It’s been over a month since I jumped over the edge. Committing myself to an exercise plan had usually been excruciating in itself. I used to keep the records in a Excel spreadsheet, but it’s horribly painful to search for the file, open it, enter the time record for the day’s run, and then to hit the save button.
Not to mention that with having to meet multiple project deadlines for the past 2 years, exercising became the neglected concubine in the my palace. However, it wasn’t as much a fact that I secretly wished that I didn’t want to go out running as it was me lacking the motivation to wake up to run before school after pulling midnighters. Ok, maybe sometimes I’m the lazy pig that sticks to his bed like a magnet to refrigerators, but I’m going to plead the “overworked” defense! Creativity needs its own space in order to expand, and as MINDEF put it on its advertisements for DXOs, “the brain, once expanded, cannot be stuffed back into the box again” (or something like that.)
My knack for missing marketing advances by corporations aside, my brain definitely has some expansion to do, especially after all that hair-tearing experience of reading through Microsoft’s technical documentation for Visual Studio.NET. I can swear that it’s one of the hardest thing to decipher – in fact, the only thing that’s keeping me sane is the fact that nobody at Redmond got the bright idea to stylise all that documentation in bloody cursive! Strangely, Java’s API documentation doesn’t suffer from the same problem. And it’s a good thing too; because it is so much easier to understand, I’m going to shoot for the Sun’s Certified Java Programmer certification in the few days after I suffer the end-of-semester tests.
That aside, my schedule is pretty packed this semester holiday. There’s Microsoft’s Imagine Cup competition, which my group’s going to be submitting as our Final Year project, some freelance work for some clients, and then comes the ramp up for my IPPT test; But you must be thinking: this crazy guy has been claiming that he’s been overworked right from the time he entered polytechnic, is he boasting or what?
I assure you, showing off isn’t my main objective. Alright, so it is. Or maybe? I managed to squeeze through nearly two months worth of consistent exercises since the start of the year now. And that is in spite of all the stuff that’s happening right now in my school life. I’m glad to say that exercising has now become an indispensable item in my life time-table.
Not that I like it very much the way I’m handling it now though. Running at 9 or even 10pm in the night is hardly an ideal time to work the heart out, since the body’s already winding down at the end of the day. To transition to the new habit, I had to endure through a few days of sleeping deep into 2 or 3am, and then waking up for class (late). Thankfully, my lecturers didn’t question my tardiness, probably because they have faith in me that I wouldn’t let it affect my studies. Unfortunately, having figured that last out one night in the middle of my sleep, it’s been weighing on me like an albatross.
It’s not easy to maintain a persistent approach to exercise, but thankfully, Seinfield’s chaining strategy appears to have worked for me. When I browse through the calendar during my free time, I get an urge to mark another exercise down on it. It’s like sticker collecting for exercising.
I’d also decided to post my plan on the Internet to hold myself accountable for my exercise plan; so far it’s been working well. Though nobody’s really asked me specifically about the plan so far, Desmond had been supportive of my plan so far. It’s nice to know that there are friends out there who would provide moral support when you need it.
And of course, to all you stalkers (affectionately known as non-commenters) out there: I know you’re watching me. I personally think it would be great if you could leave some feedback on how I’m doing so far on the plan, but I guess it’s perfectly fine if you wish to stay in the shadows. After all, I do stalking all the time. Mwahaha!
Lastly, do you know that you can subscribe to my feed so that you track my occasional updates through your favourite RSS reader? Those things grab updates from various websites, and then present them nicely in one neat application so you won’t have to click through all the bookmarks to follow blog updates — it’s the perfect stalking tool!
