The Art & Poetry of Mary Coleman

I did not do any art today. Instead I wrote some letters that I had been meaning to write for awhile. I have two pen pals I keep up with, one is my uncle in Philadelphia and the other is a woman I met online around 13 years ago on a forum. It gives me a good excuse to buy stickers, nice stamps, and pretty stationary. Also, it’s just nice to exchange snail mail letters.

I ran 2 miles with a friend today and tomorrow and Saturday we are running together. Sunday I will do it on my own. I need to get a 4 mile run in and two more 2 milers. Except for yesterday when running during the daytime triggered a panic attack (I really shouldn’t exercise after 10am), I think daily exercise has been helping with anxiety and mood. Monday and Tuesday were pretty good days (no panic attacks). Yesterday wasn’t so hot, but I didn’t exercise until 1pm.

Tomorrow I am doing strength training for another 30 minutes. That will make it an hour for the week. I’m not sure if I want to up it to 45 minutes like I initially planned in my New Year’s resolution because I find it really boring and I’m scared that if I try and do it for any longer I will get too bored over time and quit doing it all together. 30 minutes seems like a good routine anyway. An hour a week is a lot of weight lifting. I’m not trying to get buff, just trying to improve my muscle and skeletal health, so I think that 30 minutes sessions promote that enough for my needs. If I want to increase the difficulty I can just go up on the weights I’m using. Currently I’m at 10 pounds and that’s kicking my butt, but I could use 25 pound dumbbells when the 10 pound ones no longer feel like a challenge.

The internet. I know it existed as a concept well before me, but it’s widespread use by the public came after I was born and really entered my world in the early 1990’s. The first memory I have of the internet was how our class had an email that the teacher used to contact a team of archeologists. They would send us information about their dig via email and the teacher would read it to us. That was third grade so 1990.

It was around this time that my mother got her first personal computer (a Mac) for her business. It had internet capabilities, but she did not get dial up until I was in high school. I used to play games on it after school. There were Macs in the computer lab at my school as well, but they were really old (think Apple IIE with the black and green screen) and did not connect to the internet. In every classroom we had a single black and white Macintosh as well, which was a bit newer than the lab computers, but none of those went online either (but we could play Sim City on them). It wasn’t until middle school (1994) that there were school computers in the library with internet access. I personally didn’t use it until my freshman year of high school when I got my first email in 1997.

to-do-list

1. Water plants, brush dog’s teeth, get exercise clothes on
2. Run 2 miles with my friend
3. Breakfast then fasting window starts and lasts until 4pm
4. Paint rest of torso of figure and tweak areas that need work
5. Meditate
6. Take the dog on a walk weather permitting
7. 4pm fasting window ends
8. Cook dinner
9. Eat within calorie limit, no sweets today or ultra-processed foods, get in 60+g of protein and 25+g of fiber
10. Read 4 chapters of Dust