The best laid plans

Well my plans to post here more often generally didn't pan out as planned. It's been almost a month since I posted. Covid-19 is still here and still bad. Arizona is one of the worst places in the nation for it. Our cases are rising at exponential rates and it's just crazy. Thankfully we are able to stay home and stay safe. Now with summer really kicking in, it's supposed to be 115F today, going out and dashing is not something we enjoy anymore either. So it's a lot of at home time and pool time. I'm still battling the apathy but it is getting better and better so I'm good with that. It is very easy to fall into the whole 'why does it matter' mindset with all that is going on though. That is something that I have to battle every day. 

I'm taking 2 classes at GCU online so that I will be qualified to teach dual enrollment next year. The first class just finished and I'm waiting to see the grade I get in that. The second class is in it's 3rd week and it is hard. It's biochemistry and boy am I struggling.  But I'm actually learning things so that's good. 

Exercise has been nonexistent for the past month. I workout 1 day and then don't for 2 weeks. I can't seem to get the habit going. There is too much time spent hanging in the pool in this heat. I need to get it started. 

School will be starting online this year. The governor has pushed the opening date of school back until August 17th - that's the tentative date to return to the classrooms - so school will begin online on August 5th and then if things go well transition to in person on the 17th. I don't think that will happen myself. I have a feeling we will end up online for the entire semester. At least that's what I'm trying to convince myself of because then it will be easier to take when it happens. 

Okay, as usual I feel better just 'talking' this out. I do need to work on some things, but I have an idea for keeping on track.  I have a planner that is honestly not being used a whole lot because we aren't doing much, but it does have an hourly tracker. I've been color coding the tracker with what I plan to do and that has been working pretty well. Once I kind of set a plan in my head I tend to stick to it. So I'm going to start including in there exercise and the other things I want to do. I will put them in after I've been working for a while which generally means sitting at my computer. Yup, I'll do that. That will work. 

Okay, enough. I've got things to do today. 

Thoughts

2 days in a row, something must be up. 

I have a lot of thoughts today. In SCI we focus each week on something that is not good for us. Social comparison - that never helps or is true. Perfectionism - that can paralyze me if I'm not careful. Discomfort - this can be good if you are aware and deal with it. Stress - need I say more? General mindfulness - so important to mental health. Things like that. So each week we focus on one topic and try to find it as much as possible. Which is great initially but I've reached the point where things are starting to overlap and become much more complicated. Let me explain

One thing I've learned that I do is that I develop apathy. Apathy can come when things are okay and I'm just not inspired or motivated to make them better. I now realize that apathy can lead me into a depressive state, so I'm extremely thankful I can spot apathy before it grows into depression. Well, when I am in the apathetic state, I fall into all kinds of old habits. Social comparison - I start looking at other bodies and my own body far too often. When I'm not apathetic I don't do that. Perfectionism - this comes up when I'm apathetic because I don't want to do something if I don't think I can do it well. Stress? Oh yes!! I have stress when apathetic because of the things I'm not doing because I'm dealing with perfectionism. OMG!!! As you can see they all tie together and I believe that the further you get into this journey of self-awareness the greater the tangle becomes. So I find that I have to pry the pieces apart to get to the problem. The real problem. So that is what I was doing this morning on my walk with Mavy. I know I'm in an apathetic state and I was trying to get to the bottom of why. I reality the apathy isn't caused by the other things I am doing. The other things are caused by the apathy. But I struggle with how to break the apathy. 

Just went off and listened to some stuff on apathy and the general opinion is that you need to be excited about the things you do. How do I get that excitement? How do I get fired up to do the work and be excited about improving myself? I was in a battle with myself and I've worked on that and stopped the battle. Now how do I move forward and make myself the best I can be? How do I get excited about being the best? What do I need to do to reach that state of non-apathy? Is acceptance the same as apathy? Is happiness equivalent to apathy? Because I am happy. I love my life and I love the way things are right now. So does that equate to apathy? 

