Week 23: Chicken Pox and Other Things

This Week’s Accountability Report

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Craft results of a sick day at home with my son.

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Well, it’s been a rather sleepless and off-kilter week for me.

My son came down with the chicken pox and seeing as how my job provides me with a little more flexibility with time off than my wife’s does, and also because I have a high probability of immunity to the chicken pox (since I contracted them when I was little), I pretty much became the sole caretaker of him this week.

Except for the sleepless nights, it was a lot of fun staying home and having quiet one-on-one time with him. We painted pictures, played with Legos, watched movies, ate potato chips, drank ginger ale together, practiced writing both English and Japanese, read books, and much more. In a way, it was the perfect time to practice feeling grateful, which is something that I set out to do this week.

As for exercise and weight, well, it wasn’t the most productive week in either of those areas. I find that any time my schedule is disrupted it immediately affects my exercise habits, my eating habits, and my writing habits.

That said, I was able to continue doing the bare minimum, which is good enough for me. Had this have happened in January, I probably would have become inactive for the entire week. But this time around I didn’t. I still walked in the mornings with my hand weights. I still managed to do some isometric routines. I still managed to do some writing. And I still managed to pursue my goal of practicing gratitude. I just didn’t do all of these things quite as much as, or quite as hard as I would have liked to.

Exercise:

Five out of seven days: It’s taken me a while to get around to doing this, but I think it’s time for me to write up some more specific exercise goals for the forthcoming weeks. I have fallen back on a simple maintenance routine, which, to be honest, I’m quite happy with, but I want to push myself a little harder and try to achieve more strength gains, more fat loss, and a little more muscle tone. So that is my goal for this week, to write up one or more exercise plans to lead me forward.

Weight:

78.3 kg: Again, my weight dipped into the 77 kg range last week, but once again it popped back over 78 kg on weigh-in day. I’m happy to say, though, that it hasn’t shot up above 79 kg in three weeks now, so there’s a small victory.

Waist:

91.5 cm: It’s not a big change, but I’m down a half a centimeter from where I was one month ago. That gives me a total of 5.5 cm lost around my waist so far this year, and that alone has given me a much greater range of motion, and a lot of relief when doing things like sitting on the floor and/or bending down to change my shoes (both of which I do a lot living in Japan).

Gratitude:

I really didn’t keep notes on this as carefully and thoroughly as I had meant to, but I did try to think about the things I was grateful for each night before bed and often in the morning as I took a shower.

Though I don’t feel like I was very successful in producing feelings of thankfulness and gratitude, I was able to bring more awareness to myself about gratitude, which means that I found myself thinking about it much more throughout the day than I have in the past. In some cases, I think I even found myself looking at the world in a way that is slightly new for me. Rather than seeing things directly as they appear before me, I began seeing what the things that appear before me are connected to; which, in turn, made me feel more appreciative of the things that are less visible in my life.

For example, when looking at my house, which I really enjoy spending time in and am happy to have, I thought about work and how lucky I am to have the job that I have; and I thought about the students that I have, and how fortunate I am that they have the time and money to take my lessons; and I thought about some of the people I work for who are constantly working hard to make sure that I have the work that pays for the house that I like to have and am happy to spend time in.

In this round about, circular way of thinking I found myself occasionally coming near the feeling of gratitude that I want to cultivate, which is really more of a feeling of thankfulness that actually radiates and spreads warmth and happiness throughout my mind and body.

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For first time readers, this post is part of a series of weekly accountability reports that I am writing as I pursue my New Year’s goal to lose 10 kilograms this year. You can join me and others, like @nextgen622, by using the tag #goals to keep yourself accountable to the plans you make and to receive support from fellow Steemians as your travel along your path. I hope to see you soon.