There is nothing like a mid-night thunderstorm to make my creative juices flow. A thunderstorm is my creative aphrodisiac... I am literally sitting in my living room at midnight, all the lights in the house turned off, all the blinds open, and I am just enjoying the sound of the rain falling, the thunder rolling in the distance, and the sporadic flashes of lightning. It's the perfect time for me to reflect!
This has been such a weird week for me. My two month long fitness challenge ended on Saturday. I lost 8 pounds and 21.3 inches. Woo!! But it did more than that for me. It brought me out of a pretty dark depression (I'm pretty sure I've talked about this already). It got me moving. It got me eating right. It got me hydrated. It broke bad habits and bad relationships (with food and exercise and stress and boredom). It brought me out of a serious worth/value crisis. It gave me confidence and faith in myself.
When the challenge ended, I had every intention to just keep on trucking. But somehow, these last four days have been so... WEIRD! Although nothing has actually changed to affect my schedule, I feel like I have been busier. I feel like there is suddenly less time for me to get in my cooking and my workouts. I have been more lax about my diet, and have "enjoyed" some foods I hadn't had in a while: fried chicken, chips/dip, and ice cream.
I say "enjoyed" with quotation marks because although these foods are tasty going down, they do not sit well with me anymore!! I have spent more time in the bathroom these last four days... Shew-ee! It just affirms the work that was done in those two months and the progress that has been made. The last four days were "fun" (sort of... in the sense that it didn't "matter," except they weren't fun because of the consequences), but I'm ready to feel good again. I know I've gained some inches between bloating and improper hydration, so I'm ready for that to go down too!
I've been using a hashtag on my instagram posts, #fitforvegas. But this week particularly I've begun to realize that I need to think bigger picture than just that! This is the last year of my 20's! In December I will turn 30. I don't want it to be a case of "it's all downhill." I want it to be a case of "I finally have my life together."
My 20's have been great years. Years of experimentation. Exploration. Fun. But they have been fraught with a lack of discipline, a lack of self respect, a lack of self love. My successes in my 20s were basic successes. Such as landing a full time job with benefits. Yes, getting married and buying a home were big deals. But success is defined as more than those life events.
I want to be successful in my health. I want to be successful in my relationships - deep friendships. I want to be successful in my mental health. I want to be successful in my charity and outreach and volunteering. I want to be successful by being well read and well spoken. I want to be successful in being respected and seen as a good role model.
This little idea of improving my fitness to lose weight and look better is so petty and small minded compared to the big picture of what I want to accomplish now!
I want my life to be fraught with positivity. I want to strive to be better every day and stop settling for existence. So I'll continue my #fitforvegas hashtags. But I want to expand them to include things like #fitfor30 #fitforlife #success #aimingforsuccess or SOMETHING like that. LoL.
