Project Put Together Starting Point

August 10, 2011

I feel like I need to have a place to begin on this project of mine, and that means that I need to take a deep breath and share some true confessions with you. These are the secrets I know we all have, but like to pretend otherwise. But I’m going to trust in the internet and believe that I’m not alone in this.

I am really lazy about taking care of myself. Maybe lazy isn’t quite the right word, maybe it’s more like taking care of myself has been a really low priority. When we all have the same 24 hours in a day and a whole lot to cram in, some things have got to go. And for me, that is almost always personal care.

  • I am 5’9″, 180 lbs and I have never ever ever been successful at any kind of exercise. Let alone enjoyed it.
  • I have more pajamas than any other clothes.
  • I tend to go about 3 days between showers, barring goop or scent issues.
  • I almost never do anything with my hair, telling myself that “messy” is in.
  • I only wear makeup on Sundays.
  • If possible between appointments, I will go a full week without leaving the house, even for a walk.
  • Until a few weeks ago I never drank water. Almost all my hydration came from Coke.
  • I don’t take the trouble to eat during the day, normally having some crackers at 3pm and then dinner.
  • Over Atti’s lifetime I’ve gone from reading a couple of books a week to reading one every couple of months, and only if I take my time in the bathroom.
  • I put off my own doctor’s visits because I can’t handle another appointment after all of Atti’s.
  • I never take care of my skin with special face washing or lotions.
  • I really don’t know much about makeup at all.

So this is where I’m starting. And from now on I’m going to do better. I don’t want to be a frumpy martyr mom who lives through her kids. I want to have the respect for myself to take care of myself.

My first step was to give up the Coke, and, seriously you guys, I never believed I could do it. But I did. I’ve been guzzling water like crazy for weeks. One big advantage was that some combination of the new medications I’m on makes Coke taste different. And that was the out I needed. Also really really helpful to get me over the hump was Mio.

Then I knew I needed to address the exercise issue. Not for any weight goals, I feel like I need to completely avoid that as a focus, but for activity goals. With my years and years of health issues, I have a very low tolerance for exertion. And then when I get motivated I always always exercise to injury because my will is more powerful than my body. So I’m not allowing myself to even try anything strenuous. Right now I’m just trying to create a pattern.

My first week on the Zoloft Bear swore he was seeing changes already. I mentioned that to my psychologist and he said that Zoloft wasn’t created to work that way but that, “once people commit to mental health, often their behavior changes on it’s own.” I’m seeing that in myself big time. I want to be wholly healthy, and that means I have to make some changes.

Filed Under: Are you kidding me?, Project Put Together

Project Put Together

July 27, 2011

Over there in my sidebar of yearly goals I had listed the very vague idea of “reclaiming my personal style.” As I wrote earlier, I was once known for how I dressed. Then a traumatic decade knocked me off my feet, and when I got back up and looked around, I was no longer a punky young adult, but a 30 year old mom with a mom body, and left at a bit of a loss.

I’ve struggled to really know what to do with my new self. I want to look stable and responsible, like someone you’d leave a child with, but I don’t want to look like a carbon copy of every mom everywhere in a uniform of sensible shoes and unflattering jeans. I don’t want to hamper my ability to play or lift Atti’s wheelchair out of the car, but I don’t want to wear sneakers and T-shirts everywhere I go. I don’t want to look like I’m trying desperately to pass as 22, but I also don’t want to careen headlong into Talbot’s and Chico’s and the flouncy uniform of sassy women in their 60’s.

I’m still carrying every bit of weight I gained four years ago when I was pregnant with Atticus, and for all that time I’ve stayed stuck in the new mom rut of yoga pants and food stained T-shirts because I let myself believe that the first step in getting myself together would be losing weight. And until that step was accomplished, nothing else was worth pursuing. I wouldn’t want to buy clothes at this size, that would mean I was staying this way. I wouldn’t want to learn how to do my makeup or hair in a manner that worked with my rounder face, because it wouldn’t be staying that way. And time ticked by and here I still am, with my larger size and rounder face and food stained T-shirts and yoga pants.

I so should have known better. If infertility taught me ANYTHING, it taught me that you do not put your life off until something you can’t always control happens. I lost a dear friend a while back and if she taught me anything, it’s that you do not postpone joy. (Also, if you have chance to spend time with someone you love, you take it. But that’s a conversation for another day.)

So, maybe I’ll eventually lose some of this weight, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll get really fit and still be rounder than I was when I was 20. That’s kind of how these things tend to go. But in the meantime I am going to stop looking like a slob, and I’m going to rediscover the joy in applying my creativity to how I present myself to the world.

Here’s what “reclaim my style” means to me now:
Get healthy – physically, mentally, emotionally
Learn how to apply makeup in a way that doesn’t hide my face but shares who I really am
Learn how to style my hair in something besides “disheveled”
Embrace my figure – wherever it is on the curvy continuum – and dress in a way that makes me feel good.
Take time and care with the impression I present to the world

How this will all be applied will be a bit of a journey. I have a lot to learn about all these things, but also a lot to learn about how I want to go about it. Like most modern women I have complicated feelings about beauty and efforts to claim it, and above all I want this exercise to be about being more authentic, not just obeying whatever an expert tells me or spending a ton of money. I want it to be an expression of how I live and what is important to me, taking joy in a creative approach to every aspect of my life, and joy out of engaging with the world.

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, Project Put Together

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