300th Post!

Oh wowsers.

I have a lot of friends who have just recently started blogging and look at me with my 300. I feel like a proper blogger now. I’ve already mentioned that I have another idea for a series of themed posts but I will get to that later – now is time for internet celebrations.

So instead of musing on the future, the pain of adult life and my various moods, I’m going to have a quick hark back to my childhood.

We’re going back. Very far back. To before I was a singing teacher, to before I played piano, to before I latched to academia as if my life depended on it. Yes, we are taking a gander at my life in dancing.

In retrospect, I am not sure I could call myself a dancer. I stopped dancing at the age of fourteen and haven’t returned in a real way since. But at the time, it was my life and I adored moving myself to the various beats that madam music can present.

Like, I said – I’m not a dancer. Not any more. But I remember the very first time I stood on stage at the age of four, hair pulled into a bun, garish blue eye shadow and red lipstick smeared on my face, playing a rain drop in a tutu with all of the other four year old ballerinas in my class.

It was a time when I loved my dance classes. Over the years, I was neither best nor worst, picking up occasional parts here and there, marvelling at the skill and physique of the older dancers. I participated in nothing anyway active except for my ballet lessons. I loved the long skirts of character dancing that you only wore for an exam, I loved stretching my legs in weird ways, I loved the studio full of mirrors. I didn’t love the occasional comparison to elephants when we landed loudly, but I loved ballet all the same.

At the age of 10, I decided to leave to pursue other art forms – namely the theatre. I joined the stage school (of which my sisters were also members) and delved into the worlds of jazz, tap and hip-hop – along with a little acting and singing for good luck. When asked my favourite of the three, I would still respond without hesitation that dancing was my passion. I fell into a nice middle ground again – neither best nor worst, picking up small parts here and there, relishing the applause of the stage.

At this point in time, I had also been involved in another hip hop class, was chosen for the set dancing team in school and was doing well in my acting class (yes, I took another acting class on top of this.) My early teens were dominated by the concept of a career in the theatre. I had no other prospects in mind, because I had the arts and that was all that I needed.

Sometimes I look back and wonder why I left. At fifteen, I said the Junior Cert was more important than the stage. In reality, I think I had just become too awkward for it to work any more. I was sitting alone in class, I was comparing my appearance to others and my joy of dancing was overwhelmed by my increasing depression. So I ran away.

My future forays to re-enter the theatre were cut short by my own ego and sense of criticism. Auditions didn’t go well and back in the day, I did love to play the victim. I hate that I never tried but c’est la vie. As someone who tries to instil this sense of potential into students, this is always a lesson for me to remember.

And for you: Don’t be afraid. Keep doing the things you love. Your ability isn’t what matters – your joy is.

And because that got very serious, lets finish with a little laughter.

Dream A Little Dream

I’m going through a retro phase. You go, Mama Cass.

Weekend Countdown

Happy Saturday folks! I need to post today if I am going to keep up with this whole “get better at writing goal.”

I must admit, I’m pretty tired and my week was very up and down – elated to down in the doldrums and back again within mere hours. I’m back to college on Monday (yay!) and I’m ecstatic with my exam results (its only cementing the fact Nursing was the right choice.) These mood swings are making more conscious of what I am writing on the internet, hence my mini hiatus, but I have lots of post ideas (and other writing ideas) in the pipeline – I just need to pluck up the motivation and courage to actually write them. I have high hopes that I will have an interesting post by the end of the week. Even rambling on like this is helping to put me in the mood.

So until I am actually productive, here’s a little countdown from 10 of recent happenings, hashed together from various blogging and tumblr challenges.

10 words you way overuse

1. feck
2. totally
3. awesome
4. like
5. awkward/awks/awkward turtle
6. queer
7. utterly
8. jaaaysus
9. yurt
10. *various gender theory shite*

9 things you do everyday

1. Read
2. Think about blogging (sometimes I do it too.)
3. Facebook (several times a day)
4. Check my RSS feed (several times a day)
5. Make a point about gay rights/the health system/educating the youth of today.
6. Eat porridge
7. Think about exercising (95% of the time I do.)
8. Overanalyse my life
9. Sing and annoy my family

8 websites you go on way too often

1. Facebook. I hate myself for this.
2. tumblr. See above.
3. My stats page on the blog. *narcissism*
4. Memebase. I die.
5. Autostraddle. Shamelessly. I die. Intellectually.
6. Various websites from my sparkley and sexy category over there <—–. Especially Shmitten Kitten and Ega Jones. Read religiously.
7. My college e-mail/timetable. Shockingly, nothing has changed.
8. Bittorrent (which is more of a program than a site, yes) to watch absurd amounts of internet television.

