Existential Angst

Again, I find my inner jukebox playing:

Where do we go from here, now that all of the children have grown up?*

It has nothing to do with playing games, this song running through my mind. It has to do with my wondering just what I should be doing with my life right now.

For decades, my predominant focus has been on my children, although admittedly, I've had other foci, as well. But no matter whether I was focused on work or my weight/health, or my marriage or my spirituality, the underlying driving force in my life was my love for my children and doing all I could to ensure their health, their happiness, their education, and their safety ... in the present and in the future.

They are 25 and 23 now. They have long since taken control of their own health, their own happiness, education and safety. It's time for me to figure out the rest of my mission on this planet!

And then, again, maybe it is simply to live a long, happy, prosperous, and beautiful life surrounded by people I love and who love me.

Maybe, that's all that's required of me.

Maybe.

* Games People Play by the Alan Parsons Project

Question: how many hours a day can one focus on a project without getting sidetracked?

My experience this week says the answer is about 11.

Pickin' up my crest, dustin' it off, and movin' on

Choosing is so much easier when life is going smoothly!

I'm disappointed that I chose to allow myself the indulgence of drama and anger and hurt and depression when things got rough.

I am better now. Still waiting to hear what kind of action can be taken, should be taken, for damage control. But not mentally and physically KO'd anymore.

Movin' on.


OH! And I took a walk again today; met John about a mile away, where he had a hair cut ... then home. AND I ate vegetarian today. Yes, I'm back.

Crestfallen

My community of choice would be one that lives up to (or at least conscientiously holds mindfulness about) these principles:

The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Unfortunately, my experience is that the first principle goes out the window as soon as someone feels "wronged" in some way. Then, the inherent worth and dignity of the "OTHER" is discarded in the righteous indignation of the offended party. And nothing seems powerful enough to pull us back on course, back to mindfulness that we are all striving to live by these principles -- that this is what we have in COMMON. Only what divides us, what makes ME better than THEM, is important anymore.

I'm so disappointed. And I'm not exempt from transgressing in the same way. I want to have my wrongs righted, and when I'm whipped into this righteous indignation myself, I forget completely that the OTHER also has inherent worth and dignity.




It makes me want to live on a deserted island, sometimes. It's so much easier to be mindful, alone.

And yet, community is something I value so highly ....

Pondering imponderables.

Can these principles and human nature be reconciled? Or are they ideals unreachable by mere humans?

Mindful Choices: Day 3

1. Another cool house, 2. Sidewalk Art, 3. Tanya and me, walking, 4. City Market - Shorewood, WI

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Another walk at lunch - only about 50 minutes, leisurely pace because Tanya had 3" heels on. Fresh air, great to talk with her after her trip to Riyadh. Felt good!

Mindful Choices: Day 2

1. John and I had a picnic dinner in the park!, 2. UWM's Downer Woods, 3. Klode Beach Park - Whitefish Bay, WI, 4. Atwater Beach Park - Shorewood, WI, 5. Sunset, 6. Crocuses where yesterday there were none!, 7. Atwater Beach Park - Shorewood, WI, 8. Atwater Beach Park - Shorewood, WI, 9. Kane and Amy, 10. UWM Alumni House, 11. Taking the stairs, 12. My favorite Irishman, 13. UWM's Downer Woods

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Took an hour and a half walk today with Amy and Kane, from UWM to Atwater Beach Park, to the Alumni House, and back to UWM. Also chose the stairs on my way to a 3rd floor meeting in Sabin, and walked around Klode Beach Park with John after work.

The weather was at least 70 degrees, even near the lake. What a beautiful day!

Mindful Choices: Day 1

1. Blossoms!, 2. Dinner at Harry's restuarant, 3. The long walkway to parking garage, 4. Winter debris, 5. Looking up at Enderis Hall, 6. Looks like a tack in the tire..., 7. Reflecting, 8. Pita and hummus, 9. Verboten, 10. Steep stairway to the lake -- off limits., 11. UWM Alumni House, 12. Cereal and scone, 13. Gorgeous exterior

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Movement:

• Walked the full block (don't laugh, I'm trying) from Maryland and Hartford to work (rather than John dropping me at the door).


• Walked for over an hour at lunchtime! Went toward the lake, saw garden sculptures and blossoming spring flowers, lots of sunshine, and enjoyed every minute of it, despite a little briskness in the air. Lovely!

• Enjoyed waiting outside for John after work, and walking to the parking garage.
  

Fuel:

• At my desk: vitamins, cereal and skim milk, low fat cranberry/orange scone, Spicy Mountain Peach Tea = breakfast


• At my desk: 7 tiny pitas with about 5 oz. of plain hummus = lunch (oops! 2.5 hours later, and the hummus isn't sitting very well ... glad I have Tums. I think there was too much garlic. "Too much garlic?!? No such thing!!" I'd love to say. But, in reality .... Well, on second thought, perhaps it was the hummus with the Peach Tea chaser. In any case, here come the Tums.)

• At Harry's restaurant: pan-seared scallops with angel-hair pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, and white wine sauce and bread.
  

• At the Last Drop Coffee Shop: August Vanilla Bean Steamer. Truly delicious.

Spirit:

• Photography. It felt so great to take pictures of something besides food!

