. I actually ended up doing really great on the hills (still not going higher than 10% incline but the speeds were better). Since it was a switch day, I never spent that long on the treadmill and I started to worry about the dri-tri again (where I would need to do a half 5K on the treadmill), but I just looked at how far I got each block and tried to think about how that is a chunk of what I would do the next day. After the treadmill blocks were all done, I realized that maybe I should have done the bike instead since I was going to do treadmill the next day, but by then it was too late.

On the floor we had sprint rows (250 meters and under) that went pretty well for me. My biggest problem on rowing is that when I’m doing them my legs don’t always bend straight (they kind of butterfly out sometimes). And since I’m not bending straight, I’m not able to get as much power in my rows and I know I can. But for these sprint rows, I was bending much better than I think I ever have and the sprints went by really quickly. For the chest presses I was using 20 pounds weights and for my front raises (shoulder work) I was doing 15 pounds instead of 12 pounds. And we had a new move on the floor as well. It was a 4 point plank. Pretty much it was a plank with shoulder touches and then toe touches. I usually don’t do plank work on my toes because of my calf, but this time it ended up being easier to do the work on my toes than on my knees. They are pretty hard to do, but I managed my best and I don’t think I looked too awkward.

After my Friday workout, my nerves for the dri-tri were pretty high. I was thinking back what I had done this past week and tried to relate it to what I knew I would have to do on Saturday. But of course thinking like that stressed me out even more, so I tried to forget it all and just get a decent night sleep since I had to work in the morning before the dri-tri.

And that recap will be coming tomorrow!

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Default ThumbnailDri-Tri Prep Workouts (or The Beginning Of My Workout Week) Default ThumbnailAlmost Normal (or Guess I’m Definitely Missing The Dri-Tri) Default ThumbnailBack To Regular Workouts (or Making Improvements On My Dri-Tri) Default ThumbnailGetting Ready For The Dri-Tri (or Working My Way Through The Workouts) Default ThumbnailThird Time’s Not The Charm (or Being Ok With An Ok Dri-Tri) Default ThumbnailMy First Dri-Tri Relay (or Trying To Not Be Disappointed In Myself)

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Trying To Help (or An Adventure In My Car)

Posted on May 5, 2016 | Comments Off on Trying To Help (or An Adventure In My Car)

The other night, I was driving to my friend’s birthday party. To be honest, I was planning on writing about the birthday party on this post. But what happened on the way is more interesting and was a lesson for me.

I wasn’t that far from my house when I got stopped in traffic. The cars weren’t moving that much and I assumed that there must be an accident ahead. I wasn’t worried about how long it would take me to get to my friend’s party, so I wasn’t thinking too much about it. Traffic finally started to move slowly, and after a few minutes I was able to see what the issue was.

The street I was driving on was a pretty major street (2 lanes in each way). Besides the cross walks at the streetlights there are also some crosswalks not where there is a light. There is a cross walk button for pedestrians to push so lights flash and cars stop. The lights weren’t flashing but there was a woman in the cross walk.

She was maybe 5 feet off of the curb into the street. She wasn’t moving forward or back like she was trying to cross (or scared to do so) but she was swaying and blocking traffic. Cars were stopping thinking she was trying to cross, but she wasn’t moving. And cars had to go around her to be able to drive so that was causing a traffic jam.

When I drove by her, I could see that something wasn’t right. I don’t know if she was drunk, high on something, or mentally unstable but clearly she wasn’t ok. I was able to pull over about half a block away from the cross walk and called 911. I felt weird calling 911 because I wasn’t totally sure it was an emergency, but I was terrified that a car would hit the woman and I knew I had to do something about it.

The 911 operator was pretty amazing. I was able to give her the exact location where I was and since I could see the woman in my rear view mirror I was able to give her a full description. While I was on the call with 911 the woman started to walk back and forth on the cross walk and occasionally stopping in the middle of the street (and almost getting hit by multiple cars). I’m sure that I was making the 911 operator nervous because I kept saying under my breath “don’t get hit by a car” and “stop doing that” while the operator was getting the information over to the police.

I kept apologizing for calling 911 because this might not be an emergency, and the operator kept reassuring me that I was doing the right thing and that I shouldn’t worry (I was also worried about getting a ticket because where I pulled over my car was parked illegally).

After being on the phone for maybe 5 minutes, the woman stopped crossing back and forth and stayed on the side of the street that I was parked in. I relayed that information to the 911 operator and then noticed that the woman was walking down the sidewalk toward me. The operator said not to do anything and just to keep updating her on where the woman was.

Then all of a sudden, the woman stopped at my window. She was looking in and staring at me and eventually was knocking on the window. I started to freak out little bit, but the operator said to not engage with her and to just stay on the phone and update her as needed. Then, before I knew it, the woman was pulling on my passenger door trying to open it.

