A Long Weight...

Finally made it back to the gym this morning.  Which is always the final sign that I am definitively over my depression.

I knew it had been a few weeks since I last made it to the gym, but I didn't realize exactly how long.  Here's how long it's been since the last time I worked out:

• the last morning that I left early to make it to the gym before work, I needed sunglasses; this morning, I needed headlights
• the last morning that I left early to make it to the gym before work, I was wearing shorts, and I was comfortable; this morning, I was wearing a jacket and I was cold
• the last time I worked out, the leaves on the trees that I watch through the window of the gym while I "run" on the elliptical were still green; this morning they were every color but
• the last time I worked out, it was still September
• I haven't worked out in a long fucking time, is what I'm saying

Oh, well.  No use crying over spilled milkfat.  The important thing is that I'm back at it.  And with any luck, by Thanksgiving I might be halfway back to the weight I was in August.

fnord

Uh-wake...

I had another attack of insomnia last night.

I think "attack" is a very appropriate word to describe it.  Because it definitely feels like a violent and painful assault upon your person perpetrated by an outside force.  And you're not the same afterwards.

I know that everyone experiences some insomnia every once in a while, but I feel like it happens to me more than the average.  I don't know if that's actually true or not, but it certainly feels that way.  It seems like every couple months or so I have a night where I'm just awake for no apparent reason.  Or, more specifically, where I alternate between lightly dozing for a few minutes and wide awake, over and over again all night.

I wasn't tired last night.  Probably because I didn't get in my workout.  Eventually, well past my bedtime, I forced myself to go to bed and try to go to sleep.  I laid there for well over an hour before I finally dozed off.  Ninety minutes later, I was wide awake again.  And I could not get comfortable.  No position felt right.  No, it was more than that - every position felt painful in one way or another.  And I was either too hot, or too cold, or sometimes even both at the same time, but never was I anywhere in the vicinity of a comfortable temperature.  After another hour spent tossing and turning, I gave up and went out to the living room.

After another hour or so out on the couch, I eventually started to drift off again.  Just about the time that my alarm started going off.  No way was I getting up that early and going in to the gym; not with the way I was feeling.  And so, of course, I ended up getting the best couple of hours of sleep of the entire night between when my alarm went off and when I absolutely had to get up in order to make it to work on time.  Or, in other words, during the time when I should have been getting up and working out.

So, I missed my workout again today.  Which means I probably won't be tired enough to sleep well again tonight.  Remember the "Crap Energy Loop?"  Here I go again, round and round and round.

I've been in a semi-conscious daze all day.  Everything has seemed just slightly un-real.  Reality has this sort of painted-on feel to it, as if my life were actually some elaborately crafted soundstage.  I've had this unmistakeable and familiar sense that I'm only partially here, and that I'm also partially somewhere else.

So, at least I got one good thing out of having insomnia.

The Biomathematical Quotient Of One Apple...

Yesterday, I said, "It's amazing how quickly you can fall back out of shape."  And today I have to say, what a difference a day makes.

Did the same routine this morning as yesterday.  Yesterday I was legitimately concerned that I might die, and today there was no problem at all.  My heart-rate stayed right smack in the middle of my butter-zone the entire time (the monitor was actually working today), and I never felt like I was pushing myself excessively.  Just felt like a really good workout.

I even went the full twenty minutes this time.

When We Fall...

It's amazing how quickly you can fall back out of shape.

Just a few weeks of not working out (one week at the AGM, one week recovering from being sick, one week having all free time and energy eaten up by work, etc.) and suddenly I feel like I'm back to square one.  I know it's not that simple, and experience tells me that I will actually bounce back into form a lot quicker than it took to get into shape in the first place - but, still, this morning was... kinda scary, if I'm honest.

I thought I was taking it light.  Not even considering the weights at this point, since I'm just trying to get back into the swing of things after such a long absence.  Just figured I'd do my usual fifteen minutes on the elliptical (with a five minute cool-down afterwards) that I start every workout with.  Maybe I'd push it to twenty minutes, if I was feeling up to it.  That is really not much at all; I used to do thirty to forty-five minutes on the elliptical, before I started incorporating the weights into my routine.

But this fifteen minutes was hard.  Much more difficult than I expected.  I was really pushing myself with everything I had just to get through it.  But I did it; I made it through the whole thing, and was relieved to reach the cool-down afterwards.  (No way was I going to try for twenty!)  But as soon as I slowed my pace, I knew something was wrong.  My heart was racing much more than I'm used to.  And I could feel my pulse in my head.  I was having a hard time catching my breath, and I was starting to get dizzy.

Pretty immediately, I climbed down off the machine, and went and sat down on the floor with my back to the wall.  I held my water bottle (which, thankfully, I fill with ice-water before every workout) all around my neck, to cool down the blood in my carotid artery, going to my brain.  I tried to breath slow and deep and even, and waited for the dizziness to pass.  Which it did after just a couple of minutes.

Now, admittedly, I was having a hard time getting a decent reading off the heart-rate monitor on that machine.  (For the whole workout it had been giving me all these low-ball readings that I knew could not possibly be correct, and that made me mistrustful of the other readings that seemed like they could possibly be reasonable.  And then at the end, after not giving me a reading higher then 155bpm for the entire workout, it suddenly gave me a reading of 180bpm, which is way into my red zone, and much higher than I would ever usually let myself get to.  So, was that an anomalous reading, like all the low-balls?  Or was that the first true reading I'd gotten all workout?)  But, still, just a matter of a few weeks ago this was my warm-up, for crying out loud.  And it just floored me!  Literally!

So, obvious lesson-learned is that I need to take it easy, and start slower.  At the same time, my little brother and his girlfriend just challenged me to a contest to see who could be the first one to lose fifteen pounds.  And that's definitely a motivator.  But I have to remember to be careful.  I'm not twenty-five anymore.

And I won't be able to gloat if I'm dead.

Vicious Circle...

