The Inevitable

I'm totally stuck in a cold-induced fog right now. Ugh. It's so disorienting and frustrating. Yesterday I couldn't remember the word for cafe au lait so I just said coffee with steamed milk, and it took me a couple minutes to come up with that one! Sigh. It was so scary that I couldn't remember what seems to me such a simple word/phrase.

It's very tough and scary and actually kind of hard to apply mindfulness to this situation. My brain has been in slow mode for about 4-5 days now, and I'm just ready to think like myself again!

A Great Quote

"how you do anything is how you do everything"

I read this yesterday on Jenna's wonderful blog, and I've been trying to make it my new mantra. I've heard it before, but the way her post set-up the quote really made it hit home for me. I suggest you check it out here.

PS--can anyone tell me why I can't make this italic font go away?? haha

Running from Goodness. Why?

I just did a quick, 5 minute meditation. Why don't I do this more often? Why do I mentally run from meditating regularly? I always have, even when I was meditating daily. But it is so good for me. It makes me feel calm and balanced. Running away from good things is kind of a theme in my life. Or it has been since around 7th grade. I'm trying to fix this. It just takes slow, daily commitment.


This is a great site from UCLA with several meditation downloads available: http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=22

The Wandering Mind and Happiness

Whatever people were doing, whether it was having sex or reading or shopping, they tended to be happier if they focused on the activity instead of thinking about something else. In fact, whether and where their minds wandered was a better predictor of happiness than what they were doing.

Click to read the whole article.

Here's My Confession

Meditating has been falling by the wayside. (Note: what is the wayside?) As in, I haven't been doing it everyday! I just kinda gradually stopped. I had been doing it everyday for well over a year, too. It's weird how that can just fall off. No conscious decision was made on my part, either.

Soooo, I will be meditating today and tomorrow and the next day. I'm recommitting myself to getting back on the path because I can REALLY tell a difference.

The Way to (and from) Work

I have to admit, I had bigger and better visions of pictures for this post. Well, perhaps not bigger. The fact is our weather has been just rainy and damp lately so my "walk to/from work" post is a little lacking. Let's call this my winter walk to/from work post. As it gets warmer I'll take lots of time to take fun and interesting pictures because I think I see lots of neat details in my neighborhood each day.

Right now, however, it's winter. We're expecting our fourth huge storm tonight and it's supposed to last until mid-Friday morning. So I leave you with this brief snapshot of what I saw tonight:

Tomorrow it'll look more like this:

You Tell Me

Remember when I talked about my "Just Do It" philosophy? Well, I totally fell off that wagon today. I live in Philadelphia and we got a crazy blizzard. As in a for real blizzard. I'd never even seen one of those before. It's actually still going on. Crazy. Because of the blizzard I got a for real snow day. I'd seen one of those before, but not in a long while. So I was home all day and did not meditate until 5:30 p.m. even though I was feeling anxious since mid-morning. What gives?

Power Vinyasa Yoga

There's a Baron Baptiste affiliated Yoga studio near me that I've been going to off and on for over 2 years now. Off and on because I would try out different studios from time to time, too. But I've decided I love Baptiste yoga. It's just for me. I mean, I've always known vinyasa (a style of yoga that focuses on breath and connecting each different yoga pose) is definitely my thing, but Baptiste vinyasa is without a doubt my thing. I took a class last night, and I think I'm going to start making it a more regular thing. I just felt so clear and awake afterward.

The studio near me is doing a six week intensive yoga/meditation program right now, but I don't want to impulsively commit myself to anything (since I tend to do that...) so I'm going to do my own version of it. I'm going to try to go 2-3 times/week and see how that feels. Perhaps the next time they offer the six week program I'll do it.

I'm also going to focus on continuing my meditation practice each day and continuing to make sure I have good food packed to eat at work (which is a goal I set earlier). I'll make sure and post my thoughts again after my next class.

more.now.again.

How do you keep mindfulness alive during particularly boring bouts at work?

I'm a tad bit at a loss on this one. I've tried deep breaths and re-focusing on reading materials that I don't really have to read but could read for work. In the end I just keep going back to reading things online and it makes me feel a little bit like I'm slowly going crazy. By reading random things online, visiting the same blogs over and over again I'm trying to do the opposite of mindfulness. I'm trying to escape from the present moment, from the reality of my situation, and at first it sounds like fun. Or like, oh, well, I just catch up on some gossip or news or whatever during this downtime, but it quickly spirals into nothingness and makes me feel crazy.

