Posted onDecember 30, 2021|Comments Off on Was I Patient Enough This Year (or Reflecting On My Word For 2021)
For the past few years, I’ve been doing a word of the year each year. I like having this as a part of my goals for each year, but the word of the year is a different idea to me than my goals. The word is more about an overall theme where the goals are slightly more specific. Sometimes the word is an idea of something I know I want to do and it’s a reminder to focus on that and sometimes the word is something I know I will need to work on but is already something in my life.
For 2021, my word was patience. I picked this word because it seemed obvious to me. At the end of 2020, vaccines were just getting started and it was a big unknown for when I would be able to be vaccinated. I had heard rumors it might not be until the summer and I knew that as much as I wanted to get back to aspects of my normal life that I would need to wait. I knew I would need to practice patience with getting vaccinated and going back out into the world. 2020 was difficult for me with being so isolated, but at the same time, I had kept myself safe and healthy. And even if I was seeing others going out and doing things, I would need to be patient until I felt like things were safe enough for me to do the same.
I also knew I needed to be patient because I felt like I had lost a year of my life. I know many people felt the same way (now it feels like I’ve lost 2 years, but that’s a different topic) and there were things I had as goals for 2020 that I couldn’t do because of circumstances outside of my control. I needed to be patient and understanding with myself and not feeling like I was where I wanted to be at that time. I still feel like I’m somehow behind in my life, but I am still practicing being patient with that idea.
I really think overall I did a pretty good job with using my word as my theme for 2021. There were a lot of things I wanted to do but had to wait longer than I would have liked to. There are plenty of other things that I want to do now but I still haven’t brought them back into my life. It’s a weird time right now because we are still in a pandemic but it also feels like we have a small percentage of our normal lives back. We are in this in-between time where some things are back and we have to make personal choices if they are ok for us to do or not. I have been patient with myself with allowing myself to still feel a bit fearful and being ok with avoiding things. And I’ve been patient with others when I ask someone if they want to do something and it’s not something they feel comfortable with yet.
Being patient isn’t something that I will stop working on since I will have a new word for 2022 (which I will be writing about soon). I still need to practice patience quite often and remind myself that it’s ok that things are not going as quickly as they did before or how I want them to go. I still hope that things will be getting better soon because it seems like we had a small taste of what things were like before and now some things are back to how they were at the worst time in the pandemic last year or earlier this year. I have worked on keeping myself safe and healthy for almost 2 years of a pandemic now. There’s no rush to move past this and take unnecessary risks. So I will just keep being patient and taking things day by day as I need to.
Posted onJanuary 5, 2021|Comments Off on Having Patience (or My Word For 2021)
As I have done the past few years, I have decided on a word for 2021. My word for 2020 was Balance, and I think that kind of didn’t end up happening too much for me because of the pandemic. I wanted to balance out my life in so many different ways, but I was prevented from doing it because of circumstances that were out of my control. I tried to balance what I could, but I know that what I wanted to do with the idea of balance just didn’t happen.
When trying to pick a word for this year, I wanted to pick it with the understanding that I might be isolated at home for some or most of the year. I know that a lot of things that I have in mind with different words each year involve doing something that doesn’t involve just me. I need to be around others to work on the idea. But I finally settled on a word that I think is perfect for 2021 (and if I’m being honest, was kind of my word for 2020 without me knowing it).
My word for 2021 is Patience.
I need to have patience in so many aspects of life. I need to be patient with the pandemic and what is happening. I need to be patient with getting the vaccine and having some sense of my old life back. I need to be patient with myself when it comes to my workouts and working on recovering from my eating disorder. There is so much that I need to be patient with in 2021. I think it’s the perfect word for me.
Even though I didn’t end up wearing my bracelet that much in 2020 since I rarely was out doing anything, I still ordered a bracelet for 2021 from MantraBand. I feel like that also makes me feel a bit more hopeful that I will be out and wearing jewelry this year. But even if I only wear it a few times, I like having it as a reminder even just seeing it in my room each day. And I do love the sayings that are on the packaging.
