Last month I said it was a good month, and that I was tempting fate by being overtly positive, and to a degree I was correct. This month definitely had some ups and downs, but overall it’s a net win.

Work Stress and Varying Schedule

Short after last post, I had a quick influx of a large number of shorter projects. Which I find almost more stressful than when I have many large projects, because at any given moment I could get notes on 5-6 projects at once. There’s just a lot of juggling involved, keeping priorities straight, and being on top of communication.

We all know that when I’m super busy, I handle it pretty well. At least work related, it’s when I tend to find a great flow and even put out my best work.

The only thing that happens is working out and eating well tend to be the first thing sacrificed to get to that work output.

This has to change and I really have to figure out how to be better when I get busier.

Looking at my workout log, I didn’t have all TOO many breaks, perhaps a couple 4-5 day breaks, but then I got back in to the swing of things. Luckily, the results on the scale didn’t suffer all too much.

Double Peak & A Galapagos Sea Lion Cub

Looking at my weight chart from the past year, it’s almost a perfect yo-yo. As you can see at the end, the past month when I first got stressed, I was in danger of shooting right back up, but luckily I overcame got back on track.

At least now that I’ve been tracking for a while, I can see from the steepness of the changes, it’s likely a lot of it is simply water and going from the peak 2 months ago, it’s actually a pretty straight line taking the average downward trend.

Last month I said that I lost the equivalent of half a baby alpaca, happy to say that now I’ve lost a baby Galapagos Sea Lion cub!

An Old Familiar Danger

I know I’m very much back and forth in this post, but I’m trying to get out of my head and onto the blog what can I do to do better moving forward. While I got things back on track this time, it would be nice not to have that 2 week mini slip up. As always, it tracks back to mentality, and my dear old friend: burnout.

I mentioned having a lot of projects and pretty much as soon as it was finished I went back to that burnout state of mind. Even now, I’ve put off writing this post for at least a week. I’m lethargic, I’m lazy, I’m unmotivated, and that’s annoying. Usually working out helps keep that in check, but it’s not really doing the trick right now.

So, looking up other articles on obesity and depression and stress, seems like I’m doing the correct approach of just pushing through the tough workouts. I don’t know how many times the last month that my post-workout social media post said, “felt sluggish, but pushed through…”

Hopefully doing so will help get my hormones back and give me some energy.

I’ve been meaning to increase frequency of workouts, but can’t seem to get myself to do non-Orange Theory workouts (mainly running). I think a huge part of it is the higher difficulty due to harder pavement than a treadmill.

But I think another large part of it is I recognize that I’m still larger than my previous “largest” when I started this blog, and my new neighborhood doesn’t have a lakeside path, where I can run out of eyesight of a major road, and my self-awareness comes into play.

A month ago, I was well ahead of the curve for the Bears 5k, now I’m just on track, or a little bit behind with maybe 7 weeks to go. So I just need to find the will to wake up in the morning and do it. Go against all my current depressed instincts of sleeping in and getting my butt out there.

Other Things To Do

Aside from just forcing myself to wake up, here’s things that I often say I need to do, but never do, and I need to start listening to myself:

• Better work/life balance, I just need to do more fun things, especially interacting with other people. Since I spend most of my days alone in my apartment working, I need to get out more just in general for in-person interaction.
• Music: I brought my keyboard to my apartment from my family’s home back in December and still have yet to play it. That must change. Maybe even consider taking voice lessons again
• Nutrition: Can always be better, a grocery store is a block away, there really is no excuse to be as lazy as I have been
• Do all those little things I’ve been meaning to do: Although this technically falls under work, there’s a lot of smaller tasks that I keep putting off, but it still weighs in the back of my mind. So I just need to buck up and do it so I can mentally relax more

To Give Myself Credit

Although this has turned into a downer post, I have to give myself props for doing what I have been doing, some of them already beginning to address the above:

• Kept pretty consistent in workouts
• Been visiting the family pretty consistently, albeit, it was Easter and then Mother’s Day. But it’s still good fam time nevertheless
• Finally got new blinds for my bedroom, I didn’t realize how bright my room was at night, so hopefully that’ll lead to better sleep
• This past weekend, supported my good friend in his performance in the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus. It’s the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, so very important performance. Every time I see them perform it makes me miss music, gotta find some kind of equivalent to that that fits me!
• Also attended a good friend’s wedding. Although I was a lot more reserved and lower energy than I would have liked, still got out there.
• And a few other instances of reaching out to friends and getting outside the apartment.

So, I guess I’m doing alright, just don’t know why I feel drained and down on myself at this very moment. Strange having this feeling when I’m currently experiencing success.

Guess just push through and do the things I listed about better balance between work and life, then better productivity when I am in work mode. Or, maybe nothing major needs to happen, just need to keep going and things will sort itself out.

Well, that’s it for this check-in, and probably should get to sleep, it’s MAYhem week at OTF, so essentially like hell week, just in May. Meaning, more difficult workouts. So I better be rested and ready to go!