Bucket Lists and Motivation

I am making a bucket list. 

It’s funny—in the last ten months the need to get some things done has consumed me like grass in the path of a California brush fire.   Hardly a day goes by without the hamsters in my head staging a conference call about a project I have come to think of as “FUTURE PLANS.”  Metaphorical Furry and Slurry have come up with quite a list so far, too, powered by endorphins, brown rice and the occasional Gigi’s Cupcake to set them really on a roll. 

So, what’s on the list?  Quite a lot of varied proposals as Furry and Slurry aren’t in the business of doing impractical editing.  These items are different from my “TO DO LIST” that includes non-negotiable things like:

Send the Boy to college
Fix the screens and doors and kitchen floor in the new house.
Lower the BMI another 2% over the next year.  

On this FUTURE PLANS list my hamsters have compiled, there are items that are straight forward, provided I take the time to get the education and/or do the work. These sorts of items have numbers because they can be checked off once accomplished.  They are in no particular order; they are things that can be done when I have time to do them.  These are things like:

1. Learn to make decent Pho.
2. Plant and keep a nice flower garden.  

Other list items are predictably travel related and annotated in my head with caps, stars and swirls to illustrate the potential for magical adventures the idea of them bring:

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

TRAVEL TO L.A./COLORADO/GRAND CANYON/DUBLIN/B.C./LONDON/INDIA/JAPAN SEE FRIENDS, DO THINGS, TAKE THE BOY.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Others FUTURE PLANS items wind like the roads that would take me there and are not written with such emphasis as they seem further away, less likely, but are still too vital to completely remove from the list.  This sometimes makes them hard to read.

W    k        U        a        K     B    s       C     m

    a     e        p         t    2    a    e       a      p

Others on the ambition/career portion of the list fade in and out of focus, some days appearing fuzzier and far away while other line items appear crystal clear and just within reach. 

Zumba Certification

Audition for a show in an open call. 

ACE certification

Degree in Nutrition

Make the BIG IDEA happen

Finish the book.

Some FUTURE PLANS start with parenthesis as if they are half an idea.  They end with question marks and remain all in italics as if they  are shy about even being considered as a potential and realistic goal. 

(go to burning man?)

And others...others can’t be written down for long.  They appear then disappear like the Cheshire cat, leaving only the residual of a lines-on-imaginary-paper smile to show they once were there.   I know about them but they refuse to take a place of permanence on the list.  They are *not* *quite* *there* yet.

This FUTURE PLANS list?  It’s long.  LONG.  The ones written above are some of the bigger line items, but there are many more for as anyone who has ever met me can testify, my head is a busy place.  

The issue for the most part of doing all these things (outside financial resources and time and I do not count either because if you want to do something, really want to do it, these things can be made to appear) is motivation. 

I have trouble with motivation.  Let me correct that:  I have no trouble with motivation that arrives on the surge of an initial impulse.  My initial impulses are great.  Where I bog down is on the long haul between Make-It-Happen-Topeka and Goal-Accomplished-Fort Worth.  On the goal-reaching stretches that go on for miles, where there is no excitement and only the routine and regimen of moving towards something, my momentum hitches and sputters,   When the road gets rough or the way isn’t clear and I’m going to have to blaze a trail or make a new way,  it is in these stretches my impulse loaded engine slows to a stop and I find myself  beside  the side of the road of My Best Intentions with a buck in my pocket, out of gas and low on spirit.   

When this cycle reaches this conclusion,   I follow the ritual of blown-out impulses and put the demoted goal in a pretty, decorative mental strong box for safe keeping; a sort of hope chest for ideas that just didn’t happen.   I do take the box out now and again.  Sometimes, upon re-examining the ideas, some impulses spark back to life, but if things bog down, then back to the box the ideas go, either in a rush or more commonly, with reluctance. 

The logical part of me (there is one, actually) condenses the phenomenon in the following SQL-esque manner:   

If IMPULSE =OVER

then

MOTIVATION = GONE.

(End)

The sole exception of this pattern in my life is current experiment under way to continue to live a lifestyle free from Type II Diabetes.  .  This time, I actually was successful at accomplishing a goal.  Of course, then I found out the goal was actually a journey which continues onwards and will for the rest of my life, but that’s fine.  I’m here, I don’t have medication, WINNING.   

