March Madness The End

We did it!

We did 30 days of 30 minutes of walking. It wasn't always easy and I can confirm that there were more than a couple of days where I really didn't want to. But we did! And I'm so very proud of France and I. 

So here's a list of things I learned this last month. 

1. The words "commitment" and "accountability" go hand in hand. France and I both take commitment very seriously. This helped keep us both accountable. All we would have had to say to each other was "you made a commitment" and we would have ignored the pull to not get out of the house and would have met each other as planned. 

2. Some people think it's funny that I'm so happy about 30 minutes of walking for 30 days straight. I get that. Most people don't have to force themselves out of the house and do exercise things. I have to. Exercise isn't something I have ever enjoyed (obviously) and it's easy for me to make an excuse to not go. So going 30 days in a row and exercising is a huge accomplishment for me. One I'm proud of. And I intend to continue to do this in April. 

3. It's amazing how good I feel. I know 30 minutes a day seems like a small amount to you all, but that small 30 minutes has really given me back my energy. I find I'm not as lazy as I used to be. And that, my friends, is a good thing. 

4. There's a difference between routine and habit. When I think of a habit I think of things we do with muscle memory. Things like brushing your teeth, going to the same coffee shop every day. Things like that. When I think about routine, the project manager in me comes out and a routine is like a mini schedule. It's what you do to get things done. For example, my routine is to do my grocery shopping every Saturday morning. It's routine. It's on the schedule and so I do it. 

This gym thing is now routine. Whether it becomes a habit is yet to be decided, but the routine is down flat. France and I go every day at my lunch time (around 11). It gets it over with and then we have the rest of the day to muck around and do things like, take naps or scrapbook, or cook. 

5. The biggest lie I tell myself is I'll walk at home. I won't. I will want to. I will change my clothes to, but it's really common that I don't. Outside is usually wet and cold this time of year, so there's another excuse. BUT, now I bought myself a walking pad that is in my house. Now I have zero excuses. France has one and talked me into buying it. Probably the best thing I did. 

It's set up right in front of the boob tube too. So my plan has been to walk during commercials. Some nights I do. Some nights I don't. But it's there and it's available to use.

So now we're in April. And France and I both plan on going every day that we can. I start my week by reviewing my work schedule and sending France my plan for the week. Then each day we confirm the next day. 

The best part of the gym now is when we leave I say, "See you tomorrow." and I know I will. 

March Madness

I am not a basketball fan. Not even close. But, I am doing a March Madness of sorts. 

Friend France mentioned that she was doing this thing she was calling "March Madness". Her goal is to walk/exercise at least 30 minutes a day for 30 days. That sounds like a solid goal. It sounds like a lot, but why not give it a shot. 

So I told France I was all in. 

I'm a believer that the Universe tells us things all the time. If only we just listen. I could give you a dozen examples of how that's played out in my life, but I'm sure you've experienced. That gut feeling. The turn right instead of turn left gut punch you get every now and then. I have that all the time. Sometimes I listen. Sometimes I don't. I've gotten two tickets from not listening. 

I took Friday off to run some errands and to just generally have an extra day for the weekend. I do it every month. I take one Friday off a month. Call it mental health adjustment. This Friday I wanted to do some comparison shopping on chicken. (Someday I'll tell you about my weird chicken quirk I have). 

My dad love Sprouts and so I figured I'd swing over to Sprouts and see what they have and what their prices are. Next door to Sprouts is my old gym Planet Fitness. I've been meaning to go in and cancel my membership there since I have a member ship at 24 hour Fitness now. 

As I was walking over to the gym I thought, you know why not get on a treadmill. You've got tennis shoes on. You've got a bra on. You've got music. What's stopping you from walking for 15-30 minutes. AND you've got a trip looming in which you need to get into some type of shape. 

Decision made. I walked into Planet Fitness and expected bells and whistles to go off indicating I hadn't been there in a thousand years. Nothing like that happened. 

I found a treadmill and walked. I turned up the incline at some point and just people watched and walked. It was all over in no time. 

Got off and left. 

