Now is when I start to Live Life.

I have been overweight for 11 years. I gained about 60 lbs when pregnant with my son, and then went on Depo Provera contraceptives for 4 years. I am currently (and have been mostly) hovering at around 200-220 lbs, when my ideal weight (personally ideal, not “You’re this tall, be this fat” ideal) is roughly 130-150lbs, toned.

I have started to work out and eat right many times over the years. And it works; each time I start, I see results, but then I stop, for one reason or another, and it comes back. Most usually the problem is food, or rather, money to get the right food. Another factor is how I feel about myself. If I’m having a rough time in regular life (a break-up, a job loss, some other perceived failure) then I lose motivation and just stop what I was doing that made me feel great and productive.

I recently started again, in January, to work out daily and drink more water, as I’ve had a problem staying hydrated for at LEAST 10 years. My body’s now been trained to retain water, so when I flood it out with the RIGHT amount, I shed inches really quickly.

This past month however, my workouts have dwindled down again, pretty much due to my sadness at how my relationship was going. I’m now starting back up again, every morning at 6:30.

I now get up, don my workout gear, grab a bottle of water from the fridge, and turn on the Turbo Jam. It’s a 20 minute workout and it’s intense for someone not having worked out for a week or a few. I sweat, I wheeze, my knees ache and I feel energized. So many people I know say, “Ugh I’m not a morning person *grumblegrumble*”. Really. Neither was I, until I forced myself to change.

I was the girl who had to have her mother step on her head while jumping on her bed to get her out of said bed and ready for school. I was the girl who arrived at school rumpled and mismatched, because she got dressed at the last second and usually in the dark. I stayed in bed until ABSOLUTE TIME-SENSITIVE NECESSITY required me to be out of the house to catch a bus to school. I would glower at my family, not eat any breakfast unless forced out of early by my mother screaming, “GET UP THE BUS WILL BE HERE IN 3 MINUTES!” only to find I had 13 minutes. I would not talk in the morning ever, I did not want to be AWAKE while the sun was cheerfully blazing, and I sure as shit did not want to be around smiling, cheerful, chattery MORNING people.

When I made the decision to be a different person, I changed a lot. And it was gradual change. It wasn't overnight that I decided to hop out of bed like a happy little chickadee and hop around being cheerful. No way.. It took me years to work up to that. In the past few years though, if I woke up in the morning, and I had a game plan, I’d be cheerful about it. I LIKED having goals, a routine to follow, places to be. On the days when I have no plans, like no work, no school, no appointments farfar’way from my house, I laid in bed til 1pm and then did nothing.  This has lasted me for quite a while now actually. I still do this.

Until recently, I mean.

Now my mornings, whether I’m working that day or not, consist of wake up at alarm (6:30am on work-days, 8:30 on non-working days), work out for 30 minutes, shower, dress, make a protein shake and healthy breakfast, and then get on with my day.  I’ve found if I stick to the work out plan every morning, I’m less inclined to sit on my buttski and stare at Facebook or webcomics if I have the day off. I’ve also found that it keeps my feet from hurting as soon at work, while standing in one spot for hours, chopping vegetables. I also seem to be in a better mood. I’m fully aware that exercise releases endorphins to make you feel good, so the more exercise you get, the better you feel, so I’m trying hard to stick with it as much as possible. Trying to adjust to such a massive upheaval in your life as a break-up, thus removing any contact with the people you both considered friends, is difficult already; without some sort of routine, I’d fall apart.

On March 2^nd, I will be starting (for real!) the Georges St-Pierre RUSHFIT program. On February 29^th, I will be taking the assessment, which is as follows:

60 seconds of air squats

20 seconds rest

60 seconds of pushups

20 seconds rest

60 seconds of sit-ups

20 seconds rest

60 seconds of burpees.

Oh gods.. the sweaty...

Essentially 5 minutes of pushing exercise, to see what your endurance and strength and stamina can produce. In 3 months I will do it again, myself, just to see what I can then accomplish, after the training.

I also plan to bring my pell into my living room, and practice my SCA sword shots, more with my left hand than my right, because my left hand is weaker. By spring I want to be able to look good, feel good, and hopefully begin training again with the rest of the unit.

