Resolution Wrap-Up

Not like I've actually done all these things... hahahaha, you must be kidding! Just that I've realized that trying to do a post about each of these things is totally stalling out, so I'm wrapping the rest of them plus some updates into this post.

Here's what I've got left to talk about...
5. Get my finances in order
Eek. This one is the "I have no clue where to start" one. I think we're going to have to shelve this until summer. By then, a lot of things should be more clear. But as sort of a backup resolution... I'm keeping meticulous receipts. Usually it occurs to me when we finally do our taxes (as in, October 14th, the day before the extension runs out...) that I should have kept better records. It's too late for 2008, but let's start 2009 by being methodical and organized about this from Day One. (Then maybe I can get an accountant this year; it's hard to do that when you're piecing a lot of things together at the last second.)

6. Get some more social relationships into my isolated, pathetic life.
This one is hard, too. I'm honestly not sure how to do it. But maybe I could start by being less defensive and less tied in to being resentful about what people are not doing for me. Maybe instead of being eternally annoyed that my aunt forwards me junk all the time instead of sending me a real email, I could just tell her that. Maybe instead of resenting that my best friend doesn't call me, I could just call her. Maybe I could start by being a little braver and a little less protective of myself.

This is hard.

7. Go back to the gym.
This is hard, too. Not so much because it's intrinsically difficult, but because Michael is still not able to do this, and I feel bad leaving him home. He says, go. He says, I will come with you and watch, if you want. But he says this when he's feeling ok. When he's not, it's all really frustrating, and it's even more frustrating when you have to watch someone doing something that you want to be doing. So I don't know. But I think that somehow I have to do this.

I have to think about how to make this work. I will get back to this.

8. Get the house organized.
I did something about this. I hired someone to come help for about 2 hours every week. I think... hope anyway... that this will help a lot. Just having someone else to do a few things once a week will take a lot of pressure off of me.

I feel very guilty, on some level, about hiring someone to do something that I think that I should be doing myself. I still have a hard time realizing that I truly can't do everything. I still think that if I just work hard enough, I can... and that it's some sort of failure if I don't.

And some updates.

It looks like my insurance company is probably not going to approve the antidepressant that I was willing to take... since it's the one that my smart psychiatrist sister recommended... unless my doctor can work some magic. I don't think that's going to happen. So... I think I'm on my own with this. But maybe that's not such a bad thing, or at least I'm hoping I'll think so after I get done being irritated and upset; I think I was kind of hanging on to the idea that a magic pill would make me feel better (and in the process, I forgot all the reasons that I don't really want to work on this through medication).

But long-term solutions come better to me through thought and cognitive strategies than through medication, anyway.

I got my hip x-rayed and so far no one has told me that my leg is about to fall off, so I guess that's good, and I need to think physical therapy. Which will also get me back to the gym.

Oh, and I've discovered that an average day is about 3,000 steps for me, the magic of the pedometer (although I don't think it's perfectly accurate). So I need to be tripling my motion, essentially, if I've shooting for 10,000 steps. Some of that will come when the semester starts.

Ok, enough dull introspection and problems. It's time to figure out the solutions.

Resolution Days, Day 4, Hip

4. Figure out what's actually wrong with my hip and what I need to do to fix it.

My hip/thigh/whatever has been occasionally just beyond painful since last June when I pulled something playing racquetball... although there have been bits of this problem for some time. It kicks off when I do certain kinds of things... push a grocery cart is the biggest one that clearly does it, but sometimes just moving around a lot, and certainly anything that twists it kicks it off. Very, very painful. I've been to the doctor about this a bunch of times; he moves my leg around and says, there is nothing structurally wrong here, go to physical therapy.

And I was going to do that... but you know, it's a time thing... yes, and that's an excuse thing, but true.

