Irish gal living the American dream in Austin, Texas y'all!

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Month one: I wanna be a hippie!

It's in my nature to experiment. In fact, I've made (or am attempting to make) a career of it! For those of you who don't know me too well I'm a research scientist, trying to figure out how proteins important in many diseases interact in the human cell.. dozed off yet?

me and my PhD sitting in a tree...

K this is all the science talk ever on here, promise, so bear with me. We come up with hypotheses (propose scenarios), test them with experiments, they are wildly successful and I win the Nobel Prize.. whoops I must have drifted into fantasy land there, but we do hope to discover important things that will impact human health positively.

In real non-science life, for a year I plan to test a number of hypotheses, one at a time for a month each and see if it is something I will stick with or not or make any changes at all to my regular routine. The overall aim of the game? To push myself to do new things and maybe learn a thing or two. I am approaching that big 3-0 in a little over a year so I figure I might as well start early with the getting wise part (the old, not so much ;)).

First month? I wanna be a hippie!! I propose (as do all the hippies I've met) that doing yoga and going vegan will make me a more chilled, happier healthier person. To test this out I will eat vegan food only (gulp) and do yoga everyday for November. I'll leave off the hairy legs part of being a hippie

....touches leg....

hmm, maybe i'm halfway to becoming a hippie already, moving swiftly along!


I'll pick a different theme each month based on things that are likely to a bit challenging but once I've committed/forced myself to do I will likely enjoy. I'm thinking dancing will have to be in there, like salsa or two stepping.. I reckon I'm a great dancer (who doesn't after a tipple or two?!) but my boyfriend reckons I have no rhythm..hmph, I'll show him!

getting my two-step on with a random gent at the Broken Spoke
I also wanna prove that you can do things on the cheap (I kinda have to coz I'm not exactly flash with cash).. basically I want to prove to myself that where there's a will there's a way so excuses don't fly.

Manageable tasks.. I think so! My brother just cycled 2800 miles in a month, this'll be easy peasy! I'm seriously proud by the way.

It's all about pushing beyond that comfort zone. That's where the name of my blog came from and that's also why I started to blog. Writing a blog that a few people seem to like reading and reaching my half marathon fundraising goal gave me confidence. It really is mind over matter and once you set your mind on a goal, something that might even seem out of reach, you have so much to gain by challenging yourself and just going for it.. don't think about it for too long. Tell a friend (or tell everyone like I did) so you don't chicken out. By putting myself out there on the blog, I also learned to not care about what people think.. you gotta do stuff for yourself, and if you fail, who gives a crap? Just you.. Put your ego aside because it's very likely at least one good thing has/will come of it.

I also want to be one of those people, where someone asks ''have you ever tried x,y,z'' and i'll be like, ''yup, sure did''! so maybe i'll get more adventurous as the months go on. Have you any suggestions? I'll take them seriously as long as it's not cycling 2800 miles, a la Tabby :)

Yoga will be good for managing stress and gaining flexibility to ward off those pesky running injuries. I try it every so often but I think it's something you need to do very regularly to see any benefit. And it definitely won;t be easy. you know all those images of yoga poses where someone is just sitting cross legged on a mat with their eyes closed just breathing and stuff.. lies I tell ya, I was sore for 2 days after I tried it first!

Going vegan should be interesting! I was vegetarian for 5 years as a teenager but me thinks this will be another ball game altogether. Bill Clinton reckons it changed his life and all that so we shall be seeing if there's some truth in it.. well here goes! If it's a flop and I'm just hungry for the month I'll counter it and eat raw steak for breakfast, lunch and dinner in December :)

Question time: have you ever gone vegan? Ever tried some crazy yoga or practice regularly?


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