Monthly Archives: May 2012

Life Lessons with CrossFit

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CrossFit is teaching me some important lessons, but they aren’t always the lessons I expected.

Some of them are the normal lessons. For instance, today was a running day for me. I didn’t want to run because my legs are still sore from the 30 minutes of jump-roping we did yesterday, but I went anyway. And then after I was out, I didn’t want to run up the giant hill in the neighborhood, because that hill sucks real bad. But I did it anyway. The whole time I was running up the hill I was like, “I’m so strong! I can do this! CrossFit is teaching me not to limit myself! Booyah!” Then when I was nearing the end of my run and my calf muscles seized up like a motor without any oil in it, I wanted to quit early. But I kept running anyway. I was like, I CAN keep going, and so I SHOULD. That’s totally a CrossFit attitude. 10 points to me.

10 idiot points, that is. Because I just hopped out of bed to give the house the final pre-sleep lock-down and my calf muscles were all EFF YOU, STUPID. WE WILL STOP WORKING NOW. I hobbled my way back to bed using the same pivot step that my nieces use to make their knee-less Barbies strut around their doll houses.

Another thing that CrossFit has taught me is how rarely I fully extend my arms. Zack called tonight to check on me; he asked me how I was feeling, and how my elbows were doing. I had stretch out both of my arms all the way before I could verify that, yes, they do, in fact, hurt super badly. I just had previously been unaware because apparently I walk around all day long with my elbows bent.

So I just wanted to share those important CrossFit lessons of the day with you. I am always capable of more than I think I am, and, uh, also, I don’t extend my arms very often.

Howdy, Strangers.

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Something happened when we moved into the new house and all of the sudden, I lost my blogging mojo. I’ve spend a fair amount of time performing some self-analysis of the situation, and I’ve come up with a whole battery of semi-valid reasons that I haven’t written on here. I’m not going to list them, though, because they all just read like excuses and everyone hates excuses. The standard “no news is good news” rule doesn’t seem to apply to blogging — especially not when you announce the return of your sometimes-crippling depression, and then drop off the face of the earth. I recognize that my timing has been poor, so I’ll try to resolve some of the grey areas that have been left standing with an update-post. Perhaps that will get the blog rolling again.

I’m seeing a therapist on a weekly basis. I was very blessed/lucky to find someone that was a good fit for me right off the bat this time, as opposed to the disastrous results I got last time I looked for a therapist. She’s young and hip, and we spend a good amount of time in our sessions laughing, which is exactly the way that I like to deal with things. If I can’t at least laugh about something, it makes it impossible for me to talk about the really hard things.

And there are some really hard things. This therapist has helped me dig around in my mess of a brain long enough to find a few things that were really bothering me, even though I couldn’t put a finger on them before I started seeing her. In short, she’s done what therapists are supposed to do. So, that’s great news. I’m getting medically sorted and I’m getting therapized on the regular, so, wins all around.

Zack and I are still loving the new house. I of course have big plans for furniture and decorations for every room. It took me about a month of living here before I realized that all of the furniture and decorating wasn’t going to happen immediately, that, in fact, it was going to be a very slow, laborious process. After that I chilled out a little bit, and started to really soak up the glory of being in this stage. It’s a fun stage. Instead of spending my time flipping through real estate websites, I’m back to looking at magazines and imagining the perfect craft room set-up.

I started working out at a new CrossFit gym that’s right here by the house. In short, it’s pretty much kicking my ass. I did my second workout there today. I’m exhausted even though it wasn’t even a miserable day — we were just doing skill work. Learning how to do kipping pull-ups and double-unders. I am very proud to say that I can do pull-ups with the kipping. I might be less proud tomorrow, however, if the way my arms and chest feel is any precursor to how sore I’m going to be. I hyper-extended my elbows about 23 billion times as I was coming out of the pull-ups (apparently you have to be strong to do a pull-up AND to STOP doing a pull-up, too). That should make working tomorrow a total delight.

But anyway, y’all: fear not about the state of me and my mental health. I am improving, undoubtedly. And I am coming back to you. I promise, I haven’t quit blogging. It was more like a leave of absence, and I’ve missed it the whole time I’ve been gone. Thanks for checking up on me every once in a while, though. It was nice to be missed.