Finally made it back to the gym today.

Once I miss a few days at the gym, I always find it incredibly difficult to make it back.  Not because I have trouble forcing myself to do it.  On the contrary, I really want to get back as soon as possible; I honestly enjoy working out, and I feel like crap when I don't get my workouts nowadays.  It's just that once I miss a couple of workouts, my body enters what I call The Crap Energy Loop.

When I work out, I use up energy, and I end up getting tired earlier, so I get to bed at a reasonable time, and sleep better, and wake up at a reasonable time, feeling well-rested.  So, once I miss a couple of trips to the gym, this cycle gets thrown all out of whack.  Soon a night will come where it is past time for me to go to bed, but because I have all this extra energy from not working out, I'm not tired.  I go to bed anyways, but then have trouble falling asleep.  And then I don't sleep very well that night, so when my alarm goes off in the morning, I'm still really tired and don't feel rested at all.  So then I end up over-sleeping trying to make up for the good sleep I missed the night before, which means I don't make it out the door early enough to make it to the gym before work, and so I miss another workout, and the cycle continues.

I've been stuck in the Crap Energy Loop ever since I got sick.  I missed a week of working out while I was at the AGM, and then I missed another week when I got back just getting over being sick, and it was looking like I was going to miss another week to the CEL.

The last couple of times I've been stuck in the CEL, I've been able to break the cycle by biting the bullet and working out after work instead of before.  I hate to do that (the gym is really crowded in the evenings compared to the mornings, and when I'm done in the office all I want to do is go home), but it uses up that excess energy, and gets my sleep cycle back on track.  But with all the extra hours I've been spending in the office on this project the last couple of weeks, I couldn't even find the time to get to the gym after work, either.

So, I finally managed to drag myself in this morning, exhausted.  Only fifteen minutes on the elliptical, and I was dizzy.  Didn't even bother with weights this time.  Just taking it slow; trying to get back on the horse without falling off.

Here's hoping I sleep like a baby tonight.

What I Should Have Said...

I realize now that I failed at SMART last night.

Because it was my last meeting before the AGM, I felt like I should continue talking about my concerns about that (which unfortunately I can't discuss here - erg).  But, since my meeting with my old Temple the weekend before last, and my reflections on that meeting over the last week, I largely don't have any more concerns about the AGM left to discuss.  I feel pretty confident and excited about it right now.  So, I mentioned that.  And talked a little about how tired I was because of work lately.  And that was about it for my sharing.

But now I know that what I should have talked about, was the fact that throughout the entire meeting, I couldn't stop thinking about how badly I wanted to get the Tuesday night ribs 'n' wings dinner special at the bbq place around the corner as soon as the meeting was over.

I have a serious love/hate relationship with this bbq place.  They are Satanic.  Even their name sounds sinister:  Black Hog.  Their bbq is so good and it is so not what I should be eating right now.  I live very nearby the place, and it seems as if they've intentionally timed their cooking to coincide with my commute, because every night when I get home from work, the first thing I notice is the smell of woodsmoke and charred meat.  Fucking bastards.  Here I am, trying to eat right and get in shape, and every night they viciously assault me with their deliciousness.  It's cruel.

And last night was no different.  As soon as I got out of my car - BAM - like a smack across the face, there came that intoxicating aroma of flame-scorched flesh.  And what's worse, I had a pretty shitty day yesterday, and by that point I was tired and wasn't in a very good mood.  And all I had to look forward to for the rest of the night, was a SMART meeting that I really didn't feel like going to, and a pre-packaged, frozen dinner afterwards.  And that made bbq seem like an even better idea.  A little treat, just to pick myself up.  I deserved it, didn't I?

But that's exactly the problem, and exactly why I couldn't stop thinking about it all through the meeting.  I wasn't really hungry, and I wasn't really craving bbq.  I was trying to make myself feel better.  I was trying to elevate my mood.  And I've found that now that I'm no longer using mood-elevating substances like drugs and booze, I'm more and more lately turning to food to achieve the same results.  It's just another example of my inability to endure any unhappiness at all, and my compulsive use of external influences (or substances) that I know are not good for me in the long run, just to make myself feel better right now.

And it's really pissing me off.

I'm working really hard to try and get in shape right now, and every time I give in to my need to make myself feel better by eating some totally-delicious-and-totally-bad-for-me food, I feel as if I'm un-doing all of that hard work, and making all of that pain and sacrifice worth nothing.  And more and more I'm feeling like a failure whenever I do this, for once again failing to endure even the most minor of emotional discomfort, and for sacrificing my health and shooting myself in the foot just because I cannot abide any unhappiness.  And those feelings of guilt and failure end up tainting my experience of the meal, so in the end, I don't end up feeling better anyways.  It's the exact same cycle I'm experiencing in my recovery from drug and alcohol abuse.

So, I sat there throughout the meeting, dreaming of ways to get out of there early and sneak off to get high on bbq, and knowing full-well that I shouldn't.  But I managed to stay until the end.  And then the whole walk home I wrestled with it.  I wanted so badly to keep walking and round the corner and pick up a bag of ribs and wings and bring them back home and devour them.

But I was too aware of the problem.  Too aware of what I was really doing, and what it really meant.  In the end, I couldn't bring myself to do it, in the exact same way that I can't seem to bring myself to take a drink, even when I really want to:  it would cost me so much self-esteem and self-respect to do it - to fail at this task and take that drink, or eat that nasty-delicious food - that it's just not worth doing anymore.

So, instead of making myself feel better with food, I tried to make myself feel better by focusing on the positive aspects of my decision.  I tried to feel good about the fact that I was saving money by not eating out, again.  (We eat out every week, sometimes two or three times.  There are a dozen great restaurants within a two block radius of us, and it is so hard to make ourselves eat our crappy grocery-store dinners when we have money in our pockets and stupid-delicious food all around us.)  I tried to feel good about the fact that I wasn't undoing all my pain and effort from my workouts.  I tried to feel good about the fact that I was making progress, and actually succeeding in my efforts to endure unhappiness for a change, rather than immediately balming it away by any means necessary.  And I did feel good about those things.  But none of them helped to improve my mood the way I wanted, and I was still feeling like a grumpy old shit when I went to bed last night.

