I didn’t mean to stop posting on the blog. Is this my longest unintentional pause on the blog? Maybe. Often I make an intentional decision to not blog and take a break for a week or so, but this time I let the days just slip by. If I reassess why, it’s a few things. Over the last two weeks, I’ve made a trial excursion into the duolingo app for learning Spanish. I’ve often felt that I shouldn’t even bother learning Spanish because there is no way I would ever become fluent. (I’m losing words rapidly in English, both because my mind can’t find the right words when they are on the tip of my tongue and because English is rapidly changing from under me. Vince keeps coming to me and saying new words – simp was last night’s new vocab. And I know I’m constantly screwing up noun/verb agreements blahblahblah when I write). But I’ve been reconsidering the goal of fluency. Maybe it’s enough to offer someone apple or orange juice in their native language? I dunno. Anyways, that takes up about 15-20 minutes of my day. And I’m entertaining myself at the hospital. I’m amusing the housekeeping staff when I tell them in Spanish – I need to buy an expensive cat, but my favorite store is closed. And then they laugh and say cat? You need a cat? And then I tell them, I have only 10 vocabulary words, I gotta rotate through them all. And yesterday, my intro to my patient was good enough that they asked hopefully – you speak Spanish? I shook my head no with an apologetic smile and went to dial the phone translator’s number.
I’ve also added 15-30 min of strength training during the day. Also an app-based activity – I found an app called fitbod which just makes up a gym routine based on your equipment and time available. And it slowly increases your weights. So I just click on it and it whirls around and settles on the exercises and then I do what it says. And then you realize that the things you thought you could always do and would forever be able to do you haven’t done in a long time. Like a box jump. You put an 18 inch box in front of you and then you look at it for a few moments and contemplate – by golly, when was the last time you jumped that high? And then you replace it with a 12 inch box.
Also, I’m working more hours (at home mostly) to try to make more $ in advance of the big college bills, so that takes away from blogging time.
And lastly, I’m trying to stay off the computer at night just to have time to wind down and get ready to sleep. Sleep is harder to come by these days, so I’m doing what I can to help it along.
And lastly finally, I’m binge watching Cheer on Netflix.