Tag Archives: stress

Still Wondering About The New Normal (or Baby Steps Back)

Posted on June 26, 2020 | Comments Off on Still Wondering About The New Normal (or Baby Steps Back)

I’ve written several posts about my curiosity about what the new normal will be like or my fears about things reopening. It’s a very weird time and I think many people have the same thoughts that I do. In some ways, I want things to be back to feeling normal, and in other ways, I’m terrified about it. I think I was feeling a bit better about it before we started reopening things in LA because it did seem like the number of cases each day was doing down. Now, we are increasing again and that’s not what should be happening.

I know that they said that there may be an increase in cases as things open and that there are other numbers to consider. Some people say the number of people hospitalized is a better thing to track. Some say to only look at the number of people who passed away. I have been watching all the numbers because I really don’t know what is best and I’d rather have a good overall idea of what is happening. And even though I am staying informed, I still am very confused about things and really can’t tell if I should be more or less worried than I am right now. So for now, I’m pretty much not changing what I’ve been doing for the past few months. I don’t really leave my house for anything except essential errands and I try to limit those to once a week. I will have a few other outings happening, but I’m not doing a lot (I’ll write more about those outings soon).

Staying home is really the safest thing, but I know I can’t do this forever. And since I will have to start living my life again eventually, I’ve been trying to plan how to live a bit more normally. I have gotten a lot of masks in different styles because I expect masks to be a part of normal life for a while. I do have some that I think I can use for workouts if I do go back to Orangetheory. I might look into some that seem to be designed for working out. I have some that I feel are cute because I don’t want to just have boring masks. If I’m going to wear them for a long time, I want to make it as fun for me as possible.

For a while, going to get groceries was very stressful for me. Seeing the lines at the stores, worrying about what I would or wouldn’t be able to find when I get inside, and just feeling like I’m experiencing something very weird made me so uneasy. I have been doing a lot of grocery deliveries because it made things a bit easier for me. But I can’t get all the stores I might shop at delivered to me. So I’ve been doing a bit more grocery shopping on my own. And while sometimes I have still had to wait in line, the last 2 times I went to one store I was able to just walk right in. And they had everything in stock so I was able to get everything I wanted. It’s odd that being able to get things I want feels so special. I need to stop thinking like things are scarce and I might not be able to make a plan for shopping. I want to get back into making real shopping lists to work on making meals and not just shopping to see what I can find.

I haven’t done a lot of stuff outside of my house so I don’t know what it’s like to go shopping in stores or eating at a restaurant. I don’t need to do either of those things so I’m fine waiting. But I have been paying attention to the new rules and policies so that I have a better idea of what might be expected if I do venture out to something like that.

Things do change a lot and quickly, so the steps I’m seeing now to the new normal might not be the steps that happen. Being an observer of these policies does help me feel better and since I’m not directly worried about them the changes don’t bother me too much. I just stay on top of knowing what is going on so I am prepared. The new normal is starting and I have no clue how long it will take until I feel like things are really normal again. It might take years until I feel like I can be as comfortable being out of my house as I used to. I hope it doesn’t take that long, but then again I never thought I’d be staying in my house like this for over 3 months.

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Default ThumbnailSome Of The New Normal (or I’ll Need To Get Used To This) Default ThumbnailFaceTime Repair (or Baby Steps To Prepare Me For Home Ownership) Default ThumbnailBaby Steps (or Trying To Be Proud Of The Little Victories) Default ThumbnailBaby Steps Progress (or Surprising Myself) Default ThumbnailBaby Steps Back To Cooking (or My Check In Kicked My Butt Into Gear) Default ThumbnailBeing A Bit Of A Show-Off (or More Baby Steps)

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Getting Ready For Thanksgiving (or I Wish Flying Was Easier)

Posted on November 27, 2019 | Comments Off on Getting Ready For Thanksgiving (or I Wish Flying Was Easier)

I’m traveling to Sacramento again this year for Thanksgiving. Our family Thanksgiving was originally planned to be there since my grandma couldn’t travel. Since she passed away recently, we didn’t change the plans for our family. But starting next year, I think my family is going to go back to switching up where we have Thanksgiving each year.

I was so used to going to San Diego each year for a while and I have to admit that I liked Thanksgiving being there. I know that it wasn’t easy for most people in my family to get there, but it was easy for me. I didn’t necessarily love the drive down there because it could take a lot longer than normal, but driving is so much easier for me than flying. I miss it when I could just pack up my car and go without thinking too much about it. Flying takes so much more effort and planning for me.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful that I get to fly to be with my family for Thanksgiving. I’m really grateful that my parents are able to help me out with getting a ticket (since I don’t have the money for it) and that I get to spend the holiday with so many members of my family. But flying really does stress me out so much. My panic attacks with flying have gotten better to the point I don’t have to be medicated while flying, but I do still deal with a lot of panic and anxiety when I have to get on a plane.