“Everything worthwhile takes time to become. Practice patience with others, and with yourself. Because there is nothing that patience and time can’t resolve.”
I feel like that perfectly describes why I picked patience to be my word this year.
The final part of my routine with my words each year is to change up the background on all the different devices that I use. I only include the word on my computer background (my phone and iPad are only the image without the word). But every year, I have put the word in the middle of the background image and I feel like I never see it. So this time, I moved the word to the side and I will see it almost all the time that I am on my computer. I like this change already, and it’s only been a few days.
I picked the image because it was pretty and I liked the colors. But after a day, I realized that it looks like Spaceship Earth at EPCOT. I wasn’t trying to make it a Disney thing, but it unintentionally became a Disney thing! I love that too and whenever I see the image it makes me smile.
I spent a lot of time in 2020 being patient and now I need to continue to do that and build up that skill in 2021. Patience is what will keep me safe and healthy. Patience will get me through this time. I know it’s not easy and I will have plenty of time that I’m impatient and frustrated, but I just need to keep reminding myself that patience will pay off and I will be able to get to the other side of all this eventually.
I originally planned this past week to be a 4 workout week because I knew that this week was likely to be a 3 workout week. I’m now having 4 workout weeks be the norm and 3 workout weeks to be rarer instead of how it used to be the other way around. But this week was another one where my body was telling me stuff and I just had to listen. So I had 3 workouts and they weren’t all up to my normal abilities.
Monday was a strength day. I knew I’d be going to Disneyland that day, plus I was dealing with some hip pain and nausea, so I decided to walk the entire workout. It was probably a smart choice for me because a lot of the work was longer segments on the hills. I can do running on hills for short bursts, but I definitely can’t really do longer running on hills just yet. Most of my walking was at 6, 8, or 10% and it was tough to feel like I was getting a good workout in because I’m so used to running.
We also had one cardio block on the rower and it was a pretty fun challenge. The goal was doing 100 meters in as few pulls on the rower as possible. Doing as few pulls is tough because your brain is telling you to go super fast to get it done. But really you have to take your time and take long pauses at the beginning and end of each stroke. It’s an exercise in patience and I’m getting better at it. The goal was to be able to do 100 meters in under 10 pulls and I knew I could do that since on these pull challenges I usually average 10 meters a pull. In the time we had on the rower, I had time to do 4 attempts. 2 of those attempts were at 8 pulls and the other 2 were at 7 pulls. I’m pretty happy with myself with that effort.
Once on the floor, I focuses on heavier weights since my cardio wasn’t as good as normal. We did have rowing on the first block with 200 meter rows (I did them between 40-42 seconds each time). The second and third block on the floor was mainly arm work like pull overs, triceps, upper cuts, and raises. And the last block was all ab work like planks, crunches, and toe reaches. Even though I felt disappointed with my cardio, I knew I’d be doing a ton of steps at Disneyland and I feel pretty happy with what I was able to do on the floor.
Wednesday was a run/row day and I was pretty excited about it. I knew it was going to be a very difficult run/row, but it was a great opportunity for me to prove to myself that I’ve made some really great progress. On the running part, it started with .25 miles, then .5 miles, then 1 mile. And the rowing was 1600 meters, 800 meters, and 400 meters. I had a feeling I wouldn’t get through the mile so I put my energy toward the first 2 segments. I was able to run the .25 mile run pretty easily (it’s still so crazy to me that running that has become easy to me now) and then I headed to the rower.
I checked my records, and my previous PR for 1600 meters was almost 2 years ago and it was 8:15.2. I had a feeling I could do it in under 8 minutes flat and set that as my goal. Distance rowing is still tough, but I’m getting better at it since we’ve had some more opportunities for it. And I think the endurance I’ve been building with my running is helping my rowing too. I tried to not focus on the rower while I was rowing because I knew I’d be on there for a while. I finally looked down at around 6 minutes thinking I would be close and I was much closer than I thought I could be to being done! So I decided my new goal would be to go all out for the end and maybe be able to take a full minute off my 1600 meter row. I think I was in a bit of shock when I was done.
