Do It!

What the….?  I had at least 1000 words in my head every day last week and now this week….nothing.  Blank.  I checked my phone to see if I’d taken pictures of anything in the last few days…..nothing.  What the heck has been going on?  Just….hanging out.  Early morning dog walks, morning coffee with the husband, working (sort of), sitting in the sun (except today in the bucketing rain), making and bottling kombucha, taking the dog to the vet, cooking.  All the things that make up a life….that are dead dull to write about!

The weather has been a bit spotty this past week, overcast, on and off cold, on and off rain, darker in the mornings that it was even 2 weeks ago.  It got me thinking about fall and winter (I KNOW, we’re not even to August yet, there’s still LOTS of summer to go) and what I might want to do in the fall/winter.  I thought maybe I would get back to cross stitching, I used to really like that.  Or maybe reading more regularly?  Maybe my sister could teach me how to knit?  Or quilt? None of those really spoke to me though.  I kept trying to drown it out but over the last week a little voice that I’ve been beating into submission for years, somehow gained some strength and started getting a little louder. 

“Do it.  You know you want to.  Do it.  You can totally do it.  You have always wanted to do it.  There is no reason you can’t do it.  Other people do it all the time.  Stop being scared and just DO IT!”

What is “it”?  [Seriously….cannot believe I’m about to put this out into the world]…………the “it” that I have always wanted to do and have always been too scared to try….is a triathlon.  A sprint distance triathlon; 750m swim, 20km bike, 5km run. 

It’s terrifying to contemplate; swimming in open water with tonnes of other people, the transitions, the training, fueling, what to wear, swimming, the cost, the swimming….all terrifying.  I’m totally going to do it though and I’ve already picked out my triathlon and my “support crew” for it.  The one I want to do is in mid July in Penticton, about a 3 hour drive away.  My support crew is my sister and as I said to her, being my support team involves travelling there, checking out the venue/package pickup the day before, helping to calm my nerves, standing around for 2.5 hours waiting for me to finish, taking pictures and then celebrating afterwards.  Pretty easy job, if you ask me!

So the things that are freaking me out?

SWIMMING – I know how to swim.  Errr….I knew how to swim?  Once?  A really long time ago?  Errr….I won’t drown immediately if tossed into deep water?  Ya.  There’s that.  I have no background in swimming for sport or exercise.  But I have basically a year to figure it out and practice.  And, I’m very lucky because we have a huge aquatic centre about a 5 minute walk (or 2 minute drive) from our house. 

I’m a tad unlucky thought because right now their schedule permits lane swimming between 6am – 7am and 9pm – 10pm daily.  Not the best hours and I’m hoping in the fall the schedule changes a bit…but even if it doesn’t, I could actually make this work.  There’s also the problem of open water training, learning to swim in a straight line, sighting so you don’t get lost, not panicking.  Again, I may be lucking out in this, there is an open water triathlon drop in coaching group at a lake about 20 minutes away who have coaches in the water and on paddleboards giving assistance and training. 

TRANSITIONS – these are where you change gear between swim and bike and between bike and run.  From what I can tell there is a bit of an art to doing it and since I have no frame of reference, it freaks me the hell out.  Fortunately there are thousands of blogs and articles on the internet that give tips and tricks and training on how to set yourself up.

TRAINING – this doesn’t really scare me like swimming and transitions do…but it’s always been a hold up to committing to doing it.  Where would I find the time? And the commitment?  How long would I have to train for? Am I going to die?  There aren’t enough (daylight) hours in the day, do I really want to make this sort of time commitment against my evenings and weekends?  Because while I want to do a triathlon which would take up a weekend of my life and, acutely, 2-3 hours, “doing a triathlon” actually involves “doing it” for several months.  Right now I’m planning to learn the swimming over the winter months (October – March), and then focus on practice/training the bicycle March and April and focus on training the run in May and June.  Since I’ve basically given myself an entire year to get prepared for this I feel more comfortable with being able to have a more relaxed “training schedule” rather than trying to cram it all into three months, 6 days/week.  Not cool, I already know I would be unlikely to succeed at that.

FUELING/WHAT TO WEAR – again, because I have no frame of reference, it’s all a bit of an unknown…but not enough to make me not do it.

