Had a pretty great Thanksgiving break, as well as a great Thanksgiving Day. I smoked the turkey and it was the best one I’ve done so far. I also decided to bring back my broccoli casserole but without using the frankensoup. Decided I wanted to have mom come to my house instead of us going over there, and it was so much better. My floorplan is just more open, so you can be in the kitchen cooking and still not be isolated from the rest of the family. It’s also easier to just spread out, everything is less crowded. Plus, mom can stay as long as she feels like, and I don’t have the guilty feeling I get when we all pack up and leave her house.

Didn’t work out at all over the holiday, but I did a lot of stuff around the house. I got the old (extremely raggedy and embarrassing) wooden patio cover torn off and replaced it with clear plastic panels that allow in plenty of light now. Rearranged furniture in two rooms, set up a new are for my house plants – I’m debating whether or not to just get rid of them. They don’t do much for the décor, and they are one more thing that requires maintenance – something not conducive to my goal of simplifying and streamlining my life so I have more time for the things that are truly important. That is after all what I mean by Man vs Suburb, taking back the truly important and fighting against the constant busyness that is robbing us of our quality of life – resisting the shackles our society is constantly trying to enslave us with.

11/26/2018 Monday

Woke up at 5:15 and was struggling with some anxiety. I think it may have to do with the whole job situation: wondering if this will be the week, feeling unconfident about my ability to bounce back, worrying about what I will do, not feeling ready to face it, etc, etc,

8:00 – Calf stretch x 1 minute, then bend forward with knees locked to stretch back of knees for 1 minute.

9:35 – Seated Scapula Dips x 19; chair move and messed up my flow

My back is starting to hurt. Sitting in this f*ing chair is destroying my body. My back was stiff and sore over the weekend too, but it was a different kind of soreness. This is actual pain, like injury pain. Time for some supermans.

9:55 – Seated Back Extensions x 20; didn’t seem to help like the superman does, but the boss keeps walking to my coworker’s cube so I am unable to prostrate myself on the floor and do the superman.

Pushup position Bird Dog x 10, not alternating. This seemed to work better than the extensions

Stairs 2 x 2 floors; skip every other stair. This is what I will do to train for the next back pack trip, I think.

I am really struggling with motivation. I wonder if I am letting the precariousness of my situation affect my resolve, not wanting to be seen as a slacker because I am taking a moment to take care of myself rather than grinding away. I am having a hard time getting into my usual mindset of not caring what other people think. I think I just need to remind myself that whatever is going to happen is going to happen regardless of whether I’m training or not. It’s not like by not working out I am changing anything.

10:25 – Neck Mobility Drills; Seated Torso Twists; Shoulder mobility Drills, including Rotator Cuff;

I a painfully aware of how goofy I look doing these. Nobody else even considers the benefit of being constantly mobile. They seem to think they are just fine, oblivious to the fact that stints and hip replacements are not supposed to be the norm.

10:54 – Was planning to follow up my mobility drills with the pushup app, but our VP is in my bosses office with the door closed, and I don’t want to be panting and sweating should they need to see me.

11:45 – Pushups x 30; wide hands and elbows. Still tired, no motivation. As soon as I finished, my boss and coworker made it back from the cafeteria. Goof thing I did a rush job.

1:50 – Stairs 2 x 2, every other step;

Pushup App x 16, 20, 13, and that’s it. The boss just dropped another project on me. It would be nice to be able to finish just one before I have to stop and give a new one my immediate attention. You watch, tomorrow she’ll want to know why I’m not done with the nightmare freaking project I started last week.

OK, maybe I overreacted a bit, that only took me about 45 minutes. It’s 2:43 so I’ll go ahead and finish out the remaining two sets of 13, 18 with 90 second rests

11/27/2018 Tuesday

I am feeling better today mentally. I took a restoril last night and was asleep by 8:30 – 8:45, and slept until 5:45 this morning. It’s a tough thing trying to figure out how to get enough sleep getting up so early, when just going to bed earlier leaves things undone and necessary relationships neglected. Work in progress I suppose.

7:25 – Shoulder Mobility Drills, get coffee, triceps flex x 10 warmup

Pushup App x 17, 20, 15, 15, 19; that last one was tough, I was definitely approaching failure. May need to start utilizing the 2 min rest between sets instead of 90 seconds, it’s getting hard. If not that, then I may need to switch hand and elbow positions from narrow to medium or wide. Wide is definitely easier. DANG, forgot my BCAAs again! Guess I’ll take them not, can’t hurt. Just took a look at the next App workout, the sets will = 100 reps. It looks tough.

