"Keep Coming Back"

"Keep Coming Back". Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Keep showing up. In AA it's one day at a time and you put those days together. In Al-Anon we keep coming back. I went to one group one day when I was in a crisis mode. I think it was my first ever Al-Anon meeting. The topic that day was "balance" and I cried. I couldn't always get to that meeting, but I've gone off and on since to that group. I might try to change my work schedule AGAIN when things settle down a bit with my daughter so that I can go to that meeting again some day. The trick is in figuring out how to get it approved with my boss. Hmm... something to think about.

Anyway, I have been applying the "Keep Coming Back" thing with my weight loss. I use a website to track my calories and fitness. I participate in "teams" and I try to check in daily on the "chats" and "huddles". I "keep coming back". Some days I go over my calories. Some days I don't do my exercise. Some weeks I don't lose any weight (I even...gasp.. gain weight occasionally)... but I KEEP COMING BACK. I've been doing it for a year now. I'm not where I had hoped to be, but I've lost about 30 pounds that I've kept off. So I know that for me it works. If I skip a day or two I feel "off". Consistency matters more than perfection.

This is something that I learned in Al-Anon. I may not be perfect, but if I keep going back I will get better.

Image by happy_serendipity via Flickr

Happy Holidays!

I'm still out here in cyberspace. I've been busy with a weight loss blog, and I have been doing okay with that FOG stuff and boundaries with my mother. Haven't figured out how to apply the FOG to my marriage. Not that my husband is blackmailing me or anything- he's not. I just know that I act out of feelings of FOG sometimes. We probably both do, and you can see it with our finances especially. We both want each other to be happy and we overspend as a result.

Oh well... those are problems for another day I suppose. We're working as a team on other fronts such as our daughter's education which is undergoing some changes during the next few weeks. Things we have no control of are happening so we have to decide how to respond. On Monday night my husband will attend a meeting to gather more information on the situation and then we will have to decide what course of action to take. Trying to practice the Serenity Prayer over and over in my head. Right now I'm feeling like we may have flushed $25,000 or so down the drain. Not a good feeling!


Anyway, life goes on. I am managing my boundaries, trying to stay out of trouble, not doing a great job of losing weight but trying.... and looking forward to Christmas somehow.  :-)


Happy Holidays!

Image via Wikipedia

a week already??

Sigh. A week has gone by and I haven't posted. How sad. I did have a couple of brief interactions with my mother this week. Also my brother dropped his Facebook account (again), effectively cutting me out of his life. The only way I have to keep tabs on him is through FB. Oh well. I don't know if it was my fault or not that he dropped it. I might have been the cause. My mother called me in an effort to reach him (supposedly) and I sent him a message on FB saying she was trying to reach him. Then I told her that he was alive at least since he had updated his status at some point over the weekend. Then he pulled the plug on his account. His loss and mine. We aren't close but I like knowing what's going on in his life even if it's just a message that says "I'm all alone and drinking, come on by...". Now I won't even have that for a while.








On a more personal note, as I posted before I am trying to lose weight. I am surprised (or not surprised) to see some commonalities between the weight-loss and Al-Anon. The website I am using is very much of the "take what you like and leave the rest" approach. Everything you do is really up to you to do it. There is a lot of middle ground. Don't want the diet, then leave it and eat what you want. Want to track what you eat? Great, here's how to do that. Community, health, nutrition, fitness, etc... it's all there if you want it. Message boards, teams, challenges, friends... take it or leave it. This is good for me. I'm not "failing". I can go at my own pace and take what I like and leave the rest without spending a dime. So far I'm liking a lot of it, but I'm doing my own food. I'm leaving their diet alone because it doesn't work for me. The pounds are coming off though, at least for now. Here's hoping I can keep it going because it's a long, long road. I want to be healthy by the time I'm 40.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Just a quick post

So the big day of weight loss came and went. I read with sadness about the death of a married 29 year old woman with 2 kids who died. Once again she is/was a friend of an acquaintance. I did not know her personally, but reading her Facebook page I can tell that the death came suddenly and my suspicion is that it was a suicide or accidental overdose. Meanwhile memorial services were held today for the other woman who died. One of the services was right outside my window at work, in the courtyard garden. I watched but did not participate.

Next week will be the anniversary of my grandmother passing away. It's hard to believe that it's been a year already.

My husband and I are struggling to find... something that we've misplaced between us. I don't want to post about that. I feel like I've got a lot of negative inside me and it's my stuff and I need to work on it, but then at the same time I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and just get through my daily life. Really I'd like to withdraw from the world and have a good cry, a long drive maybe, or a long walk or something... it's not going to happen though. I need to be here. Now.

Lunch is over. My paperwork awaits me.

Image by LEMBOT via Flickr