I know this will take time and effort. I know that I will have muscle pain and that weight loss, either 12 inches around my hips or 60lbs, whichever comes first, is essential to me feeling good about myself, and being able to walk without feeling dragged down. I want to wear pretty clothes, I want to wear costumes, and crazy outfits. I cannot do that without toning up, slimming out and building muscle and confidence this time. I’ll be 32 this year, I don’t want to continue living the way I have for the past decade. I want to have fun!!

I will do this by cutting down sugar and gluten intake, by drinking more water, eating healthy meals and snacks, and with my exercise. I do not plan on spending a lot of time on the internet, or playing computer games. I don’t do a lot on the internet anyway; Facebook, webcomics and occasionally news are all I really look at. I will keep updates a-coming on my blog, so we can keep track of what I’m doing and how things are going.

So my new year begins now. Now is when I’ve decided that I want to be happy, successful, proud of myself and my looks, as well as my massive accomplishment of cutting an addiction to pieces and becoming who I want to be.

Who do you want to be?

Things I Keep Running into Lately.

I got this from a post by The Walkable and Livable Communities Institute 

“Who we become depends on who we surround ourselves by. I really believe that this is true.”

I did not write this, but I feel it should be shared, and there was a bunch of stuff written at the beginning that doesn’t really go with it, for me.

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn

This is a quote made by Jim Rohn, motivational speaker and self-help guru. To be honest, I don’t fully agree with this statement because it negates the fact we have our own consciousness as well. The quote will be more accurate if we revise it to: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, including yourself”. 

In my general day-to-day life, I encounter 'sleepwalkers', who generally lack a core focus in their lives. Their lives revolve around working, eating, sleeping, partying, random entertainment and generally getting by. When I am with them, I find it very difficult to branch the discussion beyond lower level, fear/ego-based topics such as gossip, complaining, unhappiness or dissatisfaction and day-to-day weary, to more higher-level, love-based topics such purpose, self-improvement, and so on.

How people around you can affect you

There are two variables that interplay in determining how much of your thoughts and actions are influenced by people around you. The first is your consciousness and resilience as an individual. The second, is the collective sum of the consciousness of the people you are with. These combine to give you a weighted impact on who you become.

You may be the most conscious and smartest individual around, but if you are constantly surrounded by negative, fear-based people in your life, it will have an impact on who you eventually become and your progression in life. If you are heavily rooted in yourself, there might be a limited downside that negative friends can bring you. However, you are also getting a limited upside because you are spending time with people who are holding you back vs people who can be elevating you.

If you hang out with a group of successful, positive-minded individuals who believe in taking responsibility for their lives, you will move to become a proactive individual who shapes his/her future. If you hang out with a bunch of pessimists who believe the world is out to get them and there is nothing worthwhile, you will start descending into the negative whirlpool at some point, even if you are initially a positive individual.

This is especially important in goal achievement, because the consciousness you vibrate at affects the kind of thoughts and actions you undertake. If you want to lose 20lbs of weight, you need to think as your end persona; the person who is clean cut in making diet decisions. However, if you are constantly surrounding yourself with people who eat a lot, you make it harder to restrict yourself. At this point, your ability to stay on track in your goal will boil down to how grounded and resilient you are. Think of how much easier the task becomes if you were hanging out with like-minded people with similar visions, or even people who have already been there before.

Of course, this does not mean you should sever relationships or cut away every single person who does not contribute to your goals. It just means you should reduce the amount of contact you are having with people who do not enable you to become a better person. Only in the event that the person is seriously dragging you down should you resort to cutting him/her completely away. Remember, if you are entrenching yourself in relationships which are not elevating you or bringing yourself forward, you are not really helping yourself nor anybody else since you are not being the best you can be and subsequently, not being the best you can be to them.”

There follows an exercise to identify your core circle of people.

Let us do an exercise now.   Pick up your pen and paper, and write down the answers to the following questions: (Even if you’re “not the type of person who does this” try anyways. If you’re sincere about change, things have to change.

1. What is the kind of person you want to be?

What is your ideal self that you wish to become? What are the qualities you want to possess?

2. Who are the 5 people you spend the most time with in your life currently?

How are they like? What are the top 3 qualities each of them stand for?

3. Do they match who you want to become in the future?

Do their qualities match who you want to become? Do they help enable or disable your vision for yourself? Do they elevate you or bring you down?

