I have just felt so rushed this week. And I've been running late for a lot of things. It seems like I am cutting every appointment down to the last minute, even that hair appointment and giving blood this week. I was late for my group therapy session (again) last week and late seeing my therapist, again. After pointing this out (gotta love her, this is why I pay her those bucks), my therapist wondered if maybe there was something in me signalling that I needed more time doing things that were unscheduled.
So, what's up? Well, I checked my Palmpilot and yes, I've got a lot of things booked. I'm doing a lot of recovery related stuff, I've got the choir which I'm not doing enough rehearsal for, and I'm getting physical exercise 6 days a week. I'm also in the studio a few hours every weekday. The studio time isn't feeling like enough. I think I'm going to try for 3 hours a day rather than the 2 or 2 1/2 hours I get. That's still only about 15 hours a week. I have to remember though that studio time isn't your average job. It's not possible to work so intensely for 8 hours a day. A maximum workweek would be about 20 hours a week. I need extra time for creative wool-gathering to feed it. So the 20 hours a week your average office worker spends at work, I need to be spending in creative regeneration.
I realize that the evenings I'm not at a meeting or choir I'm parked in front of the tv. And I'm not sure if I need that for that creative regeneration or could I devote an hour of that to doing something else--- like maybe I should go to the gym and free up the rest of my day? Or just spend a half hour of that time in some sort of meditation. I think tv may be like letting my brain run in neutal: it's still running, slowly burning gas. If I meditated or did some other similar thing, then there might be some sort of creative regeneration that could be filling me up again
I phoned in sick to my group therapy session this morning. Rather than talk more about my recovery, I just need some more time for myself writing here and an opportunity to get to the studio for an hour or two. Then I figure I can go to the gym and have lunch before another couple of hours there this afternoon.
So, now I'm here and this is pretty sweet. It's cold out, barely above freezing, but it's very sunny. And I'm at the table in my rather rustic kitchen with the laptop and the sun is lovely. I , I, I, I just don't know what I want. Except I want more time. Time to do absolutely nothing. And yet, I've noticed, that on Sundays, when I have a "clear" day, my pattern is usually to sleep in and become depressed. And it's also usually a rocky food day. My therapist, Trish, suggested that I maybe do an OA phone call or some other form of reaching out. But I came up with a better idea: Fuzz has been incredibly busy with work, so why don't we go out for breakfast on Sunday morning, and I can spend some time talking to my best friend about things?
Our local vegetarian dive has a great Sunday brunch that isn't so leaden as traditional ones, and I love their coffee, so we can linger for a while. My OA food buddy has found that some exercise on Sunday morning, a run around the neighbourhood or something while her husband attends church is what lifts her up. So, I suppose we could walk to the restaurant, it's only a 15 or 20 minute walk to there, isn't that one of the reasons we moved to town, so we could walk places rather than have to get in the damn car all the time? When I first realized I had to get exercise years ago Fuzz and I would go for a walk nearly every night. Now we do the more intensive, more flashy exercise with our running group or at the gym, but we don't get the regular bonding time of our walk any more.
I know this blog doesn't get many hits, possibly because I'm a boring writer, but the sad truth I am coming to believe is, losing weight may be an obsession for the media and many people, but the nuts and bolts of keeping it off is a less exciting and more quotidian prospect: It's just doing little things, one day at a time and letting those days accumulate. It's living life, like putting a few dollars by every paycheque. Not flashy, no magic cure, but as I do it, I am often amazed by how a little here and there can add up.
16 days of untroubled food. 1721 days OA has been saving my life.
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