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Woke up today, checked my emails, and found 3 from different places I applied for work, each of them saying they're going with someone else, better luck next time.

I can't help but feel worthless right now.

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Woke up today, checked my emails, and found 3 from different places I applied for work, each of them saying they're going with someone else, better luck next time.

I can't help but feel worthless right now.

Welcome to the club! :D

 

On the job front, I've not really done much ever since that Dallas job offer fell through back in February. I have half-assedly applied a few places, but I'm currently taking advantage of my parents' generosity and just... holding off for a while. I've currently got three things in the works, but not beyond the initial phone introduction for any of them.

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I decided mid-last year that I wanted to become an actor, and so applied to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) for entry in 2014. For context, that's where Chiwetel Eijiofor and Benedict Cumberbatch went, for example.

 

And hey, I got through to the final round! I don't know when it'll be yet (although I'm assured soon) but I am very excited. And nervous. But excited. Mostly nervous. Also I have a lot a lot a lot of work to do. Bugger.

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I decided mid-last year that I wanted to become an actor, and so applied to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) for entry in 2014. For context, that's where Chiwetel Eijiofor and Benedict Cumberbatch went, for example.

 

And hey, I got through to the final round! I don't know when it'll be yet (although I'm assured soon) but I am very excited. And nervous. But excited. Mostly nervous. Also I have a lot a lot a lot of work to do. Bugger.

 

Sounds like a big decision; congrats!

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Since March, I've been trying to get back to working out on a regular basis.  I have a typical love/hate relationship with fitness.  Part of me actually quite enjoys working out, but I tend to be horribly self-motivated.  I liked the Crossfit classes, as they gave me a lot of good motivation, but ultimately were just too intense for my level of fitness. 

 

Now I'm doing a kettleball workout at home.  300 swings in sets of 50, and between each set do 50 reps of a combination of sit-ups, pushups, squats, various dumbbell exercises, and burpees. 

 

 

Holy shit. That is a lot of exercise.

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Holy shit. That is a lot of exercise.

 

Surprisingly, it doesn't really feel that way.  The whole thing takes around 40ish minutes.  You control the intensity by deciding how much weight to use, so it's manageable for anyone regardless of how strong you are or how much stamina you have.  And the in between exercises you can load with the things that are easier for you, and build slowly on the ones that are hard.  Like I suck at pushups.  Bad suck, 5 in a row is a victory for me.  But I try to mix in some other, easier exercises that build up the muscles that are good for pushups. 

 

I like it because you're constantly changing what you're doing.  I can't stand stationary exercise equipment, as 5 minutes feels like 30 minutes to me and I'm bored almost instantly. 

 

And I'm not some fitness guru.  I'm probably 45 to 50 pounds overweight and I smoke.  But I was pretty big into weight lifting in my teens and early 20s.  I also like this workout because it includes good weight training, but is fast paced enough to also be a solid cardio workout. 

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Woke up today, checked my emails, and found 3 from different places I applied for work, each of them saying they're going with someone else, better luck next time.

I can't help but feel worthless right now.

 

At least they got back to you, a lot of places would just stonewall the people who they didn't hire.

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At least they got back to you, a lot of places would just stonewall the people who they didn't hire.

 

Agreed. Last time I was job hunting the uncertainty really wore me down. Especially when companies sometimes get back to you months after you applied so there's really no point where you can definitively mark them off the list. The outright rejections were a relief. Though I still hold it against them forever. What idiots would pass up hiring me?!

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I can't stand stationary exercise equipment, as 5 minutes feels like 30 minutes to me and I'm bored almost instantly.

 

:tup:

 

That sort of linear motion only trains a very specific kind of strength too. Free weights build better muscles for more varied movement.

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I don't even know what a kettleball is (though I imagine a ball with a handle or something) so it sounds like an exceptionally large amount of exercise to me. Especially because literally all I'm doing right now is the running. Which I realize is not ideal.

 

Well I'm eating better too. I think. I haven't really been keeping track of it, but I stopped eating thirteen extra dinners for snacks and my meals are smaller and filled with less microwave burritos. (But man I enjoy a microwave burrito.)

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 Especially because literally all I'm doing right now is the running. Which I realize is not ideal.

 

Don't be down on just running, it's still great exercise, and it's more important to be doing something than trying to be totally optimal. 

