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thepauser

~ “I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that.” Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren)

thepauser

Category Archives: Goals

If you get an Outfit, You can Go to Zumba, too.

21 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by koehlerjoni in Body Image, Decision Making, Essay, Goals, Health, Humor, Personal Essay

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

essay, humor, Zumba

I’ve had the desire to try Zumba ever since I saw the founder, Beto Perez, on television.  At two o’clock in the morning, my sleep dyslexia in high gear, Beto and the other Zumba dancers filled the screen with their optimism and can-do brand of exuberance.  Super skinny folks mingled with the real people; chunky and smooth peanut butter in one room, all of them dancing to salsa music.

Now that I’m on the dog’s path, I know it’s necessary to change up my fitness routine if I want to be successful—boredom is my enemy.  Therefore, now is a great time to do some Zumba.  Friday before last, I went to one of two local gyms to give it a try.  I thought it would be fun, and it was.  Me and five other women all shaking our booties to the type of upbeat music I don’t have on my i-pod, sweating like field hands, and laughing together.  They all seemed friendly and welcoming, and they didn’t laugh at my lack of Zumba-bility.

I was okay at the part where you kicked one leg and then the other.  When the shimmy appeared, I kept up.  However, Beto designed the Zumba as a work out for your booty, and the genre features a lot of gyrating of said.  This Baptist girl’s hips did not know which way to turn.  By the time the instructor had done the entire rolling sequence of the hips, mine were just getting the “rotate,” message.  And forget about the footwork.

 

Whatever. I had fun, and I want to do it again.  But before I go again, I need an outfit. All the other women were in tight pants (I think you call them leggings), and they were capris, and they were tight no matter how big the gals were.  My pants went all the way to the ground, and they were loose, and my t-shirt was one of my husband’s old ones and it went almost to my knees.  The extra material flapped almost as much as I did, and it made it hard to see what my body was doing. At least that’s my excuse for not keeping up with the buttock action and the footwork.  I also did not have a headband.  I think you call those sweat bands or something.

Needing an outfit for Zumba has occupied too much of the room in my brain.  The Smothers Brothers’ rendition of The Streets of Laredo morphed into my theme song, the line “If you get an outfit, you can go to Zumba, too,” glommed onto my brain stem like glue.  I looked on line at the famous site created by Kate Hudson.  She says in the commercial, “The girls will like these cute clothes.” I think the clothes are cute. But are they really supposed to touch your skin, all of it? And if you ask the site to show you short sleeved t-shirts, you are treated to a plethora of camisoles, sleeveless with spaghetti straps in the front and with intricate banding in the back that kind of reminds me of the netting you see on a turkey breast.

netting for your athletic wear and your turkey

Wrap your turkey in it, and then use it to hold your camisole together.

In the first place, this girl isn’t walking out of the house without covering up the girls. Those camisoles would definitely show your bra straps, and that ain’t happening.  In the second place, when Kate Hudson refers to girls, I think she means actual girls, as in not women yet.  The fitness models on the site have a decidedly androgynous/adolescent look.  I talk about being a girl, but I only mean it in the figurative sense.  Where are the fitness clothes for the grown up women?

I wanted to go in the Lululemon and find some workout clothes.  My husband and I worked hard for the last thirty years and I think the budget could take whatever Lulu dishes, but I just couldn’t make myself go in there.  I had this preconceived notion that the sizes went from double zero to six. I pictured the salesmen as knowledgeable and perky. Perky people just make me nervous. Sorry if you happen to be perky.

So, I went to the mall and looked through rack after rack of athletic clothes.  Some of the pants are labeled, “Yoga.” Well, that just threw me off.  They looked just like all the other pants, but would a Zumba connoisseur be able to tell I was, in fact, donning yoga pants in a Zumba atmosphere?  I feel pretty sure they’d keep their mouths shut at my Zumba spot in the country,  but what if I went with my daughter to the gym in California and somebody made fun of her mother for wearing the wrong work out duds?  I wouldn’t want that. And nowhere, in that barren tundra that is the mall, was a friendly, emotionally accessible salesperson who would respond to my to yoga pant /or not to yoga pant query with generosity and without condescension.

After looking (and looking, and looking) I had an epiphany.  I went to Ross Dress for Less. Nobody is gonna judge me in the Ross Dress for Less.  I can walk through the check out with a pair of size 15 women’s underwear (that’s some big underwear- and no, not my size), a baseball bat, a beret, and a jock strap, and no one will bat an eye.  In the dressing room, I squeezed into a variety of athletic pants and shirts, and after I picked the outfit that squeezed my skin the least, the dressing room attendant and I engaged in a brief conversation.  She said, “Are you starting to exercise?”  And I told her about being three months into a healthier lifestyle.  She talked about how she needed to get started, too. I had no problem with this non-perky conversation.   Ross Dress for Less is not a perky type of place.  What a relief.

