Reminders on self-parenting

Early adulthood is all about finding your feet and your space. It's about learning what you can do without many constraints. It's discovering that you can have cereal for dinner without there being a parent to tell you off. You can stay up way past your bedtime with no repercussions beyond your lack of sleep the following day. Leave your room in a mess and spend all your disposable income on books instead of putting something aside in your savings. Without those pesky parents the sky is the limit.

And as your grow (not much) older, as you settle into adulthood in your own terms you realize that you still need some degree of parenting, except now it's on you to parent yourself. You need to figure out what boundaries and rules to put in place, and you need to know why you've put them there.

It has been a very hard earned lesson that sometimes there is a huge difference between what I want and what I need. And furthermore that it's on me to ensure I cater to the former before I indulge in the latter. What I want is to binge watch a show on Netflix, but what I need is to first take the time to ensure I am okay. That I am centered and that there is nothing more pressing to do before opening that promising tab on my laptop. It's on me to stop myself in between episodes and ask myself if there is anything else more productive I should be doing with my time before I hit play again. It's on me to know I probably won't stop the binge by myself and therefore I need to set a timer on my phone so I don't waste an afternoon way. I need to know this. I am my own parent now.

This isn't some inspirational post, it's just a reminder to myself. I think we all need one from time to time.

Finding your inner gym bunny

A friend of mine recently said she wished she was more like me and came to the gym regularly. She said her problem was that she didn't enjoy working out. But here is the truth of it: I don't either. I have been coming to the gym several times a week, every week for three years and I have yet to wake up once excited about the prospect of working out. It just doesn't happen. Ever.

Here is what I have learned in the last few years:

1. Motivation is a very fickle mistress. It comes and goes ever so swiftly. Most of the time all you have is yourself, your pigheadedness, your self-parenting (making you do the things you don't want to do), and the tools you develop along the way to make it all work for you. Don't get me wrong, having motivation is great! It's how you jump-start yourself into action. The thing is, once you're moving it will quickly leave you and you need to be prepared to step in once it does.

2. If you want to have the time, you have to make the time. For me this means getting up at stupid a.m. and doing my workout before work. I used to go to the gym after work, but more often than not I would skip it because something would get it in the way. I was too tired. I had to go to the post office before it closed. I was stuck in a meeting until late. I didn't feel like it. I was meeting a friend after work. The excuses were endless. So I do it before my life has a chance to get in the way and ruin it. No one emails me at stupid a.m. Everything is closed. The world is still asleep. Except for me.

3. Find ways to get in the way of your own failure. To me this means not showering the night before. I have lost track of how many times I got to the gym just because I needed to wash my hair and I ended up doing a short workout that invariably always turned into a normal workout. The same about my alarm; Yesterday Me is a bit of an over-achiever and she's the one who sets my alarm to stupid a.m. Every morning when the alarm goes off I curse her with the eloquence of a sailor on leave. I don't want to be awake that early, but since my sleep has already been disturbed, I need to do something with it. I am angry and I can't let it go to waste.

4. Parenting yourself is very much like parenting a real child. This means you'll need to find clever ways to trick yourself into doing what must be done. I frequently tell myself I just need to spend ten minutes on the treadmill, knowing full well that the moment I get started I'll find the joy and momentum to do the full thing. It also means that I have to listen to myself when the ploy doesn't work (otherwise it stops working altogether). So sometimes I do play rookie, and when I do I damn well make the most of it.

5. There's lots of good advice out there, but ultimately you need to find what works for you. One of the tips that keeps popping up is to sleep in your gym wear, so that when you wake up you are ready go. While I can see the logic behind this, this very much does not work for me. Sleep is sleep, not pre-anything. It's a time of rest that has been rightfully earned and it should be treated with the gravitas it deserves. Especially because I'm such a light sleeper, sleeping in active wear just wouldn't give me the restful sleep that I worked hard for. So find what works for you, be it waking up at stupid a.m or telling yourself it's just five minutes on the treadmill.