Maybe this is because I don’t fly that often. The last time I was on a plane was a year ago for Thanksgiving last year. Maybe if I flew all the time it would feel routine for me. Or maybe it would be just as bad as it always is for me. I don’t know and I doubt I will ever fly enough to figure it out.

Before I fly, I have stress and a bit of panic with packing. When I drove to Thanksgiving, I didn’t have to think about how much I packed or how it was packed. I didn’t necessarily overpack, but I wasn’t as organized when I could put lots of things in my car. I always had a suitcase for my clothes and toiletries, but I didn’t pack everything for my trip in a suitcase. I sometimes would have a different bag for shoes because I would have a few different pairs depending on the weather and what we were going to do. I would have a bag just for my work stuff since that can take up a lot of room. I would pack presents for my family in a separate bag so they were safe and easy to get to when we exchanged presents. And I usually helped out by making some food for Thanksgiving so I would have a bag for that too. Plus my everyday purse with my normal day to day things like my wallet and what I would need when I was out and about.

There is no way I can do all that for a trip where I’m flying. I have just one carryon and one large purse that can fit my computer plus a few other personal things. I have to be very selective with what I pack for clothes, including my shoes. Fortunately, I have found a few ways I can reduce what I need to have with me to work without affecting my ability to do my job. And I have to find a way to basically fit everything into one bag that used to only be one part of what I bring with me. It’s such a dumb thing to stress me out, but it does. I’m just glad that I have it figured out and everything does fit in the suitcase I have with me. I just have to be ok with maybe not having the best outfits with me or not having all the toiletries and makeup that I’d want to bring. I guess the one positive is that my suitcase home will be easier to pack because the presents I have for my family take up a big part of the bag.

And then the entire ordeal of flying is something that stresses me out. I worry that I won’t be able to get to the airport on time. I worry that the security line will be so long that I will miss my flight. And the thing that stresses me out so much, that somehow for some reason I won’t fit in the airplane seat. This has never been an issue for me and I have flown when I weighed more than I do now. So there is no reason for me to think that somehow I won’t fit. The seats aren’t comfortable, but I don’t think most people find them comfortable. I know I will be fine flying and that I won’t have issues like not being able to get into a seat, but for some reason, this fear doesn’t go away until I am off the plane at the end of my trip. So this will be a fear I have in the back of my head the entire time I’m in Sacramento. This fear isn’t something that is determined just by my weight. When I was at my skinniest, I still had the same fear. I’m guessing this is a part of my body dysmorphia and that it will be something I will always deal with, at least a little bit.

By the time you are all reading this, I will have made it through the flight there so my packing and some of my flying stress will be done. And I’m hoping that the remaining stress and fear will be able to be pushed aside so I can enjoy the few days that I get to spend with my family and I don’t waste that time worrying about unnecessary things.

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Posted in Tough Stuff, Travel

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Showing My Stress (or Hoping Things Will Get Better Now)

Posted on January 22, 2019 | 1 comment

There is no question that things have been stressful in my life lately. There are lots of different things that have causing me stress, but the biggest one has been my job hunt. Finding a job has been surprisingly difficult for me. I’ve applied for so many jobs and most of them have turned out to either be scams or misleading. Companies will post that their job is a remote position but then when you have an interview they tell you that it’s not and the pay rate is significantly lower than what they posted. I don’t know if they figure that since you went to the interview you would be ok with any changes or what. But it’s been very annoying to be spending time on interviews that are for jobs that aren’t what I believe them to be.

I’ve had several breakdowns while doing this job hunt. There have been days where I can’t stop thinking about my situation and will be calling different friends or family members crying hysterically. I’ve had to limit how much time I spend job hunting because when I didn’t limit myself I would feel so much worse about things. I’ve tried to keep thinking positively about things, but it’s not easy when it seems like you can’t make any progress or have even the smallest of victories or wins.

Stress is never really that good for anyone. I’m sure having minor stress in your life is good for something, but not having the type of stress I have been dealing with for the past few months. But I also have a few different auto immune diseases and I know that stress makes them so much worse. I was lucky that things hadn’t been that bad for me until recently, but it’s definitely hit me now and it’s showing on my body.

