The Equivalents Between Exercising and Writing

Had another “What is my life” breakdown last night. But you folks are forced to read my “woe is me” tales far too much already for me to really get in to that yet again. Just know that I’m struggling to get past it, but I am getting past it. I’m hitting the world with more determination in fact.

First up, I broke out the good old Wii Fit and synced it with our WiiU. I used to do this thing all the time leading up to my wedding. Even though it was a family gift from my mom for all three of us – me, her, and my sister – since I seemed to be the only one that ever used the Wii Fit relatively regularly my mother told me to take it with me when I moved away. I used it a bit during the half-year that I was unemployed right after the wedding. Then I finally got a job, the house fell in to disarray, and I stopped using the Wii Fit under the excuses of “There’s no room for me to really move in order to properly use it” that lead to “Since there’s no room I should use the time cleaning instead of trying to work out” which usually lead to “It’s way too late at night now for me to exercise, plus if I do after going to work and then cleaning I won’t have any time left to write.” Not that I ever really did write. I usually just plopped next to Hubby on the couch, watched some well-deserved TV, and messed around on Facebook.

Fast-forward to about mid-April. I had the livingroom spotless and had an urge to make sure the Wii Fit board would still work with the WiiU – I had forgotten that the WiiU has a backwards compatibility mode that allowed you to revert to the original Wii format. Well, after about an hour of both researching online how to clean out battery corrosion and then successfully saving the Wii Fit board, I used the game for the first time in over a year. I set up my Mii and did the initial Body Test to see my BMI, my weight, and test my balance. Then I put it away.

Jump ahead again to about mid-May and you’ll find Hubby and me participating in a new health-incentive program I’m running at work. The concept is that you earn points – max 6 per day – for eating fruits/vegetables as well as working out. You also earn either one point at the end of the week for maintaining your weight, or two points for losing weight. These points are then accumulated for one of three charities: American Cancer Society, AmericanRed Cross, or Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. I chose my personal favorite charity: American Cancer Society. Therefore, the points I earn go towards that charity’s net amount. At the end of the program all of the points earned by every participant across the whole company are added up. Then the points earned for each charity are divided by the number of participants who chose that charity in order to figure out the average amount of points each charity collected. The charity that earns the highest average points receives a $5000 donation from the company. The second-place charity receives $2000, and even the final charity will have $1000 donated. It really is a great way to help others while helping yourself.

Well, over the past two weeks since the program started Hubby and I have been kicking butt in the fruits/veggies department – which in and of itself is impressive since we rarely had any over the winter – but I’ve been slacking in the exercise department. The only time I earned any exercise points was when I was running around to the point of sweating at work. I would go “eh, that counts” and call it a day.

Today I changed that! Today I actually took out the Wii Fit board and used it for more than a glorified scale; since my bathroom one and the one in the breakroom at work are 10pounds off from each other, and I’m not sure which one to trust. Today I actually spent about an hour working out. About 30min with aerobics and another with yoga. Go me!

Each activity in Wii Fit is only about a minute or two long. Most are no more than 4min, unless you do something like “free running” in which you set how long you want to run for and then just jog in place for that long. My point is that I can do essentially the same thing as the push-up scenario in the No More Zero Days concept. “Heck, I could just get on the ground and do one push-up so I don’t have a Zero Day,” turned in to “Well, heck, I can start up the Wii Fit and just do the Body Test.” The hardest part about using the Wii Fit is having to dig the board out of the drawer I keep it tucked away in, and then starting up the program. It takes about five minutes. After those five minutes of starting the darn thing up it seems a waste to just do the Body Test. So I do one game under the Aerobics category. None of them are all that challenging. You only burn about 20calories with each game. Then you think “that wasn’t so hard. That was actually kind of fun” so then another game is played, and another. I switched over to Yoga as a cool-down, and went through each pose even though I really only wanted to do the ones to work out the tension in my shoulders. Next thing I know I’m doing the free run for 10min and chugging a glass of water after a nice workout.

Now here’s the part you’ll care about: I did the same with my writing.

Just like with the Wii Fit, the hardest part is taking the time to just start the darn thing up. Especially since I’m doing a lot more writing in Google Docs, so that I can share my work and get feedback. Now I have to start up my computer, and then the internet, and then Google Docs, and then a new file – or bring up an old one to fix/continue. It takes about five minutes, and so once I push myself to put in the effort to “just write for a little so I don’t have a Zero Day” I suddenly feel like the set up would be a waste of time if I didn’t put in x-minutes in to writing. Next thing I know I’m doing the 10min free run – or in writing terms: I’m working on a fight scene.

I suck at fight scenes.