When I got home I was chatting with France and our other friend Anandi and mentioned this whole thing and that's when France told me about her March Madness plan. I was all in. 

Having accountability with someone else makes a big difference with me. It amazes me I can't be accountable for myself. I am at work. I am with other aspects of my life. But when it comes to working out goals, I have a bucket full of excuses. 

France and I have a plan. Anandi wanted in too. She lives out of state so we made a plan to send photos of our walking/exercise for the day. 

I've walked two days in a row now. Which for most people sounds funny - but when you work from home and have no reason to leave, it's easy to not walk too far. 

So here we go. Let's see what March brings us. I have 76 days before our big Mediterranean cruise and if Portugal was any indication of how out of shape I am to travel, then I really need to get going. I can do this. I will do this. I even bought a walking platform to have at home. That should really help. 

ScrapbookPaLooza

Motivation is something that is required to do certain things. Getting to the gym, for example, requires motivation. Hell, getting dressed to go to the gym takes motivation. I lack that motivation. 

Where I don't lack motivation is scrapbooking. It's my creative outlet. I use it to decompress from the work week - and most recently (December) the workday. 

See what happened was, I realized I watch too much TV. I work in front of the TV all day. It's usually on and is there to make noise. I don't like working in silence. It reminds me that I live alone and work alone and that I have way too many conversations with my cats. And so, because of the TV thing, I decided I wanted to turn it off when work was done and either read or scrapbook. 

The first week when work was done, I went into the scrapbook room. I didn't want to work on any big projects and just wanted to "play around". That's when it dawned on me that I could scrap random photos. Basically, scrap photos that really don't mean anything, may or may not have a story, but it would allow me to scrap, work on my skill, use up my stash and be creative. It was so liberating to realize that I didn't have to "have a reason" to scrap something. 

And so started the Random Scrapbooking Project. 

But wait, I needed to be "organized" in this randomness. And yes, I do realize organization and random are antonyms. This is the part where when I explained it to my BFF she rolled her eyes at me and my process minded self. After putting some thought into it, I wanted to "process" it out so that I could stay focused in the randomness. I know. I know. When I say it out loud it sounds crazy, but I promise you it made a huge impact on how focused it's kept me. 

I have about 200 sketches for scrapbook layouts. These are sketches (or other scrapbooker pages) that I've collected. Not every page is a brand new creation. Many times, I take inspiration from what other people have done. My page is never an exact duplicate of their page, but it gets me inspired. Those sketches are numbered in a folder on my computer.

Each week I select 5 random numbers - 1 through 200, and those are the layouts I make. Then I have to find photos to use.  Being that these are random, it's really easy to do. Plus, I have a thousand cat photos to pick from. 

From there I gather the supplies I want to use and I get busy.  In most cases, in a week I'd do those 5 pages and then some. For December I did what's called December Daily - well my version of it. I came up with 31 "topics" and I did a page with a photo representing that topic for each day. It was a blast and I used up a TON of Christmas supplies. But December Daily really helped create this habit of going upstairs every day and scrap a page or two. 

Enter January. My department at work reorganized and put me in a Director position of the Project Management Office. That means my team of PMs are scattered across the globe. Which translated into me starting work at 6am most days (and one day at 5:30am and one day once a month at 5am). That means I get off work by 2 or 2:30. THAT gives me several hours in the scrapbook room with daylight. (I don't like to scrap when I have to turn on a light. It changes the colors of papers and embellishments).

Here we are in February and every day I could I go up in the scrapbook room and do 2 or three pages. Here's just a small example of what I've done since Jan 1. 

I realize as I look at this one now that I've
not added any title or journaling. This was
my grandparents 25th wedding anniversary.

You can see how random they all are and how most don't really belong in any "project" scrapbook. 

My goal this year for scrapping is 365 pages. It's not even the end of February and I'm at 79 pages already. I might have to adjust my goal to make it harder. 

What I've noticed after scrapping each night is I feel very accomplished and satisfied with myself for not sitting in front of the boob tube. Now, if I can get just a little of that motivation to rub off in the "getting to the gym" goal. 

What were your parents like?