My auto immune diseases have different physical symptoms, but only one is really obvious when I’m out and about. I have alopecia which means I have patches of hair loss. This started when I was 14 when we discovered that behind both of my ears I lost a lot of hair. My parents took me to the doctor where I was diagnosed and we did some different treatments to make my hair come back. I’ve had patchy bald spots from time to time on my head and in my eyebrows, but it’s never been as bad as that first time. Most of time, it’s been weird little patches that are hidden by my hair. I sometimes see them and my friend who does my hair will see them. But when the bald spots aren’t on my hairline they aren’t as obvious.

But a few weeks ago, I started to notice my hair falling out more than normal. I would wash my hair and have handfuls of hair coming out. I didn’t find any bald spots so I assumed it was just all over hair loss (something else I have to deal with). But then I noticed a big patch on the back of my head where I lost my hair. I think I’m lucky because the way it fell out it looks more like that’s my natural hairline. But I can tell the difference and it’s very obvious to me. It is on my hairline on the back of my head, so there is a chance that it had been a bunch of smaller bald spots that just got worse recently. But all I know is that I only discovered the bald spot about a week ago.

There are some treatment options for me to try, but I’m not too sure if I want to do them. The best option that has worked for me is to get a bunch of shots in the bald spot. If it was worse looking, I probably would do it. I think I’m the only one who is really noticing it now and I don’t want to have to do all of the shots I know I’d need to do.

And the other reason I’m not going to do treatments now is that my stress has been lessened quite a bit. I still don’t have another job that I can count on, but I did get an email from my old boss last week. There is not a contract for my old job, but she was able to offer me a contract for a temporary job! I will be working for about 4 months and it will be more hours per week than I had on my old contract. It’s not enough in those 4 months to cover an entire year, but it will give me some time to breathe and figure out my next step. I will still be job hunting like I have been doing, but now I will be able to pay my bills.

I hate how much the stress has affected me, but I also know that how my body reacts isn’t always in my control. Auto immune diseases are complicated and I have had to learn how to roll with the punches with them. I’m just glad it wasn’t worse and that there’s a chance that it will start getting better now.

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Still Being A Bit Selfish (or Using Some Pressure)

Posted on July 3, 2018 | 1 comment

I’ve been pretty reflective and internal with a lot of my monthly challenges lately. Clearly I feel like I need to work on my inside right now and I’m glad I’m allowing myself to do that. It does mean that my monthly challenges don’t have the most measurable results, but I can feel that they are making a difference in my life and that’s what’s important to me.

Last month I set my challenge to spend the month refocusing and reconnecting to myself. I had some big goals in mind for what I wanted to do while working on that and I knew that some of them are things I really wanted to do. But to be honest, while I did work on reconnecting to myself I didn’t get a lot of things done that I should have.

I did spend a decent amount of time giving myself permission to be lazy or anti-social. I spent some nights at home reading or watching TV instead of making plans. And I loved having those nights at home. I did a lot of reading which is something that I hadn’t been doing enough lately. I went through the library system online and found several e-books that I wanted to read so I built up my wish list and hold list online. I’m slowly getting those books and I know I’ll have a lot of books coming up that I have been wanting to read.

I wanted to work on cooking more and doing a clothing inventory. Neither of those really happened. The clothing inventory did a bit with doing a mental inventory and stopping myself when I thought I should buy something. I have started orders online for clothes so many times in the past month that I just abandoned because I realized I didn’t need them. I still need to go through things and see what I have and what I can get rid of, but it’s a work in progress. And the cooking thing just didn’t happen. I think part of it was due to me allowing myself to be lazy, but I also had been dealing with health things that just stopped my motivation for cooking. A lot of times this past month I was just eating really basic and plain things that didn’t need much effort. But I am hoping the cooking thing will kick back in for me again soon.

When I was trying to think of my challenge for this month, I had a few things in mind. But it was something I bought online that ended up inspiring me. While I was nauseous I was trying to figure out anything that could help me. I ended up ordering a few things that people said had helped them in the past, and one of those things was an acupressure mat.

Several people suggested acupuncture to me, but I’m a little unsure about it. I don’t love needles (even though that is getting better) and it’s not covered by my insurance. It might be something I try eventually, but not right now. But when I was looking at acupuncture to help nausea I came across using an acupressure mat to help. This particular mat was about $20 on Amazon and has almost 8,000 pressure points between the mat and the pillow. I got it right after my nausea ended, but I decided to experiment with it this past week.

There are a few different guides online on how to use it and what you can do for different types of pain. The most basic one was laying on your back with the pillow under your neck for back pain and to help you relax. So I decided to try that first and I set the mat and pillow on my bed since there was more room on there and it would be easier to get up if I needed to.

