Check out my new place! This August I moved out of my parent's house and into my own apartment! It's clean, organized and I am intent on keeping it that way.
Which is kinda a new approach for me...
I've always taken my independence for granted. It wasn't until I lost my ability to take care of myself, let alone anyone else, that I realized how fortunate I had been to have that independence in the first place.
Really, I don't think I've ever been operating at full capacity. Depression has always been a sub-text in my life and made the world much harder to navigate. Basic care-taking requirements have always felt hard to me - like the idea of vacuuming sounded so hard I felt like crying at the prospect of tackling it most of the time. Almost like working out sounded painful and unenjoyable? Something like that
The winter before I started blogging and sharing things I hit an all time low. I revisited this tough time when I went to Atlanta to clean out my storage unit. I let go of 95% of my possessions, they had to much not so great energy. The things I rescued were covered in pet hair. As I took them off to the dry cleaner, I felt pain and joy. The pain of the winter of 2012 when I stopped everything, caring for myself, my apartment, my pets, my health.
In late 2012, I suddenly stopped - the laundry piled up, the dishes piled up; there was no more picking up after myself, my husband, or my my pets. My parents came down for an early Christmas at the start of December and I did my best to tidy up before they got there but they had to do a lot of work to help me make the apartment nice for us again.
We weren't spending the holidays with our family that year and I had billed it to be "The Worst Christmas Ever" as a result. My depression took me over a cliff and I just stopped. Doing. Anything.
My closest friend drove down to Atlanta with me and helped me clean out the storage unit that I put everything in when I moved out of the apartment last year. I gave away 95% of my possessions mostly because I felt like they still had some not-so-great energy attached to them. I've found that letting go of that "stuff" has really freed me to make a fresh start and let go of the parts of my life that make me sad.
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| Empty storage unit = A fresh start |
But, I recently took a few things to the dry cleaner that I rescued from that storage unit - curtains, winter coat, sweater - and they were literally covered in pet hair. Seeing that, reliving that as I cleaned out the storage unit, is painful. I felt super sad for myself for having gone through what I did. At the same time, I feel such profound joy about being where I am today.
So needless to say, now that I'm back to taking care of myself, I'm hyper-aware of not letting the apartment get dirty. And I'm really glad to say that taking care of my place no longer makes me want to cry. I have a very regimented schedule for cleaning things and it seems to be working.Being regimented, let's me love my home. The work I do throughout the week, frees me up to enjoy my house. I have such a deep appreciation for being able to stand on my own to feet these 20 months later. And because of that gratitude I want to clean. I don't mind taking care of the day_to-day requirements. I now understand how having a well cared for home contributes to my well being and that makes cleaning the bathroom much less of a chore.
But wait, isn't this a fitness blog? Well, yes. Yes it is. When I originally thought about this blog post, my thinking was about how my fitness and eating routine has been less organized lately. I haven't planned out my workouts, I've been more casual in my eating, and my weight has totally plateaued. My thinking his that this is the result of the time now required to manage living on my own and having a lot more responsibility to keep my world in order.
But now, thinking about the basics required to care for my home I see how analogous it is to my exercise and nutrition routine. I understand how having a well cared for body contributes to my well being and that makes working out and eating healthy a priority.
Admittedly, my eating has become more casual. I have succumbed to my sugar addiction more than a few times (frozen yogurt shops are back and I love it so very much) and in tracking my calories I see that I consistently overeat when I go out to a restaurant. But at the same time, my fitness routine has not lapsed. I've gone up and down in terms of intensity of my workouts but they have not fallen out. The gym is still one of my favorite places and exercise is a top priority in my life.
I have talked numerous times about the toll depression took on my body. I think of all the hours I logged in my recliner, and the first thing I think of is Cheeze-Its. Shoving Cheeze-Its into my mouth hand over fist. My weight sky rocketed and I only left that damn chair to get more food.
But today, rather than feeling bad about not being 100% perfect in my fitness/eating regimen, I am focused on what is working and feels good right now. I was inspired by Chuck's latest blog post to get a pedometer which has me focused on getting in 10000+ steps per day(which is seriously a challenge) and I've gone back to basics walking outside or on the treadmill as my primary form of exercise. I'm making sure to do strength training twice a week to keep from losing muscle and keep my back pain from flaring up. I'm maintaining my current weight and while I would love to see that number go down on the scale I also recognize that shaming myself pushing myself to a point that I don't enjoy at the gym or depriving myself of food wouldn't be sustainable.
At dinner the other night my friend made such a good point. "Change is inevitable", she said. "Even if you tried to not change at all there is no way to avoid it. So why try to force change to happen when there is really no way to stop it."
Okay, I'm off to vacuum.
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| Yup. |
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