Come Play With Me-Let’s Make Fitness FUN!
The 70-Day Challenge of a Not-Ever-Going-To-Retire QUEEN
It was a quiet Tuesday night rolling over in bed when she noticed it. The unmistakable, undeniable marshmallow effect. Not the sweet, yummy campfire kind, but the slow, insidious melting of what was once a strong, toned, 103-pound frame into something resembling a partially deflated soufflé. Her softened, untoned muscles rather hung off her thigh bone!! “OMG!!!” The wake-up call was more like a scream. The culprit? A suspiciously low-effort fitness regimen consisting of poodle walks and the occasional stretching session that still confirmed her flexibility was still like that of a dancing queen, astounding her teenage granddaughters. She rode on their amazement and that was enough – until that night. With her amazing flexibility, she got considerably lazy with the exercise routines she did throughout her younger decades, but she knew – that grace period ENDED!
As the new “Level 70” she just recently reached (good-bye sweet 60’s!) all she could hear in her head were the last words of that wicked witch of the east, finally defeated by Dorothy, saying, “I’m meltinnnnng!”
With a firm resolve (and a horrifyingly sagging bicep she vowed to reclaim), she sat down with her morning tea and poodles, determined to create a 70-day challenge. Something to snap her back into the vibrant, adventurous, empire-building, idea-generating force she once was—and, let’s be honest, still was, just with a little more creak in the shoulders, and way less air in her tank to make this balloon get off the ground. Her knees were still silent and cooperative and the Pigeon pose silenced the screaming tightness in her left hip. Not all was lost – there’s still something to work with here.
The Challenge: 70 Days to Un-Melt
To tone up and stay motivated, she set three goals:
- Daily Yoga – Because good tone, core strength and balance is the key to longevity, and she was not about to be the goddess who succumbed to gravity and time without a fight.
- Learn French – Because why not? And also, “Je ne veux pas ressembler à un marshmallow fondu” sounded fancier than “I refuse to melt into a weakened oblivion.”
- Grow Her YouTube Channel into a Thriving Community – Because she had things to say, stories to tell, wit and wisdom to share with an audience to gather, a tribe to call forth, even if algorithms were trickier to decode than the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Armed with her plan, she set forth with all the enthusiasm of a woman who had conquered life before, only to realize that motivation at “Level 70” functioned like a cat—it came and went as it pleased, and you could never fully control it.
The Yoga Chronicles: Downward Dog vs. Actual Dogs
The first yoga session was a more hilarious than productive. No sooner had she attempted a downward dog than her poodles interpreted it as an invitation for a face-licking assault. The warrior pose was interrupted by the toy poodle parking beneath her legs, and the pigeon pose resulted in both poodles taking this as an invitation to play, “Mom’s on the floor, let’s roll around on her!”
But she was undeterred. She reasoned that laughing while exercising counted as core work. Besides, laughter at cuteness overload was just as medicinal for her soul as the poses were for her muscles, ligaments and joints. After a week, she noticed small victories: she could hold the tree pose for a full 30 seconds without falling over, and those bat wings – well, they WILL take longer than just one week or three to prevent her from taking flight in a strong wind.
Parlez-Vous Franglais?
Learning French at “Level 70” was an adventure in humility. Her app cheerfully prompted her with phrases like “Le chat est sur la table,” which, while useful in a parallel universe where her poodles morphed into cats, did little to make her conversationally fluent, but as a brilliant mimic of accents, she actually sounded French, and with her ability since childhood to roll those R’s, it was just plain fun to feel her brain cells dancing like raindrops hitting the Eiffel Tower!
Her desire to learn French actually began 13 years ago when she got her first poodle, a red standard named Cheyana. As she wanted to also teach her first grandchild French as well, she researched the basic commands in French. S’asseoir s’il te plait sounded much better than “SIT”-Cheyana came to know all that was requested of her in French. And it sounded SO cool!
Determined to broaden her linguistic repertoire, she switched to French films with subtitles. At first, it was like watching a beautifully filmed migraine, but she gave up reading the subtitles as the cinematography was so beautiful and the sound of the language was like music to her ears. She celebrated her first full sentence to the poodles: “Voulez-vous une promenade?” They wagged their tails, not caring if mumsy was speaking Swahili, and were just excited knowing they were about to do something fun.
