I guess I knew it was coming on Sunday.
I've hit that wall that I hit when I launch a new venture. The I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing-nobody-understands-my-value-I-can't-sell-myself-this-was-a-big- mistake wall.
Stopped eating. Stopped working out. Willing my way through the paralysis.
I will get through this as I usually do. One step at a time. But, for the record, it really really sucks.
Tuesday was an interesting day. I should probably write this all down. Nothing truly extraordinary to it, but the day had an interesting rhythm. When I do my dysfunctional projection of "what people think of me", I imagine those who give it any thought at all think I sit in front of the computer all day, playing Scrabulous.
Context – Monday: The overwhelming theme of the day was that I was overly sensitive to, well, everything. It was one of those days where I took Absolutely Everything to heart, and if there was room to interpret anyone's actions, I chose the least positive interpretation. Let's just say that I have one or two of these days every month, fairly regularly, and leave the rest to your imagination.
On the upside, Monday almost always brings the promise of hockey. This particular Monday night game was the last of the season BB, meaning a presence at the pub was essential, so I went early. Summary: Our team was pretty short-handed. Hard skating … hard won victory … we only had two spare forwards, so I played about 35 minutes at centre. That'll get the ol' heart rate up … our defense rocked (they only had one spare player on D) and our goalie (rounding out her first session in the position) played extremely well. I decided to head back to the pub after this late game, so I didn't get home til after midnight.
Tuesday:
6:30: Woke up. Tired and a bit creaky. The cat I'm in charge of heard me stir and jumped on the bed, tickling me with his whiskers, staring at me with his big orange eyes. He has no sense of personal space so he gets right in my face with his. His parents come home tomorrow, thank goodness. As with most mornings, after jumping up, staring at me, nudging me and kneading me, he then sneezed on me. Specifically, on my face. A wet sloppy sneeze. He is one of these pushed-in-face cats and his face, in general, is kinda watery. Yuck.
Time to get up.
Computer time while coffee brewing. I skipped the hot water/lemon thing Tuesday for some reason. Made breakfast – pasta omelette with mushrooms and cottage cheese. Considered briefly going to Tuesday shinny then realized that my body needed some down time after last night's game before meeting with Ivan, the Personal Trainer, at 1:00 p.m.
Neatened up apartment in prep for Saint Mavis, my cleaner. She comes every two weeks to make sure I don't wallow in my own spew. Decided to take kitty back next door prior to Mavis' arrival. Decided NOT to bring kitty back over here after Mavis finished. The timing of this cleaning is particularly excellent as I'm having two rounds of visitors this week and I had trouble keeping up with kitty's fur, upchuck, litter distribution, and "let's knock things over" activities. Deities of choice, bless Mavis.
Finished second draft of some client work, sent for approval. Happily received payment for invoice directly to bank account. Paid bills and completed the requisite shell game to ensure money is where it needs to be to complete mid-month auto payments.
Cleaned out e-mail box, responding to many, archiving most. I'm an e-mail pack rat.
Mid-morning there was a crash/bang … Mavis had knocked over a crystal candle holder. My least favourite one, which I tried to reassure her of. She was unhappy with herself, I couldn't really have cared less about this particular item. First time she's ever broken anything, as far as I'm aware.
Worked on some business planning stuff. Made some calls. Left a belated birthday message for Amy @ her work. Realized that I have some new potential business leads that are pretty cool, one of which is quite motivating in terms of just generally getting my sh*t together regarding my Big Secret Project. Unlike Monday, which was quite dark, Tuesday sat on a foundation of excellent potential and possibilities.
Ate apple.
12:00ish: Left for gym. Did 25 minutes cardio on cross trainer before meeting up with Ivan just before 1:00 p.m. This is not the type of personal trainer situation in which I'll meet with him all the time. Basically, it is a service offered by the Y to set up a personalized training program. I have to self-motivate to follow it but I think I'll do ok since I'm pretty motivated at the moment.
