Outfits I Can’t Wait to Wear

Posted on August 24, 2018 by Thistle

While a big chunk of the country is already turning toward fall, we stay smack in the 100s here in south Texas. Around this time of year, my longing for cooler weather becomes acute. I want to drink coffee on the porch in crisp autumn air, and open my windows at night, and put out Halloween/fall decorations, and read creepy books…and I want to wear all the lovely longer-sleeved outfits that disappear from my wardrobe around March or so. Here’s a small sampling of future autumn outfits:

(Randy and Lynnae shirts)

(Georgia and Nicole dresses)

(Lindsay, Shirley, and Sarah covers)

Come on autumn!!!

Posted in Personal | 2 Comments

Wellness Wednesday – Throwback List

Posted on August 22, 2018 by Thistle

Back in June 2012, I was near the end of my weight loss journey, but stalled due to a stress fracture in my leg. For twelve weeks, I wasn’t allowed to exercise, and I basically maintained a steady weight in that time. I still had another 20 lbs to go, and was so frustrated with the stall. But I was also at a really good size for my body, and I lot of my online support group was telling me that I should be satisfied with where I was at instead of wishing I could just get on with things. I can see their point, but at the same time, I was not where I wanted to be. So at the time, both to remind myself and as a rebuttal, I wrote the following “I’ll know I’m done…” list. Looking back on it now cracks me up. The following is that list, with my commentary six years later.

***
I’ll know I’m done…

…when I no longer feel the compulsion to step on the scale daily and see the numbers decrease.
***I doubt this will ever go away no matter what. (The stepping on the scale bit anyway.)

…when I can see my collarbones completely and distinctly.
***This would be awesome again. I did get there before.

…when I regain my normal body shape, somewhere between hourglass and upper triangle.
***This never would’ve happened without abdominal surgery, and even after regaining post-surgery, my body shape has stayed true to me.

…when I shop for clothes I love and that fit my style, rather than for clothes that make me look thinner or fit a certain number.
***Lularoe has made this happen for me regardless of my size – this can no longer be a “final” goal, ha!

…when I feel attractive or sexy again, and don’t mind dressing up.
***Ditto the last entry.

…when I stop measuring my food.
***Turns out that I go on and off measuring my food regardless of size.

…when I look thin (ie “normal”) in pictures even in funny positions/angles or in awkward-fitting clothes.
***Again, this was more about surgery than size, but it would be nice to be there again. It just won’t be as difficult this time.

…when I look in the mirror and feel satisfied with what I see.
***Ironically, this is 75% of the time now despite regain. All down to surgery.

…when I can go to the doctor without worrying about stepping on their scale.
***I can do this now, but it has more to do with finding a decent doctor who isn’t going to berate me about my size.

…when I fit into my wedding dress again.
***Ditto surgery. Turns out it was all just that extra skin on my belly.

…when I look at pictures of me next to people of all sizes, big or small, and feel okay with my size in relation to them.
***I miss this one. I did get there at one point though.

…when I no longer think about food constantly – planning out meals, ideas, snacks, and times, etc.
***Again, I don’t think this will ever go away.

…when I feel confident in public without constantly verifying the lay of my clothes, my posture, etc.
***I’m already confident and never worry about my clothes anymore. Ditto surgery and Lularoe.

…when I’m comfortable taking a single picture, rather than multiple shots, and don’t worry how it’ll turn out.
***Broken record time: surgery. It’s not as good as it once was, but I’m pretty happy with (most) photos these days.

…when I look at those pictures afterwards and am satisfied (not asking to be happy constantly, just satisfied).
***Same.

…when I stop comparing my current self with old pictures.
***Ha! Now I compare myself to a different set of old pictures.

…when I can honestly say I’m a success story.
***I’d like to get there one day.

…when I feel and look fit and healthy, rather than super-thin.
***This photo from 2014 embodies this 100%. I do want to get back there.

