Tuesday, November 10, 2015

LENS and Life, week of 11/3

One site today, and the knowledge that next week will be another skipped week for LENS.  So far, nothing catastrophic has happened for skipping a week.  Makes me wonder what my next map will look like.  Perhaps I'll be able to drop back to once every two weeks?  I like regularly seeing my doctor, but the visits aren't exactly a cheeseburger and fries in price.

This week I found shiny things on the Internet.  I was trying to find something to let these blog posts be automatically posted to Facebook, and someone wrote a short article about how to do that.  It included a link to IFTTT.com, which is basically an "if this happens on [social service], do this on [other social service]."  So I got it to hook up Blogger and Facebook, and I should be set from now on.  Yay!

The ease of use inspired me to create a Twitter account (realautistic) and an Instagram (realisticautistic), so I'm almost but not quite caught up to the current generation in social media.  I think I'm missing Snapchat, and maybe haven't heard of the most recently whatsit.  I'm not sure I'm young enough to use Snapchat.  Either way, my friends are mainly on Twitter and Facebook, so unless I get a following (of any kind, really), I'll leave it alone.

In the meantime, I'm probably going to post spare links with a bit of commentary to Facebook. Links that I think are useful but I can't make an entire blog entry out of.  I have approximately five such links open as tabs on my browser at this very moment.  I'll space them out, lest I overload my readers. 

The other thing I discovered on IFTTT was that it has a button option.  You can literally program a virtual button to do things, like email you your coordinates, or a map of your location, or play a sound, or call you.  So I now have three buttons: one that plays a sound, one that calls me (because why not), and one that "clocks me in to work."  Turns out you can link these things to Google spreadsheets, and when I press the button, it records the date and time I pressed it.  It's always felt more official and job-y when I've clocked in and out of work.  And I have a really hard to time considering free time "work time" when self-employed, so having the ability to clock in and out is basically amazing.  It's really just playing with my mental switches, but it's a really effective method of doing so.

Other other thing: I have business cards coming!  I've been wanting to have some for The Realistic Autistic for awhile, and there've been several occasions where I really could've used them.  So for ~$15, I shall have 500 of them and that should be enough to hold me while I try, once again, to figure out a logo.  I worked with a graphic designer and a couple artists at one point, I know better than to just say, "make me a logo that's unique" without having any idea what that logo should look like.  It's roughly on par with saying, "read my mind and create what I don't know I want."  Not very nice to the poor art-person.

Last thing is that I've started counting calories again using an app on my tablet.  I've always been mildly overweight, but it's gotten worse since the stress of my job.  I would like to lose about 30.  In theory, that's as easy as teaching myself not to eat while stressed, counting calories regularly using the app's lookup and barcode scan features, and keeping going with the 3/week running schedule I have going with Chris (my boyfriend).

In practicality, my doctor assures me that it's more complicated than that, especially if you have gland problems or unusual biology.  I remember being in pretty good shape exactly once in my life, and that was when I exercised 6 days a week, alternating cardio and weight training, and ate my usual salad/ vegetarian etc. at the college dining hall.  I'm going to really, really hope I don't have unusual biology of any kind, because I need complicating factors in my life like I need a black widow spider in my apartment.

The results won't be very clear for several weeks yet.  I'm aiming for 1-2 pounds lost per week, which is healthy, rather than 15 pounds in a week which is really, really not.  I have yet to decide if I'm allowed to have "free days" like my friend does.  Those are days where you don't count calories, you just try not to be completely terrible to your body.  Or "cheat" days, where you're allowed to have that slice of cake, thank you, as long as it's only one and only once a week.  

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