4. Who are the top 5 people who embody the qualities you desire?

They should be people you aspire to become and/or respect in some way or another. There are no rules here – It does not matter whether the person is a specific individual or a general person, outside of your social circle, lives in a different country or dead. It can be someone who already achieved the end state or goal that you want to achieve. It can be Oprah, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Obama or whoever. Let your imagination run wild here!

If one of your career aspirations is to be a chef, you can list Iron Chef or a world-renowned, international award winning chef as one of the 5 people. If you want to lose 100lbs, list someone who has already achieved this goal or someone who has your aspired body type/weight. If you want to be a movie producer, list someone who has achieved acclaimed successful in this line of work, such as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, etc.

5. How can you increase contact with them?

This is where the interesting bit comes in. Depending on who the people are, you can use the following methods to reach out to them:

·         Direct contact:

This can be via face-to-face contact, telephone or via email/internet. How can you increase the opportunities of interfacing with this person? If you know the individual, how can you communicate with him/her more often? If you don’t know the person, does this person belong to a certain community which you can be part of? Do you have any friends who might know this individual? Is there a way for you to bridge into the same social circles?

·         Products of their work:

If direct communication does not work out, you can always bring the person to you in the form of his/her works. Does the person have any works under his/her name, such as shows, books or podcasts? Get your hands on them and soak yourself in them. These materials were after all written/made by them and the content will convey their consciousness and knowledge. In essence, being exposed to these materials is equivalent to interacting with them in person.

·         Visualization:

This one sounds like the most airy fairy method out of the three, but it can actually the most powerful. Clear your mind and visualize these people in your mind. Try to project them as clearly as possible, from how they look, think, act, say. When you are done, consult them in your mind and observe their responses to whatever you ask. It can also be used in daily life, where you project their persona onto you in your situations and think/act the way you think they will.

Napoleon Hill wrote in ‘Think and Grow Rich‘ that every night before he slept, he would have an imaginary council meeting with his ‘invisible counselors’. The council started out with a group of 9; it eventually expanded over time to over 50. These included people such as Darwin, Einstein, Aristotle, Confucius, Socrates, and the like. Through these nightly council meetings, he received immense inspiration, knowledge and ideas which he credited for his success in life.

Transitioning to the new you

What will happen from here on as you increase your contact with these 5 people? If the disparity in consciousness levels is high, you are probably going to start off feeling terribly misfitted. They will probably talking in lingo and topics which are different from what you are used to. Even when they talk about topics you are familiar with, the perspectives they come from can be totally different and not something you looked at before. You probably feel awkward around them.

But if you are to connect with them every day, even if for just 15 minutes a time, it’s a matter of time before your consciousness alters and shifts to the new level. If you are a stubborn individual in a low consciousness, it will take a longer period of time; if you are a high consciousness individual who is highly adaptable, it will take a shorter amount of time.

Eventually, you will start resonating with these people you aspire. You will find that you start thinking in the same wavelength and start talking about the same topics as them. Those thinking will then affect your actions, which will manifest into results you see in life.

Shape your life by choosing who you are with

By choosing who you spend time with, you are literally shaping your own future. Start by examining the people you spend the most time around. Consider if these people are enabling you towards your envisioned self. If they are not, identify and increase contact with the people who will enable you to become the best person you can be.”

Holiday labels.

This is a small but heart-felt message, on this day, called by the human people, St. Valentine's Day, or simply by Valentine's Day.



To the societal masters and media who make single people feel unworthy of attention or love on this day, to tell all those people to believe that your self-worth lies in your ability to score a significant other for this day alone, I wish you to read this and take it directly to heart.


Fuck you.
Fuck you, with crunchy peanut butter and glass as lube. 
In any orifice handy.



That is all.

My Anger Solution

Well folks, it’s been about a week since I last wrote anything. The past week has brought a lot of memories to the surface.

For now I want to talk about anger. We all have it. One of first few things I decided to change about myself was to deal with my anger. First I had to acknowledge I had it, which wasn’t easy.

Remember the person I spoke of before, with whom I moved to this city? Our adventure obviously didn’t end with hopping a bus. I believe it was some Higher Power, Serendipity, Fate, whatever you want to call it, that saw I was ready to change and thrust this person in my path; someone who was willing to go balls out (so to speak), say what needed saying, do what needed doing, for the greater good.

We packed up and left Hamilton, on a Greyhound bus, and 13 hours later we were in Sault Ste Marie. At first, life was exciting; lots of hope, and sunshine, and faith that we’d be Somebodies, we were going to change the world!

