I spent $200 on the lottery tonight; I am consumed with the thoughts that my purpose in life, the only way I can be happy, is to not suffer with a mortgage… What the actual fuck am I doing?

Maybe my children will read this one day with comfort, knowing that this same existential dread occurs throughout all generations; we are no worse off than the rest. Or perhaps, my children will read with sympathy, we sure had it harder than the rest. God forbid, they read it with envy. To quote some non-existent but all too real American lady “ya’ll had it so good, you know idea how good it was”.

So I’m 29 now. I have about $17k in savings. My partner has about +$60k but he’s still at school, figuring out this life thing. He distracts himself from life by playing videogames, I distract myself from life by daydreaming, both of us aren’t living in reality because it’s a beige hellscape you wouldn’t want to visit if your aunt were dying of cancer and visiting were the only option of a cure. Life is pointless, it seems.

Back when I was in undergrad, I lived in Townsville. Tonight I had the thought of moving back to Townsville and starting my life back there. Sure, the houses are cheaper. I sure did like the weather a great deal more than Melbourne, but would it be worth it? Does anybody really know? Of course not! Nobody knows.

It could turn out amazingly. I could end up living my dream. Or, of course, I could default on this idea. Just like I defaulted on my idea of becoming a Biostatistician. I should really blog about my failures in life. Purely to dissuade people from the lottery. Fuck the lottery. There is no easy way out.

So..what does one do when they are highly sensitive, diagnosed BPD and CPTSD? Anxious of everything but yearning for the uncertainty of the future? What does one do when they are this way but they have crow feet happening on their faces and their ovaries are screaming out ‘now or never?’.

I’ve no clue.

I am at a loss. And perhaps it’s because of lockdown since a year and a half ago. Or perhaps it’s simply because of my neurotic disposition. Will I be at peace in this world? Or am I destined to be a tortured soul? There are certainly aplenty of tortured souls in history, dont you fret; you will not become a martyr for simply being yet another tortured soul, you’ll just be one of the masses. Nay. You won’t even be. Nobody, NOBODY, in 200 years will remember you.

Given that nobody will remember me, which I have to say is not that important to me; although I will retire at age 70 in a likely delapilated shed in Moe, what will become of me? Nothing too important I suspect.

So, should I have children? Should I plan for the future?

The future seems so far away. I don’t own a home. I was too busy in my 20’s working out my love life and resolving childhood trauma for that. *Sigh*. Monetary gain in my life will leave me feeling miserable. I am so far behind on that front it’s not funny.

This leaves me thinking….nobody truly knows what they are doing…do they? I know the answer lies in being present, I just like to pretend that I live in an alternative future where I can have every material item I could possibly imagine. Cue heated outdoor swimming pool.

Maybe my current life is lost?

Diary

I’m fairly frustrated today. I feel behind in life. I’m almost 30 and I am not married, I won’t be having kids for a while and I don’t own a home. My partner is still at university for another year and a half which means none of the above will be happening for us anytime soon. I know that I need to talk to him and make sure that as soon as he has finished up with his course we can make a start on our family. I don’t want to be struggling to have children because I’ve left it too late. Sometimes I get really upset thinking that I won’t be able to have children, and I gave up my only chance when I was 27. I would have had a child to an absolutely horrible man and I do not wish to ever be tied down to someone like that. I made the right choice getting an abortion, I just worry that that was my only chance.

I know that there isn’t any point worrying about these things yet, all I can do is keep myself healthy to ensure that I’m in the best position to have children when my partner is ready. In the meantime I can continue to save my income so that we can buy a house in a couple of years and I can continue to nurture my relationship with my partner. I still feel frustrated and impatient even though I know this.

I might be having daydreaming withdrawals. I’m trying to prevent myself from daydreaming about winning the lottery so I can buy a house outright and freeze my eggs for peace of mind. I have to live in the present moment, which currently isn’t great. There are two more weeks of lockdown here in Melbourne and it’s so bloody hard. All I have is time to sit and daydream of a better life, but it makes me unhappy in the longterm.