COST – this is going to be pricey.  A swimming pass for 4 months is going to run me $175.  The drop-in cost for the open water coaching group is $15/visit and I anticipate going 6 times at least ($90).  The race fee itself is around $100, the fuel, hotel, food is going to be around $300 and I anticipate about $200 in “stuff” that comes up, swim goggles, bike shorts etc.  So…..fulfilling a life goal is going to cost me a year in preparation and close to $1000 in cost.  Once again, good thing I have a year to sort myself out!

The last thing that concerns me now (which never bothered me before….because I was much more insane back then) is the MENTAL ASPECT.  Can I train and commit and fuel for a year in a manner that is respectful of my body and mind and not get sucked into an obsessive spiral of weight, fitness, appearance and perfection?  Can I knock down the angry voice that tells me “why bother”, “you can’t”, “don’t waste your time” and the scared voice that tells me to sit on the couch and self-medicate my fear with chocolate?

I’m going to do it.  I’ve been visualizing doing it, visualizing swimming 2-3 days a week in the winter, visualizing a healthy mental state, visualizing being excited about it and visualizing finishing it strong.  I’m going to do it. 

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Walk The Talk

You know what is a great Fear Buster?  GOOGLE!  Well, actually, any sort of information gathering system!

I was reading and commenting on blogs yesterday and left a comment that I’d always wanted to do a pullup and that my gym has an assisted pullup machine but that I’m scared to use it because I’m scared of heights.  And then…..30 seconds later I left her another comment and said that maybe I should take my own advice and stare down fear!  Haha

So knowing that I was pretty much committed to getting on the pullup machine (walk the talk and all), I googled how to use one.  I’d looked at the instructions on the machine in the gym previously but what it didn’t mention was how to determine what weight to put the pin at.  For example, do I put the pin at what I want to do or at what I want it to do.    This is an important distinction because once you get your knees onto the deck, if you put the pin in the wrong place, my suspicion was that there would be a rapid plummeting to the ground!  Turns out that on the machine in my gym, you put the pin in at what you want IT to do.  So for me, I put it in at 115.  That means that the machine is responsible for 115 pounds of me and I am responsible for the rest.  (is this pretty basic and I’m the only one who didn’t get it?!).  I did 3 sets of 12 with 115 pounds of me counterweighted. 

Gotta say, COMPLETELY different than anything else I’ve done.  You feel a pullup in places you never knew existed!  Now, granted, the amount of me that I was actually pulling up was not a lot (I actually don’t know how much I was pulling since I don’t know what I weigh), but it was a totally cool feeling!  Take that, FEAR!  (regarding my fear of heights….climbing on the thing was alright but climbing down off of it after each set was a bit wobbly….I dare say that the desire to delay climbing down for as long as possible may have propelled me to keep going when the last couple reps on each set were getting hard!).  And, even though I was doing something to stare fear in the face, I was actually mitigated by that same fear…..because I didn’t want to make the move so difficult that I couldn’t get the deck back up to the top before getting off.  In this case though, I think that’s sound judgment….you don’t go to failure on something that you have to succeed at in order to get off safely!

I tried a revision to my workout this morning but I really didn’t like it.  I moved my mile run and 1000m row to the very end.  Previously I’d been doing a mile to warm up, then weights and then the 1000m row at the very end.  And, for the most part, I was failing the row every morning.  So my thought was that I would do weights first and a big cardio push at the end.  Didn’t work.  I’m not sure if it was the wicked headache I’ve had since I woke up this morning or what, but my workout sucked from start to finish.  Don’t get me wrong, I did do it…..but nothing felt good, I never got the good-workout feeling and I could feel the blood pounding in my head like a hammer.  By the end I was gassed and my head was splitting and I only made it through half a mile and 500m of rowing.  Total cardio fail.  I was feeling so crappy that when I got home I set my alarm for 25 minutes and took a nap on the sofa before getting in the shower and heading to work.

That’s it for me today…..I’ve tried to kill my headache with exercise, Advil, coffee, water, breakfast and none of that worked so I am now going to suffer through it with a big mug of coconut oolong tea.  Tara’s shake n bake drumsticks are for dinner tonight with…vegetables.  I have head of cauli, a bag of peppers and a bag of zucchini….and right now what I’m going to turn those into eludes me!  Suggestions are always welcome!

Fearing Less

Yesterday’s post I talked about trying to FAIL LESS; trying to mitigate the failure that we all experience with behaviors that breed success!  Today the thoughts on my mind have to do with FEARING LESS; seeing something new or different and not allowing your reaction to be dictated by fear.  Experiencing things on a different plane and not being completely thrown for a loop.

