Author: Brian

The Wandering Hermit: Boundaries

   11 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: Boundaries

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]

Daily Log: 11 June 2024

   11 June 2024  Leave a Comment on Daily Log: 11 June 2024

Weight: 268.6 lb/121.83 kg

2.19 mile/3.52 km walk (5:40am–6:28am, 🌤️60ºF/15.5ºC)

Mindfulness: 1 minute guided breathing (9:29am); journaling (throughout the day)

Mood: Fine

Food: 955 calories

  • banana iced coffee
  • chocolate salted pretzel protein shake
  • steamed broccoli, chili beans, jalapeños, lettuce, mustard, soul food seasoning
  • salad: lettuce, guacamole, sriracha
  • Happy Belly SF Pink Lemonade

The Wandering Hermit: One Shoulder for the Past & One Shoulder for the Future

   10 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: One Shoulder for the Past & One Shoulder for the Future

I suspect that this is not sustainable, waking up daily and having to choose to not be frustrated by the absolutely frustrating things around me.  For now, I’m managing to reset and refocus each morning, but I imagine I’ll either not be able to do that forever or the frustrating things will have to stop.  I’m not sure which.

I do actually feel amazing today, but part of that is related to my acknowledgment that I don’t actually owe anyone anything.  There are several situations in my life recently in which others are attempting–unintentionally–to obligate me into participation in their lives and in their situations.  I’m trying to find the lines and the balance between caring for the needs of those I love and taking care of my own life.  I spent ten years being the person my parents needed to be.  That was my choice.  I don’t want to complain about that because I value the time I spent with them, but I have a choice in these other situations.  I think it is easy to look at the past decade and assume that since I was able to put myself on pause for Mom & Dad, then I must just be a person who will do that for anyone.  I do want the best for everyone, but I’m starting to realize that they don’t always even consider what the best for me looks like.  

This is all vague, but it is important to my journey of self-actualization that started with my need to buy clothes that would fit my body.  It started with weight; it did not end with weight, and I don’t see myself giving up on finding ways to improve myself and achieve a life that is as fulfilling to me as I deserve.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time packing up things at my parents’ house.  I could see some big issues with my thought processes during packing, but I’m trying to be patient with myself about them.  One is my absolute desire to get back to creating art.  I love it, but the craft room was a room I shared with Mom and it made me sad to go back in there after she died, so I have spent years just wishing I would get back to it.  I packed up a lot of tools I’m looking forward to playing with.  The other was an issue plaguing me lately, and it sometimes causes me a bit of existential dread that I’m not sure how to handle.  I don’t have children.  I’m perfectly okay with that, but I want our family to carry on into the future.  I think my niblings will eventually care about some things, but all of them are so young that they don’t seem invested in their own pasts.  That’s understandable; I certainly wasn’t at their age.  What worries me is how to carry that legacy forward until they are ready.  A lot of people pass down the debris of the lives of their ancestor and my family is no different.  I have some of my great grandma McGuire’s pitcher collection, my second great grandpa Fuchs’ Bible, my grandpa Tucker’s pocket watches, my mom’s diaries.  But the list goes on and on.  My dad was a hoarder, and really the message I internalized was that severing oneself from the items of a loved one is disrespectful.  That thing was important to someone who is important to you, so keep it.  Keep everything.  Keep the photos, keep the quilts, keep the sugar dispenser, keep the wooden spoons, keep the emergency sewing kit, keep the receipts from 1972, keep the unopened mail from 1998.  And I realized when I was packing up everything to put it all in storage yesterday that I don’t want it.  

Now, this is a realization I have been having over and over and over.  Typically it ends in me distracting myself into not thinking about it too deeply.  I have used it to get rid of massive amounts of stuff, but often with especially well-loved things I stop and think those things need to be preserved.  For whom?  That’s the wall I keep coming to.  I love learning about my family.  I might love knowing that my second great grandma Spencer had a book that she loved a great deal, but that does not mean I would want to have her copy with me for the rest of my life.  

People are not the sum of their acquisitions.  I think about the people I’ve lost a lot more in organic ways than I ever do because I saw a ceramic tortoise or a coin purse full of newspaper clippings.  I have no obligation to shoulder the people I will spend my future with, but equally I have no obligation to shoulder the lives of the people I miss from the past.  My Mimi doesn’t exist in her Santas, and I don’t have to find a space for them.