Welcome to another installment of "My Life Story". The card today asks what I assume would be an easy question for most, but may be a bit complicated for me. 

The question "What were your parents like?"

You see I've had two sets of parents with Mom as the common denominator. 

Let's start with the early years. Mom and my original father, Don, were married young. Mom was just 17 when they married. That was back in 1964 - they did that then. Don was her high school sweetheart and they seemed quite happy. 

Then Don got sent to Vietnam. While there my mom gave birth to my sister, Melanie. Then he came home and then he went back again. When returned I was born 9 months after. 

The point of telling you about Vietnam is that his tours changed him. Mom used to say that he left part of his soul there and she thought it was the nice part of his soul. 

He wasn't a great father to me. He flirted with every female he came in contact with and I remember as a kid that embarrassed me. I can't even imagine how mom felt about it. He was not a nice man at times either. We were disciplined with a heavy hand. By today's standards you might call it abuse. We were certainly mentally abused. I don't really remember him having nice things to say to us. We used to get the belt for the oddest, and most insignificant things. I remember this one time Melanie and I both got it because we folded a kitchen towel wrong. 

He tried and I think he did the best he could with what he had with him. I often wonder what he would have been like if Vietnam hadn't happened. 

Mom and him divorced in 1979/80 and that's when the next dad comes into play. 

Mom went out on a set up date with Al Wraspir sometime in 1980. I don't remember who set them up, but it was a double date and they hit it off. They married in Sept 1982. Dad adopted me right after that. I officially went from Jennifer Miller to Jennifer Wraspir. 

Dad was an amazing dad. He had his issues too, like he was stubborn and was pretty opinionated at times. But he was also kind, he loved his family, he worked hard, he had a strong will, and treated me as if I was his. He never treated me like a step daughter and instead took the time to help make me a person who can be a valuable part of society. He worked for Boeing for 47 years and I think wished I followed in those footsteps. While I worked at Boeing, I wasn't meant to be there for that long. 

He always had a ton of friends around him. Many were his hunting buddies. We spent many nights at other friends' houses having dinners and such. 

He taught me to love cooking. Mom did too for that matter. But dad had the curiosity to try and cook different things. He LOVED food. Tomatoes were among his favorite foods. I don't have enough space in the blog to list all his favorites. 

He was a wonderful dad and I consider myself very lucky. 

Mom - what can I say about her that I haven't already said in this blog. She was my best friend. Not always, but definitely as an adult. As a teenager, like most, I wasn't a fan of her. She enforced rules and followed through with consequences. I'm grateful now, but 14 year old me was not. 

She was kind, she too loved her family. She LOVED dogs and her grandkids. Hell, she loved all my friends and adopted them to be "her kids". She too worked at Boeing and was there for 37 years (or something like that). She had a tougher time there trying to progress because, well, she was a woman in a man's world. 

She loved to travel and cook like Dad. They both, together, taught me about how important seeing the world is to better understand, and tolerate, other cultures. "Tolerate" was dad's word and I don't think he meant it as it came out the same way it sounds today. 

Overall, I consider myself very lucky to have had such great parents. They were strict but they loved me. They helped me become the person I am today. 

I miss them both every day. 

Where were you born? Is that where you were raised?

Welcome to the next installment of me documenting my life. I was amusing myself earlier this week while sketching out this topic by reminding myself that the purpose of documenting your life is often to leave some part of you behind for your kids. Since I have no kids, then the rest of you get to enjoy these little trips. 

The question on today's card is "Where were you born? Is that where you were raised?

I was born in Houston Texas, Herman Hospital to be exact. 

Photo from TrailBlaze Travels

My first dad was in the military and stationed there. I don't think we lived there much longer. And I've never been back. Well, that's not completely true. We visited my Great Grandparents in Texas at some point in my life. Only once that I remember. And since then the only other time I've been in Texas was to be stuck in the Dallas airport for 8 hour due to weather. 

Is that where you were raised? 

This is an easy, and yet, complicated, question. The short answer is no. The long answer is a list of places I've lived that will take you a minute or two to read. 

