answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything = 42

This morning, I woke up as a 42-year-old.  That seems like a really, really LONG time.  Still pacing myself through the recovery process from sepsis, I feel every single minute of 42, if not older.  Interestingly enough, when people who don't know me well ask how old I am, they argue with me about my age: you can't be 40!

I was running late this morning because my phone kept buzzing throughout my morning routine.  People from different snapshots of my life coming to the forefront to wish me well.  It's a heartwarming reason to be late.

I am usually one of the first people in the office, so I park in the first space.  But since I was late, it was taken.  It was taken by someone who decided to back into the spot and park over the line into the second space.  I was absolutely not going to park in the third space, so I pulled into the second one, just really close to the other car.

I had a box to carry inside along with my purse, so I tossed my keys into my purse on the passenger seat, shimmied out, and shut the door.  Yeah, the door that was locked.  My purse, my keys, my card to get in the building, the box: all still sitting inside the car.  It just so happened that someone I knew quite well was headed towards the building at that moment and let me inside.

Breathe in, breathe out.  If I had just let the bad parking job person have the two spots and parked in spot three, I wouldn't have been waiting on roadside assistance this morning.  My karma fairy has always had this kind of sense of humor.  But I think if I were a karma fairy, I probably would too.  Welcome to 42.

I have been trying to work on mindfulness recently.  Be present in the moment.  Quit replaying the past in your head.  Quit worrying about the future and things you cannot control.  Take care of your body and soul.  Drive without road rage on Poplar.  You know, the hard stuff.

But it is really difficult to be faced with your mortality and at the same time let go of controlling everything.  If anything, recognizing that you are closer to the year of your death than you are to the year of your birth makes you want to grasp at anything to control... or fall into a mid-life crisis.  Maybe that's what this is: my version of a mid-life crisis.

You know, it isn't like I never thought about what my purpose in life is before now.  I have been lost about that for years.  I guess it's just that I have to submit to the fact that I don't have 50 years left to figure it out.  And then the cycle of "what if this is not where I am supposed to be" and "what if I don't figure it out" starts replaying in my mind.  What if I had died in 2016 without figuring it out?

I see people around me who have found their calling in life.  Sometimes it's through their profession: a teacher or nurse, or even as a manager or a business owner.  Sometimes I see it through someone's volunteer work: devoted selflessly to a purpose greater than themselves.  Sometimes I see it through someone's passion for painting, or creating music, or building things, whatever.

I don't feel like I have a calling.  I mean, it is definitely not through my job.  My job is not boring, but it isn't fulfilling either.  If I left my job, they would be lost without me because I am the only one in our office of 14 who does what I do.  However, that doesn't make my heart sing with joy or anything about what I spend the majority of my time doing.

I thought for a minute that I may find purpose in working on art to sell with my venture into art fairs.  I poured all of myself into it for about a year to prepare for the Cooper-Young Festival and then barely covered the cost of my booth.  The other three events had similar results.  I was a little depressed about those shenanigans after the fact.  I still have plastic bins of product taking up room in my sewing room, my life, and my head space because I cannot just get rid of all of the time, effort, and energy I put into that work.

Working on the project house was overwhelming purpose for the period of time I was fully in it.  It was a means to an end to pay off all of my debt.  It worked out for me so far, but after the majority of the work was mostly over, I felt relieved that it wasn't a bad investment after all rather than accomplished for doing it.  And starting another project house sounds exhausting.

I watched a movie my therapist recommended recently.  It was based on the books, lectures, advice, etc of Dr. Wayne Dyer (a psychologist and self-help guru).  The basic premise of the movie had to do with being in the "afternoon of your life" and shifting to living a life of purpose and meaning instead of one of ambition and acquisition (of things, money, success, etc).  The "afternoon" meaning the last half of your life after you're over the hill.

At first, this film made me angry.  It seemed to me that it's really easy for someone to just decide that his life needed to shift to more meaning when he is wealthy and no longer has to worry about how the utility bill is going to be paid.  I could travel the world and find my purpose too if I was a millionaire, Wayne.  Thanks for imparting that knowledge on me while they interview you in Hawaii, living in your vacation shirt, with no shoes on.  I'll try to keep my sarcasm to a minimum while you make me feel guilty for the ambition that pays my bills.

I watched it a week ago so I think I am at a better place about it now.  Well, at least I'm not as angry anyways.  I thought a lot about what I would be doing if I was a millionaire and no longer had to worry about myself or my future financially.  Besides travelling the world and learning about different people and culture, taking care of elephants or dogs or both was the overwhelming thought.

Since I don't feel like I can actually do the travelling the world part without the unlimited funds part, I have focused my thoughts on the elephants and dogs.  How can I change my life path to be able to spend more time with animals?  Is this a path I need to fulfill through volunteering?  Do I need to go back to school?  Where do I even start?

It's really hard for me to commit to leaving my job or going back to school.  With the completion of the project house, I am debt free for the first time IN. MY. LIFE.  I am hesitant to go back to the place I just got out of because my life feels like it lacks the meaning I want.  

For the present time, I am going to continue the self-care I have started with therapy, yoga, diet, mindfulness, and meditation.  I am hopeful that taking care of myself physically, mentally, emotionally, etc will show me what exactly I feel like is missing from my life.  "Purpose" is too broad to address for me at the moment.

It's Been A While...

I haven't posted anything in a while.  It isn't that everything is perfect or that I have run out of things to say.  But I typed up a few things in the interim and well, just didn't like them enough to put them out into the world.  Such is life, I guess.

