Quiet the Cacophony
Friday, April 7, 2017
Vigilance
Friday update!
While I was there, I ate. Kind of inevitable, I know, but it brought something into focus for me. I need to maintain my vigilance.
The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. In order to change that future behavipr, one needs to be completely aware of what happened, why it happend, and have an idea of what would be necessary to change it. Lucky for me, where I am concerned I have an only slightly unreliable account. I know myself well, and I must be vigilant against those things which would cause me to fail.
In this case, it's knowledge of my own, staggering ability to justify my own behaviors. Call it what you will, but at the end of the day it's fitting the facts to the needs to make a bad behavior ok. I know that, as soon as I do it, I am trying to convince myself to do something I know I shouldn't. Last weekend, it was food.
I can eat all those fries, and make them curly. Oh, and that deep fried chicken sandwich on a brioche style bun and that soft serve ice cream are perfectly ok. You're on vacation. If you can't relax... well, you get the picture. I was using everything I could think of to make it ok to eat the things I know lead to backsliding.
It only makes sense, really. I have lost a ton of weight, the health scares are gone and even my cpap is auto setting to lower levels. If I am having all these wins, I can relax and just maintain, right?
Not so much. What it really means is that the habits are being seen by my inner self as prohibitions. If that is the case, I must be incentivist and use the potential negatives of getting *back* to being in danger of losing my life to whatever myriad problem was looming in the shadows of my body. I must would that weapon and keep myself in line. Only through self discipline am I able to get there.
I must be vigilant. I must hold those standards until they are all habits which simply happen. Until I can legitimately have that sugar and carb overdose without fear of backsliding. OH, and trust me, my body reacted poorly to the overdose. Somewhat explosively.
Through vigilance I got to my successes. Through vigilance I will keep on improving. Maybe next year I will be able to leap over the hood of the car trying to hit me instead of leaping around it.
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
Patience 2
A good friend and I went on a trip together. I should probably say that this person and I dated about 14 years ago or so. It was for only a year, and it ended poorly. It was the last real relationship I've had since. A string of failed relationships over a period of four years (including the daughter' s mother and this one) led me to a very dark place; a place I had no idea what to do. It was a puzzle my 33 year old self could not unravel until I came to the conclusion I was the problem and acted to change those things that were causing the failures on my end.
I tried to date at first. There were A few people over the years I was pretty interested in, and I even went on a few dates which inevitably ended with with me freezing up, screwing up a first date, or just plain being paralyzed in fear. As a result, I chose to stop dating.
A conscious decision to eschew romantic entanglements with no religious proscription is an odd thing to most people. It leads to some very interesting assumptions, and ones I did not dissuade people from having since they conveniently fit the lifestyle I was choosing.
The labels weren't entirely accurate. The entire time I was not aromantic or asexual, although i woukd use those labels at time for convenience in explaining to others where I was in my romantic life. I was not avoidant or any other myriad things people thought. I consciously chose not to date until I could do so without the paralyzing fear.
That time has come. Although the fear is there and the terror is real, I am making a choice. I am choosing to face that fear in the desire to feel and explore those feelings.
A couple months ago, the aforementioned friend and I went to a movie together. During the movie we cuddled. This was not out of character. It was something we had done before as friends, and not entirely unexpected, but this time it sparked old feelings more strongly than I had felt in years.
See, this person and I? Other than about 2 years immediately after the relationship have been good friends. We have dined together, gone camping together, lamented life together... hell, I held her hand at the hospital before she went in for surgery. Point is we've never lost that friendship.
Over those same years we would sometimes try to figure out our feelings, always concluding the past was best left there. It was the logical decision. It was the safe decision, it was the patient decision.
But it is no longer the time for that patience. Now the patience comes in letting myself feel and in not overanalyzing things or pushing for explanations or digging into the why of a purely emotional response in someone else. Let's see where this goes.
I lost my patience last night.
Things had gotten out of control on the household front. Despite weeks of admonishment of my co-habitants to do their portion of the homework and to do the chores and errands they needed to complete in order for the house to be stable and clean, they did not make apparent progress at a good rate.
I finally made my displeasure known.
That's not always a bad thing, in fact unless you make your displeasure known, the person can't know they are causing any amount of discomfort. From family to partners to coworkers to presidents and kings, unless they know what they are doing is in any way incorrect, they will just keep doing it.
In this case, I made an error in keeping my patience as long as I did. It led to raised voices and anger. I kept my patience too long and did not make
Funny thing, patience.
Friday, March 31, 2017
Patience
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Saturday, March 25, 2017
Faster
"Hey, could you walk a little slower?" I hadn't heard that in about a decade. I've heard it four times in the last week.
I suppose I could just leave the Friday update there and declare victory, but it's so much more than that. Those words represent some pretty cool things to me.
In my unhealthy state I was obviously not walking much. This meant that when I did walk it was usually going to be with others because, well, that's just how people were getting top whatever. I was slower than everyone.
With my team at work, I ended up nearly a block behind on a four block wall to a restaurant. With friends I would beg for breaks and for them to slow down, and woe unto me if folks wanted be to go hiking.
