Category Archives: Introspection

Eat.

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I moved from the healthiest state in the nation to one of the least healthiest states in the nation, and my weight shows this. I have given myself permission to eat horribly for the last 4 years. This has affected my physical and mental wellbeing, and I keep growing out of all my pants. It’s unawesome for my self esteem.

I have made a decision to change my eating habits. I did watch Forks Over Knives which says that a plant-based diet is the healthiest, but I am not quite ready for that. Instead I’ve settled on ovo-lacto vegetarian eating Monday through Friday, the choice to eat meat Saturday and Sunday, and permission to eat anything I want for special occasions. Over time I hope to lessen my dairy intake, but to still be able to stomach meat and dairy. I expect to fail miserably at cutting out dairy, but I’ve gone long stretches without meat so I’m not even worried about that part.

I will be using the Forks Over Knives cookbook for loose inspiration, but I grew up in a place that taught me healthy eating, I’ve taken a nutrition class, my body tells me what’s good to eat vs. what’s not good to eat, I have a lot of vegetarian cookbooks and websites to refer to, and I just need to apply all these things to take back control of my life.

Healthy Poppy is around this corner…

Be nice.

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I don’t know what’s happened to me lately, but I’ve let myself get out of control with being a Grumpy Old Lady.

Today I’d finally had enough of myself and googled how to not hold grudges. This led to a search about forgiving (myself and others), letting go of resentment, and the health benefits of being a nicer person.

I know a lot of you who know me think I am a nice person. The problem with that for me is that the nicer someone tells me I am the more destructive I want to be to that image, because it’s built into my character to resist you.

I don’t want to not be me, but I also don’t want to nitpick my boyfriend to death with shit that doesn’t matter when he *NEVER* says one bad word about me to me or to others.

Tonight I asked him to help me be nicer. Tonight I said, “do me a favor. If I’m being mean please say to me ‘you’re being mean.’”

I have too many excuses for why I let myself be mean: I am hungry, I am tired, I am premenstrual, I am a woman, I have to stay hard for the city, I work too hard, I’m bored, someone did me wrong.

Life’s too short for excuses, so I’m going to try not to make them anymore, and just be happy.

Today I downloaded nature sounds for me to listen to on my iPod Touch and my work computer, sounds that I used back in 7th grade to center myself, to meditate, to bring me from the dark to the happy light.

Join me or don’t, but I’m going to try to be happy again.

Waiting for approval

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It’s funny how I’m holding back from making plans because I’m waiting for my supervisor to approve my vacation request.

How many times have you let someone else hold you back from doing something with your life that you actually want to do?

I bet we do that at least once a day.

Kinda sad.

We should stop doing that.

I think this thought might be so profound that I won’t be able to write it down properly

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This is not a passive-aggressive cryptic post in which I hope you’ll think “this post is about you” or “you’re too stupid to know it *is* about you, ya big jerk!”, or any of that bullshit.

I don’t play that game.

Sometimes we humans put our own spin on other people’s words and don’t even care what the original communicator really meant and I’m sick of being misunderstood, so I’m spelling out, to the best of my ability, something about me.

There are certain things that offend me. Like, to my core. Like, make me question why the person is in my life if s/he thinks something or even jokingly says it.

I used to just attack people and say “how dare you say such things?” But lately I’ve realized that my offense is based on my life experience, which is completely different than any other person’s life experience, even if we’ve had some similar experiences. And who am I to tell you that you have offended me in an effort to make you stop saying such things? Because, this is America, fuck yah, and we’re supposed to say whatever the hell we want!

And then instead of addressing my offense of it I just navigate away from the “offender” for a while until I can forget they said what they said or when it no longer stings quite so much…

But my offense remains.

So, I’m giving myself some questions for when this happens:
Why are you offended by that topic?
What would it take for you to no longer be offended by that topic?
Is the work to no longer be offended worth the effort?
Would you rather remain offended by the topic?
Are you able to look past that friend or family member’s enjoyment/conversation of said topic?

Curious: what do you do when someone offends you? Looking forward to your methods.

Burned out cars, one each, for all

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I really need to get a job. I’m a very much homebody who will go weeks without leaving my apartment if given the opportunity. Yesterday I admitted to Dawg that I had intended to mail a letter since last week but haven’t felt like leaving our home and his response was to smile and say “ya gotta go out.” So I drank all my milk last night to force myself to have to leave the apartment to go to the grocery store to get milk the next day so that I would have some for filming Cereal Wednesday, and presumably allow me to mail my letter. That worked — I went out today.