I started back to work in the office on January 3rd.  When my shit bag left, so did my ability to work from home.  I think after a month back I can say I am simultaneously happy and sad about the change.  I miss being at home with my husband and the crazy animals.  I felt a lot more flexibility working at home.  But it was a double-edged sword since I was a few feet from a refrigerator full of food and apparently have no self control.

I immediately was infected with the winter crud upon returning to working in an office with other people.  One of the funsies of having sepsis is that I am more susceptible to germies for the rest of my life.  It ended up being a sinus infection.  I guess I can be thankful that it wasn't the flu, strep, or bronchitis.  I literally started feeling bad on day two in the office.

The other funsie side effect of sepsis that I have noticed as being more prominent is short term memory loss.  I know it comes with aging as well and I have come to accept a lot of new limitations my body has made clear to me since all of this happened.  But it almost feels like I got a double dose of it... like it progressed more intensely than it would have just from aging.  I forgot to wish a family member happy birthday on their birthday.  I didn't even realize it until three days later.  I don't do stuff like that.  I just don't.

It makes me feel too self-absorbed.  Like I don't have room in my brain to remember anything except all of the things I need to do specifically for myself.  I am not even successful at that sometimes.  I forgot to pay the car note in January.  I logged in to pay it for February, and the bill was twice as much with a late fee.  I know I don't talk a whole lot about finances on here, but I am NEVER late on payments.  I set it up for automatic draft so it doesn't happen again.  But this feels like I am failing.

One thing I have been doing successfully in the past month is sticking to an eating plan.  I decided I would try keto for three months to lose the extra weight I picked up when I was working from home and eating all day.  I have been doing it since January 15th and so far I have been committed to it.  I have been put in multiple situations with cake and somehow abstained.  I guess it is just not worth it to cheat when it takes a week for your body to get back to ketosis.  I have lost some weight, so that has been nice.

But, I went back to my therapist last Friday and told her about the keto.  I explained to her that I was trying to kick my addiction to sugar and thought the temporary fast from it would help me change my cravings.  I remember when my husband and I first had gastric sleeve, the post surgery diet was incredibly restrictive and we didn't eat sugar for probably two months afterwards.  The first time I had sweet tea after that, it tasted awful, almost like drinking syrup or something.  I figured doing keto would help me in the same way.

To say that I am addicted to sugar is a vast understatement.  The first week I did keto was a very strong statement on my level of addiction.  I would just stand in the kitchen staring at all of the food I had meal prepped for the week, longing for something (anything) else with sugar in it.  Ketchup.  Bar-B-Q sauce.  Anything.  And I thought to myself, "Girlfriend, you have serious issues if you are literally thinking that drinking some ketchup sounds like a good idea just because you are craving some sugar."

I got through it.  I stared at all the things in my kitchen with sugar or carbs longingly.  But I got through it.  It isn't worth it when cheating reverses a week of effort.  I explained all of this to my therapist.  Along with my reasoning that food for me is black and white.  I don't do well with gray areas.  I can try my best to stick to a plan that says you cannot have certain things, but I do not do well with having everything in moderation.  Her response was interesting.

She wanted to know when I was going to be able to look at food without the lens of self-punishment through restriction.  Through a series of other discussions about other things going on in my life, her other big questions in this session were: when are you going to love yourself, and when are you going to be more important to yourself than everyone else in your life is.  She deserved a mic drop after this hour.

You know, I can look at the lives of other people and can pinpoint with some level of accuracy what led them to the paths they are currently following.  The person who relies on food for comfort because it was the only thing that comforted them when they were abused as a child.  The person who is lazy and does not accomplish (or try to accomplish) anything because their parents always told them they couldn't.  The person who is materialistically selfish because their parents were the same way and they always felt like they were going without.  The abuse victim who chooses abusers over and over again because that was the example their parents set for relationship norms.  I know it simplifies a lot of other variables, and it isn't always cause and effect.  But the relationships between events like this are clear.

But I don't have answers like that for myself.  I didn't have a terrible childhood.  Overall, I was spoiled by my grandparents, I went to private school, I was afforded opportunities a lot of kids weren't, I took dance and piano lessons, and in general I appeared happy and well adjusted.  But for some reason, self-inflicted or otherwise, I always had this sense of "other"; that I didn't fit in, that I wasn't wanted.  And all of the things I did, from a very early age, came from this place of going above and beyond any general expectations because I, myself, was not enough.

I still do this.  I have a very hard time saying no when something is asked of me.  And because I have spent 40 years exceeding expectations, usually voluntarily, the things people feel comfortable asking of me are not minimal and are sometimes to my own detriment (financially, emotionally, physically, you name it).  My husband has been a voice of reason since we got married attempting to save me from myself.  But it is with me kicking and screaming the whole way.

When are you going to love yourself?  I cannot even verbalize why I don't love myself or where the ideas of insufficiency come from, not less when I will stop allowing them to win.  It's like trying to fix something that you know is broken, but doesn't outwardly appear broken, and doesn't indicate to you how it is broken.  Where do you even start?  

When are you going to stop punishing yourself with self-restriction?  This was originally in reference to food, but it applies to a lot of other areas without a doubt.  I didn't even notice or recognize this is what I am doing.

When are you going to be more important (to yourself) than everyone else is?  I have always put other people first.  Call it self-sacrifice or self-sabotage.  Does it really matter which one it is?  All of this derives from core beliefs I have about myself.  I don't know where they came from.  I don't know why they're there.  I don't know how to change them.

I do not deserve love.
I am not enough.
I am a failure.
I am not important.
I do not fit in.
I am not likable.

I realize that most of you will read those statements and disagree with me.  However, it doesn't really matter if at the end of the day, *I* do agree with them.  No?