Walking 6-8 hours a day, looking for apartments that would allow us to live there. Meeting all manner of people, some nice, some rude, some sketchy, some shady-looking but with good hearts. And then we found a place.

Once we moved in, and were no longer nomads for the summer, the shine wore off the relationship. Living with that person, and trying to set a routine for his kids, trying to be a Mommy to kids I didn’t particularly like, as he’d raised them to be demanding little selfish brats. His loud mouth got him in trouble a lot, and the testosterone he was taking for his gender-switching worked only when he took it, which wasn’t regularly. In between, the Bitch came out.

Above: The Bitch in Rych.

It was at one of these times, that the peace of our quasi-life shattered. There was shouting, a fistfight, two shots to the face (by me, to his, btw), and me leaving in my slippers.

I had nowhere to go, so I stayed at a shelter, and had to come to some hard truths about my life. Where did I want to go? What did I want to do? Who did I want to be? These weren't things I'd thought about before, but I knew that I needed to change. The people I was with tended to be reflections, mirrors of myself, and I am grateful I saw them. I realized soon enough, that I had anger issues. I would bottle my rage up for YEARS, against myself, against others, and then without any warning, it would blow and someone would get hurt, usually not me, but sometimes.

I tried to date again after deciding that I had to work on these problems with my emotions, but it lasted a month and a half before there was another explosion, and this time, a lot of his blood spilled. (Though to be fair, he knew I was going through a lot of soul-searching, and that people had attacked me before, so he shouldn’t have been surprised that when he leapt on me I reacted like a rabid, cornered badger, with teeth and everything).

Also frightened. Badgers are rarely frightened, but you get the idea.

I stopped dating for about a month, but I was lonely. New city, middle of winter, didn’t know a ton of people. Tried a few times to meet people from online dating services, just to have some friends, someone to spend time with, and nothing went anywhere productive. I chose one boy because he was the exact opposite of the previous: instead of tall, short; instead of strong, weak; and instead of exceptionally masculine, this boy was very effeminate. We got along, had things in common, and it was nice to have someone to hug regularly, even if we didn’t sleep together very much at all. That ended about 2 months later, when I broke it off, saying that I was interested in spending time somewhere that was not his house; his friends were for the most part, NOT the types of people I wanted to spend time with, and he never did much without them. I was also very interested in another man I’d met online, strictly as friends at first while I was with the other, but on my side, it was developing into more than that.

That ended as well, not long after it started (couple of months), as I’d never really met someone decent (male/dating) who was interested in spending time with me, up til that point. I became very clingy, because hey, when you’ve had crap-sandwiches all your life, someone hands you a ham & swiss and you hold onto that sucker! He walked away. I broke, I healed, I still grieve sometimes for what could have been, but I've healed.

I had a lot of trouble trying to keep hold of any relationships while fighting myself. I had a lot of weeks, even months, where I couldn’t do ANYTHING. If I didn’t have my best friend around, I’d probably have never gotten where I have today. I yelled at him, screamed, raged, demanded he leave, and he just smiled and said, "No." He was the best thing that ever happened to me, and after experiencing what I have recently, I am even more amazed by his incredible patience. It must be the divas he's had to work with; rages and screamfests are easysauce to deal with.

Working on the anger was hard, because I had to acknowledge I had it, and what to do when I felt it. My typical reaction was to just smile and let it bottle up. That worked until I recognized what it was, then it wouldn’t stay bottled! Having to constantly remind myself that OTHER PEOPLE cannot MAKE you feel emotions, YOU are in charge, was the hardest part. It’s so much an ingrained habit to say to someone you’re arguing with, “Yea well, YOU made me angry, so it’s YOUR FAULT!” I had to remind myself to say instead, “When you do this, I feel this emotion, and I don’t like feeling that way. How can we solve this?” To converse, instead of accuse. To look for a solution, rather than just bemoan the problem.

When you have one side working hard to change themselves, and the other side refuses to help, it’s even more difficult. The person I was with at the time I started the Anger Solutions program, (call him M) had what I call White Knight Syndrome. As long as I was helpless, and didn’t know where I wanted to go in life, and didn’t wanna work too hard, he was Everything To Me Man. As soon as I started changing my thoughts, my behaviours, to reflect the person I wanted to be, as soon as I started to try and achieve better for myself, I was a lost cause and he picked fights with me as often as he could. I look back and see that he had the same problems I did, he just never wanted to deal with them himself, and by having me around doing so, it made him face uncomfortable truths he didn’t want to face.

