Gym time today: 1 hour.
Total this week: 12 hours.

Since my crisis line shift today started at 10:45 am (it's 12:06 pm right now), and the class I wanted to take at the gym this morning was scheduled for 8:30 - 9:30 am, I thought I was only going to have time for like an hour and a half maximum, if I really rushed it. I was considering going there at 7:30 or 8 am so I'd have some time to do other stuff besides the class (If it was an intense class I might not bother, but it was only supposed to be Total Dance, which doesn't count as a workout in my mind). I didn't end up really trying to sleep until almost 1 am though, so I was really sleepy in the morning and didn't want to get up to go earlier... Ended up just going for the one class.

Speaking of that one class, it was supposed to be Total Dance, but the normal instructor (the one whom I'm familiar and comfortable with) wasn't there, and it was this other lady who was like "OKAY WHO'S READY FOR ZUMBA!"

This was pretty much how I was feeling on this inside when she said that:


Anyway, I tried my best to follow along for the first half hour, but I felt super awkward and didn't feel like I was really getting any exercise. I was pretty much doing like low-intensity flailing, honestly. It's hard to put energy into the moves when you don't know how to do them and you can't keep up. I decided to just leave the class and go run on the treadmill instead. I ran... a mile and a half at an 8:34 minute mile speed, then walked to round it out to two miles. It was easier to keep going at that speed, but also really, really boring. I never go on the treadmill long enough to feel like it would be worthwhile to try watching TV on there, so I'm not sure what to do, or if that would even actually help. A lot of the time I just end up staring at the seconds passing for the song I'm listening to. It's... not a great way to kill time.

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I liked this from The Discovery of Being, which I've been making my way through at a crippled snail's pace:

If I alone am in despair, I may be upset by it but I can look around at others who are not in despair. That's some comfort. But if everyone is in despair, if society is in radical transition, then we are in despair en masse. Then it is a different thing; we have no north star to steer by. If our anxiety is not blocked by apathy, it tends to move into panic. This very apathy is a defense against the panic which would occur if one really did let oneself feel. We are then in a condition somewhat like Bosch's paintings of hell. Every mooring place is gone, and human beings in droves are herded into the fires. In such times the ontological use of psychological terms represents an endeavor to gain some new basis, some new foundation for our values.

("The ontological use of psychological terms" refers to the tendency by Existentialistists to talk about things like anxiety, despair, will, guilt, and loneliness not as things that we have, but things that we are.)

Obviously, in this passage, it's not a great situation if everyone is panicking, but I don't think it's any better to be apathetic. Maybe it's even worse to be apathetic?

The term will in Nietzsche also refers to a basic feature of our existence. It is potentially present at all times; without it we would not be human beings. The acorn becomes an oak regardless of any choice, but man cannot realize his being except as he wills it in his encounters. In animals and plants, nature and being are one, but in man, nature and being are never to be identified. Nietzsche heaps scorn on those who still suffer under this illusion and who want to live simply according to nature. In Beyond Good and Evil, he cries, "According to nature you want to live? Oh, you noble stoics. What deceptive words these are. Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purpose and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time. Imagine indifference itself as a power. How could you live according to this indifference?" Human values are not given us by nature but are set for us as tasks to be achieved.

I find this sort of stuff motivating! I want to realize my being, and grow into what I can. I am working on achieving my tasks, as I have been for the past few years, but there's always plenty more to do. And I want to be a mooring place for other people. Someone they can steady themselves against when they feel overwhelmed. I don't want to be afraid to truly feel, and I don't want to slip into "self-satisfied placidity" (another phrase from the book I liked). I want to be happy with whom I am, but never to the point where I don't feel like I could be better. So far so good!

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I have an early morning crisis line shift today, so no gym yet, but I'll get to it. I think I'll try Turbo Kick tonight! Sadly I don't think extra gym time is going to help enough with all the Goldfish I've been eating, but oh well... I guess I'll try to focus on the strength-building part of it more than the weight loss part right now. >.>

That bird Tumblr I mentioned in the last entry has a list of gift ideas for bird lovers, and it is full of magical and wondrous things. I wish I'd found it before Christmas, that would have made things a lot easier.

