5 Things You Didn't Know 'Bout Me...

1.)    This simple soul is recharged with the warmth of a new season.  Though I try and try to maintain my chipper stance on all things life during the cold months…melancholy always prevails.  Curse you Midwest winters!

2.)    You may have guessed, but I keep a journal.  Well, journals.  I have at least three laying about the house (leave them alone Kevin!)  They span back years.  I’m talking tens of years.  I enjoy spending a bit of time now and again reading through my emotional extroversions of years past.  It really solidifies my grasp on the now.

3.)     Yes, I have time for your childish ways, but no tolerance for them.  I don’t play well with adults that act like high school bullies.  Usually, you’ll know it if I’ve had enough…with my distance and silence.  Grow up.

4.)    I have always been a bit lost in the world.  My style is fickle, my taste in all things art ever changing, my feelings of belonging coming and going.  I sometimes feel like fish swimming against the current.  I’d be lying if I said I was always comfortable with my outsider qualities, but every once in a while I relish in them by doing something crazy.

5.)    I glow with excitement every time I get a text/email/letter or anything else that, to me, is like a gift wrapped piece of attention.  It doesn’t matter who it’s from or why, I’m not afraid to admit that this gal loves attention.  Who doesn’t?

Your arrogance is not inviting.

What do you call the person that is convinced he is all knowing, never wrong, always the center of everyone’s universe?  I have a few names for him, one of them his own which I will not mention.

But surely he’s not the only man in the world with this false sense of righteousness.  This is the type of person that has an excuse for everything.  The kind of man that when someone has an opinion other than his own, he will fight with blood, sweat, and tears (excuses, lies and hypocrisy,) until finally, rather than cleaning up the mess of your head explosion, you give in and say, “fine, moving on.”  You can’t even agree to disagree with this man because he takes that as a sign of defeat, just throwing fuel into his ego fire.

I’ve tried for a long time to find ways to look passed this less than appealing character trait of his.  Ignored his arrogance, chalked up his blatant disregard of others as ignorance, but I think the only way to really move passed this is to move passed him.  Sometimes, a friendship is not worth having if it’s just having its way with you.

Do I have to?

Avoidance.  It seems to be a recurring theme in my life.  Where did things change for me?  When did I stop thriving on confrontation and chaos?  I’ve noticed it more and more lately that rather than face the things that are making me uncomfortable, angry , sad, whatever…I am running from them.  Well, more like pretending they don’t even exist. 

I think it all started when I began to really value myself, and my feelings.  I grew up a people pleaser, constantly trying to make everyone around me happy while forgetting that I needed to be happy too.  This sounds wonderful right?  Finally a wave of self worth hit me.  Never again would I let people hurt me.  Walk all over me. 

Now, though, I think I’m having a hard time deciphering the difference between intentional inflicted emotional pain by others, and their own want/need for confrontation.  I finally feel what the other side felt.  Leave me alone, I don’t want to talk about it! 

The things I’m avoiding are unfinished, up in the air, pending.  The longer I wait to face them, the harder it gets.  The harder it gets, the less and less likely I am to put any effort into resolving them.  I think it’s time I face the things I don’t want to, give them the closure they deserve and move on.  Because pretending that the weight of an avoided subject doesn’t sit cumbersomely on my shoulders is just one more thing I’m avoiding.

The Gateway

Bread is my gateway drug.  I’ve determined that once I have a slice of it, any kind of it, my appetite for things of its very nature (sugary, carby, fatty goodness,) is awoken from a dreamlike state of mind where it immediately begins running wild in the streets of cakes and alleys of refined sugar.   This terrible addiction became really obvious when my husband took me for Italian food last weekend and I leapt before looking, right into the pile of bruschetta lying before me.  Oh but it was so good, and really, the vegetables on it make it healthy don’t they?!

But that was just the beginning.  Next, a giant basket of warm bread just asking to be eaten is placed before me.  How rude not to indulge in this fine establishment.  I’m sure the look of pure intoxication in my eyes is what kept my husband from asking for the last piece.

Here’s where it goes from bad to worse.  The next day, my whole being was craving foods that I knew were absolutely no good for me, and worse, foods that I knew would fracture the entire structure of “being good” I had worked on the week before this derailment.  Chips, burgers, flatbread, oh no am I seeing a pattern here?

I decided to hit the interwaves on this one.  I ran across several “you are what you eat” articles, but what does that really mean?  Hello, my name is Bread, and I’m a fluffy, white, carb filled slice of sustenance??  Maybe I am what I eat…  Then I found a bit of scientific reasoning (if I read it on the internet, it has to be tested and proven right?)

“Refined carbs include heavily processed or high sugar foods like white breads/bread snacks, regular sodas, most breakfast cereal, sweets, candy, cookies and cakes.

Refined carbs cause your blood sugar levels to rise very fast and then crash very quickly making you crave for more sugar (refined carbs).”

And there you have it.  The gateway to all the things we should not crave but do.  There's only one way I know to stop the madness.  Remove temptation, completely.  It will be hard, there will be peer pressure, and relapse is most likely in my future.  But it's time to put this habit to rest.

