Goings on and tinkering!
Not a whole lot has been going on. Its mostly me hugging my knees to my chest in anticipation of having over-scheduled myself with improv again. Whups. But its probably not as bad as it looks on paper, I will take a couple weeks of my new schedule and see if I can make it work before I start to cut things.
I have a fun class, a practice group, and now a regularly performing semi-houseteam. The last is part of something the Magnet Theater does called The Circuit, a six temporary houseteams assembled by lottery, disbanded after eight shows over three months. It is in part a way for the Magnet to give more people more chances to perform, but also another facet of improv education, like "House team 101". And all the shows are free, yay! Its Friday nites at 10pm, and I'm on Team Tiger. I will holler when one is coming up.
O wait, there's one coming up tomorrow.
The Circuit, teams Shark, Tiger, & Dragon DEBUT! 10pm at the Magnet Training Center Theater, free show!
If we keep our name Tiger-centric, I already have a ton of tiger macros and potential mascots. One of them wears a bow tie. ;-D
As for other stuffs, my pants got really tight after the holidays, so I'm going to take more care with my food portioning and such. Also, there are a ton of fun clothes that I can't fit into anymore. Some sources indicate that this is a lame motivation for weight loss, but they clearly don't have the same awesome dresses that I do :-P. I like the clothes I have, I hate shopping for new clothes, and lately I've just not been happy with how I look overall. I have nothing to lose by trying to lose a few pounds. And food-tracking is generally a good idea for people with grouchy stomachs.
Sadly I'm not going to have time for an exercise type of class (martial arts, stage combat, yoga, etc) b/c of the improv over-scheduling, but I'll probably look into it again in March when my class is over.
I'm debating whether or not to pick up a person-weighing scale. I kinda don't want to deal with the cultural/emotional baggage of weighing myself regularly. However, I'm not exactly sure what losing weight will do to my shape. I may not ever fit back into those dresses even if I lose more than I expect, and as a back up it would be nice to know that I'm still getting somewhere.
But I did pick up a food-weighing scale (also good for printing postage on PayPal, w00t no more post office) to make food tracking a bit less hit or miss.
Been using http://fitday.com/ to track food and calories and such, which won't be entirely accurate unless I enter in every food item I eat manually rather than use their pre-loaded estimations. But I think it will do OK for now.
Already discovered some interesting and unfortunate things about my usual diet. On a typical work + improv day I only eat 1500 calories, and that's reeeeeally not good. That would explain why I'm always tired (aside from the poor sleep habits), and also why I put on so much sudden flab after the holidays. I accidentally starved myself chubby. Any time I would have an extra meal at a bar or pig out on cheesecake on a holiday weekend, my body would go into OMGTHANKGODFOODPACKITON mode. Whups.
I'm also working on the sleep problem. Until November, I'd been taking some kind of medication (first prescriptions and then OTC) EVERY NIGHT to sleep since January 2008. (Three years? How many weird anniversaries do I have this month?) And they don't always work anyway. After one really bad night I decided to try giving it up. I still take melatonin 2-3 nights a week, but only for matters of "I REALLY need to be awake for class/practice/importantstuff tomorrow." The melatonin also works better now that I use it less. Its easier to remember dreams when I haven't taken melatonin, too. I missed rememebring dreams.
For years I was looking at books and websites to find a remedy for my specific sleep-interrupting problem. My brain won't shut up. The closest I found was a Tom Smith song about trying to sleep with a hamster wheel in his head, but he didn't have any clear answers either. My brain won't shut up and settle down to sleep, that's the problem. And drinking/notdrinking milk or having a protein snack or hot tea or cold water an hour before bedtime has not fixed it. But having almost finished NLP for Dummies, I figured I could try and train my brain into stopping the hamster wheel myself. Still have some bad nights, but I'm getting better :-)
Also, when I'm sleep deprived I have trouble remembering/resolving to get to bed on time or early. So sleep dep starts to snowball over the course of my work week. Based on my schedule, the best course of action is to firmly say no to 'afters' when I have a class/practice, except for Friday nights. Live for the weekend like a normal person. I did screw that up last night (went out with the lady friends after our improv practice, French food in Chelsea, yay!) but I'm staying home from the theater tonight. And last night was more fun than tonight would have been, probly. Not staying out late also means taking fewer late cab rides home and saving more monies.
Last week I started catching up on my sleep, still felt tired, but ... weird. Extra unfocused. I'm so used to being sleep deprived that my brain has to reset itself again.
On top of all the physical stuff, I'm trying to read more books (I read more when I'm less sleep deprived), and make more jewelry. For which I need to read more books. I have a Tumblr, full of pretty picspam, but it just doesn't inspire me in the same way. I get more inspiration from the movie screen showing stories in my head than direct visual stimulation.
Its really nice not having shows or deadlines to deal with in jewelry. But its also hard to find time/motivation to make moar shinies without them. Lately I'm billing myself as an artist rather than a vendor, making stuff when I feel inspired and not when it's selling-season. There will be more work this year than last, tho, promise!
I'm going to try 'giveaways' on my jewelry bizness blog, eventually. Tho after the disaster of my Singles Awareness Day blogathon a couple years ago... eeek. Not sure I trust the interwebs to help me much. Somehow I am not compliant with marketing. Will try it out with a smaller item to start and see what happens. Any experiences good or bad with this sort of promotion?