I just went grocery shopping and bought a very Mediterranean style menu for this week. I’m going to try to lose the 30kg I have put on during the pandemic. I will do it slowly and healthfully. I am going to try and lose weight initially by not counting calories, but mainly eating vegetables. I don’t have it in me to properly diet, not when it so easily triggers disordered eating.

Phase 1: Thinking about changing

Over the past 18 months I have been healing my relationship with food. I have been aiming to eat intuitively and accept my body as it is, even learning to love my body. I have not been able to fully follow my hunger and fullness signals, sometimes I just want to overeat because it feels nice. Last night, I had a late night serving of pasta to sedate myself before I went back to sleep. I struggle eating well too, I haven’t had 5 servings of vegetables per day in a really long time. What has happened to me in the past 18 months is that I feel content, satisfied and happy. I do binge eat because of emotional reasons, but I’m no longer torturing myself over what I eat. It feels so nice.

Melbourne has been the most locked down city in the world from this pandemic. We still have over a month to go of movement restrictions and curfew. As you can imagine, my exercise and incidental activity has severely wavered during this time. I have also used overeating and drinking to comfort myself, alongside learning how to accept my body and given myself full permission to eat whatever I want. Although psychologically I feel much better, physically I am unhealthy. I noticed a few days ago that I had to eat lunch because I was starting to shake. This is not something I have experienced in a long time, as I used to be able to go the whole day without eating and be fine. The physical reaction to a drop in blood sugar made me fearful for my health. I have a number of predispositions for diabetes and feel like it’s only a matter of time before I myself develop the disease.

I noticed last night in the mirror as I was getting ready for bed that my stomach looked bigger, I shrugged it off. So what if it’s bigger? Then this morning curiosity got the better of me and I decided to weigh myself for the first time in 5 months. I was not expecting a 10kg increase, I now weigh 95kg. Surprisingly, this doesn’t hurt me too much. I am in a much better place psychologically. However, I am worried. Firstly, my weight isn’t stabilising. It’s continually increasing and has been since the beginning of 2020. Secondly, the heavier I get the harder it will be to exercise. Thirdly, what is happening to me physiologically? Am I healthy on the inside? Do I have fatty liver? Pre diabetes?

I spent a couple of hours researching diets and reading about how Rebel Wilson lost over 30kg. If she can do it, I can do it too. Then I thought how I don’t want to backtrack on my progress that I’ve made with intuitive eating. I feel like I’m stuck between wanting to diet and wanting to learn how to not overeat. I’m scared of dieting, I have gained so much weight after attempting my last diet at the end of 2019. It is what sparked my initial weight gain as I couldn’t control my binge eating after the diet. I just couldn’t stop eating, I don’t want to be back feeling so out of control.

So what can I do? I am inspired by Rebel Wilsons ‘Year of Good Health’ and want to do something similar. I don’t want to count calories or go on a specific diet, but I do want to increase my vegetable intake and cut down on alcohol and fake sugar drinks. I think stress is a big factor too, 2020 was a very stressful year for me, as it was for many others, and this only adds fuel to the fire.

So it’s decided, I’m going to go on my own ‘Year of Good Health’ challenge too. I’ve found actual challenges on the internet which are similar, such as the Whole Life Challenge, but I don’t want to impose strict rules on myself and have someone tell me to limit my consumption of chocolate!

I’m going to spend today thinking about what I want my life to look like, then come up with a plan to get what I want. This will be my own Whole Life Challenge bespoke for me.

My journey so far

20/07/2020

I have been really struggling with disordered eating lately. This was all triggered by a stint of keto dieting in December 2019, I had faithfully stuck to the diet for a full 3 weeks just before Christmas, carefully weighing my food and diligently counting every single gram of carbs, ensuring I never ate more than 20g. I lost 3kg’s on the Keto diet and felt like I was finally making progress. I weighed 67kg and was excited to see the number on the scale decreasing.