Hello, my name is Rachel, I'm a recovering breadaholic...and I'm one day sober.

The pursuit of...

I wouldn’t say my life is fabulous, perfect or even really all that exciting.  In fact, most days it borders on the monotonous.  What I will say is that it’s a good life, filled with good people and good feelings.  Sure, I have the occasional, “life is shit, this place is shit, my hair is shit” days, but most of them are spent smiling and thinking about the good that has come my way.

I heard a comment that “happy people are kind of annoying and arrogant.”  My first silent response to this, being the happy person I am, was “Shut up you Negative Nancy, and stop being jealous!”  After I put a bit more thought into this gut reaction, I realized; well isn’t that just an annoying response to your annoyance?  Hmmm…

After a while, I came to a few strong conclusions.  First, I should stop wondering why this person hates happy people and start wondering, “Why is this person not happy?”  Of course, that’s biting off a bit more than I can chew because we all know don’t we, that only you can make yourself happy in the end.  And really, what was I hoping could come out of this pondering?  That I, this happy, yet simple individual could make this unhappy person light up with joy at the snap of my fingers?  How arrogant I really must be!  But I was on the right track.  Stop being angry that my happiness didn’t sit well, and start spreading my happiness to those it doesn’t come so easily to.  And so forth to my second conlcusion...

Maybe my happiness with life is boastful, and unknowing.  Maybe I wasn’t taking into consideration that so many people don’t have a great or wonderful life, and just getting up in the morning might be a major accomplishment for them.  Maybe, in all my smiling and high fiving and energetic “hello’s,” I was only rubbing the fact that my life doesn’t exactly suck into the faces of those living quite the opposite. 

I again sat and thought about this for a while and came to my final conclusion.  Energy, whether positive or negative, is spread with or without conscious effort.  If I chose to censor my happiness, hide it away from those who don’t want to see it, all I’m doing is feeding the negative juice with more negative.  And since misery does love company, the haters of the happy will keep on hating, and eventually, won’t I become just another hater?  So instead, I’ll keep on smiling, keep on adding my little bits of joy to the air, and keep reveling in my never-ending pursuit of converting the unhappy to the lighter side of life!  Join me, and refuse to stop being happy! =)

and she doesn't even like chocolate!

Last night, after drenching myself through 4.5 miles in 50 minutes and 500 calories gone, I could think of only three things.  The feeling of the cool air on my sweaty skin while driving with the windows down the 2 minutes home, the chocolaty goodness of fresh-ish brownies in the refrigerator and an ice cold glass of 2% milk to wash it down.  What?!?  Let's rewind to the beginning of the chocolate catastrophe and break it down.
a.) I don't even like chocolate.  The taste usually induces vomit or gagging and I'm just not interested
b.) I think the only thing I detest more than chocolate is any milk with a higher percent than 0.  Skim milk is my sheppard, I shall not want. 
Seriously, what came over me?  The only thing I can attribute to this breakdown in my taste buds is the hearty workout and feeling of accomplishment.  I craved myself some comfort food, and by golly, I treated myself to it.  And do you know how it felt?  Magical.

Tonight brings another night of cardio to my table, but the brownies and milk won't be making the dinner table cut.  Life can't be sweet ALL the time!

and we're back in 5, 4, 3, 2....

LIVE!  That’s right people, I am aLIVE!

My One Hundred Days wasn’t a complete and miserable failure.  Miserable failure, yes, completely, no.  As you can observably tell, I did not conquer all 100 days in the ONE HUNDRED DAYS challenge as planned.  At some point while fighting off starvation, and batting away constant temptations of yummy, delicious, terrible food, this self admittedly “weak” soul gave up.  Gasp!  Yes, you read that correctly, I gave up.  Sigh…

When I awoke this morning at 4:15am to the sound of my cell phone alarm (that I’ve decided sounds like the spaceship of a 1980s sci fi flick,) I decided that a change is a comin’ and whether I’m ready or not, it’s on my doorstep.  No pretending I’m not home now.

Here’s what’s different this time.  NO unrealistic goals.  Can I really go into this expecting that I won’t be tempted by Sunday Afternoon Football Chili?  Can I really say to myself that I will be as straight as an arrow when I’ve got this wonderful new wine rack to carry all these shiny new bottles of wine?  And can I really…REALLY…really say that for the next 100 days I will torture myself into the submission of greatness??  NO, I WILL NOT say or think any of those things!  I’m human, I’m a woman and I’m 26 years old.  There is no perfect in my life.

What I WILL say for this time around, is that I am about to make a conscious and driven effort to put myself into the best shape that I’ve ever seen in one year’s time.  The goal is completely attainable, as with any goal a person is 100% committed to reach.  I am more willing to withstand pain, sweat, and tears today than I was at day one of the One Hundred Days challenge.  And this time, I’m not challenging myself to anything.  I am promising myself that I will make the next 365 days miraculous.

Yay!