On a dark and stormy night...

The east coast is NUTS tonight.  Seriously, not to talk about the weather, but what's up with the weather?! Earthquake, hurricane, floods... if Godzilla rose out of the Potomac and started bashing monuments, I don't think I'd even bat an eyelash.

I swear I thought of this joke before I found this picture.

This is going to sound trivial in the face of natural disasters, but that's only because it is, so if you're someone who takes offense to people being anything less than super serious at all times, you are really on the wrong blog.  Shoo. Away with you. We'll all wait.

Right, so I wore my new shoes to work today.  Obviously I don't check the weather (my sister, the meteorology grad student, would truly be shocked). So when it came time to leave work, I didn't want to get my new shoes wet (calf-hair leopard-print flats-- noooot exactly rain boots).  So, I took them off when I got far enough away from the important offices, and made a run for my car, barefoot.  Apparently my running barefoot in the rain skills are way out of practice, because I fell HARD CORE, scraped both my knees and my elbows, got completely soaked in the couple inches of rain that were forming a river in the parking lot... it was very embarrassing for all involved (me). It was also rather painful. So, wah wah wah, I fell and got some boo boos, but it was kind of hilarious from a bird's eye view and I'm almost sorry from a comedic standpoint that nobody saw it.  I mean, I scraped my knees, and I didn't even make someone else feel more graceful? Lame.

But that's not the point of this blog post!  I feel the need to start a bit of a new chapter.  I may redesign the blog, I may move it to wordpress, and I may even rename it.  I'll keep y'all in the loop if I do decide to do all this, but I was reminded today by one of my favorite local bloggers how enriching blogging can be, and how much I miss it. I barely even write these days when it's not required for work, and I wonder if that's part of the funk I've been in off and on over the course of the summer.

I've found a new doctor (more on that later), am relatively settled in at my job, and am super happy with my awesome boyfriend, but I still feel like a lot is missing.  Like, hobbies, for one thing.  I've had so much going on that I feel like, just when I was starting to figure out what my hobbies were (it's always been a weird question for me), I abandoned the search. I've been less vigilant about editing my life, filling it with the things that bring me joy and push me forward, and leaving the margins to enjoy the moment and roll with the punches.

So I'm working on those things again.  I reconnected with some old friends, am looking for a spiritual outlet that fits me, am considering finding an affordable yoga class in the area. Maybe most significantly (time will tell), I signed up for some Stratejoy "Joy Juice" journal prompts and have started, albeit rather feebly, to work through them and ask myself those hard questions again. Self examination, in my personal experience, is never a bad thing, and I'm hoping to make some discoveries that will enrich my life as well as the lives around me!

What changes are you making in your life recently?  

What are the things you do that make you feel  like the best possible you?

The Quickest Update I Can Muster

I seriously miss talking to other chronics lately.  Unfortunately it's not always for great reasons-- I've been feeling extra whiny lately, and now that I'm a sick person in a well person's world (as opposed to being a sick person in my own, private, sick-person world), it's sometimes even harder to explain that I don't feel well. Or just plain inappropriate.  If I miss a day of work, it's kind of frowned upon to explain to coworkers how heroic it is that I'm here today. Everyone who needs to know, knows, and I sort of need to get my act together in order to be as healthy as I can be!

So, brief recap of the last several months:

January
Graduated from college!  SUPER happy!  Began job hunt. Had a terrible interviews, had some good interviews.
February
Had a couple of great interviews and, voila, a job offer!  More super happy.  And gratitude like crazy because, really, I expected to be looking for much, much longer, and it's great work.
March
Began job, began apartment-hunting, met lots of crazy potential roommates and finally found completely sane apartment-mate about a mile away from boyfriend.  All good things... but all kind of stressful things too!
April
March finally catches up with me, and I get sick a good bit.  I end up in the hospital with colitis, I go off my antibiotics, and I start looking for a new doctor.  My body is not so good with the difference between good stress and bad stress-- hey body, don't you know we're happy?  Dumb.
May
More of that, and now I'm looking for a doctor like crazy.  Still happy at the job, but also scared of losing the job.  Determined to get a hold of this illness before it gets a hold of me.  Reading The Happiness Project and am convinced that I too can get my life under control with some planning, introspection, and elbow grease.

