I took baby steps today towards two goals I have had for a long time:\u00a0 Getting in better shape and becoming a lucid dreamer.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
For the former, I went through a modified version of an exercise routine I found online.\u00a0 It’s called the One Hundred Workout.\u00a0 It starts with one hundred jumping jacks followed by ninety crunches followed by eighty squats followed by seventy leg lifts.\u00a0 This repeats, losing ten repetitions each time, finishing with twenty jumping jacks and then ten minutes of running.\u00a0 Now, in my shape I might<\/em> be able to do a hundred jumping jacks, but even without the jacks I would not be able to do ninety crunches.\u00a0 Running for two minutes is not possible, much less ten.\u00a0 So I divided the first nine steps by ten and changed the run to a walk.\u00a0 My plan is to do this daily, Monday through Friday, adding another repetition and to the exercises and a few more steps to the walk each time.\u00a0 By the time I hit the full routine, I hope to be running instead of walking.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The other thing I did was I started a dream journal.\u00a0 I have read a few books on lucid dreaming–which is knowing your dreaming when you’re dreaming and then taking control of the dream–and every last one suggests starting a dream journal.\u00a0 I have no clue why I have resisted this idea, but I have.\u00a0 I have had a few lucid dreams before, but never had continued, regular success with it.\u00a0 I got an e-book for my Kindle on it, and once again, step one said to start a dream journal.\u00a0 So I bought a blank book and this morning I wrote down what I remembered dreaming about.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anyway, these are two things I have wanted to accomplish for a long time and failed to get a proper start on.\u00a0 Well, I have started exercising before, but I have not maintained a routine since I was in the army.\u00a0 I would like to say I have wanted<\/em> to maintain a regular routine, but, well, that’s where the problem is:\u00a0 Motivation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is the thing which drives or fails to drive a person to do whatever it is they do (or don’t do).\u00a0 What has finally motivated me to start exercising again?\u00a0 Perhaps it’s my summer trip to Indiana, when I will see my family again.\u00a0 The prospect of them seeing my overweight self has (no pun intended) weighed heavily on my mind.\u00a0 Perhaps it’s all the Ranma<\/em> I have watched lately, and the central character’s obsession with staying in anime-zing shape (pun intended this time) so he\/she can be the best martial artist in the world.\u00a0 I’ll never achieve that kind of superhuman level of fitness, although perhaps I will take some martial arts courses someday.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I want to motivate myself more.\u00a0 The webhost upgrade I did last week is an attempt to motivate myself in another area.\u00a0 I want to learn more about Linux servers and server-side scripting.\u00a0 Upgrading is a bit costly, so it would be a poor thing for me to do this upgrade and then fail to do some advanced website programming.\u00a0 How can I do the same for exercise, I wonder?\u00a0 I have purchased equipment before–made an investment, much as I did with webhosting–but that equipment sits in my living room, years later, mostly unused.\u00a0 I have a workout center and a treadmill, so I have no need for a fitness center, but perhaps I should become a member of one anyway.\u00a0 Perhaps a monthly fee would inspire me to make use of equipment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Motivation, then, is what I seek.\u00a0 I am not good at the art of motivation, however.\u00a0 I would try to promise myself rewards, but I tend to grant those rewards to myself without completing the tasks I set out.\u00a0 I have thought about setting up an experience point system.\u00a0 Can “leveling up” motivate me, even if that is the only reward?\u00a0 This would be something I could not grant early, but it would have no real meaning.\u00a0 On the other hand, there are plenty of games I play now where leveling up is a reward in and of itself, even when there’s no material gain associated with it.\u00a0 I keep playing Farmville<\/em> daily, leveling up my crops for no reason more than to do just that.\u00a0 My level in the game is high enough that there’s nothing left to “unlock” in the game by leveling alone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It strikes me as odd sometimes.\u00a0 Here are these things I want, and they don’t require that much effort, really, to achieve.\u00a0 A half hour or so of exercise daily, and I will get into the shape I want to be in.\u00a0 Record my dreams daily, and I will start having lucid dreams more regularly.\u00a0 So many goals with only a small effort to be taken, but I avoid those small efforts like the plague.\u00a0 Can I get past it?\u00a0 Where do I find the motivation?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Seriously, it makes no sense to me.\u00a0 If I exercised and got into better shape, I would improve my chances of a girlfriend by a significant amount.\u00a0 It’s sad, shallow fact that most women prefer guys who are not overweight, particularly not as overweight as I am.\u00a0 I am not immense, but I am<\/em> fat.\u00a0 It’s a health concern, too, and about my only one.\u00a0 I don’t smoke or drink or do recreational drugs, but my body fat could do me some serious harm.\u00a0 So I will aim to become and exercise freak, and be happy if I simply get into (much) better shape and stay there.\u00a0 Perhaps I will, somewhere along the way, find the key to my personal art of motivation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I took baby steps today towards two goals I have had for a long time:\u00a0 Getting in better shape and becoming a lucid dreamer. For the former, I went through a modified version of an exercise routine I found online.\u00a0 It’s called the One Hundred Workout.\u00a0 It starts with one hundred jumping jacks followed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":525,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions\/525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}