Work, Fitness & Balance
There was something in the June 2010 issue of Marie Claire Malaysia that struck a very loud chord with me. An article called’ Global Energy’ by Tan Lee Kuen talked about what six women from around the world do to stay healthy and preserve their well-being. One of the women is a nutritional therapist Alia Almoayed from Bahrain, who said something that stuck with me although I only glanced through the article at the time.
On the topic of exercise, the yoga enthusiast said:
“I’ve noticed over time that as life got more hectic with work, kids and duties, exercise was always the first thing to be dropped out of the daily schedule. So I decided to work my life around my yoga routine.”
You can download and read the article over at Alia’s blog.
Do you see how she makes perfectly good sense here? The kind of sense that smacks you in the middle of the forehead with the truth that most of us refuse to acknowledge?
We all have one or to important things in life. For most of us, it’s work. Not family, health or personal development. A lot of people thinks they can’t even afford any of the above without drawing a stable income.
Admitting that work is not your top priority in life makes you sound unreliable and undesirable as an employee. I imagine that most traditional employers feel more comfortable hiring someone who’d swear up and down that they will live and breath their job for ever and ever until they die regretting that they couldn’t have spent more time at work.
What kind of life is that?
I think the reason why I can relate to Alia’s exercise philosophy is because I’m kinda already doing it. Putting fitness above expected priorities like work.
Three times a week, which is pretty amazing because I was a very sedentary creature and happy about it until last year.
Crazy Monkey Defense (CMD) is on Monday, which is the day we all agreed on. I ended up being irregular a month in because of work, but after talking to my immediate boss, he doesn’t give me night functions on Monday any more. I usually get early ones instead, but it’s fair enough.
Kettlebell on Wednesday. There’s only two of us regulars in the class, so both of us feel obligated to show up so the other doesn’t have to suffer alone! No night functions coz Thursday is my day off.
And ballet on Friday, also a day off. This is the last month of class. I might replace it with something later on.
I make it a policy not to talk about work on my blog, because people who did that in the past usually find themselves awkwardly inconvenienced and/or unemployed, but I’ll bend it a little here for context.
Around June, I found myself thinking about work and where it is going. I didn’t feel challenged. I get a lot of assignments that I felt was inconsequential and plain boring. I knew that I could easily change that by having a quick work with my immediate boss, but I held back for some reason I couldn’t identify at the time.
I asked myself some key questions. Do I want to do the hard stuff at work so that I can go home feeling like my article might change things and people, maybe win recognition from my peers or even awards from Shell Kenyalang or Petronas?
No, I don’t. I’ll leave the real work to people who know this is their calling, and the awards to people who need the recognition or prize money to validate their existence. I just want to go home with time and energy for family, friends and me. Especially me.
Having easy things to do means that I’m not creatively exhausted at the end of the day. This is important because I’m trying to work my way back to a place I’ve lost and have been fighting to get back to since I started this job. I think I finally got there, but that’s a story for another day.
I am not and don’t want to be the best reporter in town. I want to be the person I can look back on with no regrets, no matter what I happen to work as.
After all, nobody lies on their deathbed and wishes they spent more time in the office.
Dance
...like nobody is watching.
CNY and its aftermaths
As everyone should already know, Chinese New Year is a time when everyone comes home and there will be any number of reunions depending on the size of your family tree and your general popularity. While some people like squeezing as many visits as possible into a day with a pack of ravenous wolves friends, my friends and I do it differently.
We visit a handful of houses in a slow and easy pace, congregating at the house of our former church youth leader for a leisurely lunch and chat, then moving on to other houses as an extension of our day-long catch-up-with-everyone conversations. We even had time to close the doors and watch Kungfu Panda, and croon over some unusual pets.
Camo says :P
I’ve been seeing my mechanic a lot these last few months due to my car having leaky pipes leading to the engine heating up. I noticed that Speedy sounded different but it was a few days before I realised that his temperature is high. Fortunately, my mechanic spent the recent regular servicing ranting about a client who poured cold water into a hot radiator and cracked the damn thing, so I was equipped to deal with this.