Then, our work Christmas break up party happened. I resolved that day to not touch a single carb; easy enough, I thought. I managed to make it until dessert, when my inner voice convinced me to try the christmas pudding. “After all, it’s Christmas!” I convinced myself. I broke my diet and binged on all the desserts the buffet had to offer, not caring a single bit about what my colleagues would think of me.

I haven’t been able to stop binging since and am now a solid 73kg. The heaviest I reached was 75kg a couple of months ago. I am disappointed in myself and am saddened by my fuller figure. I no longer see myself as a healthy weight, I feel like a pudding.

The binging was out of control, eating in excess of 5000 calories per binge and feeling absolutely disgusting afterwards. My compensatory behaviours started, I didn’t get to the point of purging this time but I did starve myself the following day. It was never enough to offset the damage such an immense consumption of calories did to my waistline, so my weight has been trending upwards overall.

Over the past week, the binging has subsided greatly and I can only attribute this to reading a book ‘Brain Over Binge’ by Kathryn Hansen. In this book, Hansen relays her journey through overcoming bulimia over years of therapy, only to discover that thinking about binging as a habit was all it took to end the binging. The therapy was not helpful for Kathryn, thinking of herself as damaged and trying to meet a need through binge eating did nothing to end the binging and only made Kathryn frustrated by her lack of improvement.

The message behind Kathryn’s success of ending binge eating was simple; Not binge eating is what stopped Kathryn from not binge eating. Viewing binge eating as a bad habit that Kathryn had developed over years, beginning with her first forays into the dieting world, was what helped her overcome her eating disorder. Kathryn managed to overcome her binge eating habits by first understanding that it was her animal brain, responsible for key drives in life but terrible for rational decisions, that was driving her to seek food. Massive quantities of food.

Kathryn acknowledged the urge to binge came from this part of her brain, her primitive animal brain, but chose not to act on those impulses. She noticed that thinking in this way, viewing her urges as if she were a spectator of her own self, helped her to overcome the desire to binge eat. She could just stop listening to this part of her brain and continue on with her day.

Since reading this book, I’ve also been viewing my eating as simply a bad habit that formed long ago after my first attempt at dieting. I will receive some sort of cue to eat whether it be boredom, hunger, something totally unconscious; I begin craving a binge. I am so uncomfortable when I am having an urge to binge, and I feel the only way to satisfy this is to eat. After the binge, I’m rewarded with a warm calm and satisfaction that nothing but having an overstuffed belly can bring.

This habit first formed when I was a teenager and dieted, I was always an overweight kid and truth be told I did need to lose weight. I took it too far, I lost more weight than I needed and I became unwell. Binge eating solves a problem, it solves a problem of periods of time with food scarcity. My animal brain doesn’t know that I never truly experience these moments in time, but it doesn’t know any better.

28/07/2021

It has been a full year since I wrote the above post that I never finished, I remember how obsessed I was at solving my binge eating problem. The problem didn’t resolve itself until around October 2020, when lockdown was ending in Melbourne and I had other things to think about other than what my body looked like. Over eating became (and still is) a form of coping for me. When I feel lonely, bored or stressed I reach for food. If I feel like feeling warm and comfortable, I reach for food. It’s no wonder that I continued to binge well beyond this blog post and that the Brain Over Binge book didn’t stop me from binge eating, although it did provide some useful insights.

I’ve been in an on again off again relationship with Intuitive Eating for the past 11 months now, I ended up gaining perhaps another 10+kg? Who knows, I haven’t weighed myself in a while. In August last year I first read Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch book Intuitive Eating, with full permission to eat whatever I wanted, I binged like you wouldn’t believe, ballooning my weight up to about 80kg in a short space of time. After seeing the “damage” I had done to myself, I freaked out and spent the next 8 months attempting to control my weight again. I went on diets that lasted perhaps a week at most, I saw a dietician and wasted hundreds of dollars, I fretted about what I looked like and became consumed with the thoughts of looking better than I did. What a waste of my life.

