not much

the dr and i both fell ill last week, him more snotty and phlegmy, me more clammy and exhaustion.  

not much has been going on outside of that.

listening to this american life podcasts which i’ve been thoroughly enjoying, getting into barefoot running (which looks more like barefoot limping currently) and eating lots of delivery since we’ve been too lame with illness to cook.  i started feeling relatively normal yesterday so i escaped to hike with heather in the east bay and talk life stuffs which was nice.

we’ve finally taken out a week and a half’s worth of garbage, recycling and compost.  after an hour and half at the gym my legs were a bit weak but i made it up and down the back staircase ok and rewarded myself with a shower.  there’s tempeh in the smoker and rice in the rice cooker and avocado and frozen peas waiting to be sauteed with butter and shallots.  

i wished it was later in the week so we’d have some top chef and project runway to watch.

oh well.  more time with ira glass for me then.

i ain’t complaining.

 

phases

it seems that i’m entering a different phase of this whole thing.

after my oral surgery over a week ago i entered complete vicodin haze sloth mode.  it wasn’t horrendously painful.  i just like vicodin. so i took it because i had permission to.  i gave myself permission to sleep 12 hours a night with 2 2-hour naps a day.  i slept more in one three day weekend than i had the entire month of  december.  it was glorious.

and then i had to go to work.

this made me cranky.  i did what i needed to do but i was kicking and screaming the entire way.  i was just irritated.  i wanted more laziness.  i wanted more chocolate pudding.  i wanted more vicodin haze.  it all hit me wed night when i left sampson’s early because i just didn’t want to talk about it.  i didn’t want to talk to anyone.  i wanted to lay around the house bra-less watching old episodes of top chef while the boyfriend fed me soup.

it hit me that the time i spent lollying about after getting a tooth pulled i wasn’t required to do anything at all.

nothing.

i was expected to do absolutely nothing.

and this feeling was liberating.  i felt my brain get worked up thinking i could go to the gym or yoga but my body was wise enough to override it.

operating heavy machinery was on the no-no list from the dr.  eliptical trainers are heavy pieces of machinery.  and considering i tried to use my drivers license as a credit card at the grocery store on the way home from surgery was a sign that i wasn’t fit to be in public for a couple of days.

so i laid about and for the first time, did not feel bad or guilty about it at all.  it was a relief.  i could sleep as much as i wanted.  do whatever i wanted and for the first time that chiding condescending voice in my head that called me lazy the moment i think about getting 8 hours of sleep, sorta just shut itself up for a minute.

i think this is what real rest is and i think i finally got some.  it was better than a 3 week vacation.  i reveled in not leaving the house, not talking to people and not feeling guilty for any of it.

to have that change tuesday morning was awful.  thus, the crank.  ugh. work. people.  expectations.  THINGS TO DO.  nightmare.

needless to say i got over it.  friday night i got home from work after a short stint at the gym and thanked the beings that be for the rain.

i entertained the idea of going to bikram in the morning for about 20 minutes.  yeah.  didn’t happen.  i didn’t feel bad.

i did end up going sunday morning.  without complaint or hesitation i got up at 7:30 in the morning and made my way to bikram and struggled through a sweaty class and paid close attention to the parts that were the hardest.  i walked home and showered and ate a bowl of rice, avocado and chickpeas and felt the most normal i had in ages.  at 12:30 i made my way down valencia to yoga tree for a 3 hour restorative workshop and while i thought i’d be bored by 3 hours of restorative, it went by faster than i anticipated, i fell asleep once and walked out feeling even better than normal.

i felt fantastic.

it hit me that these are the little steps towards making decisions to do things you want to do not things you think you should do.

it’s not a big thing, there is no big revelation on how this works like i had thought it would be.  i was doing things i wanted to do and there was no trace of malice, anger or fear attached to any of these things.  i ate a peanut butter cup and didn’t internally berate myself on how i don’t know how to take care of myself.  i went to bikram without thinking ‘if i keep doing this i’ll go down a pant size.’ i lolled around in blankets, bolster pillows and sandbags with a whole room full of people and didn’t once think ‘ doing this makes me a better person’.

i had the best sunday in the world.  it made waking up to a torrential downpour this morning a lot easier.

it helps that my new rain boots came in friday as well.

today

i’m feeling less “think-y” and more “action-y”.

i’m kicking ass at work.  this used to mean crossing things off my to do list at lightening speed.

now it means not crumbling when faced with issues and fuck ups.

now if i can only apply this to my life outside this space.

the work

“Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not be squeamish about taking a good look.” Pema Chödrön

i’ve had no real pull to write.

i’ve been full of, “I should be writing.” but since a lot of my work these days is to weed out the shoulds from my life to really weed through the things i think i should do to find out what i actually want to do i’ve been tasked by sampson to not do the things i think i should do and see how i feel about it.