It helps to keep the engine chugging remembering diabetes doesn’t take time off because I need to carbo-load.  Hell, this disease is so deep in my genetic code, even with everything I'm doing now, I still might not be able to avoid it.  Still, that doesn’t mean squat—well, actually it means a bunch of squats but not in the metaphorical sense of the term.  When the motivation lags, some meditation on adding needles and insulin and medication to the daily routines usually turns it around. When truth-based scare tactics don’t work, the thought of the Boy going through life with a healthy-as-possible mother and one less thing for him to worry about usually does the trick. 

And now there is this list, filled with asterisks and italics and bold fonts to highlight ideas.  Things to do.  Things to accomplish which ties back to a night in a bar in Chicago in 1994.  I had met this fantastic artist, Paula Killen.  She was doing her one woman show at the Goodman and my boyfriend at the time was the sound designer so we ended up hanging out with her during the run.   She was and is a brilliant writer and monologist; one of those beings that burns so bright energy radiates off of her in waves.  In Chicago winter, it was good to hang out near Paula because that fire she had in her belly to create just kept you warm inside.  It inspired you.   

   

Anyway, we were out at a bar—maybe the Map Room, definitely not Marie’s Rip Tide that night--and I said something in a rather wistful, little-dog-scratching-at-the-door-to-be-let-in manner along the lines like I had always wanted to do new plays or develop a one woman show.  Her response was straight and to the point.   “Well, why don’t you just do it?”  No bells.  No whistles. 

Just do it.

Just do it?  Not wait for permission or to receive validation? It rolled off the tongue so easily.  So you mean, you just do the work, get it done, make it happen?  My 28 year old self twitched at the idea.  You mean, I don’t have to wait  until all the circumstances were perfect?  Just...do it? Like the Nike ad?

Yes.  Just do it.  Make a decision.  Go with it.  Get it done.  It's that simple.  

And now, twenty years later, with this list swirling up from my mind’s eye like smoke in a magic mirror on a regular basis, the same statement faces me. Why don’t I just do it?   Why don't we all, no matter what the "it" is?

I have thought and thought about it and finally determined there are no compelling reasons not to do everything on the FUTURE PLANS list.  Everything.  One at a time until my time runs out, whenever that is.  Maybe I get to one of them.  Maybe I get to all of them and start a new list.  Some will be harder than others.  There’s no reason not to try. 

 

There are lots of reasons we don’t do things.  Lots and lots.  We tell ourselves we can’t because it’s not easy or convenient or affordable or practical.   We tell ourselves we can’t because of ties that bind.  I agree there is a level of responsibility to it all, especially as a parent.  For me, the lights have to stay on, food must remain on the table and the relative safety and stability of all beings within my care must be ensured, with the health and well being of the Boy first and foremost.   The TO DO list must be maintained.   

However, it makes sense now that the FUTURE PLANS doesn’t have anything to do with the TO DO list. For many years they were tied--it was all about the ultimate goal instead of the journey to get there, the enjoyment of the now.  Taking it a step at a time—setting a goal and working for it—having a compelling need to accomplish it even if it’s just “this is something I want” is reason enough to get through the Topeka to Fort Worth haul. 

 

So, yeah.  I have a bucket list.  I have FUTURE PLANS. What I'm learning is to take it one step at a time and keep going until you get to the end which sometimes turns out not to be the end but the beginning.  Then maybe you have something. Or better yet, maybe you'll just have the journey and most of the time, that's where the best stuff happens. 

  

That's enough to keep one motivated.  That's enough to make me say, "See you in Fort Worth."

If you ever wanted to try an exercise class and haven't--

--last night, in our 6 p.m. Zumba class in Yellow Springs, along with the 40+ all shapes/sizes people attending, there were no less than seven children under thirteen and one woman in a wheelchair who came and took the class.  The woman in a wheelchair did the arms only and worked up a good sweat.  Her daughter, who was deaf, did the class by watching and feeling the downbeat from the music. It was both humbling and made of awesome all at once. 