I felt unlovable. I felt unwanted, and broken, and useless. Worthless. Nobody loved me, because I wasn’t good enough. I grew up thinking that I had to be everything for a partner in order to be fulfilled. I had to take care of them, feed them, make sure they remembered important things, basically, I believed I had to be a Mother to everyone I dated, so they’d see I was useful, important, and had to keep me around. I had to feel needed.

PLEASE LOVE ME!

I still sometimes feel that way.  It’s good to be needed, to be depended on for doing what you’ve promised. I was taking it too far. I was trying to do my own version of the White Knight. I’d meet broken people and want to fix them, change them into what they said they wanted, help them live, but in the meantime, I felt lousy. I had to help them, because they wouldn’t help themselves. They’d sit and moan about not being able to do something, get something, feel something, buy something, understand something, and I’d be there, giving them what they had to have. I felt like I couldn’t have a life, because I had to take care of them. And I hated it. With M, I hated it so much more because I saw him doing the exact things I was trying to change in myself. It was a very hard lesson to get through, but I did it.

I’ve been accused of not being patient enough. Maybe that is true. I get impatient when I see something fixable, not being fixed. I want to do it, so I know it’s done, and we can all move on. But how does that help who I fixed things for? Does it help them learn how to fend for themselves?

I feel angry very rarely now, or rather, I express my feelings more than I did before.

Lately I’ve bottled them up, but it’s never longer than a few days. It’s still just as painful to let out those feelings, but now I am not inarticulate with rage, sputtering and hating myself because I can’t communicate my feelings when I’m that angry. Now I let it out, still not rehearsing in my head what I’ll say (I’ve never really been good at that, maybe something else to work on so I don’t sound dumb) but it tends to make more sense when I do speak while angry.

Not many people have seen me angry, and I like that. I like knowing that I’ve had a good handle on my feelings since working so hard to change how I see myself, and see the world.

There’s a phrase I saw recently: You can't live a positive life with a negative mind.

So, blog reader-friends, when those angry, negative thoughts come up, remember to change them to positive ones. Yes, it’s Work. Yes, it’s hard to stick to it. But it can be done.  The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

I did it, and I’m still working on it. But I can’t do it for you. You have to want the change in yourself, so you have to work for it. And remember, when you achieve something all by yourself, it’s that much more rewarding when you accomplish your goal.

Here’s to faith in ourselves.

Just a Little Note about Goals.

As promised, a blog that is less Soul-Searchy than the rest have been.

Here I’d like to list my goals for the year 2012. Whether I achieve or exceed the detailed parameters, they will be here. :D

1. I will lose 60 lbs (or 12” from my hip measurement) by my birthday, June 11^th.

            Update: within one month, I have lost 2” everywhere already. 5 more months to go!

2. I will save a minimum of $1000 by December 1^st.

3. I will learn a new language by December 1st. Right now I’m looking at Dutch, Afrikaans (derivative of Dutch), and Spanish.

4. I will refresh my old-school memory on French.

5. I will learn to drive, parallel-park, park, and not freak out driving on a highway (or a road for that matter.

6. I will return to college next January to begin my Level Two Culinary training.

7. I will begin, in earnest, to write my business plan for the café.

8. I will begin purchasing lottery tickets, once a week, once my pay starts.

And as an aside for this list, I’m adding what I would do with the first $1 million if I win. ;D

1. Give $20,000 each to my immediate family members, my son’s and niece’s in the form of trusts. Son, sister, niece, mom.

2. Invest in Facebook, as it is going public.

3. Donate money to the Lung Association and the Canadian Diabetes Association.

4. Buy property to build my own self-sustaining homefront.

5. Buy a shiny Jeep. :3

6. Tattoos.

That’s pretty much all I have right now for goals. I’ll post more if I think of any, or barring that, I’ll update every few months with my progress on these.

Have a great day!

Cycles of Guilt and Shame have Very Uncomfy Seats. Why Bother Riding Them, Anyway!

"The reason that we have not been ‘loving our neighbor as ourselves’ is because we have been doing it backwards. We were taught to judge and feel ashamed of ourselves. We were taught to hate ourselves for being human."