I’m now at a place in my life where I can start to accept what I look like and make peace with my food. I’m angry at how much  of my life I’ve wasted obsessing over my weight and diet. My goal is to have food be neutral and I spend my brain power thinking about more interesting and meaningful topics. I have to admit, this is very difficult for me. I know that I’ve gained a lot  of fat, although I haven’t weighed myself since I was about 85kg, and I can tell I’ve gained more because my clothes are tight once again. This hurts, it’s hard to move away from. I’m still refusing to weigh myself and instead  I’m trying to focus on how I feel. I’ve allowed myself to eat whatever I want for a couple of months now, I can say that my craving for particular foods has decreased and I find myself wanting more vegetables and fruit, but I do still find myself overeating a lot, I suppose I’m still worried I’m going to restrict my intake again.

My mindset has really shifted since I re-attempted eating intuitively, I’m now trying to be as kind to myself as possible. Harsh punishment and violence against myself hasn’t made my life any more full and enjoyable, it’s only detracted from my life greatly, so instead I’m treating myself with kindness and compassion. Since taking this route in life, I have managed to do more activities that I love, and I’m slowly coming to enjoy the life that I’m living. I’m truly grateful for finding intuitive eating and restoring my relationship with food, its a slow process and I still struggle often, but I love that food doesnt have the same power it once did over me. The half eaten block of chocolate in the cupboard is a testament to how far I’ve come, chocolate could never exist in my house previously, I had an all or nothing relationship with it, now it sits and waits happily for me in the cupboard. I will eat you when I want, chocolate.

Struggling to stay in reality

I’ve spent $75 on lottery tickets this past week, surprise surprise but I didn’t win. Before the lottery had been drawn, I was on realestate.com researching houses that I’d like to buy and spent a good deal of time fantasizing over the life I will have if I did win. My fantasies were so detailed, it was exciting to picture my future and map out what my everyday could look like. I would buy expensive things, live in a dream house, wake up whenever I wanted to and have adventures everyday. My world could be amazing, it could be extraordinary.

I remember when I was 5 or 6 years old I was lying in bed after an exciting day at an amusement show, I was upset because that experience was over and I didn’t want to go to sleep, I didnt want the day to be over. So I started fantasizing about going on the ferris wheel and realised I could relive the experience in my head, I could even build on it and make it better. What’s more, I could even feel how exciting and exhilarating it was to be on a ride at the show. My rich imagination could take me anywhere and has kept me company for over two decades now, the daydreaming and fantasizing has allowed me to live through terrible circumstances and for that I am thankful, but it has also distracted me from reality.

I’ve been trying lately to be present in my life, I’ve been meditating and bringing myself back to the present moment when I’ve noticed my mind wandering. I was doing well for a time, then I spiralled and was sucked straight back into fantasy land. I know a big reason for this is because of the pandemic and yet another lockdown, there’s nothing to do except think. Life seems painfully boring, and so I’ve indulged my fantasies and let my mind wander. I noticed yesterday, however, that I was unbearably anxious and irritable. I know that when I fantasize, I take away from my own reality. I become unhappy and unsatisfied with my life, fantasizing leads to life dissatisfaction. I can never have the life of my dreams, so nothing is ever good enough. What’s more, it takes effort to experience goodness in reality; there is no effort in daydreaming, it just happens.

I have spent the past couple of years building myself back up after trauma and learning how to live. I spend some days avoiding reality, which in the long run only makes things worse. I can’t afford to avoid reality, both monetarily as I don’t have a spare $75 each week for lottery tickets, and psychologically. Coming back down to earth after spending some time in heaven is like a bad hangover, everything hurts. I know that I have to avoid the temptation of fantasizing and put in effort into my life, I have to focus and remain present which is much harder than my default mind wandering but its the only way now, unless I choose to be unhappy and unsatisfied forever. Life may seem lackluster in comparison to my daydreams, but its where I exist and so I must find a way to stay here. As Dumbledore once told Harry “It does not do to dwell on dreams…and forget to live”.