Maybe I'm looking at this wrong way. I am happy. Could I be happier? Of course. How? Working on making myself better would make me happy. Better in what way? Define better. Maybe improving myself would be a better way to put it. Better is nebulous. I am currently better at Spanish than I was 5 weeks ago because I've started working with Duolingo. So I am better at it. I'm better at writing because I've been practicing. But am I good? No. Not at either of them. Could I be good at them? Of course I could. So what would success in Spanish and in writing look like for me? To be able to hold a rudimentary conversation in Spanish would be a success. To be able to letter something in the way I want to would be a success. So instead of saying I want to get better, I need to quantify what would be a success for me and then go after it. So thinking this through and writing it all out has made my mind feel a little clearer. I think I may be on to something here. I think I need goals as far as my self care goes too. I need to know what I'm working towards, why it's important, and how I will measure success. Definitely some things to think on. 

Breaking Apathy

Things have been going okay in my life for quite a while now. I'm doing okay. I'm walking most mornings. I swim. I'm working on a class I'm taking online. I'm slowly preparing for next school year. Things are definitely okay. The only real problem I have is that I don't want them to be okay. I want them to be as good as they can possibly be. And in order to get there I'm going to have to break through this apathy that I seem to be wallowing in. 

I'm not depressed, definitely not that. But I do have a serious case of apathy. Everything is okay and I don't have the drive to make it better. I mean if it's not broke don't fix it, right? The problem with that is that I'm not completely happy with the way things are. I'm just not unhappy with the way things are either. So let's take a deeper dive into this apathy. 

Let's look at the individual aspects of life:

Money:  we have money. Not lots but enough. We do some dashing here and there to fund our eating out habit. There is money in the bank and all the bills are paid. So no real problems there. 

Health: we are both healthy. Neither of us has caught the corona virus. We don't have any major medical issues. We are sleeping well and eating well. I have energy though not tons. Hubby quite smoking. I am overweight and not really happy with that. I would like to work out more but just can't seem to find the motivation or desire to do that. 

Happiness: this is definitely just okay. It's not that I'm unhappy, I'm just meh.  I have things I enjoy doing but I don't make time for them enough. I would love to work on my hobbies every day but due to the apathy I just don't. 

So I see a couple of issues. There are things I want to do but I don't have the motivation to do them. I'm okay where I am so there are no huge driving forces to change things. But I'm only okay. I want to be more than okay. So what do I really want? 

I want to lose some fat. I have this roll of fat around my belly/hip area that I would love to get rid of. 

Why? Because my back hurts a lot. I can't walk 10 minutes without my back getting all tightened up. I know this is partially due to the extra fat I'm carrying and partially do to my sitting so much. But standing makes my back hurt, so I sit, and round and round I go. So losing some of this fat would make it easier to stand which would them make it easier to be more active and lose some fat and round and round. I also feel that if I worked out more and had more energy I would be able to do the things that I really want to do like my hobbies. 

I want to work on my hobbies and do the things I love doing. Sewing. Painting. Diamond painting. Writing. Why don't you?  Because of apathy. When I do them I feel really good but getting started is extremely difficult due to the apathy. 

So what do I need to do to have these things happen? I know that I just need to start doing them. If I do them I will feel better and if I feel better I will do them more. And round and round. So these things are all tied together by apathy. If I didn't have apathy I would be doing these things and I would be feeling better. So I'm thinking I need to fight off the apathy initially. I think once I get to doing this stuff the apathy will go away. I'll want to do them because they make me feel good and feeling good will make me want to do them more. 

Okay, that's it. Today I'm going to fight apathy. I'm going to push myself out of my comfort zone and do the things that I know are good for me and that will make me feel good. I'm going to do it for One Day. Just one day. 

Time for some catch up

So it's been a hot minute since I've been here. I haven't posted anything since Feb. 23rd and the world has literally changed since then. The. Entire. World. Let's recap: 

March 5th: Last day of school before spring break. Woo Hoo....

March 13th: The governor issues a stay at home order for the next 2 weeks. 

March 14th: We get word that school will not resume on Monday but that teachers have to report to school. 

March 15th: Governor issues school closure order and we get notified that teachers will not be coming to school. 

March 16th: We are told to create Google classrooms and everything will move online. At this point we are still only looking at 2 weeks. 