[Walk #85]

Daily Log: 10 June 2024

   10 June 2024  Leave a Comment on Daily Log: 10 June 2024

Weight: 267.0 lb/121.11 kg

Exercise: 2.13 mile/3.43 km walk (5:35am–6:23am, ☀️59ºF/15ºC)

Mindfulness: 2 minute indoor meditation (1:45pm–1:47pm); journaling (throughout the day)

Mood: Excellent

Food: 1970 calories

  • chocolate salted pretzel iced coffee
  • russet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, chili beans, soul food seasoning
  • Yerbaé Energy, Watermelon Strawberry
  • bean & rice burritos
  • Happy Belly SF Pink Lemonade

The Wandering Hermit: Macro Evolution

   9 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: Macro Evolution

What a dramatic change in temperatures!  Quelle surprise!  I guess not entirely; I did know we had a cold front coming through.  I just hadn’t anticipated how quickly things would cool off after yesterday’s heat.  I hope that means I can get a few things done today.

One thing I NEVER worry about is macros.  I don’t even look at them when I’m planning my meals, and I still think that it is unnecessary to focus on them too much when eating foods that are already pretty healthy, but I’m about to shift into looking at them a lot.  Justin, my housemate, has asked for some assistance in making him a meal plan to help him lose weight.  There are a few hurdles when it comes to Justin that I’ll need to address.  The easiest thing would be to just have him do the plan I’ve been doing….obviously it is working.  But I eat a lot of leafy green vegetables and while Justin claims he enjoys vegetables as well, he means that in a two or three times a week sort of way.  He also has a love of, and fear of losing, a few foods I would consider junk foods.  And while I’m not going to eat those things anymore, I would like to work them into a plan for him because I don’t want him to be doing something that feels like he will eventually stop.  I want to design a plan that incorporates what he loves, but paying attention to the calories.  Because of his specific needs, I think I will be recording macros for his meal plans, which will make me aware of them in general, so I might just record them for a while just out of curiosity.  For Justin, I think it will be important to make sure he feels satiated throughout the day.  I don’t worry much about that for myself.  My foods are both low in calorie density and high in nutrients, so if I feel hungry I know I can just eat more.  But with foods higher in fat, the limits need to be the limits.  It isn’t that he couldn’t do what I do to fill the belly; it is that he wouldn’t.  He’d have more fries, another sleeve of crackers, a little vegan ice cream.  Those calories add up quickly.  I think if I focus on making sure he’s getting adequate protein in his day, he should feel full without having to drastically change what he eats.  OR, he could just drastically change what he eats and get over it!  I’ll get it together by tomorrow.

I had wardrobe issues yesterday, and I had them again this morning.  The sweatpants I was wearing while walking did not want to cooperate with me, or else they are some sort of practical joke enthusiast waiting for a good moment to drop in front of a passing car.  Nobody was out early on a Sunday, so they never had their moment, and I kept fiddling around with the ties trying to cinch them up enough to stay up, but I’d get another hundred feet or so and feel them slouching and slipping slowly down again.  I had planned on 250 lb. being when I was allowed to buy some new clothes, but I might have to get some pants before then, or quickly get comfortable with the neighbors knowing what kind of underwear I wear.

[Walk #84]

The Wandering Hermit: A Skinny Legend & His Twenty Year Old Pants

   8 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: A Skinny Legend & His Twenty Year Old Pants

I woke up a little early this morning, but ready to go!  Whereas yesterday morning was full of dread about my walk, today I was itching to get out the door and on my way.  I might have done extra as well, but I do have a small blister on one toe and it started to bother me a little after a couple of miles.  I probably need better shoes.  I don’t get all that many blisters, but I’d love it if I just got none; I had no sooner nursed one of them away when this one popped up.  It’s a very slow game of whack-a-mole on my poor little feet.

A few weeks ago, I found a pair of denim shorts that I used to wear quite a bit while I was living in Alaska.  At a size 46, I could just get them on with a little effort.  They weren’t uncomfortable once on, so I started wearing them all the time and they became increasingly easy to put on.  While making dinner last night, I became fed up and removed those same shorts right there in the middle of the kitchen and tossed them aside.  When it was convenient, I retrieved a pair of sweatpants to replace them.  They have been getting increasingly loose for a while now, and it has become a chore to keep them up, even when I hold them up.  Now, yes, I could get myself a belt, but the point still remains that I went from barely being able to squeeze into shorts from 15 years ago to not having enough girth to hold them up.  And that is progress if you ask me!

The casing that once held so much fat is weird.  It can be squeezed into pants that might otherwise just fit if I hadn’t stretched out the skin.  I had another experience similar to the denim shorts late last night.  In my quest for another pair of shorts, I tried on some from my twenties.  I was a size 38 for many years, so most of my clothes from that time–and yes, I still have a lot of them–are that size.  I was actually able to a pair on and fastened.  They weren’t still comfortable once on, squeezing me just a bit too much, but they fastened and that made me literally jump up and down in a sort of cartoonish moment of glee.  It means a few things.