Should I just accept the random internet stuff as wanderings of my mind the same way that I accept the thoughts that pop up during meditation. Should I, as I do with thoughts during meditation, gently x-out of the web browser when it's obvious that I'm just aimlessly clicking away. This would follow the same idea as gently ignoring thoughts during meditation by saying "thinking" silently to myself and re-focusing on meditating. Could I do that at work? Could I say "mindlessly clicking" to myself and re-focus on my work or something else that is meaningful, such as writing for my blog or reading academic works online. I honestly don't even know if reading articles of a more academic nature would be any better. There's something about the glare of the computer screen that makes me feel crazy. Now, if I'm typing I feel fine.

Spending Free Time

Wow, it's been a while since I posted...

Anyway, today has been pretty darn boring, but I do have a whole topic that I want to talk about: the internet!

See, I think sometimes I mightmaybejustalittle have a small internet addiction. Perhaps addiction is much too strong of a word to use, but I'd say compulsion is good. For instance, I will go on at night time and only intend to do a couple of things and then shut the computer down, and then, bam, an hour has passed and I have no clue what I've been doing! It makes my brain hurt. All that staring at the screen and just checking out of the present moment. When I first graduated from college I would do this all the time. It was also before I found mindfulness meditation and I was searching for any way to just escape from the reality of post-grad life. I would just be online for hourssss. It was horrible. It made me feel bad, and I know I was neglecting my relationship with Liz because of it. Perhaps it was an addiction then. Now it's an occasional compulsion.

Well, now that we have the terms all defined, I'll explain my plan. I'm going to set an alarm for 15 minutes if I want to go on the internet while at home, and when the alarm goes off I'm done. As my old boss used to say, "D-U-N, done." She had some really great expression...another favorite of mine was, "This is weather for ducks! I'm going home!"

I also want to spend more time reading and even watching movies. Neither of those activities make me feel as crazy as going online for too long. I was actually just reading The New Yorker, and Liz is keeping track of my internet time so I will be off this thing in 10 minutes!

Have a Coke and a Smile

Now, I know I don't write too often (if ever?) about having an eating disorder. I like to think that it's because it really just hasn't been an issue in a couple of years. And it's true. It just really hasn't been an issue lately. The last time is was an issue at all was around Dec. of 2007, and it actually wasn't much of an issue at that time. It was more an issue in the "every woman has an eating disorder" sense.

Since Dec. 2007, through much trial and error in learning how to eat intuitively, I have largely returned to my pre-ana (though I can't really remember what that was like, to be honest) way of relating to food. ...With one caveat. There's always one, huh? I still remain scared of coke.

When I google scared of coke I get lots of stuff about people who are scared of kicking a cocaine habit and even quite a few sites about some child that is scared of what happens when you combine mentos and coca-cola.

Perhaps I should reframe. I'm scared of coca-cola, you know soda with calories. Diet coke isn't scary. I mean, I guess it actually is if you think about the crazy stuff that's in it, but eh, I can drink it in moderation, and I feel neither one way or the other about it.

I drank a coke today. It was delish. It reminds me of my childhood because my grandmother always had a ton of it on hand since her family owned a drug-store, you know, the old fashioned kind with an actual soda fountain. Amazing. Does that even exist anymore? I mean, aside from novelty restaurants pretending to be old-timey?

But I digress--it does still bother me a bit. For instance, I often don't order it/drink it even though I want to because in my head coca-cola is bad. However, there is no other item that I categorize as solely good anymore, so how can I keep coca-cola as bad and how can I make it fall into simply the food/drink category--not good or bad, just something to take in as I wish?

There is no way this can happen through avoiding coca-cola. In the same way that I have not become good at speaking to other people by staying at home on the couch, I cannot become comfortable with drinking coca-cola if I avoid it.

I also know that I cannot have opinions on food/drink. When I form opinions on food/drink or when I try to monitor what I eat, I always focus on cutting back and cutting out. If I remain scared of coke, next I will be scared of another food and then another... Years of trial and error has taught me this. The next time I want to have a coke, I will. And I think if I do this over and over again I will eventually be comfortable with it.