March 23rd: Online 'schooling' begins and should only be for one week. 

March 25th: (not positive of this date) governor says that schools will remain closed for the rest of the year. We are given a stay at home order until May 31st. 

Everything closed. Schools, parks, gyms, restaurants, stores, everything. We then spent almost 4 weeks in lockdown. There was no place to go and nothing to do for weeks and weeks. On May 30th things were given the green light to start reopening slowly. Social distancing had to be maintained and wearing masks was highly encouraged. 

So things slowly started to return to normal. You could go out to a restaurant again. Stores were beginning to open. It was great. 

Then some idiot cops in Minneapolis killed a black man. Apparently on purpose by kneeling on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. People were yelling to help him and the cop stayed there. So apparently he was out to murder this guy. That was like the straw that broke the camel's back and there was rioting and looting all over the country. Many, many cities instituted a curfew. Here in Phoenix the curfew was from 8 pm to 5 am. But the protests continued although now they are peaceful. 

During this rioting/looting/protesting period which I think has been going on for 16 days now (the protesting, the rioting/looting are over), people were not following guidelines to stay safe from the corona virus. There was no social distancing. Little mask wearing. So now we are having a spike in cases. Where I used to see most people wearing masks, now it is very few. 

So yeah, it's been an exciting few months. We are now on summer break. We had a drive through graduation which was actually quite fun and something we need to consider for the future. We have no idea what will happen in the fall, which is only 6 weeks away.  But so much can happen in that time. 

Okay, so that's the reader's digest version of the last 3.5 months. I going to end this here because I felt I needed to create a catch up post before I went into why I'm really here. So there you go. 

Week 8 Reflection

I wanted to do my weekly reflections here but I managed to do 1 week and then forget. Oh well, habits sometimes take time to form. 

We are 8 weeks into the spring semester. 2 weeks from spring break. 12 weeks from school being over for the year. Wow. That's fast. 

This week was pretty good. In SCI we were supposed to focus on rumination. That's a funny topic for me. I either do it  A LOT or I don't do it at all. It's weird. I have seemingly no middle ground when it comes to rumination. And I ruminate about the most ridiculous things. We've been gone from Hawaii for almost 4 years now and I still ruminate over conversations with the freaking idiots. Now that is a giant waste of time. I have been able to control my ruminating about the future. I'm fairly good at shutting that off because I can't predict the future so there is no reason to worry about it. In fact, I came up with a good saying, The past is done, I can't change it and I can't predict the future so ruminating over them is useless. I guess this will always be a work in progress because I'm a human and make stupid decisions/mistakes. Oh well, life goes on. There is a kid in school that is causing me to ruminate because he pisses me off. I need to get over that, he's just a stupid kid and I do mean stupid. Need to drop him off my list of caring at all. The truth of the matter is he scares me a tiny bit. He is just stupid enough to do something stupid and that worries me. That could be why I'm ruminating over him and my interactions with him. I need to just let him go and quit worrying about him. Again, I can't change the past and I can't predict the future, so move on. 

I've been doing Uber Eats and I really like it. Hubby comes with me frequently and he is a tad annoying. About the only place I don't like going is to the ASU campus. Everywhere else, I'll go. But he gets all futless when we end up in Mesa or Scottsdale or somewhere not close to home. I like having the company but I wish he would stop complaining. Seriously, he complains about everything. What restaurant they chose, how far away the delivery is, what area we are in, how stupid the streets are, and on and on. It's gets old after a while. But I do enjoy the company and I know he feels better if he's with me so I guess I'll just have to suck it up. I've been doing it a couple of weeks and have made $290ish so far. Not earth shattering but not too bad. My goal is to make $100 a weekend. That's $400 a month and that's pretty decent extra money. I do need to put a category in my budget for money made through this. I want to keep it a little separate so that I can easily see what I've made. I wonder how I can do that? Need to look at that. 

What else? Oh yes, we bought the solar heater for the pool on Friday. We ended up going with the same company we went with last time since we know that one and we know how it works and everything. It's $5500 for the whole thing and we got 1 year no-interest financing. I plan on working more delivering over the summer to get that paid off before the new school year starts. But I am looking forward to getting in my pool earlier. That pool is so deep it probably won't warm up on it's own until May. Yeah, I ain't waiting that long to swim in it. 

