New Year

Well, it's a new year, huh? Hopefully the start of it isn't really indicative of how the rest will proceed, seeing as I spent New Year's Eve incredibly sick and somewhat incoherent. On the upside, I kind of feel like my life is going SOMEWHERE, so that's a plus.

Anyhoo, I've never really gone in for the whole resolutions thing. If I don't have the willpower to start something during the rest of the year, chances are that I'm not gonna get around to doing it now, either. However, I do want to change some things.

First, I need to seriously get on the Ritalin. After the fiasco that is my attempts at applying to graduate programs, I realize now that I really need to do something about my ADD problem. So, as soon as I get around to it, I'll call my doctor and figure out what I need to do to get a new prescription. I'm afraid that I'll probably need to get re-diagnosed, since I haven't actually taken ritalin since I was in high school.

Secondly, I want to seriously get into running. I'm not talking about the usual couple of miles 2 times a week, I want to start a hardcore training program. My goal is to start doing 8-10 mile runs by this summer. Why, you ask? Because I can.

Lastly, I WILL finish applying to grad schools.  I will put real effort into it, and I will care about the results.  Actually, I can't guarantee anything about the last one.  Part of my problem is that I'm awfully apathetic about these things.  Yeah, I am getting kind of sick of working as a tech, but at the same time, my life isn't that bad now.  I'm now making enough money to support myself, and sometimes I even get to buy video games, even though I rarely have enough time to play them.  Anyway, I'll do what I need to, and if I don't get in anywhere that I want I'm not going to cry or anything, but it would be nice if it worked out.

Next, I may do a year in review or something for 2008.

Ratner pool - 2, Eric - 0

So, as part of phase two of my plan to trim down a bit, I've started swimming laps again in the morning. For those of you who don't remember, I tried this before about 10 months ago and ended up giving up because it kept kicking my ass.

I'm not exactly the world's greatest swimmer. Part of this whole experiment is my stubborn side declaring that I can do anything I put my mind to, and it's just a matter of keeping on it until it gets easier. It's the exact same side of me that declared that I was going to become a runner no matter what, and you know what? It worked out. I can run three miles now, even on a bad day, and I'm working on improving my speed.

My biggest problems kind of compound each other. First of all, I never really learned proper technique. As I was growing up, my parents sent me to swim lessons, but I never really had any decent teachers. Secondly, I have an innate fear of suffocation. The fact that I can't breathe freely FREAKS ME OUT. It used to be that I couldn't swim with my head below the surface of the water because I'd start panicking. Now I've gotten over it, but my technique really sucks still. I can't seem to get to the point where I'm taking oxygen in at the same rate as I'm consuming it, so I end up gasping for air at the end of every trip across the pool.

Also, swimming is EXHAUSTING. It sort of leaves me tired the entire rest of the day, which is a problem because the only time that I can fit swimming in is in the morning.

On the upside, I got on the scale today and I was under 170 lbs, for the first time since I quit swimming the last time.

Anorexia? More like Anor-SEXY-a!

So, as all of you SHOULD know, gay pride is this weekend. On top of being a hot over-the-top tranny mess, it also presents the opportunity to parade around shirtless and count the number of looks you get (well, that's what I'm planning on doing, anyway.) To that end, I have declared this week Lose-Three-Pounds-And-Define-My-Abs week. I've increased my warm-up cardio before every workout to ten minutes and ditched the 750-calorie mass building shake in favor of a 220-calorie Go Lean shake, and have been trying really hard to downsize my dinner and snacking tendencies.

The result? I am SO not cut out to be anorexic. I haven't quite gotten to the point where I'm tired and cranky all the time, although I think that'll happen if I try to keep this going for another couple of weeks. Also, I REALLY don't like being hungry. I lose my focus and just think about food ALL the time. This struggle is symbolized by the Snickers bar that I got for doing a survey last week and has been sitting on my desk, LOOKING at me. Every 5 minutes I look at it and imagine how amazing it would taste, then force myself to wait until my appointed snack time, where I will forgo the delicious Snickers bar for dry cereal. When this weekend is over, I am SO going to eat that Snickers bar, and I'm going to love it god damnit.

The other problem that I never foresaw is that I put a lot of strain on my body when I work out, and I actually need the full carbs and protein intake of my previous diet to keep going. My arms are still sore from a workout three days ago, and I think that I'm on the verge of accumulating joint strain, which usually only happens to me when I lift weights more than 3 days in a row.

However, I am going to look fabulous. And I'm just thanking my metabolism, because if I had to do this all the time I think I'd go crazy.