Persephone asks - How do you know if any of it is working?

I'm not overwieght, so I don't tend to see rapid vast physical results from changing diets like some people do.

When I don't have routines, plans, menus or schedules - I still function.  I am an expert at base survival.  I do my job, I tend to make my school deadlines no matter how backed into a corner I am, I get a little sleep, I see my friends a little, I read books and watch TV.

So how do I know if any of this stuff is working?  I can't measure brain function on a scale.  I can't afford expensive blood work to know if the diet is helping. 

So again - how do I know?  How do I measure?

Well, it's the little things.

Waking up, while still not easy, is easier.

I've been more focused on school.

Work productivity is increased and I turn around tasks faster than ever.

The amount of information I process in a day has vastly increased, but I don't feel overwhelmed. (More on this particular point on Sunday).

I feel clearer, calmer, more in control of my moods, and less prone to ups and downs during the day.

But the number one measure of my success?

PLOT IDEAS

I have managed to free up enough of my brain that I am marinating plot ideas, titles, even cover designs in my head.

For me this is HUGE!  THIS is what I am doing it all for, to be perfectly honest. 

In order for me to be the best version of myself, I have to be creating.  It is what my heart and soul are on this planet to do.

I feel like this is only the tip of the iceburg.  I want to eventually drop from 1 caffeinated tea a day to no caffeine, and to get to where I can cut dairy out for at least 30 days. 

I want the days I get up ON TIME to be the norm, and the days I hit snooze to be the rarity, instead of it being the other way around.

I already write every day, but I want to go beyond just writing for practice and go back to writing for passion.

I can do this, and I need this here to remind of that when it all goes a little wonky sometimes.

-Seph

Abby is about to share something she didn't plan to talk about

Things don't often go as planned.  I've got to remind myself of that and be less hard on myself when plans go awry.

I didn't post last night because I was helping a friend deal with some things, and then I forgot it was Tuesday. It happens.  Well, at least it happens to me.

I'm not posting about routines or morning soundtracks or listing chores this evening because I am dealing with an alcoholic husband who has relapsed.  This wasn't ever going to be a blog topic, but it is a major part of my life.  My experience, strength, and hope might help someone else out there.  Yep, I'm in Al-Anon, if anyone recognizes that bit of program talk right there.  I'm sure I'll actually have something helpful to say about it once a few days have passed.

I ask you to pray to whatever you believe in that this is a small relapse and he gets back on track very soon.

Things Persephone Has Learned About Cooking

So I have been cooking "real" meals for about 3 or 4 weeks now, and here are some things I have learned:

1. My kitchen sucks.  Seriously, when I moved into this apartment, my friends who are cooks looked disdainfully at my kitchen, but I (total bachelor) waved them off, because the kitchen at the time was the least of my concerns.  Now I am stuck with it until April 2013.

2. My dishwasher sucks even more. OK, I knew this before I started "cooking" but now it's just more aggregious due to the fact that I have to run it practically every day now.

3. I produce a lot of waste.  I have never had to take the trash out this often before.  I live on the third floor.  This is not happiness in my tone.

4.  I lack essential tools.  Things I have recently acquired - spices (all of them), cooking oils, a crock pot, a weber grill, knives that are not nearly as good as I need them to be, a muffin tin, skewer, special produce saving tupperware, and a garlic press.  Things I still need - a large skillet, a cast iron skillet, a food processor, a potato peeler, a veggie slicer, a food dehydrator (for jerky), a second crock pot, MUCH better knives, oh and about 10 years of previous kitchen know how, but I think I'm SOL on that last one.

5.  I do not suck at cooking.  I mean, I'm nothing fantastic, but so far all of my food has been edible, most of it has even been yummy, and none of it has made me sick or tried to kill me.  I count that as a win.

And since I like lists that end in multiples of five, I think that's all I've got for tonight. 

-Seph

Persephone asks - what happens when it all goes to hell?

I had the best of intentions for my four day weekend.  Especially for today, which had a lot of time allotted for school.

But you see...yesterday I had a therapy appointment.  This is not rare, I have them weekly, sometimes more than weekly, but this was a little different.  In yesterday's session, which is likely my last one until my therapist comes back from maternity leave, some pretty big lightbulbs went off - for instance, WHY I have so much trouble with habits and routines, why I default to survival mode instead of bridging the gap into being successful and flourishing, and a couple of other things I am not going to talk about in this blog, due to its public nature.

So you would think that today I would have been more motivated to stay on track, stick to my written schedule, and push myself (gently) closer to successful instead of just surviving.  You would think that, but you would be wrong.

