What Else Is Goin' On, 2/24/10 Edition

What else is going on with me:

…well, winter just won’t die, if that’s anything new. Looking back over the past, oh, 24 winters of my life, I’m fairly confident in making a self-diagnosis of SAD—Seasonal Affective Disorder. Every year, when spring rolls around, I get this blast of Happy and I feel like I can do anything—this is partly due to spring, yes, and partly due to the fact that the prior season left me feeling like I can do nothing, and that’s perfectly fine, I’ll just curl up on the couch and stare at a screen and turn into a spud, thanks.

To revel in the negative for a moment: I’m sick of being cold, I’m sick of wearing layers, I’m sick of frost-heaving back roads, I’m sick of dry skin and of small cuts never healing, I’m sick of wet socks and pant hems, I’m sick of hat-tangled hair, and I’m sick of having to deal with all off it whenever I want to leave the house. SICK. OF ALL OF IT. DONE.

*Ahem*

On a positive note, I actually have been more physically active in the past month and a half than in a long time. The day after Christmas, with Christmas money, I went out and bought a Wii Fit Plus. Ryan and I currently have Justin’s Wii on semi-permanent loan, so all I had to buy was the game and board, yay!

It’s been a slow, stuttering start, but I’ve been using the thing more days of the week than not. When I first recorded my information, the game gave me a BMI reading in the lower ends of overweight. In the past two weeks, measuring almost every day, I’ve been hitting normal more and more often (weight can fluctuate two pounds from day to day, just due to food intake or other factors). My current goal is to lose a very modest five pounds by March 10th, and I’m making slow but sure progress.

The best part is the fact that I’m changing. My body shape is slowly but surely changing, my waist and belly getting subtly smaller. My muscles are growing, both in size and number, most notably in my thighs and calves. Exercises that used to knock me out don’t hurt quite as much as they used to—they still do, trust me, but less so!

I am getting stronger and healthier, and it feels fantastic.

On a geekier note: I’ve become even more of a WoW nerd. I hit 80 with my Blood Elf Mage, and I’ve spent the past two weeks gearing up, getting my rotation down, creating macros, fine-tuning my stats, and learning raids. I’ve also been making friends in the guild, since I can actually run dungeons and raids with them without it being a welfare-run to get me desperately needed gear or badges.

…to translate: I hit the cool part of the game, and it’s meant being geekier and more social. Yay!

Still, even with that, and the working out, this season has been getting me down. I have been in a pretty annoying funk for most of this month. For a small while, I was having really annoying and upsetting mood swings—I’d go from pleasant to enraged at the drop of hat. Literally, I’d go to place a hat, and it’d fall, and I’d get spitting-mad-frustrated. Or something wouldn’t close or open properly, or I’d bump into something, or any number of small, stupid things that would set me off for no reason other than You’re Not Doing What I Asked Of You, Stupid Object.

Fortunately, that seems to have scaled down by a large amount, so I’m in a much calmer funk. Hooray.

Overall, I’d love to blame the weather and the season entirely for the rut, but that wouldn’t be entirely fair. Part of it has just been me.

Last Thursday, I had work from 10 to 2 while the boss had a business meeting. I had a few hours to myself, just me and the computer, in the slowest part of the day. The funk had been deepening as the week went on, so I was feeling pretty crappy. In a rare moment of I don’t even know what, I opened up a notepad and started yelling at myself. I gave myself a damned good talking to about feeling sorry for myself, and not doing anything about it, and sitting on my butt, and so on.

This has again grown long, so tomorrow I’ll post the aftermath: my new set of rules for Getting Off My Butt, Literally & Figuratively.