But today?

Today I feel good.

Today, I'm proud of myself for what I accomplished last night.

And just like with my working-out, I feel stronger today for the pain I forced myself to endure yesterday.

Technical Interrupt...

We upgraded our cell phones a couple of days ago, and so I've spent the majority of the last two days alternating between trying to figure out how to work my phone, and trying to get my phone to work at all.  And between my total lack of knowledge of how to use the phone and the fact that it seems to have been installed with what I can only assume is an extra system file named PhoneCurse.dll, I've been pretty well fucked lately, in terms of both free time and communication.

So, posting = not likely.

I use my cell phone as my alarm clock, as well, and for the past few days, and for different reasons each day, that feature has managed to fail on my brand new phone, causing me to oversleep.  As a result, I've been working out after work, rather than before, as I'd prefer.  It's either that, or skip my workout entirely, which I'd really rather not do.  So, more free-time down the phone-hole.

It's not all bad.  The phone is amazing in most other ways, and is a quantum leap above our previous phones.  Just working out the bugs, is all.  I hope to have some time to post something more worthwhile soon.

In the meantime, if you'd like to join me in my technocratic exorcism rite that I have planned for tomorrow's full moon, wherein I will summon, capture, and FUCKING ANNIHILATE the electronic daemon that I have apparently been cursed with the last few months, please leave a comment, and I will have my servitor (I've named him Bit) tap your dreamscape with the appropriate contact info.

TTFN, bitches.

Disappointments & Failures...

How's that for a title, huh?

I was in a pretty good place the last time I wrote here, almost a week ago.  But the past week hasn't gone well for me, and I've swung myself over to the opposite end of the scale since then.

It started when my weekend vacation in the woods didn't work out as anticipated.  I got some writing done (expect to be reading my crappy work off and on for the next week or so), but nowhere near as much as I had wanted.  The mosquitoes and other bugs were simply relentless, so I couldn't do any meditating out in the peaceful forest setting, either, which I'd been looking forward to a great deal.  (We are both covered in itchy, red bites from head to toe now.)  And the hot tub out on the back deck, which is one of my favorite features of this cabin-in-the-woods, and which might've provided some needed respite from the bugs, was broken.  So, while the weather was beautiful, and the setting serene, I couldn't really spend any time outside to enjoy it.  Oh, and somehow, we only managed to have sex once all weekend.  So pathetic.  What a waste.

And to top it all off, after all of these disappointments, combined with all of the stress of getting everything ready for the vacation, and then not being able to find any way to relax once we got there, I ended up succumbing to my addictive desires, and relapsed again.  So much for "looking forward to spending this weekend sober."  I somehow managed to justify it with the fact that I was using a drug I'd never used before, and not one of the ones that I'm currently trying to resist because I've had problems with them in the past.  (Basically, I told myself it was okay to use this drug, because it wasn't alcohol or pot or painkillers, and because I'd never used it before.  Which is such complete bullshit.  Same old pattern I'm trying to break:  avoid using one drug by using another instead.)  I'm not going to name the drug here, but it's legal (or maybe it'd be better to say that it's not yet illegal), and while not actually a painkiller, one of the active chemicals in the plant bonds to the opiod-receptors in the brain, producing the same physical sensation, without most (if not all) of the harmful side-effects of true opiates (liver damage, chemical dependency, respiratory failure, withdrawl, etc.)

So, basically, it's a safe, cheap, legal way to get an opiate-like high.  How the fuck am I supposed to say no to that?!  The horrible, deadly, sickness-inducing side-effects of opiates are what I use to convince myself not to do them in the first place!  Without them, I'm reduced to telling myself, "Well, you shouldn't use it because... well, because you've committed to a year sober and you don't want to feel like a failure.  Oh, and don't forget that if you get high, on anything, at all, you'll end up feeling depressed and lazy and unmotivated and emotionally unbalanced for a week, remember?"

All of which is true, but I couldn't bring myself to give a shit at the time.  And now I'm paying the price.  I just wanted to enjoy my vacation, and I had run out of other options that I could find.  Somehow, sitting around the cabin watching DVDs (two of the three movies we watched ended up being really awful) and snacking (which just made me feel fat - I could feel all of my workouts being undone with every bite) just weren't going to do it for me.   And that's my problem in a nutshell.  I couldn't bring myself to stay sober, knowing that it meant not enjoying myself on my vacation.  Because when I get in a situation where I feel like I need to have a good time, and I try and fail to find any other way to do it, I always know that I've got this sure-fire method right in my back pocket.  And, sure, that shortcut comes with a heavy price to pay, but I can never seem to bring myself to care about that in the moment.  I'm always willing to pay almost any price later to enjoy myself now.

Like I said last week, a lot of what I'm trying to work on right now is learning how to suffer; how to allow myself to be okay with something like having a shitty, sober vacation, rather than feeling like I have to get high in order to avoid it (which only ends up making for a shittier vacation anyways).  And this was put to the test this weekend, hard.  And I failed that test, completely and utterly.

Anyways, then I got home and found out that my wireless had broken, again.  So I had to take the laptop back to the shop and have them fix it, again, less than a week after I got it back from them and spent two days frantically trying to restore all my files and programs.  But before I took it back to the shop I wanted to make another back up, since my previous one is corrupted.  I decided to back-up to disk this time, since every other method I've tried has failed.  After three hours, and three failed attempts, I had to give up on that method, as well.  (I have never, not once in my entire life, successfully backed-up a computer.  Every single attempt I have ever made using any method has failed.  Either it crashes while creating the back-up, or it doesn't restore from the back-up properly.  Why the fuck do I even bother?)

