Rebuilding the Exercise Routine, One Day at a Time

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Life2 Comments

I mentioned in my June Write Day post last week that I had achieved my goal of exercising every day throughout the month of May. I’m very pleased and proud with this achievement. I haven’t had a regular workout routine since sometime during the pandemic.

For the 15ish years between high school and my early thirties, I had a regular gym routine focused on strength training. During that span, I trained with weights, running, swimming, boxing, and rock climbing, and I was able to evolve my routine over time as I moved places and my lifestyle shifted. That all changed when I was laid off in 2019 and lost access to my former employer’s amazing gym. I tried to reestablish a routine at a gym near our house, and then everything fell apart in 2020.

Starting a New Routine

So I’d like to take a look at my routine in May and see how it’s developed. This is partially a way for me to glean an early routine again. Now, I had three main principles for my daily exercise routine for May:

  1. Do anything, regardless of how tired I was. Even if it was just a 10-minute stretch, I needed to prove to myself that I could proactively do something each and every day, regardless of how small.
  2. Focus on small goals. I didn’t go for intricate, 30- or 60-minute workouts from the jump. I knew I needed to build up to that — and I’m still building up to that.
  3. Be responsive to how my body feels. If I felt like I had the energy, I’d do something more intensive. If I felt worn down and just wanted to decompress, I’d focus on stretching and movement.

Building the New Routine

I’m not going to go day-by-day, but I’d like to trace my progress over the month of May to demonstrate how a decent routine can be built in tiny steps.

Week 1

  • 4 days of basic stretching
  • 2 days of resistance training
  • 1 day with a 20-minute yoga session

Week 2

  • 4 days with a 10-minute yoga session
  • 2 days of resistance training
  • 1 day with 4km of walking

Here’s an overview of my first two weeks. Week 1 was heavy on stretching, while week 2 I managed to do a lot of yoga. I also took advantage of a family trip to an amusement park to get in a ton of walking, which I think counts for something.

Week 3

  • 3 days of resistance training
  • 2 days with a 15-minute yoga session
  • 1 day with a 10-minute yoga session
  • Unexpected and unexpectedly difficult trampoline workout

Week 4+ (Last 10 days)

  • 1 day of basic stretching
  • 2 days with a 10-minute yoga session
  • 3 days with a 15- or 20-minute yoga session
  • 3 days of resistancec training
  • 1 day of kayaking, 1300m sprint

Notice in the final two weeks, I started doing longer yoga sessions. You can’t see it in the above, but I also tried to vary the types of workouts I did, as well. I took advantage of a family play date / dinner date at our friends’ house to play on their trampoline with our kids, which was so much more tiring than I expected. I also used one of our regular summer lake trips to kayak, something I love to do and really love the workout.

Continuing the Routine

The point is, once I committed to exercising every day, I was able to quickly ramp up to more intense workouts and dedicate more time to my routine each day. I don’t have a firm routine set yet, but I think it’s plain to see one had started to emerge in the second half of the month, effectively splitting time between resistance training and yoga.

Now I just need to find the time to kayak more.

Steve D

June Write Day: Routines

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Fantasy, On LifeLeave a comment

We had a lot going on in May. Between some business travel, some home improvement projects, and living with two little boys who seem hellbent on wrestling each other into oblivion, we were busy.

June will, hopefully, be a little easier. I’m traveling to a friend’s wedding for a weekend this month, and I’m trying to focus on having a couple days to relax and reset a bit; I’m trying not to stress too much about the actual travel bit. Airports are stressful.

Last Month’s Goals

  1. Actually finish two revisions for Uprooted.
  2. Plan next steps for The Herb Witch Tales.
  3. Read three books.
  4. Exercise every day.

Finish two revisions for Uprooted?

No, but I’ve identified the issue. I don’t have a routine. I’ve previously used NaNoWriMo to track writing progress, but it’s not really helpful for tracking… anything other than writing. As you’ll see in the section about my exercise routine below, staying accountable to myself, even in very simple ways, is immensely helpful. So I need to start doing this for all things writing related. More to come on this next month.

