Last week I talked about my new schedule. The schedule lasted only one day. Part of my schedule includes a new fitness regime, for instance, going for a walk as soon as I get up. So on Monday, I got up and headed out for a 45-minute walk, then got home published my blog and wrote another 600 words or so. Then it was time to get ready and go to Crappy Night Job. On Mondays, I have a nine-hour shift, so I will never get much done.
I don't know why, but the shift at Crappy Night Job was almost devoid of customers. Without having to serve, it meant that I finished all of my normal jobs and then some, and I still had an hour left. So, being the fool I am, I thought I would get some more walking in. So I walked around the car park for the better part of an hour, nipping back in if any customers rolled in. On the bright side, I hit nearly 11,000 steps for the day. On the not-so-bright side, I woke up on Tuesday very sore.
Without scheduling exercise, I don't cover much ground in a day. Even though I'm on my feet at work for nine hours, I don't move far from the till. So I'd pretty much tripled my daily average of steps. While I did what should be a daily minimum on Monday, my body is conditioned to sitting in front of a computer rather than walking seven or eight kilometres.
Because I was feeling sore on Tuesday, I didn't go for my walk, and then I didn't follow up with any writing. Mostly I felt rubbish and by the time I was starting to get a handle on things, it was time to get ready for Crappy Night Job again.
This was always going to be a challenge to overcome. Creating a more holistic life schedule requires balancing many life goals. Not only do I want to increase my exercise, but increase my word count per week, on top of 30 hours of Crappy Night Job, 10-15 hours of volunteering, keeping the house clean, shopping, cooking, doing the dishes, washing my clothes, and generally being a better human. It'd also be great to get my finances in order, panel beat and repaint my car, and do more social things. You get the gist; I'm terrible at balancing my life. Mostly, I focus all my energy on only one thing and let everything else fall to the wayside.
My average steps for the day last week were 4657 steps per day, an improvement on the week before by more than 600 steps per day. In addition, I wrote a little more than 1500 creative words for the week. So from now on, I will log those stats in the blog each week. I'd like ultimately get to an average of 12,000 steps per day and 10,000 creative words per week (or 10 hours of editing/website formatting/etc). I'm not expecting to do that next week, and if I did, I'd probably crash and not do anything for a month. I'll be happy if I can see slow improvement toward that goal every week.