Some of you know that during the outing I had an incident with a bottle of malt vinegar. It didn’t survive, but I didn’t cut myself cleaning up the shards that spilled all over the driveway of the next door neighbor. I started getting really, really angry. Angry that it was hot. Angry that I had intended to get that malt vinegar many times before and finally got it only to smash it on the ground. Angry that my groceries were so heavy. Angry that I hate leaving my home and this is EXACTLY WHY.

And then I finally got inside and violently shrugged all the grocery bags out of my hands and started putting groceries away, angrily, furious with myself that I STILL hadn’t mailed my letter yet and now THIS happens, and then the Dove ice cream bars wouldn’t sit correctly on top of the Mystic pizza boxes in the freezer and I started getting PISSED and ramming the boxes in… and then the rational part of me showed up and yelled at me, out loud: “Stef, you need to CALM DOWN, this is NOT worth being angry over, and none of this even MATTERS.”

And then I really had to go mail the letter because it’s actually due to be in Connecticut by tomorrow, not that this will even happen, but keeping it in my possession wasn’t going to get it there any faster. So I went back downstairs to mail the letter. And I walked by a burnt out car parked the wrong way on the one way street where our police precinct resides. And I thought that through. This car burned out. Perhaps starting while people were in it. Hopefully not finishing with people in it. The wheels were still fine but the car had fallen down on itself, perhaps because the axle broke or melted or, I dunno, but it wasn’t good, and all the glass was broken, and I could smell the char as I walked by, and I thought, “hmm, I wonder how that car got parked the wrong way and then burned down” and then I mailed my letter. As I walked back through I let my grown-up mind take over and realized the car burned somewhere else, probably in a parking lot or on the side of a road or on a bridge (why do SO MANY cars here catch fire while they’re on a bridge? I don’t know, but it’s true) and then it was extinguished and the car was brought to my neighborhood because someone in my neighborhood owns that car so a tow truck parked it in the one spot it found, and since the tow truck would be travelling with the one-way traffic it put the burned out car, which was loaded onto the tow truck backwards in the first place, right?, onto the street so that an insurance adjuster and a police officer and the owner could evaluate it and the rest of us could wonder under what circumstances that car caught fire.

And suddenly my bad day just doesn’t seem so bad.

Please go read this post, it helps us put our bad stuff into perspective. My favorite line: “Everything is actually only around 8% as terrible as you think it is. Quote me.”

I’m Possible

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We find inspiration in random places sometimes. Yesterday I was greedily looking through my Facebook statuses for more FarmVille gifts (please don’t judge me for this, I used to hardcore garden in Vermont, and I cannot do so here really, so virtual is all I’ve got) and noticed my previous-blogger-but-now-Twitter-and-FB pal to the East, Frankie, posted the following status:

There’s no such thing as “impossible”. The word itself says “I’m Possible”.

Indeed.

Today I found this video on rickey.org of what was described as Indian pole gymnastics, correctly termed in the video as Mallakhamb:

Physics seems defied. I am astounded by the agility of men of differing shapes and sizes, and the complete abandon of laws of gravity by the boy at the end.

The next time you tell yourself something is “impossible” remember to change it to “I’m Possible”.

Which is to say: I know you can do it, just make sure to let yourself know too.

Preparedness

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Some family news I kind of suspected since I was a kid was confirmed today. It’s sitting very uncomfortably with me. Its consequences are steep and far reaching. And that’s all I can say because it’s not my news to share. Suffice it to say, you’re just never prepared to hear bad news.

Casualty of war

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Things did not end well with me and the ex. I haven’t spoken to him in about two years. We just don’t see eye to eye on life, and he has no interest in being a positive part of my life. This also means that it has been three years since I’ve seen his family. I don’t really think about them much because they’re not mine anymore.

Isn’t that weird? I was in his life for 10 years and yet our inability to resolve our issues results in me losing the status of sister, daughter, cousin, niece, granddaughter to an entire family.

Some days that’s pretty overwhelming, particularly on the days when my boyfriend is invited to family functions by his ex’s family because they are still such good friends and he is still considered important to her family, although his title is Family Friend now instead of stepdad, brother, son, grandson, cousin, nephew.

