DUDE. It's halfway through 2014 already. Who's this crazy person making time go by so freaking fast?! Srsly.
Anywho, Since we're 6 months into this thing, I thought it might be interesting to look back at my new year's resolutions and see how it's going. There are probably others that I forgot because I didn't write them down, but I think most of them were a tad metaphysical in nature, so whatever. Anyway, here we go!
Not Date Anyone Younger Than Me
Well, this one has gone just swimmingly, considering I haven't dated anyone :P
WRITE
This one has not gone as well as I would like :/ It hasn't gone completely terribly though. This blog, for instance! ...Okay, so I haven't been keeping up with this either, but...the beginning of this year was crazy and weird, let's just put it at that.
I have still written a few poems, done a bunch of free-writes, worked really hard on a screenplay (granted, it was for a class, but still, it was actually something I wanted to write), and written several scripts for special events at work.
I plan to do much more writing over the summer, and hopefully will have some time to write in the fall when I'm at Disney...but we'll see.
What I really need to make myself do is start writing every single day. Doesn't matter what, just write. I need to get it to where writing is a daily habit - where I feel weird if I don't write anything that day. So, starting today, let's make that my mid-year resolution :D
Spend Time With People
Since I'm moving to California in August, and I had kind of been a terrible friend last year (see Reflection and Resolution), I really wanted to make a point to see people and hang out with them this year. It's been going fairly well. I did end up being ridiculously busy with school and Fiddler, but I still managed to really make time for people. It's been really nice.
Particularly, since my mom moved in with her mom to be her caretaker, my mom and I have really had to be intentional about spending time together. Last year, I kind of took her for granted and barely saw her because I essentially just came home to sleep. It's kind of funny that now that we don't live in the same house anymore, our relationship is actually stronger. I make time to go over and visit her, get coffee, go shopping, and just hang out. And it's totally worth it. My mom is pretty awesome, and I'm way lucky to be able to talk to her like one of my best friends.
Get Healthy
Yeeeeah, this is a a pretty dang common resolution, and one that I've been trying to make for years. However, I'm pretty pleased to say that it's actually been going pretty well this year! I've been trying to make it a point to work out at least 3 times a week, and have prettymuch only missed that for illness, injury, and finals. Also, I plan to run my first 5k in August. Yeehaw!
I think it's important to note here the reasons why I wanted to start exercising more. One, I wanted to not feel weak, helpless, and sickly. Two, endorphins are awesome and a great way to help kick depression and anxiety in the booty. Three, I wanted to prove to myself that I can do things again that I thought I couldn't, like running. Four, to get my 6-pack back. Five, to get my split back. Six, to have enough confidence in myself to seriously study dance again.
My health has been kind of weird the past few years. Before my lungs got nasty and my stomach started being super evil around 2010, I really enjoyed running and exercising. But, when celiac disease happened and I went undiagnosed for a while and completely trashed my immune system, trying to do any kind of hardcore exercising kind of sucked. One huge factor was not being able to get enough oxygen to my muscles because my asthma kicked in whenever I tried to run. Another huge factor was that my body wasn't absorbing nutrients because gluten had sabotaged my digestive tract. Another factor was depression which threw off the chemicals in my brain, and consequently made my stomach even worse. Also, very low energy due to all these factors! Wooooooooooooooot.
But! All was not lost! My lungs have since healed up quite a bit since the horrible 3-month bout of bronchitis followed by horrible flu and relapse of auto-immune disease in 2011. Now, if I make sure to take 2 puffs of albuterol before running, I can actually do pretty well! Yay! Also, toward the end of 2013, after doing extensive tests to find out why my stomach likes to be super evil all the time and finding nothing out of the ordinary on every single test they can do, the doctors decided to put me on a mild antidepressant, which has helped IMMENSELY. I'm not nauseated all the time now! Hooray!
I've actually been able to eat normal-person-sized amounts of food without feeling like curling up in a ball for the rest of the day. It's kind of awesome. But you know what else has just recently started happening? I've actually been absorbing the food I eat and have finally been able to gain weight. I am now a whole 12 pounds more than I was a year ago!
This is kind of a weird development for me. I've been trying to gain this weight for several years, and now it just kind of happened. And I suddenly feel a little weird about it. I didn't really realize it before, but a lot of my identity had started to become wrapped up in being super skinny, kinda sickly and frail, and being unable to gain weight. Now that I suddenly have some...volume...to my hips, I feel weird about it - like people are going to start judging me for having hips and thighs (most of which are muscle anyway with a comparatively small layer of fat). And I hate thinking that way, because when I was crazy skinny, I still had body issues. I hated the fact that my ribs were so clearly visible and that my hip bones jutted out. Right now, I am LOVING the fact that my ribs don't show all the time and that my bras actually fit! But I'm waaaaay self-conscious about my hips now. Which is stupid. It's really, really stupid.
I think my body-image issues, at 103 and 120, stem from my propensity toward perfectionism. Being so skinny wasn't perfect because my ribs were gross, and having a layer of fat on my legs isn't perfect because it should ALL be muscle (even though I'm a female and it's totally normal to have that layer of fat). Why do I do that to myself? Rather than focusing on what's wrong with my body, I should be focusing on what's going right with it. I have some really fantastic muscle tone on my legs, and I'm finally kinda curvy! And nobody's going to judge the way I look half as harshly as I judge myself. Besides, friends and family have been telling me how great I look lately - that I look healthy. That's what's most important anyway, right?
So, I'm going to continue exercising and dancing, not because I want other people to approve of my perfect figure, but because I want to. I'm going to exercise because I enjoy it, because it makes me feel good, and because I want to actually take care of myself. And if I want to eat a few cookies, by golly I'm gonna eat those cookies so hard they won't even know what hit 'em, because I LIKE COOKIES!!!!
So there.
Confidence
One more thing. This wasn't exactly a resolution that I made in January, but something I've been discovering this year.
Last Saturday, I sang in a little Broadway cabaret fundraiser thing that the music director of Fiddler asked me to do. Two other ladies singing on this program were super amazing and had done a TON of musical theatre. I've only done 4 musicals in my life, and just recently learned how to belt. I was so nervous to get up and sing in front of them.
But, as my anxiety was starting to creep in, I stopped. I thought, "what am I doing? I'm not a beginner - I'm a very talented individual. I totally deserve to be on the same stage with these ladies. I'm really good too, and people enjoy watching me perform." And it worked. I got out there and did my best. I didn't hold back because I was embarrassed or thought they were going to compare me to anyone else. I just got up there and sang, and it felt awesome.
Something similar happened the other night in dance class. I was really nervous because I haven't been able to dance in about a year because of injury, Fiddler, and sickness, and was also nervous because I know I'm not as flexible as many of the girls in my class. But I'm still pretty freaking flexible! I can do the splits! And I'm a dancer. I may not have been dancing as long or as regularly as a lot of these girls, but I am a dancer. I know the terminology and the movements. Maybe my legs don't get as high as the other girls, but they still do the right thing and look pretty doing it. I told myself I belonged there. As soon as I did, my dancing got better. Especially in dance, if you tell yourself "I'm bad at this" or "I can't do that thing," you probably won't be able to. But if you tell yourself you know what you're doing, even if it takes you a little longer, you'll get it.
I hope I can learn to translate those feelings of belonging and right to be there into other areas of my life. I'm really sick of doubting myself and apologizing for my existence.