One more thing--I know I won't overdo it because I practice intuitive eating. When I want the coke, I'll drink it. When I feel as though I've had enough, I'll stop drinking it. I can trust my body to let me know when I've had enough. It is far wiser than I am about these things...obviously--I was anorexic for a long time after all.

Just Do It

Yes, it's the Nike slogan, but I'm realizing more and more that "Just Do It" is something that I need to embrace more. For instance, dishes are in the sink waiting to be washed? Don't think, just do. Laundry needs to be done? Just do. There are, of course, many other examples of this, but you get the general idea.

When I think about plotting out time to do things that need to be done, when I think about how I can put them off all that gets done is thinking. For instance, I have been thinking about this ever-growing pile of laundry in my bedroom for over two weeks now, and it still isn't done. I'm out of underwear and I've caused myself a lot of stress/anxiety just thinking about when I will do the laundry. Actually, in spending so much time thinking about when I will do it, I've lost out on many opportunities to actually do it.

Of course, realizing the necessitiy of the "Just Do It" mantra can be traced back to my mindfulness meditation practice. About six months in, I realized that while, yes, I was meditating everyday, I would also put it off. I realized if I just did it as soon as I got home from work or woke up in the morning, it would get done and I would be all the better for it. It became apparrent that thinking and planning and worrying about it was uncessessary.

I think this slogan can be prescribed to many things, not just daily chores but bigger events. Planning a wedding? No need to agonize, do the appropriate research, check your budget, confer with friends and family (and most importantly your fiance!) and then just do it. Make your decisions, trust yourself.

Renewing

I just spent some time reading Gretchen Rubin's new book, The Happiness Project. I've been following her blog for some time now, and I have to say she has a lot of really great tips. For some reason I stopped reading her blog a few months ago, and picking up her book today really renewed and refreshed my own happiness project--though mindfulness is more the main focus of my project.

I realized that though mindfulness naturally is the main focus of my happiness project, it cannot be its only focus. By making it my only focus, I am neglecting to do many of the things that Gretchen found helpful, and that were originally very helpful to me. I'd like to do something along the lines of what she did in setting goals for each month. These won't be big, New Years Resolutions goals, they will be small. At the start of each month I will revisit Gretchen's blog/book to remind myself of what I'm aiming for and I'll set additional goals.

For January:

• Make my lunch (and Liz's) for the next day every night
  
• Write for 30 minutes each day
• Once a week (let's say Tuesday night, give or take) meditate for an entire hour (I usually just do 15-20 minutes a day)
  
• Stop nagging/snapping at Liz
  

"Whoever is happy will make others happy, too." Mark Twain

Working on Me to Work for You?

As a disclaimer, I wrote this on 12/22 and am just now posting it:

I am learning more and more how important it is for me to work hard at mindfulness, to continuously ask myself what will make me feel better. It not only serves me well, but it really serves those around me well too. Right now, this specifically means Liz. It seems so simple, but at the same time I suppose it is also rather counter-intuitive so perhaps that's why it took me so long to figure out.

But do not take my word for it. Try it for yourself. Do something because deep down you know that it is the best thing you can do for you in that moment and see where it takes you, see how it influences your actions with others.

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in traditions because they have
been handed down for many generations.
Do not believe in anything because it is spoken
and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is
found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the
authority of your teachers and elders.
But after observation and analysis, when you find
that anything agrees with reason, and is
conducive to the good and benefit of one and
all, then accept and live up to it.
-The Buddha

The Holiday Hurry Scurry

It seems like these posts are getting further and further apart. I guess the holiday season will do that to you. For instance right now I'm baking 6 dozen cookies for a cookie exchange at work. This means I will end up with 6 dozen cookies total, and each dozen will be a different kind of cookie. I'm making snickerdoodles:

And, yes, my kitchen really is that small!! And, honestly, it doesn't bother me one bit. But my relatives do seem to think it's funny. For example, when Marsha was here she made my best friend stand in the kitchen with her arms spread apart to show how small it is. But it works. It totally works, and I even like it!