Most of the time I just push my complete erasure from my ex’s family to the deep, dark, uncharted territories of my mind. And then something unexpected happens and I flash back.

Saturday night Dawg and I wanted to stay in and watch a movie on demand. We looked through the movies together and settled on Dear John. We knew we would cry through it, because it’s a tear-jerker. Minutes into the movie John meets Savannah. Minutes more into the movie the two are at a party together and Savannah introduces John to Allen, an autistic boy who is the son of Tim.

Triggering my flashback.

Allen was the biological four-year-old son of Hay’s aunt. The first time we met we fell in kid love. I loved his spirit, he loved that he could call me his girlfriend. Allen and I played for hours each time we saw each other. Allen looked exactly like the boy in the movie. And so I burst out crying because I realized that I had forgotten Allen ever existed.

Because I’m not allowed to be part of that family anymore. Or that boy’s life. And I never got to say goodbye to him, I just disappeared from his life.

And that was a choice I made, knowing the consequences.

sigh.

Fill up your self worth tank

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I recently learned that my personal self worth is directly related to my ability to trust others. In learning this fact I also was able to realize that, through every fault of my own, I allowed my self worth tank to become very depleted.

It’s really much easier to allow my self worth to become very low than it is to keep it maintained at a healthy level. And I know I’ve spent way more of my life allowing my self worth tank to run on low or empty than I have allowed it to be above 3/4 full.

But in order to maintain healthy, productive, growing, nurturing relationships with those around me I need to put in that effort for others, and most of all for myself, in believing that I am worthy to:

be loved
love
be trusted
trust
be my partner’s one and only
be faithful to my partner

To believe I don’t deserve happiness, to believe that those closest to me are really just around to hurt me, will result in them leaving me eventually. Because who the hell wants to live life walking on eggshells trying to figure out how not to upset me just because I haven’t done the work to keep my self worth at a stable level so that I don’t become a paranoid mess in the corner? And it will, in fact, be my fault that I pushed them away. Self sabotage. (boooooo hissssss)

What I’ve learned also about self worth is that it is very difficult to build my own self worth back up, but it’s a lot easier to build others’ self worth with my words. I really do need help from others to remind me of why I deserve good things in my life rather than bad. I normally don’t reach out for help from others, but then I feel so very isolated and perpetuate my feelings of unworthiness.

Soooooo, here’s the challenge: Fill up someone else’s self worth tank. Let’s say nice things about how awesome each other is so that we feel like our existence on this planet is not a waste of space, time, and energy. If you’re strong enough to say nice things about yourself, then do that too.

You can say it in a comment here, you can write your own post, you can make a vlog, you can email the person, you can write tweets, you can post photos, you can change your Facebook status or write on someone’s wall. You could even call someone or write them a letter or show up at their house, I suppose.

And if you really need some self worth but you’re having trouble building it for yourself please reach out and ask for help.

And if this is a big flop and nobody does it then that’s gonna suck donkey balls but I’ll find other ways to increase my self worth on my own, such as: sending myself a gift basket, sending myself flowers, getting my hair done, getting a hot stone massage, cooking an incredible dinner and enjoying every bite, hanging out in a kitten pile (with maybe a Dawggy thrown in ;) on the bed, writing my thoughts and dreams and aspirations in my own actual handwriting on lined paper, telling myself “I love you” in the mirror.

What’s so wrong with going there?

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Thinking it through I was going to write this lame post about college essay topics I read about on CNN, how some college students are actually being admitted to their dream school for their answer to the question “How do you feel about Wednesdays?” but I’ve decided not to do that.

When a bad thought comes into your mind how hard do you work to get it out of your head?

Have you ever considered letting it hang out in there, develop, flourish, bloom, expand and explore the depths of your creative mind, just to see where it takes you?

I do this. A lot.

I let myself process events that I have experienced, others that I only know about second hand, still others that I have no proof are even remotely close to reality, and ones that I know for certain with actual evidential facts aren’t the truth.

Why do I do this? Because it prepares me for when the shit hits the motherfucking fan.

No shit has hit any fans, people. I’m just… practicing for if/when it does. It’s what I do. Because I’m crazy. And I like me crazy. So… we stay crazy up in here.