I totally freaked out at that moment. I’m so grateful that my mom taught me to always lock my car doors as soon as I get inside so this woman was not able to get into my car. But I was still terrified and I know the 911 operator was trying to calm me down. All I could do was just keep saying “why is she trying to get into my car?” and watch the woman as she kept trying the front and rear passenger doors. The 911 operator told me that the police were on their way with the sirens on and they should be by my car soon.

After less than a minute of the woman trying to get into my car, I saw the lights of the police cars coming down the road and when they stopped behind my car the woman was still pulling on my car doors. Once they got her away from my car, the 911 operator said that I could hang up with her and that the police would probably need to talk with me.

I told the police exactly what happened and why I called 911. They took notes on my statement and took my name and phone number and sent me on my way. I took some time to calm down (I didn’t know it at the time but I started to cry when the woman was pulling on my car doors) and when I finally drove away the police were talking with the woman by the cop cars.

I have no clue why this woman was trying to get into my car. I have no idea what was happening or if I totally overreacted and there was a reason for her to be in the middle of the street. All I know is that if I had heard of a woman getting hit in a crosswalk on the news that I would feel terrible that I didn’t do something. So I had to do something. By the time I got to my friend’s party, I was still shaking a bit and coming down from the excitement of the drive over. I kept thinking that maybe I had done the wrong thing (I still don’t know what happened with the woman). But the more I think about it, I know I did the right thing. Worst case, the woman explained to the police why she was doing what she was doing and she was sent on her way. But if she was in need of help, someone had to get the help to her.

I know that we all drive past things that don’t look totally right and don’t think twice about it. I was lucky that I had the time to pull over and call 911 about this, but hopefully if you encounter a similar situation (or if I encounter another one) you will be able to help out as well.

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Reflection on April’s Challenge (and Looking At May’s)

Posted on May 4, 2016 | 1 comment

I’ve been keeping up with the monthly challenges with my Spark Planner. Even though I do weekly and monthly goals in the planner, the monthly challenges are nice because they are something I want to do every day and for each of them (100% accurate food tracking, daily gratitude lists, and no ordering delivery food), I’ve been able to maintain those habits since then. I’m sure that eventually I will not be doing everything 100% perfect, but it’s nice to know that I’ve added some great daily habits into my life that I’m keeping up.

For April’s challenge, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do but I eventually settled on doing daily weigh-ins. I have such a love/hate relationship with my scale and tracking weight can be so emotional for me because it’s a black and white status. If I gained 6 pounds because I ate something really salty, it upset me and any weight tracking things I used made it look so horrible.

So once I knew that I would have this as my challenge, I looked for a new way to track my weight. Weighing in every day is great, but if I don’t keep records then there is no point of doing it. After searching in the app store, I came across Happy Scale. You still track your weight similar to any other app, but in the tracking it shows trends versus just the current number. So if you are overall down 10 pounds but you happen to gain a pound, it will still have a line headed down. It also shows you what you will weigh by a certain time based on the trend that you are currently on. This app really helped me to focus on the overall view and not just pinpointing this particular moment.

As far as my monthly challenge goes, I wasn’t 100% this time. I didn’t bring my scale with me to Santa Barbara, so on Sunday and Monday that week I didn’t weigh in. But every single day beyond those I weighed in (I set an alarm to remind myself but I didn’t really need it). I’m fine that it wasn’t 100%, and now I’m trying to figure out how I want to continue in the future. I don’t know if I love the idea of daily weigh-ins, but I don’t know if weekly ones are good enough if I’m tracking a trend. I’m going to play with the frequency of the weigh-ins and I feel really confident that I will find a happy medium.

For my May challenge, I decided to change things up a bit. Most of my challenges have been related to my health or eating disorder recovery. I love that I’m making great strides in that, but I also want to improve other aspects of my life. And one thing that I feel has been falling behind is my acting career. I’ve had some great things so far this year with the short film I helped a friend with and the new short film that I’ll be starring in (don’t forget to donate to our Kickstarter!).

But I know there is so much more that I can do. And I can’t think that my agents will do 100% of the work for me. I need to be proactive and work on finding great parts to audition for as well. So for May, I’ve set my challenge to search the various self-submission acting sites every single day. I can’t guarantee that every day I will submit myself for something because there isn’t always something that matches me. But every day I will check to make sure. I used to be really great at doing this, but lately I’ve been slacking.

I’ve set an alarm to go off every single day to remind me to look on the self-submission sites. It does come in handy to have the alarm because it’s so easy to forget. But this way my phone (and computer) will keep reminding me until I click that the task is complete. So far, it’s been pretty easy to remember to self-submit but I know there will be days that I completely forget until the alarm goes off. But that’s exactly why I have the alarm and there’s no shame in needing to be reminded to do something.