  1. Apparently, I can do this.  I need a lot of reminders!
  1. As I continue from here, I have plenty of clothes to look forward to.  That said, I wouldn’t call the clothes of my teens & twenties aspirational.  Those were the days when I primarily shopped at County Seat and my edgy clothes came from The Buckle.  I was default settings White.  I sorta still am.
  1. I am a “Skinny Legend.”
  1. I can, and will, take over the world.

Today is probably going to be a stressful day.  I’m trying to fight that back as best I can, but it’s going to be very hot this afternoon and I have to get some things packed and ready to move to storage tomorrow.  That doesn’t even address the lack of space I have in the storage unit, but that isn’t something I have the mental energy to quibble over just now.  Generally, I’m feeling great this morning.  I just know what is coming today and I’m not sure just having the right attitude will help me out.

[Walk #83]

Mindful Musings: In My Green Shirt

There’s a photo I like to share of myself when I was around my heaviest.  It was one I had Justin take of me standing on the front porch in one of the many short-lived “diet” plans I attempted in the time when I wasn’t taking things as seriously.  I stood in the same spot during my meditation, glasses in my pocket, trying to focus on the birds–often, it is the birds that get me out of my own way–but I struggled to not think about how much I feel changed.  And then I realized I am wearing the very clothes I was wearing in that photo.  They hang loosely on me now, but it made me really want a photo recreation today.  I’ll see if Justin will take another.  Maybe I should wait for a year for this kind of thing, but I am impatient.  When I looked it up, I found that the shirt isn’t the same.  They are the same size though, and the pants are almost certainly the same.

The Wandering Hermit: Geri & The Economy

   7 June 2024  Leave a Comment on The Wandering Hermit: Geri & The Economy

It was an absolutely perfect morning for a nice walk.  That said, I did have some trouble getting going.  I actually woke up thinking I might just do indoor aerobics today, which would honestly not be a bad idea, but I’m not sure it needs to replace a morning walk, so I told myself as much and decided that if I was going to do aerobics today, I needed to get in one mile as well.  That was all just fine until I had walked about half a mile, at which time I was warmed up and decided to get both miles in anyway.  And that was a good decision.  The temperature was excellent.

Brad texted me last night; Geri, a friend of mine is in the hospital.  He says she has pneumonia and a shattered wrist.  I’d like more details, but I worry about her; I’ve always worried about her.  I worked with her when I was in high school, and we attended the same church congregation.  My brother Brad eventually married into a family that she was also married into, so he gets updates on the goings-on as part of updates about his ex-wife’s (and now his children’s) family.  I need to go visit. 

I’m increasingly eager to get moved, to move on, to find a new place and way of being.  This will sound like I’m being down on myself, but I don’t think that’s the case.  It’s been so long since I had money that I don’t even understand what to do with it.  Whenever I see other people out and about, my first thought tends to hinge on that person’s relative financial security compared to mine.  And I think I sometimes get frustrated with people who talk about how bad things are for them and their families, especially when they have a home, they have food, access to clean water, the ability to buy essentials, and usually they have a car and a smartphone and spend a bit of money dining out.  I’m not saying they shouldn’t have any of the things they have or not spend money the way they want to spend it.  But I do think we have such a comfortable situation that people have started to mistake a reduction in comfort as discomfort.  It just isn’t.  Not having the excess you once did is probably just fine.  I’m also not really saying that I have it bad.  I don’t have an income, but I do get a small amount of money through some passive means and even I have a smartphone, a home, food, access to clear water, and the ability to buy the essentials.  I just don’t live under the delusion that I am living in poverty.  

[Walk #82] 

Mindful Musings: Their Ecosystem

While I was doing my meditation, I kept getting the thought in my head: “This is their ecosystem, this is their ecosystem, this is their ecosystem….”  On and on and on…. I know it seems a little cliché and silly, but it did come out of my own head.  I feel that way a lot living where I do, plopped like a bag of sand in the middle of so many creatures homes; their ancestral lands.

Daily Log: 7 June 2024

   7 June 2024  Leave a Comment on Daily Log: 7 June 2024

Weight: 266.8 lb/121.02 kg

Exercise: 2.05 mile/3.30 km walk (6:56am–7:41am, ☀️67ºF/19.5ºC

Mindfulness: 3 minute indoor meditation (8:03am–8:06am)

Mood: Very Good

  • Food: 1205 Calories
  • coconut iced coffee
  • steamed broccoli, sliced radishes, chili beans, jalapeños, unMeat Roast Beef-style Chunks
  • sandwiches: lettuce, roma tomatoes, jalapeños, sliced radishes, Southwest mustard, white bread
  • steamed green beans, chili beans, jalapeños, lettuce, hot sauce
  • steamed broccoli, lettuce, jalapeños
  • Happy Belly SF Pink Lemonade