A lot of people lay on these mats without clothing on, but most of the guides recommended easing into that. I wore a tank top so there was some exposed skin, but it was minimal. It took a few tries of laying down before I felt like it was the right position, but once I found the right spot I just spent time reading while laying on it. It was a bit pokey from time to time, but nothing unbearable or that painful.

I was on it for about 10 minutes before I felt like I needed to get up. I don’t love laying flat on my back, so that will take some getting used to as well. And after I got up I didn’t feel much at first. But within minutes my back was starting to feel really warm and it felt like the muscle tension and stress in my back was melting off of me. I wish I could describe the feeling better, but it was almost like there was something sliding off my back and it was taking the tension with it.

While I knew this was what the mat was supposed to do, I was still pretty surprised by how quickly it worked and how simple it was. I’ve only had the mat since the end of last week, but I’ve spent time on it every evening before going to bed. And that is my challenge for this month. I want to work on building up my tolerance with the mat when it comes to how long I can lay on it as well as working toward not needing a tank top when using it. I can already feel the benefits I’ve had in the few days I’ve used it, so I can’t wait to see how good I feel after a month.

I also want to work on experimenting with other positions. I have used the pillow on my feet (I was on my back on my couch with my feet on top of the pillow). That didn’t feel as amazing as my back did, but it still felt good. And there are positions to help leg pain, hip issues, and plenty of other things. I need to work on seeing what works for me because I have a feeling this mat will be something I use regularly to help my body feel better.

While this is a more objective challenge that will be easy to confirm whether or not I did it, it still feels a bit internal and reflective to me. This is about making my body feel better and that’s something that only I can tell. Maybe if my body is feeling better I will have more energy to put toward things I want. I’m just excited to see what happens and what other things I may discover about myself after doing this.

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Remembering To Do What I Like (or Weird Disappearing Time)

Posted on March 28, 2018 | Comments Off on Remembering To Do What I Like (or Weird Disappearing Time)

I’ve written about being over-scheduled in the past, and this is kind of the same idea. But at the same time it’s different and it’s weird. But somehow it feels like my time is disappearing from me. And with that disappearing time, I also feel like I’m not doing as many of the things that make me happy each day when I know there is time to do them.

I seem to be losing my Wednesday and Friday afternoons. Those used to be my workout times, but lately I’ve been working out in the mornings and those afternoons are free. But somehow that time it going by without me realizing it and I’m losing that time. I need to be a bit more intentional with how I schedule my time so that I don’t end up sitting at my computer going down a YouTube or Buzzfeed rabbit hole after work and wasting those hours. I’ve had weekend days like that as well when I get up at 7am and then all of a sudden it’s 7pm and I have no clue how I spent my day.

And part of the disappearing time is realizing now that my routine is a bit different that I don’t have the same time to kill that I did before. When I was driving to the Brentwood Orangetheory location after work twice a week, I had so much time in my car. I spent about 30 minutes in my car driving there and driving home would take between 1-2 hours (I know that sounds crazy, but since I work from home I figured this was my commute). During that time in the car, I would listen to podcasts. I usually would get through at least 1 podcast each time I drove to my workout.

But now that I’m not going to that location when the drive would take that long (going on Mondays is a pretty fast drive), I don’t have that time that I’m listening to my podcasts. And that wouldn’t be a problem for that many people, but since I listen to over 50 podcasts they were starting to pile up! I’m not using those afternoons to listen to podcasts while I’m home, so that time to listen has gone away. So I’ve had to make more of an effort to listen to podcasts since the time that I used to listen to them wasn’t really there anymore. So now I’m trying to spend my time during work between customers listening to the backlog and I’m finally starting to get close to being up to date on them again.

I know that everyone has this problem and seems to lose track of time, but because I’m really trying to be more mindful of so much in my life I want to work on making this not happen as often. There will always been random days every so often where the day will be wasted watching lots of random things on Netflix. But I want those to be rare and not happening as often as they have been recently. The example of losing my afternoons and then also losing podcast listening time shows exactly what is happening. I’m losing that time, but I’m also losing the time that I used to spend doing something that makes me happy.

I love listening to my podcasts and I need to dedicate time to listen to them. In the same sense, I need to make sure I dedicate time to doing other things I enjoy. I do read pretty much every evening before going to bed, but I should make an effort to read more often. Reading before bed is only for a little bit of time because then I fall asleep. But I get so much pleasure out of reading and I should be doing it more throughout the day.

