Posts tagged with "schedule"

The Winter Schedule

But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slight­ly chilled, why then, indeed in the gen­er­al con­scious­ness you feel most delight­ful­ly and unmis­tak­ably warm.

I save the win­dow-open­ing rit­u­al for Friday nights, after a long, tir­ing week, when the sweaters are all fold­ed, and the shirts all ironed. Before I go to bed, I turn off the lights, square off my desk, and turn the win­dow crank 220 degrees clock­wise. Even though the ther­mo­stat is at 23°C, it’s any­where from ‑16°C to 5°C out­side these nights.

When I wake up at 5:00 a.m., as I usu­al­ly do, my room is filled with the chilly, snow-smelling air.

I do this only once a week to appre­ci­ate it.

I do it on Fridays to enjoy it.

Back Into The Game

After a ten month hia­tus, I’m back into my reg­u­lar table ten­nis rou­tine again. I start­ed out extreme­ly rusty, feel­ing as if I was learn­ing how to play again, but now I’m almost at the lev­el that I end­ed with. It feels like it’s advan­ta­geous to take a step back from play­ing so that I can for­get all my bad habits while remem­ber­ing all the the­o­ry, because I can tell exact­ly what I need to change to improve now. I wish I could say the same for my golf game when I get out on the cours­es every spring.

My bout with gas­troen­teri­tis left me with a small­er appetite and ema­ci­at­ed frame. The sud­den weight loss — bring­ing my weight pre­car­i­ous­ly close to 100 lbs. — has been rather notice­able; my sweaters are bag­gy, my rings slip off my fin­gers, and I’ve lost two notch­es on my belt. Most peo­ple strug­gle to lose weight, I strug­gle to gain it and stay above 120. Table ten­nis is one of the best things I can do to fix this. After every ses­sion, I’m rav­en­ous­ly hun­gry, and this usu­al­ly con­tin­ues through to the day after.

Table ten­nis is also one of the only sports that I enjoy enough to not have to drag my ass out every time, which is def­i­nite­ly an advan­tage when the venue is an hour away. Unfortunately, my sched­ule on Tuesdays and Thursdays now con­sists of:

  1. wak­ing up at six thir­ty in the morn­ing
  2. going to work for eight and a half hours
  3. com­ing home and sleep­ing for half an hour
  4. eat­ing a din­ner which I’ve pre­pared ear­li­er in the week (with no time to cook)
  5. trav­el­ling to the gym
  6. play­ing for two hours
  7. trav­el­ling home
  8. show­er­ing and falling asleep by mid­night

There are no breaks in between, which means that I have to watch the clock dur­ing almost every­thing that I do. It’s a com­plete rush from start to fin­ish. The upside is that when I’m at the gym, work­ing on bet­ter short-ball con­trol, or try­ing to achieve a back­hand smash, I can for­get every­thing else, which is some­thing that does­n’t hap­pen for me eas­i­ly.

Bananas Vs. Bran

It’s good to get into a sched­ule again, even though I’m not quite used to wak­ing up at 7:00 am yet. I haven’t been on sched­ule for more than a year. I had such a light load for my two semes­ters of uni­ver­si­ty that I could basi­cal­ly wake up when­ev­er I want­ed to every day. And then there was the sum­mer, when I took four months off to relax and could stay up till 7:00 am talk­ing on the phone (good…good times). Next was four months of look­ing for a job and not find­ing one, which end­ed up being a good thing or I would­n’t have been able to spend a month in Hong Kong.

Not hav­ing a sched­ule is like hav­ing only one course a term. There’s not much motive to get work done, and every­thing is put off to the last sec­ond. Being on a sched­ule makes me more pro­duc­tive. I actu­al­ly don’t mind doing chores and errands, eat­ing reg­u­lar meals, even doing the dish­es. The order and reg­u­lar­i­ty is a nice change from the amor­phous life I’ve been liv­ing for the last lit­tle while.