8:05 – Mobility Drill – GMB Moe of the Day: Bear Walk; forward, back, and twisting. Not very far or for very long, the purpose was just too explore body movement, and try to get my mindset back to being a kid just having fun.

I know this is jacked up, but I just spent the last hour going through my photos of Eagle Rock Loop so I could upload them to the cloud. I don’t actually feel too bad about it considering I get here at 7 and don’t leave until 4:30. That is part of the reason I am getting up early after all, so I can handle my business. I need to do this because I have had an SD card die on me earlier this year, and I may have lost l some father/daughter day photos. I have these pics on my work laptop but need to get them someplace else in case the inevitable happens sooner rather than later. You know the corporate think that it is best to fire someone on a Friday.

9:35 – Stiff Leg Deadlifts x 50; great form; focus is really thrusting my hips forward explosively, I think this engages the glutes more maximally. It’s harder to use just the hamstrings when going for speed coming up. I’ve noticed that I really need to keep a pretty deep arch in my back if I don’t want my lower back to hurt when doing the movement. I have a back appointment today, so I’ll ask Jesus about it.

Torso twist x 10/side; just to loosen things up a bit after the deadlifts.

Flat Foot Squatting x 2 min; kept changing my foot position, couldn’t get comfortable.

Stair Jumps x 10; went to the stairwell and jumped up onto the highest stair I could, which was only the third one up. I could jump over two. Back was not feeling it at all, but by number 6 I was able to land somewhat decently.

Just got a text from the guys, they want to plan another backpacking trip for last weekend in January, this time in Oklahoma. WTH, right? First backpack trip at 52 year old. Bring it On!!

My back is pretty worn out from my session, so I am probably done with training for the day.

11/28/2018 Wednesday

8:00 – GMB Movement of the day: Jumping with focus on soft landing. Did a few of each variation jump straight u[, turn in midair trying to land on the same line I started from, and long jumping), then had to refocus remembering
that I was supposed to be concentrating on how my body felt doing the motions, not how well or how many times I could do them. So I did a few more of each variation being more mindful. Stopped because of that stupid rapid heartbeat thing, I am positive it’s
from dehydration. My blood sugar spike to 370 mg/dl in the middle of the night, took a huge shot of insulin, and it was 342 mg/dl when I woke up this morning. So I took another huge shot of insulin. I wasn’t’ sure if my blood sugar was getting low or if
it was dehydration. Blood sugar is 105 mg/dl right now. Time to drink me some water!

I am sleepy as hell. I took another Restoril last night and slept 8.5 hours. Maybe it is having lasting effects, I’m not going to take one tonight. I took it last night because I wanted to go to bed early, but My daughter and her boyfriend
had rented “Crazy Rich Asians” and started watching while I was finishing my dinner, and I got sucked in. Didn’t wake up until 6:00 this morning.

8:30 – 200 Squats App x 6, 8, 5, 5, 8, 1 min rest between all sets except between the 5 rep sets, just 30 seconds. Total # 32 reps. Feet barely hip width apart, knees straight forward, butt to heels. Really feel it in
my quads, hard to emphasize glutes with feet so close together, but it was the least hard on my lower back pain. It took about 10 minutes.

8:40 – 200 Squats App x 6, 8, 5, 5, 10, 1 min rest; feet shoulder width, thighs just below parallel. 34 total reps.

11:40 – Seated Scap Dips x 75; so close to failure, couldn’t complete full ROM; hands in line with hip joint;

<![if !supportLists]>- Seated Knee Raises x 25/ side; slow and controlled to ensure only flexors were working;

– 200 Squats App x 10, 10, 7, 7, 11; shoulder width; I can really feel it in the crease of my leg the wider I get. Not sure what that’s about. Knees kind of want to flair out to the sides too. However if I point my toes way out to the sides, it isn’t as bad. I did notice that the harder I flex my abs during the movement the easier it is to engage my glutes.