So Monday we went through this again, and he said, let's get it x-rayed, and Go To Physical Therapy. So, ok. I will try to get the x-ray done next week. I will. Really. And I guess that I will check out the physical therapy. Ugh. I am reluctant about this, not so much because I am reluctant to do it in general, but (1) I hate to make phone calls; I am stupidly phobic about this if I give myself a chance to be, and (2) there's a long boring story here about the physical therapy place up the street and how much Michael hates everyone there. But I need to do it. So... I guess I need to put some accountability timeline on this.

Try to get the x-ray next Monday since we have to go to Rochester anyway.
See what happens with that.
Call about physical therapy on Tuesday.

Ok.

Resolution Days, Day3, Feet

3. Get a pedometer and shoot for 10,000 steps.

This is the easy one... well, the pedometer part. I got one from Amazon, and it came yesterday... I have to say that this thing is pretty cool... much smaller than the last pedometer I had, and the neat thing is that it will register in your pocket or purse or whatever, doesn't have to be clipped to your waist. So we'll see, first, what my average daily walking is, and then I guess we'll see how hard it would be to make 10,000 steps, which is the real goal.

I'm not entirely sure how dead serious I am about this... I mean, I kind of hate walking as a form of exercise... but I'm thinking that if I just try to go for upping my number of steps, then I have some incentive to do the little things like park farther away and take the stairs and so on.

Resolution Days, Day 2, Food

"2. Focus on thinking about what and why I'm eating."

This is the other hard one. I am not losing weight. I don't keep a food diary these days, so it's hard for me to know exactly what I'm eating from a calorie point of view, but I stay very low carb, and it doesn't seem to me that I'm eating a lot. So, why don't I lose weight?

I've been spending a lot of time over the last weekend watching fat shows. You know, it's the beginning of the year when everyone is stoked on the idea of losing weight, so every channel runs all the weight programs it can find (and, I suspect, gyms top out on members who will be there for a month and never appear again). Anyway, Discovery Heath has been running all its morbid obesity programming.... something I find a combination of bizarrely fascinating, inspiring, and depressing as hell. Michael and I have been there with a lot of the indignities that come with super obesity, and it is not a good or kind thing, but that's a whole different topic. My real point is that it is staggering how many really fat people say, "but I don't eat that much!" And then you see what they do eat, and you think, wow, you are kidding yourself. And, paragon of virtue though I am, at some point I have to say, maybe that's exactly what I'm doing.

The low carb way of life has been a great blessing for me... I feel better, I look better, I don't really gain weight... but at the end of the day, you still have to create enough of a calorie deficit to lose weight, and either there is something physically wrong with me, or I'm just not doing that.

Also, bad habit creep is coming back. Nibbling on things because they're in your hand. Licking the spoon. Eating the leftovers rather than putting them away (or making the dog happy!). And eating at night. Yes, I do get hungry at night. But I would probably survive just fine without that extra piece of cheese, wouldn't I?

So... what am I going to do about this. 1.5 things... the 0.5 is because I am not exactly sure that I'm committed to the first thing. The first thing is start keeping a food diary again. I have very mixed feeling about this because I tend to get a little compulsive about this, and stopping doing it was incredibly freeing. But maybe I need to do it again. Possibly with a camera. The second thing is, I've sent for the Judith Beck behavioral books that I've seen recommended a lot lately. And I'm going to have a shot at really working on some of the cognitive things.

I quit smoking years ago, and I mostly did it by learning to think of myself as "not a smoker." I think that same kind of cognitive trick might help a lot here. We'll see. I'll report back.

Resolution Days... Day1, Happiness

The trouble with resolutions is that you can't just make them, not if you really want them to happen. You have to have a plan, some way that you're going to put some structure in place to make sure that there's some chance that it will happen. Otherwise, it's not a resolution, it's a wish.

So I wrote down my eight resolutions, and now the question is, what can I do to make these things happen?

The first one, "work on happiness", is actually the hardest and most painful one. I was going to do it last. But it's probably the most important one... and so, well, let's be brave, I guess.

