Queen of Swords

Wow. . . I was unprepared for the one-two shot from the universe today.

First, on the subject of "weight loss" -- which I put in quotes because while I do want to lose weight, I do think about it in a holistic way: better eating habits, more exercise, more water, and etc. Today on FetLife, I found a post from someone asking what group members thought about "weight loss as an ordeal" -- and my ears pricked up.

One of the big challenges I have around improving my physical lifestyle habits is that I don't have any emotional energy around it. I've never been physically vain, and I don't have any important goals that are impacted by my physical condition (except insofar as any activity or goal is impacted by one's physical self), so it's always been a challenge for me to stay motivated. But framing it as a spiritual ordeal could be a valuable, vital paradigm shift. This is something I just happened on this afternoon, so I'll have to sit with it for a while and discuss it with my ordeal mistress (Ereshkigal), but I'm intrigued by the potentials.

The other shift is, of course, this sudden strong desire to try dancing. I see it as a direct consequence of my recent conversation with Ereshkigal and Her urging me to get in touch with Inanna and embrace passion. But it also builds on Wolfling's new-found love for salsa, and her desire to get me involved, reading Faith in Carlos Gomez, and jillwheezul's affirmation of embracing life. . .

I don't want to get too excited about any of this, because I hate my tendency to go head-over-heels and then burn out when things get challenging. . . but as I write that I think about my perserverance in staying with my priestess training for a year and a half, so maybe I'm starting to gain some resilience.

However either of these paths go, I want them to be joyous. I supposes there's always a time on any path when one has to simply grit one's teeth and keep going, but I want my overall approach to be gentle and joyous. And if you're asking how an "ordeal" can be "gentle and joyous" -- well, I'm kinky, and I'm pretty sure I know what that kind of space feels like.


More bulletins as events warrant. . .

I had a shrimp scampi pizza from California Pizza Kitchen for dinner last night (their pizzas are designed to be one-person entrees). It was reasonably sensible for an I'm-exhausted-and-need-a-savory-no-effort dinner -- but I made up for it this morning by having a protein meal replacement shake for breakfast.

Did my meditation, and am now cleaning the the house with my daughter.

When she hugged me around the waist this morning she commented again how much less of me there is to hug there, and said "I can feel the points of your hips!"

Woot!

The last month at work was so intense and exhausting that I completely abandoned my Weight Watchers point counting and my exercising. I stopped drinking enough water.

Nevertheless, when I got back on the scale early this morning, I was down two pounds since the last time I weighed myself on January 23rd.

If I'd been faithful to my program, I would have lost more. But I am delighted that I've changed my habits enough so that I after a month of stress I was still lighter at the end than the beginning. That is not the way it has worked for me in the past.

This brings my overall weight loss since mid December to 16.5 pounds.

And I did intense workouts the last three nights. I took tonight off, so I wouldn't burn myself out, and instead had fun cooking dinner with my daughter, eating at the dining room table, and then playing cards for an hour. It was a nice evening. Tomorrow I'll do my resistance workout again while the pork loin is cooking in my pressure cooker.

More overtime. . . It's not that I mind the time at work so much, it's that my commute can take anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes longer than usual depending on how late I join the rush hour and the vagaries of traffic flow and accidents. Last night, I worked until 5pm (instead of 3:30), but fortunately traffic was light on my route home.

The good news is that I'm in a good groove with my Weight Watchers, and can pack enough of the right kind of food that working overtime does not now mean an automatic trip through the drive-through after work. I'm actually looking forward to my meeting tonight and weighing in (which I missed last week).

It's strange and frustrating to have more than enough to do at work. Right now I'm working on the quarterly general managers meeting which starts today and runs through Friday noon, preparing for the 2006 road trip, and helping people get organized after our move from the third to the fourth floor. None of it is 'hard' -- but it is time-consuming. And having to get myself organized again yesterday in my new space didn't help. I'm used to being able to finish everything assigned to me with time to spare. I have to remind myself that not finishing everything is not a reflection on my skill, but of the increased work load.

What's good about my new space: it's all mine. I didn't inherit it from a previous holder of my position, as I had as a temp. It's set up entirely according to my desires. My boss has a corner office with windows. Her neighbor (who is just as cool as she is) also has windows and I can look up from my own desk and into her office and see the sky.

What's not so good is that I no longer have line-of-sight into Jeannie's office, so I don't know if she's on the phone, or even there. I'm teasing about putting in a Jeannie-cam so I can keep track of her.

Why aren't I sitting directly in front of her office, as I used to? Because the space in front of her new office is a window seat, which was already configured as a manager's cube, so it went to a manager instead of me. This was Miss V's choice -- back in the "before" time. Although I'm not sure if it would have made a difference now or not. She can be pretty tight on protocol like that. But the two spaces could have easily been re-configured.

I splurged over the weekend and bought myself a new, Monarch-sized Franklin Covey binder and organizer pages. The Monarch is 8.5x11. I'd been using their "classic" size, but too much of what's really important to me tends to be based on standard-sized pages. Covey blithely tells people we can reduce photocopy docs to fit in the smaller sized binders, but that simply doesn't work for me. It's taking a little while to get used to a slightly different organizing system, but I love the binder, and for me it's also a symbol of my commitment to the professionalism of my non-day-job. The binder is as much or more about my spiritual practice, my spritual direction practice, and my writing as it is about my day job.
But it does help the day job.

And I keep having intense, complicated dreams. Nothing vivid and clear enough to share here. . . but my subconscious continues to keep busy.

Down another 2.4 pounds tonight -- which brings me to a loss 10 pounds in my first month!

Woot!

I just did my first Weight Watchers weekly weigh-in.

I knew that because I'd been sick I hadn't had any trouble keeping to my daily points six days out of seven, and even on that 'other' day I hadn't come near to exhausting the bonus 35 points we get a week.

I had been hoping for three pounds gone -- one more than the ideal of two per week.

I lost six pounds this week.

Now, this is not an entirely good thing. It's a bit too much, a bit too fast, for good health.
I should avoid such dramatic drops in the future.

But it is heartening. It works. I can do this.

I just have to work a bit on the balance between self-indulgence and asceticism.