I genuinely miss regular blogging. I believe I even promised to do more of it. Work is busy like whoa. Health is taking a bit of a backseat. I know it’s a bad idea. I’m fighting to find ways to change that.
Friends are good. Family is great. Just… dealing.
every night i resolve to do better
every morning i pack my running shoes
every passing day, my choices slip farther from my goals
source: picturesandquotes.net (via Tumblr)
Sometimes we all need a little love. It opens our eyes. It’s good for the soul.
Today, I woke up feeling fat. I ate too much yesterday, all weekend in fact, and I’ve been neglecting exercise in a way that’s taking an obvious, measurable toll on my body and mind. It’s not a place I want to be. When I woke up this morning, I felt the weight of that, and I felt fat.
When I got to work, my much-beloved coworker told me she thought I was looking especially trim. Of course I loved hearing it, but it hit me a little harder than that too.
I cannot BE fat. I’m too busy being awesome, silly, funny, loving, devoted, kind, hardworking, determined, and so much more.
I cannot truly FEEL fat either. Not in the emotional sense that I meant it this morning. Extra weight can certainly take a physical toll, but despite all my recent struggles I’m still maintaining a reasonably consistent loss, so feeling fat is all in my head.
I can, and most definitely do, HAVE fat. But that? It’s not really something worth being concerned about. A small measure of fat is good to have, and while I have more than that, I’m working. I’m getting there. I’m moving, ever so slowly, in the right direction.
And so. Instead of feeling fat today, I choose to feel loved.
source: lstheword.blogspot.com
I’m solidly in a size 12 these days, which is great news to me. I’d like to get a few more pounds off, but I’m in a place I can stand to stay for now. I’m still working toward healthier habits, but I’m not sure how that will play out specifically.
In much better news, I had a comp day at work today since we worked a Saturday in the last pay period. We slept in, took Evi to daycare, and then spent the day together! We drove the back way to the nice mall, taking the longest route and enjoying the beautiful drive. We walked around for two hours, had a great casual lunch together, enjoyed a new beer, shopped a little, and saw Mirror, Mirror.
The movie wasn’t life-changing, but it was fun and entertaining. We both laughed several times.
It was an awesome, fun, relaxing day. It was so nice to spend quality time together again, and for both of us to step away from work for a while.
Oh man I love my husband. We laughed and smiled, flirted, held hands… it was incredible. The waitress at lunch asked if we were newlyweds.
source: christainnewyork.com
I’m not very good at managing my time. I spend a lot of time staring into space or putzing about yon inner-webs. Lately, it’s been catching up with me. I’m constantly feeling like there isn’t enough time… not enough time to get the work done, not enough time to spend with the kidlet, not enough time to workout like I used to, not enough time, not enough, not enough.
It’s stressing me out. In fact, it’s depressing me a little and making me generally LESS productive, which just feeds the cycle.
So here’s the thing, the dirty truth, the thing I shy away from and make excuses for and pretend isn’t true.
I say I don’t have time. Truth? It’s not a priority.
Oh my god. What does that even say about me? That I’m not making my health, MY KID a priority? I feel overwhelmed and professionally underappreciated. I’m absolutely NOT intentionally choosing Tumblr over exercise or teenager television over my kid. I’m just feeling… put upon, I suppose, and it’s making me shut down a little. I’m managing to eke out little things… pushups here and there, spinach smoothies at breakfast, walks at lunch time…
God, I have got to shake it off. I need to start focusing on…
You know what, let me just start now. I’m off for a family walk.
7 weeks, people. SEVEN WEEKS. That’s how long I’ve got before the Warrior Dash shows up to kick my butt.
So? GAME. ON.
I’m drinking my protein-powder laced spinach smoothie this morning. (I happen to love them but am not always good about making them.) I busted out 50 pushups in my office this morning before anyone got here. I have intentions of squeezing some ab work in upstairs in our board room later today, and I’ll be getting out for a long walk very soon.
No more excuses. No more stress eating. No more no more no more. I deserve better.
I also applied to be a keynote speaker through Ignite for FitBloggin this year… so there’s that. 
I’m worn out. Job stress. Less sleep. I know it’s not that I have too little time, but that I’m not properly structuring my priorities. I just don’t know how to change it. I want to get back to eating well (I’m hanging on to that, barely) and exercise (hahaha). I miss how I felt when I was doing both regularly.
I even miss running. I knew I would.
…but…
How do I make it a priority? Doing it in the morning means sacrificing already precious sleep. Doing it in the evening means losing most or all of the 1.5 hours a day I get with my kid NOT in a car. Doing it at lunch means constantly stressing about missed work opportunities and always being gross for the second half of the day.
What I really want is a treadmill, because I honestly believe I’d get on it at night, when it’s too dark to run outside, after the kidlet is in bed… but GOD they’re expensive. I’m considering starting a collection of Target gift cards…
I am officially too busy. A lot of things I genuinely care about are falling by the wayside because I’m overwhelmed by all there is to do, and I frequently spend my unwind time sitting in front of the computer catching up on teenager television instead of doing anything productive. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but a lot of things I should be doing (and often want to do) are not getting done.
For instance, this blog. See also, running.
There have been other times in my life when I was nutso busy, and I’ve actually found that sometimes those are my most productive and efficient times. So what’s different?
Scheduling. Basically, when I’m this level of busy I just have to buckle down, make a schedule for every. single. thing. and stick to it. I have to schedule blogging, running, sleeping… all of it. And then? I have to be flexible. Work will sometimes get in the way. I might not be able to run, but I can walk almost every day. I can make it work. So here I am, trying. I’m going to try my best to get back to a regular blogging schedule, and I’m going to have to spend an entire day this weekend catching up on a backlog of freelance work before it becomes entirely ridiculous. It figures that this week I also have two late work nights…
source: thecraftyretailer.blogspot.com
So… yeah…
I’ve pulled out of the runs I’d registered for this year. I’m still doing Warrior Dash, but everything else is off the calendar. There are various and sundry reasons why, but what it essentially boils down to is that I think I jumped into it too quickly, as I tend to do. I wasn’t even able to run a 5K at a pace I was proud of, and here I was registering for 10K, 10 mile, and metric marathon races… and the distances didn’t slowly ramp up either.
Between the new job and a slump in my motivation, my training was getting nowhere and running became one more thing to do, one more thing to be stressed about shoving into my calendar. Eating got out of control big time.
I’m back on track with food. Thanks to the coworker challenge (we’re calling it Flab-you-less 2012) I’m eating much better. I’m working out more consistently again, if not as intensely.
I’m not done with running, but I’m stepping WAY back from it. I’ve decided not to register for more than one race at a time now, and to keep those races consistent with my current progress. Otherwise, I feel overwhelmed by the pressure and I sabotage myself.
In other news, work is hard. This job is fun and I love it, but GOD it’s busy. There’s something new being added to my responsibilities nearly every day, and since the position was vacant for a long time before I came in, there’s NO foundation. It’s a major challenge, but I can definitely make something amazing out of it, and thankfully I have great people in the office to help me out there.
Thanks to an entire collection of things, some of them in my control and others out, I’ve lost my running mojo… so much so that I’m going to have to pull out of my planned races for the year. I’ll still be doing the Warrior Dash, but probably not anything else.
I could mull over all of the reasons why this happened, or talk about why it was or wasn’t my fault, but in the end, it simply… is. The details aren’t terribly important. No more excuses.
Beginning tomorrow, I’m hopping into a challenge with a coworker and we’ll be tracking our weight, exercise, food, and progress at work. I’ll still be exercising and running some, but things will be shifting.