I haven’t been the best at updating this, have I?
I’ve turned a corner with kickboxing. I went on Tuesday and even though I could feel the exertion in my muscles, I never actually hurt. I went back this morning and felt like I was in a really good groove. I’m far from the best in the class, but I think I’m holding my own.
If you’ve never done kickboxing, allow me to explain how this particular class works (and I have no idea if it’s like this everywhere or not). The class is 60 minutes long. The first 20 is the warm-up: jumping jacks, push-ups and air-punching/kicking routines that will be repeated later, all set to a throbbing beat. The middle 20 uses gloves and bags and repeats a lot of the patterns established in the first portion of the class, still set to intense music. The final 20 involves about 15 minutes of weight work, push-ups (100), triceps dips (100), some Pilates-style moves and finally about 5 minutes of stretching.
In the first two portions of the class, everything is dependent on two things: remembering the pattern and sticking with the beat of the music. I’m constantly counting in my head. 1-2-3-4, shuffle, shuffle, kick, kick. I can more or less do it, too, as long as those in my sight line are following the pattern. But as my mother said, there’s one in every crowd.
On Tuesday, the One from our Crowd happened to be in my peripheral vision. It’s not so much that she’s a little bit off beat, but more that she’s making up her own beat as she goes along. It was maddening. But could this really make a significant difference? Yes. As soon as I realized the problem, I rotated around the bag to keep her behind me and out of sight. My rhythm, pace and quality of workout improved dramatically. So to those who had to watch me flail in my first classes, I owe a heartfelt apology for ruining your workouts.
I would also like to send a big shout out to Chipotle for having the best fast food ever. Yeah, there’s a lot of sodium like in all fast food, but when you can build a meal of rice, black beans, fajita veggies, two scoops of fresh tomato salsa and a big dollop of guacamole… well, all is right with the world (and for only 460 calories, 17.5 g of fat that comes mostly from the guac, and 2.5 g saturated fat). I top that with smoked Tabasco for an extra kick. And extra bonus points to them for having real brewed iced tea. I’m actually hoping to go to the original Chipotle location in Denver when I attend the Creative Freelancer Conference in June.
Should I talk about work? Work has been a fascinating, eclectic blend of projects that percolate in my brain all day and all night. I usually don’t like the “and night” portion of that statement, but it’s not bothering me this week. It’s only when the required mental bandwidth exceeds its allotment and starts trickling over into family time that I get truly frustrated, and we’re well below that threshold. It’s interesting, but I find that when I’m consciously thinking about work-life balance, the process seems almost effortless. Is that because I make my decisions based on the right priorities? And where does that reasoning go when I hunker down and get work-only tunnel vision?