Bring on the Haters!

You’re late!

I went to the gym this morning… It took me six minutes of laying in bed and debating with myself but I eventually got up and went. I dilly dallied getting my clothes on and forgot to put my gym bag together last night so I only left the house at 4:55. I sped over the bridge and careened into the parking lot at 5:03 only to find that every other 5am gymgoer was standing outside. I got out of my car thinking that maybe they were waiting for some sort of special event bus to come and pick them up and that I would just slip past them into the building. Ya, no. The girl that opens the gym ended up coming at 5:28… 28 min late! It was damn cold outside and waiting outside for 30 min to do half a workout was a bit of a slap in the face.

Now, do I wish I’d stayed in bed? No. That’s a good sign, since normally I would say yes, had I known that this would happen, I would have just slept in.

What I realized as I was doing my 28 min on the elliptical was that this has stopped being ‘kill you hard’. I ramped up the resistance and crossramp on the thing for the 2nd half of my workout so that I wasn’t just coasting along, but I wasn’t counting down every second as wanting to vomit or die… that’s a good sign… right? I recovered quicker and felt better than any other day I’ve been to the gym in the last two weeks so I was very happy. Altho I would have been happier if I could have gone and treadmilled for a few min.

Community

The one good thing about getting locked out of the gym at 5am is that because I chose to get out of bed this morning, chose to wait to get into the gym and then chose to work out as hard as I could for that measly 28 min, I felt part of a club. I chatted with the guys (cause I was the only girl there) and we commiserated about getting out of bed at that time, why we had to leave at a certain time (some of us have the science of am workouts down to the minute) and why this was ‘so stupid’. I missed being a part of a community like that. It’s a special group of people (my sister included.. of course it’s special!) who get up when everyone else is still snuggling and go put some sweat on the machines. I always liked being part of that group of people… and now I’m part of it again… It gives me a little bump up in drive and determination!

You’re no fun!

So it seems that my muscle memory for working out is coming back and with it, it’s bringing memories of other things. Like people being assholes about my personal changes. Now, I realize and learned this lesson many years ago that when YOU make changes, it’s your responsibility to help other people adapt. That seems weird to say right? Why do you have to manage other people’s reactions? Because it’s in your own best interest. When you make any sort of massive change, it rocks the boat of your world and those waves affect people around you. Normally I would say that everyone can deal with their own reactions to things outside their control but I know from experience that unless you want to just wash your life of all your friends and family that are feeling uncomfortable with the changes you’re making, you need to do a little management.

Of course by managing other people’s interaction with you, that doesn’t mean stop doing something for yourself because it makes others feel uncomfortable. But it does mean that you can help them adapt by adapting your own behavior to make the change less difficult for loved ones to deal with.

For instance, let’s pretend you’re getting married and your single friends are having a hard time dealing with it. You can help yourself by managing how the change is being presented. You can book girls nights, make sure that wedding talk doesn’t monopolize every single conversation and invite them to participate in a way that is both helpful to you and fulfilling for them etc… You’re not going to NOT get married because your single friends are upset but you can manage the change to make life easier for everyone, including yourself.

You're getting married??

Now, I’m not getting married, but the changes I’m making in my own life are starting to affect the people in my circle. I’m getting a lot of negativity and pushback from people I would have expected to be some of the biggest cheerleaders. And I’ve been declared un-fun for declining to go for cake and cookies and bottles of wine and beer. I’m still a lot of fun if you ask me but the ‘club’ I used to belong to (as opposed to the sports club I now belong to) is being shaken up. The security and security blanket of my participation being removed is rocking the boat big time!

People have other people in their lives for various reasons. Oftentimes it works for both parties. When one party changes the pieces around, the other party has now had a component of their life changed and sometimes removed. Often people do get over it in time and the change takes hold and the relationship evolves to continue to reward both parties.....but in reality, if you have friends who saw you only as a junk food eating, wine drinking, lazing about participant who potentially made them feel OK about that part of their own personality, it's possible that they will go elsewhere to fill their need for that. The part about managing this is the difficult thing. I don’t want to scrub clean my small circle of friends right off the bat without allowing a chance for the change to take hold and the relationship to evolve, so I will try to help them become more comfortable with the new me. What I will not do is work diligently on myself all the while consciously helping them adapt only to continue to get beaten up for it. A time will come when decisions have to be made about how people will fit into my new life.

Sisterly Love

There are few things I count on in life more than my relationship with my sister. I sent her a portion of this post that sounded like it was written by someone for whom English is their third language. She understood what I was trying to say and was able to put it into words. It’s incredibly comforting for me to know that she’s been down this road… I’ve been down this road in the past too, but I was young then and things important then are certainly not important now. She knows the hurdles and boulders that will be in my path and even tho I know I’m equipped to deal with them, having travelled this path before, she walked it more recently. I’m incredibly thankful for having someone in the world that can make my own thoughts sound coherent and who will cheer me on for every life circumstance, regardless if it potentially makes her feel uncomfortable for a minute. And I do the same for her!

Credit goes to my beautiful sister at  FittyvsFatty for writing portions of the ‘You’re No Fun!’ section!

Goodbye for Now

I have a weird confession to make… I hope you don’t think any less of me when you read this and I hope you see it as the harbinger of a new chapter like I do.

I’m breaking up with knitting.

Yup… you heard it here first.

I’ve found myself not knitting very much lately and instead of letting it just gradually slide away, I thought it would be better to look at it, figure out why and then put a proper closure to it.