Hopefully out of doing self-submissions checks every day, I’ll get some more auditions this month. Getting auditions isn’t something I can control, so I’m not focusing on the results (just the action). But having results would be awesome and I know that every opportunity I have to audition is another day that I get to live my dream and be closer to my dream career.

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Posted in Acting, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

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Busy Workout Week (or Maybe Overdoing It A Bit)

Posted on May 2, 2016 | Comments Off on Busy Workout Week (or Maybe Overdoing It A Bit)

I had a 4 workout week this past week. I totally needed a 4 workout week (it was actually the only 4 workout week I had for April), but I think that some of my activities on my off days (or before my workouts) made it seem a bit tougher than it usually feels. Of course, I also might have felt it more because it had been way too long since my last 4 workout week and I’ve learned that I need to make sure that I’m doing them more often so I don’t get out of the habit of it.

I think my Monday workout went pretty well. It was a day that had endurance, strength, and power and those can be really fun. It was a switch day, so I was never on the treadmill for that long at a single stretch. The endurance block was full of longer push paces, but those weren’t too bad for me. The one treadmill thing that got to me was the strength section. Strength on the treadmill means hills and sometimes the power walkers are expected to go much higher on the incline than I’m ok with right now (I’m wondering if my calf will ever feel back to normal again). I tried my best, but I’m really not ok going above 8% (or on really good days 10%) on the treadmill. So I had to keep my inclines lower than I would have liked, but I tried to bump up the speed when I could.

The floor work wasn’t too bad, but my body wasn’t loving the pop jacks or knee tucks. Knee tucks are much easier for me, but they can be a struggle when I’m tired or my hip is feeling ready to be done. But what I liked the best about this workout was that the end was the endurance block that was a partner challenge. So I felt extra motivated then because I had a partner counting on me and the treadmill part of the partner workout was a 1 minute push to all-out on the treadmill so it was pretty fast.

Wednesday was a tough day for me at first. I had gone to Disneyland after the workout on Monday, and I might have overdone it a bit with the walking after a workout. Tuesday I was really sore and Wednesday I was still feeling a bit off. I tried to do some stretching work to make my legs and hip feel better, but when I’m having an off day sometimes there is nothing I can do to make it better. So when I got to the workout, I was happy to see that it was a run/row day. All the treadmill blocks were pretty short (I think the longest I was on the treadmill at a time was under 4 minutes), and the rowing wasn’t too bad. The rows were between 100-200 meters each time, so that was basically under a minute of rowing. I tried to take a moment between the treadmill and the rower to catch my breath and make sure I wasn’t pushing my hip too much. I think I did ok with that because when I got to the floor block, it went really well for me!

I was doing my squats with 20 pound weights in each hand and managed to do all my arm work with the same weights! I’m getting close to being able to move to 25 pound weights for my chest presses (somehow that is where my upper body is strongest), but I’m still doing great with 20 pounds and the last few moves of each set can be a struggle. But knowing that I’m getting close to moving up to the next weight makes me feel pretty awesome. We also had lunge work to do that day, but I wasn’t able to do my lunges how we were supposed to (with our back leg on the weight bench). So I did my regular lunges instead and didn’t feel too bad about it because I was feeling so great about the weight work I had already done.

Friday was an interesting day. Before the workout, I had put a challenge out online that for every donor we get on the film Kickstarter, I would do a burpee before the class. I really was hoping we’d get a bunch of donors, but we only got 2. But then again, that meant I only had to do 2 burpees. I’m not the prettiest doing burpees because of the hip issues, but since I was filming this to share online I tried to look awesome doing them. Sadly, trying to look awesome also made both of my hips hurt so badly (even with only doing 2 burpees), so I was already feeling a bit sore before the workout even started.

Friday was a solid 30 minutes on the treadmill to start. We had a couple of 2 minute pushes, and those felt like 3 minutes or more to me. But I managed to get through it. When we had to do hills, I had to keep them pretty low (I basically stayed at 6%), but I did bump up my speed to balance it out. On the floor, I got to use the 20 pound weights again for my chest and arm work and we had some shorter rows. By the end of the workout, my hips were feeling a bit better than they did right after those 2 burpees (I’m so grateful the workout didn’t have any burpees in it!). But even though I was feeling a bit better, I knew that Saturday was going to have to be a bit of an easier day for me.

Saturday I was using the bike instead of the treadmill. The cardio blocks were back to back so I was on the bike for 30 minutes straight. It technically wasn’t a distance challenge day, but we were given a distance to try to get to in class. The runners on the treadmill were supposed to do a 5K (3.1 miles) or better in the 30 minutes, so I figured on the bike I should try to go 12 miles since for run/row days the bike has to do 4 times the distance of the treadmills. We had a lot of long pushes between the treadmill blocks. It seemed like a majority of them were between 2 or 3 minutes and I was feeling pretty tired by the end of the blocks. But once we were told to switch to the floor, my distance on the bike was 12.1 miles, so I was pretty happy about that.

