Eeeek!

So you know how people kill their fish by feeding them too much? Well feeling a bit that way now. My ex's dad used to have these golf balls he called gold fish that looked like they were more unnaturally buoyant than even fish have a right to. Such is the feeling of being loved to death by your family with hourly offerings of cake, schnitzel, wine and donuts, on the off chance that my new home doesn't have food :D Those evil saboteurs of good intentions and fitness classes... but it's food with love, and it could be a long drought before I get home made offerings that match those of my culinarily obsessed family. So I no complain :)

Shooting has been light on for someone with so much 'free time'....But I've managed a few days in and around the chaos. So hoping my bow isn't a foreign object come the Danish Indoor next week...but I suspect it is a lost cause. Still seeing a little jumpiness creeping in if I don't shoot everyday, but happy with the progress. And even pushups are a little easier this week.

Packing up my life and squeezing in visits with friends and relatives has proven more frantic than I expected...and gosh I have a lot of stuff! I'm one of those people who watches Hoarders on tv in morbid fascination.. and looking around at all my junk that fits in one room...I wonder how people can do it. I feel suffocated by the sheer volume and I don't own much. So it's been quite cathartic to throw out and sell off and rationalise the rest. A few things have survived the cull despite me trying to be ruthless... My ottoman... maybe just because people call it a poof and I get a giggle every time..Juvenile? Me?..And my hoolahoop.... haven't managed to part with it even though I know it won't get used. It's blue and silver with sparkles...how could I possibly give it away? The magical rediscovery of things long lost or forgotten and the mystification of why on Earth I bought that... or where on Earth did that come from? And that is never fitting in a suitcase!

In two days I get on a plane and my adventure begins. Are we nervous yet? :)

Getting my fit on! who's idea was that??

Quit my job last week. Packing my bags this week. I'm officially an archery bum until I find a new job in my new home. In the mean time I made a promise to myself to up my shooting and my fitness while I have spare sand in the hour glass and lots of fidget energy to spare.

Day 5 of being an archery bum. I shot 3 days, went to Barre classes 5 days, up at 5.30am every day, cooked a spectacular meal for my digestively challenged friends and went blackberry picking in my break :)

Shooting has been great. It's been a long stretch of just easy shooting, working out the target panic and knocking out the kinks. My first challenge is the Danish National Indoor in 3 weeks where I will be competing as a Danish resident for the first time. I don't currently have an indoor range and my indoor bow is in Denmark, so making do with my outdoor setup and shooting 20m on indoor faces. The first thing you notice when you haven't cared about score in a while is how crap your score is, and how much work is involved in just aiming steady. There's lots of theory out there about aim and whether you should or shouldn't and how important it is etc. Some folk will go as far as shooting open rings with no dot in order to relax their focus on aim. I think this is a useful technique for relaxing people, but personally I find it makes me lazier than a cat in front of the fire and when you start chasing those 1-2 points here and there, it's worth going for a dot.

Weightier issues are afoot. 4 years ago I was wasting away from type 1 diabetes and dropping weight faster than I could change clothes. Once I started insulin, I immediately started gaining weight.
At my strongest and fittest (pre diabetes), I was a solid girl of about 78kg, could run for an hour, was doing very respectable weights in the gym and shooting 60lb with spiral cams and doing it easy. At my lightest and weakest, I was so thin I had to run around in the shower to get wet (53kg), my bow was 45lb (busted down to GTX cams) with all mass weights down to bare minimum, I needed a nap to walk up a flight of stairs and my gym work out was thinking about exercise. Now I have a handle on the whole pancreas thing. My weight is a healthy 66kg and my bow weight a respectable 54lb.
I'm aiming to lean down some body fat, up my muscle mass and get back to 60lb this coming season. I'm focusing on high intensity interval training, daily barrecode (core strength work out) and intermittent fasting (one of the few ways to lean down that science actually supports).

I feel ready to face a few challenges :)

Are you a bully?

Are you that person only knows how to make jokes if it is at someone else's expense? Do you always have to put someone down, somehow trying to make yourself look better, by stepping on other people? Or perhaps you are a fan of 'tough love' - if you don't constantly point out someone's faults, who will tell them? Are you the person who hasn't said a single nice thing this week? I've got news for you. You are a bully. You are that person we all know. And sadly, you are the one we secretly don't like as much as our other friends. You are the one we make excuses to avoid spending time with because you are always so mean, as opposed to because we are just too socially retarded to make a time.

Social media is a fascinating melting pot of how people wish to be seen by the world and most of us alter reality by not posting the fugly photo or by editing our opinions, before we post them, so as not to offend. But the invention of the internet has also given rise to a new level of bullying and having any presence on the net seems to attract it. Anonymity gives courage to the coward and freedom to be as mean as you like and gosh if people aren't judgemental pricks:
'You're a fat bitch.'
'Your boyfriend is going to leave you, b/c you got fat.'
'Lose some weight.'
'You're a skinny bitch.'
'I hate you.'
'You think so much of yourself.'
'You're boring.'
'Lose some weight, you slut.'
'You just want attention.'
'You are so ugly.'
Bla bla bla bla and so on.

So let's take a look at the average garden variety bully... How sad your life must be, that trying to make other people sad is how you feel good about yourself. How much you must dislike yourself and how unhappy you must be, because the funny thing about secure and happy people is they don't need to be mean to feel good about their world. And the funny thing about being mean is that it actually makes you feel bad. Always saying negative things reflects back on your life and your life is more negative for it. And if you think about a bully you know (and even bullies know another bully), you will realise that you actually don't like them so much. Being mean makes them less likeable. They likely have no genuine friends, if it is always tainted by mean comments...or they have friends who are just like them and like themselves and their friends about as much as they like fungus - grows on you, but are you sure you want it to?

I would rather be the fat, ugly chick (that I am labelled now and then) that everyone likes than the catwalk model we all detest. I love my friends and they love me and none of them are ever mean. None of them give two hoots if I gain or lose a kilo or if I'm pretty enough. Sounds so simple and logical doesn't it? Your friends are decent human beings? Shocking!

Don't get me wrong... there are people in the world I am incapable of being nice to. That's why they aren't my friends and I don't speak to them unless I can be polite. See what I did there? silence :) that thing that saves your inner jerk from being an outie.

Real friends don't feel the need to put you down, they support you and make you stronger. So if someone in your life isn't doing that, you know what to do. And if they are an anonymous butt monkey on the internet - well who cares? They're an anonymous butt monkey on the internet, not a friend, so you don't have to care what they think.