Then the depression from a weekend spent getting high kicked in full-force, and (combined with all of the other things I was already legitimately depressed about) totally knocked me on my ass, and I ended up calling out sick and spending two days on my couch playing video games.  (I am such a fucking child!)  I'm chemically exhausted from the coming-down, and so it takes me hours to get up and out the door in the morning.  As such, I haven't worked out in almost a week, and I know I've managed to completely undo most of the gains I've made with all that hard work in the last month.  I finally managed to make it into work today, but an hour late, only to find out that I missed an important assignment while I was out, and my boss had to take care of it for me.  (I didn't know about it, because I couldn't check my work email, because my computer is still fucking broken!)  Then my boss had a "talk" with me about the fact that I never seem to have any internet at home.  (For years, this was because our building's internet sucked.  And now that we have finally managed to fix that, my computer has been broken for a month!)  And my story of why I never seem to have internet at home sounds ridiculous (even to me, and I know it's true!) so she didn't believe me, and I can hardly blame her.

I skipped SMART last night, because I'm too depressed, and too much of a coward to face all those assholes and admit what a stupid fucking failure I am.  And I skipped my therapist appointment today (which I should be at right now, actually) because I couldn't bring myself to leave work early to go to my appointment, after missing two days and then coming in late today.

So, basically, my vacation sucked, I relapsed, I'm chemically depressed and exhausted, my computer is still broken and back in the shop again, I haven't worked out in a week, I'm way behind and in trouble at work, and I feel like a miserable, worthless, piece-of-shit excuse for a person right now.

And it is ALL.  My.  Fault.

Son of Blurble...

I miss my computer.

Workout is going well.  Weight is coming off at a good clip.  My stomach is flatter, and my pants fit better (my tight pants feel normal, and what used to be my good-fitting pants are starting to feel baggy).  I'm pleasantly sore all the freakin' time.

Really not happy right now, though.  I miss my computer (as I said), I miss writing, I miss meditating, I miss having free time, I hate kickball... .  And I just generally miss being happy and feeling that I like my life.  I miss Her, and realize now that I basically always have, even though she's right there, standing right next to me.  How could two people who are so close end up so far apart?

SMART meeting tonight.  No idea what to talk about it.  Really don't want to go, but feel like I should.

Guess that's about it for now.

Apologies for the boring and the whiny.

Bride of Blurble...

Finally caught up on all my work, email, etc. that's piled up during the past few days of PC Swap Madness.  Feels good to be done with that.  Not only because I don't have to deal with it anymore, but the feeling of accomplishment is quite pleasant, as well.

I'm really tired, though.  Been extra busy and out late pretty much every night, plus I've been pushing myself at the gym extra hard this week (might've picked the wrong week to start back in on the weights - ouch).  I've been getting to bed early to try and make up for it, but it hasn't been enough; I'm still utterly exhausted every morning.

I really, really do not want to go play kickball right now.  I do not have the energy, and after last game, it's lost any sense of fun or enjoyment it might've once held for me.  Half-an-hour ago, the sky was black with clouds, and the wind was whipping the trees back and forth.  Seemed certain that we were about to get hit with a major thunderstorm.  Thought my prayers had been answered.  Now the sky is clear and blue, the wind has died down, and there is no sign at all of that huge thunderstorm anywhere.

What the hell?!

I'm disappointed in you, Thor.


Ugh.  Guess it's time to go suit up and humiliate myself for the evening.  Oh, joy.  Will me luck.

(Some skill wouldn't hurt, either.)

(Why couldn't we have had a softball team??  I can play softball!  I can catch softballs, I can throw softballs, I can even fucking hit softballs!  But, no, we had to play with a giant, red, bouncy ball, just so that I can go out there every Thursday night and feel like an eight year-old girl.  Awesome.)

(And by "awesome," I mean, "completely fucking weak.")

(Ugh.)

Blurberry...

No internet at home for the next few weeks, while the computer's in the shop.  (That's why this is my first post since Friday.)

No time to post at work today, or in the foreseeable future.  Several urgent projects to work on, plus they're swapping out my machine on Wednesday for a new one with a new operating system that I don't know how to use (Windows 7).  So, setting that up is going to take a day or two, at least.

So many things I want to talk about:
          -my horrible weekend trying (and failing) to fix and re-format both of my laptops
          -tomorrow's Transit of Venus (last one until 2117!)
          -my new workout (started back with the weights this morning; "Arms. Like. NOODLES!")


This really fucking sucks.  But I don't think there's anything I can do about it.  So I guess I need to just accept it.  And if I can do that, then the Brightside would be, enjoying the small, measure of relaxation and freedom afforded me by this temporary reprieve from my computer, and the internet, and my writing responsibilities.

"Make the most of it."

Blurble...

Just a quick update while I scarf my breakfast.

Wireless card is definitely dead, so this weekend I'm going to back it up and take it someplace to get fixed.  In the meantime, I'm going to try to get my backup laptop up-and-running so that I can get back on the internet.  (Yes, I have a backup portable computer.  Doesn't everyone?)  But that will require a complete reformatting, so I might not be able to get that done this weekend.  But, I need the internet to play Mass Effect, and I am seriously jonesing for some Mass Effect right now, so hopefully that will be a good motivator for me.  Will me luck.

(And I just have to add a quick note here.  I'm really surprised that I'm not more upset about this than I am.  My computer breaking, again [I've never had a computer break as many times as this one has - it's absurd at this point], just as we finally get the internet fixed, which is something we've been struggling with for over 5 years now, is exactly the kind of thing that would've sent me off the fucking rails at any other time in my life.  And I honestly can't explain why I'm so calm about it now.  Just more even-keeled in general, I guess?  I don't know.  If I knew how I did it, I might even be proud of myself for it.)