Like, majorly. Just as I need to train in running because I have absolutely no endurance – like, I can get winded going up stairs if they’re steep enough, even if there’s only about 20 of them – I need to work on fight scenes. Again, just like running, I have the basics and I can do alright when I need to, but certainly nothing to really brag about. “Oh man, I was able to jog in place for 10min.” Ignore the fact that while I wasn’t exactly winded, it did take about three minutes for my breathing to go back to normal once I was done…. “Oh man, I wrote a fight scene.” Ignore the fact that everyone just dodged everyone else’s attacks until the hero finally got the winning blow in.

Exercising and Writing. They go hand-in-hand and I can certainly apply the same tricks to both activities. Something that I need to do more often in fact. More exercising. More writing. More motivation to do something productive both on my days off and on days where I have a short shift.

That being said, I’m proud of my pathetic fight scene, just as I’m proud of my “almost-two-miles” jog. Because they both mean that I pushed myself, and did so after actually getting my lazy butt in gear and doing something I should every day.

Bet you’re curious about the fight scene, huh? Well, like I said, it was pathetic, and it was mostly dialogue. It’s not even done yet. It’s going to be another X-Future: Snippets once I have it to a point that is publishable, and it’s – surprise, surprise – a Trish snippet. Her confronting Devon. A woman who can only stab things and create fire is going up against a man who can manipulate fire and is just as skilled as stabbing things. She’s not going to really get much headway there. Likewise, Devon is trying to use fire against someone who both controls it and is completely fireproof. No dice there either. Both parties need to rethink their strategy. Right now it’s “whomever can Stabby-stabby first wins.”

I’ve also been slowly working on the collab with AngelBlood666. I had a grand old time last week when I created the joint Google Doc file. We would essentially IM each other by writing in the file, and because it’s all in real-time you can watch the other person type. It’s amusing to watch how fast someone else can type and how quickly they pick up on their typos.

Plus, AB666 is a nutjob who had me in stitches most of the time. His online persona may seem dark, and some of his stories may be too, but don’t let that fool you. AB666 himself is a riot.

It seems a bit silly to admit this since it’s a play that takes about 3hrs to perform, but it’s taken me about that long to “convert” the story in to modern language since I write out the gist of what is happening and how people are reacting. Oh yeah, did I mention that I’ve only managed to “convert” two scenes?

It would have been faster if I literally set it up as a script and “translated” the dialogue in to modern language. Instead I have passages such as “Theseus tells [Hermia] that she must either die or become a nun. If she won’t marry Demetrius she won’t be allowed to marry anyone.”

Oh! And speaking of Demetrius…. I never before picked up on how much of a jerk he is! Either that, or I completely forgot that part of the story. He’s just this major… well, I’ll use “jerk” again even though I could use more colorful language. Although the idea of a love-square works wonderfully for the Helga > Arnold > Lila > Arnie > Back to Helga dynamic, having Arnold as Demetrius might not be the best idea. AB666 and I are going to have to take a few artistic licenses with the original story so that Arnold as Demetrius is still his lovable “underdog” self. That being said, Lysander is a fantastic character that you can really sympathize with, which isn’t really Arnie at all. So more liberties will be taken so that Arnie actually has a personality…

We’re still trying to figure out the exact format of the story as well. Do we want a straight cross-over? Leave the story-more-or-less the same, just with Hey Arnold characters instead? Did we want to change the names to the Hey Arnold equivalents, or do we want to do the same thing as in the “What’s Opera, Arnold?” episode and make strange name mashes, i.e. – CarmHelga or Ruth McCarmen for Carmen, Don Arnold for Don José, or Curlmillo for Escamillo? Do we have it set up very much like "What's Opera, Arnold?" and have the characters dream/imagine they're in that play? Or do we create our own story loosely based off of  the concept of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"? I mean they sort of had love potions in the show before in the episode "Helga's Love Potion", but that turned out to be a grape soda placebo. Since everyone under the love spell had no clue what was going on a placebo effect won't really do much.

Eh, we'll figure it out.

Finally, I made some - not much, but still better than none - progress in my pantheon building for Gyateara. Namely, I've come up with a list of the most commonly used "Godly Domains" that appear in both D&D and Greco-Roman faith. Domains such as "Sky" or "Wildlife" or "Roads/Travel" or "War", etc. My next task is to try to figure out what gods I create will be in charge of what domain(s), and if they are in charge of multiple domains, how are they connected. I also have to be sure that all of the "Cleric Domains" in D&D are represented by the "Godly Domains" so that the cleric-specific spells in D&D can still be used if/when I run Gyateara as a campaign setting.

Well, I think I've sat for enough. Time to get my lazy butt back in gear. To writing and exercise and productivity!