Monthly Archives: April 2012
22 posts
and tell myself what I really need and what my motives are, I get this.
And then my brain feels really sheepish about it, like maybe it’s really lame and I’m incapable of mattering or doing things that matter. I think it’s just upset that it kept it hidden and in the shadows for so long, because it feels so scary to say it; and to name the things that drive me and have driven me since I went down that slide in the playground thinking I could be a hero like Balto when I was three.
On March First I started a Tumblr to keep track of my progress. I mostly just update with my starting weight of the day and how I’m feeling. I’ve been using an app for food tracking, but it’s waned in it’s helpfulness, so I’ll probably go back to just remembering what I eat again in the future. A few things have happened since January.
Most importantly, I found out that my weight trigger is almost completely hormonal. By getting my hormones under control through herbal supplements, my weight has varied and actually gone down. When I started keeping track I weighed 122. Today, I started out at 117.6 which isn’t half bad. Obviously, it fluctuates a lot, so I’m not totally ready to call it “lost” yet, but it’s nice to see the scale moving down instead of just up. Ironically, the scale numbers don’t actually reflect how I feel. So I’m still working on that. My legs however, are really starting to tone up and look really nice, and so is my stomach when I’m not focusing on that one little ledgey thing near my abdomen (which might just be where my stomach lives). I haven’t measured myself but I should start doing that, because that’s what actually counts.
Secondly, I’ve been staying fairly consistent with exercising. I don’t push myself too far because my body will regret it and I don’t have a trainer or anyone besides my muscles and bones to tell me what’s safe and what’s not. I still walk at least once a day if it’s not pouring ice cold rain, and I do general yoga stretches and core (I think?) exercises in the morning or at night as needed. My muscles have been finicky lately (and today my tailbone decided to hate me) so I pay attention to those and if I think I’m going to bother them more, I don’t do the stretches. It’s better to avoid injury, I think…
That said, my body is starting to have a little bit more definition than it had before which is nice. Weird, but nice.
We’ve been cooking. Less this month than last, but cooking and controlling your ingredients does seem to help – at least as a placebo if nothing overtly noticeable. This week we made Ribs with Macaroni& Cheese (who knew they went so well together?), Chick-Fil-A-eqsue sandwiches (because they don’t exist here, and I miss them :P), and we’re going to be making chili, chicken pasta primavera, curry chicken shepard’s pie, and if I’m lucky, I’ll make a scrambled egg & left over veggie thingy. 😉
So that’s where I am now. Still flying by the seat of my pants – the biggest thing, I think, is just figuring out what your trigger is and focusing on that, and then adding things (cutting soda, cooking more, exercising regularly).
Every night before I fall asleep (somewhat fitfully) for the last few days I’ve had a running scenario/monologue. This isn’t really new to me, but for some reason it’s been fairly consistent the last few days which is somewhat odd.
I’m a guest on my favorite podcast (nerdist) and we’re talking about something and it always goes back to how I haven’t been to college which leads to me then explaining in detail the scenario of why that is, which leads me to trying to figure out if it’s okay that I don’t have a degree or any formal education after high school. Besides the fact that job odds are ever stacked in the opposite of my favor as far as pay goes – which is for many other reasons than just college, admittedly.
I don’t even know that I think college would make me a better person. I’m basically making myself a job by doing art, web-development stuff, both producing and acting in separate web series(es?), and trying to be healthy/fit. As far as time goes, I constantly need to evaluate how I spend it, and I am doing really cool things with it (in my opinion). I know how to learn, and I’m good at learning.
Honestly, as much as I think about having a steady paying job for myself, I’m not actually looking for one, because I’m enjoying doing “Niche Shoppe job” with my time because of the loveliness of my husband (who enables me to do that, and I don’t take it for granted – I try not to, anyway).
But something in the back of my mind is always there. Things from my past that I haven’t rooted out yet. I feel like college would somehow be a culmination of an inner need to tell myself that I can do it, and I don’t have to be the person I thought I was “supposed” to be, and that I’m not turning into that (obviously, the person I thought I was “supposed” to be would look absolutely nothing like me, and she’d have bad hair).
But I don’t have the money. Or the time, frankly. As much as I would love to someday, and may make that a goal in the future, I have other things calling my name – establishing myself, and my series(es), and my art, and taking care of me, and proving to myself that just because I don’t clock in at 9 and out at 5 and don’t actually get a paycheck (yet?) that what I’m doing is just as relevant; and just because I occasionally work in a bathrobe and do things from the comfort of our apartment doesn’t mean that I’m the definition of a “housewife”.
Because I’m really not.
I’m looking at you, dinner.
And dishes, I hate you.
With a passion.
The other webseries I’m working on now has a trailer!
I need to not stay up so late and wake up earlier, at least for the next week, because I have a lot of things I want to do, and not enough time to do them with my current “schedule”. Also, I need to wake up and run from Zombies again, when it’s not raining all week.
To do:
1) finish Team Treehouse – I have 30+ more badges to do and about a week and a half to do them. Which, I can do, if I wake up before 11 or do them late at night.
2) finish The Nerdist Way – well on my way to doing that. I’m on part 3, and I wrote down the prompts in my Tome to do at my leisure.
3) create more content/make more videos. I have the next two roughly planned, but I need to get them sorted and done-ish, and continue to make more. Which means more Mass Effect and WoW for me also.
4) keep journaling – I love it. You might have guessed if you saw the last video, but it’s great.
5) paint something – I want to. So yeah.
need to not stay up till 3 am….
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…” ― Dr. Seuss
I’d like to go to Cardiff, in England, and travel in the TARDIS on the Doctor Who set.
(drawn on my iPad using Paper, and a bamboo iPad pen)
but instead, I’m writing, because I need to and I can’t find food until my brain spills it’s thoughts. Weirdness.
I got to part three of The Nerdist Way and I need to talk now.
The last few days I’ve been in a funk, not weird for me I guess, but I had several really really good days when I felt awesome and I was the warden of my brain and not it’s overtired prisoner. Hardwick talks about how our brains just sort of set to autopilot, and I can finally pick up when that happens (today and yesterday, for instance) because when I control it I’m so. much. happier and I feel so much more alive. The problem I’m having today is getting out of the tired funk induced autopilot and getting back into the captains chair, because it’s more fun there and I swear, the sky is brighter and the air smells better. I took today “off” and decided to just read. Here’s hoping tomorrow is brighter and less sleepy-coma-y.
I did one thing that started getting the happy hormones to my fuzzy brain – I filled in some of my progress in my progress bars in my Character Tome, and also, I reached level two in my life bar.
Brain is better now, hitting the books…