Couch 250: An August Couch

Lost..I wish I had your motivation to exercise right now.

Thank you.

A hospital appointment where my efforts will be assessed at the end of the week is very much keeping me accountable at the moment.

My life feels like a process within a process within a process these days.

I hope you can find a form of exercise that feels supportive to you at the moment.

Rest is productive.

How do you rest? And what constitutes rest?

Rest is something I am thinking about a lot at the moment. It seems like most people have trouble resting because they have busy, frantic lives with lots of commitments and responsibilities. That is not the case for me because my life is quiet, still, solitary.

However, I find it hard to identify rest as opposed to slumping or inactivity. The things which I enjoy and which nourish me (swimming, night walking, reading, journaling, seminars, chess, writing) require effort for me to engage with because it feels like my "easy" state is one of demotivated disengagement (watching films, scrolling Reddit, blah).

So rest is work because it requires effort and what is the difference between rest and leisure? Is there a difference between rest and nourishing things?

This vacation is not going well so far. Within the first 2 hours of my being here, I got in a fight with my H and parents. Then last night, I ended up in a conversation with H that made me feel so bad that I emailed Dr. T (he sent a supportive response this morning). And D is being super-whiny this morning. And her doughnut pool float that she loves apparently has a hole in it, as it's completely deflated now.

I'm ready to go home, and it hasn't even been 24 hours....Hope we can all turn things around...

Hi Comrade,

I think there is a difference between rest and nourishing things.
Rest is anything that gives you a sense of being replenished in some way.

I got an edition of a subscription box a while ago which had information about the seven types of rest.

Similar information can be found here

For me, leisure is linked to fun.

I don't quite know how to explain that, though.

Thanks for the opportunity to go on a research mission.

Lost

The much loved but deflated float is a poetic image. I hope you find some opportunities for yourself so you can have what you need. Holidays and trips can be so intense and fraught with loaded expectations (our own and those of others).

Thanks, Comrade. Yes, that is quite symbolic. There are lots of expectations for vacations--going back to my childhood, when we'd spend a week at the beach every year. My mom had certain things she'd want us to do each day and night.

Then there was the need for perfect photos. I'd go down to the beach early with my dad, and she'd say I couldn't go in the ocean and get my hair wet till she came down an hour later and could take pictures. I just have lots of pictures of my D with wet hair because I think the experience is more important than catalog-worthy photos.

I was on the beach with my parents and D this morning for a bit (H went shopping), and that went OK. I'm supposed to have a date night with H tonight, while my parents watch D, and I'm just not feeling it. But maybe we can still have fun.

I resonate with the perfect photos thing, LT. every year when my siblings and i were kids we had to take family christmas photos my parents would pick the best one to make into a christmas card. every year it was a fiasco. the 4 of us kids can without fail look at any given year and tell immediately which one of us had been crying. it never failed, at least one of us got yelled and was crying and had to try to put on a perfect smile for the picture anyway.

i hope you have a fun date night!

LT-I hope the date night helps turn things around. I haven’t been on an actual vacation anywhere in lord knows how long BUT I also refuse to go away and stay in the same house with family. Maybe that’s easier said than done when you don’t produce grandkids though? I don’t know. But I definitely never felt obligated to put myself in that position.

On the perfect photos. I used to make sure they were terrible on purpose. When I smile I smile with my mouth closed. (Messed up teeth) but i always smiled with my mouth closed as a child as well. My mother loathed that I smiled that way. So when it came time for the photos- I always made sure I had the biggest closed mouth grin and all my pics were horrible because when I did that my eyes would be half shut and my nose would be wide and scrunched up.

