Body « An unfinished person (in this unfinished universe)

Entries tagged as ‘Body’

Being grateful this Friday

March 19, 2010 · 5 Comments

So looking back at this week, through the prism of the Sleeping with Bread meme, I ask myself and ask you to ask yourself:

For what am I/are you most grateful this past week?

For what am I/are you least grateful this past week?

For what am I most grateful this past week?

1. Body: Losing three pounds from early last week to early this week, with WeightWatchers and walking at least three times a week.

2. Mind: Starting to read The Complete Sherlock Holmes: 4 Novels and 56 stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

3. Soul: This may seem trivial, but being able to eat a big burger for lunch today on one of the Fridays of Lent, thanks to St. Joseph. My alter ego, Unfinished Rambler, even suggested earlier how big of a burger I could eat. While it wasn’t that big, it was big. Normally during Lent, Catholics fast from meat during the Fridays of Lent, except for solemnities, of which today’s Feast of St. Joseph was. To be honest, I’m getting sick of Veggie Delite subs at Subway (blech) for lunch on the Fridays of Lent.

For what am I least grateful this past week?

1. Body: Not walking an hour every other day as I had challenged myself (and done) last week. I missed Wednesday and today I didn’t eat that great, no, not just the burger, but also a Philly cheesesteak wrap for dinner, even though I walked to and from work at the library.

2. Mind: Losing focus and motivation again on the job front, as I faltered again and didn’t pick up and/or finish any new assignments from a freelance writing site of which I am a member. The articles are small and aren’t on subjects that interest me, no matter how hard I look. Maybe I need to look to another site, or just suck it up and do the little I can for the little pay I get.

3. Soul: Missing Mass to start off the week.

Yet I am still grateful, and I encourage you to be grateful too:

The badge above is one of three new badges I’m using for my themed days, with the first one introduced Monday for Motivation Monday, the second one introduced Wednesday for Midweek Review, and the last one introduced today for Flashback Friday. This one is using a photo that my wife took.

Categories: Body · Flashback Friday · Mind · Soul
Tagged: Body, Flashback Friday, Mind, Sleeping with Bread, Soul, The Examen

Lack of Motivation Monday, but I’m still alive

February 22, 2010 · 2 Comments

When I began this blog, I had the intent of merging all my other blogs into this one, and then focus on three aspects of this unfinished person on the following days (with rambling posts interspersed in between):

Body: Motivation Monday — where I would share a quote from the late George Sheehan to help motivate you in your exercise for the week and hopefully to motivate me also.
Mind: Midweek Review (Wednesday)– where I would share with you a review of what I’ve been reading the past week.
Soul: Flashback Friday — where I would share a look back at my week in terms of The Examen of St. Ignatius of Loyola, framed in the questions of “For what am I most grateful this week?” and “For what am I least grateful this week?” as the group above does each week.

As you can tell, by now, I haven’t kept to that, and so today, in keeping with (and straying from) that original Monday theme, I’m going to talk about “Lack of Motivation Monday” without a quote from George Sheehan and combine it with Midweek Review and Flashback Friday.

For what am I least grateful this past week, this past month, these past two months?

Lack of motivation: Let me count just a few of the ways I have been unmotivated in no particular order. One, I signed up for an event called the Iditawalk, where I committed to walking 30 minutes a day through February into March to help me slowly but surely get back to running, and I think I only have done it once. Two, I am a member of WeightWatchers.com, but haven’t kept to the plan. Three, I got a gym membership at the beginning of the year, just for three months. Now it’s almost the end of the second month, and I only have gone maybe once. Four, I only have read two books so far this year. Five, I was accepted into an online writing site that pays a minimal amount per article, but still it’s something, and only have written two articles for it. Six, I still usually only make it through Morning Prayer in praying the Liturgy of the Hours and often don’t pray what is considered the second part of the hinge: Evening Prayer. Seven, and something that pales in comparison to the other things listed here, I have yet to merge my previous blogs and entries there into this blog.

I’m going to be honest and tell you I don’t know for what am I most grateful this past week, this past month, these past two months. I guess if anything, it’s as the song “Alive” from Pearl Jam says, “I’m still alive” with the same potential of what once was considered a curse instead becoming a blessing.

Categories: Body · Flashback Friday · Midweek Review · Mind · Motivation Monday · Music · Soul
Tagged: Body, Mind, motivation, Sleeping with Bread, Soul, The Examen

Where is your balm this week?

February 8, 2010 · 1 Comment

For this week’s Sleeping With Bread post (click on the badge at right for more information about the meme), this week’s host Lamont phrased the questions: “What are the things that caused you to feel ‘chapped’ this week? What are the lip balm – Gilead – moments that cooled, refreshed and healed?” She used those instead of the customary ones such as “For what am I most grateful? Least grateful?,” “When did I give and receive the most love? The least love?,” or “When did I feel most alive? Most drained of life?” and so on that we who participate in the meme often use.

Chapped?

For today’s post, I’m going to hearken back to this post where I put things into focus through the prisms of body, mind and soul, the theme of this blogs, so in terms of things that caused me to feel chapped:

1. Physically: Lack of exercise. Much like in that post, I’m still struggling to get myself out the door to exercise, even though I joined the Idita-Walk 2010, which involves walking 30 minutes a day for 35 days from Feb. 1 to March 31 for a total of 1,049 minutes.

2. Mentally: Lack of reading discipline. I’ve been in a reading slump since at least December, having only read one book: Murder at the Super Bowl by Fran Tarkenton with Herb Resnicow, and then I kept on a Super Bowl theme and tried to read Black Sunday by Thomas Harris. It didn’t hold my interest and I’ve decided to follow the example of a few book bloggers that I follow, who are doing something called “deliberate reading,” which is only reading what they want to read.

To that end, earlier this month I started reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses as translated by Mary Innes as part of the Really Old Classics Challenge (click on button to go to challenge’s main page). Along with that, I’m going to continue participating in the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge and want to pick up the Ladies Detective Agency series again by Alexander McCall Smith.

Beyond that, I have no plans, other than to continue to try to read books that already are on our shelves. However, since I started working at a library part-time in December, that is getting to be more and more difficult than it sounds. The only thing I’ve been doing to try to stop the tide from overflowing the house is to keep a list of books I find while shelf-reading instead of just grabbing them from the shelves and taking them out immediately.

3. Spiritually: Lack of spiritual discipline, primarily missing Mass this past weekend because, in a rare moment of honesty here, I was out late Saturday night getting drunk at a firemen’s banquet with my wife. Do I regret getting drunk? As a Catholic, of course, I have to say no (said in half-jest). However, I do regret missing Mass (said in all seriousness).

And those moments that cooled, refreshed and healed me (a lot shorter than the things that caused me to feel chapped):

1. Physically: Walking to work at library. I can say that it definitely has been cooling this winter.

2. Mentally: Hanging out with friends for the Super Bowl. The commercials were horrible; the halftime show, meh; the food, very good, but the fellowship, even better than all the previous.

3. Spiritually: Joining the aforementioned Tara with a group (online) from her church in reading and discussing Holy Conversations: Talking About God In Everyday Life by Richard Peace. I will have a post tomorrow that will go along with this.

I’ll end with this clip from Napoleon Dynamite, since that is where Tara got her inspiration for the wording of this week’s questions (with which I also leave you):