Testing, testing

My outdoor training coach is tonight calling people who trained with me while he was away over the weekend. As long as he doesn't call the girl I winded with a 4kg medicine ball (yep, my bad!), all should be good. He needs to get feedback on how I went and if the clients liked the classes etc.

I realised tonight I'm a lot less confident in my instruction when he's around than when he's not. Hopefully that will be reflected by positive feedback on my classes sans coach. Actually, it's not that I'm less confident. He's more loud, so he makes my loud seem quiet in comparison.

The good news is, I'm finally being paid. Work experience is over!

The next step is to have the woman who owns the franchise company to come out and watch me take a class so I can get accreditation with them and officially be registered as outdoor training qualified. I've met her a couple of times before, and she's really nice, so I don't mind her watching me. Sort of.

Who'da thunk it?

If you give 15 people the option of skipping rope or doing push-ups, they choose push-ups?

Or give them the option of a nice, slow jog for a couple of hundred metres, or squats with a medicine ball, they choose the squats?

Surprises, every day.

Blerg!

Not all protein powders are the same. I knew when I took the large can off the shelf, I should have maybe gone for the smaller option, but hey, I've had protein powders before and they were alright. I find myself requiring a serious psychological effort now to prepare myself to make another shake tomorrow morning.

The powder by itself tastes fine. The skim milk by itself tastes fine. Together they taste....well, you know when you go to hospital and they make you drink that thick, foul barium drink, or whatever it is? That's what it is like. After the first mouthful, I thought, well it's only 250ml, that's not so bad. Uh, yeah, it is. I haven't struggled so much to drink so little in a while. Thankfully, I had a bottle of water on hand to wash it down.

I am going to have to find out what the hell I can put into this stuff to make it taste better and still keep it fat and sugar free. Chocolate never tasted so bad.

Tomorrow morning, I'm starting a cleanse with granulated psyllium husks. I bought 'original flavour' of that powder and I'm thinking that was probably a mistake as well. Oh, well, as long as I can get it down...

What's that you said?

I really dislike public speaking. I fidget and do all the wrong things when I'm talking to people, like play with my buttons, or fold my arms, or some other bad body language movement.

It's amazing how quickly I've gotten over that, being forced to stand in front of 12-16 people a couple of times a week and tell them what to do for an hour. It's amazing that they actually listen. Lack of confidence, I guess, had me expecting people would look at me and ask who the hell was I and why should they do what I say. Strangely, they just accept it and do what they're asked, even when they don't like it or don't want to.

I'm also finding it's helping other things. In different situations now, where I was previously concerned about getting a negative response, I have more confidence now to expect that whatever I ask for, I'll get. Well, within reason, obviously.

I needed this. I needed to go waaaay outside my comfort zone - and I'm still operating way on the outside of where I'm comfortable - to see that being out there isn't so bad. If you talk loud enough and say the right things, people will listen.

I'm learning about myself. I'm finding my voice.

Sweet sleep

I will sleep in tomorrow, for the first time since I don't know when. In fact, I have nothing planned for tomorrow, so I may just stay in bed all day.

I took my first full solo session, with no coaching tonight and it went perfectly. The exercises worked, the timing was spot on, and a newbie said she didn't like me anymore. Perfect! (You know you're doing a good job when they start making it personal.)

My coach was happy and I now have the keys. Having the keys means my sleeping in is short lived. I have to take two early morning sessions on Saturday, because my coach will be interstate for Easter. He also told me tonight that he won't be back for Tuesday, so I have to take the kick boxing session on Tuesday night. Wooohoo! Fun! But also a bit scary, because there are a few amateur boxers and black belt martial artists in that group. I have to look like I know what I'm doing. Nothing like a bit of pressure, huh!

What else is news? Um, oh if I want work with another outdoor training franchisee (same company), I can pick my days, so that's good. The only problem is he has limited session times and they're all the same style. Maybe I can convince him to add more sessions or do something else.