I did just over 1:02 faster than my old PR! That’s pretty insane and I think that it was a really great time for me. I knew I’d PR on my row, but to think I could PR by that much is mind-boggling. I was pretty exhausted after that row, but I still wanted to do my best on the next running segment. I’m not sure how I did it, but I managed to run the entire .5 mile run too. I did the 800 meter row in 3:27.5 which is less than half the time it took me to do double the distance so that was pretty great too. And I only got started on the mile run by the time it was time to switch.
The floor work had an interesting set up. There were 4 blocks and the first 3 blocks all started with a minute of timed work like squats, pushups, and rowing on the straps). After that, we had about 4 minutes to do 2 different moves. The moves after the timed work was mainly arm work and a lot of it was rowing (which seemed mean after doing so much rowing during the run/row). The very last block on the floor was timed ab work like crunches and leg lifts. We also had a 90 second plank hold to finish which felt pretty easy considering all the plank work I did in my challenge last month. I’m happy that planks have gotten so much easier for me and I’m excited to see what other plank progress I’m going to make soon.
Friday was another run/row day but it was also a strength day so that meant hills. I originally planned to do all the running as running and it started off great with a .5 mile run which was at a flat road treadmill (which is 1%). I actually was able to get my speed up and did it at 4.7 mph instead of my usual 4.5 mph. Next was a 450 meter row which I wasn’t too worried about since I was focusing on the next run segment.
Next was supposed to be .4 miles at 2% and I assumed I’d be able to do it. But my body was saying otherwise and after less than a minute I had to switch to power walking. It was disappointing because I was so set on running, but I’m really learning to be patient with myself and knew it would be best to not run. My body was hurting from some hip pain plus I had eaten too much the night before (more on that in a future post), but I was hoping that I could overcome that. But once I started walking I was feeling better so I know I made the right choice. I did the 350 meter row, the next run segment (as a walk again), and just had enough time to finish a 250 meter row when time was called. I didn’t get all the way down the run/row assignment, but I got almost done which is pretty good for me.
Once on the floor, I again wanted to do heavier weights because I felt like I had to make up for what I didn’t do on the treadmill. We started with lateral lunges and I was able to use 20 pound weights in each hand. It wasn’t easy and I had to take breaks, but I got through the entire set. I did my front raises with 15 pound weights (usually I use 12 pounds) and I even used weights for my hip bridges and scissor kicks which I usually do without weights. In the second block, I wasn’t using much heavier weights than normal, but I didn’t go easy on myself either. And we ended with a core blast with a medicine ball and I went for the 10 pound one instead of 8 pounds. I felt like I really made up for my lack of running with weights.
Leaving Friday’s workout, I had every intention of making it on Saturday. So I probably didn’t go as hard for that workout than I would have if I had known I was going to skip Saturday. But Saturday morning things changed and I knew it would be best for me to not work out that day. It’s not easy for me to listen to my body because I’m always trying to push myself, but I’m trying and I’m seeing the results when I do pay attention.
I’m a bit paranoid about not hitting my workout goal for the year, so I might try to see if I can fit in another workout this week. It might not be possible and I might have to be ok with 3 workouts for 2 weeks in a row. It’s not the end of the world, but I’m so set in my plan that it can be hard to deviate from it. But this is all a lesson in patience, listening to my body, and not being too hard on myself. It’s just tough for me to do that sometimes.
Posted onDecember 25, 2014|Comments Off on I Really Am Doing Everything Right (or It’s Frustrating Not Losing Weight)
First of all, Merry Christmas everyone! I hope that you are all having an amazing day doing exactly what you want to do today! My recap of Christmas will come soon.
I’ve been on a very good path lately. My exercise routine is getting to be in a very good place. I’m going to Orangetheory 3 times a week every day and I’m even adding a 4th day every so often. I’m thinking that for 2015 I will do 1 week of 3 workouts and then 1 week of 4 workouts just to push myself.
I’m getting so much stronger and I know that I’m getting much healthier. While I haven’t necessarily tested my cardiovascular abilities, I know that I don’t feel as tired as I did my first few weeks of workouts after the cardio section. And I can row much farther than before without having to take a break.
