To Infinity, And Beyond! 2011 In Review

What better way to kickoff the new year than with an awesome new set of goals?! Well, first let's review how epically fantastic 2011 went for me...

It's been quite a while since I've posted... Rest assured I haven't deterred from the goals I set up for myself; I've just been too busy MAKING IT HAPPEN. Kicking ass, taking names, dropping pounds, and becoming a certified badass!

The greatness of this year kicked-off officially when I became a staff employee for one of the largest entertainment media sites on the Internet. Along with that came real health benefits, an awesome salary and the roots of my career firmly planted in the ground. I worked my ass off for 1 1/2 years and the fruits of my labor finally paid off. I'm a member of the cool kids club. "Look ma! I'm a real person now!" Greatest. Day. Ever.

Next comes my overzealous commitment to better health, fitness and weight loss. I've spent no less than five days a week in the gym, pumping iron and beating the crap out of my body for the better good of humanity. Squatting has become my religion and Chin-Ups my lord and savior. On the weekends I pray to the beat of my sneakers landing on asphalt... left, right, left, right, repeat. AND I LOVE IT. I feel like superwoman. I've discovered that I really do have biceps, and my ass has never looked better. I'll even shamelessly admit that I often catch myself checking out that afforementioned ass in the mirror quite often. Oh, and I FIT INTO MY OLD CLOTHES. What a glorious day that was, throwing myself a little fashion show in the bedroom.

My official weight-loss of 2011 was a resounding 35 pounds. Do you know how much that is?! Well, four gallons of water weigh 30lbs. Imagine carrying around four gallons of water with you, everywhere you go. Now put those imaginary jugs down. Thats how it feels to lose that much weight. Fucking fantastic. I've set my sights on losing another 15lbs by Memorial Day. And I'll damn well do it.

So... I also did this cool little thing called QUITTING SMOKING. Aww yeahhhhh! My stop date was September 18th, so I'm working on my fourth month tobacco-free. I didn't take the cold turkey route (call me a pussy if you like, I don't care), but instead weened myself off using the electronic cigarette. It's a godsend and I highly recommend every smoker out there try it. My favorite vendor is Vapor4Life (www.v4l.com) and they wrote the book on insanely amazing customer service. Do it, and thank me later.

Two other quick notes before I sign off:

-I successfully completed two 3-week stints without consuming any refined sugars. One from Halloween to Thanksgiving, and again from Decemeber 3rd through Christmas Eve. That meant no cake, no candy, no cupcakes, no cookies, nothing! The first round was intense, to say the least (detox, OMFG). Both drew awesome results and helped me curb my addiction to sugar. Sugar is a drug. Believe it.

-I also shot and edited this cool little audition video for a friend:



Look forward to my next post where I dive into THE BUCKET LIST!!

P.S. I plan to actually continue writing on this blog this year. I have lots of exciting things to share!

Back In The Saddle

First, I'd like to apologize for the impromptu month-long hiatus. Life got a little crazy, and I had to kick a few things to the sidelines. Well, it actually hasn't gotten any less crazy, but I'm learning to manage it better now. A whole slew of my coworkers decided to quit at the same time —guess who's left picking up the pieces? Yea. However, I'm trying to put a positive spin on this and think of it as an opportunity for career advancement, rather than the reality that it equals 10-12 hour days and triple the workload. Anyhow, let's jump back into fantasy-land where I can pretend I actually have a life outside of work.

Coupled with that hiatus, I totally fell off the workout horse. I came down with a cold and managed to sprain my left shoulder at the same time. And how did I manage to sprain my shoulder? Well, I fell asleep at a kitchen table one night while resting my head on my arm. Please note I was not drunk. I just have this talent where I can fall asleep anywhere, in any position, regardless of the world around me —earthquake, fire, driving, Guns N Roses tribute concert, social gathering. Three of those are true stories. (Hint: We don't have earthquakes in New Jersey.)

Although I fell out of my exercise routine, I was able to successfully maintain my diet! Well, except for a few select days due to circumstances totally out of my control. My 25th birthday at the end of January was met with good cake and great food, and then my girlfriend's birthday followed a week later, which was met with more cake and goodies. Oh, and then Valentine's Day came a week after that, but my love was kind enough to give me only one giant hunk of chocolate (thank you! xo). So, I have to say, I think I did pretty damn good under the circumstances. I didn't put on any weight, and I even lost a few more pounds. I'm now 10lbs down from when I started!

Needless to say, I felt like total crap during these past weeks. Work started to wear on me, I was stressing out left and right, and my body was revolting against the poor nutrition and lack of movement. I had enough of this low point, and so Tuesday I opted to jump back into a rigorous 5-day workout routine. I was met with some opposition that day, but I managed to overcome the negativity and start busting my ass. I'm continuing the C25K running plan from where I left off (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) and sprinkling in a killer ab workout in between with some arm toning. I downloaded a newer, better, and absolutely free food and exercise logging app. It's called MyFitnessPal and has a way bigger database of food and activities than the LoseIt! app. It's also available on Android, Blackberry, and the web, so my Verizon friends can download it and join in the fun! Within the app you can add your friends (like Facebook for getting fit) and watch each others progress. I think this is a great motivational app due to the ability to encourage your friends and family to stick with it. I texted everyone I know with a smartphone, but I'm still waiting on them to download it. Get to it, people! My username is x1daydreamer6x. Add me! ;-)

Rising From The Dead

Look! It's moving. It's alive. It's alive... It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!

