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Love and Laugh

Let's Get Educated

On this gloooooorious Tuesday, I bring you some valuable pieces of information on healthy living.

Or...you know...something like that.

These Walls

The Whole Motivation

What Is Loneliness?

Today's Goal

A Lesson In Presence

This Is Water by David Foster Wallace

Learn how to think.

Learn how to pay attention.

Know you have other options.

"You get to consciously decide what has meaning, and what doesn't."

Life's A Journey

Lovely Links for Lazies

Are you home on this Saturday night? Lazy.

I'm not, for once. I KNOW RIGHT.

But I have links for you anyway, 'cause I'm a giver!

First, via Jezebel, the best thing you will see all weekend.

25 Things You Don’t Have To Justify To Anyone

I just love Thought Catalog, and this is great. My favorite:

"25. Not knowing exactly what you want to be when you grow up, even if many people would already put you in the category of "grown up." If you are considering going back to school, or changing careers, or moving, or starting a family, or doing charity work --- it's all good. And none of it has to be followed up with a longwinded explanation about why it's a good idea and they should believe in you. If you need to justify what makes you happy to someone in your life, perhaps you should ask yourself why you even care about their opinion in the first place."

Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls... SO I WILL.

More awesomeness. This is really applicable for anyone, regardless of body type. We should ALL love ourselves and embrace ourselves, flaws and all.

"You're allowed to fall in love with yourself. I promise. This will be the scariest thing you will ever do, and that's okay. It will also be the most amazing (albeit super gradual) experience you will ever have. It doesn't make you narcissistic. It doesn't make you vain. It is liberating in every form of the word."

23 Signs You're Too Obsessed With Your Person

Some of these are familiar, though Tree would never admit to it.

And a little gift from George Takei...

Progress

Not perfection.

The Reset Button

You know my very favorite thing about Weight Watchers?

The reset button.

Every week, you get to hit it and start over. Bam. It's done. New week, new batch of weekly points, new chance to earn activity points and get your shit right. Wipe the slate clean. Tabula rasa.

My problem is, if I mess up, I can't really hit a mental reset until my Weight Watchers week is actually over. I'm sure I could if someone held a gun to my head, but you know, behaviorally, on my own, I just...can't. I tried today and I failed, I was tempted by the Wednesday lunch pasta and desserts, and my self-defeatist attitude.

It doesn't matter how long I've been at this, I still get stuck in the same self-destructive behaviors.

Self-demeaning.

Self-demolishing.

But I want to break that phone. Just break it.

It's such a cliche, the way my brain trips me up, when I stumble I want to fall, when I eat a little I think, might as well eat a lot.

I'm a case study in cray.

I know I'll try tomorrow, and maybe I'll succeed, but I'll probably fail. Maybe that's negative thinking, or maybe it's just realistic. I already know there will be booze and appetizers after work, so I know I'm in for a hard day.

But I also know on Friday, when my week starts over once again, I'll be infused with a fresh batch of motivation, and I'll be ready to face a new week with a new attitude.

This is what we decided in therapy tonight. Maybe I don't have to be so hard on myself about this one thing (well, all things, but this one thing in particular). Maybe I can allow myself this habit, this ritual or quirk, and know it works for me. I like symbolism, I love my new week and my fresh slate, and I need to let myself wait for that moment.

I just love my button, and I know on Friday, I will reset.

Journey Into My Power

Weeks and weeks and WEEKS ago, I bought the recommended book for my yoga teacher training program, "Journey Into Power: How To Sculpt Your Ideal Body, Free Your True Self, and Transform Your Life with Yoga" by Baron Baptiste. Pretty lofty promises, eh?

I could have paid full price and used my two day Amazon Prime shipping, but I was attempting to be fiscally responsible, so I bought a used copy. And then it took a century to get here, so really, the lesson I learned was NEVER BUY ANYTHING CHEAP.

Yup.

But it finally arrived, and I am so happy, because now I can start my preparations for class! I read the preface today at lunch, and I just know the book is going to speak to me right on my level.

Choice quotes:

"Sharing what you know makes it more real, more a living part of you." 

"I saw that if i stopped smothering my spirit and soul with external knowledge goals, I would actually start feeling, and ultimately healing." 

"...we don't have to take dogma so seriously. When we start too take it too seriously, outer mastery becomes the goal, and we are then chasing the illusion once again." 

"If we tune out the inner voice of wisdom in favor of what someone else is telling us, how can we ever really be in our own power?" 

"The only person who can open the door to inner truths and lead you to the light is yourself."

Perfection and Passion

I can't expect everything to be perfect.

This is my realization of the day. I had an appointment with my drug doctor today, and the crux of it is, I'm not 100% happy right now. Things are feeling kind of...stagnant. And the question I'm asking myself is, should I be? Should a bunch of little pills be making me totally, completely, all-consumingly blissful?

Nope.

I have to work at happiness, too. I have to put in some effort, and do more. No, I don't need to put tons of pressure on myself and pile on the goals, and I need to calm my tits, but I do need to do more that makes me happy and feel good. And less that makes me...not.