…when I no longer care if I lose another pound, because I’m happy just the way I am.
***I do hope that I’ll get there one day.

*****
So as it turns out, most of what I had to do to feel like all the things on this list was undergo abdominal surgery and then find a clothing brand that I love. Heh. I’m so far from goal now that I couldn’t even begin to think of a replacement list. Perhaps one day.

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Running Part 1: C25K

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Thistle

For eight years now, I’ve run off and on. It’s been an adventure and a journey of definite ups and downs, and I decided that I wanted to document it over time!

Nearly a decade ago, I heard about the Couch to 5K program from my friend Anne. At the time, I was at my highest-ever weight. My hips, knees, and ankles hurt all the time. Running wasn’t really an option for me. However, the idea stuck with me, and in August 2010 – 20 lbs down from my highest weight – I decided to give C25K a chance. Indoors. Running back and forth in my living room. I was not prepared to take the plunge in public (or in San Antonio August heat!).

For almost five weeks, I did laps around my living room. At the same time, I listened to my first real audiobook, Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (read by Alan Rickman!). I only listened during those half-hour running sessions. I loved the audiobook, and it made the running bearable. At the time, I was really surprised at how difficult I found the running. My entire adult life, at all sorts of weights, running around the living room while watching TV had been easy. This time, though, I got severe shin splints. Every step was torture. I chalked it up to my weight, which was heavier than I’d ever run before, and when my audiobook finished right before the 20-minute run at the end of Week 5, I quit the program.

The following January, when I began my weight loss journey in earnest, I decided to try the C25K program again. In my living room again, of course. But one thing had changed. We’d rearranged in there since my first attempt, and my “route” changed. Instead of going from front door to back door in laps, I could run a large circle around the couch, armchair, and elliptical. Because I was on carpet the whole time, instead of transitioning from carpet to linoleum and back, I could run barefoot. Turns out, those shin splits had to do with wearing shoes (probably those specific shoes) and not with my weight. This time, I finished the program on schedule, and went on to run 45 mins straight not long after. I knew I wasn’t actually running a whole 5K, but I didn’t think I was doing too bad. Until I signed up for a real 5K.

March 2011, down about 25-30 lbs, I started “jogging” at the start line of this 5K. As it turns out, I’d never learned how to run properly. My movement was more up-and-down (like running in place) than running forward. I could walk faster than I could run. MUCH faster. And running-in-place-but-kinda-forward was much more difficult outside my living room, even on level ground. That 5K exhausted me, and still took me 54 minutes to finish (about a 17:30/mi pace). I managed to “jog” three-quarters of it and STILL it took that long. I knew then that I had to learn how to run properly.

C25K, round 2 – outside. I went to my local trails, put on my music, and did the only thing I could – I sprinted the run sections. Only by sprinting could I move forward instead of up-and-down. Of course, sprinting all those sections was beyond exhausting, but it taught me to run as well as my messed-up-feet will ever let me run. I never finished this particular round of C25K. A couple weeks in, I almost had a heat stroke because I was still wearing sweatpants as I ran (same ones pictured above), when it was 80-something degrees out. I was just too self-conscious to wear shorts. This particular incident led to a personal challenge to overcome self-consciousness, but that’s a story for a different post.

Instead of continuing the C25K track, I opted to walk my normal hill-heavy trails with running sections whenever I could manage. Mostly on downhill sections. Ha! And I got to the point where I could run maybe 1 mile at a slow pace (slower than 15:00/mi). The first time I ever managed to run an entire 5K was on a treadmill right before my first-ever cruise, set to a very slow 4 mph pace. I just wanted to try and see if I could do it, after running smaller sections for about nine months. I was so excited to make it all the way through without walking, even though my speed was still slow. I took this really silly picture of my calves afterwards, because of how solidly I could see the muscles there. When I got home from that cruise, I decided to run a 5K outdoors on my normal trails. I discovered that I loved the outdoor running – even on uphills – far more than on a treadmill. Not surprising!!

