Pleasantly busy

“Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.” – Brenda Ueland

Living in the present is something I’ve done a lot lately because my schedule finally filled out. I go to bed early, wake up for personal training at LA Fitness around 5 or 6 a.m. and then go to work. Evenings are filled with dog walks, tax training, or a second trip to the gym. Then it’s a beverage and a T.V. show.

The Netflix show of choice was Damages but now I am onto The Kennedys, which is ironic considering one of my favorite books is Libra.

Some changes are in order though. I need to get back to the Jillian Michaels / natural foods diet and redouble my efforts at the gym. I want to lose my stomach so I can walk around the office with semi-high-waisted pants like Leo in Revolutionary Road. Minus the cigarette of course…

I also need to get back to my Ableton time. It’s been too long and I need to finish my album.

Things pleasantly busy though, and I feel fortunate.

My second-round interviews for the job are also this week. The position sounds amazing and I just hope the second-round interviews are as fun as the first-round interviews.

These certainly are exciting times, even with the lack of high-waisted pants.

Oh, and randomly, here’s my song of the moment

Getting tired of the cast

Things are looking better. My finger finally stopped throbbing, although it started to hurt again at the end of the workday. I go back to the orthopedist tomorrow morning, but I’m not sure if they are going to take out my stitches.

Everything is harder with 1.5 hands. I can only walk one dog at a time, typing takes longer, and drying myself after a shower makes me feel spectacularly handicapped. I’ll be happy when this is over.

LA Fitness also debited the money for my 3-times-weekly personal training sessions so I need to get out of this stupid cast as quickly as possible. I was attending the gym irregularly before the injury, but there’s something about being unable to do something that makes you want to do it…

The good news is that I got to shave my ridiculous pornstache because Movember is over. I felt like a hot mess walking around with the Hulk Hogan mustache and my finger in a cast. Now I just look like a hipster with his finger in a cast. And yes, that’s progress.

Best Summer Ever Week 8: Twenty Five

Ah crap, I’m old… at least I had another hilarious year in Minneapolis.

Downtown Minneapolis

I turned 25 yesterday. My birthday fell on a Saturday this year, but the celebrations were muted because we just had two holiday weekends (July 4th and Minneapolis Gay Pride). I just felt like staying in, eating cheeseburgers and watching the First 48, but of course that didn’t happen.

We skipped around town to bars, restaurants and dog parks. Mojitos and dog poop characterized the weekend. Oh, and we saw Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho at a midnight showing. So it was mojitos, dog poop, and old-school slashers. Classy.

It wasn’t a bad way to end my first quarter-century on the planet. I looked over last year’s birthday goals and I achieved about half of them, namely graduating law school and getting a full time gig at my corporation.

I wasn’t so good about the exercise and creative goals. Actually, I put my personal training at LA Fitness on hold this week. The 5 a.m. workout schedule wasn’t working for me and I got annoyed by how often the gym did not open on time. My trainer was late too often as well. If I pay $500 a month for a service then I should not be standing outside a locked gym at 5 a.m. feeling like an idiot or inside the gym wondering where the hell my trainer is.

Going to the gym in the afternoon wasn’t an option because there are bizarre middle aged men who scream as they lift 40-pound weights. There is also a gooey layer of sweat that covers half of the machines/benches my trainer directs me to and random dumbbells littering the floor.

I couldn’t deal with that hot mess so I went to cancel my training and my membership, but LA Fitness wanted to charge me $2,500 to get out of my contract. I could not use their underwhelming services as a justification to cancel because the contract basically says that they will provide “personal training” without any promise regarding the quality of their services.

I should get approved to work from home in the coming months, so I’ll resume my personal training at a suburban LA Fitness on my work-from-home days. I’m too disgusted with the Uptown location to go back to that gym. I told the managers that too. The managers seem pretty on top of things when they are at the gym, but they obviously had no idea how poorly things are run when the gym opens at 5 a.m.

We’ll see how I do on my own the next few months. I gained 10-pounds during my first month of personal training and it wasn’t muscle. It was mostly because I didn’t sleep enough and being exhausted makes me ravenous. I’m sleeping more now and hopefully getting back down to my pre-gym weight. I don’t want to be 26 and chunky, so this is the year to get things together.