Before I Date…Week 1

Hey girl hey! And ‘ello Gents!

This is has been the first week of my wonderful and slightly over self-important mission to become a better person while single. I would like to apologize for the overly important and serious tone of last week’s post with an even more exaggerated serious and self-important to display a sense of sarcasm and irony.

But let me tell you: This week has been fabulous!! So much soreness from workout which is great. I planted my flowers and fruit and vegetables. I have watched three classic movies: Vertigo, Roman Holiday and Rebel Without A Cause. What I learned was, Alfred Hitchcock is officially my favorite director. Every single one of his movies I go in a panic when something scary happens. Like, my whole body builds up this tension because the tension is so subtle but doesn’t stop so when it finally happens I explode… Wow, that sounds sexual. I didn’t do that on purpose…

For Roman Holiday, well it was sort of ruined for me because I saw online that the main man was originally written for Cary Grant and I love me some Cary Grant so I kept comparing the actual actor who played the part in the movie and Cary Grant. And Cary Grant always wins.

Another lesson I learned, James Dean just gets it. I saw him in East of Eden and he just knows how a confused, lost and lonely teenager feels. He’s just too talented. So sad to have lost him so soon.

Anyway, my list has been finalized and specified, though I imagine I still might make so changes later on to my list.

The list includes:

1.) Be in a play

2.) Read the Bible Up To Joshua

I had decided to specify this one by telling my readers every week what I had gained from reading the Bible and what insight I have found. But I doubt if it will be considered insight really, just my notes.

3.) Read the Lord of the Ring

4.) Start learning to play the piano

5.) Finish reading Jane Austen Anthology

6.) Get in better shape

The main change I made was to this one. I needed some way to track my progress and to set an actual goal. So instead of tracking things like weight or inches or BMI, I decided to try to improve actual specific areas of fitness. So I decide to set a goal for mile, push ups, planks, squats and leg lifts. For the mile, I would LOVE to have a 7 minute mile! I feel like seven is realistic enough but enough of a challenge. I remember doing the mile in high school and by that time, I was at a 9 minute mile I think and the people who were at 7 were so fit and I wanted to be like those people. For the plank, well, maybe a bit extreme, but a 5 minute one would be fabulous. For push ups, I would like 40 pushes IN A ROW! It’s so different doing it non stop, all the way down. I remember last year when I was really doubting myself in musical theatre and I said I would try to do 40 push ups and if I could push myself to do 40 pushes in a row, non stop then I would know that I would be able to push myself all the way to do musical theatre. But I failed at, like 38 I think. But I collapsed when I couldn’t take it anymore. While that reconfirmed my belief that I would fail trying before I gave up on musical theatre, it gave me something to work for.  For leg lifts, I decided to 50 in a row and these are the ones where stick your legs together and raise them up at the same time and for me, these things are so hard! I haven’t decided exactly I will do for the buns. I will probably do so many standard squats except I suck at squats. I will probably work on these at home until I don’t feel stupid doing them and then do them at the gym.

So for my desire to become in better shape, I have used Pinterest endlessly. I will probably add a link to my Pinterest so y’all can see what I am pinning and working on. While on there I found a plan from Military.com, so you know it’s serious, for how to shave off two minutes off your mile. I decided to use that as my template for quickening my mile. Here is the link: http://www.military.com/military-fitness/running/improve-your-pft-mile-time . It has a great specific plan and it has information for every level of running which is awesome.

I’ll keep a time chart on here, so you guys can keep my accountable. I started this on Wednesday so the first Monday and Tuesday I’m not recording.Just so you all know I’m not cheating. The numbers the recorded as a ratio, with the first number being the time it took and the second number is the number of miles I ran.

Mile Chart

	Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thurs.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
Week 1			11:10/1	Bike	9:30/1	32/3.02	Zoo!
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6

So as you can see there was a huge jump from Wednesday to Friday because on Friday I worked like you wouldn’t believe.

For everything else, I just kind of do intervals of push up and plank and leg lifts. For the push ups and leg lifts I do about a set of ten, rest a minute and then do another set. Don’t know if I’ll chart that too but that would probably be a good idea.

So I am addicted to good songs to work out to and everything Britney Spears is working. Seriously “Stronger” is my jam. But if anyone has any great work out songs, write them on the comments.

7.) Start learning to play the guitar

8.) Community service

I think for this one I will set a number of hours I want to do in a year. I think the magic number will be 200 hours of community service. I came to that number by supposing that I do community service twice a month and if I do it for eight hours each time then I times that by 12 months, the number comes to 192 so I just rounded up. I might split up the time with a portion of that going to the church I started attending this winter which is an awesome church. One of my friends from last year went there and man, if you ever did see such a woman of God! This lady seriously is such an inspiration to me.

9.) Belly Button Piercing

And given certain circumstances…

10.) Tattoo

I think that I will count this as part of my list if I am past the age of 21. I would like to get a tattoo by that time almost as a gift to myself, like my nose piercing was for my 20th.