<3 Chrysilla
I have a fun class, a practice group, and now a regularly performing semi-houseteam. The last is part of something the Magnet Theater does called The Circuit, a six temporary houseteams assembled by lottery, disbanded after eight shows over three months. It is in part a way for the Magnet to give more people more chances to perform, but also another facet of improv education, like "House team 101". And all the shows are free, yay! Its Friday nites at 10pm, and I'm on Team Tiger. I will holler when one is coming up.
O wait, there's one coming up tomorrow.
The Circuit, teams Shark, Tiger, & Dragon DEBUT! 10pm at the Magnet Training Center Theater, free show!
If we keep our name Tiger-centric, I already have a ton of tiger macros and potential mascots. One of them wears a bow tie. ;-D
As for other stuffs, my pants got really tight after the holidays, so I'm going to take more care with my food portioning and such. Also, there are a ton of fun clothes that I can't fit into anymore. Some sources indicate that this is a lame motivation for weight loss, but they clearly don't have the same awesome dresses that I do :-P. I like the clothes I have, I hate shopping for new clothes, and lately I've just not been happy with how I look overall. I have nothing to lose by trying to lose a few pounds. And food-tracking is generally a good idea for people with grouchy stomachs.
Sadly I'm not going to have time for an exercise type of class (martial arts, stage combat, yoga, etc) b/c of the improv over-scheduling, but I'll probably look into it again in March when my class is over.
I'm debating whether or not to pick up a person-weighing scale. I kinda don't want to deal with the cultural/emotional baggage of weighing myself regularly. However, I'm not exactly sure what losing weight will do to my shape. I may not ever fit back into those dresses even if I lose more than I expect, and as a back up it would be nice to know that I'm still getting somewhere.
But I did pick up a food-weighing scale (also good for printing postage on PayPal, w00t no more post office) to make food tracking a bit less hit or miss.
Been using http://fitday.com/ to track food and calories and such, which won't be entirely accurate unless I enter in every food item I eat manually rather than use their pre-loaded estimations. But I think it will do OK for now.
Already discovered some interesting and unfortunate things about my usual diet. On a typical work + improv day I only eat 1500 calories, and that's reeeeeally not good. That would explain why I'm always tired (aside from the poor sleep habits), and also why I put on so much sudden flab after the holidays. I accidentally starved myself chubby. Any time I would have an extra meal at a bar or pig out on cheesecake on a holiday weekend, my body would go into OMGTHANKGODFOODPACKITON mode. Whups.
I'm also working on the sleep problem. Until November, I'd been taking some kind of medication (first prescriptions and then OTC) EVERY NIGHT to sleep since January 2008. (Three years? How many weird anniversaries do I have this month?) And they don't always work anyway. After one really bad night I decided to try giving it up. I still take melatonin 2-3 nights a week, but only for matters of "I REALLY need to be awake for class/practice/importantstuff tomorrow." The melatonin also works better now that I use it less. Its easier to remember dreams when I haven't taken melatonin, too. I missed rememebring dreams.
For years I was looking at books and websites to find a remedy for my specific sleep-interrupting problem. My brain won't shut up. The closest I found was a Tom Smith song about trying to sleep with a hamster wheel in his head, but he didn't have any clear answers either. My brain won't shut up and settle down to sleep, that's the problem. And drinking/notdrinking milk or having a protein snack or hot tea or cold water an hour before bedtime has not fixed it. But having almost finished NLP for Dummies, I figured I could try and train my brain into stopping the hamster wheel myself. Still have some bad nights, but I'm getting better :-)
Also, when I'm sleep deprived I have trouble remembering/resolving to get to bed on time or early. So sleep dep starts to snowball over the course of my work week. Based on my schedule, the best course of action is to firmly say no to 'afters' when I have a class/practice, except for Friday nights. Live for the weekend like a normal person. I did screw that up last night (went out with the lady friends after our improv practice, French food in Chelsea, yay!) but I'm staying home from the theater tonight. And last night was more fun than tonight would have been, probly. Not staying out late also means taking fewer late cab rides home and saving more monies.
Last week I started catching up on my sleep, still felt tired, but ... weird. Extra unfocused. I'm so used to being sleep deprived that my brain has to reset itself again.
On top of all the physical stuff, I'm trying to read more books (I read more when I'm less sleep deprived), and make more jewelry. For which I need to read more books. I have a Tumblr, full of pretty picspam, but it just doesn't inspire me in the same way. I get more inspiration from the movie screen showing stories in my head than direct visual stimulation.
Its really nice not having shows or deadlines to deal with in jewelry. But its also hard to find time/motivation to make moar shinies without them. Lately I'm billing myself as an artist rather than a vendor, making stuff when I feel inspired and not when it's selling-season. There will be more work this year than last, tho, promise!
I'm going to try 'giveaways' on my jewelry bizness blog, eventually. Tho after the disaster of my Singles Awareness Day blogathon a couple years ago... eeek. Not sure I trust the interwebs to help me much. Somehow I am not compliant with marketing. Will try it out with a smaller item to start and see what happens. Any experiences good or bad with this sort of promotion?
<3 Chrysilla