Category: Updates

I Did a Thing

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So today I did a thing. It was not a big thing but it was a thing.

Actually, it started last night because I laid out clothes to go walking before bed. Then I set alarms. This morning I actually got up at 5:30 and got the pup and went for a walk. 

I realized a while ago that exercise in the afternoon after work was untenable. I was not going to happen. Maybe if The Girl™ every goes back to the gym with me, which requires her to be uninjured for more than 2 weeks, but not alone. I am a morning runner, especially since for the better part of a year I have been a non-runner. So I got up, I got on clothes, I got the pup and I went to the park.

It was a slow walk as the pup and I got used to using the new harness and retractable lead. But it was 1.25 miles of movement and hopefully, it was a beginning. 

Expectations

”The next time you catch yourself getting brought down by your expectations, shift things in a different direction. Instead of getting your knickers in a twist about how things didn’t turn out the way you wanted or expected them to, simply accept them for what they are. In that moment you are now freed up to deal with them.”

― Gary John Bishop, Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life 
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For the last week or so things have been harder again. I am still not physically well or as well as I think I should be. I am not staying on task with even the small things I have laid out for myself. I expected I would be able to manage at least that. I still have not gotten back to the gym to join up. But top on the list there has been some major disappointments in my life which involve other people, some big and some small but all of them add up to my reflecting back to this quote.

Honestly, I was laid out by what my expectations were and the fact that once again they were not met. I don’t know why. They are, for the most part, recurring patterns. Patterns in which I am repeatedly setting myself up for disappointment. I need to remember in all things that expectations are the groundwork for disappointment and resentment. In some cases, I have tried specifically laying out my expectations and asking for what I need and still the result is the same.* Now I just need to come to the realization that I either live with resentment and disappointment or just realize I am not the priority in these situations and try to let go of the expectations. Nothing will make what I want or need materialize, so I need to figure out how to shift things away from having others meet those wants and needs to only expecting things that I can fulfill on my own.

*Asking for people to meet my needs is incredibly difficult for me. But that is a post all in and of itself.

Fuckin’ Roadblocks

How it feels when you are trying to take even baby steps


It’s a detox of such staggering proportions that sometimes it can feel like The Universe is conspiring against us—trees fall on our cars, our computers crash, we find our significant others in bed with our best friends, we get our identities stolen, we get the flu, our roofs cave in, we sit in gum—when in reality, The Big Snooze is creating chaos in an attempt to self-sabotage and keep everything as is, instead of moving forward into unknown, yet desperately wanted, new territory.

You Are A BadAss: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero

I had just listened to this chapter yesterday morning when I went to the Rec Center where I work to finally join. I had my paperwork all in hand. I was employed full time now. My doctor had filled out the forms for my getting a discount rate (without the pressure of the last gym membership). I had a day where I felt like I had my shit together. I was finally feeling a tiny bit better and I might recover from the cold I have been battling. I checked stuff off my to-do list including getting The Girl registered for some private swim lessons.

We got all of the work done to have the cost deducted from my paychecks when Bam! “That will be $XX.00.” “Wait you are taking it out of my pay, no?” “Yes but you have to pay the first month.”

Let me tell you there is nothing I hate more than surprises, better known as “who fucked with my PLAN?!” I did not budget that in. I get paid Friday and I can take care of it then but when you are just starting and you do not have a huge reserve/foundation yet it is these things that can knock you for a loop. It is these things that make you just want to say Fuck it all and go buy Dairy Queen and McDonald’s and eat all the way home.

I did not do that. I was slytherin angry polite, which might be a variation on Southern angry polite but I can’t speak to that since I am usually New York angry which has no polite to it at all, told them I would be back and went back to my office and reread the chapter on how The Big Snooze and the “Source Energy”* would fuck with everything when you try to make changes.

Big Moral here: I am still too sick to really use the gym. I have no firm lessons scheduled for The Girl so I don’t need to be a member. Friday is soon enough. I tripped over the crack in the sidewalk and was basically angry someone saw. But it is not the end of the world. Perspective: Get some, WVRed.

*I will totally come back to the hokey “Source Energy” thing later because I have been rolling around with conscious intention which focuses magic work and if sub- or unconscious intention can also have an impact. And I personally think that might be a better fit.