i took almost two months off from the shoulds of my life. i’ve only gone to the gym when i felt like i really wanted to which equaled 3x a month as opposed to my regular drive to go 3x a week. i’ve only been to bikram 2x a month. regular yoga 2x or so but i did manage to do lots of yoga on my own in both Yachats, OR and Kauai,HI. I tried to fight my should of going into work at 7AM and tried sleeping in (failed horribly, these things take practice I guess). i ate whatever i wanted with no guilt whatsoever. i haven’t cracked one anatomy text book. i’m now one of the throngs with an iphone and i’ve laid around watching tv shows and checking facebook on the thing while a stack of books have been laying around waiting to be read. while the sun shone outside and called me to come frolic ii unabashedly have laid in the poof chair for hours and let myself be taken away by mindless drivel.

it’s amazing how relieved you feel when you finally give yourself permission to do all the things you want to do. at first it’s difficult. it’s amazing how hard it was for me to let myself eat as many grilled cheeses in one day as i wanted. (i praise whomever invented daiya) i’ve come to realize that the voice in my head that is constantly mean to myself is the voice of a disapproving parent looking down on me and judging me harshly. it’s the voice that polices me. the voice that keeps me out of trouble. the one that tells me to eat my salad and shut up. do your cardio because you’re a fat fuck. work a 12 hour day because if you don’t you’ll lose your job. don’t do this. don’t do that. you can’t do it because you’re not good enough. you can’t wear that because you’re not skinny enough. you should go outside and not waste your time. these people don’t like you. you’re not like them. you need to listen to me if you want to ever become the better person you imagine in your head. the one you thought you’d be if you just lost more weight, read more books, went to more shows, traveled more, etc.

i’ve come to the obvious conclusion that i am constantly exhausted because i’m spending so much time trying to live up to an impossible standard i have set for myself.i’ve had great moments of enlightenment in the past couple of years and have slowly but surely gained more self-confidence and some ‘i don’t give a fuck’ attitude but things come together like that and then they fall apart again. these feelings are always in flux.

so as i let myself off the hook for a couple of months to do whatever i wanted to do and ignore any statement that started with ‘i should’ i wallowed in guilt for a bit. i worried. i was anxious. BUT IF I DON’T GO TO THE GYM I’M GOING TO GAIN WEIGHT.

god. the fear. all these things that i should do were fueled by fear.

and since a majority of my life is filled with shoulds it means that a majority of my life is filled with fear.

this was a big revelation to me.

i am scared of things. lots of things. i thought i had your basic fear of heights and falling down things, a normal fear of horror movies and wet condiments but it seems to go deeper than that. fear has been hardwired into my way of living. why i white knuckle it as i ride my bike on a street with cars. why my chest starts to tighten when i think about major life changes. why i have epic breakdowns when i evaluate anything in my life that will take away my current happiness.

i’ve spent my entire life believing that these feelings are my own and that somehow everyone else has their shit together. it’s just me trying to muddle my way through this. like i was born with this handicap that made my life harder than everyone else’s and i had to work harder to achieve what looks like normal.

all signs point to:

THIS IS CRAZY TALK.

none of it is true. we’re all doing the best we can and we are all struggling in our own way.

the stupid voice that wants me to believe i’m damaged wants me to believe that i need it because without it i’d be a fat, lazy, jobless, useless human being.

it’s never been just ok to be whoever it is i am. there’s always this feeling that if i don’t work hard to be this idea of myself i want to be then there is no point for me to be here. because boiling everything away, all the layers upon layers of things i’ve piled on top of me to define me, my work, the way i dress, the people i know, the things i own, the choices i make – take all of that away, the person underneath all of that isn’t worthy…of anything.

OMG THIS IS CRAZY TALK.

but it’s… it’s what i’ve been thinking about and what i’ve been realizing as i try to find ways to really be as authentic as i can be. i’ve burfied all this bad stuff, all this awful self-esteem stuff because i naturally thought that i could ignore it and work harder and it would naturally just go away.

it’s coming to light that i need to really touch upon the ugly things i’ve squirreled away and deal with them now if i want to move forward.

a lot of this has been hovering quietly in my brain as i move through the normalcy of everyday life and it speaks up loudly when i find myself saying:

“I should go to the gym tonight.”

“I should set my alarm earlier because i need to catch up on some stuff at work.”

“i should go to yoga.”

“i shouldn’t eat this.”

the counter voice i’m building is starting to ask “what’s the worst thing that will happen if you don’t do this?”

all of this is exhausting. trying to break down the person i think i am to figure out who’s really underneath all this crap is work.

so i’ve been especially quiet as i put my head down and work my way through this diligently, slowly letting go of all these bad thoughts i have about myself knowing that they can come back at any moment but i’ll be better prepared to handle them when they do make their way back into my brain.
it’s always been easy to make a laundry list of the things i think are wrong with me because i am my own worst enemy. it’s easy to identify what i don’t like about myself. it’s hard to identify why i feel this way about myself. the origins of these feelings are usually dark places we don’t like to go to and places we don’t want to acknowledge exist.

somedays are great. somedays are just ok and somedays it really really sucks.

just like real life.