There are some things that aren’t on the right track. My hips are hurting more and more each day. They aren’t nearly as bad as I know that they can get, but I do sometimes miss my pain-free days as now they are much less frequent than they used to be. I’m also starting to lose a bit of flexibility that I had worked very hard to get back after my hip surgery. I’m not sure what exactly is causing this, but I think it’s a combination of the pain and maybe my muscles being stronger and bigger. I’m going to be interviewing new orthopedic surgeons soon and this is a concern that I’m going to bring up with them.
And finally, I’m starting to get my food in control. I’m getting very comfortable with cooking and in fact am planning on spending some time today reorganizing my kitchen to help make things more efficient when I am doing my bulk cooking.
I still have some food setbacks, but they aren’t as often or as crazy as they used to be. Having my food ready for me the moment I’m hungry really does help stop me from needing to run to the store to buy something in desperation.
So why am I frustrated?
I’m really not losing weight at the pace I feel like I should be. I know the saying that muscle weighs more than fat and I could just be gaining muscle, I should be seeing the scale go down in more significant increments that they are doing right now.
I know that sometimes it takes some time for the weight loss to show up on the scale so I’m trying to be patient. But having that instant gratification of knowing that I’m doing the right things really does help with motivation. And I have some clothes in 1 size smaller that I’d really like to start wearing.
I really don’t think I can do more than I’m doing right now. I guess I can work on adding more workout days, but I do need those recovery days for my hips to stop hurting. And I don’t want to decrease or increase my daily calories. The number of calories that I’m eating right now is something that my old therapist/nutritionist set up for me and I know that it’s a good number for me.
So for now, I just have to keep doing what I’m doing and hope that my scale pays attention one day.
I’ve worked in customer service for many of my day jobs. Most of the time, I’ve been interacting with customers in person. But with my telesales job and my current box office job, I’m just doing customer service work on the phone (or in a chat feature like at my current job).
When I worked in telesales, I did discover that I was being much nicer to telemarketers on the phone. I didn’t hang up on them (unless they were robo calls) and if it was something that I know I wouldn’t be interested in, I would politely ask to be put on the do not call list.
But things have changed since I started my current box office job. I’ve had some really crazy customers since day one. I’ve never been threatened more at a job than with this one. Customers tell me that they are going to have me arrested to show up at a show and demand to see me so I can apologize for doing whatever they believed is wrong.
First of all, what saves me every day are my co-workers. While none of us work in the same city (I think only 1 other employee works in California), we are able to chat with each other through the chat feature while we work. We can ask if someone had previously spoke with a customer. Many times, customers will say that someone else told them that they could do something that is against the rules. I check with my co-workers to see who spoke to them and exactly what was said. That way, I can let the customer know that the information that they got from one of my co-workers is correct and I’m not able to bend the rules for them.
For some of the more detailed issues, we just direct them back to the location that they are attending. This is all done by email, so we have records of when we passed on a customer. Since a lot of the tough issues are not dealt with the box office, I’m grateful for that.
But ever since starting this job, I’ve noticed a change in how I deal with customer service people on the phone. I don’t believe that I have ever been mean to anyone, but I’m learning what preparation goes into making sure everything is done correctly.
For example, I ordered a DVD box set for my brother for his birthday. It was a pre-order so I knew it would take a bit of time to be shipped. I got an email 2 weeks ago saying that it would be shipped then, but there was no tracking number. I also had a charge and a refund on my credit card.
Before contacting customer service, I gathered all the information that I had gotten from the company. I knew when emails were sent to me, when the charge and refund was on my card, and when they claimed they would be shipping the DVDs. When I got a hold of customer service, I presented all my information and she was easily able to find out what happened and what went wrong (they are finally shipping the DVDs this month now).
I also recently called an Orangetheory location down in San Diego. I will be there for Thanksgiving and my dad, my brother, and my aunt all want to take a class with me on Thanksgiving. When I called the first time, the guy I spoke to seemed very confused by my request to schedule a class. He took down my information, but nothing seemed right.