A life update

A few months ago I quit my Biostatistics course, three quarters into the semester. I was enjoying the theoretical Maths side of the course, and doing really well on assessments but I was dreading anything to do with coding. I realised that my future job in the biostatistics field would be 95% coding. I also had a growing sense of anxiety that I was making the wrong decision in my life, each day I woke up and that anxiety felt stronger and stronger. I could no longer ignore it or talk myself out of it. had to listen to what my mind and body was trying to tell me.

I found myself missing teaching and longing for the classroom, ironic as I had grown to loathe being at school last year. I began planning how I would run my own class again, teaching Maths as it should be taught, not having a textbook shoved in your direction as you’re instructed to study chapter 3 for that week. That was my experience of Maths and I hate that this beautiful study area can be so mistreated.

I started to question why I left teaching in the first place, what exactly did I hate about the job? What stood out the most to me was that I didn’t feel good enough in that job. My dad never approved of me being a teacher, thinking I was destined to become a fantastic scientist that would scour the amazon for some elusive rare frog or something. But my dad doesn’t know who I am, we rarely speak and I see him once a year at Christmas. Truth be told, I changed my career trajectory after being rejected by a guy I really liked a few years ago, I didn’t feel good enough for him either. I changed all my wants and wishes to align with what I thought would finally be good enough. It all back fired of course, I wasn’t living my authentic life and I wasn’t honoring who I am. I was already good enough as a teacher and it has taken me turning my life around, quitting the profession, going back to uni and starting over again to figure that out.

Now, I am actually grateful for the learning opportunity that this has afforded me. I always joke to myself that if there’s a mistake to make, I will make it just to see what happens. Of course, pursuing something then realising it wasn’t for me would not be considered a mistake. I now know that I am going to stay in the education profession and I can feel satisfied and content with my decision. I have learnt a lot about myself, that there is nothing wrong with my life and the sufferings and anxiety I feel at times is a result of not feeling good enough, it comes from my thoughts.

I now work part time at a school tutoring, my life is generally laid back and I can take the extra time in my life to work on how I think about things and pursue hobbies to add richness to my days. Another aspect to teaching that I didn’t like was how I was under the illusion of being time poor, but having this extra time has also given me a fresh perspective; even when I was working 40+ stressful hours as a teacher each week, I still managed to fit in my hobbies and have a fulfilling home life if I put in the effort. The problem I had was that I would take care of my students needs before my own and I would often leave work with nothing left in the tank. The times where I had balance in my life as a teacher I was prioritising myself and taking care of myself first. This is something I will continue to work on because it makes all the difference between enjoying and not enjoying my career.

Here I am sitting at my desk, energised about what I have just written and resisting the urge to plan every facet to my future days. I’m genuinely excited about my life and have come to see that there was nothing wrong with the life I was previously living, it’s all in my mind and how I think about things. I’m now on a journey to living more mindfully and present, not desperately chasing a fictive future that I think will finally satisfy me and make me feel worthy.

Schedule Review

I’m trying to do the best I can at the moment, but my brain pushes me to do better and better and better and better. I swear I never used to be this anxious over perfection, I never used to feel so dissatisfied. I’m trying to let go of perfection, I’m trying to just do things that need to be done, not put them off because conditions aren’t ideal. I’m a fairweather weightlifter, uni student and cleaner and this is something I want to be able to move past.

I keep writing out a schedule for myself, but I often don’t follow it because I think it would be better if I schedule particular activities at a different time. I have flip flopped from pushing myself to get up early to go to the gym to going to the gym late at night. In the end I don’t go to the gym because I can’t think of a perfect time to go, or rather, when the time comes to follow my schedule, if conditions don’t feel perfect I blame the schedule and reshuffle everything! I’m getting nowhere with my fitness goals because I’m not being consistent enough.

I’ve decided once and for all to go to the gym at 8pm on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night and Saturday morning. I’m not going to change this time for the duration of Term 2 and I’m going to track whether I go or not. I’ve made sure I’ve got plenty of study time in my schedule too, and I’ve balanced this with some fun activities.

Not being consistent is the biggest hurdle to achieving my dreams, I don’t put in the time and effort to make my dreams come true. I’ve designed a schedule to give me that time, but I don’t stick to the schedule. This is what I need to work on!