Ivan was terrific. The last couple of times I've had someone at the Y set up a program for me, I felt the trainers were just going through the motions. I had one guy spend more time chatting and cruising than actually paying attention to me and my goals. Ivan was FOCUSSED and he has me doing almost entirely brand new stuff for me … circuit training.
10 minutes cardio (cross-trainer)
Gravitron (pulling up, then pushing down)
Fly (x2)
Cable Machine for two arm curl things
Squats with ball
Lunges
Back Extension
Abs (x2)
10 minutes cardio
repeat weight routine above
10 minutes light cardio
He has me doing stuff I've never dreamed I was capable of, like the back extension and the ab crunches. The ball/squatting thing looked hard but I actually managed 15 reps. I particularly liked the gravitron machine. My muscles felt challenged during and quite "awake" afterwards.
(Aside: I'm writing this on Wednesday a.m. and a few of my muscles, esp. glutes, are grumbling. I must get more disciplined about stretching.)
Ivan and I are going to meet up in early June to see how I'm doing. He'd like to see me 10-12 lbs down and having progressed to heavier weights. If I've met these objectives, then I guess we are going to change things up.
Spent a few minutes in the hot tub @ the Y afterwards. Maybe that is why I'm not sore today!
2:50: Home in time to carry on with some work I started in the a.m., or so I thought. Went to turn on the computer to let it do its warm-up thing while I made something to eat (Home-made burger pattie – no bun + salad). Took my lunch over to the computer to find it stuck and unresponsive at the very opening of its boot cycle. Uh oh. Disconnected the power supply (twice) to see if I could essentially shock it back into life. No luck. Uh oh. Called CG, world's most pleasant computer tech guy. He offered to swing by after work to take a look and perhaps take it away for repairs. UH OH – all my client stuff is on there, last back-up was Sunday, stuff is due this week. But, what choices do I have?
Fired up the laptop, scrambled to find the phone number for the person I was scheduled to meet at 5:00. Tracked him down around 4:00 and decided to have the meeting here at my now clean and neat apartment while CG tinkered on my computer.
CG calls and suggests I find the original Windows disk and try a rescue boot. Good idea. I'm to call him back when I've put my hands on the disk. Mad scramble through piles of disorganized CDs and file folders. Actually, it isn't that bad … but I recalled that I do not have an original Windows CD as XP was loaded at the store. I do have a Compaq recovery CD. Without calling CG back, I pop in the CD that is cheerfully labeled "Compaq recovery Oct. 05" and see what happens. The computer boots back into its pre-hibernated state, and then re-boots properly. It does a check disk and finds nothing wrong. It is back up! I call CG and report back. He wants me to do a scan disk, which I try to do but nothing much seems to happen.
I immediately set up and run a full back-up to my external drive.
Aside: Everyone who works at home and relies on their computer needs a CG. Happily, he was just here last week doing some maintenance work on my unit so he was up to date with everything. I ask him to come by about every six months to just take a look and fix whatever weirdness has arisen, as it does. It is worth the small amount of $ to have things stable and backed up, in my opinion.
Meantime, as all this is going on, I'm concerned about my 5:00, now 5:15 appt. It gets on to 6:00 ish and there is no one arriving. Phone rings, finally, at 6:15. He has had a bad afternoon, too, just generally running late and then having made it all the way to my building but forgetting the instructions to ring in so I could let him in the gate. And he didn't bring my phone number with him from his workplace, so he went all the way back to his office to find my number. We agree that he will send me his materials and that we'll re-schedule for sometime next week.
I had been looking forward to this. I've agreed to mentor a couple of U of T students as they launch their very interesting wireless enterprise. This has really excellent potential, but neither of them have any business experience or acumen of any kind. It is fun to help them, and on this particular day I was planning to help them prep for a presentation to one of Canada's major wireless providers.
6:30: Re-group. The mentoring session is off, my computer is back on, however I seem to have temporarily switched to the laptop, at least for the evening. I need to finish the current phase of the Big Secret Project, which isn't that big a deal. I just need to sit down and do it. I also have to make a pan of my "healthy" (i.e. diet-friendly) lasagna. I bought half the ingredients over the weekend and they will go off soon if I don't get on it. But I'm missing some of the ingredients so head out to the store to pick up cottage cheese, low fat mozzarella, and frozen spinach.