The floor work was a lot of should work and we had some longer rows too. One block was an 800 meter row and the other was a 400 meter row. I managed to do both without having to take a break, but it wasn’t easy. And I was under the time that we were supposed to be under for the rower, so that was pretty awesome. At the end of each floor block, we had a 1 minute plank challenge. I still have to do planks on my knees (on my toes hurts my calf), but being on my knees also allows me to focus much better on my form. I could feel the planks in my core a lot, but I was able to keep going for the entire minute both times.

This week, I know I’ll be doing 3 regular workouts. There is also a dri-tri on Saturday that I’m debating about doing. I know I’ve felt left out in the past when I didn’t do the dri-tri, and I think that maybe I should just push myself to do it. But I also somehow don’t feel ready for it yet. I’m hoping that by tomorrow I will have a decision made on whether or not I will go for it. This dri-tri is the preliminary for the regional dri-tri, but since I know that I will not be a contender for representing my studio if I do it my focus will only be to finish and not to beat anyone else. I know that if I do it, the chances of me being the last person to finish is really high, but if I go for it I think finishing is the only goal that I’ll have in my head.

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Stopping A Panic Attack (or Only One Health Issue At A Time)

Posted on April 28, 2016 | Comments Off on Stopping A Panic Attack (or Only One Health Issue At A Time)

I’ve been pretty lucky lately with my panic attacks. I was warned that with taking Vyvanse it can make panic attacks more frequent or more severe. But I’ve almost experienced the opposite. My random panic attacks aren’t really happening right now (which I am so grateful for) and my expected panic attacks (like at the dentist) are the most mild they have ever been. I’m very happy with this side effect and it’s been really nice to not have to stress or panic about a panic attack happening.

Then the other night in the middle of the night I had a gallbladder attack. It was pretty awful, but fortunately not the worst one I’ve ever had. But they are pretty painful no matter how mild they get. I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t really see straight. My vision was going in and out (it almost felt like I was going to faint at times) and I stayed on my bed to stay safe. The pain was so uncomfortable and I couldn’t find a position to put my body in to make things feel even the smallest bit better. And I’m not sure if this is a part of the gallbladder attack or a reaction to the other symptoms, but I couldn’t stop sweating and was having trouble catching my breath.

In the past, my gallbladder attacks have brought on panic attacks. It makes sense to me because you do feel like you are dying when you are having a gallbladder attack. I really was wishing that I would pass out so that the pain could happen without me really knowing about it. I wanted it to end, but it wouldn’t. If I had a panic attack, I would have felt that it was totally normal.

But somehow, I was able to rationalize with myself in that really bad moment. I knew that it was a gallbladder attack and that it wasn’t a heart attack or that I was dying or anything. I knew that it would end eventually and when they do go away it usually is sudden for me so it could be going away any minute. And I knew that I had a choice to go to the doctor’s soon if I wanted to get my gallbladder out and never have to deal with this again (I don’t do that yet since my attacks aren’t that frequent and it’s a surgery that isn’t necessary yet).

I found a way to lay on my bed that was a safe enough position for me (I wasn’t at risk for falling off the bed if I did pass out) and I was working on focusing on my breath. I was trying to do counts for each inhale and exhale and was putting the counts in the front of my mind and not the what felt like endless pain.

Finally, the attack stopped pretty much as quickly as it came on. I tried to get as calm as I could and focus on getting back to sleep. The entire thing was about an hour long and the next morning I found it pretty funny that when I looked at my sleep tracking from my Fitbit, it was clear when the attack was happening.

Sleep Tracking

The pink lines are when I’m awake so you can see that chunk of pink in the middle of my night. That’s when I couldn’t stop moving because of the pain but you can also see that the entire night was a bit restless for me (the restless moments are the blue lines).

I know that I have the option of getting my gallbladder removed, but like I said above the attacks are pretty rare so I don’t think that surgery is a good option for me. I’ve had a couple of ultrasounds in the past and they have always told me that until the attacks are frequent enough that they are affecting my life, I don’t need to have my gallbladder out (the attacks aren’t good but they aren’t damaging my health in any other way right now). I’m just glad that my attacks are rare and they seem to be over within a few hours each time (from my research it seems like some people can have them for a day).

While it sucks that I had the attack, I’m so glad that I was able to prevent the panic attack from happening at the same time. I think that helped me get through the attack much better and I’m thinking maybe it helped it end faster than they have in the past.

Obviously I don’t want to have to go through this again, but I know realistically that it will happen again but I’m glad that somehow I was able to control the panic attack from coming and whatever skill set was in my subconscious to do that is able to be used in the future.

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