Our apartment, like the kitchen, is also very small. But we do have a tree, though it may be a table-top one:

...and some other decorations, too:

In other news, I spent the weekend with Liz's family, and she has this one uncle that is obsessed with money. He's probably a mid-level salesman and does pretty well, but he is just obsessed with reading about billionaires and what they buy, etc. etc. Anyway, it drives me crazy. It really does. We were sitting around talking and he mentioned this part of Florida he had recently been to and I said that I had gone to the neighboring island when I was a really little, and his response was, "Oh, that's a poor man's version of the place I'm talking about."

My first reaction was to be furious, and I was very angry for at least 24 hours. Then I got to thinking and decided to just rationally look at his statement. It helped a bit. Also, maybe he's so focused on money because he's insecure about something? Or??? I don't know, but I'm sure there's a reason, and I came to the conclusion that the comment he made wasn't about me. It was a flippant remark, and it tried my patience and my mindfulness, but it also taught me something about myself.

It taught me that I need to work on being mindful of where other people are coming from and not just seeing reactions based on the immediacy of what someone says/does. Often times there's way more behind what someone does/says that you can ever realize at first glance.

A Sunday Saved

I had a really, really good acupuncture session today. I went in feeling pretty awful. It was rainy out, and I had been pretty cooped up inside all day. Now, I had gotten stuff done (load of laundry, cleaning, you know, Sunday stuff), but I was just feeling so blah. And Liz can't hang out. She's in med school. It's like they have a no hanging out rule. So I'm very, very glad I had this acupuncture appointment.

I got out of the house and did something constructive and felt oh so better afterward. Really, the best I've felt after acupuncture in a long while. And I still feel pretty, darn good! After acupuncture I decided I should stay out since it was working so well for me. I did a little xmas shopping and then went to the gym. When I got to the gym I realized that I didn't have my iPod since it was an unplanned visit so I decided to just do a mindfulness & movement session on the elliptical. It was really nice. I just focused on my breath. In fact, I feel like I'll probably do it pretty often. A lot of times listening to "work-out" music just makes my mind churn at super fast speeds. This is way odd, but I wouldn't mind downloading some jazz for the gym! haha

I think that in going off Zoloft and leaning more heavily on acupuncture & meditation, I'm learning to embrace and work with the aspects of my personality that tend to most annoy me. For instance, my anxiety--instead of seeing it as an enemy, I'm learning to view it as a part of me that I can befriend and work with. I now I understand that being naturally a more anxious person is something that can benefit me. It doesn't necessarily have to hold me back. For me my anxiety also goes hand-in-hand with being a very efficient, fast pace, no procrastination worker. I like all these things about myself. I think my anxiety becomes negative when I view it as such, when I get upset when I become overly anxious rather than take a deep breath and a good look at the situation.

Another Zoloft Update

I've been having a rough time of it. Well, actually, I've been having a rough time of it starting yesterday at 11:48 am. Oh, office politics. I know it will be funny one day that you sometimes/most of the time make me cry.

So, at 8:40 am, while I was walking to work, I decided to set an intention for today: I will try my hardest to see and speak to each person I come in contact with not as I preconceive them to be, but as they actually are in that moment. Updates to follow throughout the day.

11:30 am--so far so good. I find that this intention allows me to be much more mindful during my interactions with others. This has led to more mindfulness overall, and is positively effecting my work.

1:00 pm--had a nice, thoughtful interchange with the cashier at Barnes and Noble.

1:10 pm--another thoughtful interchange with the receptionist downstairs.

2:00 pm--was able to joke successfully(!) with my boss

3:00 pm--am losing motivation. all my tasks are done (and i mean ALL my tasks). would like to please go home now.

3:30 pm--it's only been 30 minutes?

And my motivation pretty much stayed at this point until I got home and proceeded to meditate and then sob. I went through lots of "I'm not sure if I can stay off Zoloft moments," I talked it out with Liz, and then I felt so much better. SO much better. It was ridiculous. Like I just needed a friend to talk to...not a co-worker. I think that was what was so great about being a VISTA--my co-workers were truly my friends, too. We were comrades, a team.

I have also just been very, very weepy lately. When I first stopped taking Zoloft I wasn't weepy at all, but I was dealing with anxiety. My anxiety is very much under control through meditation right now. I just get weepy. I cannot watch the Today show without crying. Don't even get me started on Law and Order!...or Hallmark commercials. I pretty much have to leave the room for those.

