Self-motivation

I heard a speaker about a year ago give a speech about self-motivation and how self-analysis of the success failure has a huge impact on continued self-motivation. The example she used was exercise. The national whatever group recommendations are for say 30 minutes 3 times a week (made up these numbers). If you have been doing no exercise and you start and hold yourself to that recommendation anything less is a failure. Whereas 30 minutes 3 times a week should be your long term goal, not your week 1 goal. If you take 1 walk for any length of time that first week, that a success for you. So if you've been getting no exercise and you walk 10 minutes twice the first week and then 10 minutes 3 times the 2nd, you've had a 50% increase in your exercise from week 1 to week 2. You have to use where you start to base your success/failure, not some arbitrary value that someone has created.

I found this post in my drafts. I don't remember starting to type it, but it is something that was good for me to find today as a reminder that small steps are important. Anytime you do something better than you used to, is a success for yourself, regardless of if it meets some arbitrary standard set by someone else.

Current status of me

This last week has been really hard emotionally for me. I think what triggered it was dad being sick and me worrying for him and mom. But reality is that this has been lurking at the edge of me for a while now and I've been fighting tooth and nail to keep it at bay and I just can't anymore.

I think every time one of the kids leaves the house that something horrible is going to happen to them. Every phone call that I don't recognize the phone number , I am terrified that it is someone calling to tell me that something happened to one of the kids, or someone else I love. I have a constant feeling of impending doom. I think that somehow any person I love is in jeopardy just because of me. However, I don't know what to do to stop all this. I don't know what I have done to deserve all this. I know life is not fair, but it just doesn't seem like anyone else has thing after thing after thing happen to the ones they love. And it's all stuff I have mostly no control over.

So this week I don't know, I've done some crying, over some pretty stupid stuff I know, but I can't help it. Yet even when I'm crying I don't feel like I'm feeling anything, I'm just crying. Part of me thinks that truly not feeling anything would be good, maybe I wouldn't be so terrified and anxious and stressed and depressed. Feeling nothing sounds a lot better than all of that. But this week of not feeling anything has just been worse. It's like I'm walking through water, everything is slowed down, I can't think as quickly.

Work is awful too, I dread going to work, the thought of having to interact with people all day long and seem happy and ok and all that jazz seems an insurmountable task. I drove around for half an hour on Friday before I could make myself turn into work. And even though my job can be stressful, I love it, I know I do, but not this week.

Friday afternoon at work, I didn't get much work done, I just couldn't make my brain actually work. What I did is look up therapists for myself and called a couple and left messages to call me back. I know that I need to get back into therapy, I can't fix this myself I don't think. So I think starting therapy will help.

I decided I also need to start doing some things to help myself as well. So this labor day weekend, I'm going to give myself 9-10 hours of sleeping time but no more. When I'm anxious/stressed/depressed/etc all I want to do is sleep, it is my escape, but in the long run I don't think it really helps me. So far I've done ok. I slept 9 hours last night. Which may seem like a lot, but I've always required more sleep to function fully. Generally 8 to 8.5 and I'll wake up on my own, this morning I woke up after 8 and then dozed on and off for another hour before I got out of bed. Then I made my bed. It was a visual reminder when I looked in there that I was not going to sleep today.

I'm also going to slowly work up to working around the house. All I want to do it sit and veg and sleep and when I'm feeling this way it's really easy for me to look at everything I need to do and never get to any of it, since normally I feel like I need to finish the whole task at once. Today (and this weekend), I'm just going to do a bit then take a break/play a computer game/chill for bit, then just keeping doing that back and forth.

So it's 5pm now, I've been up since 8:30 this morning, I've done 7 loads of laundry, a bit in the kitchen (it needs attention the most so it the most daunting to try and work in there), a bit in the 2 bathrooms, picked up a bit in the living room/dining room. I'm hanging out all the clothes to dry, which I really like, it's soothing somehow, maybe clothesline meditation?

I do feel better today than I have this last week. Less guilty (though guilt is still there about the kitchen). I spend a lot of my life feeling guilty. Maybe that has contributed to the funk I've been in.

On the off chance that someone someday reads this I feel the need to validate why I am where I am right now. The hard part is where to start, how much of my life history has contributed to where I'm at now. The last 5 yrs, 10 yrs, 39 yrs...I'm not sure. I know that there are lots of people out there that have it just as bad and even worse than I do. I'm not living in a war zone or battling starvation, and for those things I am grateful. But the reality is that I live in the Midwest US and I'm middle-income. This is where I'm at and although I know it could be worse, I'm still terrified of what might happen to someone I love.

All 3 of my children have totaled cars. My son had his in Aug. 2005, he rolled a single time and had no injuries. The most recent accident, Katydid's was in May 2008. She wasn't hurt, just sore, nor were the people in the other car, for which I'm very grateful. Nor was it her fault, it was an older couple and they didn't see her and pulled out in front of her.