Look at THIS THING!
And THIS

So much cute stuff.

...I miss my birds...

---Edit---

Gym time today: 2 hours.
Total this week: 11 hours.

My mom got a Groupon for my gym, so she went with me today, and we did Pilates together. After that I went to the Turbo Kick class, but the instructor was feeling kind of down because her dog is really sick, so she kind of modified it. My mom tried to run on the treadmill while I was in class, and she wasn't done by the time I got out, so I went on the elliptical for about ten minutes. It said I burned 100 calories but I'll assume it wasn't really that much. This article says that ellipticals tend to overestimate how much you've burned by 42% (!!!!), so like... maybe I'll just assume I only burned like 50 calories. That's pretty lame.

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Gym time today: 2 hours.
Total this week: 9 hours.

So I did two classes this morning, back to back. I was really contemplating leaving the second one after half an hour, but eh... I decided to stay anyway. Then I went on the Stairmaster for a few minutes (to burn 100 calories, supposedly, but as previously mentioned, I'm highly skeptical of its accuracy) to round it out to two hours.

I had therapy again today for the first time in a few weeks. We talked about awareness and the kind of person I want to be and some of the stuff I've been dealing with. I guess it's not really that I've been dealing with a great number of things, but some of the same old things that have been around are... still around. And it's taking time, but I'm working through them. My therapist did comment that I seemed like I was smiling more genuinely now, which is something I didn't do much when I started going to therapy. I'm at a different place in my life now, I guess. A better place, I'd like to think. At the very least, I'm not getting panic attacks! And I haven't been significantly depressed in a bit of time? Angry, sometimes, which feels unusual to me, but... the gym is sort of helping with that.

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So I found this bird Tumblr and basically my life is over, there is nothing but birbs now. Birbs now and forever.

Because birds!

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Gym time today: 1.5 hours.
Total time this week: 7 hours.

Went for Body Blast tonight. Turned out to be Bosu Blast because the instructor for the Body Blast class left the gym and they haven't found a replacement yet. It didn't feel very intense. Ran a mile and walked a mile afterwards, then did Stairmaster and chest press.

When I went to visit a hospice patient this morning, I bought a book, because that patient usually doesn't respond to me, but I'm supposed to stay if the patients are awake. I've been really bad about reading The Discovery of Being by Rollo May, even though it's actually a really interesting subject. This part in it stood out to me:

It is well to remember that the existential movement in psychiatry and psychology arose precisely out of a passion to be not less but more empirical. Binswanger and the others were convinced that the traditional scientific methods not only did not do justice to the data but actually tended to hide rather than reveal what was going on in the patient. The existential analysis movement is a protest against the tendency to see the patient in forms tailored to our own preconceptions or to make him over into the image of our own predilections.

I really need to work on this in my own life. Trying harder to see people as they are, not as they fit into stereotypes or preexisting molds I may have. It's so automatic to make judgements and assumptions, though. I hope increasing my awareness helps.

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Something super cute that happened today: When the baby I babysit was eating lunch, I put on "I Want You To Want Me" by Cheap Trick and was singing along, and she started copying me. She just got the "didn't I, didn't I, didn't I" part down, but I was really surprised. Maybe I shouldn't have been, though... I had it on repeat and was singing along a LOT, haha. It helps pass the time, that's for sure.

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Gym time today: 3.5 hours.
Total this week: 5.5 hours.

I did Pilates, CSI, and Total Dance today. Also ran a mile (7:30, same as yesterday) and walked one. The treadmill said I burned 220 calories, but I'm pretty sure that was inaccurate, because I didn't put in my weight or age. Pilates didn't feel like exercise, but Total Dance was fast-paced, so it felt more like exercise than usual. I'm only counting CSI as an actual workout, though.

So I made plans to meet up with a dude on Saturday. We're going to get lunch, I guess. Turns out he's interested in biological markers of attractiveness too! What are the odds? He said he could talk my ear off about it and I hope he does. I don't think I ever took an evolutionary psychology class, but he did, so he knows more than I do (Most of what I learned came from cultural anthropology classes, I think?). It's been awhile since I got to listen to someone talk about something they're passionate about in detail, so that'll be cool if he gets to it. (Though it definitely helps that it's something I'm interested in already)

Also, I got a box from Amazon today in the mail. My dad was like "I didn't know you had Amazon Prime" and I was like "...I don't." And I opened it and...

