willpowerthru

So first, the RAOK from yesterday. I’ve been planning this for a little while but a LOT of things had to line up for it to happen and everything just worked out. I got my parents tickets to the Colts/Broncos game in Indianapolis for tomorrow night. Peyton Manning is one of my mom’s all time favorite players, and she’s never been to an NFL game before, so I thought that would be the perfect game for them to attend. Here’s the view from their seats:

The three of us working together allows for one of us to be out of the office with only a little notice, but two being gone takes some planning. I wanted to make this a surprise, and I just got the tickets finalized Thursday night. This means I told them they were going yesterday, and I just had to hope they didn’t have anything work related Monday morning that would be hard to miss. Turns out everything is fine and they are super pumped about the game. They both work so incredibly hard and really deserve at least one day off.

I’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating. Owning your own business is hard to explain to people who don’t do it. My dad used to tell me stories about people asking him what he did for a living, him telling them he had a small business, and their response being: “Must be nice”. He’d always ask them to explain what they meant by that, and you get the normal responses

Must be nice to…be your own boss, set your own hours, take off whenever you want to, not have to worry about money. In theory, those things sound amazing. Now that I’ve been doing it for a little while, I understand how my dad views those “must be nice” situations. Must be nice to…be your own boss…aka…have every decision stop with you (so it better be the correct one for everyone involved), set your own hours…aka…work 12 hours a day and come in on most weekends, take off whenever you want to…aka…that’s not how it works, not have to worry about money…aka…worry about ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING and money too. You never really clock out, even when you leave work. That’s just how it goes. To my dad’s credit, I’ve heard his response to the “must be nice” comments. He says, “You know, it is nice.” He understands that trying to explain or justify the pros and cons of owning your own business is foolish and only an idiot would blog about it.

What I’m saying is, obviously there are pros and cons to everyone’s job/career/work life, but man, my parents have earned what they’ve built. I’m glad they are going to the game.

So back to yesterday:

That was about 4:57am…I really need to figure out a way to timestamp these better than some vague “8 hours ago” or “yesterday”. What’s the point of that if there’s no time on it, ya know?

The night before, around 1am, I had finally fallen asleep. I usually don’t have that big of an issue getting to bed, but I really feel like the pressure of waking up early is keeping me up.

I dug around for my workout clothes and put them on, finally getting to the door around 5:15. I opened the door, got hit in the face by wind, shut the door, went back inside, and fell asleep on my couch. These are things that are happening during an actual willpower challenge.

So I’ve identified the problem, it’s Obama.

Or maybe it’s trying to get up after 4 hours of sleep?

I knew I was right, thanks Minions.

The good news is that I’m eating well under 2,000 calories a day so I’ve already lost 2 pounds. I know that’s not the point, but it’s kinda the point. I mean, I can already envision some dude with a hat that says, “My other hat is a hood” having a really bad day…you know know, we’re doing it guys!

Let’s take a quick break and then we’ll talk about today. For today’s break, let’s watch a clip of the Best Vines of September! My favorite one is at the 2:38 mark. I laughed out loud:

Also, that last one on there…I think that’s how you get like, double lung cancer?

6:55am

I realized this morning that even thought I had a willpower list, that’s not really a “plan” per say. Having a list of goals doesn’t give you an action plan on how to attain them. The cool thing about getting up at 7am on a Saturday is that you get a LOT done if you want.

So I did 14 things that will help with an actual plan of attack. A few of them had nothing to do with the willpower stuff…

Among them were office work, an estimate in Michigan City, and lunch with friends.

They close tomorrow, so we got one more in for the season. I purposely didn’t eat last night and didn’t eat breakfast so I could have this today, and I passed up on going to Oink’s for ice cream after…so I’ll put that in the “moderation” win column.

I was so busy checking things off my to do list today, I literally forgot to add “go to the gym” to that list. So I did some P90X instead and called it a wash.

I gotta say, today felt good. It’s only about 4pm right now and I’ve been writing this blog for a while, to try to get everything set for the rest of the 50 days.

Some of the other things I did today were:

Created a calendar of things that are going on with my personal, work, and comedy life…you know, like an ADULT.

Threw away expired food from the fridge…you know, like an ADULT.

Didn’t go immediately back to bed after waking up this morning…you know, like an ADULT.

Flossed…you know, like SOMEONE THAT CARES ABOUT THEIR GUMS.

Thought about big boobs…you know, like a TEENAGE BOY.

Well, you get the picture.

Tomorrow, I have my parents’ dog Stella so they can go to the game:

On top of that, I’m going to attempt to get about 10 more things done around the house and work before I go to improv class and do dinner with the BFF Timmy Mac.

Alrighty, I’m off to The Drop to work this evening’s shows…Here’s to a good nights sleep tonight!

The actual list for this 50 day challenge. I’ve added a few more.

1. Blog about it everyday: Done

2. Wake up at 5 am on week days and 7am on weekends: Done, but we’re working on not going back to sleep almost immediately.

3. Go to the gym before work on the days I work: 0/3 EPIC FAIL SO FAR

4. Floss everyday (I just know I should do it more) Done

5. Teach Millie to come to me. (she knows “sit”…and that’s all) Not Done

6. Do a Random Act Of Kindness (RAOK) everyday. DONE

7. Say “yes” to something once a week that I would normally have said “no” to. 0/7 so far

8. 5 Videos for Charity 0/5 filmed….2/5 planned

9. Weigh 242 pounds or under at the end of the 50 days or donate 1,000 dollars to the KKK I guess we’ll see…

10. Eat one meal that has vegetables in it every week. Which means I will ingest 7 more vegetables than I would have normally. 0/7 so far