And that takes me to the summer of 2012, when a new phase of my running adventure began. To be continued!

Posted in Wellness | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Sunday Coffee – This Week in the Gignacery

Posted on August 19, 2018 by Thistle

Lots going on, thought I’d give snippet updates.

1 – Morrigan developed shin splints at the end of last week in marching band. They were so bad that he couldn’t even walk up the stairs alone. My aunt Mary, who’s a massage therapist, did some major work on him last weekend that helped a lot, and he has a protocol of stretches, foam-rolling, and icing that he needs to follow. He seemed fine the rest of the week, and next week has evening-only practices, so fingers crossed we dodged an injury bullet. PSA: Calf muscles – well really all muscles, but calf is relevant here – should be soft and jiggly when not in use. If they aren’t, they’re too tight and might cause injuries such as shin splints or stress fractures. Massage and foam-rolling help to keep muscles loose!!

2 – I had both a chiropractor appointment and a massage this week, so I feel a bit extra-amazing in my body this week. I had to change to a new massage therapist this month after the one I’ve been using for the last three months just kept doing such an awful job. Last month, I literally left with a migraine, and I think she fell asleep while doing my neck at the end. It was awful. This new therapist was absolutely amazing! I’m also looking forward to getting back in with my aunt, who is very busy and schedules out months in advance.

3 – Ambrose finished all the drive time he needs to get his license, and passed the driver’s ed driving exam. He goes in to get a certificate tomorrow, and then he can go down to DPS, take a few more tests (written and driving), and get his license! He’ll be my first licensed child.

4 – Laurence has been crazy-addicted to learning everything he can about pre-season football and fantasy football drafts. It’s funny, because I knew he would love this kind of thing and tried to get him to pay attention to it four years ago, but only in the last year has he become obsessed.

5 – Jason finished a few lingering house projects that weren’t part of the actual construction damage/claim, but nonetheless needed to be done to finish our house: installed cabinet door/drawer pulls in the kitchen; installed the new coax cable for our TV; repaired the master bathroom shower; replaced/repaired the outdoor pipe from the water main; fixed a new leak in our two-month-old-toilet (ugh!!); squared off one of the new cabinets where the wall wasn’t at perfect angles; fixing a leak in one of the outside sewer pipes after Ambrose knocked into it with a shovel.

5 – It was a rough week in construction. Our contractor thought he would be done by Tuesday evening, then Wednesday evening…etc. But it’s still not done. There have been so many external factors interfering with progress! Not his fault, of course, but still I can’t wait until this is done. Since last week’s update: kitchen floor finished; tile laid in the boys’ bathroom; kitchen ceiling caulked and painted; living/dining room walls painted; boys’ toilet installed; about 75% of the kitchen counters installed. There was a problem with the tile in the master bathroom, and it has to come up and get done all over again from scratch, so that’s another delay. Boo. There’s a hard deadline of the 25th, though, so I should have good news by next Sunday!

6 – All the boys finished school registration stuff this week, got their schedules and pictures etc. One more week to go!

7 – I used up my last skein of yarn. I found a flapper hat pattern that I loved so I downloaded it and used my purple silk/bamboo skein to make it. Only first, there’s a section of the pattern that didn’t work as well as it was meant to, and second, I didn’t quite have enough yarn so I had to leave one line of the brim off. The end result wasn’t great, and pretty much wasted my lovely yarn (boo!), but I do love the pattern and have a better idea of what to do later on to make a better version.

8 – Book club yesterday! We discussed Do Not Become Alarmed, and it was as really fun and lively discussion. There were seven of us there, all with very different opinions, and the book turned out to be a great one for discussion.

I think that’s about the extent of my week. As usual, I’m counting down the days until school begins!