Got a lot of work to do today, and I'm hoping I can get a large chunk of it taken care of and off my desk.  Then we've got our double-header for the season in Kickball tonight, so that ought to be interesting.  Being a double-header, that's going to mean twice the amount to write-up, so I might not be able to get that posted tomorrow like I normally would.  Especially if I'm in the hospital.

My scale hasn't been indicating much weight-loss since I started working out (maybe 2 pounds), but my eyes are telling me a different story.  My stomach is clearly much smaller than it was in April, or even at the beginning of March.  My pants fit better, and my belt is easier to fasten.  And when I look down, I can see my dick, without even sucking in my gut.

I call that progress.

Confounding Conundrum Countered, Conclusively...

Regarding the question, "if I'm still getting high, but just in healthier ways, am I really changing?  am I really getting better?" - a question I have been asking myself here repeatedly for some time now - I think I finally have an answer.

My counselor read my blog entry yesterday regarding the SMART meeting (I sometimes send him pertinent entries to keep him updated between sessions, and he is gracious enough to read them), and he sent me this reply:

A desire to want to get high and/or altering our mind/mood state is part of our genetic, biological, and chemical make-up as Humans. It is an underlying instinctual desire that we all have. That's why we have serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, adrenaline, and various other chemical neurotransmitters in the first place. These chemicals are a vital part of our survival mechanism, that's why sex, eating, and exercise can feel ssoooooo gooood! These chemicals are a part of [our] neuro-chemical make up to ensure pleasure when we engage in these activities. These activities are necessary for the healthy survival of any species. A desire to feel good or even feel high or to alter our mental status is very much a part of who we are as humans. This is why every civilization known to Man has developed some sort of mind altering practices or substances. The harm is when we lose the capacity to regulate the chemical process either internally or externally. Excess is what changes the dynamic from healthy to unhealthy and triggers addictive behaviors.

Short answer:  getting high is just a part of who we are, and we wouldn't be here without it; so, healthy methods are okay, but everything in moderation, always.

It seems so obvious now.  And in hindsight, I feel like I already knew it.  I just couldn't find my own way there, for some reason.  I was over-analyzing the situation again, I think.  Missing the forest for the trees.  I'm glad I had someone there who could explain it to me in a way that I could understand, and use.  Thanks, Doc.

I enjoyed my workout-induced endorphin high this morning, guilt-free.


PS - I kind of want to talk about this at my next SMART meeting, but I don't know if that's because I want to update them on my progress, or if I just want to start a confrontation with the panicky facilitator and prove him wrong in front of the rest of the group.  Can't deny that'd be fun.  But definitely a dick-move, too.  We'll see how I feel next week, I guess.

The Mighty Endorphin...

Day 3 of my new-and-improved workout routine.  Running harder and faster, really getting my heart rate up there.

Around about the 15-minute mark, I started to notice some changes.  It was starting to hurt less.  In fact, more than that - I was starting to feel pretty good!  The music I was listening to was just suddenly so awesome!  And my eyelids were getting sooo heavy.  I was getting really drowsy, but not sleepy, and I wasn't slowing down at all.  I was still pumping away at a furious pace, to match the beating of my heart - left, right, left, right, left right left right left right bang bang bang bang.  It felt more like nodding, that state where the opiate is so overwhelmingly pleasurable that the user repeatedly passes in and out of consciousness, or "nods off."

And that's when I realized it:  I was really high!

And while I enjoyed it, and while I knew I was doing something good for myself - and so I should just let myself enjoy this, could even consider it my reward for putting in the effort - there was a part of me that still felt bad about it and felt like I was doing something wrong.  And then I was right back to trying to answer that same question I keep coming back to:  if I'm still getting high, but just in different and less destructive ways, then am I really getting better?

If my goal here was to stop getting high in destructive and/or dangerous ways, then I could easily answer that question, "Yes, I am getting better."  But that isn't my goal.  My goal is to try and stop needing to get high all the time, period, regardless of method.  Because if I can't rid myself of the need to get high all the time, then when the healthy methods stop working as well for me, or when I get into a dark place again for one reason or another (we all have them, life is full of dark places we must traverse once in a while), then I'm going to turn to unhealthy methods again to satisfy that desire.

I'm not going to stop meditating, and I'm not going to stop studying Mathematics and other Sciences, and I'm not going to stop playing video games, and I'm not going to stop having awesome sex with Her, and I'm not going to stop writing, and I'm not going to stop working out.  So, if I am getting high off of these things, then I guess that means I have to learn how to live with that.

So, then, can I adjust my goal of trying to not get high at all, regardless of method?  Is that even a reasonable goal to have set myself?  Can I reasonably expect to be able to achieve that without moving to a cave somewhere and spending the rest of my life meditating like an itinerant sage?  Is getting high just something that I need in order to make my life feel worth living?  And if so, is that true for everyone, or just me?  What if the only real choice I have is the method I use?  And is that something I can live with?  No, I can live with it.  But is it something I can learn to be okay with?

I don't know the answers.  But I know I'm not done asking the questions.

Working Out The Kinks...

Yesterday morning, I discovered that I haven't been doing my workout correctly for the past several years.

I'd been using the wrong target heart rate, a rate lower than what my actual target should be.  So, I've been getting some benefit from my workout (anything is always better than nothing), but not as much as I could've been, and not as much as I thought I was.  I could've been losing more weight, building more muscle, and doing it faster.

I also discovered that I need to adjust the methods I'm using to work out.  I've been working out solely on the elliptical, with the goal of losing a certain amount of weight that way before going back to trying to incorporate weights into my routine.  But I found out that the anaerobic activity of lifting weights actually helps to increase metabolism more effectively than aerobic activity alone, and so along with building muscle mass, it can also help you lose weight faster.  So, sometime in the next couple of weeks, I think I'm going to start trying to incorporate weights back into my routine.

But this morning I just tried out my new target heart rate on the elliptical, and wow!  Instant improvement of about 75%.  I burned a ton more calories than I normally do, and I ran almost twice as far as I used to (virtually, of course), managing 3.5 miles in forty-five minutes.

