Blog
2028-08-19 I ended up putting August 118th as the date of my previous entry. As outrageously hot as it's been, it feels like a month of a hundred days!
Here's hoping this week finishes up well.
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2026-08-18: It's been kind of an emotional evening.
I was holding back tears finishing up my fourteenth and fifteenth laps swimming tonight. I set this goal a month ago, despite feeling so, so far away from it. I couldn't hardly make it through four or five without my feet and my arms and my calves killing me when I started. I just wrote up a whole thing about it. I was crying a bit on the drive home, thinking of taking care of myself like a old barn-find car. Again, my emotional attachment to cars strikes!
I promise I will have more going on than this wellness/fitness journey down the road. But like, this is a really big deal for me.
Hope you all have a good rest of your week. I have a bunch of demanding stuff at work coming up to close the week so I'll probably be going AWOL again for a while. Unless I don't. We'll see.
2026-08-16: Had a good weekend. Went with a few friends to a minor league baseball game. It was way, way too hot out, but it was better with good company! I got a swim in yesterday and my endurance is improving! I was able to swim about 10 laps with a break halfway through. I found I last longer if I change positions/styles, so I can use different muscles and give others a bit of a break.
We had a bit of abreak from this long, hot drought when rain blew through. In fact, it blew in a bit too strong and from a funky direction. ~50 mph winds blowing at a weird angle.I ended up dealing with some water intrusion around my back door. More troublingly, I had a surprise leak where my kitchen and living room meet, about five feet from that back door. Between that, the ants I have been trying to deal with, and random cracks all around the house since they had to tear out a piece of the foundation to get that possum out, I had quite a few things to bring to facilities maintenance's attention. Here's hoping things get taken care of.
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2026-08-11: Ants! Ants everywhere!
We are in the midst of a pretty bad drought and my whole neighborhood is getting ants like crazy. At my place, they have congregated around my sink and shower, though they prevously got into my cough drops. I'm pretty sure that food source was the initial attractant, but a leaky sink faucet is keeping them around. It's bone dry, so they're probably looking for every last resource they can. Trying to deal with them as best as I can.
Aside from some tiny guests overstaying their welcome, I am nearing my third week of swimming and working out! Last weekend through today was a little rough; I overdid it a bit on some dumbbells and tendons in my elbow/forearm bothered me for a couple days. So, this is a cardio and legwork week instead! I swam with a boogie board and my legs were so sore after a few laps.
It's like a chicken-and-egg thing right now. I need to get my endurance up, but my muscles and tendons need to be able to keep up. I'm trying to alternate between strength and conditioning.
Last week had me battling some self-image and self-worth issues that have hidden below the surface for quite some time.
Dysphoria is rough.
Basically, I am in the process of confronting the ways in which I have neglected my physical needs as an outlet for some stuff I went through during my teens and early twenties, and that I have backslid into an unhealthy place out of a sense of resignation. In trying to establish good habits, I got struck with the realization that this all has been a kind of self-harm that I have to deliberately acknowledge, call it what it is, and counter it with self-care.
I'm trying to adjust my self-talk. Instead of operating from a place where I am making myself small and helpless, I am trying to speak to those feelings by reminding myself that I'm worth this effort.
I told a close friend about all this, and their response was affirming and needed.
You are worth the effort. You deserve to feel good in your body and to have a body that feels strong and stable. You deserve to take care of the older version of yourself by investing in them now.
So, that's the battle I'm fighting right now. Far beyond the reps or the laps or the cycling, I am really contending with how I feel about the body I occupy, where I want it to be right now, and how I want to feel in it as age catches up to me. Knowing it's a "use it or lose it" thing, I am trying to get more physically active a litle at a time, and hoping to see good results in the weeks and months to come.
This site, consequentially, is one of the things I am devoting less time to as I take this challenge on. I'm not abandoning it, but it has to be slotted into the right place in my priorities to not detract from my biggest goals. Though updates will stay a bit slow, I do check my Neocities profile and email often, so still feel free to reach out!
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2026-08-08: This should be a fun Saturday! I went swimming this morning and got a few laps in, had a nice lunch, picked up groceries, and I'm hanging out for a bit before I head to a random ska concert. I saw someone signal boost it online and figured, heck it, I've not been to a concert in like three years and it's like 10 dollars to get in the door. Might as well!
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2026-08-04: I keep surprising myself with how little I have meaningfully updated my site or even kept up with blogging these last couple months. On one hand, work has kicked my butt this summer. On the other, I have gotten sick and tired of being sick and tired. I just haven't had the energy. On a secret, third hand, my respite these last few weeks has been retro gaming.
I've been doing better since I started working out. I expected to be even more exhausted, but I've felt more energetic since swimming and doing cardio regularly! My goal is to get stronger and have more stamina, to generally feel healthier, and then weight loss down the road. Setting my priorities in that order because the sort of sustained work needed to see sustainable weight loss requires a good foundation. I figure, if I am doing that and feel physically well, the weight will come in time. I'm not even bothering to weigh in; building muscle will add weight in the short term anyways.
Point is, I wanna feel stronger and feel better. Also, never in my life have I ever been a strong swimmer, so I really hope that I'll look back in a few months and be more comfortable in the water than I have ever been.
So, that's gonna be one of my top priorities for a while, trying to be consistent with it!