My youngest totaled her car on Oct. 2, 2007. The car rolled 6 times and she was ejected out of the sunroof on the 3rd. She was life-flighted to the hospital. Many of my fears, flashbacks, nausea causing events/triggers are from that first hour, the phone call, hearing the helicopter come, hearing and seeing her trauma team being assembled (it is one of the weirdest, there were 10-12 people, which made me feel good that they were going to take care of her, but then I realized my daughter was so injured that she needed a 10-12 person trauma team).

Now every call that is an unknown number makes me fearful to answer, every time I see or hear a helicopter or drive by an accident I get nauseous. And I never ever want to let any of my kids or family drive again. But I know that isn't realistic, so instead I say "Drive safe" every time and live with my fear of what may happen.

The thing is she was incredibly lucky, she had only a mild concussion but no permanent head injury, a chipped vertebrae but no damage to her spinal cord, 4 pelvic fractures (that did not require surgery), a tibia plateau fracture, a left clavicle fracture, an internally lacerated kidney(no surgery), bruised spleen, both lungs bruised, and multiple cuts/scapes/road rash (but none on her face). It was a rough intensive recovery but I had time built up at work so I was able to take 2.5 months off at the beginning and continued to work only part time for the next month or so to help her to and from school and to appts.

I should be counting my lucky stars and I am extremely grateful that she had no permanent injuries, but instead I just feel like the boot is going to drop at any time and she won't be lucky again. Or Katydid won't, or TJ won't, or ... the list includes all my family.

I think this probably 3 or 4 posts worth of data, so going to publish now and just write each day on how I'm feeling.

Update and Challenge info

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted anything. I've kinda been in a holding pattern, and just not done much lately. I noticed I also need to update my challenge text box. Haven't been doing great on it, but haven't been horrible most days. Meat is the hardest. Which really surprised me. I have never been much of a meat eater, so I figured that one would be a breeze.

Eating Local

I am quite proud of tonight's supper. I am not a very good cook, but I decided to try a veggie saute on pasta. I used a zucchini from my garden, garlic, onion, tomatoes and eggplant from the farmer's market, olive oil and a bit of oregano. Sauted until tender then served over whole wheat pasta with some grated parmesan cheese.


It was wonderful. Katydid ate some as well and enjoyed it. And there is enough for my lunch tomorrow.

Making it all from scratch gave me quite a sense of accomplishment.

Sliming

Warning - gross bodily functions discussed in this post.

I had lap band surgery a year ago, it's a type of weight loss surgery. I did really well for the first 3 months. Then my youngest, Bitbe, had a very serious car accident. She's fine now, but I have really struggled with getting back on the program. I haven't gained any weight, which at least is good. Anyways, with Chili's Discretionary Eating I was way excited to get back to eating well again.

So lunch today was carrots, cheese and cottage cheese. Somewhat odd I know, but I really like all those things. So I'm munching on carrots and reading blogs....and then....the feeling. I didn't chew well enough. One of the things after WLS, you have to chew, chew, chew your food. Also smaller bites, and smaller portions (my stomach can only hold about 1 cup of food if it's dense food). Things like ice cream, chips, cookies, etc, can flow right through, so you can eat more than you should plus they have a lot of calories.

So, I'm hopeful that a few burps and I'll be fine. Then my boss walks in, so now I'm trying to be discreet, and not really burping. Next thing I know, I'm sliming.

For those of you that don't know what sliming is, it's your mouth producing copious amount of saliva. And you can't swallow it, because stuff is already stuck down there and swallowing it will only make it worse. Then the foaming started. Foaming is your stomach's response to being in distress. And since there isn't room for it to stay there, it starts coming up in the burps.

Long story short, or maybe short story long depending on your feelings about bodily function descriptions, I dealt with it for an hour at work, if you can call shutting my office door and spitting slime and foam into my empty coffee cup. Then decided to go home sick. Actually vomited twice while driving home, and then spent another hour at home miserable.

Carrots, for god's sake, carrots!

My 1st Official Challenge

I'm participating in my first official challenge. I was going to try and do Independence Days on my own, and have failed miserably. So when Chile Chews announced her new challenge I decided I would do it. The challenge is Discretionary Eating. There are 6 categories. I decided that I really need to change my diet and it's something I've been thinking about, so I'm doing the challenge at 75% for all categories.

Chile defined the percentages as reducing that % amount from your current level. Trying to figure out what that meant for what I could eat each day was daunting. So instead I am measuring mine in days. For each category, 3 of every 4 days I will follow the rules. I get to indulge in each category 1 of every 4 days (or less), and in any one day I can only indulge in up to 2 categories.

It's 10am on day 1 and so far so good....except I can't stop thinking about food. I bought fruit and veggies, yogurt, cottage cheese and cheese to eat for breakfast and lunch at work. I need to make up oatmeal with my own add-ins at home to bring to work. I really missed my packet of maple and brown sugar oatmeal this morning. But I deemed the pre-made packets as violating cafe and lite, so none of those this month. A task for the weekend.