Priorities

Waaah­h­hh! We’re out of the sal­ad dress­ing I like. The spinach is just old enough that it isn’t very appe­tiz­ing with­out dress­ing, and the dress­ing curiousmay9 prefers is heav­ier than I like. Must pick up some rasp­ber­ry vinai­grette next time I’m out.

Any­way, the sal­ad is some­thing of a sup­per sub­sti­tute. Maybe an ear­ly appe­tiz­er. I’m real­ly work­ing on devel­op­ing health­i­er habits in my life, and eat­ing reg­u­lar­ly is one of them. I’m not hun­gry enough to eat any­thing heav­ier than a sal­ad, but that’s enough for me to take my meds on time.

Any­way, this is about the fact that, no, I’m not just chang­ing how I inter­act online. There’s a lot more going on to realign how I actu­al­ly spend my time and ener­gy with my priorities.

The per­son I want to be is health­i­er, more inde­pen­dent, and more orga­nized. Her life is bal­anced. She can take care of her respon­si­bil­i­ties and her­self, and still have time for fun and social activities.

What fol­lows is, to a large extent, me writ­ing down my plan for my own pur­pos­es. Part of the rea­son I’m putting this out there pub­licly is for account­abil­i­ty. If I’m screw­ing up and not stick­ing to my pri­or­i­ties, some of you are peo­ple who will kick my butt back onto the path. I’ll thank you for it, though I acknowl­edge that lack of saint­hood means I’m like­ly to be a bit grumpy/guilty/bratty at first.

Health

It’s no secret that I’m not phys­i­cal­ly healthy. (BTW, I got the next huge pack­et of papers for the dis­abil­i­ty process in the mail from Social Secu­ri­ty today. Oh joy!) Yes, some of that is due to chron­ic dis­eases that won’t go away. BUT—I’m con­vinced that I CAN do things that will help me to feel and func­tion bet­ter. It’s my respon­si­bil­i­ty to change what I can, rather than just whing­ing about what I can’t change.

I’m focus­ing more on being healthy than los­ing weight. I don’t want to get more dis­abled. I hate that word! If pos­si­ble, I want to be more func­tion­al, less impaired, more “me” than I am with my body screwed up.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, hat­ing my body isn’t help­ing at all. I have to change that.

One of my health goals is to be able to dance with­out get­ting wind­ed. That means get­ting through an hour-long dance class, at the very least. I miss danc­ing. I will do it again. I did social (“ball­room”) dance in the dis­tant path, and absolute­ly loved it. I’ve actu­al­ly spo­ken to a bel­ly dance teacher near me recent­ly. That class might be a nice reward for me.

Anoth­er goal is to be able to sur­vive tak­ing a full course load at school, mak­ing good grades, and keep­ing the rest of my life in bal­ance with­out a phys­i­cal col­lapse. I don’t want to spend for­ev­er get­ting my BA!

Eating

I’ve man­aged the “rec­om­mend­ed” 2–4 serv­ings of fruits a day, and am work­ing on the 3–5 veg­eta­bles. This is a first in my life. That’s the whole 37 years of it. Yes, my diges­tive sys­tem is in shock. I’m still work­ing on find­ing veg­eta­bles that I like, oth­er than a spinach salad.

I still need to increase my intake of com­plex car­bo­hy­drates and meats. I’m fine on dairy, in fact, I could stand less dairy most days.

curiousmay9 is a HUGE help in mak­ing these changes. She’s been doing the same thing for sev­er­al years now, and the dif­fer­ence real­ly shows. She does­n’t nag, under­stands that I have a bad rela­tion­ship with food, and is very sup­port­ive and encour­ag­ing. Thank you, hon!

I’m look­ing at doing Weight Watch­ers again. Like, I even looked up the near­est meet­ing place and the times that would work for me. I find myself resent­ing the $10/meeting (stu­dent price), but they do have a very good pro­gram. They help me to know what’s “nor­mal,” which is real­ly impor­tant to some­one prone to eat­ing disorders.

Exercise

Ear­ly each morn­ing, I have a good stretch­ing ses­sion. That’s fol­lowed by a walk with sam­bear and Karli. 

After dai­ly walk­ing and stretch­ing are well and tru­ly estab­lished as a habit and my body stops freak­ing out, I’ll see about going to the Y three times a week for water aerobics.

Medicine

I set up my med­i­cine box, which I’ve neglect­ed late­ly. So far, I’ve actu­al­ly tak­en my meds each day, most­ly on time! It’s just too annoy­ing to deal with get­ting every­thing out of a bunch of dif­fer­ent bot­tles four times a day, otherwise.

I’m also not­ing on my cal­en­dar when I need to get refills of var­i­ous meds. I’ve been very bad about run­ning out of things, like the Armour Thy­roid, and not get­ting back on it for a week or more. I know it isn’t healthy. I just hate tak­ing the meds so much that I self-sab­o­tage. I may have to ask sam­bear for help on that front.

Eat­ing reg­u­lar­ly goes hand-in-hand with tak­ing my med­i­cine prop­er­ly since most of it is “take with food” stuff.

Health Care

I am hor­ri­ble about can­cel­ing doc­tor’s appoint­ments for myself. In fact, I missed one today. I always feel guilty about the mon­ey. I must change that.