6. If you want to stick at it, you have to set your own metrics and celebrate your successes. How do you measure success? Is it the number on the scale coming down? Is it on your measurements? Is it on increased endurance? Maybe it's how much weight you can lift, or how big your reps are. Whatever it is, find your metric to success and be sure to celebrate even the smaller milestones on your way to your goal. I would love to measure my success on weight loss, but unfortunately my body holds on to fat like a clingy child pulling the mother of all tantrums, so weight loss happens at the end of everything else after weeks (months!) of hard work. This has taught me to be persistent with my goals and flexible on how I frame my progress. My goal is still a number on a scale, but since that is something I don't have complete control over, I make sure all my milestones are things that I can control and that I can see visible progress. I have a running log, so I can see progression on my cardio. I have a weightlifting goal, so I can work towards it. Celebrating the smaller successes help me keep motivated until the day when the scales finally start to shift. Because I won't quit until they do.

Finally, know this: in three-plus years since first being labelled a gym bunny, there still hasn't been a workout that I've regretted doing. You just have to break the first barrier and follow through.

Thankful Thursday # 32

So I have been feeling a little bit out of sorts lately. Grumpy and short-tempered. At first I thought it was just the cough that's been keeping me awake at night for the last week. Now I think it's also the lack of this. Of gratitude. So here is my fix:

1. My boyfriend. I have the most loving man by my side, and these past few days I have felt especially loved and cared for as I nurse myself back to health.
2. Working from home. I have a job where I am lucky enough to be able to work from home whenever I need. This means that on those days when I am feeling slightly under the weather but not enough to justify calling in sick, I can just sleep through my commute time and just work from the comfort of my home. In comfy wear. With scented candles on and an endless supply of tea.
3. Christmas-time. I love, love, love Christmas. And with all the madness this year has brought, I am looking forward to a few days to chill.
4. Our guest bedroom. Having a spare bedroom means I can sleep alone when the coughing gets too much. It's bad enough this keeps me awake at night; I'd feel terrible if it meant disrupting my boyfriend's sleep too.
5. Knitting in Winter. I am blessed with the disposable income and the free time to knit. I don't do it too often (hence why I will always be mediocre at it), but when I do, I thoroughly enjoy it. At this time of year, nothing beats a cheesy Christmas film with a scented candle on and some knitting to keep me going.
6. Youtube. I have no memory for crafts. Zero. I have lost track how many time I have asked my boyfriend's mom to teach me how to cast off. So I thank the good knitters on Youtube who went to trouble of uploading tutorial videos that save me the embarrassment of having to ask the same questions again and again.

The pits of overplanning

All my life I needed a plan D. Because having just a plan B was for the unprepared, so I needed to go to at least that fourth level of preparation. And while it made me excellent when the time was right (which it almost never is), it changed the person I was for the worse. So much worse. Here is what it has taught me.

Overplanning dials up your panic mode. You need to plan when it's important that things go right. When it could be potentially catastrophic if your plans fall apart. So if you overplan for everything, then your brain will start to think that any small thing going wrong could have catastrophic consequences. Because surely if you are spending the time and energy putting together a plan D for if you can't find that book in the first bookstore, then it must be important. If you need a plan for what to do if it rains and your coat isn't waterproof and your umbrella breaks, and there are no shops or cafes to go inside and wait for it to pass, then that must clearly mean that water on your skin will make you melt like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz. Overplanning makes everything massively important and it dials up your panic mode until you feel that living with the constant anxiety is normal. Like you are an oversight away from the end of the world.

Overplanning means underliving. If you are busy shutting the world away, constantly honing your battle plans, you will plan your life away. That is what happened to me. As a teenager I was always thinking about what was the next cleverest thing I could say in a group conversation, and by the time I had the ultimate comeback, the conversation had moved on. And worse; this would continue indefinitely and I even when I did say something, I would carry on overthinking how I could have said something smarter, funnier, more interesting. The perfect comeback would come to me hours (days!) later when it was pointless. It left me with constant anxiety and feeling I was less capable than everyone else. Also I was never living in the present; I wasn't listening to the conversation, rather I was trapped inside my head running loops like a frantic hamster in a wheel after it's been given way too much caffeine.

