I'm Alive?

Didn't realize it had been so long.

So much has been going on at work--there has been a lot on my mind. Haven't had time to do much of anything but survive. Everything else has been on the back burner.

Especially health and fitness.

In addition to all the stuff I've had going on, I think I just got to the point where I had to go underground, if that makes any sense. Needed to hunker down in my den and wait for the weather to improve.

I'll say more later. Just felt the need to post something, poke my head out and take a look around.

Another Update

Just wanted to say my recent silence isn’t a bad thing. I’ve been back on track with my old original food plan for almost three weeks, and there are no forseeable danger events coming up in the near future to knock me off before the wellness eating becomes second nature again. Things are good, but they are new and fragile, and I’m trying to do everything I can to protect those fledgling habits.

I haven’t had a ton of energy and most of what I’ve had has been soaked up by crazy stress at work and spring-based garden refreshment work, which has been on a scale I’m not used to (especially while on a low carb diet).

Also, I’m really struggling with the urge to withdraw from social contact. Emotionally, mentally, and physically I feel kind of like I’m hunkered down in recovery mood and everything outside of what’s going on in my head just wears me out. I have faith this is only temporary, and the urge to live out loud in the world again will return.

I know I’ve said this before, but I am a mega-mega introvert. My new job puts me in a situation where I am interacting more with all sorts of people (those I know and those I don’t), and what’s going on in the economy has made that contact more fraught with peril than before—so I’m really, really drained from a communications standpoint.

It feels criminal to post anything without having responded to your comments or commented on your blogs lately. I’ve read everything and have things I want to say (especially THANK YOU), but I’m just not there yet (though I hope to be soon).

Nothing Profound, Just Checking In

I’ve been quiet for a while, mostly because I just haven’t had anything particularly interesting to say. Maybe it’s more accurate to say I’ve had interesting thoughts (at least to me), but I just don’t know how to articulate what’s been on my mind.

A couple of things:

I made it through 12 days of South Beach Phase One fairly effortlessly. Then my parents came to visit. My commitment didn’t make it past the first night’s dinner.

I was sitting on my couch one night two weeks ago, thinking about how I just wished things would get back to normal. Then it finally occurred to me that the old normal NO LONGER EXISTS. The exact configuration of life practices that worked for me in Mississippi cannot be recreated here and now—too many variables have changed.

I have to figure out what my new normal is. Just like last time, it’s going to take some trial and error. I’ve learned a lot over the past couple of years, so it’s not like I’m starting from scratch. I just have to be diligent and patient and honest with myself and commit to working hard. I’ve done it before. I can do it again.

I’ve learned something else about myself over the last couple of weeks: I don’t know how to be happy.

There’s so much I want to say about this, but I just don’t have it in me to really talk about it right now. What I can say is that I’m not Unhappy right now. What I am is vaguely dissatisfied, restless, and I don’t have any reason to be either of those things right now. Things aren’t perfect, but they’re never going to be, and there is absolutely nothing in my life right now that can’t be improved with hard work, a positive attitude, prudence, and perseverance.
Things in my life are better than they have been EVER in my life. Things are good. Things are GREAT.

Then why don't I FEEL that way?

Anyone out there know how a person can learn to be content with their life? Any suggestions?

Lifestyle Change, Redux

One week clean, with a small side of exercise.

I’m doing the modified South Beach thing I started off with almost 2 years ago. No sugar or starches, lots of lean protein, lots of vegetables. Going to do it for at least another week, and then will start adding fruit and whole food starches back in.

Back to basics—I cooked every meal except for a Friday evening trip to the wonderful Ukrops salad bar. Nothing hard, nothing complex, just simply cooked, fresh whole foods in a quantity sufficient to satisfy but not stuff.

No binges. No grazing. No wild, uncontrolled bouts of consumption, of any sort. The hell if it didn't feel like flipping on a switch as soon as I moved into the new place. I don't know whether that makes me relieved or angry at myself.
Maybe it's best not to dwell on what I did to myself over the last 8 months?

The exercise is going slowly—I have a LOT of ground to make up. Didn’t have much energy last week due to starting on the new diet, and I’ve got some knee stuff I’m trying to work through(the new house has stairs, and I’ve got some over-use issues due to all the heavy lifting related to the move). I’m trying to do what I did back in 2007, which is to walk a bit in the morning and a bit in the evening. Things have been complicated by some dismal weather and late hours at work, but I think they’re going well for now. The important thing is to get in some species of habit and go up from there.

I know this state of affairs is fragile, but I’m cautiously optimistic.

In the meantime, there's still so much to put up in the house. Yikes. Maybe I'll be finished before summer!

The Big Exhale

That’s how I’ve felt this week—like I’ve finally been able to sit back, release those long-sustained bone-deep fears and worries, and have been able to take that oh-so-necessary deep breath and exhale that signals the beginning of the end of the nasty stress that accompanies (for me, at least) any major long-drawn-out life event.

