Before I start this post, I want to talk a bit about the “new” WordPress. Yesterday, WP converted me over without permission, and I lost the ability to choose the classic editor. I despise the new editor. It’s so buggy. In the few mins I tried to use it, I discovered that it didn’t allow me to see all posts (published or not) on the same page, had random editing pop-up blocks when I tried to type, never paid attention to where I actually put my cursor, took 15 steps to get an image into a post, and randomly “corrected” things my post to the way it thought I wanted it to be. No, no, no. I seriously decided to abandon this blog and move back over to Blogger if there wasn’t a fix that allowed me to revert to classic, which thankfully, fellow blogger Trish was able to find! So if any of y’all are in the same boat – mine converted while I was in the middle of drafting a post – here’s what you need to do. Click on your profile (top right, with your pic), then choose account settings, scroll down to interface, toggle on the advanced dashboard pages, and hit save. This will bring the option to use Classic back on the posts section. I don’t know how long this will last, but the moment WP forces my hand permanently, I’m outta here. I guess it’s a good thing I re-opened Ramblings recently, eh?

Last week, I spent an afternoon hanging out with my friend Stephanie. She made a few statements that caused me to look back on my life and have a bit of an epiphany.

I have been focused on my weight/body in one way or another for the last 23 years.

Pic: 1998, the summer after my freshman year of college. Prior to this, while I had body-image issues and other problems, I’d never actively worked toward weight loss, changing my nutrition, etc. I’d been an athlete for most of my teen years, and yeah, we did a LOT of work on fitness, strength, cross-training, etc. There were weeks when I was exercising 20+ hours. But no where during that time did I pay attention to food (other than omg I’m hungry where do I get my next meal) or weight (other than some vague dissatisfactions with how “fat” I was at under 120 lbs). Shortly after that summer of 1998, when I had my tooth surgery that led to all the health problems, “body” became the primary focus on my brain. Pretty much ever since.

From 1998 to 2009, my body/weight went up and down and up and down in random bursts, or related to pregnancies, and while dealing with a myriad of other illnesses and symptoms that all boiled down to invisible, silent tooth infections. From 2009 to 2013, my body was healthy, I was able to lose all the excess weight, and health/fitness essentially became my second job. After 2013, the focus was no longer on weight loss but weight maintenance, but “body” was still my focus. And from late 2014 to present, I’ve been dealing with weight gain and inability to lose weight no matter what I do, as well as more random symptoms that I’m sure is related to one thing or another wrong in my body that I have yet to find. (Except it’s probably coffee, at least in part.)

(Pic: 1999) It’s not like I haven’t realized that these were the segments of my life prior to this weekend. They’re divided in my head into “the tooth years,” “the healthy years,” and the current “WTF years.” But I never looked at them together, and realized they’ve taken up more than half of my damn life. Perhaps the reason I never put all those years together is that the healthy years in the middle, while still focused first on weight loss and then on maintenance, were ones where my body worked “normally.” So the results were good, and controllable – but the focus was still on the same thing. And I’m soooooo tired of this. I don’t WANT to be hyperfocused on my body.

Not like I can stop, though. My body is in a place of very ill health and discomfort, in addition to preventing me from doing what I want to do. So the cycle continues. I don’t know how to get off this train.