That's about it. I do have a procedure next week that has me a little concerned but I'm trying to think positive. I'll write more about it next week because hopefully I will have answers then. 

Time for a little navel gazing.....

One of the things I miss about writing in this blog is the navel gazing aspect. I worked a whole lot of things out just by writing here and now I need to work out some more things.

I've been doing the Self-Care Initiative since it started. Literally, I was one of the first people to sign up. Some have been really good and some weeks have been absolute crap, but I have noticed that it's getting better and better. My mind is in a much, much better place as far as how I view myself and the world around me. I am honestly very happy and relaxed and really feeling great. So things are definitely worth doing the work. But I'm not happy with the way I feel physically. I'm not mad or angry or mean to myself about it. I just want to feel better. I feel like I am happy and content in my mind, I now want to feel that in my body. So I think it's time to start taking care of it like I've been taking care of my mind. I have made walking everyday a habit, time to kick it up a little bit. Looking over my stats for the last couple of weeks, I've been averaging between 7,000 - 8,000 steps a day. Let's kick it up. Let's shoot for 10,000 every day. That means more moving and walking during the day. I can totally do it, I just need to focus on it like I focus on my rumination, or self-depreciation, or social comparison. It just need some attention.

I also want to add weights in. Twice a week is good to start. So let's pick 2 days that work well. I usually feel pretty good on Mondays. So Monday night would be a good one for weights. I usually feel pretty good on Thursdays also, so let's do that. I would like to try some yoga too. So maybe on the weekends I will add a yoga workout in. As much as I'd like to hike, I think I'm going to put that on the back burner for a bit. I think I want to focus on these things before I start adding hiking to the mix. I know that adding weights will eventually give me more energy so I'm going to go with that for now. My walk as become such a staple no one in the house questions it anymore - including me. Let me make weights and yoga that way too.

Okay, I feel better. I can approach this just like I've approached my mental health by focusing on one thing at a time, not beating myself up if I slip, and making it a habit. I'm settled now.

Week 5 - Reflection

Last time I wrote here it was November. That is 3 months ago. Hmmmmm, actually thought it was longer than that.

In the new year, I started bullet journaling again. One of the tenants of bullet journaling is to do a weekly reflection. I thought I would do that reflection here since I hardly use this anymore. Also, I think really well as I type and I type faster than I can write.

So the week started off rough when I realized we were broke and it was 5 days until payday. Looking at the finances, it appeared that we were falling around $500 short every single month. Now, I'm not quite sure I believe that but it was a blow. So I clamped down. No more using the debit card for anything. No more extraneous spending. No more....just no more. I also started looking into side hussles. I ended up signing up with Postmates and DoorDash. These allow me to work whenever I want and stop whenever I want. I've done it a couple of times now and I honestly rather enjoy it. I am driving around seeing places that I have not seen before and probably wouldn't have without this. I'm learning the area and it's fun. Just picking things up and dropping them off. I like it. It doesn't pay a lot but it serves a number of purposes. It makes me a little more money - Yay!!!  It prevents me from getting bored. And it keeps me busy. I'm done if I have nothing to do and get bored. So it's fun. I've made a little over $100 so I'm not going to set the world on fire, but it is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. So there's that.

Today is Superbowl Sunday with the 49ers vs the Chiefs. It should be a good day. We are having some friends over to watch the game. The stupid game doesn't start until 4:30 so I'm not even sure I'll see the whole thing. But it should be a fun day.

That's about it for this week. Been meditating every morning and walking Mavy every evening - except Friday because that was RunBuddy day. Working and really enjoying myself. I'm happy. I like what I'm doing. I like where we are living. I like the way my week goes. I just like everything about my life at this point and I'm happy.

So here's to another good week coming up. See you next Sunday.

Catch up time

It's been a while since I've been here. The last real update was Sept. 2nd, which was 11 weeks ago. Lets see what has happened since then.

