Just put tape on it

  
I missed a workout tonight, and I’m only sorry I missed it because I have to make it up tomorrow. It turns out if I want to run faster, I have to run faster. As much as I’d like to run from the facts (heh), there are people in my life who will not let me. 

I wish I wanted to do all my training. In fact, lately, I find myself not wanting to do much, training only because I know I must. I don’t even find the wedding dress business to be sufficient motivation. Why can’t I be more like 3M (pictured above), who has a solution – a way of mending or taping any problem – for everything? Even when she b*****s it’s oozing with potential and positivity! She knows it’s going to be hard and she is still excited about it. Many can be envious of her speed, including me, but if I could take anything of hers it would be her enthusiasm. Is there an enthusiasm workshop somewhere? Gah. I hear Blonde Oprah’s high-pitched voice but I can’t make out what it’s saying.

I don’t just want to train and get better! I want to like it! 

Rest of the Year: Thermometer.

I had resolved to set the so-called temperature with my attitude rather than respond to what is going around me. If I have succeeded this year, I honestly cannot recall. I do remember several times feeling like I should just walk in front of the oncoming semi and put myself out of my misery. 

Writing that upsets me because I know how blessed I am. When I come upon such strong emotions, feeling like I cannot do anything correct, like I am a mediocre waste of space, I do my best to shield others from my self-loathing. In a sense, that effort in and of itself is a win; I never want to bring anyone “down” where I am. 

Of course, these emotions are most likely to arise when I am premenstrual, which makes the situation all the more frustrating. I’ve had my period for damn near 20 years now and I STILL can’t seem to figure out why I live in a fog for a few days a month. I thank God that I tend not to act rashly (wait until the truck passes, Joan, it might turn out okay), but I need to be able to combat these hormonal forces better. I want to be a person people want to be around because of my sharing the truth with them, the truth being that they have something to offer, that they are worthy of love. Hard to do when I feel like this guy: 

  
Am I ugly? Am I talented? Am I athletic? Am I going to be a good wife? 

Even when I cannot bring myself to answer those questions, I always can say God loves me and others so I should continue doing the best I can and trying to get better. Maybe the answers to the other questions don’t really matter as much as being a loving person. Perhaps the key to being a thermostat is to stop asking and to start doing. Dammit. ❤️

Rest of the Year: Money.

Finding ways to save can be tough.

 
🙂 

The Good: 

1. I now have a regular budget. 

2. Creating said budget has made me realize how blessed I am, meme above notwithstanding. It is nice to know I don’t HAVE to be happier on the 1st of the month than I am on the 12th. 

3. I have accepted that the budget must be flexible. Sometimes things pop up, you know, like a wedding. 

Room for Improvement:

1. Eating out. Impacts both the wallet and the waistline. Sadly, it’s a weakness like budgeting itself. Humans with our sinful nature dislike boundaries. I don’t like thinking that I shouldn’t eat out because it’s bad for me in several ways, so I rebel. 

2. Now is the time where I’m supposed to be enrolling for retirement stuff at work. My goal over Thanksgiving is to look over the information and pick one of those grown up 401k thingies. 

Now I will have to learn to manage money with someone else! I don’t even know where to begin with what those kinds of resolutions could look like, but I am thankful that God provided me a way to get a head start on budgeting just in time! 😊

Happy Rest of the Year!

Though I have not been posting about my progress as much as I would have liked, I have been thinking about the resolutions I made in January. It’s now November and I feel like my year has been kind of lame, through no fault of anyone else’s. I’ve got to get myself together to make sure I end 2015 better than I did 2014. I will repost my original 10 resolutions here, and my goal is to post DAILY this month regarding at least one of them. Sometimes I don’t write things down because I’m ashamed of them. No more shame! 

1. This one is the most important. I know whatever comes below will be executed imperfectly. I resolve to give myself the freedom to be imperfect without beating myself up.

2. To start saving more regularly for my retirement, aka only working 20 hours a week. I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility for me to fall over at a piano lesson in my 90s. Poor kid.

3. To put mostly good things into my body to fuel all the things I demand of it.

4. To embrace rather than curse my vulnerability.

5. To put at least 15 minutes a day into housework. (I skipped yesterday and will do 30 today. Heh).

6. To ask for help before the last minute. Even the last two minutes would be better.

7. To lose a currently undefined amount of weight before my first triathlon of the season. This weight is undefined because I refuse to weigh myself before the end of this month. I’m going to make good choices and let the numbers take care of themselves, for now.

8. To do more rigorous study of the Bible.

9. To find ways to save money despite being a teacher AND triathlete.

10. To be a “thermostat” and not a “thermometer.” I was watching a church service on television and the pastor was saying that many people are thermometers, in that they just measure the temperature of their circumstance. A thermostat, in contrast, sets the temperature. I want to be a positive force, regardless of what the circumstance is.

  
This does NOT count as me messing up number 1 and beating myself up. There’s a difference between imperfection and inaction and the line is definitely not fine!