REASONS

This blog is about change. 

It’s about creating change, embracing change.

It’s about how I am changing my life, little by little.

It’s about how I am changing my body, day by day.
It’s also about how I am changing certain habits, perceptions and beliefs that no longer serve me.
This blog is a documentation, a record of my journey from here to wherever it is I end up.  It’s a way for me to hold myself accountable.

I woke up one day and decided that I needed to change my life.

I wasn’t happy.  In fact, I was desperately unhappy. Everything was just kind of “blah.”  I was just going through the motions. Nothing in my life felt fun, exciting, seductive, absorbing.  

I wasn’t eating properly or healthily.  I wasn’t exercising regularly.  Actually, I wasn’t exercising at all.

I wasn’t reading very much.  All I was doing was writing—and it wasn’t even my own work, writing for which I could publicly claim credit.

 In order to earn enough money to cover my overhead, I’d decided to temporarily work as a writer-for-hire.  I edited other people’s writing; I helped people shape and put together their book proposals.  I did all sorts of stuff that fell under the writer-for-hire umbrella, but mostly I was a ghostwriter.  I’d write books, articles, speeches, etc. and other people—my clients—would claim credit for the finished product.  I’m extremely grateful for the myriad blessings that these opportunities brought into my life— namely the ability to pay my bills, especially my daughter’s private-school and university tuition bills, and still be able to live a fairly comfortable life.  But in many ways the work was soul-crushing, the type of paid exchange that requires you to give away something of yourself that is sacred.  I was so busy doing client work, I had very little time to even get to my own work.  And that weighed heavily on me.

I’d promised myself that once my daughter graduated from university and got settled into her life as an adult, I would stop taking client work.  But I’d started working for someone I’d once considered a friend and that professional experience left me with a whole lot to be desired.  In fact, I’m still extremely bitter about the situation so I won’t even go into it here.  What’s that saying?—If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all!

Actually, what I will say is that this client had no respect for time—his own or other people’s.  He wasted so much of my time, it was infuriating…depressing…debilitating.  Everything came in at the 11th hour.  I was pulling a lot of all-nighters, always being forced to race against the clock.  Things that should have been taken care of in a timely manner turned into do-or-die emergencies, the labor of which would fall squarely on my shoulders.  It created a lot of unnecessary stress in my life, completely threw a monkey wrench in my social life and turned me into a prime candidate for numerous health conditions.

I was no longer doing any of the things that I enjoyed, things that had once fed my spirit.  I simply did not have the time.  By not setting firm boundaries, I was allowing my time to be abused, and my friendship to be exploited.  My workload and work schedule were overwhelming, seemingly never-ending.

As a result, I have serious anxiety and sleep issues.  I developed fibroids and they are growing quite aggressively, causing symptoms that are almost unbearable.  I’ve gained a lot of weight.  I now need to lose about  30, nope 40, actually more like 60 pounds in order to get to a weight that corresponds with a healthy BMI.

A wise woman who'd cured herself on terminal uterine cancer once told me, "If nothing changes, then nothing changes."
Change will only happen if you make it happen.
You can’t simply wish for change, you must create it.  That’s not exactly rocket science.  

The first of what, I am certain, will be many many changes to take place in my life this year is that I am choosing myself. 

Instead of thinking of all the ways I have to be present and available for someone else, all the ways I have to come through for someone else, I'm thinking of myself, choosing myself.  I choose to be present and available for myself, to come through for myself.

And that’s how change begins, with a decision, and a commitment.