Weight: 266.0 lb/120.66 kg
Exercise: 2.44 mile/3.98 km walk (5:06am–5:59am, ☁️72ºF/22ºC)
Mood: Great
Food: 1271 Calories
Yesterday started out strong, but I ended up not feeling my best most of the day. I had chosen to not have any caffeine, and I think it just caused me to be a lump. I barely did much at all after my morning walk. I do need to remember that it is okay to have days that are intentionally not productive. It helps everything settle. I have plenty of days when nothing seems to get done, but those are typically days when I’m using the mental energy to try and stay busy, but this or that thing keeps getting in my way.
It was another warm morning—foreboding. I was hoping to move some stuff today, but I’m worried about the heat. I can’t stay too worried about the heat; we have to get everything out! I’ll do my best to make the biggest impact I can today, even if that means not taking things to storage. Brent is going to be here Wednesday? I’m not exactly sure, but next week anyway and I’d like to have him feel better about the process. I have thoughts on that, but they aren’t worth exploring.
I tried listening to a podcast this morning, this time The Stephanie Miller Show, something I have listened to at home for years… although not in a while just because I have so needed a break from the firehose of politics. I enjoy the show, and it had its moments, but I didn’t like it as much for walking. The most successful bits were story driven, and I think the podcast I choose to listen to in the morning should just be a story. I think those who recommended audiobooks are on to something. I haven’t yet tried them, but I will do that soon. Tomorrow morning I’ll probably be back to music though.
[Walk #90]
Weight: 270.2 lb/122.56 kg
Exercise: 2.38 mile/3.83 km walk (5:17am–6:07am, ☀️74ºF/23.33ºC)
Mindfulness: TBD; journaling (throughout the day)
Mood: Very Good
Food: 2026 calories
This morning was beautiful, but a little too warm for as early as it was when I set out. It was a warning to keep the A/C running and stay inside today. But it was an invigorating walk, and it ended with running into Justin who had decided on his own to go out and walk. He was doing the area between the mailbox and Fairgrounds Rd, back and forth. I’m not sure how long his walk was, but I was so proud to see him out there doing it without my prodding or involvement. Good job, Justin!
Why didn’t I do this sooner? I’ve been craving a system to do my journaling and to keep track of everything in a centralized way. For a long time, I used Notes to do everything. It’s still full of writing and links and notes to myself. But Notes has limitations and as I started adding things like a daily health log and a journaling habit, it became increasingly clear that I needed something that could handle that information a little better. I worry about using third party apps and blogging websites. They are often better, but they also have a habit of shutting down and leaving the users with no place to go. It’s annoying to have to rebuild a following. That’s why I started my own websites years ago, and I still think they are the best place for my thoughts, even when the readership is low. But they aren’t the solution for my daily needs. I’ve been using Day One for two weeks now, and so far it is nearly perfect for most of what I do. There are some significant things it cannot handle, but I also understand why it has those limitations. Primarily, formatting is extremely basic on Day One, lacking even the ability to center text. For 99.9% of applications, I imagine that is fine. For me, a writer who likes to play around with justifications and spaces, it is a hinderance. But I still have my trusty TextEdit to use, and pairing the two is fine for now. I don’t love that the work I already have will have to be formatted incorrectly or not added to the compiled journal, but it is what it is. No app is perfect; this one is just better than the others I’ve tried.
[Walk #89]
Weight: 270.8 lb/122.83 kg
Exercise: 2.50 mile/4.02 km walk (5:25am–6:19am, 🌥️72ºF/22ºC)
Mindfulness: TBD; journaling (throughout the day)
Mood: Excellent
Food: 1892 calories
I’m trying to shift my thinking. A few weeks ago I was happy in my ignorance about my future. I’ve been there before; sometimes it’s nice to just know that you’re about to let the wind take you and to not be all that concerned with the outcome. But as soon as I was presented with a plan, I started to settle on it and when it looked like that would no longer be possible, I felt like something had been taken from me, forgetting how recently I had been content to ride the wind. So, let’s reset and regroup. I’m not interested in the kinds of stress I was allowing in. I need to remember myself.
I do not know where I will end up once we sell the house and move on. And at this point, I’m not sure I want to know. This morning I was thinking about how much I’ll miss living out here in some ways. It’s not my dream, and it is very inconvenient to me, but it is nice and peaceful. We are on the corner of Fairgrounds Rd & Burris Rd. The house across Fairgrounds is nostalgic to me. My grandpa used to take us on drives on the gravel roads of Payne County on this side of Stillwater. We might end up driving through Glencoe or Pawnee or Morrison before returning, but that house was one of the landmarks I remember from then; it’s one of the few things that has been the same for all these years. Most of the houses out here are much newer. It was at first a little surreal living across the street from that house. It’s almost like having an old imaginary friend move in down the street. It existed in my mind, but I had no reason to drive out here before my parents moved here, so I didn’t know if my memory was real or if it was all a creation of my mind. It’s not a particularly interesting house. There’s nothing fantastical or noteworthy about it, but for many years it was just a part of those moments spent with Papa, and more recently it’s where the people with the horses that like to escape live. And soon I’ll leave this place and I won’t see it all the time. And I wonder if I’ll still remember it fondly or if it has lost its meaning.
