How I Must Take Myself Back

I've really started letting myself go, in the way overwhelmed, 40-something mothers do, before they cut all their hair off, becoming shapeless grey blobs of sweatsuits and birkenstocks. That's exactly how I feel.

I didn't think that would start to happen until my mid-30's or 40's, not my mid-20's. I feel incredibly old and immature at the same time. There are so many things I want to do, that are right there within reach, but I procrastinate everything. I'm lazy and sluggish, and up until the last few weeks, I've been indifferent as well. Getting by on knowledge and daydreams rather than action. It's really pathetic of me.

It may seem as if I'm having a pity party over here, but there's a difference between low self esteem and being realistic about how one has given up on oneself. For example : Though I wear yoga pants most days I'm not wearing scrubs, I only go occasionally now, despite having more time and more studios to visit. I used to go to yoga at least three times a week, sometimes two classes a day. Now I'm lucky if I make it to even two classes a month.

I used to be a health-food fiend, strict vegetarian, spending hours on shopping trips reading every label, cooking 3 or more meals at home each day, never touching bread or rice that was bleached, never eating frozen dinners, fast food of any kind wasn't even on my radar. Now, I drink soda, I cook more with my microwave than I do with my stove. Though I stopped eating vegetarian for other reasons, I've also completely slacked off on my Mediterranean (low glycemic index) diet. I haven't been to the farmers market in months.

And because of that, I'm gaining weight. I'm around 127-128 pounds, almost 20 pounds heavier than I've ever been before, none of it in muscle weight. I've stopped exercising, I've stopped hiking, I've stopped biking. I barely have enough energy to take my dog for a decent walk each day. Two years ago, I was doing P90X, I was going to the gym almost everyday, at least every other. When I see how out of shape I've become so quickly, it makes me feel defeated, which makes me feel indifferent.

I used to read obsessively, finishing 2-3 new books each month. I carried books everywhere, and turned their pages every chance I got a moment. It was one of the most important daily activities I had. And I still read now, but so much else has taken priority over it. My poor books gather dust faster than my eyes get to see their words. I'm still reading the same novel I was a month and a half ago. I haven't even gotten close to starting all the new ones I wanted to by now.

I used to have a dedicated spiritual practice. I spent a lot of time studying different texts, practicing new and old techniques, meditating, speaking to the Earth, experiencing Nature and Paganism in different ways. I do have to say that my church is one of the only things today that can get me awakened, energized, excited, interested. But it's so often now that I don't bring back home the things I learn there. My private life now is pretty empty, and it feels pretty meaningless. I'm fucking sick of it.

I want my life back, my sense of self, my whole self back. My identity has become that of a depressed, lonely, boring shell. I've not even started any of the 2013 resolutions I wrote for myself on January 1st. I said 2013 was my year, but I haven't yet accomplished one thing other than excuses and being afraid. I'm beyond wanting everything to change, and waiting for that to happen. I've been living passively and isolated, and it's bullshit. I'm glad I feel angry at myself for allowing all of this to happen. I wasn't ever angry about it before, just sad. Sadness doesn't motivate anything, it hinders and distracts and eventually cripples. But isn't it so easy to give into sadness? That's the real insanity of my own life right now. Up until this point, I've been content with being sad. How ridiculous is that?

There are so many things I want to accomplish, and so many changes that need to be made, ones I will have to force myself to embrace. Ones that I used to live out naturally that now seem so impossible. It's like I've forgotten how to be healthy and positive, somewhere, somehow, I fell out of rhythm and convinced myself that none of my old lifestyle mattered, because everything was stressful or chaotic. I've been less passionate than a zombie toward everything lately, and it is stopping now. I'm reaching in, and grabbing my mind or my soul or my higher self or whatever it is that we have, I'm grabbing it by the throat, slapping its face, demanding it to Wake Up, and possess me.

Dawn was so beautiful this morning. I won't keep wasting dawns like today's with hours that I throw away burying myself under negativity, irritation, and indifference. I am taking myself back, and I will not hold back to do so. No more laziness, or self-loathing, or self-sabotage. I no longer have patience for it in my mind or room for it in my heart. No one should ever let their self go.

No Surrender

It is the last weekend before the new semester starts, before the new spring, and I am desperate for change and for the ability to handle what's coming. Stress is the worst thing in my life, and though I feel completely adept at hiding my stress, it seems impossible to shut myself off from its experience, or to even diminish the experience. It is the reason for all my discomfort.

I do not place blame on stress, however, but rather on my own lack of self discipline in the face of stress. I have great plans for how to cope, but instead decide to buy a six-pack and watch TV, late at night when I get off work. And repeat, repeat. The cycle makes me so depressed that even the most basic meditation exhausts me, and each day I give up more easily. And repeat, repeat.

So of course, one of the bigger themes of my New Year's Resolutions is Find Ways to Better Deal with Stress. And I know what these art: more art, more exercise, improved diet, develop a more disciplined spiritual practice, more play, reading, imagination, meditation. Less booze, less smoking, (stop both...), less time non-productively spent on a computer, the end of procrastination. The end of feeding the strength of my stress by obsessing over it, worrying so much about how to handle it that I never actually do.

I believe there is a level of force required to defeat stress, and perhaps one of the simplest things is to force yourself to be positive. Punch through the mirror and declare, I am changing, I am making progress, there is evidence of these things. And I hope that this evidence will come to make up a portion of the meaningful content in this blog: how my puppy is growing into one of the sweetest dogs I've ever known (and how I'm starting to teach him some agility!), how I'm changing my diet and eating Mediterranean, low glycemic index meals, how I'm getting out more to photograph what I might begin calling "speed portraits":

I'm trying to spend more time with a variety of people, I'm cooking more at home again, on the weekends when I don't have work until the evening, I take some time to go to the gym. I snuggle more with my cat, I took Tuesdays off my work availability in order to attend more discussions with a local philoso-religious group I've known for a long time. I'm trying to laugh more without holding back. 

Anne Rice said, "The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half-strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation." I feel as though for some time, my laughter has sounded more like the latter, and I refuse for that to continue to be so. There are no more excuses nor justifications for surrendering to stress.