MY HEALTH AT FIRST

I skipped Nordic Track today: one day off after 8 days in a row is okay, I think. Tomorrow I’ll go to 11 minutes (plus a walk of 5 blocks out). In fact, I’ll do the 5 blocks out walk today.
One significant help in this effort is the checklist. What it does for me is to keep efforts from dying out gradually—skip a day, do a day, forget a day, skip a day, do a day, skip two days, forget for three days, feel guilty for one day, and give it up. That sort of thing. Yesterday I skipped Spanish study, for example, but I see from the checklist that I had studied every one of the previous 11 days, and I’ll study today.
After trying a couple of alternatives,  the simplest and best for my purposes. Another great tools is the large Moleskine journal I keep beside the chair to record thoughts. Last night I uncovered one of those unconscious “laws” laid down in childhood that continue to shape our actions. I wrote that reading Herodotus, although it’s fully enjoyable, is also taking an action that will produce a check on my checklists of fitness projects.
Hmm. I looked at that again after writing it, particularly the “although it’s fully enjoyable”. What’s the unstated premise? It seems to be something like: “Normally, fully enjoying something is wasting your time; you should be working.” This leads in the direction of:

If you enjoying yourself, you’re wasting time.
Which leads to this (unconscious) rule: “Avoid enjoyment.” And man, can I see where that has affected me over my life. I’m on to it now, but I recall times when I was younger that I would actually sort of internally tamp down any joy I was feeling. Good to expose and extirpate that rule.
The more I read of Herodotus, BTW, the more he starts to be the answer to “Name the historical figure you most admire.” He’s quite a guy, very rational and cosmopolitan.  has an excellent, highly readable, and very valuable introduction by Carolyn Dewald. I also like the translation, but I think I’m going to move , primarily because the maps are more detailed and integrated with the text, which makes it easier to follow the action, and also because it uses footnotes instead of endnotes so I’m not constantly flipping to the back of the book. I do wish it came bound with a ribbon bookmark. The introduction to this edition is by Rosalind Thomas and is drier but still valuable.
You’ll notice a certain jumping around: I first tried HabitForge as the checklist, but it’s still a little too beta for me. Then I went to The Journal (which I’m still using for notes), and for now I’ve settled on Joe’s Goals, which lets me see today’s checks (or blanks) along with the previous week’s entries.
Same with the scale: The Withings scale is okay, and I like the graphing and wireless data transmission, but when The Eldest pointed out how much more data are available from this scale, I decided to switch to it. Experience, as Benjamin Franklin pointed out, keeps a dear school. Still, start-up course corrections are not unusual in any project.
So long as I’m discussing tools, I should also say that the MBT shoes still seem to be a good idea. Yesterday, for some reason I was full of energy and found myself walking quite briskly for my walk—and enjoying it hugely. Yesterday, in fact, was the first big energy payoff from the fitness routine: I did the laundry, Nordic, walk, kitchen cleaning, and cooked two great dishes for dinner—and felt vigorous the full time.