Instead, I overslept by three hours, I skipped both blocks of school, I'm writing this when I should be working out, and I have a sink full of dishes I should be attending to, but I'm not.  My optimistic explanation is that I'm taking a mental health day, that I simply just needed to take the day to process, that tomorrow I will do better, that tomorrow I will be better.

I re-worked tomorrow's schedule, to give myself some school time to make up for the time I am losing today, but that's all dependent on one thing - waking up on time. 

Now I haven't talked about my sleep issues much on this blog.  Most of you do know that I struggle with waking up on time.  I got some enlightenment on that yesterday as well.

What a lot of you don't know is that this time last year I was on sleep medication, I was wearing ear plugs every night, I was in the midst of extensive neurological testing, and I was plagued as I have always been with nightmares.

Long before my therapist led me to the kind of breakthroughs I had yesterday she worked on my sleep.  That's actually her specialty.  (We joke that she has super powers over sleep, but I am actually pretty convinced she does.)  By the time I came to her I was actually on two different types of sleep meds, and I was messed up.  At that time I didn't get up on time because I physically couldn't.  There was too much fog and too many chemicals to fight off.  Too much anxiety and fear, too much doubt and uncertainty, and too little confidence.

So now I have the physical ability to fall asleep on my own, and to get up when the alarm goes off.  What stops me from waking up on time now is purely psychological, and the revelations I had yesterday should be enough for me to talk myself through the mornings, into getting up instead of giving up in ten minute increments at a time.

It's especially hard considering that the coping method I was taught growing up is to "take a nap" when I am stressed or overwhelmed.  That's the exact opposite of what I need to be doing right now, but 32 years of a habit, of a "default", is awfully hard to change.

I am hoping, by writing this down, by getting it out of my brain and into the written word, tomorrow I'll  be a little less overwhelmed, and can find the strength and self love it will take me to get up with that first alarm and tackle the day like an adult who has their shit together. 

Because, in the end - my day only works when I get up on time.

Abby Abby bo Babby banana fana fo Fabby, me my mo Mabby, ABBY!

First, a great big thank you to everyone who commented on my last post with song suggestions.  Those are always welcome, so keep them coming!

I have a complaint.  My husband (there are some who call him....Tim?) is trying to make me eat an orange with my lunch, and I do not want it!  He always packs more food than I'll eat.  Just in case, he says.  You never know when an apocalyptic event might occur, and you will want that orange.  The orange which I've brought home uneaten every day for a week now.  There isn't enough room in my stomach for both the orange and the chocolate I have stashed in my desk.  Besides, it's so much work to peel the thing.  I could get juice in my eyeball, and then what would I do?  Eyeballs are essential to my work.  He's threatening drastic measures.  I'm not sure what that means, but I fear it.  He said something about "smiley faces", and I'm worried.

On a more serious note (I've always wondered what note that would be.  I think it'd be a very low one, like The Mystic Chord in The Dark Crystal), Tim and I have recently changed from a two income household with two vehicles to a one income household with one vehicle.  We realized this would change the budget and our schedules, but we didn't realize the magnitude of it all until this evening. It went like this:

Me:  I know I said I'd clean the bathroom, but I'm really damn tired after working all day and I'm kinda jealous because you take naps and hang with the cats and do laundry and dishes and cook and that's awesome but really I don't think it's fair that I work 8 straight hours with a 30 minute lunch and two breaks and you get a 4 hour nap and Skyrim every day.  We need to reevaluate this shit, yo.

Tim:  Ok.

Me:  This is going to be an awesome subject for my blog post tonight and we can list all the stuff we have to do daily and weekly and monthly and divide it up equally and then I can blog about my method and you could be a guest blogger so we can compare the similarities and differences between them and it'll be AWESOME.

Tim:  Breathe.  I don't blog.

Me:  Can I ask you questions and then blog about your method for you?

Tim:  Ok.

So, we're going to make this list tomorrow evening.  Then I'm going to do all the deciding and he's going to be all silent and agreeable until 6 months later when he blows up because he actually thought it unfair at the time but is so terminally polite that he can't bring himself to say his opinion out loud in the moment even when I ask him to because that is how we do things in our house.  Or I'll poke and prod him into making some of the decisions and ask him eleventeen times if he's really positively alright with the chore division because I'm paranoid that he's not telling me how he really feels and it'll turn into a long discussion (meaning I'm the only one talking) about communication styles and how we have to meet each other halfway and I don't really feel like he's participating in the conversation.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Also also, Tim went to the used bookstore today and got these:

Guess what we're going to do this year