And now I feel awesome.  I have that delicious, relaxed, rubbery exhaustion in my limbs, and I feel ready to do anything, like I could take on the whole world.

Goes a long way towards making up for the seemingly endless series of humiliations I suffered in the game last night.  More on that tomorrow...

Hunger Pains...

I'm still hungry all the time.  And it's really starting to get on my nerves.

I don't know what's causing this, but it started just after I stopped drinking, so I would imagine it must have something to do with that.  But is it a biochemical reaction?  Meaning, is it my body's autonomic response to being suddenly deprived of the ethyl alcohol it had grown accustomed to?  Or is it a behavioral response?  Is it just my head trying to fill the "Pleasure Yourself" gap left behind when I stopped drinking, with some new, more readily accessible form of pleasure?  I have no idea.

I've heard that a lot of people develop an insatiable sweet-tooth when they quit drinking, because their body is craving the sugar that they used to get from the alcohol.  (Our bodies metabolize alcohol into sugar.)  But that's not what I'm experiencing.  My problem is that I simply never stop feeling like I want to eat.  Normally, I would only get that feeling when I needed to eat.  And then, once I'd eaten, that feeling would go away, until the next time I needed to eat again.  But now, I can eat until I am bloated and feeling sick from the amount of food in my stomach, and I still have that feeling of "I want to eat."  It just never turns off!  And it's so fucking annoying!  It's like when you feel like you have to pee, even though your bladder is empty.  It's just this really unpleasant, uncomfortable feeling that will not go away, and that you cannot do anything about.

And I really, really just want it to stop.

I'm so tired of constantly fighting with myself to keep from over-eating.  I'm so tired of constantly wrestling with this phantom craving.  Every night it's the same thing.  As soon as I finish dinner, I want something sweet.  So, I eat a little dessert, and then as soon as I finish that, I want something salty-crunchy.  If I give in to that craving and eat something salty-crunchy (whole-wheat tortilla chips and 100-calorie packs of cheez-its are my current drugs of choice), then as soon as I finish that, I want something sweet again.  And if I give in to that, then I want something salty-crunchy/savory again.  And that just keeps going on and on forever until I end up passing out face-first into a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels.

I'm currently working out and doing my best to eat as healthy as possible, in an attempt to lose some weight.  And I am losing weight, but much more slowly than I'd like.  And this shit is not making it any easier.

I've been trying to come up with ways to either satisfy and/or curb this craving that do not involve adding a bunch more calories to my daily intake.  Number one on the list is drinking lots and lots of water.  And I mean, to the point where I start to feel full.  That helps some, but not much, because the whole point of that trick is to curb your appetite by making your body feel full; and, of course, my whole problem is that my body is not currently responding correctly to that feeling.  And then there's the further drawback of having my day constantly and repeatedly interrupted by the painfully urgent need to piss violently.  I've thought about lo-to-no-cal snacks like rice cakes, but in the midst of these cravings, I can't bring myself to eat something completely tasteless that I am already well-aware I will not enjoy.  Still, I've found a couple of brands that are mildly tolerable, and I'm planning to try really hard to make them work.  I bought some lo-cal, high-protein jerky, as well, to try and help with the savory cravings.  The trick there is to just chew and chew and chew and chew and chew and chew until either it eventually turns to liquid in your mouth, or you feel like your jaw is going to fall off.  That way you get to spend a lot of time eating and enjoying the pleasure of tasting the salty/savory thing you're craving, but overall you don't actually eat that much food, or take in a lot of calories.  The sore jaw helps to put a damper on the desire to eat more, as well.  And at work, I've been having mid-afternoon Chai Lattes to try and help with my after-lunch cravings.  That seems to be working out ok.  It's not helping my need-to-pee-every-fifteen-minutes problem very much, though.

And there's one solution I've been trying out this week that is a little naughty.

I stopped smoking cigarettes over ten years ago.  And I cannot stand cigars.  But every Fall and Winter for the past six or seven years, pretty much as soon as the weather starts to turn cold, I smoke a pipe.  I really enjoy a good pipe during the cold half of the year.  I love the sweet, rich flavor of the tobacco.  I love its aromatic smell.  I love the ritual of loading, packing, tamping, lighting - everything has to be just right in order for it to work proper, but when it is, and when it does, oh, sweet ambrosia!  I even love the anachronism of it.  My grandfather smoked a pipe.  It just has this old, retro, even ancient feel to it, and I enjoy feeling like a part of that tradition.  And since I don't inhale pipe smoke, I don't have to worry as much about bronchial damage, emphysema, lung cancer, or even nicotine addiction, the way I did with cigarettes.  And since I indulge in it so rarely (even at the height of my smoking during that half of the year, I will smoke, at most, two pipes a day), I don't really have to worry about it much, at all.  It is a rather safe, and pleasurable, indulgence I can allow myself.  Especially compared to all of my other indulgences, which are so many times more harmful and dangerous.

So, it occurred to me, perhaps an after-dinner smoke would fill the void left behind by the absence of my customary after-dinner drink.  And, perhaps also help curb my appetite for my after-dinner snack - and my after-after-dinner snack, and my after-after-after-dinner snack - that is currently replacing my after-dinner drink.  I know, it's still not the healthiest solution in the world, but tasting (not inhaling) a little tobacco smoke is a lot less unhealthy than drinking, or over-eating.  So, I'll take what I can get.  (And everyone needs some sort of vice, don't they?  What's life without at least a little indulgence?)  But the problem is, as soon as the weather starts to warm up, I immediately lose all interest in smoking a pipe.  I don't know what it is, but it has been that way every single year since the very first.  It's not something I'm trying to do, intentionally.  That's just the way it works for me, for some reason.  I always want to smoke a pipe during the cold half of the year, and I only want to smoke a pipe during the cold half of the year.