Which brings me to now, and brings me to maybe posting more or maybe starting a new blog.  Something's got to give, and it's not just my health issues.  I feel a need to sculpt my life a lot more purposefully now that I finally have that power back.


How do you enjoy your life more?

Failure at Facebook, but maybe not so much at life?

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Well, for the record, my no-Facebook pledge lasted maybe an hour before I got an email in my inbox and, you know, just HAD to go respond right away.  Oh brother.  I'll try again later when my will is more stalwart, but for now I think I've still dialed down some of the obsessiveness.  Though leaving the house would surely help as well.  I'm not housebound physically anymore, but since I currently work from home (freelance) and am fairly broke (um, results of the freelancing...), I don't have many reasons to leave the house during the day other than doctor's appointments and occasionally running/walking.  I do still go out at night sometimes, but it's just not the same-- sunlight makes me happy!  I'm just starting to feel like a vampire or something.  Bleh.

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My doctor's appointment on Monday went just fine.  Dr. M. put me back on antibiotics, but just doxycycline and not the other two, in order to mitigate the negative tummy reactions.  I'm still on probiotics and she prescribed a bunch of different supplements that I now have to go about collecting.  They're all from random online companies, too... one even from an Ebay store run by another doctor.  I've kind of been putting it off, but I'm totally going to get on that tomorrow.  By now, I've mostly learned my lesson about putting off my health for too long just because I feel fine now. Preventative action is the name of the game, people.

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In other news, I've actually been exercising lately.  Strange, right?  I've already got shin splints, but I'm determined to keep at it.  I've been 3 separate times in the last week, which is pretty on target for me.  I used to imagine the clothes I could wear if I were toned enough as an incentive to make myself work harder (yeah, I'm one of those girls sometimes.  What of it?).  I realize that's shallow or whatever, but if it works, it works.

It's not what I'm going on anymore though.  I try to imagine myself the way I was before I got sick, one semester in particular when I really got into running at night (unsafe but exhilerating), took up yoga, played intramural softball, and started rock-climbing for fun.  I felt strong. Solid.  Invincible.  Of course the next semester I became terribly ill, so there goes the whole invincible theory, but the point is that I've felt health and I'm trying so desperately to feel it again.  This is really cheesy, but I like to listen to Fort Minor's "Remember the Name," while I run to remind myself that anything worth having is hard work-- it's not just me and how life is unfair blah blah blah ad nauseum, lol.  Maybe it's silly, but the song makes me feel empowered and tends to send any leftover victim mentality issues right out the door.  I'm not in control of everything, but I'm in control of some things, and it's dumb to whine about how hard they are.  It doesn't make them any easier or get them done any more quickly.

Oh, one last tidbit before I go.  I heard back from WFU that I actually only have one more English class to take, which means that the last class can be anything I choose.  Woohoo!  I think I'm going to take a journalism class by this awesome professor who guest-taught one of my classes last semester.  She talked about social media and online journalism and how exciting the changing world we live in is.  I dug it.  So I emailed her and she's going to make room for me in the class.  Hooray!  She writes books about living simply, and her blog is here if you're curious.

It's ALIIIVE!

So, it's 2:08 am and I'm still awake.  Not really insomnia this time around... nope this is just good, old-fashioned, night-owl-ish-ness combined with a healthy dose of I-don't-give-a-damn.

Nessie over at lipstick, perfume, and too many pills gave me this sweet blog award, which I will try my darnedest to post on tomorrow.  Thanks, Nessie!  Truly the best part of this, though, was checking out all the other blogs that Nessie gifted the award too because, damn, this girl could be a blog curator if there were such a thing as a blog museum.  I'm just having a blast going through these puppies.  There's RA Guy, who draws comics, of which I am ALWAYS a fan (Hyperbole and a Half much?). Amanda over at All Flared Up is FUNNY in that awesome, irreverent sort of way, which can seem taboo sometimes when you're feeling as crappy as we sometimes do.  And Helen from Pens and Needles is starting to feel like my long-lost friend the more I read her posts.  So really, much fun to be had tonight on the interwebz.

