Owning It: Now What?

Yesterday’s post was a tough one. It’s never easy looking in the mirror and seeing what I see and then sharing that with others. What is worse is doing nothing to change the status quo. Being in a perpetual state of stagnation is almost as bad as the downward spiral that led me there.

So, what’s next? I’m a list-maker. I have paper notebooks scattered all over the house with lists. One notebook I kept close has a running list of big-picture and small details of my rambling train of thought the past few weeks. I scribbled quotes and brain spew while on vacation. I wrote down the things that I like to do, the times I’ve felt sheer joy, the moments that me laugh, brought great memories, songs and lyrics that stop me in my tracks when I hear them.

Then I started organizing them into groups and the big picture got a lot clearer. 

1. Running. To my core, I am a runner. No matter how long of a break, no matter how slow, or how flabby I “feel”, I am a runner. Running brought me back from a very dark place and I’m counting on running to come through for me again.

2. Photography. My beloved Canon is on its last leg and I have emergency funds available to replace it with Amazon prime after it takes its last picture. I’m rusty with my food photography (maybe because I’m rusty lately on eating…FOOD). I love making a food pic look amazing. I love seeing my work published. But beyond food, I’m itching to return to the everyday, the candids, the black-and-white. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done was a year-long 365 project. I’m not solid on doing one again, but I would give my last running shoe to have had the last 365 days documented.

3. Strength training. Specifically, putting a lot more effort into my CrossFit goals. I’ve never been the dainty ballerina type, but my soul felt such peace when I started working out with CrossFit. It was that missing puzzle piece to go with running. CF has gotten such a bad rap lately, but that’s for future blog posts. I want to start back to my 5:30am class. There is something fundamentally healing about quiet mornings and pushing my body to limits  I never thought I could reach. I crave the soreness. I miss the exhausted mind-clearing that happens after a very tough workout. I don’t miss the cathartic tears that rise up and have to be choked down, but that’s ok. I’m in a safe place to do it. One day I will tackle that fear of the jump box (the day I no longer care about losing my shin skin…). My CrossFit box has a mantra that is truth. “This place will change your life..if you let it”.

4. Cooking, recipe development, nutrition. It was a sad day when I told Stephen I didn’t feel like making spaghetti. That is the easiest and quickest meal I make and when I reached that point of not wanting to cook it, times were rough. I had forgotten how much I love developing recipes, specifically Paleo recipes and gluten-free recipes. I had forgotten how much I love setting a table with colorful dishes and lighting candles. I have more napkins than the Ladies’ closet at church, but have not used them on my table in months. My fascination with researching holistic nutrition and ancestral health dwindled to paltry efforts around the time of Paleo FX. I stopped reading the pubmed papers and listening to podcasts and reading the books.

I was so lost in my own mind that I couldn’t sleep. And that has to stop. The brain fog has to dissipate and I know it will not just happen my magic and prayer. I need a plan and I’m very well aware there will be a lot of going-through-the motions of a different kind. I won’t feel better or back to normal, whatever that is, with one run, one workout, one family dinner, one gab session with family, one prayer, or one solitary walk in the woods. But like putting that puzzle together, the pieces will fit and over time, I’ll get back to ME.