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES

My almost not too tight gear

Now that I have my outfit, I can return to Zumba with a sense of pride in my financially responsible attire. I hope to make Beto and all the other Zumba high-ups proud with my can-do, chunky peanut butter exuberance.   Maybe I’ll even brave the Lululemon one day soon.   I still need a headband and I’m pretty sure they have one in my size.

 

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pauseRReport: Year One

31 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Blogging, Creativity, Education, Goals, Social Media, Writing

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

blogging, creative writing, Education, social media, writing

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES

At home, examining the light.  A description that fits for the last year.

The Pauser marked its one year anniversary just a few days ago, and I feel like celebrating!  Here are the big lessons I’ve learned this year:

  • Digital, schmidgital! People make social media interesting.  I have enjoyed the personal connections I’ve made more than any other aspect of blogging.  While my virtual relationships are not the same as those real-world, on-the-ground ones, the generosity, kindness, and encouragement you all have shown me has helped me grow, and to heal hurts that I hadn’t even been aware of.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.
  • Starting a blog was not that hard. I still don’t have the “bells and whistles,” skills my children have, but I can drive the boat.  Blogging is a testament to life being doable.  In year two, it’s time to learn at least one bell/whistle.
  • Blogging is a measuring tool. When I look back at some of my early writing, I can envision ways to make the writing more effective than it was then.  I also look back at some of the writing I did about my husband’s journey with prostate cancer and I think about the way the writing helped me to achieve some emotional closure.  Because I flung my words out into the universe, they became a kind of commitment to my soul, something I had to go back to when the downs came calling.  Those words, once spooled out, became a permanent record of all I have felt, all I have achieved, all I have hoped.
  • I’ve been fairly consistent with my posting, but I have learned that sometimes I just can’t keep up.  I’ve also learned not to worry about it.  The earth won’t stop spinning on its axis if I go a couple of weeks without a post.

Year One STATISTICS

Blog Posts: 86

Blog Views: 3027

Total Comments: 293 (Half of these are mine, because I always reply to comments. I’m Southern.)

Followers: 117

Top Three Posts:

# 3  Daily Discomfort: Frozen

# 2   Daily Discomfort: Love and Time

# 1  Daily Discomfort: Getting A Pedicure

The post with the most comments:

 DD: Mozart and the Beautiful Tears

Up Next:

EPSON MFP image

My editorial calendar for the year: It will probably change, but at least I’ve got a plan.

For year 2, I’ve changed the editorial calendar a bit.

Each week I’ll write a feature article based on a monthly theme.  I’ll also write once a week from a prompt I generate in a new way each month.  Each month, I’ll write an article for the paus(ed) category based on how to use that prompt generation in the classroom.

In September, I’m writing about the New Guard.  You know, my kids and their kids.  I have just learned from NPR that I am of the Old Guard.  I (and apparently many of you) am classified as the Old Guard because I am are still using Twitter.

I’ll also write from a series of prompts generated by my Personal Universal Desk.  It’s a cool tool.  I’ll write about how it works so you can use it too if you want. I’ll also write about how to use the PUD(makes me feel good just to put it into writing) in your classroom.

pauseRReport: On Six Months of Blogging, Brain Fog, and New Strategies

02 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Blogging, Goals, Reflection, Writing

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

blogs, Gallagher's Write Like This, pauserreport, writing

fog

I’m in there somewhere.

Here is one thing I learned in month six:

  • In terms of readership, it’s almost as important to respond to what other people are saying on their blogs as it is to write your own posts. My February views and visitors were lower than views and visitors in January, but many of those views resulted from comments I’d made on other sites.

Some of my favorite Blog posts from the month of February are:

  • Let’s Play Literary Would You Rather!(6th Edition) 101 Books
  • Friday Book Chat: Movies That Were Better Than Their Book, Such Small Hands
  • The Good, the Bad, and the Low Flush Toilet Peg-0-Leg’s Ramblings
  • Jesse Fuller, The Lone Cat, The Immortal Jukebox
  • A Year of Reading the World: A Q & A with Ann Morgan, WordPress.com
  • Permission to Fail, Brevity

My blog just didn’t get much of my attention in the month of February.  I only posted 4 times, and the most read post was Love and Time.  An intestinal infection plagued me for the better part of two weeks, and I lacked a general sense of focus, which is unusual for me.   I think brain fog is a good description for what I felt in the month of February. Is that one of the symptoms of the pause with men in it?  I can’t remember.