In the meantime, thanks to Ian giving me the contact, I've been offered work as a personal trainer in a gym around the corner from where I'm working right now. They want to put my profile on a new website they're building. Aaarrrrgggh! I have no real details yet, because it was literally a 30 second phone call (Hey we want you to work for us. Cool. Here's what we need from you. Ok. Come and see us next week. Sure.) Of course, I hyperventilated from excitement for the next half hour or so and the women in my office looked at me like I had three heads, but they were happy I was happy.

Oh!! Ha! Silly me! I graduated last night! D'oh! How could I forget that? I go back and complete my business subjects at the end of April, for 8 weeks, but for employment purposes, I'm done!!! Finally!

I'm sure there's more, but I can't remember. Maybe I'll add more later.

Breathe in, breathe out

It's been a peaceful few days in my house. My housemate has been away, so I've been solo for 3 days. Bliss! Considering the heat has been intense and my mood has been less than friendly, it's probably a good thing he was away.

He's been back for about half an hour. My blood pressure has already risen considerably. First, he came in the door and tried to change the channel on the tv while I was watching the F1 race, saying it was boring. Um, I like formula one and I watch the Melbourne race every year. So he bitched for a bit before proceeding to put his own tv on and start playing a smash-em-up race car game. Yeah, that makes sense.

I've been trying to finish some assignments for school all weekend, and not having much luck, because my brain doesn't like thinking all that much in really hot weather. Now I have video game noise and music up loud in the background, despite me asking him to turn it down. I am not pleased.

If it weren't so damn hot and I had more energy, I might ask him to turn it down again. But I can't be bothered. I can see myself waiting till the middle of the night, when I can't sleep, because the fan is pushing hot air around the bedroom, to finish the rest of my assignments. My blood pressure has been spiking up and down for the past few days, as I've gone through various stages of anxiety over final assessments and getting my assignments done. It changes by the hour. Right now, it's up there.

I am a leo. I am a cat (even though I'm also a Rat, go figure) and cats don't like doing much of anything at the best of times. When it's hot, we get even more lethargic and irritable. I have no energy. I cannot wait for winter to come. I was born in winter for a reason!

I've eaten more ice cream today, in an effort to remain cool, than I care to admit to, but water stopped having any decent effect early this morning. Yet another week of stifling heat to look forward to. And a night of video game music torture and the sound of smashing cars. Yay. Not.

I've been thinking more often lately about moving out of here, but current circumstances make that an impossible option. I need to find a short -mid term solution.

Tears and tears

I'm a little amazed at the high number of injuries our outdoor training clients have. Maybe it's an across the board thing and what I'm seeing is concentrated, but damn, people hurt themselves more than me! I have to clarify, it's not just when they're training. Back injuries from work, rolled ankles from lord knows what, hamstring tears (that happened on my watch last night and I felt awful about it), shoulder injuries, calf strains.... Or you have nights like tonight, where everyone works hard and it all comes together. Tonight was good.

But there were almost tears afterwards. I've been doing strength training with one of the clients for a practical assessment I have to do for school. Tonight was our last night and I know she was disappointed that it was going to end. For contract reasons, my trainer and I are not allowed to take the group class clients as personal paying clients. She wants the extra training so she can lose weight and have a baby. She's also decided she wants to do a 10km run in 16 weeks. We told her tonight she could continue her sessions with me twice a week, for no payment. I'll be doing it in my own time, before the group sessions. I thought she was going to cry when I told her. I thought if she cried, I would have cried and I'm glad she didn't. Really, I don't care if she doesn't pay me. For an hour of my time each week, I'm helping to give someone a better life. That's pretty cool to me and if she does that run in 16 weeks, that will be payment enough. To be honest, her smile was enough.

Moving on

I'm a little superstitious about posting stuff about boys here, these days, so we'll just bump that note down one spot now.