I think walking has been good for me. Sure, it’s been great for my physical health, but I think it has helped me mentally. It is often over-emphasized that walking is good for mental health, but it’s not wrong. It seems to allow my brain to sort things out. I wonder if there is something unique about the action of walking or is it the traversing of a distance. I’m going to be joining a gym soon and doing my walking there much of the time; I wonder if I will see the same benefits in mental health or if I need to be out in the world. I used to do an hour of walking daily at a gym in Anchorage, Alaska. I wasn’t in the same place mentally when I started, so I don’t know that I noticed any shifts. After spending years depressed, anything was going to feel monumental, but the walking has helped quite a bit.
I’m not sure what to do to get started with running, but I am interested if it is possible. I tried it for a minute during my walk, but felt like it was too jarring when I hit the ground. Maybe I’m just not used to it, but it was unpleasant. It felt doable in general otherwise. It didn’t hurt or cause my to not be able to breathe, which had been my primary concern. I’ll look into it. It seems weird that I couldn’t just start running. I feel unequipped. But I also am slightly amazed that I’m even interested in trying it out. I keep saying it, but it is true: I cannot believe that one year ago I could barely walk at all and now I want to walk everywhere.
[Walk #88]
Weight: 270.0 lb/122.47 kg
Exercise: 2.37 mile/3.81 km walk (5:34am–6:23am, 🌙69ºF/20.5ºC)
Mindfulness: TBD; journaling (throughout the day)
Mood: Excellent
Food: 1600 calories
Discipline. I keep repeating that to myself, holding onto it like a bird struggling to fly away from my grip. I don’t know if I’ve always craved discipline, or if my newly rekindle relationship with myself is fueling some changes that make me want to structure my life a little more. It’s like I want to add supports to prop everything up just in case it starts to slip again.
I set an alarm for the first time in years. I don’t actually need an alarm to wake me in the morning, but sometimes I sleep until almost 6:00am, but then I feel disappointed that I didn’t start walking at 5:15, so I just set an alarm. I have been thinking about structuring my morning more as a schedule I have to follow rather than a loose set of activities I want to accomplish with no real set times to get those things done.
My schedule, roughly, before today
4:30am–8:00am: wake up (normally between 5:30 & 6:30)
morning: outdoor walk
after walk: shower, weigh-in, coffee, breakfast, writing
some time during the day: meditation probably, food logging maybe, more writing, etc… lots and lots of etc and misc.
Honestly that has been working for me, especially as I got more and more into taking care of my body. I wasn’t been so regimented about the whole process, but I am increasingly wanting a great deal more discipline and structure. I’ll try to work on outlining something in the next day or two.
The dawn felt delicate today, like I needed to handle the sky gently so as not to damage it. Yesterday felt robust and sturdy in retrospect. Was it the color of the light breaking over the horizon or the clouds or if it was all an illusion based on my own state of mind? It’s so difficult to know for sure where the feeling came from, but I didn’t dare pick up the sky at all.
[Walk #87]
Weight: 269.4 lb/122.20 kg
Exercise: 2.36 mile/3.80 km walk (5:18am–6:08am, 🌙62ºF/16.5ºC)
Mood: Great
Food: 1011 calories
mostly personal, not too terribly health focused
I need to learn how to set boundaries and demand that those boundaries are respected. And it isn’t as though I don’t try.
I’ve been staring at the screen waiting for permission to feel the way I feel. I’m not sure why…
I’m frustrated. Yesterday was mentally exhausting, but maybe ultimately revealing. I’m neither the person everyone wants me to be, nor am I interested in becoming that person. Some folks have decided they know how I need to be, how I need to live, how I need to dress, who I need to spend my time with. I am 44 years old. I don’t understand where they found the audacity to act this way towards me. And absolutely every time I express my concerns or try and set some sort of boundary, I’m shut down. My feelings aren’t valid, or what I’ve said is entirely dismissed. It’s so frustrating to feel such a huge lack of respect.
I’m trying to clear out my parents’ house. I spent six months begging for help before I decided that I would need to do most everything myself. But I couldn’t physically. It was part of why I needed to lose weight, and after I started losing I started packing. The house was full, the shed–a 20’x60’ enormous space was completely packed with stuff. And I went through it, and I threw things out for months. I went through every bit of the lives of several people, deciding what was important and what to get rid of. It was an emotionally taxing event, and often genuinely a struggle. In a lot of ways it was the nostalgia that was difficult, but mostly it was the solitary nature of it all. It didn’t feel warm in the way reminiscing should. It felt lonely because I was doing it alone. I’ve been making a lot of decisions alone & neither of my brothers seems like they are interested in really dealing with some of this stuff. One is in a hurry to sell everything and move on, which I understand. We do need to do that. I just think he does that at the expense of both my feelings and at the expense of my ability to keep some of my own things, which he has suggested I just get rid of. And I’m not exactly sure why I should have to. The other hasn’t been ready to deal with much of anything for a while now. He does have some health issues, but he doesn’t really make much of an effort, seemingly waiting for someone to show up and do all of his living for him. He is as dismissive, but also has a sense of entitlement about other people’s time, trying to employ guilt to get everyone to wait on him. Guilt trips are a form of emotional manipulation, and are a sign of disfunction. DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THEM.
I’m sure I will be fine in the end. I’m sure everything will work out. I’m looking forward to some new places to do my daily walks. I’m looking forward to being near enough to a gym that I can go there for some consistency when it’s too hot or too cold outside. I’m looking forward to creating my own life and not being held back by people who never put their own lives on hold for me. I don’t owe them that either, and I really need to stop believing that I do.
[Walk #86]
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