Speaking of office politics (which I did in my intro), they are tough here. A huge silver lining is that the people I work closest with are very, very nice and helpful. I still miss being an Americorps* VISTA. Best job ever, hands down.


I have to say, setting my intention for the day and really focusing on it was awesome! I really felt it helped me to connect with other people, which I see as one of the main points of life.

Holiday Shopping

I think that step by step I am learning to be a-okay with no Zoloft. This hasn't been without its ups and downs, but I really feel that I've gotten a good grip on handling the downs--the ups are easy. The first couple of weeks completely without Zoloft I was definitely much snappier than usual. But I made a conscious decision to try to recognize when I felt upset/anxious/etc., and I really feel that it paid off as I haven't felt snappy at all lately.

Yesterday I walked into Center City to do some holiday shopping while Liz studied. At times I felt a little sad that I was shopping alone, but rather than feel sad about it, I decided to take deep breaths and embrace my current situation. I enjoyed the shopping that I did and then I took time to get a hot beverage at a coffee shop and read for as long as I felt like it. It was blissful--just what I needed. I felt 100% great after reading and a hot tea with steamed milk.

Taking time out during the busy hustle and bustle of the holiday shopping season also allowed me to be a better partner to Liz. After the coffee shop I was able to go to the grocery store and then head home to prepare food, all the while feeling present and un-anxious. I hadn't even meditated yet, and it was 6pm at that point. Usually if I haven't meditated by 6pm, I can feel the anxiety creeping up. I know it's time to sit. I think taking time to read is sometimes really meditative for me, though, so that could have played a big role in decreasing/keeping anxiety at bay.

Lazy Saturday

I spent the morning at a mindfulness and meditation retreat. Lots of meditation and yoga = a perfect way to start the weekend. I've been laying low watching netflix shows since I got home because it's cold and rainy out right now. It might even turn into snow tonight. I think I might make some sugar cookies later today. Tis the season!

Until then Dolce and I will be doing a lot of napping. She's already promised to stay out of trouble...unlike this time last year:

Zoloft Update

So, I've been on 0 milligrams of Zoloft for 1.5 weeks now! I'm feeling pretty good. I think the biggest change I've seen is the level of patience I have. When I was taking Zoloft I pretty much had infinite patience. It was probably kind of ridiculous, actually. I am less patient now, but I feel like I'm working with that, and finding ways to get back to that ridiculous point of patience that I had before. What can I say, I enjoyed it.
Without the Zoloft I occasionally feel like I'm back to where I was before I took the Meditation Course. However, since I have meditation as a support system, I'm able to quickly come back to a point of patience and mindfulness through using my meditation practice. All in all, everything is going pretty well.

Of course, there were also times when I was taking Zoloft that I found my patience was pretty low. My wedding day comes to mind...Liz's mom's anxiety just about made me a nervous wreck (to be completely honest). Her anxiety also made me pretty anxious over Thanksgiving, which is fine. I understand that she can't help it, but it is triggering for me to be around someone who gets so anxious. I guess previously I just have assumed that the next time I see her she won't be anxious, but I think it's important for me to realize that there's a good probability that she will be, and I need to work with that. Half-way through spending Thanksgiving at their house I realized this and came up with a few things I could do to work with the situation, and it really did make the rest of the stay much better. I know that there's nothing I can do to change her anxiety, but I can change my reaction to it.

I have acupuncture tonight and I think that will be great, too. It was really fabulous last week. I talked with my acupuncturist, and we agreed it would be good for me to go back to two times a week while I'm getting used to no Zoloft. I'm still wanting to meditate twice a day, but so far it's just been happening once daily. I think I would probably see major improvements if I switched to twice a day.

In other news, my boss isn't here today, and it's pretty boring. I had a mandatory financial systems training this morning, which was actually really fun and informative. But there's only so much I can do when he's not here, and I have done it (and checked over it a few times!). Part of working that I may never get used to is just needing to be at work in case something comes up. Right now I'm here until 5 in case someone needs something, but I have gotten everything done and really can't do anything else without someone giving me another assignment. It's odd, but I am much more used to it now than I was when I first started working.