Overplanning kills adaptability. Struggle is the mother of evolution. It's a basic principle; unless challenged and threatened, living things have no need to change. Why bother? It would be a useless energy expenditure to improve something that already works. So we need plans to go awry to change and adapt. The ability to adapt, to improvise when things go wrong is something that requires practice. It's like sharpening a blade; you stop doing it and it will go dull. So if your plans are so comprehensive that everything always goes according to plan you don't need to improvise. You just follow your own script. But sooner or later you will need to deal with something that you failed to anticipate that day you will need how unprepared overplanning has made you.

Overplanning narrows your comfort zone. Isn't it great when everything goes according to plan? Or when you dazzle everyone (yourself included) by being prepared for something that does go wrong? Like you were expecting it all along and Fate just couldn't outsmart you even with a sudden turn of events? Yes, it does. It makes you feel awesome. But at what cost? The more things go the way you plan then, the lesser your ability to react when they don't. Also, the more you cushion your life, the harder it is to endure the slightest discomfort. If you are caught in the rain, is it really that bad? Which brings me to...

Overplanning gives you tunnel vision. It robs you of the ability to ask yourself So what? and see things for what they are. Yes, you forgot to bring a coat and your commute home is colder than you expected, so what? It's just a temporary discomfort; the moment you get home you will get warm again and all will be well with the world. In fact, whenever this happens to me I have learnt to focus on how much more I will appreciate the warmth in the short future because I am cold now. It also give you perspective. Many a time I have had to tell myself If you can stomach a cold shower (because the gym ran out of hot water), you can *insert whatever distasteful activity I don't want to do*. Now if I hand't had that cold shower I couldn't say this, could I?

Overplanning destroys your self-esteem. The more I planned for the unexpected, the more I felt unable to deal with life. Overplanning made everything bigger and scarier while making me feel more and more dependant on my plans. Like I wasn't strong enough to survive without them. After all there is no valour in following a script. It is when things go wrong and you have to make it on your own, to find solutions on the spot, that you see your true worth. It was only when I opened myself to the unexpected that I started to see that even when things did go wrong, that I was strong and able enough to deal with them. That they weren't so bad after all. And that build confidence.

Overplanning kills spontaneity. If you stick to what you know, you will never learn anything new and worst of all, you will never be surprised. Your vision will never broaden and you will lose your sense of marvel and wonder. And who knows what awaits if you take the road less travelled? A couple of years ago, the boyfriend and I were driving to Lizard Point in Cornwall. As we approached our destination we spotted a handmade sign just off the side of the road saying Cider Barn. This was not in our plans, which we tend to follow like gospel, but we made a promise to spend ten minutes less in Lizard Point to check this out on our way back. In the end Cider Barn allowed us to taste and buy incredible local ciders and lovely glassware that we now use for candles whenever we run a bath. It was a gem of a find that we never would have explored if we just stuck to the plan.

I don't mean to say to live your life winging it. To never prepare. No, by all means lay your plans down. Plan for A and B. If it's really important, go for C. Just don't run through the alphabet. Learn from me and open yourself to some degree of uncertainty. Trust me, there you will find treasures you don't know you seek. Inside and out.

Multipotentialite

Today I learned that I am a multipotentialite. If - like me until an hour ago - you have no idea what this means, I would highly recommend watching Emilie Wapnick's TED Talk on it (here). Suddenly my mind makes so much more sense! Turns out I am not a lone weirdo, there's more of us and we are so awesome!

My whole life I was criticised for my inability to follow through on my hobbies, for being too obsessed with my interests, only to flutter to a new one like a butterfly going from flower to flower. I have always devoted myself to things wholeheartedly, but nothing was forever, and everything was always all or nothing. A quick walk around my house and you'll find the yoga gear I stopped using a few months after I got started, books I bought a decade ago and haven't gotten around to reading and countless crafts projects abandoned halfway. I fully intend to return to all these things, my attention simply got pulled elsewhere. And there's no middle ground with me.

I was told I was fickle, that I didn't truly love anything, because if I did surely I would stick with them. I was shown time and again that to succeed and be happy you needed to devote yourself to your choices, and that constantly changing your mind was irresponsible and immature. You can't build a career this way, you can't pay a mortgage and that you couldn't have this sort of behaviour if you wanted to raise a family. That if you are constantly starting over you will never excel at anything and you will always be average (like that is an insult).