In the years before my pause year, I probably had these dry spells, but who has time to think about their missing mojo when that report is due in the next two hours and three people are standing in line outside of your office to have a heart to heart talk with you about what you need to do for them immediately? And before I had major responsibilities in an office, I had major responsibilities at home.  Children don’t understand that Mommy is feeling a little off and therefore cannot make you that grilled cheese sandwich you’ve been craving.  My whole life has been do, do, do, with no time for reflection.

My goal setting for February.

My goal setting for February.

Now I’m my own boss, and I have both the freedom and time to decide how I want my life to proceed. I need some new strategies. So without a real grasp of what these strategies should be, I’m now writing some ideas down and naming them strategies because I have to start somewhere.

  • I need solid ideas about what I’m going to be writing in a given month. I have been pretty consistent to write about a topic for a month or so.  In February, I wrote three vague ideas on my whiteboard. They were unrelated to one another, and I only managed to write about one of them.  This month, I’ll get more specific with myself, perhaps by using Gallagher’s if you have 1 you have 18 brainstorming technique.
  • It would be nice if I could get just a little bit ahead. Maybe some of my posts could be shorter and the topics could extend into a second post.  It would help if I had something to post when the well runs dry.
  • I need one goal for the next month, not three. Three goals feels like an albatross around my neck.  One is more manageable.  So my goal for March is to publish two posts a week, at least one of which will related to the topic of the month, which I will think of soon.

What about you?  What strategies do you employ when your mojo is in hiding?  How do you keep blogging when the blogging gets tough?

The PauseRReport: January 2015

01 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Blogging, Goals, Reflection

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

blogs, goals, monthly reflection

Questions that make you think- Marfa Texas

Marfa, Texas  January 2015

Here are some of the things I’ve learn in this, my fifth month of blogging.

  • My soon to be daughter- in- law sat with me while I created categories and menus to make the blog more user friendly for people who just wanted to look at a certain type of post. Her assistance was absolutely invaluable, so I learned from my sweet, soon- to- be daughter that you don’t always have to figure everything out by yourself.  I love my children and their spouses.  I love them so much.
  • No matter what, it’s really about the writing. Good, solid writing is what really counts, so I need to keep on working to improve my writing.
  • It’s okay to write about what you want to write about.
  • Fulfilling goals is scary. The Pillow Poll was scary.  The Song of the Month was dry-mouth, head in hands, on the downslide of the roller coaster scary.  But when you have done it, it doesn’t kill you.  In fact, it’s satisfying to take a little thought and blow on the spark of it until you’ve created a glowing ember.
  • In writing about my confusion and frustration with the birdy format, I came to a realization. When I voiced my misgivings, my understanding of the platform actually took a cognitive leap forward. I need to examine this idea more.

Books I’ve read this month:

  • All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
  • Burned by Karen Marie Moning
  • The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon
  • Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella

Inspiring me to go through new doors.

Blog Posts I’ve enjoyed:

  • Twirl,  The Carter Library
  • He Wrote It Down, In Other Words
  • The “Word Problem” Problem, Math with Bad Drawings
  • Hiding In The Shadows: The Way We Make a Broken Heart, The Immortal Jukebox
  • Why I Would Rather Find the Funny than the Meaning of Life: Peg-o-leg’s Ramblings

 

Total Views in Month Five:                          382

Total Visitors in Month Five:                      194

My top posts:

  • To Tweet or Not to Tweet
  • It’s the Last Midnight: Reflections on 2014
  • Daily Discomfort: The Rose

February Goals:

Every day is new

Every day is new

  • Sign up for an online photography course
  • Learn to do one HTML move
  • Hashtag a tweet and do three more @’s for people I refer to on the blog.

Recent Posts

  • New Site:On Revision
  • Finally…
  • Where I’ve Been: A Tale of Two Babies
  • We all Fall
  • If you get an Outfit, You can Go to Zumba, too.

Recent Comments

Charlotte Hoather on New Site:On Revision
koehlerjoni on Where I’ve Been: A Tale of Two…
Jalyss Smith on Where I’ve Been: A Tale of Two…
Charlotte Hoather on We all Fall
koehlerjoni on We all Fall

Archives

  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2016
  • March 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
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  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014

Recent Posts

  • New Site:On Revision
  • Finally…
  • Where I’ve Been: A Tale of Two Babies
  • We all Fall
  • If you get an Outfit, You can Go to Zumba, too.

Recent Comments

Charlotte Hoather on New Site:On Revision
koehlerjoni on Where I’ve Been: A Tale of Two…
Jalyss Smith on Where I’ve Been: A Tale of Two…
Charlotte Hoather on We all Fall
koehlerjoni on We all Fall

Archives

  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2016
  • March 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
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  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014

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