I'm just your average, everyday, divorced 38 year old girl -- overweight, tragically unhip,
and trying to make a life for myself. I live with two furry beasts, Dave and Abby, whose
feline mission in life is to choke me with their fur. Nothing special.
Saturday afternoon (again). Forgot to mention one really fabulous thing: my dad was really blown away by how good I looked. He was, literally, without words upon his first glimpse of me. (Now, you'd have to know my dad to appreciate the next part, but that's OK.) After we'd been sitting together for, oh, about two quarters, he said, "so, have you lost weight?" I sort of laughed and said, "a little, yes." He said something to the effect of, "it looks like a lot more than a little," and I stopped to calculate how much I've really lost, all told. You know what the number I came up with was? Just over 45 pounds since March and just under 40 since June 6. My dad hadn't seen me since the end of August, so that would explain his rather extreme reaction, but I think we might be getting into the fun part of the journy, the part where everyone and their brother is going to start noticing how I look.
Now, last time we played this little game, this was the part of it when I really went over to the Dark Side, focusing solely on how I looked as a barometer of how I was doing. That is so not going to happen again this time because, and here's the thing, I'm never going to be thin enough or pretty enough for me and that doesn't matter anyway. What's important, what has to be at the core of every step I take from here on out, is building a healthy, robust, filled-to-the-brim-with-activity-and-challenge-and-all-of-the-stuff-that-makes-Life-worth-living life. I know that I'm succeeding not because I'm wearing clothes that are two sizes smaller than the ones I started in or because of the pounds and inches lost, but because I'm not sitting at home on the couch every night eating breathtakingly huge portions of food, as quickly as possible, living for those all-too-brief moments of numbness and wishing I could disappear. I'm out there. I'm at my classes. I'm walking for an hour. I'm doing aerobics for 30 to 60 minutes. I'm going to the drycleaners with my suits (and I'm wearing those suits). I take care choosing what I'm going to wear everyday. I make sure I'm wearing at least lipstick and some mascara every day. This, for me, is what success looks like. (Of course, having my daddy tell me that I look amazing isn't a bad thing, either!)
Saturday afternoon. Well, that was (not) exciting. The high points of the homecoming game last night were that CHS won (not a common occurence for them) and that I got to see my dad. I never found any of my classmates, although they could have been there, because every time I thought someone might be an '85er, they turned out to be parents. Oh. My. God. I'm officially really, really old. People that look like my contemporaries have sons old enough to play high school football. Oh. My. God. If there had been alcohol available, you know I'd have been all over it.
Oh yes, and, lest I forget, what has happened to high school fashions??? The homecoming queens looked like trashy wannabes, in tight, revealing gowns and these God-awful clunky shoes. Hello? Ballgowns and delicate high heels anyone? On the positive side, there was a girl from band nominated for Queen, and I know that never happened while I was there. There were also a couple of girls who weren't thin (not that they were fat, mind you, just not thin) nominated, which made me smile. Heck, there was a chunky cheerleader, too, and that definitely never happened in the 80s. Back then, if the football team (who got to help winnow the list of candidates down) decided you were a dog (not pretty enough) or a pig (too fat), you were gone. Charmingly quaint, don't you think? Eating disorder anyone? Beyond even just the princesses, all of the kids looked so, um, messy. I know there were slobs when I was in school, but not the entire school! Seriously, not a prepster or cute girl dresser in the bunch, and I sat near the entrance (to look for my dad), so I saw them all come in. Baggy hoodies with threadbare t-shirts and jeans that dragged on the ground. What the heck? I think they need to add a class to the curriculum: How to Dress Like a Girl. And don't even get me started on their hair and makeup. Or the knockoff handbags. Ugh.
What a way to spend a Friday night. Hey, wait a minute...isn't that what I used to say in high school, too? Hmm.
Friday afternoon. I'm so tired. Not just physically tired, although that's true, too, but that deep-down in your bones weariness that makes everything more difficult and magnifies every little bump in the road into an obstacle of Herculean proportions.
Tonight is my 20th Anniversary high school football game and I was supposed to leave at noon so that I could be there in plenty of time and not have to fight traffic. Due to my procrastination, my Wednesday meeting had to be rescheduled to 3pm, which will put me on the road about 4pm and should get me to the game just as they kick off. Somehow, just that knowledge makes me feel like a balloon that's had all of its air let out. Yes, I look pretty fabulous (that's according to others, not my own opinion) in my crimson suede blazer, crisp white shirt, jeans, and high heeled boots, but I'm just not feeling it, you know? I'd better make sure I've got some good tunes for the (extended) drive up there - that will help lift this funkification.