Anyway, I completed for full read-through of Uprooted. I think it’s overall solid, except the ending needs some more. As is my habit, I had gotten to writing the ending and just wanted to finish, and so I rushed it more than was necessary. I want to pad it out a bit so it’s not as abrupt for the reader. So I finished one read-through.

I got about halfway through my second read-through, the goal of which is to map out my scenes and their length, so I can determine if there’s a better way to organize my novella into shorter chapters.

In short, I have more work to do on Uprooted, but it’s nothing major.

Plan next steps for The Herb Witch Tales?

Not really. Kind of? While it’s tempting to say I’ll be ready to send Uprooted off to my editor and beta readers once I’m through my next revision phase, that’s probably hasty. I’m thinking I need to get Uprooted to a good spot where I’m comfortable with it as a singular story, and then go through revisions for New Earth.

Doing so will help me ensure that the themes and tones I want both stories to share are properly touched on throughout. Rather than finalizing one, I want to finalize both. So, that’s my very loose plan.

Read three books?

Yes! I finished this goal about halfway through May, and since then I’ve been taking my time with new reads. I’m still working through Raising Good Humans and A Memory of Light, and I’m also listening to Tyll, a retelling of a German folktale that I am honestly not sure what to think about yet.

I’m hoping to finish at least at of these this month, and I’ll find the third somewhere.

Exercise every day?

YESSS! This is the part of this post I’ve been most excited for. I exercised every single day, and after only the first one to two weeks, my exercise habits started to change. I’m going to do a deeper dive on this next week, but basically, the first week of May had a few days of just stretching as my exercise, because it was all I had the mental or physical energy for. I started doing more yoga, even in 10-minute sessions, and that has grown.

I’m continuing the trend for June and starting to formulate a basic routine. I’m just not marrying myself to anything rigid at this point, because I want to keep progressing. I’ve used Samsung Notes to track my daily progress, and honestly, it’s working. More to come next week!

Goals for June

  1. Do something writing related at least every other day. Similar to my exercise routine, I need to set of routine of writing things. Not writing, specifically, or writing X words per day, because I’m not in a drafting phase. But I need to be accountable for the progress that I’m making, so this is my way of doing it. I’m saying every other day for now, because I just need to establish the routine, then build on it. I think this will help me achieve my more specific goals for Uprooted — I’m just keeping things simple for this month.
  2. Read three books. As I said above, I want to finish at least two of the three I have in progress and then find another one to round out the month.
  3. Exercise every day. I just want to keep the momentum going. I think a routine is starting to coalesce in my head, but I just want to stay adaptable for now. This is working for me physically and mentally. I’ll provide more detail next week.

Steve D

Book Review: THE FLAME BEARER stumbles to a satisfying ending

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, ReviewsLeave a comment

The Flame Bearer is the tenth book in Bernard Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom series, and it caps off a run of faster-paced stories in over the last few novels.

In this installment, Uhtred sees the budding rivalries between the West Saxons, the Danes, and the Scots in Northumbria as both a threat and an opportunity for his claim to Bebbanburg. acts on his ambitions from the previous story (Warriors of the Storm), and the result is a brutal battle.

Leading up to the climax, Uhtred blunders his way from one step to the next, always with some semblance of a plan in mind, but loose enough for the reader to think he’s on his way to disaster. As I was reading, this felt like an intentional plot point where Uhtred’s confidence leads to drastic measures for him to gather information. In retrospect, I think these sections were a little questionable.

Uhtred has shown in the past that his overconfidence or his desperation can cause him to act quickly, if not wisely. These chapters just felt a little out of character for the older, wiser Uhtred we’ve come to know. I’m okay with chalking it up to his desperation to retake Bebbanburg, though.

I also enjoyed seeing a few younger characters get more time and development on the page. Aethelstan has quickly grown into my favorite character, and his transition from a supposed bastard into a Prince of Wessex is fully realized here in the initiative he takes in the final act and the ultimate leadership he shows on the battlefield. Uhtred the younger also displays the cunning, bravery, and ferocity he’s learned from his father in surprising ways.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel. It followed a familiar formula from previous books, but that is to be expected by this point in the series. I still feel like I’m learning something new about Uhtred and some of the other characters with each book, and that’s progress.

