those who were seen dancing

A little while ago, I posted about Benson's Personal Kanban series. My at-home approach to planning and prioritizing work has devolved into "keep it all in my head; consider eventually freaking out about incomplete contents of head". So. I've adopted a miniature version of this concept.

( It looks like this. It will evolve. )

It's new & imperfect, and is helping me feel both more useful and more relaxed. If I were in a household of people, I still suspect a Scrum-like approach to work planning & tracking would be cooler, more useful - certainly more inclined to facilitate planning conversations. I think houses need those. But a single person? Maybe not so much.

The problem with the gym is that it makes me hungry. Like. Giant sucking void of food-wanting. Persistent hind-brain messages like We need pasta. With alfredo. NOW. This would be fine if I went to the gym at like 5pm, but I keep going at 8 or 9 (after a perfectly sufficient dinner, mind you), and I don't want to be eating again at 10. I do that enough with dance stuff. It keeps me up late. And I don't usually have pasta in the fridge.

So, yeah. That's annoying.

Also annoying is the back-of-my-brain reaction (namely, glee... tempered with front-of-brain horror) to the realization that I'm going to shrink again this summer. I'm taking 3 dance classes in addition to the usual practice schedule (though I expect a light performance schedule), and trying to make it to the gym for 2-4 hours each week. Past experience shows that new activity, especially 5 hours a week of it, will make my body different. Past experience also shows that I may lose my shit when that happens. I hope it will be better if I'm prepared for it, and at least I know now that I'll stabilize size-wise within a year. If I keep feeding the giant sucking void, maybe I'll only shrink at the rate my clothes wear out. I hate wasting perfectly cute clothes.

Other than these persistent annoyances, the gym continues to be a rocking good time. I found a stability ball exercise that hits a lot of what I need to do floor work well, and I had the pleasure of surprising little bitty trainer boy with my core strength. It's so loud and busy at the gym, but what struck me tonight was just how peaceful it is [If you stay away from the people trying to destroy their joints on the elliptical machines. I hope we have universal health care before they get old, cause some of them are just leaping at those machines. They sound like storm troopers.]. Focusing on form and counting repetitions in this strange chaotic setting reminds me of going out to practice tai chi in the middle of the theater building at BillnMary - in some ways the internal quiet is more intense for being hard-won. At home I can create the exact right environment to focus in, but having to work for that focus is - well, it's another dimension of working out, I suppose. I like it.

In other news, I realized this week that I feel called to coaching as a career. It's unclear exactly what form that needs to take, but I'm sure that path is not old-school plan-driven project management. And that narrows the field of my job search. Mostly, though - it excites me, and that's... heh, it's exciting.

I'm starting to look forward to my life again.