My brain is a bully

My brain is a bully. I was first told this during counselling for BPD a couple of years ago. It made me realise that my brain isn’t always going to be on my side and I will sometimes need to take a step back and leave my brain to its tantrums. I can’t stop my brain from bullying me, but I can stop letting it make me feel bad about myself and my life choices.

My brain is currently getting kicks out of making me think that I made a mistake changing careers. I’m having the thoughts that teaching wasn’t so bad afterall, it was a stable career that pays decently well and has great holidays. I’m beginning to forget how stressed out I felt, how unsatisfied I felt and the feeling of having nothing left at the end of each day because I had given everything I had to the kids. I forget how I had a dream to go back to uni since the very first day I started teaching, that I started buying lottery tickets when I started teaching because I couldn’t see myself working like that for the rest of my life.

This year I finally went back to uni to pursue a career that I think I will find interesting and will fit my personality better. I’m living my dream life at the moment and feel so happy with what I’m studying. Then along comes my brain and suddenly I’m worried I’ve made a huge mistake, that my old life was actually my dream life. I have the thoughts “If I were still a teacher, I wouldn’t need to write up this assignment”.

I’m worried that I’ll never feel satisfied with my life, truth be told I’d rather not have a career at all. I would much rather spend my days lazing around with a good book, spending time with family and working out. So no matter what I choose, be it teaching or biostatistics, there will always be that element of not wanting to be there.

I wish I knew how to be at peace with my choices, how to enjoy my present moment without worrying if I made the right decision or not. I wish my brain wouldn’t backflip on itself so regularly and out of nowhere it suddenly needs something new to keep it happy. I’m always wanting something different.

I had this dilemma in my early dating days with Callum, in fact, when the counsellor first made the comment about my brain being a bully, he was referring to my anxiety about being in a relationship. I was contemplating breaking it off with Callum, I hadn’t even given him a chance yet. My brain was keeping me safe by not allowing me a secure relationship and pining after someone perfect and unattainable, my brain was tormenting me.

I’m now very comfortable with Callum and unbelievably thankful that I did give him a chance, it took a long time and many, many doubts but eventually my brain gave up the idea that I should leave him for a fictional Mr Perfect. How did I get rid of the back and forth thoughts that used to bounce around in my head about my relationship? The “Should I leave him?” “If only he had X, Y and Z then I truly could be happy with him” “he’s wonderful, stay with him” “He’s not good enough, leave him” thoughts. I shut all the doors. I gave myself no option but to stay with him and fully commit to him for 3 months, then I could reassess how I felt. So I fully commit to him, no more fantasizing of Mr Right. No more comparisons between Callum and fiction, no more planning my break up. I fully commit myself to the relationship and to Callum. Once I was no longer trying to find an exit from my relationship, something beautiful happened between us and I started to feel at peace with our relationship.

I know what I must do with my career then, I must fully commit to becoming a biostatistician. My brain will bully me into thinking something different, maybe I’ll decide that my life calling is to be a pastry chef, whatever my brain decides to do I just have to brush that off because I’ve chosen to commit to being a biostatistician. I’ll reassess this at the end of the year, when teaching contracts will be renewed and I’ve done some research projects and had a taste for this field. I can always go back to teaching if that ends up being more suitable for me. For now, all I need to worry about are those looming assignments.

Sticking to schedule

My week isn’t going as planned and I have not progressed with my goal of following my schedule. I took a sick day off work on Monday (I was perfectly fine to go to work) and I ended up with a migraine on Tuesday. Monday and Tuesdays are my planned gym days, so of course I skipped those. This means I’ve been to the gym exactly no times this week, when I wanted to go 3 times.

I’ve gone astray with my exercise routine and I keep making up excuses for why I can’t go to the gym when I’ve even penciled it in to my schedule. Sometimes I feel like there are two versions of myself competing for air time. One version is a self conscious, impulsive teenager who likes comfort, short term pleasure and constantly measures herself to others. She’s fun, highly emotional and a little reckless. The other version of me is an adult with goals, ambitions, discipline and the ability to detach from thoughts of not being good enough. My inner teenager, if you will, catches me off guard and I’ll end up self sabotaging my efforts for short term good feelings. The gym, after all, is not her ideal environment.