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Strange Practice, by Vivian Shaw (audio)

Posted on August 17, 2018 by Thistle

Alternate-world London, approximately present day. Dr. Greta Helsing treats patients who are “differently-alive” to use the PC term. Vampires, were-folk, ghouls, banshees, demons, etc. The non-human world is far more varied and nuanced than most people believe or understand. And now, a bizarre medieval religious cult has risen to the surface to attack both human and non-human, and a vampyre – a different species than a vampire – has shown up injured on the doorstep of a friend and client of Greta’s. A whole group of people (living and not) must riddle out the secret of this cult and stop the string of murders happening across the city.

Oof. That’s a terrible description and makes this sound like a supernatural crime novel or cozy mystery. It’s not. The book is far richer than that. The setup is similar in some ways to Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate books (Soulless, Changeless, etc), but this isn’t historical fantasy, there’s no Jane Austenesque speech, and the story/characters/writing are much thicker and heavier. This is a book for someone who wants urban fantasy with real people as characters, deep world-building, moral conflicts and philosophy, and heavy emphasis on love of the friendship sort. We’re talking about a vampire who has become a mentor and benefactor for a young historical researcher, and a witch who will cancel her vacation plans to run the clinic when Greta is in deep trouble, and a demon who stepped in as a father figure after Greta’s father died years ago. The ties these characters all have to each other go way back – sometimes hundreds of years back – and that is reflected in their relationships and actions throughout the novel.

Y’all know me – I love this sort of thing to pieces. The story was amazing. I suspected it would be a fun book when I started, but had no idea just how awesome it would be. It was unencumbered by traditional novel tropes, while delivering a solid plot arc. It was a perfectly closed story even though there are future books. I don’t even have a hint of what the next book will be about, plot-wise, and yet I definitely still want to read it because I loved the characters so much. I want to spend more time with them. The mystery was also revealed slowly over time and becomes far more grey-toned than one would expect from a group of serial-killer-monks. So I think it’s no surprise that this was a perfect read for me, or that I’m planning to read the second book (which just came out) for this upcoming RIP season (just a few weeks away!).

My only quibble with the story has to do with the audio production. First, I want to say that the actual audio performance was just as amazing as the book. Susanna Hampton does a first rate job with all the characters, making them all distinguishable with minor changes in accent and speech rhythm. She kept up the pacing well. However, the production tended to give no pause at section breaks. One minute Hampton would be reading about one character, and the next line would take place somewhere else with someone else, no transition at all. I’ve listened to other audiobooks that do this, and it’s always a bit jarring. But it really does feel like it’s a problem in the production – as the sections are pieced together – rather than what the narrator has done. Once I realized what was happening, I could adjust a little and just do a quick rewind if I got confused, but the first time (when a particular character was introduced in a completely different scene), I had no idea what was going on because I hadn’t realized it was past a section break. So if you listen to the audiobook – and I do highly recommend it – be forewarned about that one production quirk.

Posted in 2018, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Wellness Wednesday – Insomnia

Posted on August 15, 2018 by Thistle

Insomnia is a word that gets batted around casually, but real insomnia is nothing short of a paralyzing disease. With real insomnia, we’re not talking about a night of crap sleep that you can make up for in a night or two. We’re not even talking about a few nights of crap sleep. We’re talking years and years of no-sleep nights added up together, when even the minimal sleep you do get is worse than unrestorative. It’s day after day of your body trying to pull energy from somewhere, anywhere, just to continue with basic functions like breathing or listening or moving your limbs. It isn’t a question of willpower – when you suffer chronic insomnia, your body takes over. You no longer have any choices. Want to exercise? Nope, sorry. That energy is needed to digest food. Want to eat moderately? Too bad! The body needs massive amounts of food to get the minimum energy it requires in a day, storing the rest away for later because it’s terrified that these no-sleep nights will just continue and continue and continue. Which they will.