Thursday morning. I was thinking, on my way home last night, about how incredibly lucky I am to have the team that I do. In fact, to be honest, what I was really thinking is that I don't deserve them. We've been without one member of the team since Labor Day (over seven weeks now), and they've just been stepping up - without a complaint - and getting the job done for our customers. Their quality hasn't dipped. Their incredibly positive, engaged attitude hasn't changed or faltered. And they haven't missed a single deadline or slipped a milestone. Not one. They're not procrastinating on tasks and throwing them together at the last second. None of them would ever be so slack-a@@ed as to do that. I would, though, and it makes me so ashamed of myself, yet, somehow, the behavior doesn't change. This cannot continue. This team deserves a leader that exemplifies all of the wonderful qualities they have, someone whose own behavior is on a par with that of the team as a whole.
To my team (paraphrasing Jack Nicholson's character in "As Good As It Gets") - You guys make me want to be a better manager (and person).
Tuesday afternoon. Ugh. You know, if I was my manager or anyone that had to work with me on a large project, I'd shoot me. I am so reliable in my procrastination that it's frightening. Yes, once again, I've put off a project to the very last and am going to have to throw the darned thing together, inconveniencing everyone, including me. This time, I must say, my very weak iniative was further taxed by the fact that the other procrastinator on the management team is my co-project lead on this particular task. Basically, it's the lost leading the lost-er. So not a good thing.
One thing I'm not procrastinating on (thankfully) is my CASA training. I'm doing my reading and my assignments and tonight is my "mid-training interview" to see how I'm doing. As intimidated as I am by the responsibilities and processes, I'm so excited by the opportunity to show the world (or is it just myself I need to prove something to?) that I can do something worthwhile and I can take initiative and be strong and do something!
Oh, and there was a moment of panic last night as I contemplated the fact that I'd ordered a size smaller dress for my holiday party and the waistline is a lot smaller than mine at this point. I started hyperventilating and then I started trying on skirts that are too small for me, looking for one that had the same waist measurement as the dress, which I finally found. Turns out that it will fit, but it's got about 4" of elastic expansion, so it seems I'm about 4" too big for the dress right now. Is it do-able? Gosh, I hope so. I've got 7-1/2 weeks until the party, so that's like 1/2" every week. I don't know about this, so I'm going to do a little check-in with myself a couple of weeks before and, if it's just not looking good, I'll order a back-up dress. Bleah at weight and size!
Sunday night. Perhaps it's because I just passed my 37th birthday or because I'm approaching several milestones on my journey to better health (Ten Percent Challenge, Part II), but I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be healthy and whether or not I'll be able to handle getting to goal and maintaining a healthy weight for the rest of my life.
There's a lot of fear for me around the entire idea of being not fat, not overweight, not beyond the pale of society's acceptance, for reasons that have never really been clear to me. Certainly, there's the fear that, in ending my self-imposed exile from the world, I'll find that it really never was the weight that made people shun me or not want to be friends, but, rather, that it was me, myself, without regard to weight. As I slowly begin the exercise of putting myself out there in the world (with my CASA training), I feel the old fear creeping up - "you'll never be good enough", "they won't like you once they get to know you", "why bother, you know you'll just fail eventually" - and it's got me on edge. There was even a moment last night, as I was reading my CASA policies and procedures manual, when I thought I might decide to resign from the program because it's very exacting in the way things have to be done and I thought to myself, "you'll never be able to get it all right and, if you can't be perfect, why try?" I was even planning to tell my supervisor that at my mid-training interview on Tuesday. It's too hard. I'm too scared. I'm just not good enough. I guess I'll just hide in my house, alone, for the rest of my life.
When I walk, I do a lot of thinking. Truly, it's one of the most relaxing times of the day for me. I don't know why I didn't figure this whole "walking is relaxing" thing out a long time ago! In any case, as I began my walk tonight, I started thinking about an article I was reading in Fast Company magazine today. The issue is several months old and the theme was "courage", which really struck a chord with me and got me started stringing seemingly random thoughts together.
The authors of the articles in the magazine all had different approaches to the idea of courage and had exhibited it in many different ways, but, through all of their stories, I kept being struck by the fact that none of them said they weren't scared before, during, or after their courageous acts, no, it was more that they mastered that fear, harnessed it for their own purposes, and did what needed to be done. So, maybe it's not about being fearless, maybe the fact that I'm scared of everything - literally, everything - isn't a bad thing. Maybe, maybe my fear is a good thing. Maybe the fear is what will save me and bring me into a world I've dreamed of, wished for, and never experienced for myself.
Being afraid isn't a bad thing unless you let that fear stop you from doing what you need to do. It's not the fear that determines whether or not you're brave, it's what you do next that counts. Stay tuned.