 

My handstand experiment is a good example for fearing less.  When I first dreamt up that I should learn how to do a handstand I thought it would be a walk in the park.  As long as I could support my body weight on my arms, I would just have to lock my elbows, kick my legs up and lean against the wall.  Done deal!  The trouble I ran into first wasn’t whether or not I could hold myself up, it was instantly experiencing the world from a different perspective.  That and the dog licking me in the face while I couldn’t defend myself.  But mostly the fact that everything was upside down and nothing felt familiar or natural.  Forget that it’s exactly the same body in exactly the same vertical plane, it’s a completely different experience, I may as well have been trying to breathe underwater.

 

So last night after making the declaration that I was going to try and progress to a handstand (supported or unsupported, I’m not sure yet), I took some hints from online and here’s what I ended up with.

 

I asked Ray to snap a picture so that later on I could compare what I started with to what I will end up with.  Looking back at the picture I was struck by how different it looked than to what I was actually experiencing.  First of all I was way less vertical than I thought I was.  I even scooched my hands back towards the couch a bit to see how that felt and I instantly felt like I was almost past vertical and would cantilever over onto the floor.  The picture shows that’s not even close to the position that I was in.  Experience (and feeling fear) vs reality.   

 

So then, moving on this morning, I saw a blog post about a girl who is going to practice her splits and when I saw that my first thought was “I can’t do that.”.  This morning though, I was reminded how fear can dictate your reaction and I wondered, why can’t I do that?  Sure, I cannot physically do it right this minute….but why can’t I work on it and eventually come to a place where I could do the splits?   Maybe, anatomically, I won’t be able to do it….but I sure as shit will NEVER be able to do it if I don’t at least try.

 

Fear is there when we don’t even know it’s there.  It’s not just that gut-sick feeling before you jump out of an airplane.  It’s quiet and insidious and it often will dictate our actions or reactions.   It’s there when we put others down, when we stop ourselves from making a change, from doing something different, from going against the grain (pun intended).

 

I challenge you, in whatever way you need to do it, put fear in its place, do something that scares you.  Skydive, headstand, toss the scale, wear red lipstick to work.

Focus On The Now

We had a “Hail” of a good weekend, you can click through to read about it and see some pictures. 

 I’m feeling so much more like myself today.  Yesterday it felt like the fog was starting to lift and I am absolutely YEARNING for this better feeling to last more than just to the end of the work day. 

 Last week Grace and I logged over 32 kilometers together and I think that went a long way in having a bit of a shakeout.  It was all green, fresh exercise and any exercise with my dog beside me is a gold star in my book!

 My goal tonight is 4.5-5k with Grace in the park (rain or shine) and then home to make dinner.  Tonight it’s very simple to make, hamburgers baked in the oven with leftover roasted veggies.  I’m going to avoid turning on the television at all tonight and get some of the things that have been bugging me done.  Tidying, dusting, laundry finished up.  I’m also going to get my gym bag packed up and ready to go.

As you may know, I’ve been struggling lately….I would say consistently having a hard time over the last 9-12 months.  Trying to find my groove and being knocked down more often than not.  It’s definitely getting tiresome.  A  friend of a friend on Twitter sent me a link to an article that really struck me right in the heart.  It’s about having an “upper limit problem”.  The article is a bit long but do go and read it, it’s wonderful!

http://www.marieforleo.com/2010/08/upper-limit-problem/

It talks about how we have limits to how much love, success and happiness that we allow ourselves to feel/achieve, or really, how much of those things we are capable of dealing with at any one time.  I had been lamenting in my previous post about how I always, always get stuck here in this same spot that I’m in right now.  That I’ll distract myself with other things for awhile to avoid noticing that I’m up against a wall.  Because the trouble is, I don’t know how to get over that wall, it’s too tall and too solid.  The ticket is, I realize, to stop trying to go over and smash through the wall, but to take a step back and look for the unlocked door and simply walk through.

In the past when I’ve wanted to change something, fix something, create something, I just jump in and get my hands dirty, work hard, dig deep and make whatever it is happen.  Pain, time, effort be damned.  No matter how hard I am trying to push myself right now though, it’s like my feet are cemented into the ground where I stand and no amount of shoving is helping move me. 