Years ago, I had a “friend” who tried to tell me that I didn’t suffer from insomnia because I didn’t have an official diagnosis. This was one of those “friends” who was always trying to one-up everyone. Oh, you have a twin? So do I, only we’re identical, and we had a psychic bond when we were little, only it broke when she ran away and I haven’t seen her in years and I have no photos of her because I destroyed them all as they were too painful. Oh, your husband is looking for a job and you might move out of state? Well, my husband was already looking for a job and already found one so we’ll be moving out of state before you have a chance. You’ve all met that person, right? Anyway, setting this girl’s toxic a$$ aside (like I did not long after meeting her), one of the things I remember most was the lecture she gave to me about insomnia and how my condition wasn’t “real.” She told me that I was making it up and complaining just to get attention, wanting to have an affliction, minimizing the real struggles of everyone else (like her). And all I could think (besides that it was time to dump her) was why the hell would I want an affliction like this one?

Real insomnia is a nightmare. You go through day after day with your thoughts watery and vague, because your brain is literally trying to get in some low-grade REM sleep in order to repair itself. You eat twice as much as you’d normally need, often made up of crap carbs, because your body can’t function properly without ready food energy. You can’t drive or exercise or hold onto full conversations. You think back on the worst days and can’t remember what parts of them were real and which parts were actually dreams. You resort to complex self-medicating habits in order to get even the tiniest bit of sleep, combinations you should never, ever mix (like Ambien, benedryl, and wine), because the doctors look at your condition, can’t find anything wrong with you, and simply shrug you off and push you out the door.

Before September 2011, my insomnia was inconsistent, a handful of weeks on end several times a year. It began my first year in college, and kept to that pattern for 14 years. In Sept 2011, something changed in my body, and the handful of weeks grew into a constant. In the seven years since, there have been so few times without constant insomnia that they stand out like beacons. A week in spring 2012 while I ate nothing but unprocessed foods, not even foods like canned tomatoes or beans. Two months in the summer of 2014 when I actually slept just by taking magnesium citrate supplements daily. Last month, when for most of July, I didn’t need more than just melatonin to sleep through the night. Aaaaand that’s it. Just over three months of real sleep in the last seven years.

Right from the beginning of August, like clockwork, the insomnia reared back up again. Whatever good things in July that had been happening in my body disappeared. You know that metaphor about certain diseases and having a limited number of spoons to use each day? With severe insomnia, on the worst days, you wake up with zero spoons. You have literally nothing to work with. And knowing that this is forever, and nobody knows why, and there’s nothing anyone can do to help or fix the situation, is the very definition of hell.

Posted in Wellness | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Kimono and Cross-body Crochet Bags

Posted on August 13, 2018 by Thistle

I mentioned in my July wrap-up that I’d gone backwards in my goal to get rid of all my yarn by starting a new project with new yarn. Well, I just finished said project! Welcome the Genesis Kimono into my closet:

I got the pattern free from Hooked on Tilly, though she has since removed the pattern from her blog and the only version you can get is for money. The pattern had modifications for small, medium, and large, and I used the large size for myself (though the medium would’ve been fine, as it turns out). For the most part, the pattern was easy to follow and it got into a good rhythm. The only problem I had was with the adaptation for the large. At the end, when you sew the side panels to the back, there’s supposed to be a gap between the two sides (otherwise they’d connect behind your neck). The large adaptation has the side panels wide enough that they actually overlap. Instead of overlapping them (which would’ve made the kimono unwearable), I left several inches unsewn and later flipped them back with a button to make lapels. It’s a good thing I know how to improvise! It’s possible this has been corrected in the paid version of the pattern, but I don’t know. Yarn used: Lion Brand Mandala in Centaur (body); Deborah Norville Everyday in Heather (edging/fringe).

Another fun benefit: Matching the Mandala yarn for the edging/fringe was very difficult, and I ended up with several extra skeins that didn’t quite match. I got to make a few small cross-body purses for my upcoming cruise. No pattern on either of them, I was just making it up as I went along from pictures on the internet. They aren’t terribly professional, but they’ll do!