Perhaps this self sabotaging behavior comes from dismissing the inner teenager side to me in favor of the adult. What my inner teenager wants is fun, friends and a sense of belonging. What my adult self wants is a solid exercise regime. Unfortunately these events seem mutually exclusive at the present time in my life, I don’t have any friends at the gym and I find it quite lonely. Sure, if I go to the gym often enough I might make friends, but the future is not something my inner teenager thinks about.

I’ve got to work out how to appease both my inner teenager and my adult self in order to get what I want out of life. It’s clear that I won’t get friends and a sense of belonging from the gym just yet, and will need to look into other ways to bring more of this into my life. I do tend to say no to social events so that I can have more time to study or go to the gym or tidy up. This could be why I’m rebelling on myself, I have too many adult priorities and am shoving my teen side into the corner. Could spending more time with friends help me to achieve my goals?

I’m tempted to experiment with this idea next week and catch up with a friend mid-week, or even go out on a date night with Callum for my sense of fun. Will this help me stay on track with my schedule if I ensure I have enough activities that balance out my responsibilties too? I can only try and see what happens.

I’ve come up with a little table to see what I can balance my responsibilities with and will aim to incorporate both into my schedule.

Maybe if my schedule is less hostile towards my inner teenager, I’ll actually stick to it. I can only see if this helps me a little on my way to being the type of person who can follow a schedule.

The Golden Mean and next weeks goals

It’s a Sunday morning, Callum’s in bed and it’s raining outside. I’m on the couch sipping coffee and listening to the birds chirping outside and, annoyingly, my cat licking her fur. Now is the perfect time to reflect on the previous week and take lessons learned into the next week. Last week I struggled to do what I wanted to do, sacrificing my goals for my comfort. I’m realising that I’m going to have to strike some sort of balance with myself. Some weeks I find I’m an all work and no play kinda gal, other weeks I’m all play and no work kinda gal. What springs to mind as a goal for next week is aiming to live by the Golden Mean.

The Golden Mean – I first came across this concept reading a self help book titled Aristotle’s Way by Edith Hall. It was one of the first books to pique my interest in philosophy and history and I devoured the book within two days. What did I take away from the book? The idea of the Golden Mean, of finding virtue between vice excess and vice deprivation, and I’ve been coming back to this concept lately to help me guide my goals and thoughts.

As someone previously diagnosed with Borderline Personality, I do struggle with black and white, all or nothing thinking. I tend to live that way too. A big one is with my studying, I either want to spend an entire day studying, neglecting my other goals such as connection with friends and family and exercise. Or I want to spend no time of the day studying. Coming back to the idea of the golden mean I start to think, why don’t I just study a little? I don’t have to spend the whole day studying or completely avoiding it.

This week I’ve made a schedule that gives me the time to accomplish my long term goals (Be the best weightlifter I can and do the best I can at uni) and I also have some time for activities and relaxation. If I can follow my schedule and do the important things, I can relax with no stress. I even bought bath bombs to help me calm down and de-stress during the week, to really make the most of my down time.

What I am happy with from last week is prioritising time with friends and family and going to the gym twice (which is one up from the week before), so I am slowly building up to having a life that will allow me to meet my goals. I went shopping with my sister, Amanda, and her 7 week old son Riley yesterday. He is such a beautiful baby and I love spending time with them. I also ate decently well too, it helps so much to meal prep on a Sunday and get organised.

I’m amazed everyday at how much happier I am this year compared to last. It’s hard feeling calm when you spend a great portion of your day (and life) in a career that isn’t suited to you. I am unbelievably grateful that I have the opportunity to go back to uni full time and pursue a different degree at 29 years old. I am unbelievably grateful that can afford to do weightlifting. I am unbelievably grateful that I am in a relationship that is secure, calm and happy with a man who I can grow with. Oh how things are changing.