House: We are settling in. Still settling in I guess. I don't like to rush into things. I like to get the feel of things before I start making changes. I need to know the flow of the place before I can figure out what will work best. So we are getting there. Yesterday we went to an exotic plant sale and bought some cool plants for the yard. We got lilikoi, a mango tree, dragon fruit, and some edible ginger. We did some research on what is best for them, I hope Hubby listens to it, and we worked out where to plant them. Yesterday we got the lilikoi and the edible ginger in the ground. Today we will get the dragon fruit and the mango tree planted. We just have to be careful with them and get them through the winter. Once they take hold and start to grow they should be able to survive the summer. We also finally got the whole ac thing figured out and it's all good now. Still working on unpacking and getting things organized. We have everything for day to day life set up, but the extra things are taking time. It will get there.

Work: Work is actually really good. I'm the department chair and I feel like I have a bit more say in things. They are also asking me to do more things, take more responsibility and that feels good too. I don't want to be admin or anything remotely like that, but it feels nice to have a little more responsibility. Also, the modeling classes I took over the summer are really paying off. I love teaching this way, it's so different and very cool. I did not finish my license as I planned this summer - ya think???  So that is on my list. I would like to get that done by the end of the year. Then I have to consider the whole dual enrollment thing. Do I really want to do it? Ugh..... just want to teach and be happy.

Physical Health: this could get ugly. So in late September I had one of my attacks again. It was really bad. It started on the way home from work and lasted until almost midnight. Since then I've been leary about letting myself get hungry - that's how it started - and as a result I tend to overeat. I did go to the doc and she gave me some medicine to stop the spasming, thankfully I haven't had to try it so that's good. She did want blood work, an ultrasound, and a colonoscopy. I got the bloodwork and it was all good. I got the ultrasound and they found that the lining of my uterus is thick and they found a polyp that might be a problem. So I have to go see a gyno surgeon. Unfortunately I can't get in to see him until December. Figures. I have gained a whole lot of weight and I'm really not sure if it's from my fear of this think happening again or if it's just that I've kind of given up.

Mental Health: towards that end I've really been working the Self-Care Initiative. I've really been working on my thoughts and how they affect me. I've made some huge strides and things are definitely getting better. It's a slow process and something I will be working on for the rest of my life.

Family: heard this week that my sister Ellen has less than 4 weeks to live. Turns out she has cancer just about everywhere and is in hospice. That makes me so sad. When we all lived in the bay area we used to see each other all the time. We were a fairly close family and I loved that. In some ways I feel like my moving to Hawaii split the family up. That's ridiculous I know, but I can't help but wonder what would have happened had I stayed. The thing is, what would have happened to us? I've had a pretty great life and it all came about because of the choices I made so what would have happened if I made different choices? I'll never know but I wonder if the family would be different. Of course, it's rather arrogant of me to think I was the only thing holding the family together. Mom did that. When she passed is really when everything changed and that would have happened no matter where I lived. Anyway, I passed the news on to Barbara. I'm sure I wrote about her. I got her into drug rehab in Hawaii, even paid for her plane ticket, and she left the rehab, wouldn't talk to me, and set out on her own. She's doing well, for the first time in her life. She has a job, an apartment, and seems to have a fairly decent life, so I'm happy for her. But I don't know that I can ever really trust her again. I told her about Ellen and I was rather hard on her. I know I was. But she basically kicked me in the teeth by leaving and not even wanting to talk to me. Anyway, I'm sad that Ellen is dying and that Barbara basically pushed me away.

Dogs: Lola has tested borderline for Cushing's disease but I haven't started her on the medicine yet because the dosage is way too high. I haven't wanted to talk to the vet and so I've been avoiding it and probably making things worse. Ugh. Bella is doing great and bouncing around here like a little puppy sometimes. It's awesome to see. Mavy is doing good. We stopped agility because it is just too far to travel and I don't know that he really wants to do it. Where we live has some great walking paths and we've been walking a lot. Not as much as I want, but a lot. So the pups are happy.

Guess that about brings everything up to speed. I really love living here and I'm really loving the way my life is turning out. I can honestly say that I'm happy. Really, really happy.