Yarn: Lion Brand Jeans yarn in “Brand New.” This project took about two hours total, including all the squinting at the small internet photo to figure out what to do next. It also only used about half the skein, but I gave the rest away to a friend who likes to make collage pieces out of leftover skeins.

[PS – After finishing this project, I suddenly found the pattern. Only it’s in Danish. Heh.]

Yarn: Lion Brand Heartland in Badlands. Again, took about two hours total, and used about half the skein. This pattern was pretty much made up from scratch, and it came out okay.

Now I only have a single skein of yarn left to use to finish my goal of zeroing out my stock this year. Woohoo!

Posted in Crochet | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Another House Update

Posted on August 12, 2018 by Thistle

When your house is ripped apart and coming back together slowly, your world eventually sharpens until that work, the last stages of it, becomes all you can do and think about. You just want it to be over and done with. I’ve talked about this before, somewhere in this blog, the last stages of any major project from writing a manuscript to undergoing a weight loss journey – something I’ve called the “Nine of Wands” mentality. Anyway, I’ve gotten to that point on this construction project. I haven’t had a whole house since Mother’s Day, and I can’t think of anything else besides please please let me have a whole real house again. So here’s how construction went this week:

First, our contractor decided to cancel the event he was leaving for on the 9th since this project wasn’t going to be done, especially as he wasn’t able to come over to work last weekend like planned. Then, work didn’t really resume until Wednesday afternoon due to a major problem of a mutual friend. At that point, he said he was going to work straight through the end of today, since his new deadline is tomorrow, but he ended up sick again yesterday. I imagine we have at least a week’s worth of stuff left to do, and it’s definitely not all going to get done today. On my list of tasks (broken into each component part), there are still 40 more items left. Fingers crossed it’ll be done by next Sunday, but as each day passes and things keep going wrong, I’m betting more on my original guess of the 25th.

Things done this week on our very shortened 2.5-day work schedule: downstairs trim up and caulked; subfloor and the beginnings of tile laid in the boys’ bathroom; repair tile laid (but not grouted yet) in the kitchen; about 75% of the wall mudding and texturing done in the kitchen, dining, and living rooms. Wish us luck that five times this much will get done before next Sunday’s update!!

*****
Note: Our contractor is a friend of ours. We’ve had him do work for us several times over the last few years, and we know that the trade-off of having top-quality work done (and done right) is that he juggles a lot of time-management problems and personal issues. He’s great at his work but not as good at paperwork, timing, efficient work flow, etc. So this path is one we chose. We could have had a company come in and do this all in a few days, but the quality of work likely would have been a bunch of cut corners and crap workmanship. Back in February, with our roof in critical condition, we chose not to go with our contractor but instead with a “guaranteed quality company” through USAA’s contractor connection, because time was of the essence. And look how well that turned out. This whole $20k summer nightmare is due to their negligence, and that whole “guarantee” bit wasn’t so guaranteed. So while I complain about it here, a bit of extra time and chaos is totally worth hiring someone who we know will do the work right.

As San Antonio homeowners since 2006 (with two years spent away in that time), we’ve had to do many house repairs. In our first house (2006-2014): replacing all windows, replacing the roof, siding repair, deep plumbing (above), flooring, duct work, a/c issues, fence repair/rebuild, rebuilding walls after window leaks, replacing exterior doors. Second house (one year between Boston and Wisconsin): replacing the entire kitchen, dealing with black mold, plumbing, flooring, roof, repairing chimney mortar, replacing two walls of the house including new stud work throughout (left), electrical issues, a/c and duct issues, deck repair. Current house (one year now): landscaping for major erosion, roof x 2, dealing with the fallout from the roof being repaired incorrectly (not going to list all that out again), pipe flooding, and replacing the entire kitchen, living room, dining room, upstairs bathroom, and master bathroom.

