A year or so ago, I combined some words to invent the term badassmatic. Simply, a badass living with asthma. To be used in a sentence: Steve is the epitome of badassmatic.
Today, let’s define it. It is an honour to be the first ever guest-poster at my friend Steve’s blog Breathinstephen!
Please join me over there for some conversation on music, asthma, owning your health . . . and badassery!
On the 12th of each month, a bunch of bloggers from around the world take 12 pictures of their day and blog them. Here are my pictures for January 12th, 2013!
12:54 am – kitchen. Trying to actually do some non-blog journaling this year. Now it’s bedtime.
11:20 am – kitchen. Got some snow overnight.
2:26 pm – kitchen. Watching WheezyNews vlogs. “This is my preferred method of transportation.”
2:33 pm – kitchen. Mike and I discussing how boring our Saturday 12s will be. Go see his here!
3:08 pm – bedroom. Spent some time on Google Hangout today–second call about to start with Steve because we wanted to try it out–by the time I joined the hangout he’d already decked himself out with effects. Dia and I also did a Hangout call when Skype/Facebook failed us in the morning. I am in love with Hangouts. :]
6:08 pm – kitchen. Vegetarian tacos! I’m extremely boring and all I top the soy taconess with is cheese. So good.
6:28 pm – kitchen. Rocking my ugly sweatpants that you cannot see, so needed to rock my Tummietote to hold my iPod while doing dishes. Priorities, people. See also my epic Threadless shirt with the awesome organs hugging each other :].
7:03 pm – kitchen. I am never going to get an anatomy grade, am I?
7:52 pm – bedroom. Cleaning all of my empty inhalers out of the drawer in my bathroom. This is out of control. That blue Ventolin off to the side is actually probably nearly full but expires in a month. Total count, 47.
8:17 pm – bedroom. Moved onto a different drawer in my room. Seriously. Total count, 57. I haven’t been on Advair [purple] since September ’09, and FloVent [red/orange cap] since March ’09.
Total total: 104. This isn’t a complete number but pretty close. See also: tired of this! Cure please?
10:33 pm – kitchen. Been kind of lazy on the video blogs. Tomorrow.
11:54 pm – kitchen. This made me laugh. A lot. By myself.
I don’t do the halloween costume thing particularly well, but I do love me some tutus.
[And thrifted Threadless tees for $3.99]
And where the inhaler is, nobody knows.
Camouflage.
My friend Alanna asked me to share a bit on public perception and asthma on her blog, Life on T1. Alanna has Type 1 diabetes and lives in Nova Scotia [reppin for Canada!].
Of course, you know me . . . I had to spin it around a little bit!
Head on over to Alanna’s blog and check out what she appropriately titled “Every Breath Counts“!
Thanks, Alanna!
hello, good morning, how ya do? what makes your rising sun so new? i could use a fresh beginning, too . . . all of my regrets are nothing new.
[…] i’m dying to breathe in these abundant skies.hello, good morning, how ya been? yesterday left, my head kicked in. i never, never thought that i would fall like that, never knew that i could hurt this bad.
i’m learning to breathe, i’m learning to crawl […]
learning to breathe, switchfoot
I will be completely honest that I have been very much out of the groove since the beginning of September. At first, I blamed it on readjusting to the new routine of school. Then I was crazy busy, and blamed that. Then I went to California. And we all know what happened in California [and, unfortunatley, did not stay in California].
I’m not intending for this to be a bitchfest post. I’m intending it to be an accountability point. While it is one thing that two or three weeks ago, doing stairs was still really hard, I am slowly getting back to where I want to be. The fact that I haven’t been working out lately prior to the asthma exacerbation is nothing’s fault but my own. I am the one who makes those choices, and I have not been making those choices. So, it is going to be doubly hard to get back to doing what I know I need to be doing exercise-wise because I’ve probably already lost a fair amount of where I was at the beginning of September from simply not being intentional. Yes, I’ve been busy, and yes, recently I’ve been sick. The latter is a reason . . . the former is an excuse.
Since I lost my Fitbit [seriously. It was honestly super depressing when I discovered it was MIA. The people at Fitbit are awesome and are sending me a complimentary replacement], and am constantly in need of some kind of motivation, I joined MeYou Health’s Daily Challenge site–I’d love for you to join me! I receive simple challenges every day to motivate me towards just making one small choice that . . . when added up . . . can make a big difference. It also helps with that intentionality bit by asking a few questions to help evaluate your current wellness–I’m hovering at 80%, likely because of some nutrition and physical activity issues, and dipped down today because I have been feeling stressed this weekend (see also: Darwin paper). The questions are simple, but really make me realize how I am feeling about things, which is awesome.
I get things narrowed-down in a nice little screen like this, helping me to see what I need to work on. Emotional health dropped like 19 points I think just due to the stress factor. The physical health thing is quite obvious due to my state of physical activity and asthma lately.
The healthy behaviours bit, let us explore that a bit more:
Each domain can be outlined like this, giving some concrete ways of how to improve health in the determined area that might need some work. So, once again, this one is all about those little choices that add up . . . and the little choices that are dragging me down in some of the other domains adding up.
I know part of the exercise aversion is that I’m scared of two things, one being that I won’t feel good while doing it [which is basically a given at this point that it will be harder to breathe than usual] and two being that I’ll make myself sick again [which is, at this point, unlikely I would hope, but it comes with the package deal of having a wicked exacerbation, apparently]. The only way to crush those feelings though . . . is to try it.
Goals for the week:
i got my scars, i been to hell and back again. born for the blue skies, we’ll survive the rain. born for the sunrise, we’ll survive the pain.
we’re singing wait it’s not over now, we’ve been down but we’ve never been out . . .
we found a way out, the city takes everything it can. but outside the crowds, i can feel my lungs again. . .
dark horses, switchfoot