After going to my Orangetheory and getting some more information about my membership from them, I called the San Diego location again to get everything straightened out.
The woman who I spoke to on the phone the second time kept saying how great it was that I was prepared to schedule everything and that I had all the information in front of me. It made her job simpler and allowed the problems to be corrected (it was mainly some typos and the previous employee using a different account to schedule my class).
Basically, from being yelled at on the phone every workday at least once, I’ve really learned that there is no reason to not do everything that I can do to make a customer service call as easy as possible. It’s not just about being nice (although that helps and I wish more customers were nice to me), it’s about knowing what had happened with your interactions with the company in the past and knowing what you need to have accomplished (as long as it is possible and not breaking any rules).
Posted onOctober 17, 2014|Comments Off on Having My Patience Tested (or Taking Deep Breaths)
Lately, it’s felt like my patience has been tested all the time.
This mainly is work related, but my personal life has had its moments too.
At work, my main day job is working for the box office job I have. Even at my old box office job I dealt with a lot of angry people who wanted certain seats that aren’t available or want to attend a show on a date that isn’t happening. But since they knew that we wired at the theater, I think people were a bit nicer because they knew that we might eventually meet them.
At the new box office job, people pretty much know that they will not see us. There are always a couple of customers each week who are threatening me on the phone about suing me or having me arrested. What prompts this is usually either unavailable tickets or not having all the answers and having to pass on a message to the particular location that they are going to attend. Most of the customers are nice, but when you get a really angry one, it sticks out in your head.
Thankfully, I can use the chat feature to chat with my co-workers in other locations. We help each other out when we can and if we need a moment to vent, we are there for each other as well. This also has been extremely helpful when a customer contacts us multiple times hoping to get a different answer from a different person.
I’ve also noticed my patience being tested regarding babysitting jobs. First of all, many parents put out a job request to a dozen or so sitters. And whoever responds back first gets the job. So I keep seeing jobs getting cancelled on me because I’m not fast enough to respond (usually I respond within 10 minutes but there are some people who are very fast).
I’m also hearing from multiple parents that they need to see my background check before they can hire me. I’ve passed the background check that the service I use has and it says so on my online profile. But parents want to read it all before they consider me. So I contacted the background check company and they are mailing me a hard copy of the background check. My plan is to scan it in to my computer so I can email it out if necessary (after blacking out my address and social security number).
And in my personal life, it’s not too bad, but all of it adding up has gotten to me a bit. When I moved into my house 4.5 years ago, my landlord promised to re-do my kitchen. He would have done it before I moved in, but I didn’t want to have to wait an extra month. I never really heard back from my landlord on when he would fix my kitchen, but since he wasn’t raising my rent, I stayed quiet.
Now that my rent is raised every year, I want things that were promised to me to be done. Finally last week, the handyman came to my house and took all the measurements for my new kitchen counter. It was supposed to be done by Wednesday of this week.
On Tuesday, the handyman told me that the shop screwed up cutting the counter and that the new one won’t be ready for another week or so.
I shouldn’t let this bother me, but it did. I’m still getting my new kitchen counters (and refusing the clean my old ones since they are about to be trashed). I just need to be ok with things not being done when promised.
All of this has been a big lesson in patience. I’ve always considered myself a patient person, but realizing how this has all tested me has proved that there is room for improvement for me.
Posted onMay 15, 2014|Comments Off on Unexpected Problems (or This Is Why I’m Glad I Rent)
Again, this is not a blog I expected to write. But things happen in life that make you think about how you react to them and this is one of those situations.
It’s the middle of another heat wave here in LA, and I’m definitely cranky again. It’s a combination of the heat, lack of sleep, and bad nutrition (because I know I’m making bad food choices while it’s triple digits here).
So I wasn’t in the best mood yesterday morning when an employee from the gas company came to my door to let me know that they had to turn off my gas. What he told me was a pipe was old and it cracked. Later, I found out that the gas company was attaching a new meter and they cracked a pipe. And it was just over the boundary that makes it my (or my landlord’s) responsibility and not the gas company’s responsibility.