Miscellany

I was already pret­ty good about stay­ing hydrat­ed and had stopped drink­ing cof­fee every day. I’ll grad­u­al­ly reduce the caf­feine more, but hon­est­ly, I don’t think it has that much of an effect on me. I large­ly use it when fight­ing a migraine.

I’m tak­ing vit­a­mins reg­u­lar­ly again. I’ve been out of some impor­tant sup­ple­ments, like glu­cosamine-chon­droitin, for quite a while now. Good vit­a­mins and sup­ple­ments are expen­sive! So that’s on the list for “as soon as we can afford them,” but I can’t do it right now. I’ve been read­ing a lot about dif­fer­ent treat­ments for fibromyal­gia and would like to try some dif­fer­ent sup­ple­ments to see if they help at all.

Soul

sam­bear keeps remind­ing me that I’m not good about tak­ing any time from the “must do” stuff for fun stuff, or for recharg­ing. He’s right. I did­n’t get to be a kid, real­ly, and nev­er learned to play until he start­ed teach­ing me by example.

I haven’t fig­ured out how to state a con­crete pur­pose for this cat­e­go­ry. I will, though.

Writing

Not writ­ing for a spe­cif­ic pur­pose, but a “brain dump” each morn­ing to clear my mind. That’s one of the ways Julia Cameron refers to doing morn­ing pages, which is my cho­sen method. I start­ed Artist’s Way,¹sam­bear found my copy of the book and jour­nal! ga_sunshine, have you start­ed yours? which is sup­posed to be a twelve-week process, well over a year ago. I stopped, and let that time be sucked up by, “But I NEED to do this!” (What Stephen Cov­ey would call the urgent, rather than the important.)

One day this past week, I woke with a short sto­ry in my head. There was a sen­tence that had to be writ­ten just that way. I start­ed writ­ing before doing any­thing else, and by the time I real­ized hours had passed, I had just under 3000 words and it was most­ly finished.

That was the first time that has hap­pened in a very long time. I don’t con­sid­er myself a cre­ative writer. That’s Sam’s thing. I do non-fic­tion. But I did have a sto­ry in me, and I took the time to write it.

Creating

Last night, I sat down for the first time in a year or more to stitch while we weren’t gam­ing. Sam was at work, so the rest of the fam­i­ly plus rid­inrab­bit and dra­cofrost had Chi­nese take­out and watched an Alias DVD. And I stitched. I left the PC in the bed­room turned off. I did­n’t try to file any­thing or work on paper­work or assign­ments. Just stitch­ing. It was calm­ing, and I need to do that more often. 

I need to go ahead and put the week­ly Artist’s Dates on the cal­en­dar, or I won’t do them. They’re time to hon­or your inner child. I might go some­where and col­or, do a puz­zle or learn some­thing new. In fact, I’m just remem­ber­ing that there’s a bead­ing shop near our old apart­ment that has an open work­shop every Sat­ur­day. In any case, I need to leave and do some­thing cre­ative that I enjoy. I’m tempt­ed to stay home to do some­thing, but then it isn’t a date, is it? And I’m unlike­ly to actu­al­ly use the time for myself if I’m here.

Music

Music is large­ly miss­ing from my life right now. I must find an out­let for that. Katie wants to go back to piano lessons. Maybe I should?

Community

I still feel the loss of the UU con­gre­ga­tion where Sam and I met. I want to be part of a spir­i­tu­al group again. I haven’t found any pagan groups that are, um, nor­mal?, enough for my tastes. So I’ve got the near­est con­gre­ga­tion’s meet­ing times on the cal­en­dar. This week­end won’t work, but the fol­low­ing Sun­day I’m going to the morn­ing service.

Mind

Goal here. Hmm. That’s dif­fi­cult, as my wish­es would remove all the cog­ni­tive effects of fibromyal­gia. I’m real­ly quite good about feed­ing my mind a steady diet of infor­ma­tion from var­i­ous sources. 

School

I want that degree, dammit. I will get it, and do it well. In fact, I think I’m going to law school after I get the BA.

I’ve set aside time in my dai­ly sched­ule for aca­d­e­m­ic assign­ments. I’ve nev­er had good study habits. I was always able to just skate along up ’til col­lege, keep­ing a 4.0 with no real effort. I can’t do that any­more, whether it’s because the cours­es are more dif­fi­cult or my brain just does­n’t work as well. 

What seems to work is doing my assign­ments while Katie is work­ing on hers in the same room. That’s a habit that’s very much in progress.

I need to make time for being involved in some activ­i­ties on-cam­pus because if get­ting into grad school is any­thing like get­ting into col­lege back when I was a fresh­man, they’re impor­tant. SPSU isn’t the great­est place for that, espe­cial­ly in the back­wa­ter that is my major depart­ment. There are things hap­pen­ing, though.

Other

There are, of course, lots of oth­er parts of my life. Rela­tion­ships, busi­ness stuff, home­mak­ing, etc.—all of them deserve and get lots of my time and ener­gy. I’ve been doing them with­out tak­ing care of myself, and that’s what I’m changing.

If you’ve read this far, I’m amazed.