For most of my life people have tried to change my ways, as if it was a matter of choice. As if by trying really hard I could be normal and I could stick to only a handful of interests. Or they tried to have me be less into *insert current obsession*. Because apparently normal people don't wake up one day with a desire to read about the Vietnam war or spend a month memorising the first two acts of La Traviata. And by Jove, I needed to stop talking about Alexander Hamilton!

No one ever asked me about how life is through my brain. Why I am the way I am. (Not sure that last sentence has an answer, but at the very least no one asked me the thinking behind my behaviour.) Here is a few secrets: normalcy is boring. Life is too short to only be one thing. The more you stick to the same things, the smaller your comfort zone becomes and the less you are able to adapt to new challenges. Normative doesn't breed out-of-the-box thinkers. In fact, normalcy kills innovation. You need us to take you to new places. And we need you to be our north star so that we don't stray too far (at least I do). Because left to my own devices I would gladly trade sleep for one more episode or chapter, only to suffer the brutal consequences the next day (because my body is not eighteen anymore).

In true fashion, I am now obsessed about exploring what it means to be a multipotentialite (how meta is that?), so I will probably carry on writing about the challenges and rewards, as well as my ground rules for not let it take over my life completely. Or not. Maybe I'll become obsessed with something else before I ever get to write those posts. Because that's who I am, and it's plain awesome. 

I didn't wake up like this

Over the last few years people sometimes approach me to tell me how they wish they were more like me. That they too could laugh at their misfortunes, that they could be as motivated to get up at stupid am, or as strong to deadlift more than 50kg. That they could be as confident to  not care that they look silly blowing bubbles in the park, or as organised and prepared to bring sunscreen to impromptu work lunches outside. They admire my spontaneity, my quirkiness, my child-like wonder. Though mostly they mention the getting up at stupid am.

Here is the thing: I didn't wake up like this. I am the product of years and years of work. I too was once the complete opposite of what I am in that first paragraph. I too hated myself and would ignore my live passing me as I binge watch stuff on the sofa. While eating crap food. In fact, for the first twenty years of my life, the only fruits and vegetables I ate were banana and lettuce. I couldn't run for a full minute. I firmly believed I had been born with less motivation and strength than everyone else. I was just unlucky. I would never be strong or inspire anyone in anything, except what not to do. I was Sandra Bullock at the beginning of every 90s rom-com, except fatter, weirder and lacking in natural charm. Also no cats. At least that is how I viewed myself.

When I started my journey I never - ever! - could've dreamed I could come this far; that I could ever be this comfortable and proud of myself as I am now. I wasn't in this believing I was going to be this super version of myself; I just wanted to be better than I was.

I am going to spare you the two-minute inspirational montage where our hero (that's me!) trains arduously to achieve their goals to the sound of Eye of the Tiger or something like that. The reason being that my journey isn't really that important to you. It is my journey. You find whatever works for your journey. You just have to catch yourself the next time you say "I wish..." and do something (anything!) about it. Just get started and the rest will come.

Few things make me happier than knowing my life inspires others. If I have motivated you to change anything about your life, please let me know; that just fuels me even more to get better and better. Just make sure you are not comparing your beginning with my middle. The truth is the only differences between whatever it is you admire in me and you is not strength or motivation, but time and action.

You are not going to simply wake up one day and be the person you want to be. You hone yourself into being that person. Day by day. Make the commitment. One day you will wake up where you want to be, but it won't be like this *snaps fingers*. And the fact that it was something hard earned will make that day so much sweeter.

On belonging

Yesterday the boyfriend and I were watching Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 on the sofa. If you haven't seen it, go watch it, it's awesome! After you do, go check out Lindsay Ellis' review on Youtube (link here). More than a great Marvel film about saving the galaxy, to me it's a story about family. Finding your tribe and also going back to the people you may have overlooked. I could write many, many posts on how I relate to the different characters in this film (again, watch the Youtube review), but for now I will just focus on Rocket.

