I am a warrior.

I recently discovered habitforge, a site that allows you to list habits you want to form and then sends you an email every day to check up on you. But the best bit? You have to do the activity every day for 21 days straight. If you skip one day, you have to start again from zero. It’s very effective. I'm currently working on two habits: working out for 50 minutes and writing every day.

So far it’s been 5 days since I started and I can say, hand-on-heart, that the previous two days especially, I would not have worked out if it were not for the threat of starting all over again. And you know what? It feels great! Every workout I finish I feel so proud of myself - this is a HUGE accomplishment for me. Consistency isn’t my forte, or so I keep telling myself, but I’m really beginning to think that’s a load of BS. I can do anything consistently, provided I have the right motivation, it’s something I truly believe in and it’s something that I really want to do, and not just something that I think I should be doing.

With regards to my workouts, I’m generally doing whatever workout I feel like doing and/or is convenient. Yesterday, that was yoga. I didn’t follow any set workout plan or DVD or anything, I just did a few rounds of sun salutation to warm up and then did whatever poses I felt like doing, for however long I felt like doing them for. The one pose I kept going back to and staying in the longest was this warrior pose (though perhaps not quite as deep as the picture in the link!). I am a warrior. ;)

After my little yoga sesh, I read through some blogs in my reader, and I came across this post from The Simple Dollar. In it, the author (Trent) shares that his wife writes a very simple daily journal: every day she notes down what the best moment of her day was. It seems so simple, yet so darn useful! I really think that if I were to note down the best moment of my day everyday I’d start to see what I really love to do.

So, what was my best moment of yesterday? When I realised I had about 10minutes left of my workout, I spent the rest of that 10 minutes smiling my way through the poses. I was happy with myself, and I felt strong, successful, centred and in control of my life.

What was the best moment of your day?

Scientific weight loss videos

I recently came across this really interesting, scientific approach to what does and doesn't work with weightloss. As someone who leans towards the nerdy side of life, I like to know not only what works, but also how it works and how they know it works.

This is a 10 minute clip of a programme, which is continued in about 6 other clips on youtube. You can watch the rest if you want to from there on.

Bullets

I'm not in a writing mood, or even an editing mood to post a draft, so instead I'm just gonna do some bullets on random things that have been in my life/head recently:

- Bitchiness:
I hate it when people are bitchy. I hate it even more when they try to bring me in on their bitchiness. I mean, I can be bitchy, but I like to think it's not in an immature oh-my-God-she-said-something-mean-about-me-and-I-feel-sensitive-so-now-I'm-not-gonna-be-friends-with-her-and-I'm-not-gonna-be-friends-with-anyone-who's-friends-with-her way. Seriously, this has happened to me in the past week and all those involved were grown women. It's ridiculous. What's worse is the amount of behind-everyone's-backs whispering and tale-telling and whatnot. It's just plain sad and sick and infuriating when I get dragged in. It's so childish.

- Internet Connection:
Or rather, the lack thereof. It comes, it goes, I waste time. You see how that's frustrating? Anyways, it's here now. For now.

- Jinxs / evil eyes:
You know, this could probably be a post all by itself, but I can't be bothered doing the necessary research. In short, the evil eye is the belief that people's envy can affect things in your life. A jinx is pretty similar. And of course, you can give yourself both. Why is this a problem? It's a problem because I keep doing it to myself (unless one of my readers is...?). Everytime I write something on here that's good - like starting to exercise again, or buying a treadmill, or whatever, something goes wrong. This week my schedule has gone out the window, taking with it my exercise routine. Factor in a lot of cream cakes and we, my friends, are in serious trouble with the scales. And my treadmill is currently on hold.

- Routine:
My routine has gone clear out the window. Some weeks I totally nail it: up early, exercise done, work started / left home early, etc and plenty gets done. Not this week. And I have exams next week and a paper due. So naturally, I'm on here blogging.

- Masters:
I've been having serious doubts as to whether this is what I want to do. I'm not sure research is my thing. The only reason I haven't quit is because a) I don't want to be a quitter and b) I know that I pipped a lot of people to get a place in my course, and I owe it to them to not quit. I think that I'm gonna have to write up a list of reasons as to why I want to be in my masters course, why I want to succeed at this thing. An idea for another post.

- 2012:
I watched this film the other day and would just like to say that it totally sucked. Really, I thought this was a terrible film. I don't mind the whole end-of-the-world genre (I loved Independence Day!), but I found this film predictable, unbelievable and actually kinda sad. You can guess who'll die and who'll live within the first half an hour, and the dialogue is just meh. The only redeeming factor was John Cusack's acting - I do think he's good - and the cute Russian pilot eye-candy (played by this guy). However, I don't really think that either justifies watching the entire film.

