French, Strength Training & Marcus Aurelius

by | May 31, 2022 | Art, creative process, youtube | 6 comments

My sister-in-law sent this to me this morning and I was so moved by it, particularly given all that is happening in our world, especially here in the United States, that I thought I’d share it with all of you.

I’ve mentioned before that my husband and I start our day reading from the The Daily Stoic.  Often it’s a quote from Marcus Aurelius or Seneca or Epictetus, but it’s always thought provoking and interesting.  We then discuss, each taking turns to share our thoughts and intentions for the coming day.  It’s a really beautiful way to connect and begin the day.

The thing is I’m an early riser so I am often up several hours earlier than him and that’s when I practice my french, do a workout (yes, I’m still working out on my FitOn App, which I love and now do anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes of strength training, cardio and whatever else I can manage! I even have dumb bells that I use! Gasp!  I know, I know, but at my age I really cannot let this slide…)

So when I went to answer emails this morning, while waiting for my husband to arise, I loved seeing this link to Peace Train.  I teared up within the first few seconds, it is so beautiful.  And I kept thinking about something we read the other day from The Daily Stoic about how it’s just as easy to be kind as it is to not be and takes just as little time.  Added plus, kindness is a gift to everyone who receives it, regardless if they’re able to return it. The return isn’t the point.  It’s the practice of it, the commitment to it, the act of doing it on a daily basis, that’s really the point.  At least that’s the case for me.

Yesterday I did a livestream over on Patreon for my patrons, celebrating my 1st goal met, 100 Patrons!  How amazing is that?  I live-streamed from my summer studio. It was a lot of fun.  During that livestream, I had the idea that I might start doing a prompt in my Facebook group: Ariane Zurcher Stitching Circle  And  then, as I was saying that, I thought it would be really fun to make an even more detailed prompt for all my Patrons over on Patreon.  So I’m going to be thinking about that today and seeing what I come up with.  But I already have some ideas that I think could be really fun.

There are 5 spots left in my upcoming Finding Your Voice Workshop.  I did a short video explaining how that workshop came into being, a very short pictorial history of some of my other work when I was a fashion designer and jewelry designer and then came to stitching and how improvisational stitching was a major turning point and then going to the artist’s residency in France this spring was the next major turning point and what the workshop is all about.  You can watch it, if you like, below.

And finally there are still spaces open in the Dorset Button Stitch Along and just 6 spaces left in The Basics Workshop, which I will NOT be teaching again for awhile, so if you’re new to all of this, please sign up now!

Have a peaceful day!

❤️

I Hate the Gym & Other Profound Thoughts

I Hate the Gym & Other Profound Thoughts

by | Mar 1, 2022 | Balance, Life, travel | 8 comments

Here’s the thing: I hate the gym.  I have a gym membership, but I never go. And Covid gave me a get-out-of-going-to-the-gym-for-the-foreseeable-future card, except that now everyone’s decided to move on with their lives. Still I remain resolute in my hatred of the gym, despite my age, and the increasingly urgent need to get some sort of exercise if I want to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle.  So I found an exercise app, downloaded it, and felt very pleased with myself.  That was three months ago, I think, though it may have been longer, which tells you how much I’ve used the app.  I’ll give you a hint – 0.

Until this week!

I can’t really explain what happened, but I’m very pleased to announce that this morning is my THIRD workout.  Now, to be fair, when the app asked me how long a workout I wanted, I chose the shortest option they gave, which is 10 minutes and I chose “low impact” because they didn’t have a “sedentary” option. Oh stop it, you’d have done the same.

So the first time I used it, I started the workout and before the trainer had even finished explaining the exercise we’d be doing the phone rang. I really did have to take the call so I paused it and then “forgot” to go back to the app.  It was rude to leave that trainer hanging like that, but I forgot, I swear.  That was about a month ago.  Last week I thought, this is ridiculous, I have to do something because standing on one leg while in the shower, really doesn’t count as exercise, or does it? Anyway, I did a 10 minute workout Sunday morning.  Oh yes I did!  And here’s my takeaway from that workout – who knew that in ten short minutes one could work up a sweat?  That’s the first revelation.  The other is that ten minutes is actually a really, really, really, really LONG time to be gyrating about working muscles that I didn’t even know I had.  And my final revelation about all of this is that I’m really out of shape because the next day I was sore, though that didn’t stop me from doing another workout and then this morning another.

I know some of you are going to ask what the app is. I’m going to tell you, but just know that I don’t work for this company nor do I receive anything from them for telling all of you about it.  Just wanted to be clear about that.  The app is FitOn. I’m thinking there are a lot of exercise apps out there, I don’t even remember how I learned of this one, though knowing me, I googled, “Best exercise app” and this one came up on a list with others.  When you first download and open it, it asks you, Do you want us to send you notifications.  Now I know about this whole “notification” business, it’s really code for nagging.  Basically they’re asking, “are you okay if we nag you?” So I said, Yes.  Go ahead, see if I care.  In fact I dare you. Nag away.  That was Sunday and sure enough on Monday morning I get a notification at 7:45am asking me if I’m ready to work out.  NO.  No, I’m not ready, nor will I ever be, but how can I really hold my head up and say no to a 10 minute workout?  I mean, seriously, I spend more time gazing out the window, so I figured, okay, fine, but I’m not putting on workout clothes or shoes, so I wore my bathrobe and slippers out of defiance.  And that 2nd workout packed a lot into 10 minutes.  Now all the muscles that were already sore were joined by others. It’s amazing how many muscles the human body has.

No one said this was going to be pretty.

This morning when I got that alert on my phone while I was practicing my French, I thought, okay, I got this and in preparation I even had on pants and a workout bra. TMI? Whatever. So I pressed “yes” and did an upper body sculpting workout that was 13 minutes long.  See?  That’s how they do it.  It’s like a gateway drug.  They start you at “low impact” and “10 minutes” and then they squeeze in a couple more minutes and before you know it, you’re working out for an hour.  One has to very careful.

Now most of you know that I’m off to France next week, and for those of you who are saying, what? How did I miss that? you evidently haven’t signed up for my newsletter, because I talk all about that.  You can sign up now by going to the right hand side bar of this blog and signing up now! By the way, I don’t have time to write a newsletter more than once or maybe twice a month, so just know you won’t get inundated with newsletters from me if you sign up. Seriously, look how often I manage to write a blog post?  It’s been very spotty lately.

Next week at this time I’ll be in Paris!  And I’ll have my FitOn app with me, because that’s the thing about apps, wherever you are, they are too.  It’s a beautiful thing, depending on how you look at it.

A bientôt!