43things: Swim 1km without stopping

Image from http://www.msac.com.au/aquatics/lap-swimming

I have to keep pinching myself in order to believe I actually achieved this goal. And so quickly too.

Honestly I don’t know how it happened. I’ve been to the pool about 1-2 times per week for the last few weeks. Prior to Tuesday, the most I had swum without a quick break at the end of a lap was 200m.

Somehow on Tuesday it happened. I was aiming for 300m (6 laps). I was still feeling good after 6, so thought I would be ambitious and aim for 10. By 10 I was still ok so aimed for 12, then 15…By the time I reached 16 I was determined to make the 20, so I did.

It was more by accident than any specific traning or pre-planning. Maybe it had something to do with not having done any other exercise for 48 hours beforehand, so my arms and shoulders were fresh.

As exciting as that was, it’s a bit scary. I’ve raised the bar now.

Today I’m a bit tired, a bit hungover, and a bit sore from a training session I had yesterday. However its 35 degrees and I need to cool down. I’m about to head to the pool. I’m afraid I won’t be able to swim 6, let alone 20 laps without stopping, which will make me a fraud.

But even if I do stop and take breaks, I know I’ll get to 1km. I don’t always have to swim without stopping, just because I have before. Sometimes I’ll want to have a drink. Sometimes my goggles will leak or fog up. Sometimes I’ll be lazy and hungover.

And while it’s not perfect, I have to remind myself it’s ok. Just making the effort and getting out there and doing it is a great thing!

See more progress on: Swim 1km without stopping

43things: Get a bike and start bike riding

I'm finally marking this goal as done! I’ve had my bike for over a year now. I’m by no means an expert cyclist and in that time I wouldn’t say its gotten the biggest workout ever, but I am using it!

The day I bought my bike!

In the last week alone I have ridden to:

• Port Melbourneto meet friends for dinner & drinks
  
• Step into Life class
• Sandringham beach and back with friends for a swim

I don’t know if I’ll ever be an everyday communter. That will probably depend more on proximity to work and shifts, but I’m enjoying what I’m doing for now. I already have dreams of other bikes I’d like to get – cruiser, racer, vintage road bike…..but that’s a story for another time and place!

Me on a recent ride taking a cheesy self-portrait

See more progress on: Get a bike and start bike riding

Decisions

Hurrah! Some of the uncertainty that hovered around during my last post has now been resolved.



I finally bit the bullet and made some long awaited decisions regarding 2011. I'm staying in Melbourne and just doing casual work. No specialisation. No exams. No contracts. No job security. Actually I'm hoping the casual work will find me not only in Melbourne, but country Victoria, the Gong and maybe even country NSW too.

Lest I celebrate too soon, there's still lots of things I need to do to make this a workable reality. My current work contract runs out in 4 weeks. In that time I need to solidify some of the nebulous options that hover in the wings. I need to sign up with at least one locum agency. Most importantly I need to line up some definite work for February. Bills to pay baby.

A big wide open horizon can be scary. But amazing possibilities!

Intentions

I've been meaning to post here since November, really I have. December hasn't been easy though. There's been a lot of harking back to "this time lat year", mixed in with a healthy dose of "what am I doing next year?", and even more "and what after that?" It's kind of stressful to realise that even now, on December 27th I still don't have any of these questions answered.

It's not like I necessarily want them all answered, either. One last minute job offer (whilst I was enquiring about casual postions) could have resolved all the instability, for one year at least. But that would have meant an interstate move within the next 4 weeks. Back to where I was. Where part of me wants to be, but another (bigger?) part of me is scared of being. I don't think I am ready for that yet.

What I am ready for, I am just not sure.

Getting my butt kicked

For the last two weeks, I've been away getting my butt kicked in a metaphorical sense. Actually, more of a physical sense really. Or is it? I'm confused.

First up was a week meeting up with two good friends at a glitzy resort in Port Douglas. We swam in the gorgeous swimming pool, drank cocktails and ate copious amounts of Fantastic Delites by the swimming pool.



The few times we left the pool we went and did something fun like hike through the Daintree Forest, or go snorkelling out on the reef.

In that week of pure slothfullness, we did get our butts kicked by the Queensland sun. We were so good applying sunscreen what felt like 24/7, that for our day out on the reef we thought we had it pretty much covered.



What no-one told us was that swimming costumes have a funny habit of "riding up" as you're splashing around in the water snorkelling. All 3 of us had the craziest bum burn you'd ever seen. Made sitting down quite uncomfortable for a few days. No photos of that sorry!!

And then the major butt kicking began. I went to Ayung Sari Indah in Bali for 5 days of bootcamp run by the wonderful Marni Alexander. The meagre amount of exercise I'd been doing beforehand left me totally unprepared, I got my ass whooped several times, and handed to me on a silver platter, and whatever other ass-whopping colloqualisms you can think of.

In between ass-kicking I tried to camoflague myself into the rice fields.



We also trekked up a volcano in darkness to be greeted by a beautiful sunrise at the top.



Another proud moment was an ass-kicking I had no personal involvement in: seeing the aussie dollar outrank the greenback for the first time ever. A truly photo-worthy moment!



What a week! I loved it, ass kicking and all. In fact it's just what my ass needed. Now that I'm back, the hard part: I need to keep on doing it on my own.

If you're really bored you can waste time looking at the entire album of pictures.

Finally.....a "what i wore" post

I still don't know what job I'll be doing next year when my one year contract here expires. I had part one of a job interview today, so I guess I'm one step closer to finding out.

And thanks to the marvellous fact that my new digital camera arrived yesterday, I can post photos of what I wore!!

I didn't go too formal for this interview for a number of reasons. It's an internal job for the company where I'm already working, so theorectially it could have been held on a day I was already at work. The department I'm interviewing for is quite informal; pretty much everyone just wears scrubs to work, so a suit would have looked very out of place. Also I'm currently on annual leave and was going in specifically for this interview on a day off (ok maybe that's not a very good excuse, but I'll take what I can get).

Initially I was going to wear this:



Sorry for the blurry shot. New camera hiccup I hope!

But at the last minute I decided to swap out the black vest for a red top.



I felt put-together in this outfit, and definitely more dressed up from normal - it's officially the fourth time I've worn heels all year, and yes I am counting!! I still felt comfortable though, and felt more "me" with some kind of bright colour. I didn't feel out of place in the environment I was being interviewed in at all.

My interviewer even commented on the red vest and said it looked fun and that I looked "personable". I hope that's a good thing!

Stolen moments

I've been working night shift all weekend. So when I got home at 10am this morning, all I wanted to do was sleep the day away. Which I did quite successfully up until 6pm.

When I woke up, the sky was semi-clear, sunshine was occasionally peeking through the clouds, and for one of the first days all week, it wasn't raining. I decided to get ready quickly, and go for a walk along my usual beach path route before it became dark. I'm now officially on holidays for 3 weeks, so why not get it off to a good start?

By the time I had walked along the path and back, the sun was nearly, but not quite setting. What to do? Continue home and miss the first sunset I've seen in a week? I chose plan B and ducked into a suprisingly near-empty bar along the beach, bought myself a riesling, plonked down at my own beachfront table and watched the sun set with only the music of my iPod to accompany me.



I felt a little self-conscious walking into a bar and ordering a drink by myself. But you know what, the sunset was worth it. Some moments are too precious not to sit still and savour.