 So if you've ever wanted to take a class or feel intimidated by them, try it.  Work to the best of your ability; you don't have to do the whole thing perfectly or be the best in the room or do everything high impact like the instructor. (As one of my favorite class teachers to date said once:  "Low impact does NOT mean low effort!"  You can get a great workout and by marching and lifting your knees, really stretching on side movements and working your lower body by getting lower instead of adding bounce.)  The important thing is to take the class if you want to take the class.  If you take it more than once, you'll get better at it.  

A bunch of children, including a deaf child.  A woman in a wheelchair.  Like the commercial says, come on:  just do it.   

Well, I am a sanctimonious asshole.

What the title says. Therefore, a few things: 

1. I have no hard answers or solutions to pretty much anything.  Physically, I know what works for me but there’s a lot more to learn.  Things keep changing.  More on that later.
2. Getting healthy in any way is in my limited experience not a one-size-fits-all sort of thing.  It is intensely personal and malleable.  It is also incredibly fragile.   It’s one of the reasons why I started this blog and also why I think those diet industries make 60.8 billion a year.  
3. Mother Teresa is an inspiration.  I sure as hell am not.  In fact, most days, I’m a poster child for HSM (Hot Shitty Mess.) It’s a miracle my son has survived to be almost 10 with such a mother.
4. These observations I have are solely my opinion.  I am an expert at nothing.  As I educate myself, I will share because knowledge is power.   I realize that by taking on controversial subjects, I attract wrath. Take what you want and leave the rest.   Take nothing at all.  Or tell me to go to hell, if you want.  It’s just my opinion and I am often wrong.   
5. My writing is not intended to prod or poke or make fun of or put down anyone else's efforts towards health.  Anyone who is trying to grow healthier physically, emotionally, socially, financially or any other "–ly" should be applauded and supported.  Whatever motivates them to start and persevere is an awesome thing.   I am 100% behind them.  
6. Where weight loss is concerned, I adamantly do not believe in diet industry driven programs anymore as sustainable measures for long term physical goals.  I think they are great jump-starting tools and that’s about it.   This is my own personal conclusion.     
7. With that said, if a diet program sustainably works for you, that’s great.   Again, this is fragile and personal.  One size does not fit all. 
8. I have thought about this blog for a very long time.  In doing so, I have had many conversations with many, many people in the last six months about this subject.  My dissatisfaction with the media portrayal and the marketing of weight loss couple with the dissatisfaction I hear from those I encounter along with my own personal dissatisfaction with results in the past is the driving factors here.    

So for any who took offense or thought I was criticizing or who wanted to knock me down a peg, I’m knocked.  Mea culpa and true apologies offered.  It is my sincere and humbled hope they might be accepted. 

******************

I considered naming this blog, “Things No One Tells You” but settled on the more incendiary title because it’s what I tell myself about everything most days.  Still, “Things No One Tells You” struck a chord  because I’m doing the perio-menopause thing.   I have been for about two years.  And you know what?  A lot of what is happening, has happened to date, no one warns you about.   As a dear woman I love to pieces wrote me this morning, “Who knew your giblets are the boss of everything? And I mean e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g!”

It scares me, this looming iceberg of uterine change that from all telling disrupts your life from the ground up not for a month or so, but for years.  Women get through it every day, of course.  For some, it is simpler than others.  For some, there is wreckage in its wake.  Here’s a fact:  menopause and its’ inevitable outcome scares me.  It seems to me that I just found a me I’m vaguely happy with upon the brink of potentially this incarnation going away again. I am scared I will not be able to sustain a healthy lifestyle through menopause.   

No.  Strike that. I’m terrified.  

I also fret about changes other than the proverbial “change of life.”    Life change scares me for it has derailed me in the past for long periods of time. 

<navel-gazing portion of blog>

I had lost weight a number of years ago before my wedding, (which is where the name SYHGOYA comes from as I lost twenty pounds in about three months by exercising and eating a strange diet.  My friend, Su said she and I should write that book and had a good laugh about it.) Then I lost my job, my husband was denied entry to the US after going to renew his visa because he had married a U.S. citizen and had “intent to immigrate,  I got pregnant on a visit to Canada to see him.  He re-entered the U.S. a week before our son was born. 

