On a Saturday

Warning! There are a crapload of links from this post to other places… don’t get lost!

Today is the first true rest day I’ve had in a looong time.  Like in a couple weeks, at least.  Full rest day; we’re talking at the moment, I’m laying on the couch, balcony door is open, cool breeze coming in, golf is on in the background, and it feels like Sunday to me.  Which is great, because tomorrow is Sunday, and that just means I’ve got an extra day in my weekend (I know, I don’t, but whatever).

On more Sundays than not, I tend to have an introspective, contemplative attitude.  Sundays to me mean getting ready for the week ahead, getting some last-minute errands done, and then figuring out how to hold on to those last few hours before you have to turn everything back on and re-engage with the world.  Part of that attitude has to do with me being tragically hungover on Sunday mornings, especially lately.  It’s for this reason that I usually find a way to listen to A Sunday by Jimmy Eat World (iTunes link).

Not this weekend, no way.

This weekend I’m focusing on regrouping my life from end-to-end.  As Gwen Stefani so eloquently put it,

This shit is bananas

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

My training schedule is beginning to collide with my teaching schedule, which is also colliding with my work schedule (can’t link… employer would not be pleased, let’s just say that my current job requires a lot of collaboration).  The convergence of this banananess is causing havoc in my life… I’m 30 years old, and I can’t keep up with the fucking dishes.  I mean really, Eric, the dishes?  C’mon!  Really?

I used to think I needed structure.  I’ve got calendars and schedules and all kinds of lists and shit.  There’s enough structure to build the 42-story building that’s going up next to my 4-story apartment complex.  I’m beginning to think it’s not structure, it’s simplification and efficiency.  I need to go back to what Mom taught me when I was growing up — take the dishes as an example; just put the fuckers away when you’re done, and then you’re caught up on the dishes.

So my new goal is to stay current, stay engaged, stay present.

Let’s see if I can squeeze out any extra time to pursue other goals and perhaps dreams.

Introspection over.  On to what I had originally intended to post this week.

• The Healthy/Fuck Off scale.  First off, I just recently stumbled upon Byers’ blog and she cracks me up.  This post, and the one on bacon.  The Healthy/Fuck Off scale is a scale of foods that you know are healthy and you’re cool with eating, down to foods that are totally not healthy, but if you told me I can’t eat them, I’d tell you to fuck off.  The idea being that if you can identify the fuck off foods, you can control your consumption of them and not totally block them out of your diet.  I can tell you right now, booze, pizza, some cookies, and molten chocolate cake are on low (very low) on the healthy scale and very high on the fuck off scale.  What’s on yours?
• The Performance Menu.  Anyone who tells me they don’t have time to cook is lying.  Simply lying.  Read the beginning of this post.  I cook, you can too!  And the free recipes on this site are so damn good that it makes me want to buy the book(s).  Top that off with most of them being quick… Performance Menu FTW!  I made the Lemon Tarts the other day, amazing.  Tomorrow for Easter brunch, I’d like to have a few friends over for an attempt at the Quick Paleo Pancakes.  Later this week, we’re going for the Paleo Pizza.  So many options, and you just feel good eating this stuff!
• A quick recap on wtf I did to my blog layout.  I got really tired of the time-formatted posts, so I decided to start messing around with the Interwebs and “mashups.”  As someone with an MS in Computer Science, I thought the whole mashup concept was total bullshit.  Until now.  I took the feed of my workout log from Dailymile, a filtered version of my twitter feed, and BAM! Food log and training log line the sides of this place.

I’m going to shuffle around my training and teaching schedules a bit in the coming weeks.  I’ve also got a cool conditioning class I’m starting up at Pure Austin in May.  I’m excited about the future, but it’s time to stay present and stay engaged.

–e

p.s. Jeremy tells me I need more pictures on my blog.