• Took a different direction and different route for my lunchtime walk than I ever have before, and saw lots of wonderful things I hadn't seen before. And having my camera with me means I could also record some of them. Even wiating for John was enjoyable with my camera to keep me company.
  

• Sunshine! What more do I need to say!?!

• Lovely dinner and companionable evening with my wonderful husband!
  

Choosing to walk ... with bare toes!

Yeah, it was warm today! I wore the flip-flops to prove to myself that I could.

John and me.

Not a long walk, but it sure felt good!

Choosing not to move, again

It's too easy to settle in, even with an awareness that I should move, that I want to move. Settling in with the computer, with the TV, with food. I wanted to take a walk today, but not badly enough to actually do it. I did have a headache, and took a 2.5 hour nap ... but then, instead of taking a walk, I checked my email, finished making the spinach pie I started yesterday, and generally wasted the rest of my day.

It doesn't help that I'm watching 98-pound Michele Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys. I have to get a perspective on what's possible and reasonable to expect for MY body. And just do it.

Choosing to Notice - Looking Up

This view of this building reminds me of "perspective drawing" in high school art class!

The sky is so much more interesting with clouds ....

I couldn't even see what I was taking a picture of in the viewfinder, because it was so bright . The sun was behind those clouds, just blazing away.

It feels good to be taking pictures of the world around me again.

Reality Check

Eighteen pictures of me (taken with the auto function), superimposed over one another with the collage tool in Picasa. The individual pix are too depressing to post here, but seeing them helped me decide NOT to wear that outfit to work.

No photo journal = heartburn? Really?

I admit that I ate mindlessly, for the most part, yesterday. Not badly, necessarily, just mindlessly.


No photo journal, no accountability?


Well, not quite.


But when I reached what would have been (during a photo-journal day) the end of eating (partly because of mindfulness, partly because it's a pain to pull the camera out and modify the photo journal for a handful of candy!), I kept going. Not a "binge," in the sense of "out of control." But definitely more than I've been indulging for the past 3+ weeks.


And, for that, I suffered. Heartburn. The trigger? Innocent-looking pink and while candies.


I knew better. I did it anyway. This is how we learn.













Photo is used under the creative commons license.

"oh, my...." re: me from the outside

This is definitely a good direction for me to go, if my goal is to be mindful and bring my body image into alignment with reality. I'm not exactly sure whether that's a good idea, overall, though.

I looked at my last blog posting this morning, again. I can't express to you how hard it is for me to absorb the fact that those are images of how I really look.

I have LONG wished that mirrors had never been invented, because I could then believe I was absolutely beautiful, based on how other people respond to me -- honest, it's good! But when I see 'me' I know it's something besides my appearance they're responding to -- which is also good -- but feels incongruent.

ANYWAY ... my only worry in this expedition is that there are things that are irreconcilable. I may be able to lose weight and pare down my overall mass ... but there's nothing I will reasonably do about the overbite, the broken nose, the ... age. Sigh.

I am I.

Onward.

Me, from the Outside

I'm finished with the visual food diary for now. It's clear to me that I don't usually over-eat. I do usually under-move.

Today was another perfect example:

- John dropped me off right outside the building I work in (thank you!)
- I sat at my desk from 8:40 a.m. until 5: 30 p.m., with very few exceptions
- John and I walked to the car (7 minutes)
- and then I sat around the house for the remainder of the night.

The problem is definitely lack of movement.

This is not new news.

I'm just looking for new motivation to get me to do things differently.

The visual food diary helped make me more mindful of what I was eating. I'm hoping a visual record of what I look like from the outside -- all around, not just the part I usually see in the mirror -- might be a visual and mental motivator to get me to MOVE!

Food Choices: Photo Journal - Day 26

3/10/09

Breakfast 8:30 a.m.

Raspberries, cereal, milk -- at my desk.

Lunch 11:30 a.m.

I don't know why ... when I saw the smoked oysters at Trader Joe's, I just wanted them. When I didn't have something ready to take for lunch today, they seemed a logical choice. They were really good with the pita.

But I gotta tell you ... the flavor of smoky-too-salty oysters stays in my mouth LONG after the desire for them has been satisfied.

Girl Scout cookies - a little too many, but I was trying to kill the salty smoky flavor, unsuccessfully.

Dinner 6:30

Baked potato leftover from last night's dinner at the Glen Cafe, Dove bites, and two triangles of TJ pastry crust with a sprinkling of shredded cheddar.

Food Choices: Photo Journal - Day 25

Food Choices: Photo Journal - Day 24

Food Choices: Photo Journal - Day 23

Walking on a Beautiful Spring Day

It was gorgeous outside today. I don't mean "nice." I mean 60+ degrees, sunny, I-wore-no-coat gorgeous. In Wisconsin. On March 6.

I chose to leave my desk and go for a walk. I chose to call my husband and ask if he was free to take a walk *with* me. I waited for him to finish his project, and we talked and walked hand-in-hand to the coffee shop up the street, got some food "to go," and went back to work.

That's my kind of lunch date. I'm so lucky!

 

What am I choosing ... to watch?

I'm not sure why I watch The Sarah Connor Chronicles ... at times it's disturbing, but part of me wants to know how young John Connor gets to be *the* John Connor.

But I refuse to watch Dollhouse. I saw about 10 minutes of this show tonight, and decided to leave the room.

As a result, I learned some new things about Picasa photo editing. :-)

Food Choices: Photo Journal - Day 22