01/31/11: Well then

I had another blog up this morning.  Then I started reading on my blog list trying to catch up all that I missed from last week.  And the week before.  And the week...well, you get it.  And I came across news that put my blog into perspective.  Then I thought, well, it's what I'm feeling and it's my blog so whatever.  But, ultimately, after about half an hour of trying to convince myself that my whining was ok, I decided, phuey, it wasn't.  So I deleted it.  If you saw it, well, there ya go.  If you didn't, you didn't miss much.

So, instead, I'm gonna put up another blog that is way more whiny.  But this one will be the real thing.  Some of what's really bothering me.  Some of just how lame I really am.  Some of why I need help in life like lap-bands and fantastic and amazing husbands - two "things" I could never live without.

So I suck.  We all know that.  Thankfully, y'all don't throw it in my face.  And I rarely dwell on it.  However, every so often, the 'I-suck-a-thon' runs amock and I get to deal with the damage.

I think I'm in one of those periods.

I suck.  On that we agree.  Let's move on.

'I-suck-item-#1'.  My career.  This is a biggie.  To me.  I love my career.  I love what I do, who I work with, how my days go, all of it.  I love it.  But I suck.  I have worked for my curernt employer for 3 years and 2.5 months.  I have loved my current employer for exactly that long and aspired to work for my current employer for approximately 6 years before I was hired by them. 

When I was a student in college I took a course, an elective tied to my second degree, that changed my life.  It made both of my degrees make sense and it made my career path clear.  That course was in my junior year.  Jobs were plentiful in my junior year and I had two job offers from my chosen career field waiting for me.  Fast forward to graduation time.  Jobs were scarce.  Even compared to this recession/depression, at the time that I graduated it was said that jobs were harder to come by than they were in the Great Depression.  Both job offers were rescinded because the companies had to downsize.  I graduated and turned to waiting tables as a way to make ends meet.  Eventually, something "better" did come along and I was hired as a chemist.  But it wasn't the chosen career and while I loved the people I worked with, it was not a sustainable career nor did it pay "enough".  That job, though, was perfect for the time.  In 2004 when my mom was dieing, I had a supervisor who had lost his mom to the same cancer.  And he held my job for me as I flew back and forth to California every other week to be able to spend time with my mom.  Eventually, at the end of March, I didn't like what I was seeing, so I stayed in Cali instead of returning to work.  And my boss held my job for me.  He held my job for me for two long months.  I went back to work late in May and worked my bum off to thank all of my coworkers who had picked up my slack.

At the end of 2004, knowing that wasn't my dream job, I quit.  What did I do next?  Sailed around the world for four months.  We left out of NYC on January 5th and returned to NYC after circumnavigating the globe on April 29th.

And then what?  Tech writer was my next career.  I love writing and you all know I'm a dry-writer.  I can process/analyze data like the best of 'em and make the reading clear and concise.  But politics got in the way at that job.  My boss used something I never said against a coworker and fired her for it.  I wasn't about to be anybody's pawn, so I left.  And that was how I wound up in my dream profession.

I started with a competitor and handled anything and everything they threw at me.  Five months into the job, I was doing stuff my coworkers, with 5-6 years of experience, still couldn't handle.  I was an independent analyst within 6 months handling one of the largest exploration surveys that had ever been undertaken.  I loved it.  With that competitor I was underpaid, though.  And while I was learning tons, I was limited in how far I could go.

Until one day a head-hunter came after me telling me the industry's best wanted me.  I accepted the interview.  I accepted the job that was offered within one hour of me leaving the building.  I would be working off-shore and my pay was nearly doubled.

I started with my company and excelled through the training program.  I passed my first promotion within six months.  That promotion, if you are motivated, usually takes a year.  If you are motivated and fast-tracked, maybe you can do it in nine months.  No one had ever done it in six months.  I was on track for my final promotion to get me out of training within the following nine months.

In that span, I had also gotten married.  And my marriage would have gone up in smoke if I continued to work off-shore.  So I had a conversation with my boss and he agreed to transfer me into the office.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is when my career fell apart.

I have now been in the office for two years and three months.  I have not finished the training program and gotten the associated promotion.  I have not moved into management and I am not handling projects on my own.  My motivation is gone.  My drive is even less.  My desire...dang but I don't even know what that is anymore.

I am watching people around me, hired long after me, with no experience from other companies, move through the training program and get promoted.  A colleague and I were joking about this this morning.  He is a dear friend of both my husband and myself and I teased him that he'd be promoted before I was.  The joke is/was...I have worked in this industry longer than he's been out of high school.  And he has two college degrees.

I am finding it hard to continue being me.  I am a driven, motivated, discplined person.  I work hard and I laugh often.  I see what I want and I go for it.  And everytime I've gone for it since working here, I've had my hand smacked.  I have stopped asking for what I want and am now trying to just stick my nose to the grindstone.  The grindstone "they" point me to - not the one I know I can handle.

It's depressing.

'I-suck-item-#2'.  I am not losing weight.  I'm not even trying.  I let my husband bring things into the house that aren't conducive to weightloss.  I don't blame him and I'm not mad at him, don't get me wrong.  But I don't stop him.  I continue to be lethargical and uninterested in putting forth the effort.  Part of this is still pregnancy woes.  Part of it is also pregnancy desires.  I really don't want to start up again on my routine just to get pregnant and have to stop again.  But the end result is I saw 199 and I gave it back.

Am I really into this?  Can I really commit to this lifestyle for life?  What is my issue?  These are questions I ask myself daily.  Why am I so full of excuses?  How on earth have I become so content with mediocre?  I lost half my desired weight that I want to lose and this, somehow, gives me license to slack off?  What is wrong with me?