 

And yes, you accurately described a kettleball (bell).  It's just a ball of iron with a handle on it.  The standard exercise is literally just swinging it between your legs, and up to head height.  But it can be used for all sorts of other exercises as well.  Very versatile and simple piece of equipment.

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Oh I'm not down on just running. I mean, before this week I was doing literally nothing, physical-activity-wise. I still do mostly nothing but I am committing to this, at least. I just kind of feel like I'm wasting days when I'm not running. I know that there's no way in hell I'd be able to run every day right off the bat, but I also know that I could be doing other things. I don't have any equipment of any sort, but I think I could handle burpees and sit-ups and push-ups and the like on the off days. Well, maybe not burpees, since there's jumping involved and my legs are sooooore.

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I always heard it called a kettlebell, but yeah. There's one set of a dozen kettlebell swings in one of my workouts, so I'm thinking about like a 5-10kg kettlebell. 300 kettlebell swings is an awful lot in that frame of reference! The program I'm following has 2 no-freeweight workouts in it a week. Twig if you want to try some bodyweight stuff -

 

pushups (do half pushups, knees on the ground butt in the air if you can't. If those are too easy, 3/4 pushups with your knees on the ground but your body stiff)

sit ups/crunches

bodyweight squats

burpees (I can remember my first grade gym teacher calling these squat thrusts. He was the only one I've ever heard do that)

lunges

glute bridge (shoulders on the ground, knees in the air. clench your butt. It's pretty much what it sounds like)

jumping jacks!

 

we're talking like 5-10 of each. maybe pick 2 sets of 3 of them or something? Do jumping jacks in between sets. :3

 

I am not a trainer, but it's not hard to work up a sweat and get some quality exercise making your body move around. It also won't be screaming pain forever.

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I always heard it called a kettlebell

 

That's because it is a kettlebell and I had a typing brain fart.  Really tempted to fix those now, but then this exchange will just like like crazy talk.

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Spoilered to avoid google-able job woes:

This class is murdering me. Because they're third grade, they're at the age where behaviour stuff is just beginning to emerge and testing is just happening mid-year for a lot of real troubled kids. In the past two months, the number of kids in my class on special behaviour plans has doubled. My class is 26 students, ideal for this age is 16 - 20. I now have fully a third of my class on behaviour plans for destructive and/or defiant behaviour (which, oddly, is nearly the exact number of students that my class is above the target). Administration thinks that the solution to this is an early morning meeting every Monday where they scrutinize my plans for the week into the ground. I am crying in the shower every morning and dead-eyed after work to the point that my friends and partner are becoming intensely worried about me.

 

10 more weeks until this contract is up. That means that I'm done 16 of them. This class is seriously making me reconsider whether I want to continue teaching. After dedicating myself to this for 8 years of university and having an experience with a class from September to December that was fucking extraordinary and made me love teaching more than anything, this group of kids just makes me want to throw it all in. I'm so fucking tired. Fuck everything.

I just read this book, which I found fascinating. One of the things mentioned near the end is that in the US there's now the idea that everything hinges no teacher 'effectiveness' and teacher have to be assessed and monitored all the time. Is this an outflow of this policy? It sounds super-shitty. I wish you much strength.

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I just read this book, which I found fascinating. One of the things mentioned near the end is that in the US there's now the idea that everything hinges no teacher 'effectiveness' and teacher have to be assessed and monitored all the time. Is this an outflow of this policy? It sounds super-shitty. I wish you much strength.

 

I can't speak for the book or for the elementary/secondary system firsthand, but I personally believe the current American obsession with teacher assessment comes out of a paranoia about "bad" teachers lurking in the system and a desire to systematize teaching by treating teachers like low-level bureaucrats. This really came into play with the "No Child Left Behind" policy of the early Dubya years, which basically tried to rationalize all policy and funding in the American education around a vastly expanded battery of standardized tests. The end result, of course, was an exodus of qualified teachers who refused to teach to the test and an increased gap between poor and rich districts based on who could attract high-performing students that could raise their district's average and get them more funding because of it. It's generally a mess now because no one can say outright what a failure it is; if they do, they get attacked for being "against education" and hence "against children".

 

However, Miffy's from Canada, right? I don't know if their education system is in a similarly terrible state or if it is just one bad principal who recently made the jump from boardroom to classroom.

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I've seen the advice about how static stretching is bad, but I'm also really inflexible.