I have no problem with insisting a picture be taken with everyone looking nice and smiling. Children should learn that the world does not revolve around their emotional state - they don't have to like it but they still have to do it for the greater good. I hated dressing up for pictures or really anything at all as a child (actually I still do) but I have to for some things whether I like it or not if I want certain things (I have to dress more formally for court for example - otherwise a judge could say I had to leave the courtroom -which is not good for the career if one wants to practice the sort of law I practiced -as an example)
We don't have enough of that anymore from what I see of children running amuck over parents and parents who don't have the guts or the attention span to actually be the adult in the room

the problem with the fake smiles for christmas pictures was that anything that was public-facing had to be fake smiles. pretend niceness every sunday in church and stuff. no one believed us and insisted we were the perfect family. and i grew up thinking God only lived in church, i'd sometimes sneak out of sunday school early and go into the church service cuz I knew he was there. always wondered why he never came home with us.

We had a public family persona as well. I guess it didn't bother me - I don't remember as something that bothered me. I probably thought everyone did.
I was forced to go to a church as a child but I never wanted the god to come to my home - that would have been awful to me. Church/religion/the stations of the cross and so on and the stories they told scared the bejeesus out of me. As I got a bit older I found it all very illogical (I was kicked out of sunday school at 10 for pointing out some logic flaws - I was happy about it but my mother had the vapors for a bit). I remember when I was in a religious primary school - being terrified some religious figure would appear to me like at Lourdes or I would get the stigmata or something. I finally got to stop going in high school and haven't been back since except for funerals and a couple of weddings.

In my family, we had to look perfect. My mom owned a preschool. What would they think if they knew she didn't care for her own kids. I think that was one of the reasons for her neglect: she was too busy raising other people's kids that she didn't have the time for us. There are more reasons too (family dynamics, temperaments, etc.). But yeah. We had to put on a pretty face in front of everyone. I guess that's also why when I started struggling with my mental health openly, I was quickly shamed, shunned, and silenced.

Okay started back exercising today after a 2-week hiatus.

Things gone right / things gone wrong:

1. Next time take it easier during heatwaves.
2. Build up time more slowly.
3. Good that my time off was actually a countable amount!

That's such a good question. I tell myself "Rest is productive" to remind myself that it is just as important as *doing* or what is traditionally thought of as productive. Otherwise the rest part just gets shuffled off to the side because I don't prioritize it or think of it as important. I hadn't really thought about the rest-productivity idea from the perspective of what actually is rest.

Now I am pondering. I think my "rest" list is closer to your "disengagement" list- anything that allows me to recharge without demanding a lot of energy. I am way overthinking now, my natural way of thinking, of course. I just thought, well sometimes rest is resting my body- I'm sitting or lying down but I might be reading or writing in my journal or working on a puzzle or staring out the window at the hummingbirds or surfing the webs. Sometimes it's resting my mind- I might go for a meander (but not a brisk walk or a hike! Heh) or go putter in my garden and look at the pretty flowers and eat the tomatoes. I had the afternoon off yesterday and ended up picking up the youngest of the spawn and going to the river and standing with my toes in the water- but we had to walk to get there. Hmm. Rest or not? I sure felt satisfied and relaxed when I was done.


I dunno. I started calling rest times "slow time" because it feels like a good way to describe meeting the need to not go-and-do all the time, and it helps me to be more satisfyingly productive in the long run.

Couch Workout Club day 21 (yesterday)

Don't know where I found the motivation, but I did my seated boxing workout and two sets of core exercises.

I'm playing with the idea that moving your body can also move your feelings.

Couch Workout Club day 22

Logged over 6,000 steps throughout the day, including a walk around a local garden and a supermarket.

Workout done also

I'm barely at 2,000 steps today. As soon as it cools down some, I'm going for a walk around the block.

It’s cooled down in my area significantly this week. Next week we are back to heat. I’ve been taking advantage of the cooler temps this week and opened all my windows to let this place air out before I have to put the air back on in a day or two.

The temp is dropping here -but more importantly the humidity is lower. I think the temps are going back up this weekend

Ditto here. A nice cool week with a little rain, even, which was nice for the thirsty forest. Temps are going back here too, which will be good for the garden. I've got lots of tomatoes ripening.

I ate fresh homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers with mozzarella for dinner tonight.

Couch Workout Club day 23

Three sets of core workout exercises.