I wanted to be in the 180's by Valentine's Day.  I've lost jack-squat-diddly in the month of January.  Cause all that I've lost...I keep putting right back on.  If I had taken my 205-photos this weekend, I actually would have weighed 205 for them.  But I didn't.  This morning I'm back down to 202.

And yeah, why can't I take the 205 photos?  What am I scared of seeing?  Do I think I'll still look like I did at 215?  At 225?  At 235?  At 265?  Photos have always been a motivator for me, when I truly see the progress being made, I get excited and work harder.  So why can't I let myself have that motivation?

I can answer that.  I'm pretty sure that my 205 photos will not show an improvement.  In the span of losing the last 10 pounds all that has really changed is I stopped weightlifting because I was pregnant.  I haven't changed what I ate.  The tape measure hasn't changed all that much, either.  So I'm pretty sure all I lost was muscle.  And if that's true, I will look worse.  Ten pounds lighter - but no better off.

It's depressing.

So why don't I get back to the gym?  The friggin gym is in my house.  I don't have to go anywhere.  It's not too cold - I control the temp.  I don't have to worry about jiggling in front of people.  I don't have any excuse not to.  And yet I don't.  For two months now...it's been...I'm gonna.  Well, first it was Christmas.  Then it was recovery mode from Christmas.  Then, on the appropriated week for when we were going to start our routine gain, my husband stubbed his toes and probably broke his pinky toe.  He can't run.  So I chose to sit on the couch with him.  He's still healing.  I'm still sitting.

'I-suck-item-#3'.  My eating.  Even if my goal wasn't losing weight, let's say, it's maintenance.  For the long-haul.  Long term health.  I'm eating horribly.  I have decent restriction.  The magic restriction of early December is gone and now I have weird boingey-ness going on - two weeks ago, couldn't eat a thing (and saw 199 on the scale); last week and this week, I can eat reasonably.  But I'm choosing to eat around my band and I'm eating quantity and not quality of all of it.  10 whole drumettes from Hooters Friday night.  Yes, 10.  I figured out how to get them in without pain and suffering.  And I won't disclose here how to do it cause if you don't know, you shouldn't learn.  But somewhere along the line I learned the trick.  And a fill won't solve me.  Only I can solve me.

So why am I not?  For the last four days I've turned to comfort foods to battle my headache.  Ice cream.  Cheetos.  Sodas.  Wings.  Sushi.  Donuts.  KFC.  And I'd love to say it's just the last four days that have been bad.  But truth is, the last two weeks have been speckled with lots of badness.  And I keep choosing this.  I donated blood earlier this month and saw that my cholesterol is higher than it's ever been.  But instead of motivating me to fix it, I go on a smear campaign to apparently make it worse.  I'm 65 pounds down and my cholesterol is the highest it has ever been.

I suck.

That's depressing.

I could fix it.  And on this one, I'm gonna blame my husband, too.  I'm even going to tell him to read this so he can see this.  I can't fix both of us.  I can only fix me.  But I need him to stop tempting me.  I need him to want to fix him.  And his cholesterol was just as bad as mine.  Go Figure.  We eat the same damn shit. 

Maybe exercise isn't going to happen every week and every month.  But we can eat better.

When we cook at home, we do eat better.  The week we gave blood we spent 3 evenings with a best friend visiting from NY.  We ate out at places we wouldn't normally and partook of things we don't normally have access to.  The week before that, before we knew the best friend was going to be in town, we'd made a vow to ourselves to not eat out for the entire month of January after that week.  That particular week was recover from Christmas/New Year's week.  We had three restaurants to try, restaurants that specialize in burgers.  So here we have two weeks in a row eating badly.  Very very badly.  One week we rationalized.  One week we didn't control as much.  And then we should have switched to eat at home mode.  But we didn't.  Some of this and some of that derailed us again.  And then we should have switched to eat at home mode.  And, honestly, I can't even begin to tell you what we ate last week - my head hurt and I was losing my eyesight periodically.  I have no idea what we ate I just know I didn't cook.  And now there's this week.  Over the weekend, well, I spelled out my last four days above.  But I can tell you...this week will be getting ready for the super bowl.  The only night I know makes sense is tomorrow.

It's horrid.

Why am I not doing something about this?

It's not ok with me...and yet I let it continue.

My career is not ok with me...and yet I let it continue.

My exercise is not ok with me...and yet I let it continue.

I want to be a mommy.  Will I ever be?  I can't get any of these other things right, what makes me think I'm capable of raising children?  Is that what the miscarriage was?  A big ol' smack in my face telling me phshah.  As if.

My headache...you wanna know what my triggers are?  I've learned something with this headache.  It's my hormones.  Specifically estrogen.  So, I can't cut out my trigger.  I can just learn to live with it.  Yay.

And, apparently, as my body gets used to my normal hormones all over again, cause, you know, two months of pregnancy changed everything, well, normal hormones are stressing my brain out.

Yay.

Here's the cure.  Wait until the estrogen subsides or get pregnant.

Sheesh, why didn't we think of that?  I mean, we want to have a baby and all...what...get pregnant?

Ugh.

(please not sarcasm is prevalent in my humor)

Like I said, I suck.

It's depressing.

So there it is.  All the stuff I haven't wanted to talk about.  I've been fake with my blog for awhile - and you know it.  Thank you for not calling me out...but next time...please do.  I've kept this bottled up for entirely too long.  And I'm ready to move on.  Please?  Can I?