Awesome Hypothesis #2: Mind Follows Body

Throughout the year, I'll be testing various attitudes, behaviours, et cetera, to see if they make my life more awesome.

So, the no worrying thing. That was going pretty well for a while, then it started going a bit less well (although nowhere near as non-awesome as, say, the average day of 2008) over the past few days. There's two reasons for that.

One is trying to decide how to deal with non-awesome things. I knew that they would happen, and they are happening, only mildly to me directly thus far, but severely to people around me, and of course globally. Finding an appropriately awesome response to these things is, to put it mildly, challenging. I suspect that the most awesome thing to do is to do precisely as much as is in your power to do and move on, but I am pretty terrible at gauging what is, precisely, within my power. And also, I certainly don't want to be completely tone-deaf and inappropriate like - oh, yeah, that Gaza thing sucks, but hey! Year of the Awesome!

(Memo to Israel, and anyone else unclear on the concept, by the way: bombing civilians is Not Awesome.)

Then there's the other thing, which has been a bit of a dip in health. I felt my glands getting swollen-y on the way back from Christchurch, and ran a bit ragged in the subsequent days anyway. I'm not sick, but I am tired, and I find that as my body wears down, it informs my emotional response.

So: time to focus on my body.

Step 1: doctor's checkup. Last year, I discovered I had fatty liver. I cut back my drinking for a while, and then scaled it up a bit (though still far back from my heights). But at this point I'm shooting in the dark i/r/t my liver function, my cholestorol, and probably many things I don't know. Get some bloodwork done, calibrate goals for the year.
Step 2: exercise. Part of the reason I felt great over my holiday was that I was *doing* heaps of shit - kayaking, swimming, walking, paragliding. Now I'm sitting 8+ hours a day with minimal breaks. You know what's sad? I work next door to a gym. Not "next door" as in down the block; next door as in, literally, next door. I'm not sure if I'll join that for a month, but tomorrow I'm going swimming after work; see how that goes.
Step 3: sleep. Catch up on it, indulge in it. Take naps. Naps are Awesome.
Step 4: diet. Informed by step 1, but I know that I need to cut back on simple carbs again. (I cut them out last year; felt great; brought them back in, felt worse.)

So let's see if a. I can do all that, and b. it helps improve my ability not to worry.