It made me laugh pretty hard. Turns out Kyle sent me a giant box of Goldfish as a belated Christmas gift. In all honesty this is probably my favorite gift this year. It's going to be murder for my figure though. T_T

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Gym today: 2 hours. That makes 10 this week! I did a fairly intense spin class and a fairly not intense class called Body Blast that I think had more to do with strength.

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So I saw this guy I thought was pretty cute, which is very unusual these days. I don't think I'm surrounded by unattractive people, but I just feel physically uninterested in the vast majority of people I see.

When I was in high school (and before that), I had a lot of crushes, but they were all appearance-based because I was way too shy to actually talk to anybody I found attractive. I've had almost no crushes since high school, but on the few occasions I have, my reaction to them is... basically the same as in high school. I didn't want to date any of my crushes in high school. I didn't even want to talk to them, usually. Just wanted to look at them from afar.

Now that I am attracted to almost nobody based on appearance alone, I don't have to worry as much, but the old shyness kicks in full force on the rare occasions when it does happen. Case in point: Aforementioned dude. His picture is attractive to me to the point where I want to hide from it. (I don't want to actually talk to him or anything, though)

WAT DO

I was thinking about why this might happen, and my hypothesis right now is that it's related to misattribution of arousal. The basic idea is that when you have an emotion, you feel some sort of physiological arousal, but you depend on the context of the situation to label what your emotion is. Sometimes you get that label wrong. With me and crushes, I think that I'm interpreting that physiological arousal as a fear response instead of an attraction response, so I end up feeling sort of anxious and intimidated.

Ah, the joys of being awkward and shy.

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So, no gym time yesterday or today. It was only open from 7am-1pm, which wasn't really convenient. (I didn't even get up until after 1 today...)

Two classes planned for tomorrow, though! So I'll still make it to ten hours, hopefully.

I had a pretty chill New Year's Eve. I went to Sean's house and hung out there with School Alex and Sean's friend, Carla. Made mac and cheese to share, but there were only four of us, so... it didn't get finished, haha. It was a nice time though, super laid back. We mostly just hung out and chatted, but we also watched Big Fish. It was Alex and Carla's first time seeing it I think. Sean and I have both watched it more times than we can remember. It's a great movie, though. I ended up staying at Sean's house until like... 3am. Hence not getting up today until the afternoon.

Today was pretty laid back too, I guess. My mom and I went over to Santana Row to return my and my brother's Christmas gifts from my aunt to H&M. Sadly, they couldn't give us a cash refund, so they just gave us merchandise credit. :| I have no interest in shopping at H&M, so it's kind of disappointing, but oh well. I ended up walking over the Free People and getting a couple things there on sale. Finally got that bra cami thingy that I keep trying on every time I go there. XD Also got a new long sleeve shirt! I got a bunch of long sleeve shirts from Old Navy when I was like, 15, and haven't really gotten many more since then, so I'm thinking I might start replacing some of them... Although they haven't worn out yet, so maybe there's no need? I dunno. Nine years is a pretty decent amount of time to have owned shirts from Old Navy, especially considering they were like, $5 or $10 when I got them. I also still have that hoodie from Old Navy that I got when I was in 7th grade... and it still fits me... Yay for not growing much? Maybe? >_>

I might be meeting up with someone this weekend, but we'll see, I guess. No idea what we'd do, or what it would be like. I've gotten a lot more lax about meeting up with people though, I think. Dude seems nice enough, so I'm not too worried.

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Gym hours this week: 8

Rounding down to an hour at the gym today. Did a class called Body Blast that was cardio/strength with no breaks, which was pretty tiring, then ran a mile for good measure. Felt sleepy when I got home though, which was unexpected. I went in the morning and thought the exercise might help wake me up.

Took a nap, went to my shift at the crisis line, came home, sleepy again.

Bluhbluhbluh.

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