Now it's full speed ahead at an average of just above three miles an hour regardless of terrain. Up hills, down hills, across mud, whatever, I walk. My legs pumping out a rhythm to match the music in my ears when I am exercising keep that rhythm when I am just walking now, too, but that rhythm is a little faster than some.
It's a small thing, walking faster, but it's a victory for me. It represents one more embarrassment falling away. One more thing I hated about how my body was and isn't any more.
Between this and people I haven't seen in a couple years commenting on how I "look great" with the weight loss I might even begin to believe I am getting back to being in shape. Let's see about dance and fencing next.
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Change
Monday, March 20, 2017
Windfall
Taxmas is a thing. It came about in my house because being a technical contractor meant not having paid time off, and being a technical contractor meant not making enough to really get ahead to be able to save up for that big gift. It also meant having to tell your kid that the big presents would have to wait a month or two... for Taxmas.
It's not just about the gifts, of course, it's about any larger purchase. Things get outdated, break, or just plain wear out. Clothes get torn and can't be replaced (let's talk about big people and clothes at thrift stores some time), phones stop working, cars stop running and the only thing which can possibly rescue these things comes in the form of a windfall.
We're told we shouldn't spend them. After all, they're for your hard times, or your retirement, or you should change your withholding so you get that small amount more per check instead of all at once. We're told by politicians that we don't deserve assistance because we bought a new couch or phone instead of buying insurance or we bought steak and lobster one day to try to lift the oppressive air and have a small luxury to make us just a little happier.
But that's the thing. When you're poor, every time is a lean time. You get so used to getting by with so little and bending over backwards to stretch your income as far as it can go that when you get that windfall, it's like candy. Eating all the candy at once might be bad for you in the long run, but when you haven't had any for the rest of the year, someone plunking down a snickers bar in front of you brings on feelings of doubt.
Add to that the fact that every store in poor neighborhoods knows you just got your tax return. They rely on it. They advertise for it. They want you to spend it and they have sales designed specifically to take advantage of the fact that you have money you usually don't. You could call it free market economy or a symptom of further economic oppression, but it's real either way. The very thing we shouldn't do, we're encouraged to do... so we do.
We get the new used car and pay cash for the means to get to work. We buy the new phone because not having one means we miss the calls which can lead to better times. We rent to own the new couch because the only thing we have to sit on is folding chairs and pillows (yes, I've been there). And then we're judged for it.
Now I stand on the middle of the financial scale for the first time in my adult life. A windfall now means an amount of money old me would never be able to conceive of having all at once. Bills vanish, savings can happen and there can still be money left over, so... I don't know what to do. My instinct is to buy new things, but other than the new computers to replace the ones nearing 6 years old nd some new clothes to fit the changing body there's only luxuries to buy. It's a strange place to be for me.
Maybe this year, we won't have to wait until February to celebrate Christmas morning.
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Choices
I did it!
I successfully managed to make reasonable choices this week. Yes, I did give in to some small items, like a piece of a friend's first attempt at making truffles and a spoonful of ice cream, but by and large, it was successful. I managed to keep to my habits and even improve some of them.
That's the thing I love about this attempt over the others. By maintaining strict dietary restrictions for long enough, I now can gauge more accurately where I can make those small cheats and not have an overall negative effect. I can also be reasonably assured that my choices will keep in mind the overall goal. In short, character matters and discipline is finally a thing. It took me long enough!
If I am honest, I feel like I am on the other side of a very long struggle with myself. All of the self doubt and negativity I have felt for so long is beginning to slough off. I still have a good amount of anxiety around a lot of things, but honestly? This journey is showing me things about myself I had forgotten. It has shown me my strength again, and I am loving it.
In this case, I do actually mean physical strength as well as mental and emotional fortitude. I can lift and carry a significant amount. Things others say are heavy are... kind of? I can jump and duck and even run if I have to. I can easily step over gaps that even a few scant months ago, I would have doubted my ability to cross. I am stretching my abilities on the daily by continuing to meet and exceed exercise goals (116% of goals recorded on my phone last week), and I am killing it on the walking.
I had lost track of my walking limits. You know, the amount of distance I can walk before my legs say "um, dude? Let's not anymore." When I first started this journey, it was all about the walking... because I really couldn't. A simple quarter mile on somewhat flat surface was excruciatingly winding. My heart would be beating and I could barely catch my breath. I was worried. That, along with the now removed threat of diabetes were my primary motivations. Well, that and seeing a picture of myself which showed just how out of shape I really had become. Either way, those limits were hard. They were holding me back and they had to be challenged.
So challenge them I did. This past week, I have found the new one. about 2.5 miles of walking over an hour period with two small rests of about five minutes each is what my legs can do now. Sure, it's no 5k and it's not even close to a good hiking trip, but it's awesome to me. It represents progress. It represents greater freedom. It inspires me to keep pushing, to keep making these good choices which are increasing my confidence and helping drive back the demons of depression.
Maybe, finally, I can start looking forward. It's my choice to do so.
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