The charming Mr Jones (aka Ian) put me in touch with a gym owner he knows and I went and saw the gym and both partners a couple of times last week. The first time was just for a chat. The second time, I meant to just go down and see how they run a group class. It turned out nobody showed up, which is highly unusual, so I hung around to chat for a while. The next thing I knew, I was giving suggestions and assisting to train a couple of guys - in my office clothes, on my lunch break. But it was fun and somehow I think I managed to make it look like I actually had a clue what I was doing.

Did I mention I'm going to be paid from now on for my outdoor group classes? On top of that, I'll be taking classes on my own a couple of times a week, the last two weeks of every month. Easter Saturday should be interesting. It'll be the first time I'll take two full classes - toning and cardio - back to back, on my own, as my trainer will be interstate. It'll be an early morning and a challenge, but I've already worked out I can be home and back in bed by 9.30am hehe. If my housemate's evil spawn are here that weekend, I'll just have to spike their breakfast cereal with a sedative. They have no concept of quiet....or manners, or cleanliness, or respect for adults.

Anyway, so if I get some work at the gym I went to, it'll mean I have 3 jobs (gym, outdoor and my temp job at the city of the dead (which I love, because it satiates my morbid fascination of unnatural deaths and the medical/anatomy side is helping me with school etc)), plus school. But it's all in an effort to keep moving towards where I want to be. I may be a zombie for a while, but it should only be temporary till about June (which feels so far off from now!).

I'm still training for The Trek. I just have had no time to update that blog. Besides, "I ran another x kilometres today" can get a bit boring after the first few times it's been mentioned.

I may have to wear ear plugs to bed tonight. The neighbours behind our place are having an outdoor party. They're so loud, I woke up from my afternoon sleep (read: I fell asleep as soon as I got home from school) and thought my housemate had his family and evil spawn over. I'm on the opposite side of the house to where their party is, but I can pretty much hear all the conversations and music as if I were holding the party myself. Channel Yoda and show self restraint, I will. Or people could get hurt.

It seems my housemate has less patience than I do. His bedroom is right across, only a few feet, from where the girl behind was having her party outside. At midnight, he asked if she'd keep the noise down (I could still hear it from my room). She ignored. He asked again for them to at least go inside. They ignored. He started yelling. Party goers started yelling. He threw water. They threw food. Yeah, it was mature. Eventually, my housemate called the police, because it was just ridiculous. Meanwhile, I was standing on my balcony, watching the stars and trying to remain as peace-filled as possible. The noise didn't stop for another 90 minutes after the police left. I slept in late today.

Spinning wheel

There's someone in my life at the moment who is turning my brain inside out and challenging me in dozens of positive ways. The circumstances of our acquaintance are a little unorthodox and under normal conditions, I'd have run for the hills weeks ago. I feel as though even saying this here, I'm opening myself up to jinxing all the good that has happened to date. That's the way it seems to go as soon as I mention something like this on my blog. Posting a photo is certain death. I have faith in the universe this time. It's what's kept this dance alive as long as it has.

We've not met in person. We've not spoken. For now, we're happy to keep it that way, even though we could meet half way between our houses in about 15 minutes. I should clarify that the only reason I would have run for the hills prior to now is that we've been in touch for a decent amount of time and we've not progressed past email. But, that's a choice we've made and strangely enough, I'm comfortable with it. Obviously, there has to come a time when we will meet. We've chosen neutral ground for that. We're just not ready, because we're getting all we need from what we have now.

There's a fear factor, too, on both our parts. How can a random meeting, a chance mouse click bring with it such chemistry? I dunno. Fear of losing that chemistry in the real world is something we've discussed and the conclusion is that nothing will be lost, but things will obviously change. So why don't we do it? This all came about by chance. We both did something we wouldn't normally do, and we met. The universe guided that. Whether or not anyone else believes that is moot. We do. So we're letting the universe decide how and when we meet in person, without forcing the issue. The great thing about that is it removes a whole bunch of pressure. Nerves are another thing entirely, but eh, that's to be expected anyway.