YouTube Stardom: Where Algorithms and Poodles Collide
Her YouTube channel was her digital baby. Once upon a time, she had dreams of creating a community around her passions—art, writing, musical recording and animal communication. But building an empire took consistency, something she had traded for spontaneous ideas that never saw the light of the patent office. Her songs however, DID see the light of the U.S. copyright offices, but no Grammy’s came of it.
Determined to change this, she set a content schedule. The first video was a masterpiece of wisdom, humor, and bloopers. The second video she had to decipher the code of thumbnail creation, and by the third, she chucked the hurdle of editing and was content just to get them uploaded on Fridays, in town-because at her rural cabin, the bandwidth prohibited uploading anything. Encouraged after around 10 videos complete with thumbnails and an emerging niche, she conquered the fear of looking at analytics. Explained to her like a 5th grader from another You Tuber, Jan at Silver and Solo, analytic watching went from dreaded to downright fun, arousing her excitement like watching a code appear before her very eyes. She got to learn all kinds of things about who was viewing, for how long, what age group, gender and country.
Far from going as viral as Covid’s global effect, she decided to post the 70 Day Challenge on her channel, inviting her small but growing audience to participate and make it a party. We’ll keep you posted on the results of this grand experiment.
The Unexpected Side Effects
Halfway through the challenge, she noticed unexpected benefits.
- Her brain felt sharper. Writing in French stretched her mental muscles. Yoga kept her balanced (mostly). And YouTube forced her to embrace technology and algorithm comprehension along with that consistency to post videos on Fridays, which meant she had to MAKE the videos during the week. Every week.
- She started craving social interactions. Not the obligatory ones, but real, deep connections with people who understood the joy of giggling at ridiculous things.
- Her empire-building fire reignited. Her ideas, long simmering on the back burner, began demanding attention. Maybe that patent for the dog-walking device wasn’t such a lost cause after all. Self-promotion of her website www.aveguevara.com, her newest book which actually won an award (available via her website) and telling everyone she had a You Tube channel that she’d LOVE and appreciate their visiting, possibly subscribing to, watching, LIKING and commenting on her videos. She realized that self-promotion came out of self-worth and self-love, all of which was lacking before engaging in this challenge. More accurately, this challenge came out of the quest to improve her sense of self-worth, realize that self-love was not being a narcissist and self-promotion was as necessary as the skills she excelled at, and it’s called “marketing” – not a dirty word!!!
Adventures Are More Fun with Friends
The only thing missing was few real-time kindred spirits, preferably ones who still found joy in silly things, wasn’t drowning in serious philosophical debates, and had a sense of adventure. Younger, older, it didn’t matter—she just would like the stimulation of a live person who understood that fun and purpose could coexist. Loving dogs, especially poodles might be a pre-requisite, but she wasn’t going to limit herself. Online friends are great, but the sound of laughter is way better than the “LOL” after a sentence that wasn’t even very funny.
She put it out to the universe: A friend who still laughed at absurdity, shared an appreciation for nature, and wasn’t afraid of trying new things. After all, life was too short to spend it talking about the world’s atrocities without balancing it with some focus on the many great aspects of life, beauty in the world, making that inner radiance brighter and more sparkly. Being bright and sparkly was good medicine for a world facing darkness on more levels than anyone can count.
The Home Stretch
By day 65, she could hold a plank longer than a sneeze, string together sentences in French that didn’t require subtitles, and had doubled her YouTube subscribers. But the biggest victory? She felt like herself again. The woman with boundless energy, creativity, and enough spunk to take on the world, well maybe not the whole world – but at least HER world, which would expand out to touch and inspire others’ lives IN the world.
As the challenge came to an end, she knew this wasn’t the finish line but the beginning of a new rhythm. A way to keep her body strong, her mind engaged, and her life full of the kind of joy that didn’t rely solely on morning tea and poodles, although starting each day with this ritual was the best – the love and cuddles of little furry angels and a steaming cup of Taylors of Harrogate black tea with nicely frothed, hot oat milk. Yes, it’s actually tastier than half ‘n half with no cows happy, natural lives compromised, and no arterial blockages to have to consider.
She wasn’t melting into marshmallow oblivion, she was toning into triumph, strengthening into stardom and laughing without peeing her pants.
And who knows? Maybe her next challenge would involve learning to tango in Argentina. Oh wait, she actually did learn to tango in Argentina back at “Level 52” – even bought the shoes, but we’ll save that adventure for another story.