First of all, what is guilt? I see it as manipulation. Parents use it to control their kids, probably believing that by showing them the consequences their behaviour has on others, that they’ll learn to be more considerate of others, to show compassion because of some sudden realization.

We should be aware of our connections, yes, but not at the expense of questioning our own desires and needs. We lose perspective on what’s really important because we don’t want to “feel bad” for choosing our desires over what people will think of us for doing so.

Shame is even worse; it takes it one step further by bypassing guilt. Now, by ignoring other peoples’ needs over our own, we’re selfish, we’re inconsiderate, we’re stupid or self-serving. We are “bad people”. Basically, those people will use our wants and needs as a source of shame as they see their own as more important.

If you’re able to ignore the guilt-trips, the people involved then move on to attack you as a person. It moves blame from what we’re DOING, to who we ARE. We don’t really have much defense against that, so we just absorb it and accept that’s part of who we are.  THIS IS NOT RIGHT.

Once we get this treatment over and over, we learn to do it ourselves, without anyone having to say anything; we know the score, we’re on it. *GUILTSHAMEGUILTSHAMEGUILTSHAME* all over ourselves. So when we look at our desires, we now automatically try to look at what others want or expect of us and decide if the guilt is worth the effort. Most of the time, if we do risk it, we risk shame from the ripple effects of our actions.

I wondered if I could ever get out of this cycle.

To ask, “What do I want?” instead of assessing each of my choices to see what it would cost me in guilt or shame.

It’s a fear thing, really. Internally, we think that whatever the guilt or shame represent, is the worst thing EVER. But these are bits and pieces from our pasts, and they can’t hurt us if we don’t let them. However, if they’ve been with you a long time, you’ve gotten used to using those “skills” to determine your actions, and essentially become a habit. Those are REALLY hard to break. The paralysis they create within us prevents us from taking any action whose outcome they could be connected to.

The way it works in practice is like this: I am feeling fat; I judge myself for being fat; I shame myself for being fat; I beat myself up for being fat; then I am hurting so badly that I have to relieve some of the pain; so to nurture myself I eat 20 cookies; then I judge myself for eating the cookies, etc. etc.

Shame, to self-abuse, to shame, to serve no purpose but to make us feel unlovable or unworthy.

Obviously, this is a dysfunctional cycle if our purpose is to be happy and enjoy being alive.

Changing our belief system, the one we’ve used to dictate how we react to life, the one we’ve had for years, is very difficult. We have to change our relationship with ourselves, and you may know how hard it is to change a FRIEND you’ve known for years, who’s acted the same way for years. It’s almost like there’s no movement at all, sometimes.

What we need to do, is switch our shame/guilt thought reactions into positive, life-affirming thoughts. “I am so fat!” becomes “I can lose weight!”

“I am so poor, I can’t afford anything,” becomes “If I get off my ass and get a job, I can afford what I need and want.” It’s harder to put these into ACTION, though, if for so long you’ve been the type to just sit and obsess about how badly your life is going.

The guilt and shame aspects of these types of thoughts are pretty profound. You can sit there and think happy thoughts at yourself all day; they won’t change a damn thing in your life if you don’t stand up and ACT on them.

Acting on your positive thoughts will reinforce that, even though you sat there and thought, “If I want to get a job, I have to go and look for one, and my résumé isn’t up-to-date, and it looks like crap, so I won’t get hired, so I might as well not even try.” CYCLE OF SHAME, BEGONE!

If you think you won’t get hired, you will not do the things that will get you hired. Employers can smell a defeated prospect a mile away. If you think you won’t lose weight, you won’t. It really is that simple. 

The action you take should not involve shame or judgement on yourself. “Get up, because you’re a fat, lazy ass and you don’t wanna be that anymore!” is not an effective way of changing your thoughts. It may work at FIRST, but it’s still a destructive way of getting you motivated, and ultimately, you will fail. You’ll eventually get to the point where you stop doing what you were doing, even for as little as one day, and your mind will come back with, “See? You’re lazy and you couldn’t do it for long anyways.” And you'll stop. I have done this, COUNTLESS times.

You want to change your relationship with yourself - you want to LOVE yourself, so why not change your thought patterns to respond in a way that encourages you. Think in a way that supports your decisions, whether they prove to be good OR bad in the long run; they are YOURS.

Most of my problem was that I have a little kid living inside my mind; that little kid wants instant gratification and instant relief from problems. The adult in me knows that delayed gratification for life’s things is pretty much how the world rolls, but MAN, is it hard to accept that some days!