Baby Steps

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Week one down. I have been fairly kind to myself. I got very sick on my way up to Pittsburgh for a memorial service for my favorite older generation in-law. That really influenced my choice of the one small thing to focus on this week. I decided since I was so ill I would focus on something which did not require physical exertion but on getting back to low carb eating.
I know in my head that carbs make me feel awful. They make my body hurt, they trigger immunity responses like worsening allergies, edema, joint pain and more. But for some reason, ok for many reasons, I still continue to eat them. Does it matter if it is because I think I do not deserve to be well? Or if I think that only well people have the self-control to stop themselves and eat them proves that I am not that? Or is it just that those are the foods that for many years gave me comfort when I had little other sources of comfort? Or honestly does it just not matter? I eat things that are bad for me and I don’t just do it occasionally, I do/did it all the time with increasing frequency over the past few years. And if I am going to even begin to feel better at all I needed to make this one of the first things that I tackled. Being ill made the decision for me.
I did not jump back into tracking and monitoring and all of the things which I super fail at and make me rush back into my poor eating habits and ALL THE COMFORT CARBS. I just made simple choices based on carb counts. Will I get there? I think so after I have mastered this small thing. But for now I will just continue to eat mindfully and with an eye to no sugar, no grains, no dairy (except cream), and very limited fruit.
I have continued to ruminate about how I am going to proceed for week two. I am not thinking bigger than that for now. I think it is a matter of small steps which in the end lead to big change. I am getting my medication schedule back under control which I think is super important. I am thinking next week I would like to try and add something physical, maybe some easy walking since my lungs are currently coming up in large-ish chunks. I would be resting comfortably in a sanatorium by the sea “recovering” from consumption if this was the Edwardian Era in England. And The Girl will want to be back to working out which will be motivating.
Additionally, my book club is making noises about meeting to discuss Michelle Obama’s Becoming so I will be adding some reading into my schedule.
Small steps of getting back to a place of just being OK is the goal. So Week One was just mindful eating. Week Two will just be continuing with that and maybe adding in some mindful bodywork.

It’s Always Ourselves We Find in the Sea

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I have been writing this post in my head over and over for about a week now. Put the words down on the screen was a huge step and now posting them here is another huge step. But here it goes.

Mornings might be best for coffee and contemplation, but the dark and the stars and the sound of the ocean is altogether the right thing for self-reflection and a personal get right with yourself talk.

This site has laid dormant for years now mostly because I have too. I feel like I, and therefore the name of the site, are fraudulent. I am still WVRed but I have not been a reader nor a runner, not consistently, since my 2015 injury. The longer it has been the more I have avoided coming here.

At first, I blamed my injury but I recovered from that and after a few false starts, trying to jump back into where I had been  instead of where I actually was, I could have returned to running but I didn’t. More interesting and probably a sign I should have been paying a lot of attention to was the lack of reading that came along with the lack of running.

So sitting on the deck in the Spring cold watching the stars and listening to the waves (the beach and ocean are where I am meant to be I am convinced), I thought a lot about where I am and how I got back to the place I was in 2014 when everything was also awful and I was so very miserable with myself before I found that running made me better, stronger and put me in an emotionally better place.

It was then that the magnitude of all that has happened in the past 3 years came crashing in. I have seen major friendship changes. I have watched people dear to me go through some horrible life circumstances which were beyond my control to help fix. I started working, first part-time and then full-time. My family has radically altered. First, with my eldest graduating and leaving for college which came with some added challenges for her. And then this past year when my husband left to go stay mostly with his father who has been ill making me suddenly, for the most part, a single parent 80% of the time. The changing dynamic of parenting teens and young adults is exhausting in a totally different way. Toddlers leave you drained at the end of the day but the emotional work of young people is bone numbingly tiring. Do not get me wrong I would not trade it for the world. I have a teen who talks to me (and a young adult who does not but who I know has someone she does talk to) and I would not trade that. But it is exhausting.

Couple all of that with what I have come to see more and more clearly as SAD coupled with insomnia which really breaks me every Feb/March. This year I felt very much like I was in it alone. The time or two I tried to broach the subject with people close to me I felt dismissed. That triggered a bunch of walls and historically poor responses many of which are both physically and emotionally unhealthy.

Sitting there I realized that emotional eating (ALL THE CARBS), not sleeping, and generally taking care of everyone else but me was what got me to where I was in 2014 and it was exactly what got me back to almost the same spot in 2018. The other realization I had was in recognizing that it was not just that I was not running and not just that I was not reading. It was that I was trying to get back to being the person I was in 2015/2016. And she does not exist anymore. I can’t go back I have to start over. I get to keep the parts of the old me that I liked and build on that. I have to remember that the average time to build a house is 7 months and I am not building just any house I am building a cathedral. Those MFers took centuries.

I have archived everything here. I have come up with new logos that are grayed out and as things progress they will colorize. My first goal is figuring out what that progress will look like. I have decided I don’t care if I monetize, have followers, get free stuff, become an ambassador to any brand or ever move beyond posting stupid memes and progress reports. There is no schedule, no daily themes and no pressure.

This is 100% my building plan and I am laying the groundwork for a new me.