Spoiler warning: I was honestly surprised that this was not the final book of the series. However, I think Cornwell has laid the groundwork with the story of the Flame Bearer in previous novels well enough that this story does not feel like a sudden turn. I’m excited to see what further developments come in future books. Spoilers end.

Steve D

Book Review: WARRIORS OF THE STORM

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, ReviewsLeave a comment

I’ve continued my listening to The Last Kingdom series by Bernard Cornwell with Warriors of the Storm. This 9th entrant in The Last Kingdom series really brought all of the elements I enjoy about this story together.

In this story, Uhtred has entered his second “prime” as a lord serving Aethelflaed, the Lady of Mercia.

Uhtred has reestablished his relationships with his children and the young Aethelstan, and he builds on these relationships in Warriors of the Storm in meaningful ways, demonstrating that he is no longer the absent father as when his children were younger. He is a father and a leader of young people, who finds young boy servants he knows can learn from him and join the ranks of his warriors as they become men.

Uhtred’s own ambitions have also been reseeded after seeming lost for a time. Through the middle few books of this series, Uhtred appears mostly aimless. He always pines to retake his ancestral home at Bebbanburg, but he has very little idea of how to accomplish that, so he is buffeted from conflict to conflict against a constant tide of new enemies. Warriors of the Storm feels like the first time in several books that Uhtred shows real ambition, where he takes proactive steps to make his claim to Bebbanburg.

This ambition gets Uhtred into some trouble with an army of Norsemen, hearkening back to his younger brasher days. But as a veteran warlord, and with some good allies, he makes his stand.

This story called back a lot of themes from previous stories, helping it feel quite familiar: a Northern threat; a mysterious sorceress; a hair-brained quest; and a last-ditch battle. It was a great story overall that reminded me of why I love this series.

The narration is serviceable, but the tone of this narrator feels underwhelming to me. I suppose nothing compares to the bellowing and growling of Jonathan Keeble, who narrated the first few stories of this series.

Steve D

Book Review: THE KING OF ELFLAND’S DAUGHTER and the precursor to modern fantasy

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, ReviewsLeave a comment

I just finished listening to an audiobook of The King of Elfland’s Daughter, by Lord Dunsany. I’ve previously listened to a short story collection of his that I had enjoyed less than I could have, most likely because of the dull voice actor.

So I came into this novel hoping I could find more enjoyment out of it (and a better voice actor).

I really enjoyed this story. The King of Elfland’s Daughter follows a family, a human lord and his elfin wife and their son, as they each navigate the boundary between the human world and the realm of magic, Elfland. The story started slowly, but the shifting of perspectives between “the fields we know” and Elfland brought an interesting dichotomy between the worlds and how each character wrestles with their desires, the relationships to each other, and their home.

This story feels like a progenitor of modern twentieth-century fantasy. It leans quite heavily on mythical creatures that would have been quite familiar to an English reader in the early twentieth century: elfs, unicorns, witches, trolls, and an enchanted forest. Where Tolkien borrowed ideas and themes from Northern European (and other) mythologies and shaped them into his own distinct world, Dunsany inserts fantasy elements into a world that feels not so far removed from our own. Thus, his story reads as if it could have been a lost fairy tale of pre-modern England.

In that way, the tone of this story is solemn and full of wonder.

Throughout The King of Elfland’s Daughter, a pervading sense of yearning is captured between the different characters: yearning for love, for lost love, for home, for the hunt, for so many small things, and this helps the solemn tone feel earned, rather than overwrought. The reader yearns with the characters and feels their losses and gains.

Like in all classic fantasy, the theme of the realms of magic receding from human knowledge stands stark, and so the entire story feels like a lamenting and a yearning for that deeper connection to a world we have lost, or perhaps abandoned.

As I mentioned above, the voice actor for the audiobook version is also excellent, and has definitely endeared me to Lor Dunsany’s writing in a way that the previous stories I’d listened to did not. Now I know I will need to go back and read his other work, either in hard copy or with a different narrator.

Steve D