– Triceps Flex x 25; good deep flex

I just took a walk outside, it is beautiful. It’s 68 degrees, the sun is shining, the wind is blowing. Part of the frustration I feel is that there are so many things I want to give my attention to, so many things that are necessary for good mental, physical, and spiritual health, but if I attend to those needs then I fall farther and farther behind in my work. So instead I spend days taking little 5-7 minute breaks throughout the day to do some exercise at my desk and then get right back to it for 9 hours a day, feeling guilty for doing it all the while. I actually got myself to do it today by reminding myself that I may not even be working here in 3 days, that’s what working myself like a rented mule has gotten me. The take away is this, take the time for the breaks. If there is no time to do this because it means either neglecting your family or missing your deadline if you do take the time, then seriously, find something else. That’s the situation I’ve found myself in, and it’s the reason I began getting my resume together and preparing to job hunt even before the shitstorm hit. For now the solution is to get up and come in earlier to meet my deadline. The kids are still asleep when I leave anyway so I’m not really neglecting them.

2:10 – Supermans x 15 while still outside. I did a little meditating while out there and my back started really aching, but the supermans made it feel so much better. On a side note, My hamstrings are kind of sore from yesterday.

I had either an “aha” moment or a “duh” moment, probably some weird form of both together at once, but it was that the prison cube workout isn’t realistic for hitting my overall goal of 6 pounds of muscle by next fall. It can help, and it can certainly help keep my body fat from increasing as I do gain muscle, but I don’t have the luxury of pushing hard enough to do it without weights. I’m not saying it is impossible to accomplish, I’m saying my situation won’t allow for it. I would have to go to muscular failure every time I do an exercise, and doing that requires some serious heavy breathing and sweating.

11/29/2018 Thursday

8:35 – GMB Movement of the day: The Monkey, 3 variations. I was tough enough that the first couple of times I did the movement I didn’t focus on breathing or how my body felt or anything. I definitely wasn’t having fun with it, I was trying to do it properly when I should have just been doing it the way that felt the most natural so I could evaluate my motions.

11:45 – Neck Mobility Drills, Shoulder Mobility Drills

– 100 Pushups App x 10, 10, 13, 13, 9, 10, 35; didn’t reach failure, but was breathing too loud. took full 2 minutes between sets. 110 total pushups!

The boss went to lunch with a friend so that gave me the opportunity I needed. She’s in a weird mood today. Was yesterday too for that matter, kind of standoff-ish. She asked me to call a state to verify a sales tax question. When I finally got someone on the line, I asked them and got an answer. When I told her what they said, she told me that is wrong. That our last auditor from said state said something different. Then she acted annoyed with me like I didn’t make the call and said “I guess we still don’t have an answer then.” WTF? I asked someone from the state, got an answer, and you’re acting like I’m not doing my job? Why am I even calling them if you already know the answer anyway??

12:20 – Pushups x 41; reached failure! All of the reps today have been close hands and elbows.

11/30/2018 Friday

I feel like I want to do pushups again today. I felt nice and swole last night, But no soreness or tenderness today (so far). I think I am going to hold off on the GMB 12 Days of Movement move of the day until after the warden gets here, that way I can get more returns done before she gets in and it looks like I’ve been grinding longer. Part of the game dontcha know, managing perceptions. It matters more than actual accomplishments. It’s absurd. On the upside I’m not getting fired today, and probably will make it to the end of the year, based on the way things are moving right now.

Just checked my blood sugar and it’s at 71, I think I will just do a quick round of pushups so I can create a need for the protein I am about to take. Scratch that, warden just called to have me empty out a cube for the auditor, and she is almost here.

9:00 – BCAAs; I remembered!

9:20 – Up Dog Pushups x 75; first 15 hands and elbows close, elbows really not liking that, last 60 hands and elbows wide; good burn but not close to failure, I’m just freaking roasting. Damn that felt good.

The boss treated us to lunch on the company dime. All part of the moral boosting team building thing. She tries to take us once per month. I guess I should note that the warden isn’t the problem per se, she is as over stressed and over worked as we are, but that’s the problem. There is just too much, unrealistic expectations and all that. As a person she’s great. Prior to this year I would occasionally go on interviews just to see if anyone was going to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse, but I always let them know up front that I wasn’t in a bad situation, I was just keeping my options open. It’s this year that things have gotten so bad, and steadily worse.

2:25 – GMB 12 Days of Movement Move of the Day: Cartwheel; discovered my flexibility has gotten pretty bad. I can do a mediocre cartwheel if I just go for it and don’t really try to be in control with my movement, but if I do try, it is pathetic. This brings to light something I have always believed since my early twenties, even when I was into lifting weights twice/day, it’s that flexibility is the most important aspect of fitness in regard to aging. My how I’ve lost my way. Guess what new goal just got added to my priority list.

On a side note, those up dog pushups really helped my back today.

Have a Great Day!

Lubimûr