Of course this happened before I had a chance to take a shower in the morning. And while a cold shower does sound refreshing, I prefer it to be cool with a bit of warm water. Not ice cold. There was no way to get the gas turned back on until the pipe was repaired and the gas company man left me with some paperwork explaining what needs to happen next as well as a citation saying what needs to be fixed.
Fortunately, I was working from home with my recruiting job until 2pm yesterday so I was able to call my landlord and leave a voicemail saying that this needed to be fixed ASAP. And since sometimes they don’t get my messages, I also emailed him.
This is where my attitude could have been adjusted. I was so mad that I got a voicemail for my landlord. The house I live in now is the first place I’ve lived where I didn’t have on-site management. I’m not used to being able to reach people immediately to fix things. I tried calling my landlord every 30 minutes until I got through to someone. Finally, I got through and they said that they were sending the plumber to fix things.
I really didn’t have patience yesterday for any of this. I know that I wasn’t a pleasant person to deal with, and I regret that I didn’t take a breath and try to deal with things with a better attitude.
Right before I had to leave for day job #2 in the box office (where I’m so happy they have air conditioning), the plumber as well as my landlord got to my place. They promised that it would be fixed by the time I got home from work, so I left and they worked on it.
While I was at work, I called the gas company to figure out how to get the gas turned back on, and the gas company was at my door a few minutes after I walked in.
I’m glad that somehow this all got done in a day. I really wasn’t that inconvenienced even though it felt that way. And I’m super happy that I didn’t have to pay for any of the repairs done to the gas line. I don’t have that type of money to spare and if I had to pay for it myself, I don’t know what I would have done.
Hopefully, this type of situation won’t happen again in the future, but if it does, I’m really going to work on my patience and having a better attitude about it. Having a nasty attitude really didn’t help anything get done quicker and it made my day kind of stink.
This week hasn’t been the best week for me. I’ve been in a bit of a funk. My eating hasn’t been that great. And I haven’t worked out in a while. Part of the lack of working out was the fact that I didn’t have a sports bra for a while, but I’ve had a new one for 2 days and I still haven’t done anything.
As much as I want to get out of the funk, something is holding me back. I don’t know what. I do have a 5K this weekend, and I will do that no matter what, so hopefully that will turn my attitude around.
But this week, I had an encounter that made me smile. First, a little back story.
I studied with my acting coach, Kip King, from 2002 until he died in 2010. I had a very special bond with him (our birthdays are 2 days apart so he called me his birthday buddy). He knew how to push me but not go too far. One of Kip’s big acting jobs was being Tailor Smurf on “The Smurfs”. So when Kip was sick and in the hospital, I brought him Smurf things I found at various stores, like a Smurf Christmas ornament.
Ok, back to the regular story. I was in Babies R Us the other day getting a gift for a baby shower that I’m going to this weekend. I was walking around the aisles looking for the perfect gift when in the middle of a diaper aisle I saw this.
It was a set of Smurf toys that said Happy Smurfday! on them. Technically, none of these Smurfs are Tailor Smurf (who has a needle through his hat), but it still felt like a sign to me. Why would there be a bunch of birthday Smurfs in the middle of the diaper aisle (and yes, I know the reasonable explanation is that a kid put them there)?
I saw those toys and I smiled. I thought about Kip and how much he believed in me no matter what. He saw me lose and gain weight all the time and loved me no matter what. He said that he knew that I would make it as an actress as long as I was patient enough to wait my turn.
Maybe I need to have that same mentality to my weight. I’m not going to sit around and not do anything, but I’m not going to let myself get this upset and in these slumps again like this. Right now might not be my turn to lose weight, but if I keep working at it like I do with my acting, eventually it will be my turn and things will fall into place. If I’m willing to work hard and be patient with my acting career (which I’m more than happy to do), why am I not allowing myself to have that same mentality to everything else in my life?
So thank you to Kip (or the kid that stuck those toys there) for helping me to see things a little differently when I was in a low spot.
Having Patience (or My Word For 2021)