So….I’m taking a different approach.  Instead of trying to force myself to move from where I am right now, I’m going to back off a bit.  Instead of trying to scold or curse or guilt myself into feeling a certain way or expecting a certain result, I’m just going to try and relax.  I saw it written somewhere over the weekend that when you hang onto constant stress, your (fat) cells feel like they’re being yelled at all the time and so they become numbed to any sort of input.  There is zero point in eating naturally and moving naturally and trying to live as low key as possible when your insides are having to listen to a Metallica concert 24 hours a day.

Instead of looking forward and trying to become someone else, I’m going to look at myself where and who I am and be the person that I am right now.  I believe in constant improvement, constantly trying to better yourself, achieve more, succeed and win.  I think I’ve been going about it wrong lately though.  I’ve been trying to project ahead to that woman in the future.  The problem with that is that it does a disservice to the woman that I am right now!  There’s nothing wrong with goals and we should all have them.  There is something wrong with having a goal and then beating your current self up because she’s not there.

Future Me:  I want to eat clean and kick sugar once and for all. 

Current Me:  I do eat very clean, healthy and whole right now.  I work all the time at limiting and reducing my sugar intake

Progressive Me:  Continue daily living, question urges and motivations and pick instances that mean something before indulging in treats.

Future Me:  I want a perfectly balanced relationship with equal give and take and lots of gratuitous affection.

Current Me:  I have a man who loves me endlessly, a fulfilling relationship with lots of fun and togetherness. 

Progressive Me:  Reduce internal dialogue that doesn’t serve a positive purpose. 

Future Me:  I have very high goals of who I want to be/look like/achieve. 

Current Me:  I am healthy and able and fit and strong.  I work hard and putting the Future Me in the forefront of my mind doesn’t allow Current Me to shine.

Progressive Me:  Don’t let Future Me eclipse Current Me.  Do the hardwork to better your CURRENT SELF, one day at a time!

Change is scary.  I am not big on it (as I’m sure is a common feeling).  In reality though, personal change occurs slowly, one day and one action at a time.  Standing where I am right now and projecting ahead to Future Me is like standing at the bottom of a mountain and being told to jump straight up to the top.  The reality is that it’s not a one time straight up jump.  It’s a hike, a step, a slide, another step. 

This post is all over the place, I realize that.  But my head’s been in such a fog for awhile that when it clears, however temporarily, I have to embrace it!

Lent…Or Something Harder

OH!  LENT!  Today is the start of Lent, that is frigging awesome!  I’ve just been sitting here this morning ruminating over things and while I’m not Jewish, having Lent start today goes along really perfectly with some of the things that have been bugging me the last little while.

So, the idea is to give up something(s) from your life or diet for 46 days (correct me if I’m wrong).  I think that whatever you give up is supposed to be something you like or value so that you can know personal sacrifice.  It’s supposed to be something that you’ll notice missing for this time (no sense giving up drinking pop if you only have one Coke a month) and I believe it’s complete abstinence.  I imagine chocolate and alcohol are probably fairly popular ones!

I’m not really that excited about Lent as far as giving anything up, although I should probably put the boots to sugar (as per usual!).  I’m more looking forward to it because it’s one of those cool “lines in the sand” that come up as the year progresses.  First is New Years, we all know how that one goes, then Lent, spring, the transition into back to school.  All seem like natural times of refresh and renew and I’m totally going to use this one to try and clear some stuff up.

I have this haze of unhappy right now.  I’ve made a huge commitment that’s going to start coming to fruition in the next couple of weeks and it’s totally throwing me.  Paralyzing me with fear and inaction, actually.  As completely idiotic as that sounds when I read it back, it’s the truth and I should have seen it coming.  Fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of change and however crazy, fear of success. 

So when you’re existing in a quicksand filled with fear, how do you get out and get going and let go of “safety” and leap into the abyss, come what may, fuck fear, embrace success, shout your own value from the rooftops?  It’s so odd that I’m asking myself (and you guys!) this question because someone just asked it of me last week.  Tomorrow is the 5 year anniversary that I quit smoking and the 5½ish year anniversary that I lost nearly 100 pounds and changed my life.  HOW?  I had absolutely nothing to lose.  Nothing.  I was fat and extremely unhealthy, depressed and dejected, alone and with no spark.  There’s nothing to fear when all is already lost.