There is a hockey game on tonight, several actually. So the rest of my evening is spent bouncing between the kitchen (chopping, layering, shredding), tinkering away on the laptop, and yelling at the guys on the ice.
I'm not cheering for any of the Canadian teams currently competing. I like the SJ Sharks. I like their style and attitude. I like Ryan Clowe, the big Newf. However, I have a huge soft spot for Jarome Iginla and an even bigger one for Curtis Joseph (CUJO) who truly saved Calgary's bacon the other night, stepping in for Mr. Perfect, Mikka Kiprusoff. So, for me, this is the series to watch. Montreal is going to take their series, and the Sens are toast, pretty much.
Wednesday … finish off everything for my big client before my out of towners arrive …
(FYI – I'm writing these posts for me, mostly. They are long and detailed and really only of interest to moi. I want to have a record of the pattern of days and what gets accomplished. What I'm trying to say is that The Handbasket Blog Police will not smite thee if you skip these posts.)
A milestone was achieved on Friday a.m. when the phone rang and I could see on the screen that it was FBCCCW. I let it ring. I've never done that before. However, I'd put in my eight hours, I could see that she sent me an e-mail simultaneously and that it was No Biggie. This is her pattern – send e-mail, and also call to relay information that is the same as what is on the e-mail. She did not leave a message, so I know that I called it correctly. It felt so empowering to choose NOT to hear that woman's voice on, essentially, my chosen day off.
So, this week …
I realize that I'm a bit down about not having billed for any new clients this week. However, it is only week two. Rome wasn't built in a day, I suppose. 🙂
Random Thought #1
I've met two women in the last two weeks named "Victoria" who play hockey. Not Vicki, Tory, or some other funky derivation. Victoria. This name always reminds me of my grandmother who, at the turn of the last century, played softball in a floor-length skirt. I have a photograph somewhere that proves it. They didn't have softball, or baseball, bats for women to use in 1903, so they used cricket bats. There were even men who coached the ladies softball team. My grandmother's name was Dora Victoria. I wonder if she would have played hockey if she had the chance. I suspect she would have.
Like me, my grandmother hated her first name. The lengthy version of my first name is not suitable for use on either a softball field or an ice rink. I have first-hand verification of this. "Elizabeth" is too long to shout when you are cheering someone on. My grandmother hated her first name for a different reason. She thought "Dora" sounded like a horse. She really wanted to be called "Vicki" which would have, in no way at all, suited this tiny, distinguished white-haired lady.
Just for the record, my mom hated her first name (Alice) and insisted on being called "Betty", a derivation of Elizabeth. Which is how I wound up with that handle.
Grandma, bless her, lived spryly and with excellent health to the ripe age of 93 before dying, quickly and peacefully, in front of her TV set of an aneurysm. It was 1981.
Random Thought #2
I've lost a total of 43 pounds since June 29, 2007. The weight loss has slowed considerably since the onset of winter. I think people in the northern hemisphere ingest more carbs in the winter. That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. I hope to get more physically active as soon as there is even a hint of spring and either bike riding or jogging can be undertaken with reasonable assurance that I won't hurt myself, or anyone else.
Random Thought #3
I'm really enjoying self-employment. Some days more than others, but in general, people want what I have to offer. This is pretty neat. I like feeling valued.
Random Thought #4
I really like poached eggs. Much more than I imagined possible. However, it is important to time the readiness of the toast with the readiness of the eggs or the whole thing goes awry. I got caught on the phone this a.m. and burned the toast and overcooked the eggs. Drat.
Random Thought #5
A friend sent me this link to a documentary called How To Be Happy. Aside from the actual reason why she sent me the link, which will be amusingly obvious to some, the documentary is actually quite interesting. Turns out that happiness might result out of a liberal dose of altruism, gratitude expressed, and an occasional dash of hedonism. Interesting. I thought the hand-in-ice-water test was weird, but strangely telling.
Random Thought #6
Redzilla made me laugh out loud again.