Of those jobs, we’ve done half the work ourselves or by hiring this same contractor. No trouble with them. Of the other jobs, half involved companies/individuals that we knew through family or personal connection. None of those gave us trouble, because they were all people who were good at their very specialized jobs (in other words, none of them could have dealt with the massive current project alone). However, with a quarter of all the total above jobs – or all the jobs we hired strangers to do – all but one of them caused major problems/issues on our houses, and the companies had to redo their jobs after we got very noisy in our complaints. One company literally installed a window so crooked that there was an inch-thick gap between it and the wall on one corner, and told us that was just because Texas houses shift so much that this happened in the hours after installation. No, dude. No. He said the same thing about the sliding glass door that wouldn’t slide open immediately after he installed it.

TL;DR: So yes, with all the trouble we’ve had in the past by having strangers’ companies do these jobs for us – and all the trouble that everyone we know in town has also had with strangers’ companies doing jobs for them – we feel far more comfortable hiring someone we know will do the work well, even if for many reasons he might be slower than someone else.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

The Prince and the Dressmaker, by Jen Wang

Posted on August 10, 2018 by Thistle

When Frances follows her client’s wishes instead of her boss’, she is both fired from her job as a seamstress and hired by a mysterious new client in the palace. She meets Sebastian, the Belgian prince, in need of her unique services. Frances accepts Sebastian for who he is, and helps him to create the clothing needed for his Lady Crystallia half.

A love story involving a genderqueer character and the person who accepts him and cares for him regardless? What’s not to love?? This is one of the sweetest things I’ve read in quite some time. I wanted to hug the book. I probably did hug the book. Um, more than once. Definitely need my own copy!

I’m very picky about graphic novels, but the artwork and story were both fabulous in this one. I loved every second and highly recommend it!

Posted in 2018, Visual, Young Adult | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Wellness Wednesday – Filling Time

Posted on August 8, 2018 by Thistle

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been binging on fluff audiobooks, not really listening half the time, just to have something playing while I do other things. Out of the blue, a line popped up in one of them: “You’re filling your time so you don’t have to face how much you’re hurting.” The line struck home. I feel like most of the last four years have been an exercise in this exact activity. It’s easier to read too much, exercise too much, watch too much TV, listen to too much music, crochet too much, do too many puzzles, etc etc etc than to actually sit down in the silence and face all the things that I feel and all the things that I’ve struggled through since April 2014.

Honestly, I’m not sure what to do about this. Back in early 2011, the time when I really got serious during my first weight loss journey, I made a plan to yes, lose weight, but also do so with balance. I cut my reading from 200 books a year to 50 or so, a much better pace for me. I signed up for classes in activities I’d wanted to try (like making stained glass). I taught myself other things, like calligraphy and henna-painting. My health goals were divided – not just eating the right kind of food, but drinking enough water, getting enough sleep, starting new good habits, exercising moderately, etc. It was the perfect storm to help me to fill my time but in a meaningful way, in a way that really brought me forward to become what I wanted to become. It’s not the same as binge-watching SVU and playing phone games and listening to a dozen fluff audiobooks.

The difference is, when I started 2011, I was in a mentally stable and healthy place. I’d been working for a month to dig myself out of a pit of shame (regarding my body), and I wanted to create a journey that would be longterm sustainable. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to find that balance again. Some of it is external (between lack of schedule, chaos at home, and emotional blows), and some of it is my own lack of strength at the moment. But I don’t want to just fill my time anymore. I want all my steps to be leading me forward.

In writing, there’s a common piece of advice that says you should cut anything that doesn’t move the story or characters forward. Setting aside the finer points of this advice, this seems to be a valid way to live as well. Walking toward something, not just wading in place or trying to go backwards. Unfortunately, about 75% of my time is the deadweight of a manuscript that would get cut in editing. And I don’t know how to fix or address the internal mess that keeps me from fully living. But it’s about time for me to figure this out.

Posted in Wellness | Tagged , | 5 Comments