Incremental progress

I have a habit of, every time I come in thorough our driveway gate and I'm on foot, picking up a handful of rocks. Then I drop them into a barrel that's near our house.

I do this because these rocks are left over from the house-building process: tthey dumped a scattered layer of rocks near the entrance, I guess so the big trucks wouldn't bog down in the dirt. But, I don't like them there -- it makes it hard to mow the lawn, with all these rocks about -- so one of these days (!!!) I'm going to dig them up and put them somewhere more useful.

But, in the meantime, I grab a handful at a time. And so far I've collected half a barrel full.


A few weeks ago, once our baby boys stopped waking me up during the night, I've been staying up from 10pm to midnight to work on my Dissertation. (Note: It's a real dis-incentive to stay up late to work on something, when you know that the 5-6hr period you should be allowed to sleep will be interrupted -- twice.) I don't do this every night -- instead, I alternate: some nights I write until midnight, and get up at 6am; other nights, I get to sleep from 10pm to 6am (or 6:30).

Plus, if I manage to break away earlier, like 8pm or 9pm, I'll do it. But that doesn't happen much. Three children, all under four years old.

These two hours a night, of course, is on top of the time I devote to it at work. It's just two hours a night, but it's pleasantly surprising at how it aggregates up. I seem to crank out an average of five pages per hour -- which again, doesn't sound like much -- but it adds up.


Around the same time, as I started this "evening shift", I also started doing one-armed shoulder presses (some people call them "military presses"; see photo). I do them every other night (you're supposed to give your body 24 hours to recover -- which is when the muscle-building actually occurs), three sets of what used to be five reps, but I'm now up to nine. I'm about to put some more weight on, though, once I get to ten or twelve reps -- at which point the number of reps I do will fall back to a lower number.

I've been really pleased with my progress: my capacity seems to go up about 8% a session.

Why am I doing this? Well, I've always wanted to be able to do a proper hand-stand, and walk on my hands. But, I don't have the arm strength to support my body and shift my hand placement to maintain my balance. So, my aim is to be able to support my body weight (around 80kg) -- which would be 40kg per arm.

So far, I'm at 22.5kg. But, I have time.

It all aggregates up.


--GG


(The photo is NOT me; it's from http://www.bowhunting.net/artman/uploads/military_press_starting_position.jpg)