If you’re not a knitter and/or you don’t know me very well, it would seem kind of crazy why I feel the need to forensically identify why I’ve not been knitting lately. I get that. If you are a knitter and/or you do know me, this may make a little bit more sense to you.

You see, I’ve been knitting non stop for almost four years to the day. March 23rd, 2009 was the birth of what can only be considered an obsession. Knitting was with me and on me everywhere I went. I’ve compiled a ludacris collection of handknits that I may never see enough cold weather in this life time to wear. I have items that went directly in to my heirloom knitting box to be saved… for what I’m not sure… but they are works of art in every sense of the word. I have items I made with yarn purchased on holiday, on a whim and on a bad day. I’ve spent HOURS scouring Ravelry for patterns, projects and inspiration. I’ve knit things for a selected few other people and taken great pleasure in seeing them in action!

So what’s changed? Well me of course.

Knitting was around when my life was falling apart… when I wanted nothing more to than to run as far away as I could (which ended up being the coffee shop down the street). Knitting was around when everything came crashing down around me. It was around when I was picking up the pieces and when I thought I was ‘better’. Then it was there when I wasn’t ‘better’ at all. I spent many a lovely cozy day with my knitting… slowly building up a wool armor around myself. Every stitch was a piece of protection that kept me safe. My sister once said that she liked wearing my handknits when she was having a bad sad or difficult day because it felt like she was wrapped in my love and protection. And that’s what I was doing for myself. Knitting was a shield I used to protect me from the outside world and in part, myself. I received what can only be considered superficial attention from my finished handknits and knitting in public.

But now I feel like exposing myself a little bit… taking down the walls stitch by stitch (oh don’t get crazy, I’m not unraveling all my finished knitting!). For the first time in years I feel like I can stand up, on my own two feet without being draped/wrapped or smothered in handknits. It’s an interestingly unique feeling. Like going outside in spring without a jacket on. A bit scary but surprisingly ok.

So, because I relied on knitting as somewhat of a crutch, I need to take a purposeful break from it. I need it to sit in the background and be less important than it once was.

I can already tell you without a bit of doubt that I will miss it and that I will come back to it in time. My life is in a state of transformation and knitting has to transform too. What I want to do is come back to it when I’ve reached a goal I’ve set for myself and knit a sweater. I want knitting to be purposeful when I come back to it. The sheer volume of items that I have knit in the last four years speaks to the incredible pain I was trying to heal. When next I pick up my knitting I want it to reflect who I am transforming to become… Purposeful, driven and focussed. We can’t stay friends if we both don’t change so knitting is going to go away for a while.

It’s pretty freeing to have scrutinized this and then written it out… Tonight I’m going to put everything away… All neat and tidy like so when it’s time to reunite, it will be a calm and orderly reintroduction.

Who I really am

I can feel a change coming… I can feel it scratching just inside my consciousness… just inside my soul… scratching to get out… twisting things in and out and up and down in an effort to alert my conscious self to its existence…



It seems like an odd time to be having this feeling of metamorphosis… it’s not Back to School, it’s not yet New Year’s… it’s certainly not spring… all the times that are generally the seasons of change… and yet here I am… feeling the itch to move along down the road of life.



I’ve been listening to the voice… to the scratching… to the incessant rubbing on my psyche like a burr under a saddle…. And it’s got a message.

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

Is it weird that the scratching is a Dr. Seuss quote? Maybe. I’m okay with that.



I feel as tho I am moving into the next incarnation of who I am meant to be. And the scratching is telling me to embrace it.



The voice in my heart is telling me that who I am is okay.



It’s okay to be an introvert. So the world thinks I’m an extrovert…outgoing, social and brave. I’m not. I prefer my alone time to a group of people. I don’t like loud noises or overwhelming sounds. I’m habitual to a fault and I’d rather have a scant handful of close friends than a gymnasium full of people that I only sort of know… And it’s okay to be honest with myself that I’m am a more reserved person… and I don’t necessarily always have to be a pretend extrovert… sure it’s helpful in certain situations but the more situations in which I am honest with myself, the better.



It’s okay to love yourself regardless of body shape. This is not to say that it’s not a positive endeavor to do what I can to be the most healthy I can be. What it does say is that it’s not okay to withhold self-love until I reach a goal. My grandparents have shown in the past that they value us more as people when we are housed in a thin frame. If it’s not okay for someone else to treat me like that, then it can’t be okay to treat myself like that. Maybe that’s the missing piece… maybe that’s the thought that I will finally derive success from… I am me… Can I be a better me? Sure! In all aspects… life is about self improvement and moving forward no matter what. But waiting until I am a ‘better’ me to like myself is just not okay.

It’s okay to want change. It’s okay to honor who I have been in years past and yet not want to be that person anymore. It’s okay to want to take my life in an alternate direction… even if I don’t know what that direction is exactly… It brings to mind a quote that was sent to me last year…

‘It doesn’t’ matter if the path you start down and the path you end on are the same, as long as you start down a path’.

I’ve committed my time, energy and talents to something new starting in January. I’m both nervous and excited and I’m looking so forward to putting myself out there… using my mind and my self to help others. I think to do this, I need to be an honest version of myself and while that is ever a work in progress, I need to at least be on the road there…



So I’m going to end this year… all seven weeks of it listening to the voice in my soul that is saying that I can embrace the new and better me that is itching to get out….