- Nail Varnish:
I'll admit, I always underestimate the power of coloured nails. So much so, in fact, that I haven't bothered to wear nail varnish for over a year. At least. Last week, I decided to break this habit and just paint my nails. And how feminine and rocking did I feel afterwards? Yeah, I gotta do this more often. But not in bed - I spilt a bit of varnish on my bedspread and it really doesn't look that good. Any ideas as to how to get nail varnish out of duvet covers? Anyone?

Done

I'm not really in the mood for blogging today, nor have I been for the past ... however long it's been since my last post. BUT I'm being self-disciplined (hurrah) and doing it anyway. I think, however, that I'm gonna have to start preparing some random blogposts on various topics so that I can post them when I don't feel like writing. I'm gonna have to work to slack off. There's something wrong there. Isn't slacking supposed to involve no work? Hmmmm....

Anyways, I've been meaning to make a confession on here for a while, but I didn't want to say anything until after I got my backside in gear and sorted myself out. It's taken me all of January and February to get my backside in gear, but I am glad to announce that I finally have. So, my confession:

I have only exercised 3 times since the beginning of the year.

So much for getting healthier and forming good habits and all that blah blah that I thought I'd done at the end of the last year.

BUT I have started again. I've exercised 3 times this week so far (starting on Saturday) and I'm fitting it in early in the morning. And boy do I ache! But I am so proud of myself for finally just sucking it up and getting on with it. I intend to write a post some time soon - maybe this week? - about how Jillian Michael's 30-Day Shred has kinda ruined me, but I can't be bothered to turn this post into anything remotely informative or expressive of my opinions. I just wanted to congratulate myself for getting back to working out and cross of 'post to blog' from my to-do list. :D

Hope everyone has a great week!!

What have I been up to lately?

Yay! I've finished all my exams! (ish - I'm going to have to resit a few, but that's no biggie.) So, as I have obviously got myself a well-earned break, I have hardly had two minutes peace since finishing. So what have I been doing? Let me see...
Firstly there's the gym. I went to see the gym owner last week and all my fears were totally unfounded. Not only was she happy to see me, but she wants me to get my behind back into shape asap so that i can start doing classes again. But here's the best bit: she's going to pay me this time. Woohoo! So I'm going to aerobics classes for free at the mo, and to be honest, I'm already part instructing them. She helps me along, cos I'm still a bit rusty, but I'm most definitely back in training! And, I'm sore. Oh boy am I sore. I'm going to be soooo much more sympathetic to the newbies in future - cos my legs simply aint functioning like they're supposed to.
Secondly there's the work. I took time off for my exams and now have a veritable mountain to catch up on. I'm almost there. I hope. But it's stressing me out being so behind - I feel like a total schmuck for not just getting it all done, and for being late on my deadlines. It's so unprofessional, and I hate it. I want to do my job properly, is that so hard? At the moment, yes, it seems.
Thirdly there's the english revision lessons. A neighbour has her Baccaulareate coming up in a couple of weeks - less now - and yours truly has agreed to help her with her revision. I don't mind helping someone out by going through their past papers and/or explaining stuff from their books that they don't understand or going through exercises, etc, but this isn't like that. She's got a very low level of English, which is hard to deal with and she's been failing the subject for a while now. Then there's the lack of preparation she's been doing - she's even turned up once without so much as paper to take notes on. Which brings me to the next thing: even when she does have pen and paper she doesn't take much notes. Now, if the student don't make an effort than that isn't my fault, but if she comes with nothing and I have to have a lesson planned, that aint on. It's not like I'm getting paid, or even that I'm a teacher, so i simply don't know what to cover with her. I just hope i get rewarded for it - that's the only reason I'm doing it: for Allah.
Fourthly, a girl has to have some sort of social life. So, I've spent a long weekend at my aunt's place with my cousin, I've spent a morning shopping and have gone to the hairdressers twice (once a cut, and then I decided to get rid of my hairdye and go back to natural, so i had the colour bleached back. And i am never doing that again - so bad for my hair!). And I'm going to uni to meet up with friends tomorrow, and then to my aunt's again the day after, for the weekend.
To be perfectly honest, I can't maintain this kinda speed/chaos in my life for long before going crazy. Even now, I'm already holding on to the fact that the Baccaulareate exams will be over soon and that if I stick with my work, I'll be working great by the end of next week. But I have enjoyed the variety of the chaos - it's not been dull, at any rate! I just wish the weather would improve, then I could start planning my summer.