But on Sunday, I found a solution to this problem.  There's a brand of small "cigars" (or "cigarillos," which is a rather annoying word) that are filled with pipe tobacco.  It's not the greatest pipe tobacco I've ever had, but it still tastes sweet, and smells nice, and it's infinitely better than cigar tobacco.  (I would rather eat old sushi than smoke a cigar.  Ugh!)  So every night so far this week I've smoked at least part of one of these "cigars" after dinner.  And I've enjoyed them alright, but not as much as my pipes.  And they've seemed to help with the cravings a little, but not as much as I'd hoped.  I'd hoped that they would come close to putting an end to the cravings, but I've found that just a little while after putting out the "cigar," I'm hungry again.  Still, the whole time I'm smoking, I don't want to eat.  And the cravings are a lot easier to resist for a while after the smoke.  So, all-in-all, one "cigar" seems to equal about an hour or so of not snacking.  So, it's not as much as I wanted, but it's not nothing, either.  We'll see how it goes.  I'm glad to have something enjoyable to do for now that seems to help at least a little, but I could also see myself getting bored with this very soon.

Alright, that's enough for now.  I'm starting to get hungry.

Time for my Chai Latte.

Waah...

Finally managed to make it out the door early enough this morning to get in a workout, but never actually got to work out.

I've discovered the one major flaw in my otherwise pleasant new backroad commute:  accidents.  On the highway, when there's an accident, it slows everything down considerably.  But even if you're going much more slowly, you are still, at least, going.  But on the backroad, being a mere two-lane, when there's an accident, it shuts down the entire road.  On previous occasions, that has meant a sudden, unexpected detour, sending me off to gods-know-where, to try and find my way around the accident and back to my backroad, without having any clue as to where I am, or how to get where I'm going.  This morning, however, it meant simply sitting in my car for forty-five minutes, not moving, listening to the radio, and watching my average miles-per-gallon tick-tick-tick steadily downwards.

In hindsight, I know that I should've spent that time enjoying the lovely scenery and the beautiful day, taking advantage of the rare opportunity to sit still and take it all in.  After all, there was nothing I could do about it, so what was the point in being upset?  But, honestly, that never even occurred to me.  At the time, all I could think about were my plans and expectations once again being totally screwed up by random chance.  It's becoming apparent that one of the many things I seem to have lost since Walpurgisnacht, is that relaxed, easy-going outlook.  I keep finding myself getting more upset than I used to, more quickly and easily than I used to, and for longer stretches of time.  And this is all very comfortable and familiar to me, because it's who I've been for most of my life.  And while I always knew that my recently acquired state-of-grace wouldn't last forever, I thought it would last longer than it did, and that it would gradually taper off.  I didn't anticipate the possibility that I would bring it to a sudden, and untimely, end.

I don't like this person I am right now very much.  I like the person I've been the past few months a lot more.  I'm very sad to see that person go.  And even more so to know that it was my fault.

But, whatever, never mind, can't beat myself up about that.  Need to try to keep moving forward, and looking on the bright side, if I'm to have any hope at all of getting that version of my Self back again.  So, anyways, by the time I actually made it to the office, I no longer had time to get in a workout.  But I still needed to clean myself up, as I was in my gym clothes and hadn't bothered to fix my bedhead this morning.  (As mentioned previously, I'm going to work out and take a shower anyways, so why should I give a shit if I'm dressed nicely or if my hair is presentable?)  So instead of a workout, I got to enjoy simply going down to the locker room, taking a quick shower, getting cleaned up and dressed, and then coming straight back to my office to start working.

And this was the part of the day I was actually looking forward to and expecting to go well.  The rest of my schedule for the day looks to be no fun at all.  So, here's hoping that I'm just as wrong with all of those expectations, as well, and the rest of my day turns out to be fun and exciting.

But even if not, then oh, well.  There's always tomorrow.

Oh, wait.  Tomorrow's kickball.

So, there's always Friday.

Obstacles...

I cannot tell you how long this road shall be, but fear not the obstacles in your path, for fate has vouchsafed your reward. Though the road may wind, yea, your hearts grow weary, still shall ye follow them, even unto your salvation.   -Blind Seer, O Brother, Where Art Thou?

It seems as if the Universe has decided to test me.

I was pulled over for speeding last night on my ride home.  I was in the middle of a long line of cars, just following the car in front of me for miles and miles.  At one point, the car in front of me stopped to make a left-hand turn.  Afterwards, I sped up to rejoin the line of cars that had moved off down the road away from me as I waited for the car in front of me to turn.  I have no idea how fast I was going, or what the speed limit on that part of the winding road was, but that must've been where they caught me, because as I came up the next hill and around a bend, a Sheriff's deputy stepped out into the road ahead of me and signaled me to pull over.  There were two deputies parked in someone's driveway, both pulling people over in the same way.  It was clear this wasn't the actual speed trap; this was the net.  I never saw the trap, but I assume that it must've been somewhere on that part of the road just after that left-hand turn, because that 100 yards where I sped up to rejoin the line of cars was the only time on the entire commute up to that point that I hadn't been in the middle of a line of cars.  At every other point we'd been moving along like a line of ants, and I'd been going the same speed as the car in front of me, and the same speed as the car behind me. When I asked the deputy where I'd been speeding, all he would say was "Back there," pointing down the road in the direction I had just come.  Well, duh, officer.  Vague, much?

He said I was doing 67 in a 40.  I don't think that's true, but I have to take his word for it.  Normally, when you see a speed trap, it's reflexive to hit your brakes and check your speedometer.  But since I never saw a trap, and since I was just trying to catch up to the car in front of me, I have no idea what speed I was actually going.  And since he won't tell me where I was actually caught, I can't even verify that the speed limit was actually 40.  But, whatever, no big deal.  An $80 fine and 1 point on my license.  Even though I just finally cleared all the points off my license this year, still, whatever, it's not the end of the world.  And it could've been a lot worse - the deputy was giving me a big break by only charging me with 49 in a 40, rather than the full 67.