I woke up on time today. I woke up at the actual time my alarm went off.
And I only snoozed once (or twice).

This feels just short of a miracle to me, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high in the event this was simply a fluke. Whether or not this whole vibrating concept actually works will require additional testing. For round one I still used my iHome alarm on blast in addition to the phone. I found a fantastic little free app that comes with a ton of settings (I'm tempted to buy the full version now!), and I elected to use a classic beeping feature on it, as well as the vibration. I'm hoping in the long run I won't need the beeping, but I just wanted to be safe.

So I awoke this morning to an orchestra of beeping, vibrating and Lindsay Lohan (don't judge me), and I have to say that it wasn't that bad. I must admit though, that initial buzz kind of scared the shit out of me and shocked my eyes wide open—but it worked! Just so you can fully understand what I have been going through my whole life, I'll share some of my most bizarre morning adventures this week...

I like girls that wear Abercrombie & Fitch...
I had a ring-tone years ago that played the chorus of LFO's "Summer Girls" single. I decided at some point to start using it as my alarm, figuring there's no way I could ignore something so godawful annoying. Well my ever-so-clever subconscious decided to play a vicious trick on me... One night/morning I had the craziest dream that involved giving a eulogy at someone's funeral. As I approached the podium to begin my reading, a song starts playing over the loudspeaker. Yes, you guessed it, LFO's "Summer Girls" began playing during the funeral services. I laugh off this silly mistake and continue on. Later on throughout the "day" I hear it again and again, until I finally turn to person I'm walking with—in my dream—and delcare "Wow, this song has been coming up an awful lot today!" Needless to say I was late to work that day, and when I told my boss what really happened, he kind of stood there in awe for a moment before issuing me yet another citation, warning me of impending termination.
   

Waking Up Is Hard To Do

Every morning my subconscious and conscious minds battle to the death over what time is appropriate for my body to wake. I know my subconscious is just looking out for my general health and sanity by fulfilling a 7-hour requirement, but unfortunately, at this point in life, my paycheck ranks higher on the list of survival priorities.

Nevertheless, almost every morning I find myself dead to the world—with an iHome blaring angrily into my ear—as the minutes tick by and I'm late again. I can't quite explain how this is possible, but there are plenty of people you can ask who have witnessed this phenomenon first-hand since I was a teenager (I'm sorry, Mom, but it really wasn't my fault!). Turning the volume up louder and louder doesn't seem to do any more for me, other than making my girlfriend want to beat me over the head with it.

I'd like to take a moment and apologize to my sweet, loving and patient girlfriend for dealing with my ludicrously loud (and louder) alarm clocks over the years. I don't know how you do it, because I surely would have killed me by now. xo

So, as step 1 in my quest to further my career, I'm determined to discover a wake-up call that actually works for me (I mean, let's face it —How can I expect to be successful in my career if I can't even manage to wake up!?)Now I can't get too crazy, since I'm financially limited to using only my household items, so I'll have to apply a little creativity.

I keep seeing these wrist watches advertised that actually monitor your sleep patterns, then wake you up by vibrating at the "optimum time." It doesn't sound too far-fetched to me since I've also seen a couple of other alarm devices that vibrate, like the vibrating pillow and another gadget that vibrates your entire mattress. I actually respond really well when someone gives me a little tap to wake up, so that could very well be my solution. The problem is I don't really have the money to invest in this. So I started thinking and suddenly realized I have an iPhone that is perfectly capable of vibrating!

Starting tonight/tomorrow I'm going to implement this new method into my morning wake-up routine. I'm not sure if the native alarm app actually vibrates, but I'm willing to spend the $1-2 for an app that will fully utilize this miracle vibrating function. Also, since my phone is a bit cumbersome to wear on my wrist/arm, I'm going to start with placing it under my pillow.

It's time for sleep so I'll let you all know how well this little experiment works out in the morning, as well as some ridiculously crazy stories of the dirty tricks my subconscious pulls on me just to keep me asleep! ;-)

-Posted in bed from my iPhone (so please forgive me speeling tyops)
   

Back At Square One

So I suppose the proper way to start a blog is with an explanation of why the hell I'm here and what I plan on doing about it. For the attention-deficit crowd, here's the short story: I've been out of college for over a year without nearly as much career advancement as a 25-year-old would hope for, I'm waste deep in debt with NO savings, I haven't been taking very good care of myself, and I'm using the promising year of 2011 to change all of that (Sound familiar!? That's because it's the story of nearly every damn college grad in the last 5 years). For those of you looking for the long story (or at least trying to further relate yourselves to my troubles), please read on.

From the above laundry list of "areas in need of improvement" I gather three major topics: Success, Wealth & Health. Some of you may notice one tragically important thing missing... Love. Well I'm happy to report that's the one section of life that I have under control!

My plan is to tackle each of these areas step by step, little by little. Each week I'm going to declare a goal in each of the 3 areas and fulfill it to the best of my abilities. I've never been one to fail at any project thrown my way, so I'm going to take a lesson from myself and stop failing so hard at life. By blogging about my endeavors I'm hoping it'll be the kick in the ass I need, the pressure that pushes me to succeed. I can't just tell the world I'm going to do something and then leave them hanging! I don't want to call it an "obligation" because that has a nasty negative connotation to it, and I want this to be a positive experience that will force me to grow into the individual I know I can be --strong, confident and successful.

I'll provide more background story (and those fun little anecdotes) as we move along, but for now I have to get to sleep! Goodnight ;-)

- Posted in bed from my iPhone (so please forgive any terrible spelling/grammar errors)