Scheduling fun things doesn’t necessarily sound like the most exciting thing, but I really do need to work on it. I think scheduling it helps me find the balance between being over-scheduled and under-scheduled and helps me plan where I have empty time in my schedule that I might want to fill with something else. While there is always time I want to use to watch TV, I don’t want to spend an entire day just watching junk. I’m working on only watching shows that I have recorded so that I limit how much TV I’m watching and I also can stop mid-way through a show if necessary (I do make an exception to this for news).

I’ve also realized lately that I haven’t been doing as many things from my happiness checklist as I was doing before. I’ve thought about maybe changing some of the things on the list, but all 10 of the things still are things that make me so happy when I do them. And I haven’t thought of something else that makes me just as happy or happier to replace them with. So instead of changing them (which is what I’ve done in the past), I am just trying to be more intentional and trying to make the effort to add them back into my schedule. I probably need to set some reminders on my phone or add them to my calendar so I don’t forget, but having reminders isn’t a bad thing.

Hopefully the combination of realizing I’m losing time to doing nothing and I’m not doing as many things that make me happy as I should that I can start planning better and that will just make me feel happier and not that I’m wasting time in lots of aspects of my life.

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Figuring Out Some Self-Care (or Working On My Physical And Mental Health)

Posted on January 19, 2018 | Comments Off on Figuring Out Some Self-Care (or Working On My Physical And Mental Health)

I’ve been a bit too stressed out lately. A lot of it had to do with just being overwhelmed and trying to schedule myself, but that didn’t explain all of it. Reflecting back on it, I think that it’s possible that my panic and anxiety disorder came back. It wasn’t enough for me to feel like I needed to take medication or call my new therapist, but it was something I was aware of.

Like with so many other things in my life, being aware is a huge step for me and I consider that to be a win. But of course I wanted to make the stressed out feelings go away and not just be aware of it. Part of what I’ve been working on is related to my monthly challenge this month. I’m being a bit selfish and turning down invitations to things I don’t want to go to. I’m not committing myself to things that aren’t what I want to do socially and I’m not going insane when there is an event I want to go to but it doesn’t fit into my schedule. I’ve had to miss some fun things like birthday parties and baby showers because of work, but I’m not feeling guilty that I have to work because my friends understand.

Being selfish is a bit of self-care and I never really thought of that before. I think it has been a big step in my mental health although it isn’t fixing everything. But giving time to myself does allow me to think through the stress I’m feeling and figuring out what is causing it and what I can do to make it a bit better. And I know I’ve said this probably a million times, but I am also working on time management to work on my stress. I hate when I get to the end of the day and I still have so much to get done. I’m trying to work on doing stuff throughout the day and not just after work or after my workout.

But this time, I’m also working on my physical self-care too. I love to look at different beauty products, but I’m not always someone who uses them. But I decided to get a set of sheet masks from Amazon (they were pretty cheap) so I could work on my skin care. They are nice, but I look pretty creepy when I’m using them!

I’ve only used one so far so I don’t see a huge difference in my skin, but I think the mental break I get when I use those masks help too. It is time that I have to be still and relax, which I probably don’t do enough. I also found a nice new body cream at CVS on sale that I got that feels a lot more luxurious than my normal body lotion. Sometimes, it’s the little things like those that make a big difference.

I’ve been working a lot of doing these self-care things this week and I really have noticed my stress levels go down. I still need it to go down a bit more before I feel totally like myself, but I’m glad it’s getting better. I didn’t need to turn to medication (which I’d rather not use since it will make my Vyvanse less effective) and I’m not waiting it out and suffering. I’m taking action and figuring out what works. Or at least what works for me right now. I know that things will change all the time and what is working now might not work later this year. But at least I was productive in figuring out what I needed to do.

I know that this self-care is a positive step, but I still am working on how to stop the stress from getting to this level. I want to be able to stop it before it gets this bad and I start feeling overwhelmed. But as I’ve learned I have to look at the baby steps I take and not get frustrated. I can’t be expected to figure out everything right away so I need to appreciate that I figured out one small step toward figuring it all out. And hopefully next time, I’ll figure out the next small step.

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Posted in Beauty, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff

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Not Wanting To Wait Until The New Year (or Managing The Crazy Times)

Posted on December 21, 2017 | Comments Off on Not Wanting To Wait Until The New Year (or Managing The Crazy Times)

My schedule has been crazy for a while. Part of it is my fault with planning a lot to do, but I think that the holidays are always a crazy time. I keep saying that things will be normal again on this date or that date but then something else comes up that changes that entire plan.