And during that time, even with an excellent support network in Chicago, stress took its toll.  High stress job.  Bills on one paycheck. Being pregnant, all on its own.  It was in my third trimester I decided Oberweiss ice cream was good for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Therefore, I was 198 pounds when my son was born, up from 150 lbs at the start of the pregnancy.   And for me, breast feeding did not take that weight off.  The truth is, I did nothing to help it off either.  Ice cream is still good during post-partum and well into the first year, too. 

The next eight years brought a series of crazy changes.  Motherhood.  Premature hyper-tension.  Moving from Chicago to Ohio.  A dream job that became a nightmare.  Separation from my husband. Unemployment.  Divorce.  Single Parenting.   Navigating a new dysfunctional and highly political work environment requiring a 3+ hour commute each day.  A new unhealthy relationship. Foreclosure.  Lawsuits against mortgage giants.  General insanity. 

(Note:  I look at that list and think, “Jebus.  Really?   That sounds like a bad Lifetime movie of the week.”  But yeah—all of that happened.  Still, we had a lot of fun during it. My life has been pretty good to date, even all the definite crap of it withstanding.  Also, 95% of the nasty situations I encountered I had a hand in creating.  If you make questionable decisions, questionable things happen.  It’s a fact. No pity there.) 

There was no question that in the “healthy living department,” I was completely derailed.  Food was the only constant.  It was my offering to myself and to those I loved.  Cooking was something I wanted to excel at as it seemed I was struggling with everything else.  So, food was comfort.  Food meant love.

 

I did attempt Weight Watchers a couple of times during those eight years—lost 15, gained 20, lost 10, gained 22.  I was never serious about it though and I knew that while I did it.  I wanted to lose but knew I couldn’t sustain.  I simply did not want to give up the one thing that offered consistent pleasure.  I remember thinking, "Man, I can't wait until I lose this so I can eat again."  Oh and there was no exercise.  Really at all. I left too early and got home too late. 

Then in 2009, after attending a reunion, reading an article and seeing a picture, when all seemed to be out of control, I started controlling food.  That’s the truth of this.  Then, a new job came, a half an hour commute began and I started working with people who talked about going to the gym and I realized I could do that now.  So I tried it.  This time, it stuck.

   

</navel-gazing>

The point of all this is I have derailed many times in my life from health simply from the circumstances of life. My current big focus is financial health these days.  It’s a monster in my life of my own creation and one that has to be slaughtered all on my lonesome. 

Still, I’m afraid it will happen again.  The only thing constant in life is change and I do fear something life-wise will happen and I will lose the ground I’ve fought for over the past two years.  So.  Yeah.   Gotta love the hard light of reality, right?

I want to know how does one keep up when the unexpected comes into play? These circumstances happen all the time to people more disciplined and better equipped to deal with crisis than I.   Me?  I have no answers.   Question of the day:  does anyone else?  How do you mitigate changes?  And how can you stay on track?

So Who Am I? And What is This?

I have noticed a trend. 

As of the last year, when watching the news and talking to friends and family, a theme is coming up over and over again.  When put through the media, it starts like this: 

"Lose weight and keep it off the way the stars do!" 

"Tired of diets?  Need to fit into those 'skinny jeans?'"

(insert image/voice/footage of ridiculously paid celebrity spokes person) "I lost weight using Blah Blah Blah program and you can, too!"

In conversations, it begins differently.  If I see someone I haven't seen for a while, it generally goes something like the following: 


"You look great/Wow, look at you/some sort of exclamation of surprise at my physical fitness to date."


(I say thank you.  I work hard at health and appreciate when people notice.) 


Then, within five sentences, sometimes even in the next breath, 2/3s of the people I encounter state one of the following ideas:

1. They need to go back to the gym. 
2. They know they need to lose weight.  (Sometimes they actually apologize for their appearance. It's awkward and there's nothing I can say to make them feel better.)
3. They don't like the way they look/feel at their current weight level. (Sometimes they look great.  In fact, I'll have been thinking, "Damn, they look good and about to reply and then it's all,'Oh, I feel awful/look terrible/am so fat/insert your derogatory comment here.'")

