Escape from the Prison Planet!
I put my picture on wearethe99percent.tumblr.com … because I feel like a refugee from a pocket third-world country in the US, created by the 1% and the government's insane/corrupt need to please them. And I'm very aware, every day, what a lucky one of the 99% I am. The luck is nice, but it's incredibly tough to be lucky when everyone you left at home isn't.
But you probably care more about all those updates I haven't been getting around to…I'm sorry; this week has just been horrendous, really. And it isn't really slowing down, so this will be in the form of bullet-points for now…my hope/plan is to slow down this weekend and do some real substantive writing, here and elsewhere. ::hope hope hope::
- Sleep goes well. This week has been ridiculous so I've missed some naps, but overall I dropped right back into my Everyman Mixed (? Can I call it that?) schedule, where my goal is 3×3, but if I get shorted on naps I do 2×4.5 or 1×6. As long as I get some 3×3 days every week, this seems to work without issue, but I've definitely noticed that if I get stuck in 2×4.5 / 1×6 for too long, I start to get tired. (Specifically, a week of 2×4.5, or more than a few days of 1×6, will make me tired and I'll need catch-up sleep, after which I can go back to polyphase.) I think this is evidence that 3×3 is the most stable one overall - which has been my long-term experience - and that, more generally, the more naps you get, the more stable and restful your polyphasic schedule. But it remains nice that missing naps doesn't have to knock me completely off-schedule; as long as I keep trying for them, I'm OK even during the most insane weeks of work / practice / errands / etc.
- Exercise goes well too. I'm sorry I didn't get to update as I made this transition, but what I did is try out Insanity and P90 as possible alternatives to P90X (which I did for 3.5 weeks - but it was too long and too intensive and thus making my sleep schedule impossible). P90 won. One of the things I really liked about P90X was the focus on form - as a martial artist and someone who picked up fitness as an adult, I care a lot about economy of motion and avoiding injuries - both short- and long-term. Insanity is definitely named correctly, because it seems to me that unless you're already capable of doing the whole thing by muscle-memory, doing it at that speed is dangerous. P90, on the other hand, is a nicely shorter version of P90X, keeping most of what I liked about the program without killing me to the point where I need to sleep for years. ;) It's still challenging: Though I've been surprised at how I can "just do" most of it without petering out, and I finish all the workouts which I couldn't always do with X, I'm still out of breath and sweaty and feeling it in the right muscles, but I can take naps and my core and still have enough energy, including for things like taiji and hockey. I'm nearing the end of week 1 of P90, and so far I like it a lot. (Note: It's just as cheesy as P90X, but I'm coming to the realization that all such programs are cheesy. I can deal. And it won't take me as long to memorize these so I can just tune them out and listen to music, either!)
- My new exercise clothes are AWESOME. Icebreakers are expensive, but if you work out regularly and hate doing piles and piles of laundry, they're completely worth it.
- There's other stuff, but as I keep getting distracted by work and stuff and risk not posting this at all if I don't do it now, I'm stopping here! ;)
Have a good Thursday the 13th**, everyone!
*Title note: One of the most awesome songs ever! One day I will make someone play it in karaoke or something so I can yell those amazing lyrics at the whole world…Go forth ad infinitum!
**For some reason Thursday the 13ths have always gone worse for me than Fridays. Thursday the 12ths can be pretty brutal too. And of course October is a mandatorily creepy month for either.
Originally published at *Transcendental *Logic. You can comment here or there.