Issue #49 It's The End of the World As I Know It and I Suppose I Feel Okay Even Though Most Things Are A Dumpster Fire

I've been thinking a lot on the idea of a sense of self, my self, my goals, and desires not just for the new year but for always. My daily state of being is "overwhelmed." It does not help my job contract ended on December 28 which enhances the feeling of worthlessness. I feel even more lost as a few that are close to me have recently started their own way on the long hard journey to wholeness and I find myself standing alone, watching their backs as they move towards their own goals wondering, "Why not me?" Cement blocks are metaphorically keeping me rigidly in place. It is not for a matter of want or lack of tools or desire; those things I have in spades. But I am drowning, and I have been drowning, for quite some time and I feel impotent to the change.

Why?

I was also remarking privately to myself this shadow of regret lingers around me, pausing sometimes to thin so I can almost see relief before enveloping me again. I am cocooned. I work hard to remind myself TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY and ALL IS NOT LOST. But it often feels tasteless on my tongue. I have been in this state, of some degree, for decades. When will the breakthrough happen for me? When will I not just breathe my existence but actually learn to live? I have written extensively on the paralyzation of my life these last few years and to be sure, there is some rational reasoning for it: leaving my job, joblessness, the case, my mother dying, the tenuous relationship with TEH in the beginning when we got back together, and the constant moving. I should not be so proud as to think that because I've lived in a single place for three years that it is an achievement but yet, here I am: proud. To be sure, all of these things could do anyone in. I am called strong and resilient and amazing because I get up in the morning, I do the things I can do, and I function. I never give up on myself and I never give up hope.

And yet.

But there are days, as these last string of days have shown, where everything tastes black and spoiled. It mostly relates to the ending of my job and the stress of job hunting again. I've had three interviews: one was a definite no, one was "you'll know when we know" which means the HR is handled by the city and the library cannot tell me the status of my application until the city deems it so, thus I am in limbo. The third interview was with a local web dev company, a startup, and the interview went really, really well. I felt some hope that I could be a good fit for the position. I was told they would know the end of the following week only to receive an email half an hour later telling me they were "snoozing my resume" (direct quote). They felt I wasn't quite right but invite me to apply again in a few months. I cried. My therapist wants me to look at it as a positive thing but honestly, I want to light things on fire.

It would gauche, repetitive, stupid, illogical [insert adjective here] to talk about New Year's resolutions because like losing weight, resolutions almost always fail. People have GREAT IDEAS and read self-help books, watch TED Talks, or listen to podcasts on whey they are failing with ideas on how to fix that with only slight number succeeding. None of the advice is consistent and it is confusing. There is the argument the changes should happen when you want to start that process, the very minute or hour when you make your decision, and not on a day because it is decreed to be so. You must REALLY WANT the change and if you're not actively working then you must not want it bad enough. I remember a few years ago when I had GREAT IDEAS, I decided to kick things off in September as that was the Roman New Year (or one of them at least) as that would be cooler than waiting a few more months which gave me that time to binge and thus gain more weight or fall far behind where I was at that moment. That idea failed. There is also the suggestion to make all of these GREAT IDEAS public for accountability but if that worked for me, the Great American-Canadian Novel would have been written and published a dozen times and I would be famous and rich six times over. Of course, you can always keep things private as a SURPRISE to everyone that look, you've done this great thing and now you can continue doing great things. 

My beautiful friend Steph posted the above with a lovely paragraph about her goals for 2019 and I thought, fuck people mocking fun of resolutions and change, I need that shit right now. (Also, fuck people who use "basic" as a term of derision. I'll do and wear what the fuck I want, when I want, and how I want.) I know change can happen. I have been 90% smoke-free for almost a decade now which is something I never thought I would do and I quit drinking caffeine a few months ago which according to rumor and such is harder to quit than heroin. So, I have proven to myself to change even though I feel like I am Sisyphus most days. I CAN change. Maybe I just haven't figured out the right method for me yet on everything else.

I have decided this time around I would do things differently. It will not be "lose 100 lbs" but "stop eating dairy and don't go over your daily calorie goal by 500 calories." It is not, "weigh myself every day or every week" but it is "weigh myself every month." It is not "Run a 5K" but "walk 5K steps a day and increase that slowly" There are larger goals, of course, like lose 100lbs and run a 5K (oh god, why the fuck am I thinking this is a good thing? It feels as if people don't take your exercise goals legitimately unless you're sprinting like Jackie Joyner Kersee and sweating buckets in the process) but I am not thinking about those long goals, I'm thinking about attainable things I can do every day. I do not want to binge and purge and make myself sick to lose 100lbs, which was my previous modus operandi. I want to be more conscious of what I'm eating and stop using food as a catch-all for all things that plague me. I want to move and stretch. I can walk 5K no problem but now I want to run it. I want to go up and down our flights in our building without sounding like an asthmatic. I want a camera trained on me, following my progress while energetic music plays in the background, A montage of my success before I am dipped backward and kissed by TEH.

Small attainable goals. Small changes. Everything is possible.

I have an empty notebook I found to track these goals because I need data. At the beginning of the book is the list of the large goals and beginning of each month, I have broken down those goals. In previous incarnations, I have planned for weekly things and that was enormous pressure because when I didn't meet my goal, I was a horrible, terrible, awful person. But monthly, I can do monthly. Slow the fuck down. Take my time.

After all of this, the one thing I will begrudgingly admit to being true across all the science and think pieces on change is mindfulness is key. It comes up over and over again along with the only true way to lose weight safely is calorie in, calorie out (CICO). (Don't come at me with your keto, Whole 30, or Jenny Craig. At its very core, it's CICO.) (I heartily, HEARTILY, recommend the podcast The Calories. It is hopeful and mindful on its message and only three episodes long.) I stomp my feet and shake my fist in the air because I am resistant to the idea of mindfulness and I have no good reason to be. I have taken on meditation before and was fairly successful in keeping mindfulness in practice but I've sort of lost my way. I picture myself as some sort of hippy love child wearing flowing clothes, Buddhas at the entrance to my home, yoga doing girl. I have considered, honestly, intently, and seriously, of getting yoga training and teaching. I do not see myself as the chain-smoking, vodka swilling leather jacket wearing bad girl I was in my 20s. I see myself love, peace, and light and that vision is so close and yet so far away.

Small changes. Attainable changes. Mindfulness. 

Happy fucking 2019.

P.S. Those who are actively working on their goals and I have formed a support group where we tell each other as often as possible how proud we are of each other, it's okay to have slipped up because look at the long history of doing so well, and that they have the fortitude to make their goals. Tell someone how proud of them you are today. 

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