I have to set a boundary between the Little Shya and the Grown-Up Shya. I know that true pride in one’s actions comes from ACTING on my thoughts; from saying out loud that “I WILL DO THIS THING,” and doing it.

True pride is taking credit for the action we have taken to foster, nurture, and maintain those gifts we’re given: whether it be looks, talent, intelligence or for being spiritual, healthy, or sober. We need to set loving boundaries for ourselves in the moment of that desperate need for immediate gratification and to know that - though it is not shameful if we can't do it perfectly or all the time - we need to 'just do it.'

So how to get over these feelings of guilt and shame for not being who you wanna be? Practice. There are so many things you can do to stop feeling like this, the foremost being, TRY ANYWAY.
Face those fears, do what you want to do, and DO NOT let the guilt and shame wash over you and mar the moment when you realize that by doing things for yourself, you are NOT being selfish, you are NOT being an asshole, you are doing something that to YOUR LIFE, seems right.

  

Guilt is manipulation, remember, so if we want to do something that benefits us, the fear is of having someone telling us that we are bad or wrong, because they would have preferred we make the effort, spend the time or use the energy on THEIR behalf, not ours.

What's the worst that can happen to you? Probably nothing as serious or as terrible as you think. Are you going to allow that fear to paralyze you?

Be who you are and say what you feel 

because those who mind don't matter

and those who matter don't mind. ~Dr. Seuss

Let those fears rise to the surface, make peace with them and then confidently move forward on your path, knowing that from your point of truth everything is possible, and when you stand in that truth, the worst never happens.

“Patience and fortitude conquer all things”

[Warning: This may get intense, folks. Also may seem like it's rambling. No need for alarm.]

I like coming to these realizations, like uncovering shiny things in the sand at the beach.

For a long time, I regarded patience and tolerance as the same thing. I am very open-minded as far as what humans do with themselves, each other and what makes them feel good.  (Looking only at the positive aspects of said “good times”, of course.)

What I have realized lately is that I have to work on patience, with those around me. Whether I am friends with them or not, I tend to have very little patience with them when or if they are slow to act, or do something they know is destructive, and come to their own conclusion that what they’re doing isn’t good for them. My stock response is usually something along the lines of, “Ok. So… stop it. Hurry up and get over it already. Fix it.”

I keep forgetting that getting to the place I have, myself, has taken a long time and a lot of work from the time I had the same realizations. If anyone had said to me what I say to people, I wouldn’t be very open to advice from them anymore.

 “Kay, stop doing drugs. Now. What's stopping you? Geez.”

At the beginning, I was a very sullen, grumpy asshole. I knew what I had to change, but saying what you want to change and actually committing to completing that change are two very different things. For one thing, it’s really easy to tell people things you’re doing. If you’re not changing and are just telling people those things in order for them to look at you as if you’re succeeding, it eats away at you. It destroys your own self-confidence in ACTUALLY succeeding.

I did that for years.

YEARS.

I knew what people wanted to hear, what words to tell them that would make them look at me in admiration for the success I was getting, but I WASN’T SUCCEEDING IN ANYTHING., except for lying to people, and to myself. That had to stop. It stopped in 2009.

May 22, 2009. Dramatic Type Story that Occurred in My Life.

A girl I had been talking to online through a mutual friend, (let’s call her B) while talking on MSN, informed me that the reason my boyfriend (G) wasn’t at my house yet (I had been waiting for him to come over, as he said on the phone he was heading out to “get some”) was because he was on his way to HER house. I hadn’t even been aware that they knew each other. I can only  describe what happened next as some sort of breakdown.

I know there was rage, crying, despair, and no small amount of hatred towards this ‘friend’. I actually felt like dying, and drank a large amount of liquid codeine I had been taking for a tooth abscess. If you’ve ever had too much codeine in your system you know exactly what happened to me. Felt sketchy, like my whole body was made out of  twitching TV clips, I was itchy ALL OVER and there was something wrong with my hands. All I had wanted to do was go to sleep and not wake up.

I got really scared and called the Crisis Outreach and Support Team (COAST) and told them the whole story. Why I had done it, and what was happening, and that I really wanted help. The woman on the phone was very good at her job, kept me from doing anything worse, and told me that I wasn’t alone, that there were people to help me. She was sending some people out the next day to talk to me, and I ended up going upstairs to hang out with my sister and her boyfriend.