I have been, lately, just beyond unhappy. I have been crushingly, overwhelmingly sad in a way that I just don't know how to deal with (and I've had a lifetime of dealing with depression and so forth). It is becoming incapacitating. I get up every morning and spend two or three hours just getting to the point where I can do something besides cry. I think it's fair to say that this is not normal.

Michael says, well, what do you expect? Your mother died last summer. The process of grief takes time. And so on. But it's not that. I mean, it is that in a way... I miss my mother every day, and I am still filled with anger at the unfairness of it all. In some ways, it's hard for me to imagine that there will ever be a day when I say, "I'm over this now." Some losses you never get over. But I understand this. It's not my first loss. It's part of life. I can deal with it. If it were only this, I think I would be all right. But it's the proliferation of a thousand small things, not so much this one big thing.

It's been nearly a year since Michael has been really well and mobile. It's hard on him; it's hard on me, and it hasn't gotten easier. There's little to break up the endless medical problem after medical problem; we can hardly go anywhere, and when we have, it's most been a mistake. And I do everything. This is not a complaint... just a fact, and over the last year, nearly everything has become my responsibility, and it wears on me. I am afraid that these things will never get better... although I believe that they will.... and at the same time, I have to try to be the optimistic and encouraging one. And the weight of all of it... I don't know. I mean, I am not a complainer. But I have so little time to do anything that might make me feel better, and I'm so isolated, in a way, and the combination of all of it has, I think, tipped me into a kind of depression that's beyond anything I've experienced before.

And I have to do something about this. I've been trying to wait it out, but it's getting worse rather than better. So I think that this is taking me back to the place I've been trying to avoid, going back on antidepressants. Don't get me wrong here... I am not at all anti-medication; I was on them for years, and they are lifesavers for a lot of people. But let's just say that the end of my antidepressant experience was a lot worse than the beginning, and left me with considerable reluctance to try this again unless absolutely necessary. I haven't wanted to deal with the whole adjustment and side effects thing... and in some silly way, to whatever extent this is all about grief, I wanted to feel it, not have it numbed (even though I know that it's not the way that it works). As some bizarre sort of tribute, I suppose. And because I just think that I should be able to cope with everything in the universe.

But this is wrong. It's wrong partly because I keep telling Michael that he has to try medications that might help him even if he doesn't want to, so it's just flat-out hypocritical for me to be unwilling to do the same thing. And my state of mind affects him as well as me. I've started to call my doctor about this five or six times over the last few months... and every time I talk myself out of it. And that's the point of talking about it here, really, to make that commitment to actually doing that. Monday.

Things are not supposed to be like this. And so maybe if I could deal with the biochemical bits of it, maybe some of the other things that will help... the rest of my resolutions... will be possible.

The Inevitable Resolution Post

I've been putting this off.

My adorable son, when asked about New Year's resolutions, either says, "I don't do that because there's got to be one holiday you ignore", or "I don't do that because if you're going to resolve something, you should just do it whenever." And, ok, he's right about the last bit.

But it's a little hard not to see the old year ending and the new year starting as a moment to assess and evaluate and plan.

Goodbye, 2008. You were an awful year for me. Probably the worst ever. If we could just get through 2009 without anyone getting sick or dying, it would pretty much be an improvement. It's hard not to be bitter, looking back. Very few bright spots. Probably the only one is that Michael ends the year having lost 102 lbs. in 2008 (173 overall). Impressive... though I have to say that even this has a dark side. He was actually more mobile at this time last year, which is just another of those endlessly ironic things.

And roll on, 2009.

There are so many things I want for this year. And I'm just going to write these down and think more about each of them later.

1. Work on happiness.
2. Focus on thinking about what and why I'm eating.
3. Get a pedometer and shoot for 10,000 steps.
4. Figure out what's actually wrong with my hip and what I need to do to fix it.
5. Get my finances in order.
6. Get some more social relationships into my isolated, pathetic life.
7. Go back to the gym.
8. Get the house organized.

I think just writing these things down is enough for the moment.