For a long time, I said my schedule would be fine once the 300th episode party for the podcast would be done. But then I had more parties to go to (even if I didn’t end up going to all of them) and then family things to help with and that seemed to stress me out. I think also not having any extra time off for the holidays is throwing me off because it won’t feel like I have a break. I just have my regular work schedule happening and my next day off work for a holiday isn’t until the 4th of July (too many holidays happen on a Monday which is already my day off work). So it feels like I’m in something that just keeps going and going without a break to have a sense of having time to catch up. I still have 2 days off a week, but usually for holidays I get at least one extra day or one regular day becomes a half day. Not so much this year.

With all this craziness, I’m lucky that my fitness schedule isn’t too affected. Next week and the week after will be a bit weird, but I will still get in my workouts one way or another. I know that this is something to be proud of because for so long I would consider this craziness an excuse to take a break and not work out. But instead, I’m almost annoyed when I can’t get in as many workout as I want to because of holiday schedules. And while in the past my food plan might have gotten out of control too, it isn’t as bad as it has been in the past. It’s not great, but I know it could be so much worse. But since I know it could be better I want to work on that. And it’s just far too easy to say that I’ll work on it when I know things are normal again.

I don’t want to get into the mindset of waiting to fix things that aren’t going the way I want them to be. That’s the problem of waiting until Monday, next month, or next year. And with it being near the end of the year it is really easy to think that I’ll just fix it on January 1st. But I know if I wait to do that, it won’t happen. It’s far too easy to procrastinate and get myself deeper and deeper into whatever hold I’m digging myself into.

And if I keep telling myself that I’ll wait until it gets normal, I know that won’t ever happen either. There may be a small break of time where things seem very routine and easy for me, but I know that it’s not all the time and when it happens it is very brief. More often than not, my life is crazy with times of insane stress of too much stuff and then insane stress that I’m not doing enough. And I want to work on being better prepared for those times.

As much as I want to say that my life will be normal again after the holidays, I know that there’s no way that it will be true. I’ve got a trip planned with my mom and sister-in-law in February, I’ve got the busy season at my day job, it’s almost pilot season for acting and I’m hoping to have some more auditions, and I’m guessing that my dating life is going to continue to be crazy for a while. All of those things have a good chance of stressing me out and making it feel like my life isn’t normal.

Maybe I just have to think of all the craziness in my life as the normal times and when things are easy for me those are the crazy and weird times? I don’t know. But I do know that the more I’ve had to work through times like this (and it happens a lot because I know I blog about it a lot) the better I get at managing it. This is one of the first times that it’s really seemed much easier for me and I don’t feel like I’ve had a huge setback when dealing with the stress. I’ve had minor setbacks, but they are much smaller than they have been in the past. So I think they are also easier to bounce back from.

I know that each time I write about this I say how I should be happy that I’m seeing progress and acknowledging that I have to work on these things is major progress. It doesn’t always feel like that when you are in the crazy times, but I think that I’m finally starting to believe it.

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Default ThumbnailRecovering From Thanksgiving (or As Always It’s Back To The Grind) Default ThumbnailHow Long Can I Wait? (or Wanting To Shop At The Last Minute) Default ThumbnailStaying Calm In The Crazy (or Is This Month Over Yet?) Default ThumbnailStarting The Year With A Lot Of Transformation (or Who Will I Be By Next Year?) Default ThumbnailFirst Week of Workouts After The Challenge (or Weird Workout Times) Default ThumbnailWaiting On The Wait List (or The Text That Made My Week)

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Posted in Fitness, Food, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff

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Surgery Shopping (or How To Prep For The Unexpected)

Posted on April 6, 2017 | 1 comment

I know I’ve posted a lot about my liver surgery lately (and I will be posting more about it over the next few weeks). I’m now 2 weeks away from surgery and there is so much that I’ve been trying to get done or need to do. I’m still trying to have a lot of fun, but surgery stuff is taking up a lot of my time.

I have the stuff I expected like various doctor appointments and tests. I’ve already done some blood work and today is my MRI. I’ve got my official pre-op appointment next week and that will consist of multiple doctor appointments at one time so I can meet with the surgeon, the anesthesia team, and possibly the inpatient team. I’ve also been working more than normal because I’m banking hours at work. I can’t afford to take time off (I don’t get paid time off at any of my jobs), so I’ve been working extra hours unpaid to cover the time I won’t be working coming up. I’ve got all the hours banked that I think I’ll need, but that has taken a lot of time in the mornings that I usually do other work.

