Saturday, April 28, 2012

Oh, hello.

Today, I crawled back on the Weight Watchers wagon after falling off for about a week.  I learned something during that time: that I have learned enough about food portions and the type of food I'm eating that I can no longer eat unconsciously.  I may and have still eaten it but I am aware of what I'm feeding myself and I can't tell myself that it's doing no harm.  While I may no longer be able to eat unconsciously, I still do eat out of boredom but even that's getting better.  I am noticing that I'm eating when I'm not hungry.  Now I need to stop doing that.  Pounds wise, I didn't do too much damage just gained back a couple of pounds; health wise, it wasn't good, no doubt about that.  Losing weight isn't just about how much I eat because on the points system, I could use all my points eating chocolate all day.  It's also about relearning to eat healthier food.

Boredom is my bĂȘte noire.  I just typed that into Google translate thinking it meant dark night.  Their translation is black beast and boredom really is a black beast for me because I don't or haven't used it as a catalyst to do something about it.  The average lifespan is about 25,000 days, which means if I live an average lifespan, I have about 10,000 days left, more or less.  I don't have a whole lotta time to waste anymore.  Dr. Christmas and I spend some of our evenings together watching TV (The Voice, Vampire Diaries) and we do watch series on dvd that we don't see because neither of us have HBO or Showtime.  But I find myself wanting the dvds to be over, that's it's a chore instead of a pleasure, and the Dr. is feeling it as well.  Summer is almost here and I would rather be out and about, or learning French again on my Rosetta Stone, or reading a good book, or practicing singing (it's not good but I enjoy it) or just about anything else than sitting in front of the TV.  I have to remember this feeling when I plop on the couch and flip on the tube and zone out in front of it.  If I'm not enjoying it, why am I doing it?

All of this stuff is just learned behavior and if I learned to do that, I can learn to do something more.  Something better.  Something that makes me feel like I am accomplishing something, that I am learning something.  I believe there are lessons all around us every day and by stopping for a moment and noticing what's going on, I can learn something and use it to become a better person.  Yesterday when I got home from work, I was feeling irritated and agitated.  I wasn't sure what set me off but I knew that something was going on.  Ben and I were going for our walk when I got home but I didn't want to go feeling this way.  So I sat down to take five minutes to breathe and figure out why I was feeling the way I was. I didn't want to go for a walk and lash out at Ben because it wasn't about him.   I also didn't want to sit down and melt into the couch and whine about not wanting to go, so when I sat down I set my intention that I was using this time to take a breath so that I could go out and enjoy my walk. What I found was a mixture of things.

A lesson from yesterday at lunch.  I went to a farewell luncheon for a longtime friend and colleague from work who has been let go.  There were probably 30 people there and I happened to be sitting near a couple of other longtime friends and colleagues.  These folks have, for the last 10 years, worked in another building so I don't see them every day, usually just at things like this luncheon.  One of them I remembered as being a cool guy, funny, kind of a wise ass, but someone who's company I really enjoyed.  Now, I don't know what's going on with him, but from the few things he said it sounds as if his life is going along okay.  He just seemed really bitter and sour, not like the guy I remember working with.  He wasn't what made me irritated but I thought about him when I sat down to breathe and used him as a lesson.  Whatever set me off, I really needed to let it go rather than drag it along through the rest of my day.  I don't want to be sour or bitter.  I don't want to live the rest of my day through one moment that might have annoyed me.  I don't want to give that thing or person that much power to affect me like that.  

The other thing is about change.  Something I believe about change on an energy and/or spiritual level is that it is instantaneous because there is no time or space on that level. On a physical level, change takes time.  And the way the physical body communicates to the spiritual body is through emotion.  My physical body was agitated. So I sat and breathed.  And I learned that my physical body is enthusiastic about feeling better but was stressed about feeling like IT HAS TO BE DONE NOW!  After several minutes of breathing and being entertained by the things I do to myself, I felt relaxed and went out for my walk in a great space.

So there are some of the things I've been doing while I haven't been here.  John Lennon said "Life is what happens to you while you're  busy making other plans."  So, so true.