Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Wanted: Motivation to Make it Through the Winter

Needless to say, I haven't been very motivated these last few weeks. I can rattle off excuses about how much I've been working (16 hours straight on Christmas, YAY!) or my health (2, count 'em, 2 kidney stones say that my body got confused by meat and wants to go veg again) but in the end, they're all justifications for slacking off.

It's not really all that hard to stop by the gym on the way home from work. Yes I hate the gym. Yes I hate treadmills. Yes I would much rather be smoking half a pack over a giant beer and a shepherd's pie the size of my head. But it is far easier to give up than to keep pushing myself that next mile or seeing how much I can improve my 5k time, and I'll never be accused of taking the easy way out.

Friday, October 10, 2008

1.47

Tonight was a hard but good run. That 4 minutes is not impossible, but not really a piece of cake either. Next week I go into a different kind of interval training-very short walks in between short runs. My right shin was acting up a little in the beginning of my first interval. It might get some ice later on.

OT: Work was insane today. Here in Michigan, our unemployment is among the highest in the nation. The automakers are all in serious trouble and have laid off thousands of workers in the past year alone. Unfortunately, the entire state economy is built around the Big Three (Ford, GM, and Chrysler for those not in the rust belt) and when they started to go down, EVERYONE started to go down. I work in the airline industry which is incredibly unstable at the moment. I've seen at least five airlines go under in the last six months and the company is scrambling to combat high fuel prices, mechanical cutbacks, and climbing fares. While I have my issues with the airline industry (as we all do), I've ALWAYS been grateful for a job-a rare commodity here. This morning I watched as more than 30 people were laid off in my office alone. They had no notice, they arrived to work and were taken right away to a room and then were walked off the premises. Some were crying, some had young children at home, single mothers, people who just married, just bought a car, just bought a new home, sent their kids to college last month. I felt terrible for them. More than that, though, I know that I'm next. In our system, people who are hired last are laid off first. Now that they're gone, there's about 40 of us who will probably be on the chopping block in the next few months. I'll be okay as I have a really solid backup plan (the peace corps and then graduate school), very few bills, and no family to support but I know a lot of other people have aren't so lucky. I hope they're all okay...

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

1.24

I was so exhausted today that I tried to weasel out of work early, to no avail. It is so wrong that I can basically go home early every day if I wanted. Great for my free time, horrible for my paycheck. I spent the entire day eating halloween cookies, talking to my work buddies, and planning my upcoming travel on Lonely Planet. Best. Job. Ever.

I came home at about 6:30pm, ate a bit of dinner, and tried to take a nap. I tossed and turned for about an hour and a half, changed nap strategies and crashed in my bed instead of my couch, and finally fell asleep at about 8pm. I woke up to complete darkness and my dog dreaming in his bed (so cute, except when it wakes you up). I thought it was the middle of the night and I was kicking myself for missing my run. I flopped over to check the time and it was only 10! YES. Even though I could have just rolled over and slept through the night, I got up, got my scrub-gear on, and went out for my run. I've been nervous about running more than 1 minute at a time as my walk-to-run program has assigned me a (gasp!) whole 3 minutes tomorrow. I know it's idiotic to be nervous about a 3 minute run when I used to run 5k but I feel like a total noob. I took a crack at running 2 minutes straight tonight and didn't even really feel out of breath at the end. I could have easily gone at least another minute. This makes me feel a lot better about my previous visions of keeling over and possibly dying tomorrow. Death averted!

Has anyone else ever been nervous about running such a small distance? I cannot be the only one.