But I found that I had a really hard time getting over it.  I felt like this completely ruined my new commute for me, this new route to work that I've fallen in love with and come to rely on.  Because part of the reason this commute was so good for me was that it was relaxing - stress-free compared to 270.  But now that I know that around every bend there could be a speed trap that I will never even be able to see, I'm feeling paranoid.  My worry-free drive is now worry-ful.  So, in order to deal with that I have to obey the speed limit, but that doesn't really help, either.  Because now I'm constantly checking my speedometer and always worried about whether I'm speeding or not, where before I never even had to think about that.  Also, a lot of the enjoyment of this road was that it was just a fun road to drive - a winding backroad through farm country.  Having to obey a completely ridiculous 40mph speed limit on a twisting road in the middle of nowhere just sucks all of the fun out it.  So now it's no fun, and stressful.  Fuck, I might as well go back to taking I-270.

I was still really tense and upset when I got home, so I decided to try and meditate to see if I could relax a little.  But it was really late by that point (I'd got caught at work and left later than I'd planned, then I had to stop by the grocery store, not to mention spending fifteen minutes sitting by the side of the road with the cops), and I still had a bunch more work I needed to do, so I didn't have much time available.  Trying to meditate under pressure to hurry up and finish so you can get back to work is pretty self-defeating, to say the least, so as you can probably imagine, it didn't go very well.  But the biggest obstacle was that I had a song stuck in my head.  This is something that has come up consistently throughout my entire meditative history, and I have never found a successful method of dealing with it.  Basically, every once in a while, I will try to meditate, and I'll find there's a snatch of a song repeating in my head, and there's simply nothing I can do about it.  I never get any meditation accomplished during these sessions, because the song continually breaks my concentration, and there's no way to get rid of it.  And every time it breaks my concentration or breaks me out of my meditation I get a little more upset about it.

So when I sat down this time, and heard the song in my head, I knew that I was completely fucked right from the start.  Still, I tried anyways, doing a full 108 breath cycle, but it did no good.  When I stood up from my mat, I was even more stressed out and upset than I was when I sat down.

Our internet was still down, so that made a whole bunch of things more difficult and/or impossible, adding further frustration, complication, and aggravation to an already stressful evening.  When I finally got to bed, it was no surprise that I didn't sleep very well.

This morning, my beautiful, relaxing new commute was, as predicted, stressful and unpleasant.  But at least I didn't get pulled over.

I got to the gym bright and early at 7:30, only to find the place packed.  Every treadmill taken, every elliptical taken.  Part of the reason I enjoy working out in the early morning is because it is never packed.  But there were at least twice as many people in there this morning as I have ever seen in there before!  I have never had to wait to use a machine before, either.  I didn't know what to do.  So I ended up just standing around for fifteen minutes, until a machine opened up.  Which, of course, threw off my schedule for the rest of my morning by fifteen minutes.

But here's the kicker:  about an hour after I get up to my office from the gym, She calls me to tell me that she's just been fired.  From the job she's had for eight years.  By her new boss (about the tenth she's had in the last two years), who's been there only a couple of months.

Wow.

Ok.

Gotta say, didn't see that one coming.

Up to this point, it had just been a series of annoying complications.  But this is different.  This is a sudden 90-degree turn in the course of our life from here on.

It's kind of difficult to take it all in, honestly.  Suddenly, the foundation of our lives has become slightly unstable.  We know a lot of things are about to change, drastically.  But, we don't really know which things, or how, or in what way.  It could be anything from Really Bad (e.g., we can't pay our mortgage and end up losing our home, etc.) all the way to Totally Amazing (e.g., she could end up with a new job that she loves, that pays better, that finally gives us more time together, etc.).  Everything is up in the air, which is scary, but also full of potential, which is exhilarating.

This time will be what we make of it.

So, are we up to the challenge?

I have to say, I'm looking forward to finding out.

The Beginning is a delicate time.  -Princess Irulan, Dune

Dry: Day 3...

So far, the only noticeable side-effect of laying off the booze, is that for the last couple of days I've been insatiably hungry.  I can't seem to eat enough.  Even when I'm so full I can't eat anymore, I'm still hungry.  It's fairly annoying, to say the least.

I'm dealing with it, first and foremost, by trying to simply accept it and not let it get to me.  And when I do eat, I'm eating healthy and lo-cal, lo-carb, lo-fat, etc.; all the good lo-'s.  And that's really not that difficult, because those are actually the foods that I've been craving lately.  I'm eating salads and yogurt and fruit smoothies the way I used to eat barbeque and burgers and fries.  And I've noticed that I've suddenly become really grossed out by a lot of the food I used to crave.  Fried foods, especially, have been turning my stomach lately, when recently they were a staple of my diet.  The last few times I ate anything fried, I felt horribly sick for the next several hours.  I was trying to figure out why, and it occurred to me that the drugs and alcohol were actually what made it possible for me to enjoy fried foods.  They made the food taste better than it normally would, and they masked the feelings of nausea that would come after.  Quite an unexpected benefit that I am taking full advantage of now.

It also helps that I started working out again the very day before this condition began.  (In fact, it just occurs to me now that the increased expenditure of energy and subsequent increase in metabolic rate might have just as much to do with my new ravenous appetite as does the sudden lack of ethanol's carbohydrates and sugars.)  So, I might be eating a bit more, but I'm actually slowly, but surely, losing weight.  And the workouts are going well.  Other than that first day, I've had no scary sensations in my chest or anywhere else, and the last two days I've actually been able to do a full half-hour on the elliptical.  As always, it feels really, really good to be back.  My whole day always feels better when I start with a workout in the morning.  There's really nothing else like it.

It's almost like getting high.

Except, you know, it makes me stronger instead of weaker.  And I actually manage to get some shit done with my day.  But, yeah, other than that, it's almost like getting high.  Sort of.