I feel like I should know how to power through and fight dragons and shatter fear like it’s a fragile vase.  But….I don’t.  Obviously.  Time is ticking away from me and I’m still sitting here.  Unmoving.  Frozen.  Sinking in the quicksand.  I know what I want, I can see it.  I know how to get it.  It IS what I want (in case you’re thinking that I’m trying to force myself to want something that I really don’t). 

I’m not unique, just in the last week I’ve read posts with people struggling in the same way:

http://thebigcityfarmgirlblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/motivation-for-monday-stop-self-sabatoge/

http://myinnerbovine.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/tearing-down-the-wall/

These two in particular really resonated with me.  Women, having powerful internal struggles.  FEAR! 

WHY are we so scared of ourselves?  WHY do we fear our success?  Why do we crush the little seedlings of happy and success with the rusty, enormous fear hammer?  How do otherwise smart and successful and confident women eradicate the fear that brings us down?

How do I do it?  How do I move towards change, towards the future, towards the unknown?  How do I arrest fear and set free my own forward motion?

I realize that this is probably not exactly what “Lent” had in mind, giving up wine for 40 days would definitely be easier than this.  I’ve always been stopped here.  Always.  When I was fat I was stopped here.  Now that I’m not fat, I’m still stopped here.  I’ve often had other focuses and distractions….but here…..is where I’m stuck.

I really don’t want to be stuck here anymore.

Eviction Notice

Tentatively and with a bit of fear, I put my scale away on Tuesday morning.  I weighed and then buried it in the linen closet where I meant for it to sit gathering dust until the end of January.  I have been a faithful weigher since September 4, 2007, the day that I first stood on the Weight Watchers scales.  5 and a half years I have stood on the scale at least weekly but mostly daily.  It’s a funny thing, that little digital number.  It’s either the permission to feel happy or it’s a little blue glow at 5am that steals away your happiness, comfort or satisfaction, whether it deserves to or not.  It’s justification for poor choices if the number shows up smaller than it ought to be and it’s punishment for not working hard enough, even when you’re giving it your all.

I have to admit that yesterday I had the urge to pull that scale out and step on it and see if the one (brutal) day so far in the year had yielded any lost weight.  You see, I have exercised sporadically since last May.  A month on, one off, a month on, two off, a week on and then a month long cold and then Christmas.  And with Christmas December came chocolate.  Alcohol.  Grain free cookies coated in chocolate. Chicken wings.  Alcohol.  Chips.  Rum balls.  Alcohol.  Zero exercise.  You get me?

And yet through the entire month of December, I didn’t gain a pound.  Yay scale! Thank you for telling me what was ultimately an enormous lie.  Sure, my actual weight stayed the same.  But the breadth of my thighs grew, muscle in my bum and arms turned soft, my belly turned from reasonably flat to reasonably fat.  The scale is bullshit information.  I say that knowing that for years it’s what drove me and for YEARS it’s what kept me at an acceptable weight.  But………things changed, my diet changed, my body changed, my thought processes changed.  And yet I stood on the same scale every day.  I hung my heart and mood and self worth and success or failure on something that doesn’t even tell the real story.

I was very grateful to newly discover a tool that does tell the truth, the whole story, the complete works?  It was me.  All along.  My eyes, my heart and my brain, they know.  And when the scale isn’t ripping truth out of my hands every morning with its little glowing number, I can hear what’s happening and I can relate what is happening to what I’ve been doing, good or bad!

I really believe that this was the final step in completely committing to my current lifestyle.  It’s been almost a year since I gave up grains and admittedly I think I always had one foot in my old life, just in case.  One foot that wasn’t quite sure that this radical (it is radical if you compare it to the average diet) way of living and eating could work.  I’m all in now though; tucking that scale into the closet was like closing the door on the past.  Any label that used to let define me is closed in there with it; former fatty, “was in a car accident”, lazy, not athletic.  They are all in there, locked away with the scale.  And while my original intent was to get it out on January 31^st and “see how I did”, my current intent is to never get it out again. 

Happy Day Three!  One of my favorite quotes to leave you with this morning:  “There is no better way to combat weakness than with strength.”

In case you’re wondering about the muscle loss/weight gain, I’m not worried, it’s negligible in the grand scheme, it taught me a HUGE lesson that I needed to learn and I’ll have everything set back to rights in less than 45 days!

Many thanks to my dear friend, Tara, for blazing this trail months ago and putting the seed in my head.  And many more thanks to her for her beaming, genuine happiness when I told her what I’d done, definite confirmation that where I’ve come to is a good place to be!

