catheroominations

Dang, look at all the cobwebs around here. It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything. Is anyone still here? Hello? Echo…echo…echoooo…

Lately I just haven’t been feelin’ it dawg. It being really anything. I haven’t felt like taking photos, blogging, writing, reading, exercising, or really anything that requires any initiative on my part. I’m not sure what’s going on, but it seems I have lost my mojo. It would have been helpful if I’d taken a photo of my mojo while it was still here so I could send it to the milk people to put on their cartons.

How I’m feeling is usually reserved for winter, not when it’s sunny and warm and happy outside, so I’m not sure why I have such a case of the blahs. I am suffering from a tremendous lack of motivation and have become a rather large bump on a log. I’m even a bump on a bump on a log. I don’t think it’s depression because I have been depressed before and it wasn’t like this. I think what I have here is a serious case of laziness.

The way I do projects is this: I get really excited and go all crazy about one thing, say, writing. I sign up for a class, I join a writers group, I go to places that help me remember things for my memoir, I read books about writing, on Twitter I follow authors and people who are in “the biz” so I can stay motivated, and I write, and write, and write. And then, for no apparent reason I stop. Done. I just don’t wanna. It’s no longer exciting. I get bored. Bah.

Without giving too much away about this writing project, if it comes together and we finish it (I’m writing it with a friend) it will be awesomely awesome. I’m not just saying that. Everyone I tell about it says “Whoa. That sounds like a great idea. I can’t wait to read your book.” Even people who write and publish books.

But books don’t write themselves. I know this because I have no book so far.

I haven’t written anything since the day I sat in the cafeteria at Stanford Hospital and did an assignment for class. I wrote for one hour about the chaotic sounds (dozens of conversations at once, none of which I could understand), the cacophony of smells (cafeterias are to the nose what nails on a chalkboard are to the ears), and the sights (a bunch of people who look like doctors because they wear scrubs and/or lab coats and clogs but in reality could be housekeeping).

Maybe going back to that place wasn’t such a good idea.

Maybe it momentarily sucked the life out of me again, like it did in 2002.

Maybe it was really freaky to get my records from my therapist at that time and reading them. She used words like anxious, rage, fear, and sadness to describe me. Wait. What? That was me? That’s not who I am now so it’s strange to know I ever was that girl.

Maybe running in to his favorite nurse when I visited oncology wasn’t the best thing. She adored him and now adores his memory. I don’t. She misses him. I don’t. I should probably feel bad about that. But I don’t feel bad. Going back to the oncology floor didn’t make me sad. I remembered it, but I didn’t remember it. It was like I was on the set of a TV show I watch a lot. It looked familiar, but I didn’t feel like I’d been there myself. Nice Nurse hugged me because she thought it was hard for me to go back there. It wasn’t.

Maybe I’m tired of remembering about all the crap he pulled, and how he was not really Mr. Nice Guy everyone thought he was.

Maybe I’m having trouble remembering what it was about him that kept me around. Surely there must have been some Nice Guy moments. I was his doormat for a long time, but I wasn’t a complete moron the whole time. Was I? I can’t remember the good, except that he spent a lot of money on me to try and hide his emotional bankruptcy.

Maybe I’m just scared to do it.

Maybe I’ll fail.

Maybe I suck.

Maybe if I had a better desk where I could write.

Maybe if my work offered a sabbatical to allow me to devote the time to writing. Now that’s no excuse because Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying during his lunch hours while working in a coal mine or some old-timey job like that, and Alice Hoffman woke up at 5 am everyday to write her first novel before working two jobs transcribing sex clinic sessions and working at a department store (I learned that from her Twitter feed.)

Maybe I should stop making excuses and take the Nike approach.

Maybe this can masquerade as a Grace in Small Things post. Let’s see if I can squeak out five things here. It is my 50th Grace in Small Things, so I should make it a good one, huh?

