Friday 3rd April 2020

In most aspects of the lockdown, I’m pretty sorted. I’ve got World of Warcraft to take my mind off the news and keep me busy. I’ve got writing work to feed my creativity. I’ve even got a load of Shadows of Brimstone models still to glue if I want to do something practical. However, the one area I’ve been falling down on, is exercise and food.

The last couple of weeks, with hunts for meat taking up some entire evenings, and the general stress around getting prepared for life in lockdown, my food has been a bit all over the place. I forgave myself, even though I need to maintain a strict diet due to medical complications. As a result, I didn’t starve, but my energy levels have been all over the place. And that’s fine… the world was in complete chaos, I was allowed to be in complete chaos as part of that.

So I had a couple of weeks of just getting by. I didn’t set any goals for myself other than – and this is a bit overdramatic but you get my meaning – getting through the week.

As time went on however, I wanted to get some routine back into my life – to use these events as a motivator for positive change in my habits. As a result, plans were made, and the fact that The Climb is back, is just one example of having a bit more structure in my life.

Health and exercise got put to the back of the list though. A large part of that was availability of foods at the supermarket. They seem to slowly be getting back to normal and I’m hoping by next week I should be able to get everything I need.

I also need to be motivated to exercise. I can easily sit at my computer and get so lost in what I’m doing that I don’t get up unless I need to go to the loo. Likewise, if there were medals for putting off going to the gym, I’d have a world ranking better than my Rapier & Dagger.

Swordfighting has done a lot in recent years to get me my motivation, but like the gym, that’s been cancelled for the time being.

I realise that like so many things I do, improvement is made by doing stuff little and often. Hence why I’m so focused on getting routines going. But it’s easy to find excuses to delay For example, I can’t find a kettlebell anywhere online and hence I’m fighting the urge that the home workout plan that’s been devised for me can’t be started. I mean, I know I could just lift something else heavy instead, but brains are good at playing tricks.

Couple that with the general air of anxiety everyone’s under and motivation to do anything is a real struggle right now. Unfortunately I’ve never been one of those people who feel better after a workout. God, I wish I was.

So my plan is to start on Monday. That’s not me procrastinating, that’s me trying to take baby steps across a lot of change to implement routines that stick. i plan to update progress every Friday.

I keep telling myself that lockdown is an opportunity. It’s a chance to get stuff done when most of the world is stressing out over the news. To do that means I have to fight my own anxiety, which isn’t easy, and hence why doing things in stages – taking baby steps – is the right move.