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Friends will keep you moving!

Wuffles Leave a comment

Good morning!

It’s been about 3 weeks now since adopting a new workout routine and it’s been awesome to be doing it with friends again. For those who don’t know (which might be all of you), I used to follow a strict and rigorous workout routine with my best friend. We’d meet up at 6AM at the gym, Monday thru Friday, and crank out a muscle group for an hour with a bit of cardio to begin with. I gained about 30 pounds over a year and I was in the best shape ever. However, he eventually moved out of state and I suddenly found it much harder to get to the gym and keep it up. You’d think doing it for a couple of years would’ve locked it in as a habit! The best I could do was light maintenance just so I dont fall apart. However, like plenty of others for other types of tasks, I sometimes need that extra motivator of having a friend handy to boost me further.

Friends motivate each other by keeping each other accountable! You all decide to work out? Great! One of you doesn’t feel like it one day? Those other two will get you into the gym! Plus, nobody wants to look like the flake so you’ll keep yourself moving in order to keep from being the weak link. On top of that, your friends know how you’ve been doing lately so they’ll also keep you from taking things too easy. You probably aren’t going to get away with doing a session of light stretching when your friends are right there hitting the weights and panting up a storm!

It’s not just the gym. Develop an art jam schedule with friends and show up to draw or write or whatever. As long as your group, whether it’s 2 people or 4 (I’ll explain that a little further down), contains a person or two who is feeling dedicated that day, you stand a greater chance of continuing and succeeding. At the very least, it gets you to show up and spend the time on the topic, skill, or whatever it is you need to work on.

So why do I mention 2 or 4 people? Well, unless you’re leading the group and they’re all depending on you, it will become easy to fade into the background with a larger group. You stop showing up and the group carries on without you and, because they may not miss you as much, any guilt about the situation is reduced and the entire point of you joining the group fades away. Sometimes a fuzzbutt requires a little more intimacy rather than just feeling like a face in a crowd.

I’ll end with how my new workout habit is performed with friends who live as far as Europe! Does not apply to everyone but we have VR! We log into VRChat together, find a certain place called the Squat Gym, and do a bunch of squats togethers! It’s gamified and I spend a little time coaching my friends! They’re so eager to get into better shape that I can’t get away with taking a day off. The squats have expanded to other calisthenics (since working with weights in VR is hard) like pushups or sit-ups and we drive each other to perform better. Reminders in the morning on our workout days also mentally prepare us to get together! It’s just fun and we spend time lounging and chilling out afterward, getting in some good social time after the workout. I hope to keep this going longer and I hope you can find a way to get your friends together and motivate each other to develop yourself!

Good luck, fuzzbutts!

Dealing with the Post-Convention Depression

Wuffles Leave a comment

Hi fuzzbutts!

You’ve had your fun at the convention. Met friends you haven’t seen in ages and made new friends! You had a care-free fun time the entire convention and then you’re on the plane or in the car to head back to real life. The high of the con starts dipping down and you get home again with a desperate need to do laundry and put everything away. However, by now your mood has dropped into the deafening void and the various chores to accomplish look impossible and you lost pretty much all your motivation.

I know I went through this. I was willing to let my fursuit air out after a long weekend of use and just took way too long to get around to actually washing it. Dirty laundry sat in the washing machine way too long and I just flopped on the bed or at my computer and found it tough to get anything done. So I did a bit of inner exploration, realized I was depressed after the convention, and then decided to figure out how I can address this since I know it affects many convention goers.

One of the first things I realized was a sense of loneliness since most my friends had moved away. While I usually enjoy alone time, even I experience the lows that come with missing friends. So the first thing I did was start reaching out to those friends. I made new friends at the convention too and we shared our contact info and social media and I started talking to them too. They were all pretty darn chatty too so it was very helpful to keep in contact with them to combat the PCD.

Another thing I realized is my mood was down because I was just exhausted. At the con, you’re riding high and you’re having so much fun that it’s hard to pay attention to what your body is telling you. Starving yourself because you don’t want to eat without your friends but they’re taking too long. Then, when you do eat, you’re eating quick food or junk food. Sleeping late because there’s so much going on. Drinking and having fun like a crazy person. Then we’re surprised that so many people leave a convention with con crud (the almost immediate cold/illness you get as you’re leaving a con or immediately after a con). Being physically tired/weaker will lower your mood and contribute to the post-con depression.

So if you’re set on not taking care of yourself at the convention and want to party hard, the best way to recover after the convention is to just rest and start eating better immediately. You’ve put yourself through a lot and need to take the appropriate rest and eat something that will put your body back to normal, if not even healthier food than normal. Your body will recover and then you’ll just feel better there too.

So the gist of dealing with post-con depression is to put yourself out there and reach out to friends in a way that’s enjoyable. Don’t go telling them you’re so miserable and sad. Just be social and chatty. Also, eat something to help your body and take the appropriate rest. You’ll feel better way faster and your mood will improve to drive away the post-con blues. Then you can get back to being productive!

Good luck fuzzbutts!

Going for Walkies!

Wuffles Leave a comment

Hello fuzzbutts!

One thing I think a lot of us could work on some more is getting outside more often. It’s not the common furry that goes out and about to try new things or see new places. I’m very guilty of this, myself. I’m not even talking about in-suit. I just mean going out. The world around you can be fascinating and beautiful. So why not explore and see if there’s anything out there?

Well, I’m not really into just going out on my own so I started inviting friends. They’ve been working on their own levels of fitness and they were open to hanging out and going for walks around some of the areas none of us really checked out. Top of a mountain that people walk up regularly or a long trail that ends in a waterfall. It’s all enjoyable and you’ll hopefully feel a sense of accomplishment that you finally did something like that. Go with friends. An 8-mile hike might feel pretty daunting by yourself but friends make it amazing and fun. So look up some trails and interesting areas around your place and invite your pals to go with you!

Another thing I might try experimenting with is leading a group. Once I feel comfortable checking out a lot of these hikes and trails, I might start inviting more and more furries and make it a furmeet type of thing, only health-helping.

Good luck fuzzbutts!