Loud, Loud World

 

Good Morning,

It's been a slow one, slow to get moving and all that.

I have so many things on my mind. Probably too many things on my mind.

Anyone reading this probably already knows that I cancelled my show. It had to do with a lot of things. For the amount of people that were coming over, I was mortified at the small amount of products I had available and that not everything in the lines were made. I was not able to do lotion, body butters and oils. I was not able to do the sugar scrubs.

I was embarrassed.

And overwhelmed.

And depressed.

And sick of myself.

But I learned a lot and something happened in the process, the day before yesterday, that was unexpected. I realized that I have been going about this in the wrong way for years. I've constantly set myself up for failure and I do that in all aspects of my life, let's face it. And as better as I have gotten in some respects, I am still so fucking good at being in denial about things, justifying them and making excuses.

I want to go to big first of all. I wait until the last minute. I don't research, I don't experiment...bla bla bla.

How many times have I written in blogs that I want to get from A to Z without doing B through Y? How many times?

I am an instant gratification girl.

Life very rarely works that way.

And I am in my head about way to many things. The world is so fucking loud and so at odds with itself.

How did we get here?

All I can do is take care of myself in this.

So I took my fucking fitbit off yesterday and I'm not putting it back on. If my goal is 8,000 steps, I know that it takes me about 10 minutes of walking/dancing, etc. to get to 1000. So having roughly 40 minutes of physical activity a day is a goal. It doesn't have to be hard core working out. It can be a walk or I can dance to music.

I don't need to know that my resting heart rate has gone way up, I don't need to know that I got in a sucky 3 hours of sleep and that most of it wasn't deep sleep or REM. I don't need to know any of that. 

I talk about working and how it makes me feel like a slave but I'm a slave to a lot of other things, amongst them are:

• The details of my Fitbit
• Smoking
• Drinking coffee
• Buying "things"
• My lists
• Food/diet plan/weight loss
• Scrolling through my phone

There's more but let me start there. If there's anything else I need to look at, at some point, it will reveal itself to me.

We just covered the Fitbit shit. I took the fucker off. As soon as I get insurance, I am going to go in for a physical. If my B/P is still high at that point, I will address it.

Smoking. Oh my God. This one has become a loaded gun and it's not because of the cost although that factors in. It's because of the shame. I can't smoke on my deck here. I have to go out to my car and because of the way I am, I am embarrassed about it. I feel like the whole complex is watching me and thinking, "my god, she smokes too much." And in addition to that, I smell so bad now because I'm confined to my car. I hate it. I hate  it. There is so much shame in this for me.

The smoking has to go. I think the best way for me is to go cold turkey. I cannot do the taper. I do not have a taper valve in me. I am either in active addiction to something or I am not. I have to quit.

There's a saying that if you want to have self-esteem, then do esteemable things. Smoking is not an esteemable thing for me and I can't get past the shame of it. I don't need it to live, like I do with food. It can go.

Coffee. I am the same way with coffee that I am with smoking. There is no limit for me, there is no one cup a day. If it's in the house, I'll drink it the way I used to drink beer. When I sleep so shitty, and it affects me the way it does, I can't be drinking caffeine. The only thing I can think of that could potentially work is to get a Kuerig, even though I hate the way the coffee tastes. But that's another expense and those pods that they use? You want to talk major fucking pollution? Major fucking waste? Our planet, while not in her death throes, is not doing so well. She's fighting back. I don't know that I want to piss her off more.

So I think that the coffee has to go. I did read this morning that abrubt cessation of coffee can however, fuck up a lot of things. I'm already depressed and I already struggle with sleep. I can't afford even less than I'm already getting so for this week, I am only having one cup. I don't have it in the house, I'm paying for it. I got a medium, not a large. It's the only one I'll have each day and on Saturday, I'll go down to a small. One week and then no more. It'll be a constant state of withdrawal but it won't be abrupt. So I have a plan for the coffee.

Buying things, man, I have to figure that one out. It's simple, right? Don't buy things. You would honestly have to go inside my head to understand why this is so hard for me but I do have skills that I learned from my DBT therapy that can at least help and I have applied them and at times they have helped me determine whether something is a Pierre purchase. Don't ask. Just trust the process here. It's actually called something else but I changed it for purposes of this blog. A Pierre purchase is something I think I want or need or will use or must have but it actually serves no purpose whatsoever, or I already have plenty of that kind of thing. Pierre purchases run deep with me.

So it's just looking at that, starting to question everything I want to buy and assigning it as a genuine need or something I really wanted but saved for, or if it's a Pierre purchase. I have already begun this process but it's been half assed. Time to go full on ham, or full tilt boogie...whatever, you get the point. For this one, I am going to take my DBT workbook out and start working on the skills again. 

The great thing about that is that it will spill over into other parts of my life.

My lists. I beat myself up so fucking bad with this one. You all know that, I write about it a lot.

I don't think that having lists is a bad thing; I don't. But I have got to be willing to do the whole thing. The end goal list and the breakdown list and the daily task list.

Because my lists are making me fucking crazy and oftentimes there is little resolution or completion of jack shit.

So what I'm gonna do here is use the internet in a positive way and look up how to set goals, have to have plans, how to break it down and make it manageable. This is another one that I am all or nothing with.

So I commit to that.

I'm getting sick of writing but I'm forcing myself to finish this blog before going on to something else because I get bored and start looking for distractions. I'm trying to fight that too.

I obsess about food, about the right diet and about exercise; I make elaborate meal plans, I have rigid exercise goals. Fuck it. The bottom line is that it comes down to calories in/calories out and I can work with that. I can have days where I eat a bit healthier and days where I allow things that aren't as healthy but it comes down to calories in/calories out. As far as exercising, that is a part of CI/CO but it's also about building strength, endurance, keeping my body fit. Exercise helps with heart shit, blood pressure shit, depression, you name it. It doesn't have to be this regimented insanity though.  I need to let go.

Internet. Ok, I think we could ALL use this one. Stop the fucking scrolling. You wanna talk slavery and maybe it's not politically correct to use that term. I in no way, trying to compare the confines of my mind to actual/physical slavery. I do mean to dismiss or to minimize that. It's the only analogy I can use that makes sense to me. I got rid of all my streaming services. I will allow myself FB in the morning and FB maybe for a quick check in the evening. I am going to remove notifications from all my social media and cancel all texts from I get from businesses about sales, etc. I will check my emails once a day, on my computer, not my phone. I have no games on my phone. The only service I still have is Spotify and I can't live without that one. I am going to be listening to music again, a lot.

So...speaking of lists. What of today? 

I am going to some cleaning, no expectations, just some cleaning.

I am going to do some job search, no goal today, just look and if there's something that fits, I'll apply for it

I am going to pick my friend up from the airport.

I am going to go grocery shopping - actually go, not order and pick up. As much as people freak me out, I gotta engage.

That's it for today.

Whew, we got through all that. I only left my chair twice, once to get a drink of water and once to poop.

So that's an accomplishment.

Be Blessed.

Love & Light,

Neecie