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One of the things I like most about running is that it wakes me up. (I run in the morning.) I'm so much more awake at this time of day than I was yesterday. (I wake up at 10am, and it's currently 11:40am.)

 

Also I keep meaning to move my alarm up to 9am, so I guess I'll do that right after clicking the post button.

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Rather than a Kettlebell, my housemate has an exercise sledge hammer he uses on occasion. It starts out weighing 20 lbs, but you can open up the head and add lead shot if you want. I've never tried it, but he seems to get quite a workout.

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Rather than a Kettlebell, my housemate has an exercise sledge hammer he uses on occasion. It starts out weighing 20 lbs, but you can open up the head and add lead shot if you want. I've never tried it, but he seems to get quite a workout.

 

I'm sure it is good exercise, but I'm sure anyone who sees him using it ends up a little freaked out.

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It was a bit startling to walk out of my room and see a half-naked man swinging around a bright red sledgehammer with a head the size of a tissue box.

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Is his head that size because he keeps hitting himself with the sledgehammer?

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Woke up today, checked my emails, and found 3 from different places I applied for work, each of them saying they're going with someone else, better luck next time.

I can't help but feel worthless right now.

I want to just tell you that you are worth a great magnitude, but you probably won't believe me; you'll have to convince yourself. One of the things I'm really grateful of is that I an currently in a position where I feel appreciated, find one of these. Ideally you would have a place where you can both feel appreciated and earn enough currency to pay for the ability to live in society, but oddly such circumstances can be difficult to find. So you may consider just finding a place where you can earn currency and finding another place where you are appreciated. It seems that you are working on the currency-source, but I know that in my personal history, I have conflated the two and have concentrated on finding a source of currency at the expense of finding a place I am appreciated. This is problematic because lacking a place where you feel appreciated over a period of time can make you less attractive to employers.

Luckily, it is not very difficult to find opportunities to provide free-labor. While these do not necessarily lead to being appreciated, they do provide ways into circumstances to figure out whether or not it is a place where you may be appreciated.

I recommend thinking of a thing you enjoy doing, a place you want to hang out, or a cause you can get behind. Then go to the institution where this is happening and volunteer some of your time as you continue your search for income. If you feel that you are being taken advantage of, leave. I guarantee you Ucantalas, that there is a situation that can benefit from your particular perspective and efforts. Staying somewhere that treats you like shit is robbing the place that would appreciate you of their well-deserved Ucantalasity.

Get specific as you experiment.

-Can't stand the idea that some people can't afford food? Find a group that feeds the hungry.

-Want to make games? Become very active in a game-making community

-Are you particularly good knitting? Start making hats for bald people you meet.

These efforts may lead you to sources of money, but more importantly, they will remind you that you are fucking awesome and increase your awesomeness (as long as you put effort into not to being an asshole too. Being an asshole takes bites out of your awesomeness, but if you fuck up by being an asshole, don't give up. Stop being an asshole and find circumstances in which you are appreciated to increase your awesomeness even though you lost a lot of it).

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Tomorrow I start my annual vampiric cycle and begin working nights.  Working the night shift doesn't bother me (I actually volunteer for it), but the long weeks and hours do.  I'm going to have to put off playing Transistor when it's released, which really bums me out.

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Yesterday's run kind of flew by. Done before I knew it. I do watch Netflix (currently that's when I watch X-Files) while running, but days one and two seemed to drag despite the distraction. Day three was pew pew done. And I felt pretty good at the end. It almost feels like the C25K program is going too slow, but I guess we'll see how I feel once week two begins. It's only nine weeks total, anyway, so even if it is going too slow, it's not going THAT slow. Once I reach the nine weeks and finish, I want to start running every day instead of every other-ish day.

 

Does anyone have an opinion on barefoot running? Or, at least with those weird toed shoes that are gross to look at oh man. I've been running barefoot on the treadmill (surprisingly not a problem after the third day, although I had a lot of pain on the bottom of my feet after the first day), and I just realized as I was thinking about running outside on Monday that I don't have running shoes. I don't think I'd ever do it pure barefoot because I don't want to step on a rock or anything worse than a rock, but I'm wondering if it's at all worth considering buying those weird gross shoes that are toed.

 

Maybe I should start an exercise thread, at this point. But I don't want to start a habit of starting threads so I probably won't.

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