This happens *all the time.*  I've been asking around to other people to see if it happens to them and it seems this is my own thing that's going on.  Regardless, it's always surprising. I've wondered actually if I'm leading them to it so I've been monitoring my conversations with those I see to make sure I don't anymore.  I don't mention anything about it and then it comes up.  It can be absolutely maddening. 

I also have noticed I have more and more conversations with people I love where we touch on the topic of their dissatisfaction with their own level of appearance and fitness on a regular basis. They tell me they know what they need to do, they'll do it their way, they want to step up the workouts, they are counting points or working a program--all variations on the endless theme of "IIIIIIII don't like my booooody" society teaches us to sing from the earliest of days.  

And you know, I get it.  I do.  I was a picked-on, bullied fat girl who got thin from about her senior year of high school until my early 30's when a nightmare relationship took me down a spiral greased with pizza slices and butter-coated everything.  I was 44 years old when I made a decision to become myself again after living thirteen years, with a brief two year stint around the time when I got married and before I got pregnant with my son, clinically overweight and nearing obese.   So I get it.  


This is what I do not get:  

Per the CDC, as of  2007-2008: 

• 33.9% of U.S. adults over the age of 20 are OBESE. 
• 34.4% of U.S. adults over the age of 20 are OVERWEIGHT  
• 18.1% of adolescents, ages 12-19, are OBESE
• 19.6% of children, ages 6-11, are OBESE. 
• 10.4% of children, ages 2-5, are OBESE

BUT 

• In 2010, the diet industry made 60.8 BILLION DOLLARS hawking their solutions for helping people become thinner. 
• There are various studies and statistics that show 95% of all people who lose weight through dieting gain it back. 
• The average diet cycle per year is 4; meaning those who want to change their appearance will start diets at least four times in twelve months.  

Obviously something isn't working but goodness-gracious: some people are getting rich.  


All of this has me got me thinking about so much.  For instance:

• As a consumer, food has changed so much in the past twenty years that what we think we're eating may very well not be what we're eating at all.  
• I've personally experienced some real craziness ever since the moment I decided to unpin the Type II Diabetes target off my size 16 butt.  From dating, to perception, to dealing with food issues--I've looked it in the eye at one point. I'm sure there will be more, too, and writing always helps.
• What does it really mean to make the changes to live healthy in a culture that promotes quick and easy and impermanent instead of health and self-empowerment?  And how on earth do we raise healthy kids in the midst of the corporate food machines? 

See, I'm 46 and in the best shape of my life (which on update:  which is relative for me and not for Shape Magazine.  I still require airbrushing.)  The thing is:  I'm not done yet.  This is not a diet.  This is a lifestyle.  Life is to be lived and not denied and I'm tired of seeing people throw money down the diet machine maw, myself included.  I want to figure it out--how we can change the perception from "quick fix" to "really wonderful sustainable life style change" and hell, I'll use the internet to help me do it. 


The fact is there is only one way to get healthy. That's to live healthy. And please remember that "healthy" is a relative term defined by the individual and not by society.  I know those who have suffered disabling disease that still maintained a "healthy" lifestyle during their sickness with support and help and through their own personal strength and commitment to their understanding of health.   

The point is, our culture would have us think otherwise. Our culture believes in quick fixes, in teaching us to look outwards instead of inwards for solutions we already have.  In my opinion, it's time for the inmates to start running this asylum, to take back the dieting-night, so to speak--to teach ourselves to live with bounty and in grace instead of deprivation and need. 


So yeah.  I think that's enough for today to start.  So shut my hole, right?

A Note to the Title of the Blog:  Yes, it's called Shut Your Hole.  Get Off Your Ass. I can see where this might be offensive to some.  However, I use this not only as a reference to portion control and exercise but also as the phrase I tell myself when things get hard.  I require tough self-love.  I do not coddle.  

To break it down:  

Shut your hole = stop complaining/whining/giving excuses.  
Get off your ass =  Get moving/take action/affect change.


Sometimes it means moving mountains.  Other times, it means I need to put down the cookies and go to the gym. (Eh, it happens.)  Regardless, it works in every situation.  


Every single time.