It's obvious that every single one of these characters have been pretty messed up by life, Rocket being no exception. The thing that struck me is how much of a dick he is to everyone in this film (apart from baby Groot, but then again, who can resist baby Groot?) and how much I related to that behaviour. To the outsider he may simply look pissed off or that he is actively trying to drive people away. To me it's the exact opposite; Rocket behaves like someone who has found a family for the first time, and he is scared of being left again. After being mistreated his whole life, he has found a group of people who accept him and see value in him. An unlikely tribe of people, just as weird, who love him. People he loves back. And he doesn't know what to do with it. So he lashes back. Because a good part of him still expects to be abandoned, so he lashes out to see if people will still stick around. I know. I used to be him.

Maybe I am looking too deeply into this, but in this film I see myself in Rocket a lot. I used to throw my weirdness at people to see if they still stuck around. Throughout my early years I learned that if I showed who I truly was, people would leave me. I was too weird. Too quirky. I tried hiding it, but as friendships grew my quirkiness would start to leach out. And then people would leave and I would be heartbroken. So I learned to skip this step and I would just throw my weirdness at people to see if they left or if they stayed. If they stayed then they were worth investing in, because they had already accepted my weirdness.

Sometimes I am told I take too much pleasure in my quirkiness. That is true, I do enjoy it now, but there is so much more to that statement. In the past I did it to test people, and to prove to myself that I was worthy of their love, because they clearly accepted me despite of my quirkiness. There was a dark pit made of a lack of self-love, acceptance and belonging that I couldn't fill. So this was my attempt. 

Throughout the years I learned many things that changed my view of this. I know I am loved, regardless of how weird I am, and a lot of times I am loved because of that weirdness. I belong. Period. In many hearts, and some families, I belong. My quirkiness inspires others. It is one of my favourite weapons to better the world. I don't need people to prove their love to me anymore. And I am here to prove my love to them. To everyone in my life who is still a Rocket. Who still steal batteries they don't need (go watch the film!).

In my memories of who I was there will always be a Rocket. And he now knows that he is loved.

Don't stop me now*

According to Newton's first law (how my boyfriend explained it to me), an object at rest will want to stay at rest, while an object in motion will want to stay in motion. Apparently that's inertia for you...?

Why am I writing this? Well, because I very much feel the same. The longer I stay in motion, the harder it is to stop. The busier I get, the less I can stop and assess how I am doing and what I need. Busyness fuels itself and before you know it you are doing something completely out of character and you have no idea how you got there. In my heyday I snapped at someone who had nothing to do with whatever issue was plaguing me, I stress ate my way through... lets just say a lot of crap food, I had bursts into an ugly cry over the smallest remark. All of these things came because of something else that went undiagnosed. My problem(s) had started days/weeks before, and I just carried on instead of taking the time to sort myself. I just bulldozed my way through life because I wouldn't stop. I couldn't, I was too busy, there was too much at stake, the deadlines were looming and who needs sleep, anyway?

With age, distance and a lot of practising (and also a lot of failing), I have learnt I am never too busy to stop. In fact if I find myself verbalising that I am too busy for blank, then that it's a trigger for me to stop and have a time out.

Most times busyness will creep up on me. It can start innocuously enough with two weekends in a row when we are doing something social. Those weekends just happen to fall at the end of a very busy week (who could've predicted it?). To relax after work, we slump on the sofa and binge watch fail videos instead of having quality time to replenish. I could make time to rest by skipping my dance and fitness classes, but I'm not a quitter, so I carry on. All this hustle and bussle, the work stress starts to affect my sleep quality, but instead of skipping the gym now and then and having a lie in, I carry on getting up at stupid a.m. (official time), because again I ain't no quitter. All of a sudden I am spinning more plates than my body can cope with and my attention and my mind are stretched too thinly. I am too little butter for too much bread. So something starts to crack. My diet goes out the window, I forget to call my family at the end of the week, or I stop investing in my relationship, living mindlessly from sun up to sun down. This was the old me. Again and again.

It is so easy to fall down the rabbit hole because it's so gradual and everything has an excuse. And here is the grim thing: this will never be done. There will never come a day when you say you've won and you will never again fall down the rabbit hole. It will always be there, lurking in the shadows and waiting to catch you unaware. So how do you cope? How do you fight back?

