Successes and Failures

On any given day, I think everyone has successes and failures. Some days feel like nothing but failures but if you really think about it, you woke up and got out of bed, didn't you? That's a success. It beats not waking up doesn't it?

Yesterday, I experienced a noteworthy success and a failure. I'll start with the failure.

The Pilot has been doing P90X. I have joined him for a couple of the workouts. I've kept up for the most part and can do most of the exercises, even though some have to be modified for my current abilities. That is until last night. I call it a fail because I couldn't make it through the entire workout (90 minutes). The funny thing is that it was the yoga workout! I did much better at the other, more cardio intensive workouts. I knew it wouldn't be easy because I've only done yoga a handful of times in the last 10 years. I also knew it wouldn't be "true" yoga, it was the P90X version of yoga. Anyways, I really struggled through the moves. I'm not completely inflexible so that wasn't the challenge. It was the repetition of downward dog and cobra poses were killing my elbows. My elbows naturally hyper-extend and I don't have the muscle tone in my arms to keep my elbows from hyper-extending when going those moves over and over. I know it will get easier the more I do it, but after 45 minutes, I waved the flag and quit. Another thing I struggle with is my attention span. I started to get kind of bored. I'm used to cardio-heavy work outs and this just wasn't doing it for me. I may try it again or just keep searching for something else that floats my boat.

Cobra

Downward Dog

Something else working against me during this workout was it was after work and I hadn't had dinner yet. I was starving. I need to find some smart snack options that I can munch on in the late afternoon at work so I make it through my workouts without bonking. I guess a 45 minute workout isn't a complete failure. It's better than sitting on my a$$ doing nothing but I didn't finish the intended workout that I'm calling it a partial fail.

So moving on to yesterday's success. It's not fitness related...well, it was beneficial to my financial fitness so I guess that counts. As of yesterday afternoon, I am officially credit card debt free! A huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. It took a lot of discipline and time but I finally got there (getting a new roomie to help pay my mortgage didn't hurt either). A medical emergency, some not-so-smart spending and an epic fail of an experience with a health savings account (all several YEARS ago) put me into the mess and it was hard to get out. But I made the last payment and it feels great. Even while paying off the debt, I knew the only way to avoid getting into the same situation was to really work hard to create an emergency fund so I wouldn't have to resort to the credit card again. So even while still paying off the credit card, I also started socking away a lot more money into an emergency fund and in my retirement account. Now that the credit card debt is gone, I'm hunting down my car loan. The goal: pay off the loan at least 18 months early.
Normally I wouldn't share something like this publicly because part of me thinks it's really not anyone's business but I know I'm not the only one who has struggled with debt. I was ashamed of it to be honest. It was embarrassing that some of my poor decisions and not being prepared for an emergency got the better of me. But, just like with working out, I stuck with it and kept chipping away at it and I made it. I really believe that blogging holds me accountable for my training. I really don't want to blog about how I completely failed at reaching my goals so I just keep trying. So I'm going to approach my goal of paying off my car loan at least 18 months early the same as training for a race. I just made it public so now I HAVE to reach my goal. :)