I’ve also been trying to get things ready to be in the hospital for a while. I’ve been getting ideas of things to have with me from friends who have been in the hospital for a while before. I’m hoping the hospital has decent wifi because I have a feeling I’ll be watching a lot of Netflix or Hulu there (also, if I feel up for it then I could even work from the hospital). I’ve also gotten some dresses that are easy to put on and are cheap to wear after surgery. There’s a chance that things with waistbands won’t work for a little bit for me so dresses seemed to be the easiest solution. I also know I might have surgical drains when I go home, so I found these awesome sticky pockets to put in my clothes if I need them.

I still have a pretty decent list of things I still need to get for my time in the hospital and while I’m recovering with my parents. Some things I expected to be easy, like getting some slippers to have with me, but somehow they haven’t been easy to find in stores. I’m guessing I’ll be doing a big Amazon order soon. I might wait until after my pre-op appointment so I know what else I might need. Thank goodness for fast shipping with Amazon Prime! I’ve been told I might get a list when I go in for the pre-op appointment, but if any of you have been through any type of abdominal surgery and have suggestions for things I should have please let me know!

And then of course there is getting my house ready for this all. I will be doing some big cleaning because I don’t want things cluttered when my parents are here and I don’t want things to feel dirty when I am back home. After I’m out of the hospital, I will be recovering with my parents so they can help me out with things or buy things I forgot about. But I still want to try to get as much done now as I can. One thing I was trying to do but have been slacking on is getting some food made and frozen so it’s easy for me to eat at home even if I’m tired. I don’t want to go back to ordering delivery food (plus I’m guessing I’ll be on a restricted diet so I want to have food that I made and know what’s in it).

I know it sounds like I’ve got a handle on things and seem really prepared, but I don’t feel that way at all. There are still so many unknowns with this entire thing and a lot of the answers won’t be things I can really know in advance. I have no idea how my body will react to this all and I can’t prepare for what I don’t know will happen. It has been giving me a pretty steady level of anxiety lately, but nothing as bad as a regular panic attack. And I have had a few minor attacks but fortunately my friends and family have been able to calm me down.

When things were 2 months away or even 1 month away it seemed like I had unlimited time to get ready and that it wasn’t going to be soon. I think it really hit me when I had 3 weeks left how soon this was all going to be. I’m very lucky that I’ve had time to prep for this and it wasn’t an emergency surgery where nothing could be done ahead of time. But sometimes having prep time is the worst because I can analyze things to death. I’m trying to stay as calm as I can be which is why I set my monthly challenge to be being calm and taking more deep breaths.

Over the next 2 weeks, there will be posts about preparing for surgery but I will also have some fun posts in there too. And I am hoping to keep this blog going regularly while I’m recovering, but of course I don’t know how I’ll feel. But I do promise that if there are some days I can’t blog I will get back to writing regularly. I’ve been doing this every weekday for so long, and the idea that I might miss a day does stress me out a bit. But I hope that you all will stick with me while I get through all of this and hopefully I can find some fun things to write about while I’m recovering!

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Posted in Health, Shopping, Tough Stuff

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Trusting It Will Be Ok (or Dealing With Stress In A Healthy Way)

Posted on February 9, 2017 | 1 comment

Even though a lot of recent events should have added a ton of extra stress in my life, I’ve been doing ok. I’m not letting any of my health issues get me down since I know that having a bad attitude won’t change anything for me. Money issues are still toward the front of my mind, but I’m also trying to not stress about those. I have had some things get better for me financially recently, but I think understanding my financial status by budgeting has been really great at keeping the stress down. But in the past week, things just have taken a crazy turn for me.

First, my weight loss is going a bit haywire. I know I should be losing weight, but it’s not showing up on the scale. In fact, the scale has been going up a lot recently. I don’t know what’s happening or why things aren’t going my way, but I’m trying to figure out what I can do to control the situation. This is stressing me out because I’m worried about trying different things when other things have worked for me in the past. But I also know that I need to get this under control and going the right way again sooner rather than later. But I also know that stressing about it is not going to help (and telling myself to relax just stressed me out more).

I’ve been stressing a lot about time management lately too. I don’t know why my days seem to be going so quickly and that I don’t have time to do everything, but that’s how I feel. I have a huge list of things to get done every day and I’m not making a huge dent on them each day. I’ve been tracking my time and there isn’t a ton of wasted time each day. Maybe I’m just taking on too much, but I feel like it shouldn’t be too tough to get all the things done each day that I set out to do. I know that going on Disney adventures doesn’t help, but those were on days where it seemed like my week was going to be super calm. But as the week goes on, things start piling up. I’m just trying to keep up with my to-do lists and hoping that something clicks soon.