You learn to create coping mechanisms to keep you aware and away from a life on auto pilot. I used to think meditation was the magical panacea that would fix all my awareness problems. But if I find that if I have a very regular meditation practice I eventually start to zone out. I stop being as present and the whole exercise becomes counter-productive. So I change it up. Some days I meditate, others I make lists of how I'm feeling, and what I need. Some days I will spend five minutes focusing all my attention on a sense (what can I smell, what memories do those smells invoke, how does the smell make me feel) or an object (scented candles are my favourite for this), or I will quickly list a few things I am grateful for. 

My point is this: you will always be vulnerable to the trap of busyness (blame physics and Newton's first law!), but you can learn to cope. Only you can find what works for you. Once you do, arm yourself with a few of those things, because none of them will work 100% of the time, so you'll need to change it up a bit. You will still fail sometimes. We all do. The struggle will never the truly over. But I promise it will always be worth it.

*Queen

Things I keep in my journal # 2

Here's a few more things I record in my journal:

1. Weekly meals. I'm a big fan of taking leftovers to work, both for me and my boyfriend. So I got into a habit of making a list of what each of us is having for lunch and what we are both having for dinner. This helps me make my shopping list in a flash, and means we don't have to get creative at 5pm after a full work day. To make this work, I have also started putting reminder on my phone for when I need to defrost food, and when we have more leftovers than anticipated, to label and freeze them before they spoil.
2. Weekly goals. Same as the monthly goals feed from the Yearly resolutions list, the weekly goal list imports tasks from the monthly goals, plus it adds everything I expect to accomplish that week. This includes the number of times I want to meditate and exercise, and if I expect to finish a book. I also like to add anything nice that happens that week, like going to the cinema, or going to Ikea, or doing a face mask.
3. Daily goals. By now you can guess what happens here. I usually use two pages to cover the whole week. Every day I make a section for that day and list everything I want to accomplish that day. Meetings, important work tasks, remembering to buy bread or pick up clothes, house chores I want to do, people I want to call, meditate, exercise, etc.
4. Sleep log. Because of my irregular bouts of insomnia I like to track my sleep to spot any patterns. There are highly complicated and complex sleep logs you can get online, personally I find less is more, so I only note down what time I went to bed, what time I got up, and how many hours I slept. 
5. Braindumps. This is what I call my "I just had an idea I need to jot down before I forget" pages. It will be anything, from ideas for posts, to recipes to google, to present ideas.

Thankful Thursday # 31

Morning, everyone! Did you miss me? Well, here is a staple of ours:

1. The ability to laugh at yourself. I know, what an abstract way to start! I'm the type of person who has a lot of mishaps. Situations that once made me feel profoundly embarrassed, but that I have since learnt to laugh about. Just today I managed to accidentally flash my backside to a random guy as I was leaving the showers at the gym, and ten minutes later a wind lifted my dress all the way to my waist as I was crossing the street, thus flashing an old guy. So never underestimate the soul-lifting skill of laughing at yourself and not take life too seriously.
2. Disposable income for spontaneous purchases. I'm not throwing money away (and even if I did, it's my money, so no harm there), but I do enjoy being able to do random things like organise an impromptu hot chocolate buffet at work. That's what I did today; got a really nice chocolate mix, some mini marshmallows and other toppings and now I'm off to email my team to come and treat themselves on me.
3. My boyfriend. Nothing beats the joy of having someone in your corner. Someone who makes you laugh, who knows exactly how to make your knees buckle, who lies next to you on his kindle as you read your book in bed. Someone to free spiders back into the garden with whom you can share your life with.
4. Working from home. Every now and then I like to work from home. I can have a lie in (because there's no commute), I can have a scented candle by me, I can belt musical tunes while I go through my emails, I can work in comfy wear. And I can use the coffee breaks to do five minutes of chores. Also, I can get through my normal workload a lot faster.
5. Butternut squash. Yummy, low calorie vegetable that tastes almost of dessert. What more do you need?
6. Duvet weather. I know I say this a lot, but I lo-ve sleeping under a heavy duvet. To sleep in a cocoon of cosy and have that barrier between your yummy slumber and the rest of the world. Thank you, Autumn!