Anti-depressants are supplemental, they're not all-powerful. I think a part of me is almost waiting for some switch to flip until I'm really ready to make the final change and charge towards being the kind of person I think I can be. Till I'm perfect. This super productive, impressive, yoga-fied goddess, on the go, full of energy, positive and powerful. I keep thinking the right combo of drugs in the right dosage will kick in and turn me into some mighty mistress of awesome, but the only thing that will turn me into that person is me, and my willpower.

(I should really read that damn book.)

But you know, I also don't have to be that person, right? Not totally and completely. It's okay to be who I am just naturally part of the time too, which is a kind of a lazy, self-involved, goofy homebody.

But only some of the time...

I think a lot of it comes down to passion, really. Rediscovering it, redirecting it. I know I'm a passionate person, I see it in the way I act and love and live, but all too often I let those passions drift towards the unhealthy, the indulgent, the detrimental, and away from the nurturing and the challenging. Because of fear, of course, and because I like the safe and the familiar.

And I'm lazy.

It's just so much easier to be lazy.

Whenever I try for something, I try for perfection. It's my ultimate problem, I've discussed it often in therapy. I always have this image in my head of the best way things could be, the best person I could be. I make plans and I make schedules, I fantasize, I imagine a world where this perfect me achieves this perfect ideal and things are so much happier then. That ultimate goal is never going to be attainable, so when I try and try and you know, fail as I am inevitably going to, I get frustrated and disappointed and I spiral into self-loathing.

I'm incredibly predictable.

You've seen this before, if you've been reading my blog long enough.

And this happens with everything.

So what is it that I'm waiting for? The perfect combination of motivation and happiness to launch me into...what? A disconnected yogi who meditates all day, never goes online at night, drinks nothing but water and tea and reads until her eyeballs fall out of her skull?

Who says I have to be that person?

Baby steps, folks. I can mix good habits with the more indulgent. I can find myself some balance. That's what yoga's all about anyway, balance. Not perfection. Not forcing yourself into habits that don't suit you yet, straining to find some sort of meaning amongst a Spartan life.

Not that there's not something to be gained in all these goals and challenges I've set for myself, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that perhaps my motivation for it and my methods aren't the best right now. Maybe I don't have to be the best. And I don't have to be perfect.

Itty Bitty

This post is the complete opposite of this post. 

As I write, I am sitting on my bed, curled up in a ball with my knees tucked up against my chest. My arms are wrapped around my legs, hands on the keyboard, body scrunched in the littlest of ways. This is a completely unfamiliar, newly comfortable position.

It's been a long, long time since I've had the room for my legs here against my body, since my belly's has been small enough. Since my thighs have been able to rest this close together.

I feel almost...small.

I look down and I see the folds, the flab, the fat, sure. I know I still have a ways to go, my brain trips on the valleys and mountains.

But for once, I feel kind of itty bitty.

I may or may not feel beautiful.

Wise Owl Says

In This Skin

The ultimate goal here is to be comfortable in my own skin, a phrase that's been overused so much in self-help and weigh loss literature it's nearly lost its meaning.

What I personally mean by it is that I want to feel at ease saying what I think, doing what I feel, and acting how I want without the mean, critical voice inside me worrying how other people will react, what they're thinking about me, if they're judging me. I want to feel conviction in, well, how I feel, and not always question my own emotions and thoughts because I'm too insecure to be sure of what I really believe. I want to live my life under my own power and not constantly let the opinions of others dictate my actions. I want to stand up for what I believe to be right, even when it's hard. I want to be myself, always, without fear of reprisal.

I want to move and bend and twist without feeling like I'm inhabiting the shell of a stranger. I want to strut down the street with confidence, feeling every muscle and bone working together in perfect harmony. I want to look in the mirror and see my soul shining back at me through my eyes and feel connected to every bit of me, inside and out.

I feel like I may be starting to get there, bit by bit. There are moments where I still feel entirely disconnected, but others where I sink into myself in a way that's unfamiliar and yet like coming home, and I do think I can live happily in this new shape for awhile, and feel comfortable in this skin.

This shrinking skin.

Sunday Eve Musings

One thing I've been thinking about recently is my difficulty accepting invitations.

Not from people I know and love, no. Not from the Biff, my family and such. Not usually, anyway.

But things that take me out of my comfort zone, reunite me with people I haven't seen in ages or put me in touch with people I don't know?

Yeah. I've had a problem with that in the past.

I met up with a girl for yoga today that I went to high school with, did theater with, an awesome chick I have a lot in common with. We've both been in LA for awhile, and we talked about getting together awhile back, but it was kind of on me and I let it drop, as I was in the throws of my anxiety and I just couldn't gather the energy or strength or balls or what have you to hang out with her.

There's actually a list of people I could/should/would reach out to, if I thought about it, that I couldn't muster the courage to deal with at the time.

Thoughts for a Sunday eve.

Anyway, I posted on my Facebook about my teacher training, and turns out this girl goes to my studio too, but a different location. She drove to my area 'cause my favorite favorite teacher was teaching the intro course (which I need to be taking for my teacher hours) and we had an awesome practice then sushi after.

A lovely Sunday date.

Energy