Have you heard that it’s good to do something that scares you every day? Like get out of your comfort zone scary, not watch a horror movie scary. Well this past week has been all about that for me. No I didn’t go sky diving, try to surf the North Shore, SCUBA dive the Great Barrier Reef, travel to foreign countries solo, ski the French Alps, do the Ironman triathlon, or have a baby without any pain meds. Nope. I’ve done all that already. So what got me out of my comfort zone, you ask? I taught my first Spinning class. And I survived. But I didn’t knock it out of the park. You know what my evaluator’s biggest gripe was??? I didn’t talk enough! Hahahahah!! No really. That’s what she said. If you know me in real life, you know that’s not usually my problem. Especially if you get me talking about my latest DIY project. God help you if you show up at my front door to drop something off or pick up your kid. Chances are I’ll eat up 15 minutes of your time giving you a tour of all my (half-finished) projects around the house. Yeah, talking is not usually my problem. But I was scared. The microphone was acting up at first and any time I said anything it would screech. We got that fixed but I was still a little afraid to speak. Don’t get me wrong, I did talk, I explained what was coming up, what everyone should be doing, and how much time was left in each portion. But honestly, I don’t think I said one word about cadence or hand position or effort. I was too busy turning the screen on my iPhone back on every 60 seconds and squinting to see the screen. I held it in my left hand for a good portion of a few songs. Whatever, there’s no place to go but up from here!
And because I don’t have any pictures of me teaching my first Spinning class, here are a few pics of other things that have taken me outside my comfort zone. I don’t even have a picture of me riding my road bike, but I swear I did.
You know what was the scariest part of the whole things is for me? The music. I am musically challenged. I always have been. I remember getting my first 10-disc changer in high school. I would load it up with 10 of my own CDs and hit shuffle and not be able to tell you who was singing. No joke. Hey, we all have our strengths and music is definitely NOT one of mine. Maybe that will make you feel better if you’ve ever been a little jealous of my ability to see projects in my head then fill in all the little details. Or my ability to multitask. That was shot to hell this past week, as evidenced by my lack of blog posts. I have been getting some work done on my “open” projects, but couldn’t find the time to blog about them.
Speaking of time sucks… I found a new favorite website… Lynda.com. It is like my dream come true! Do you know how many things I can teach myself now?!? The sky’s the limit. And it’s so cheap, $25 a month to watch as many video classes as you want. I’m just doing the free 7 day trial for now. I have like 50 classes on my playlist. Wait, I just check, 75 classes in 4 playlists. Where I am going to find the time to watch all those? Dude, I’ll stay up late if I have to. I’ve watched 4 already. I tried watching a WordPress class while riding my Spin bike in my office. Um, didn’t work. I do watch TV on my computer and ride my Spin bike at night, but I just couldn’t concentrate on the video classes. And no, I don’t have any type of affiliation with the site, I’m just a sucker for learning something new.
But getting back to music, I am C.L.U.E.L.E.S.S. But I think after a week of working on it, I’ve come up with a system that will work for me. I found a great blog called Spinning Music with playlists and suggestions for warm-ups, sprints, climbs, etc. I have to print the lists then go through the songs one by one, looking them up in my iTunes to see if I own them. I would never have any idea if I did. If I don’t own them, I see if I can check them out from the library, otherwise I’ll buy them on iTunes. As we speak, I’m loading the last of the 60 CDs I checked out of the library in the past 2 days onto my iTunes account. I now have a playlist for each type of Spinning song: warm up, cool down, hills, sprints, jumps, rolling hills, etc. If you’ve never taken a Spin class, you should, they’re a lot of fun AND a great workout.
I was so freaked out the night before my audition class, because after I spent hours coming up with the perfect songs, I couldn’t get my iPhone to hook up to my iTunes account. Hubby’s doesn’t use iTunes or have an iPhone, so he was no help. I’ve owned an iPod for over 10 years and I’m not that dumb, but it just wasn’t working on my new computer. I called Apple and apparently when you download the latest version of iTunes you have to uninstall 4 sort-of-related programs. Well, how the heck would I know!? It worked fine after that. Before I called Apple, I bought iTunes Match to try to get around the hookup issue. Um, that was crap. The very first song on my Spinning playlist was Cee Lo Green’s Forget You. The version I had on my list was clean and the version iTunes matched dropped the F-bomb no fewer than 15 times. I didn’t even listen to anything after that. I got a refund.
I looked into Spotify and GrooveShark, but they scare me too much. Cheaper, yes, but a lot of variables this musically challenged girl can’t handle.
So that’s what’s been going on with me all week, in case you were wondering. My dad’s coming to stay for a few days at the end of the week, which means I’ll be scrambling to finish up projects as usual. Which also means I’ll have lots of projects to share with you soon. Yay!
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