And the thing that is causing me the most stress, especially in the last week, is the film festival that I run. The festival is happening this weekend, and everything was perfectly in place until last week. We discovered that our contact at the venue was no longer working with that venue and there was no record of our festival being scheduled to be there. Fortunately, the owner of that venue has another venue that we are going to use. But it is causing a lot of unknowns with the festival. I’ve never run it at any other location than our old one so I’m worried that things won’t be ok. I went to the venue for a site walk through earlier this week and that helped. But until Sunday is done, I think this will be causing me a ton of stress.

I hate that things are causing me so much stress, but it is also a good thing for me. In the past, I haven’t always had the best coping skills. Having a binge episode was a common way for me to deal. And when I found out about the venue for the film festival not having us scheduled, the first thought into my head was what I wanted to go eat for dinner that night. Even though I had planned out my meals for the week, I wanted to go get something that wasn’t a part of my plan for dinner. I wanted to eat something that would distract me from worrying about things. But I didn’t do that. I drove home and while I didn’t eat exactly how I had planned to do so that day, I didn’t do anything too extreme. I had to deal with my feelings the way a healthy person does and it wasn’t easy. But I did it and I got through it.

I hate feeling so stressed out about so many things, but this is just how my life is right now. I’m trying to trust that things will turn out ok, and in most cases I can see how things can get better. But until they do get better, it isn’t easy for me. All I can do is trying to get through these issues and know that when it is done I will have better coping skills to get through things in the future.

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Posted in Food, Tough Stuff

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Trip Planning (or Keeping Panic To A Minimum)

Posted on July 26, 2016 | Comments Off on Trip Planning (or Keeping Panic To A Minimum)

This past weekend, I went to Maryland for a family reunion. I just got back last night so I’ll recap the trip tomorrow, but I wanted to share with you how my trip planning went.

I’m a pretty good traveler, but I get so nervous and panicky about things. I always want to make sure I remember everything and I know I overpack because I’m scared I’ll forget something that isn’t easy to find (like clothing). For years, I’ve taken panic meds before traveling (for a day or so before flying and then right before my flight to be ok with flying). But since I’ve been doing better with my panic attacks and my Vyvanse makes the panic meds not as effective, I’ve been trying to get through traveling without the meds. I’ve been doing ok with doing that at the dentist (which is a miracle), so it should be the same for traveling.

I tried to do all of the other things I do to prepare for traveling to keep myself calm. I made all of my usual checklists, I did all of my usual prep work (checking all my travel toiletries and supplies), and tried to plan for some fun things to do on the flights there and back. I flew there with my brother and sister-in-law, but I flew home by myself so I wanted to make sure I had plenty of new library books on my Kindle to read and other things to keep my mind off of flying.

I was doing pretty great with my prep stuff, until I started planning out my clothes. While I am used to occasionally having hot days in LA, we don’t have humidity like they do in Maryland. I wanted to make sure I had clothes that would do their best to keep me cool in 90 degree heat and 90% humidity. Most of what I packed were workout clothes since those wick away sweat (I know that’s gross, but it’s true). And my outfit for the reunion was a tank top and a skirt so I figured it should keep me a bit cooler than other things. But just knowing that I might be sweaty for the entire weekend stressed me out.

I don’t know why that got to me so much, but I really was stressing a lot about the clothes and what would and wouldn’t show sweat if I was gross. I know that everyone else might be just as gross and sweaty, but I still didn’t want to look that way. I think part of it is knowing that I don’t want to look like I’m sweating because of my weight. I don’t want to be that stereotype and while I’ve been making good strides in my fitness and weight loss, others don’t know that and I don’t want to be judged.

I was talking to my mom about this a bit last week before leaving and she helped to calm me down a bit. I said that I just wanted to make sure I was impressing everyone since outside of my immediate family I haven’t seen any of the people at the reunion for 5 or 16 years (or ever in some cases). My mom was telling me how it doesn’t matter whether or not I impress people. I’m living my life the way I want to and as long as I’m happy it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. I know I’ve known this, but having someone else tell me it made it finally register in my brain.

I really tried to focus on how awesome it’s going to be to be going on a trip and to see family that I haven’t seen in years. I’m so lucky that I had the opportunity to do this and I’m grateful that I got to go. These family reunions are held each year, but since everyone pretty much lives on the east coast they are always held there. And I usually don’t get to go so this time was really special. Focusing on those things did help me relax a bit and not feel like I really need to take my panic meds. I’d rather not have to take them anymore so testing myself is good for me. I’m so used to taking them, and trying to get off them is a good idea since I pretty much have to choose to take them or my Vyvanse (and I would rather be taking Vyvanse).

A full recap of my weekend in Maryland is coming and I can’t wait to share with you everyone that I got to finally see again!

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Posted in Family, Travel

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