I found a note from them saying they were out til late to see the late movie at the theatre, and because I was all stressed out, I called the only person I could: my best friend at the time, Lance. We hadn’t spoken in about 8 months, for other drama-reasons (his girlfriend was a crazy person who hated me, more on that some other time). I called him, he answered his phone, and I said, “It’s Shy. I need you.”

His response: “I’ll pick a fight with her and see you in 10.” That’s friendship right there folks.

Lance showed up 10 minutes later, took one look at me and said, “Let’s go for a drive.” It was about 10pm, and we ended up driving around for 2 hours, listening to music that just seemed to break apart all the chaos I’d been living with for the last 4 years. I cried, and cried, and there was blubbering and snot and all the unattractive things that accompany epiphanies: puffy, red eyes, swollen nose, throat-clearing snot noises. Aww yea, I was sexy.

Anyway, the night ended with us vowing not to allow SOs to keep us from being friends anymore, and that I was done with G forever. So many signs and portents and all the symbolism and realizations that smack you in the face when you finally allow the scum of your relationship to leak out and the wound to heal.

The day after, I was online, and happened to start chatting with a buddy on  World of Warcraft. I’d met him due to the fact that he was a skilled player who also didn’t take the game so seriously that he wasn’t above making people rage, for fun. He had a unique way of doing it. He’d talk about himself in the third person. I found this hilarious (after I also stopped taking the game so seriously), and we chatted randomly at vague intervals.

He said that day that if I needed someone to talk to, he’d be there, so we did. The conclusions I came to, after our chat, was basically that G was selfish, and an asshole, and he’d kept me caged inside my own insecurities for too long. I was encouraged to go outdoors, be a person, be MYSELF, and have fun: rollerblade, Parkour, dance, sing. I did just that. I went rollerblading. (You may remember this scenario from a previous blog.)

I stayed with G (and B thrown into the mix) for 2 weeks after that. It was the wrong way to go about a polyamorous relationship situation, I know, but hey, it was there, and I was still stubbornly sticking to what I knew: him. I’d hoped he could change, since there was such a fundamental change in myself. I was wrong. New girlfriend meant new opportunity to impress, and he spent every cent, and every waking moment, on her.

After my birthday weekend turned into a great big floppy donkey, I called my sister to come get me in Toronto, and stormed off. I didn’t speak to him before I left, except to say, “She’ll spend all your money and cause you grief.” I was right; she did.

But back to me! It happened like this: At those times you think you can’t get through, because of the severity of the chaos surrounding you, once you’re past it, the WHOLE WORLD is bright and shining with promise! I felt like a 500lb weight had been lifted off my soul, and the world was new, to do with as I saw fit!

This picture was taken when I got home. I felt like my face was going to split, I was so happy.

Once I got past the chaos of being held down in my depression and insecurity, once I realized that I DO deserve to be happy, sexy, and well-liked, I worked hard to change myself. I met a guy through my research of Parkour who seemed pretty cool, so I went to meet him that night. This was the person who would (within a week) bring me to Sault Ste Marie. We hit it off, there were sparks, there were promises, and there was romance, and connections and… This person started life as a female. So? Who cares what the plumbing is when feelings this strong are involved?

I know now that my life was opened up to change once I accepted that it needed to.

I believe I was lead to Sault Ste Marie, to start my life fresh; to leave behind me, the doubts and insecurities that created the basement-dwelling near-soulless creature, living in blindness, that I had been.

Once I kicked myself in the ass and started to change, it became easy to ignore and forget the long, long journey it took me to get to where I am now. Now, I seem to have no patience, and without having gone back through time, to remember the things I did in the past, I don’t think I’d have been able to say that I CAN change that about myself.

There are people around me now, that remind me of who I’ve been. Unfortunately, up until now, those people have gotten the blunt end of my patience, and for that I apologize.

I promise, I will have more patience and compassion for what you are going through, than I did in the past. I hope you can forgive my brush-offs of your pain, my impatience at your suffering, and my insensitivity at your struggle.

I will be a more caring person, more understanding of what you must be going through, and hopefully, be the person to you that I had from Jason, my best friend. He has a bottomless well of patience, that man, and kept me sane through my own struggles this past 2 years.

I know you can get through your chaos, because I got through mine. Let’s help you become who you should be, together

Yay Life!