I pulled into the shop parking lot (I was at Jalan Song), popped the hood to let it cool out, and called my dad. He came over to look at it, verified my diagnosis and I called AAM, who sent a tow truck to haul my car to my mechanic.
Earlier this week, I noticed the change in Speedy’s hum while going into the basement car part at Tun Jugah and saw that the temperature had gone up again. I parked the car, went for lunch, then called my mechanic to let him know I’m coming in again. I called AAM for a tow truck, and then texted my dad to advise him on the situation.
Wahab from AAM had me drive my car out of the car park (there was no way anyone could get a tow truck in there). It was a bit nerve-wrecking and I kept my eye on the temperature but Speedy had hours to cool off, so it was ok. I got to ride in a tow truck!
Hang in there, Speedy!
Wahab told me that these been an unusually high number of car breakdowns that day, which accounts to him not being able to get to me until over an hour after I called. But it could have been worse. I could have been marooned by the road instead of in a parking lot in the middle of the city!
I got my car back the same afternoon.
A couple of days after, I had my headlights on because it was a dark and rainy morning. When I parked at the office, I forgot to switch it off. But not 10 minutes after I got in, my office got a call with my car number on it. Everyone asked if the car started, but it was fine on account that the security guards tracked me down in record time. I’m glad that the guard on duty that day is one of those who recognise me and know where I work!
I was at Studio 23 for three evenings running this week. Counting my Thursday voice class, my after work schedule looked like this:
Mon – Fizfit Core Strength
Tues – Bellydance 2 (being the more advanced class, as I’ve done the beginner’s class)
Wed – Fizfit Core Strength, with kettlebells
Thu – Voice class
Why two core classes? Because I’m nuts, that’s why.
I decided earlier on that I’ll go for the Monday class because if I suddenly have to work Monday night, I’ll still have Tuesday and Wednesday. I signed up for Bellydance because I could use another kind of workout. I’m not saying that core wasn’t enough; some of the moves are easy for me (I sneak in extra reps), but there’s a few that I struggle through (damn you, Hindu pushups!) and one or two others that are conducive to me faceplanting in the mat.
However, I couldn’t say no to kettlebells. I wanted to know what it is going to add to the workout. Albert ran the five of us in the Wednesday class through the basic moves. Now I have muscles aching in new and interesting ways.
But bellydance kicked my ass. It was rather obvious in the first half of the class that I’m still wired to one month of core and my body don’t understand the concept of fluid movements. After class, I had several muscle groups sending me memos about their respective statuses.
Shoulders and biceps: Please note that due to your excessive sweeping gestures with a heavy cloth, you will not be able to lift your arms up past your ears for the next 24 hours.
Legs: You owe us a massage.
Feet: And a pedicure!
Stomach: *muffled sounds from under the blubber*
Hips: Your stomach muscles and I agree that losing some of that flab will help us get closer to your lower ribcage when you paint figures of eight with your butt. Also? You might actually be able to shimmy instead of looking like your entire middle section is vibrating out of control.
Stomach: *more muffled sounds*
Hips: And the next time stomach flutters are called for, people can actually see them instead of just your gut pulsing like something from an Alien movie.
Stomach: *approving muffled sounds*
Hips: That’s right. And I don’t lie.
Okay. So I can do 3 classes in a week, but it leaves me with little time to do anything else! I’ll stick with dance and one core class until I clear out some pending projects.
Rainy days and many fitness classes means a lot of clothes in the wash. Since my existing exercise wear was limited, I went shopping. I still had to shorten the pants. I am a bit put off by how short my legs are.
The sewing machine got a work out too.
That’s my last few weeks. I have more things to talk about but those will go into another post.
Unplugged Friday is cancelled on account I haven’t been online much this week and need to play catch up with a few things!