But I think what I like best about reading blogs from other people with chronic illness-- and especially other young, single people with chronic illness-- is the fact that they make the same mistakes I do.  And that sometimes you can't even really call them mistakes because it's not like we took a gamble. I *know* what happens when I drink, and I *know* what happens when I stay out too late, and I *know* what happens if I push myself too hard for too long.  Yeah.  I get it.  The whole fragility thing.  Womp womp womp.

But, sometimes, I just don't care. I'm sorry.  Sometimes, if I'm not feeling my worst, and I have that anxious, "gotta get out of this house-," "my God I'm 24 years old and I never have any fun"- feeling... well, I'm going to get out of this house and have some fun.  And sometimes it's a mistake.  And sometimes it's the best thing I could have done for myself.  Because whether or not I get better after all, I'm not waiting around for my life to start.  It's happening.  Right now.  Right this very freakin' minute. And sometimes the threat of a crash just doesn't measure up to the threat of reaching 25 and thinking, what the hell did I DO last year?

So that's where I am right now.  Please don't judge me if one day my posts are about how I can't get out of bed, and the next day I'm on my way to a series of events.  Or sharing dumb stories about the stupid things people say in bars.  Or taking overly ambitious road trips.  Or even chaperoning a church youth camp in the middle of this heat wave (something I'm actually considering for next week, depending on how these stomach issues pan out).  It doesn't always mean I'm feeling that much better (though sometimes it does and that's awesome); it just means I'm juuuust enough better to start living my life again.

Owning My Story

After my diet change, I intended to write a post about what I could and couldn't eat.  I was going to take pictures, make comparisons between my old stand-bys and my new fill-ins, joke about my wine and sugar addictions and my subsequent withdrawal symptoms... you know, the works.

One small problem:  I don't really find it that interesting.

I think that I'm at that phase of my blog journey when I feel the need to define this blog and its purpose.  "This is a health blog," I told myself.  "This is where I blog about my health and all my screwy symptoms and my many doctors.  This is where I find other patients who get it and we talk about how our lives have been changed by health."

But really, I didn't start this blog to talk about my health, or lack thereof.  I started this blog to talk about everything that was affected by my health.  MY LIFE! 

I went to church this past Sunday for Easter and the pastor said a really great thing in prayer that stuck with me.  He told us to thank God for our story, no matter how hard that may seem sometimes.  And just like that, I was able to see my life a little more clearly.  This isn't the end, and it's not the beginning, but it's part of the story, and that's okay.  If God is the author of my story, then I know it will be beautiful.  I just have to trust Him and live my life and own my story!

I've been slowly going through the diaries of Anais Nin, a French author who died in the 1970s, because I just love the way she uses words.  She croons her life story to you.  Anyway, she's training under a psychoanalyst in New York City named Dr. Otto Rank, and she's describing his patients' troubles:

The sick came endlessly, each one who was cured brought father, mother, sister, brother, friend.  They multiplied in an alarming degree.  Was this a new illness, born of our own times?  No time for love, no time for friendship, no time for confidences.

Rank touches all things with the magic of meaning.  Those who come to him are like the blind, the dumb, the deaf.  When he discovers the "plot" of their life, they become interested.  This interest saves them.  This plot created by the unconscious slowly reveals itself to be more interesting than any detective story.  Rank uncovers the links, webs, patterns.  It is endlessly interesting, full of surprises.

Then, after Anais begins to see her own patients, she makes the following remarks:

Analysis accelerates growth, maturity, but changes come more slowly than insight.  The patterns have deep roots and take time to change.

I avoid all clinical language because as a writer I believe language has power.  I also take much trouble to describe each character, each motivation as unique, not to give the patients the feeling of being classified.

Science may heal, but it is the poetic illumination of life which makes my patients fall in love with life, which makes them recover their appetite for it.

This is what the blog is really about for me: falling back in love with my life.  Accepting my story and starting to do a bit of the writing of it myself.  Extracting the meaning from my days so that this time of my life will not have been in vain.

What about you?   If your life story had a genre, what would it be and why?  What would it take for you to fall back in love with your life?

All photos from WeHeartIt.