1. My weight loss journey is at a dead end. I cannot get out of the range I have been in since Christmas. Last week I ate way too much crap food, but I did work out FIVE TIMES during the week. This is unheard of lately. The result on the scale was a gain of .2 pounds. While I’m not upset with the gain, had I been eating thoughtfully and healthfully(?) I could have had a nice loss. BAH! So, I’m going to start a challenge hosted by The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans. Starting tomorrow I will pop my nearly never-used DVD of Jillian Michaels’ 30-Day Shred into my DVD player and let her torture me every single day for 30 days. I thought about not mentioning this here, but by doing so, I’m hoping to be more motivated to commit it. See, I am a people pleaser and if I tell you I’m going to do something, I do not want to disappoint you by not doing it. What I’m really saying is that when I am sore from the strenuous workouts, I’m blaming you guys. OK?
2. Also, because of my serious need for extra motivation in the weight loss journey that never ends, I am enlisting your help. This story showed up in my Google Reader last week. This guy lost more than 50 lbs in 10 weeks, and one thing that helped him was soliciting comments from his readers. For every comment he received, he worked out for one minute. This is where you come in. I am going to exercise one minute for every person who comments on this post (and subsequent posts). Before I work out, I will check how many comments I have to my latest post and do one minute of crunches, pushups, walking, weights, whatever per comment. This does NOT mean that you can leave multiple comments to one post. You can comment as much as you want, but the way it works is one minute of exercise per commenter. No fair turning your 10-word sentence into 10 comments of one word each. Remember that I am doing the 30-Day Shred, so I will probably be able to kick your ass if you pull some crap like that. Also, having shredded, you might not recognize me sneaking up behind you and might mistake me for some hot chick with great highlights. (Lately I have been getting lots of comments on the color of my hair.) For this to work, and for me to get a proper amount of exercise, you need to comment. Don’t worry about being witty, or funny, or anything. If you usually delurk, say so. (Hi, delurkers! Thanks for coming!) Just please help me get my ass in gear. Please. I don’t ask for much, but right now I could really use some help.
3. Along with the exercise, I am also joining The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans in their current challenge Shrink Into Summer and will be telling you every week how much I weigh at my weekly weigh-ins. My weigh in day at Weight Watchers is Saturday, so come back and see how I am doing. I can’t believe I am going to tell you all how much I weigh every week, but if that isn’t motivation to get my act together again, I don’t know what is! But if I tell you my weight, you’d better leave a comment. You can’t just be all voyeuristic and not say something to add to my exercise minutes. Deal? Deal.
4. A co-worker and I are starting a weight loss challenge in our office. I am a very competitive person and I fully expect to win this challenge. This is a sneaky way of motivating myself, under the guise of helping my colleagues and friends shed some unwanted pounds. I’m sneaky like that! We’re setting up an internal website where folks can get recipes, menu ideas and tips on exercise and healthy lifestyles. I’ll be sure to post some of the tidbits here, and if any of you have something to share, please do. Your helpful hint will also count for one more minute of exercise for me.
5. On a completely different topic, I signed up for a writing class so I can get some help on how best to tell the story I have to tell. I’m looking forward to learning some new skills, and am even excited about letting perfect strangers read my work and tear it to shreds. If I ever do write a book, perfect strangers (and probably several imperfect ones) will be reading what I wrote and I won’t get to hear if they think it sucks. So I’d rather hear it before I go through the trouble and sweat of writing the thing. And I’m going to have to grow a thick skin and get used to rejection if I ever plan to farm a book out to publishers or editors. Not that any of my classmates will think my work sucks. Because it so doesn’t. It’s completely awesome and fantastic. Of course it is.

Hey, don’t forget to comment. <\whoring for comments>

Updated to clarify one commenter = one minute of exercise. Thanks for your help!

Do you ever hide something so well that you cannot find it, no matter where you look? Whether you’ve blocked it from memory, or hidden it away in a cardboard box in the attic, you just can’t remember where you put it. And right now you really want to find it, because it’s part of a story you have to tell, and are now ready to share. But you can’t remember. The memories are nowhere to be found in the cobwebbed nooks and crannies of your mind. You hid them too well from yourself. I am still looking, but I did find this, written by someone that I once was.

Waiting

The waiting is the hardest part. It seems that every time you go to Stanford you wait. Patients should be called waiters. That’s what they do. Wait. Sit. Wait. Maybe they should be called patience instead. You watch the clock. They put the clock on the wall next to the television that’s attached to the wall with a bracket. Why is the clock so near the television? It’s torture. Watching the slow moving hands make their way around. One…two…three… Some clocks have a sweeping second hand. Others have the tick, tick, tick of small movements. Either is equally slow. Monotonous to watch. Time passes so slowly. Sigh.
keep reading Skeletons