Closing went smoothly. New room painting, the moving out of temporary quarters, and the moving-in of all my stuff went pretty well, considering Mother Nature decided to dump 6-8 inches of snow with single digit temps the day I was supposed to move in. No point on dwelling on the stuff that didn’t go smoothly, though! The point is I’m here, it’s over, and I love my little house, and I love my little kitchen, and things are going really, really well.

Oh my—I have so much stuff I need to still pick up and put in its place. How does one person accumulate so much stuff? I thought I’d gotten rid of a bunch before my move, but I must have been mistaken.

I haven’t yet had enough time to comment on any comments, or to read all your blogs with any particular thoughtfulness yet, but I did want to make a quick post to let ya’ll know I’m fine, doing well, and things are looking up. Hopefully I'll even be able to get my internet connection set up by the weekend.

Think it’s OK to give my New Year an effective date of March 9 for 2009? I cannot believe it’s almost Spring. I feel like I’ve had a lost time incident and the Men in Black are going to be paying me a visit.

So Close . . . .

Oh, I have been a bad, bad blogger this month. Maybe I finally figured out I had nothing much to share at the present time that wouldn’t be just a slightly less-stressed-out re-hash of what I’m been nattering on about since late last July.

I’ve been hesitant to say anything specific about what’s going on in my life out of fear that I will jinx things and something will go wrong. I did not have a great-grandmother with the maiden name of Murphy for nothing, you know.

As things stand now, the closing on my new house is in less than a week, and I’ll be able to get my stuff out of storage and moved in the first week of March. While it looks like there is a definite end in sight, there is so much to be done before I’ll be settled. However, I’m a good deal closer to that point that I was at the beginning of the year.

I’ve been knotting myself up on the inside with all the stuff that’s going on with our Government and with the economy. Up and down, up and down, up and down, down , down. One decision I am really pushing myself to make is to not get cable or satellite TV hooked-up when I move. I think that one of the reasons I was having so much success with health and fitness early in 2008 and most of 2007 was that I was making do with a TV antenna and Netflix. I felt like I had so much more time to do stuff, because there wasn’t as much I was tempted to watch. Also, my personal peace wasn’t as manipulated by the on-air reportage and discussion of the actions of fools, crooks and politicians. Now, I come back to the apartment after a long day at work and the first thing I do is turn the TV on, and the last thing I do is turn it off before I go to bed. At least with the antenna my choices were so much more limited—I didn’t find myself surfing incessantly in search of some species of mind candy to occupy my attention and to try and tamp down my worrying.

Light bulb: my relationship to television is very similar to my relationship with food. My consumption of it sooths, distracts, tranquillizes me. In the presence of so much choice, I consume too much stuff of questionable quality, and I don’t have the willpower to resist the indulgence when it’s always at my fingertips.

The ingestion of bad TV and bad food make me tired, dull, fat, dopey, and disappointed in myself.

Also—(related to using TV as a tool to keep from worrying so much)--I’ve been binging on the cable news stuff about the economy, stuffing it down my craw when I know it’s no good for me and will just make me feel worse—and yet I don’t turn it off. Very familiar behavior. Not good at all.

Right now, I am a weird mix of hopeful and scared-to-death. I am sooooo looking forward to being in my own place with my dogs again (I should get them back near the end of March—I’ve been without them since last November), and looking forward to getting settled in some sort of routine. On the other hand, is it monumentally stupid to buy a house in such unstable market conditions (even if the local conditions seem OK)? The best thing I’ve got going for me is that my job is pretty rock-hard stable, but will that be enough?

My food has been about 50% good, and 50% rotten. Believe it or not, that’s better than January, when the rotten percentage was darn near close to 80%. Exercise has been not good at all, although I haven’t given up completely yet. For me, the not-giving up may be the difference between a quick turn-around when I’m settled and a three year further descent into misery and denial, if that makes any sense.

Thanks . . . .

I did want to thank you all who’ve kept reading me even though for the last 6 months I’ve been so angst-ridden over my move (and honestly, angst-ridden over other things before that). I’m very grateful for the advice and support you’ve given me, even thought I've been a failure as a weight-loss warrior. I know I haven’t been the best blog-friend during that time, and I’ve probably been seriously un-fun to read, so I really wanted to express my gratitude to you for sticking around.

Thanks, ya’ll.

The closing on my house in Mississippi was Friday and everything went smoothly. The house here passed inspection with flying colors and now the only two hurdles are the appraisal and final approval of my financing. I should know the results of the appraisal this week. One good thing about this area (well, it’s both good and bad) is that the housing market in my price range hasn’t suffered a serious meltdown yet—homes are still selling in the 97% range of their list price. Not so good if you took a hit on your own house, but good for the investment value of the house you’re purchasing (at least I hope).

Of course, hearing that the Fed Gov is going to be proposing programs to reduce mortgage costs in the near future make me wonder if buying right now is the right thing—although I don’t have a lot of choice right now since I've got a contract. Le sigh.

If everything goes well, though—less than a month till I’m in an actual *home* again! Did I mention there’s about 200 finished square feet in the basement I can use for a dedicated exercise space? That was something lacking in my old place--I couldn't do videos because there wasn't enough room (not without moving a lot of furniture around, and that got old).