On my 40th birthday, as part of the celebration, I thought it'd be fun to do some Jenn Trivia. One of the questions was how many places had I lived in my 40 years. The catch was every address counted. Not just the different cities or countries, but every address I lived in. 

The answer: 27

That's right, I had lived in 27 different places by the time I was 40. Now that I'm 55, that number is a whoppin 28. The first part of my life I moved frequently. Then I found a place I liked and lived there for 12 years. The longest I ever lived anywhere. Now I'm in this new place (been here for 3 years already). 

Back in the day, I'd move every year. The places I was living would raise my rent and I figured if I was going to pay more rent, I might as well live someplace nicer. It got amusing for my friends who all found other things to do the last weekend in July every year. 

Places I've lived since Houston - Not in any order: Albuquerque, New Jersey, Lancaster (3 different addresses), Washington (I lost count of how many addresses - Kent, Renton, Bellevue, Redmond three times, Lynnwood (twice), Switzerland, Saudi, Mexico, etc

I have mixed emotions about all these locations and all the moving. It makes me feel a little gypsy esk at times. The benefit has been that I was able to make new friends quickly. The downside was you never really created deep, lasting relationships with those friends. 

Moving, I feel, also broadened my view of the world. Living in foreign countries allowed me an opportunity to see, and understand different cultures. Eat their food, see their sights, talk with their people, and immerse myself in their culture. 

What about you? Where were you born and were you raised there?

2024 - Week 1 Done!

Phew. I wasn't sure I was going to make it. The first week of 2024 was a killer of a week. 

Having a shorter week sounds like a good idea at the time, but it ends up being that you still have 40 hours of work to do in only 32 hours. I managed, but just barely. 

In 2017 - 2018 I had the shittiest time at work. I had a small team and WAY too much work for a single team. Myself and another PM colleague spent hours, hours and hours at work weekly. For the first time ever, I clocked over 65 hours at a job for a week. I was getting tired. I was getting burned out. 

I was short tempered with everyone. I had dreams of finding a new job - but God knows I had no time to find said job. I was in a hamster wheel and didn't know how to get out.

I spoke with my boss at the time about it. He didn't seem to hear me. He wasn't interested in how much work was on my plate. He was, instead, interested in the data and how we could use the data. He was in the office late each night and so it seemed it was natural. He was part of the problem and I wasn't aware at the time. 

I read articles about how to communicate with a boss that wasn't listening. I tried those suggestions, and nothing. No change. 

I was on the brink of just walking away. And then we had a reorg.

Saved by the reorg. I went back to work for a former boss and he heard me. He listened. He saw the hours and he got me help. Phew. Just in the nick of time. 

This last week ... nothing like that. Not even close. But it had me thinking about those days now passed. I realized how thankful I was to just be "busy" not overwhelmed. 

We're on the brink of a reorg at work too. I'm about to become the Director of Courseware Project Managers. Not quite a PMO, but close. I'm a bit nervous. A bit scared. And a whole lot of excited. 

I'm going to be managing new people that I know, but haven't had much of an opportunity to work with. I'm clean slating it too. They all come with baggage - good and bad - and I'm going to do my best to just start with a clean slate for each of them. Including the two PMs I already manage who are staying with me. 

The current company has invested in Advanced Leadership training for managers. I think this is a great time to put a lot of that to good use.

Next week will be busy just getting situated. The new team is going to enter the "forming" stage of Tuckman's ladder of new teams. This is the hardest stage for me if I'm being honest. I often want to just skip ahead to the "norming" stage where we are all just productive. 

I'm going to be busy for several weeks moving forward too. I have to get to know these new employees and their jobs. On top of learning all that, I need to get to know them. That's the easy part. 

All this to say, I'm ready for this challenge. I won't ever go back to working 65 hours again, but I'm ok with putting in hours and hard work for a company that values you. Not that the other company didn't value me, they just didn't seem to care that I was overwhelmed. THAT is what I won't let happen again.

In other none work related news, the Crabby Ladies went to see Boys in the Boat yesterday. We read the book in 2014 and it was one of our favorite books. The movie did it justice.