Sad to say that I am pretty much all the way back to where I was 4 days ago.
😞
At least in terms of my emotional state. My physical actions and efforts are still a bit ahead of where I was, but emotionally, I’m all the way back.
😞
I woke up about 5:45 this morning, with my alarm going off. I was exhausted and had no desire to go in and work out, so I just drove straight back to the Bentonville Walmart parking lot where I slept for another four+ hours.
Tired, groggy, unhappy. 😞
[sigh]
After waking up, I started doing just answer work. I’ve worked so little since losing all that money in the stock market that I’m on the brink of being bumped down a pay grade.
I went from having my second highest month ever to crashing and burning because I crashed and burned with the stock stuff.
Consequences.
But at least I had enough energy today to spend a fairly significant amount of my day trying to answer enough questions as to get myself back into safe territory with my compensation level.
🤞
I’m going to spend a fair bit of time working this weekend as well just to be absolutely sure that I’ve gotten back to the safe zone.
I think I probably accepted close to 30 questions today? Somewhere around there anyway.
That’ll be good because I spent quite a lot of money lately, and I haven’t had much coming back in. 😅
I at least want to have more money coming in than is going out.
Anyway, so I spent a good chunk of the day working. I worked in my van at the Walmart supercenter. I drove into Rogers and worked while working out at the gym. Working while I climb the stair stepper helps pass the time, and I get to make money while I’m exercising, so that’s a bonus.
It is a little hard to talk to customers on the phone while I’m huffing and puffing, though. 😅
I work super hard to control my rate of speech without breathing, so I sound normal before I have to take a huge breath because I was already out of breath before I even started talking.
And that saps my oxygen, but it works just fine, so I keep doing it. 🙂 It really is a boon to be able to make money while I’m working out–taking calls while climbing stairs. Sending messages in between workout sets. Answering questions sitting on the bench in the locker room…
I’m grateful for that privilege/opportunity.
Interestingly enough, I think I mentioned yesterday or the day before that my goal was to get up to 45 minutes at level 5 speed, and then I was going to drop it down to 35 minutes and start at level six.
Well, I realized halfway through my 42 minutes of working out today that I had accidentally put it on level 6 from the start. 🙃
I definitely noticed the difference, as I was more out of breath than usual, more tired, and I think a fair bit more sweaty?
But I also noticed that I managed to make it all 42 minutes today at level 6 without significant difficulty.
So I guess that means I’ll continue to 45 minutes at level 6, and then I’ll drop to 30 or 35 at level 7 and see how I do.
It’s nice to be making progress in my exercise.
I don’t really think I’m making much of any progress in getting rid of the fair bit of fat that I’ve been quite successfully depositing all over my midsection and rear end. I’m used to being able to burn it off so quickly, but I live a pretty sedentary life, outside the gym, nowadays, and I imagine I am metabolism has slowed down a fair bit, and I still haven’t done a very good job at getting rid of the crap food.
I’m certainly better than I was a week ago, but I still have a good ways to go. Case in point, tonight’s dinner, which I’ll get to a bit later.
After working out, I headed over to the Rogers library to have better internet access. I’ve already burned through all 50 GB of my preferred cell phone data, and I still have 19 days left before my month resets. 😆
So I was heading over to the library to be sure that I would have internet speed sufficient to be able to at least get some questions to answer, as my ability to accept questions significantly depends on the speed of my internet connection, as it’s first come first served.
But the Rogers library was closing at 5:00, and it was already 3:30, coming up on 4:00 by the time I got there, and then when I got there, I found out that pretty much the whole library but the lobby was closed because of the tornado last year. The building looks pretty much fine, but I guess there was structural damage inside that’s not really visible from the outside. On the outside, the only evidence of tornado damage on the entire massive building was maybe a 10 ft by 10 ft section that looked like it had a covering to keep out rain. Other than that, the whole building looked perfectly fine.
But apparently, it’s not.
So I gave up on that, and I headed over to the Rogers recycling center to drop off what I hope will be the last empty 2 l bottles of soda. I want to stop drinking soda.
Get back to the healthy foods.
🤞
So I put the empty bottles in the recycling bins, then I headed back to Haven Hill to pick up some important mail that had come for me.
From there, I headed into Pea Ridge to my mom’s place to help her get the battery charging on my z3. She went to go drive it the other day, but it was as dead as a doornail.
So we got that battery connected to my charger, and then my mom and I headed over to Wendy’s in Pea Ridge to have dinner together.
That was nice. And it was nice to have my mom back in Rover. I miss traveling around the country and Canada with her.
I wish we could go right back out and do it again right now.
But she’s got different priorities this year, and I still have lots of stuff I need to sell, so… it’s not looking like it’s gonna be in the cards, sadly.
It was nice to get dinner with her at our traditional little Wendy’s stop.
Afterward, we headed back to her place, where we checked on the charging of my Z3 and concluded that it’ll be better to leave it unplugged tonight and to reinitiate the charging in the morning.
Neither one of us like leaving potential fire hazards plugged in, even if the potentiality of an issue is tiny.
I think there’s a part of me that remains affected by what happened when I was a teenager, waking up in the middle of the night to my friend yelling something like get out it’s on fire (the wikieups that I had built had caught on fire because my friend had fallen asleep while attending the fire, and the ceiling had caught on fire, and the whole thing burned down, all three conjoined wikiups, in a huge fireball, hot enough to explode the rocks that I had put on the outside of the wiki up to help insulate it.)
Pretty nutty night, that night, up Provo Canyon, with like 4 inches of snow on the ground, running down the canyon through the snow in socks, as I remember, to call the fire department.
Fun times. 😅
🐿️
From there, I headed over to the Walmart Neighborhood Market, using the bathroom, doing a little bit of shopping, all the while talking to one of my sisters on the phone. We talked for like an hour and a half, with me going off like a crazy person on all the technological advancements that are in the process of radically reshaping our human civilization.
I enjoy keeping up with what’s going on. 🙂
One meaningful thing that’s happened over the last couple days, which is sad, but something I’m grateful to be able to be a part of… I’ve had two friends over the last couple of days both reach out to me in crisis situations, and I’ve been able to be there to encourage and support. It’s crappy that they have to be in those situations, but I’m grateful to be able to be a support for them in their tough times.
After chatting with my sister, and doing a fair bit more online work, I decided that instead of driving back into town and having to do the sleep sampler, bouncing from one place to the next, so as not to bother anyone or draw too much attention to myself by staying in the same place all night, I decided just to head back over to Haven Hill and park up by the big barn. I can’t park in the lower field because there’s been too much rain, so the ground is going to be soggy and I’d make an absolute mess trying to get in and out.
Anyway, unfortunately, emotionally, I’ve regressed pretty much all the way. I am still making some progress at least in the physical actions, so that’s at least something.
I’ll get there. Some day. I hope.
In the meantime, I wrote this journal entry on time. 🥳
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 