Not Bullet Proof

Approximately a billion years ago….or 20, but I’m feeling old right now so bear with me, I was a kid.  A very…..scared kid.  I never did anything.  I don’t know why, I don’t think either of my parents ever fostered an atmosphere of fear, but I was.  I thought everything was going to hurt or kill me, I didn’t trust my dad to keep us safe when we went into the bush or on a road trip.  I had a nervous stomach and I pretty much stayed at home.  Growing up some, I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t party.  Our group of friends as mid teens was pretty tame, we’d spend a lot of time laughing and drinking coffee at A&W, not drinking and partying at whatever the popular out of town location was.

As we continued to grow up, this resulted in me getting fat and less social.  (part of it, anyway)

Fast forward to 2007 when I had decided, amongst other things, to test out living in the world because being trapped in my apartment and my body was no longer an option.  The euphoria that ensued made me feel invincible.  Bullet proof!  I (stupidly in hind sight) used to run my route every day along the shoulder of a busy trucking route.  And I would not give one inch to the idiot truckers who used to try and scare me with their vehicles.  I used to walk to work through a questionable part of town and a few times when I got followed or harassed, I stood my ground, not running and not turning back.  When I first began my “running career”, I got injured frequently.  Nothing really serious, some shin splints, plantar fascitis, pulled groins etc.  And I would rest a couple of days and then get right back at it, too determined to crash through whatever limitations I was experiencing. I discovered that getting hurt wasn’t the end of the world, it was just an unfortunate outcome of actually living life.

Fast forward again to meeting and falling in love with Ray and riding bicycles and motorcycles. Last May I crashed my mountain bike fairly well and dislocated my shoulder and smashed up my knee.  Unfortunate but not the end of the world.  It definitely made me a little more cautious about riding in the rain and more aware of where my skill level is (or isn’t) for bicycling.

On our motorcycles we’ve travelled tens of thousands of kilometers and along the way we’ve had some scary near misses.  One in particular in Nevada had us both pretty rattled for a few days.  But we got back on the bikes and kept motoring.  Because what was the other option?  Giving up?  No thanks.  We no longer ride the same, our friends have noticed even though we’ve never told anyone about the near miss.  Ray’s been riding for longer than I’ve been alive but he’s changed his style to suite my more present fear.  We’re a little slower and a little closer together now.

Fast forward to last week.  And my invincibility is shattered.  While I happen to be in pain from the accident. I don’t sleep without chemical assistance, I’m stressed out over writing off the car and getting a new one and not being at work and messing up my relationship with my boss, I am also mourning the loss of my invincibility.

The car accident feels like the final nail in the coffin of my belief that I was invincible.  Turns out I’m not bullet proof.  And unfortunately that realization has altered the way that I think about myself and my life.

I’m not writing this to feel sorry for myself, please don’t get me wrong.  My gym bag is already packed, as soon as all this is sorted out and I am given any sort of clearance to get to the gym, I’m there.  I’m not sitting at home eating cake and cookies and bunnies and ice cream all day and I’m mostly not crying into my pillow anymore.  I know that sooner than later I’ll be alright again and I don’t want to be set back any further than is necessary.

It’s just a weird feeling to once again be thinking about things in terms of hazards rather than obstacles to be charged through.  I’m hopeful that goes away though; maybe once I’m not trapped here in my house and I’m out lifting heavy weights early in the morning and logging walking kilometers and going on ice cream rides, maybe this feeling fades and I get my armour back.

I realize it was only a car accident……but understand that this niggling little feeling of being fearful has been growing steadily for a little while and the recent accident pushed it into the forefront.  As much as I will work on my weights and my cardio and my eating, I will add this to the list.  I know that there are experiences in people’s lives that, for whatever reason, they get stuck at.  I can see how it happens.  Uncomfortable feelings (anxiety, fear, dread, sadness, anger) come up and instead of plowing through them and pulverising them to dust, people try to comfort them or shut them down or turn them off.

I refuse to get stuck, I refuse to be fearful, I refuse to be redefined as tentative or scared.  I refuse for Ray to always have to wonder if I’m alright with what we’re doing.   I will push past the fear and keep going through the anxiety and teach myself again, that injuries and close calls are a side effect of really living life.  I’d rather be out there living and occassionally have to recover from something than to be safe in my house never recovering from anything.