7 things you are grateful for

1. My bike for when I am to poor to ride the bus.
2. The internet, for making me feel like I may have a life. (Irony much?)
3. Quorn, for making excellent meat substitutes.
4. My mom, for listening to me cry when she really doesn’t have to.
5. Tea, for solving all life’s problems and bringing people together.
6. Best friends, even if they don’t know that I consider them so.
7. Nights out in 31 and Costies. Because if you were there, no explanation is needed.

6 things that made you drop lolbombs from your roflcopter

5 things you’re reading right now

1. Potatoes not Prozac by Kathleen DesMoiselles
2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
3. Autostraddle’s Things I Read That I Love series
4. Eating Myself by Candida Crewe
5. Tha Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

4 current obsessions

1. Learning French
2. Rooney Mara
3. Reading, writing, playing and singing Schubert
4. Finding the best cosmopoliton in Limerick (FYI The Bailey is winning.)

3 tv shows that are taking over your life right now

1. Dr Who (I have finally finished! What is left in my life?!)
2. Secret Smile – watched this ITV movie from 2005 yesterday. Scared the crap out of me and changed my opinion of David Tennant yet again.
3. Grey’s Anatomy – when will this mid season break end?!

2 favourite songs right now

1. Where is my mind? The Pixies (Oldie=goodie)
2. We found love Rihanna (I will never get sick of this song.)

1 recent picture

Fran, Egne and me being particularly blue.

10. A confession of your choice

This blog is rife with confessions – horrible moments of eating distress, conflict and other things that I put on the internet for some reason. So why not, instead, throw out some mini confessions instead.

10. I think I am becoming more hair than girl recently.

9. I am very feminine because dressing like a boy looks very wrong on me. And I have the hat and clingfilm to prove it.

8. I haven’t worn shoes in my house in over a week.

7. About every 24 months, I decide it is a good idea to take up knitting again. I usually give up before anything is finished.

6. Often times, I am guilty of being a complete and utter bitch and I don’t realise until it is too late. But I will try my best to make it up.

5. I have put on around 60lbs in the last 18 months and I am trying my best to be fine with that. Some days I feel. More and more, I succeed.

4. I am becoming increasingly cynical with age. If anyone has the ability to make me believe in fairytale love again will surely have my heart.

3. Sometimes, people become exceedingly uncomfortable when I mention that I am a member of Out in UL or when I have a strong opinion on LGBT rights. I will never hide this because joining was one of the best decisions of my life thus far.

2. I love Disney movies. Unashamedly.

1. There are moments where I completely hate my life, my past and myself. But I wouldn’t change it for the world because every day makes us stronger.

9. Your favorite television program, and why.

I watch a lot of TV. A lot of it is repeats. By which I, of course, mean: Scrubs, Friends, Frasier. At the same time, I usually just have it on for background noise – but I can still pull out a decent reference when need be.

I love hospital shows – House and Grey’s Anatomy are on the top of the list for the female members of the Stewart family. These days I like picking out the medical terms I understand and trying to figure out treatment plans in my head – this way I can rationalise that it counts as study.

Dr. Who. I was against it for so long. And now I find myself waiting for a blue box, fearing stone angels and working out the River/Doctor timeline so it makes the tiniest bit of sense. Something about fantasy shows – it is so much easier to just lose yourself and life’s petty little disappoints and problems for an hour when you are trying to get your head around what exactly a Time War might entail.

Then, when it gets right down to it, I bang on Spongebob Squarepants. Altogether now.

Whooooooooo…Lives in a pineapple under the sea?

Sugar Withdrawal Day 4

I am four days without sugar and I kind of want to die. Or kill everyone else around me, I’m not quite sure yet.

I do see the benefits. I do not have multiple crashes due to low blood sugar during the day. My binging has pretty much stopped (I know its only been four days but thats still a pretty big deal for me.) I need a lot less food to keep me full because I’m eating lots of protein and unprocessed food.

But right now, in the midst of it, it still kind of sucks. The headaches, the upset stomach, the mood swings. And more than all of them, I have to actually feel my feelings. Turns out that I have a lot of them. And they aren’t that happy that there is no sugar to placate them anymore.

So when anxiety, depression and panic sets in, what do I do now that I can’t suckle on a piece of chocolate?

For one, I’m being a total hippie and meditating a lot. Every morning. It keeps me sane until lunch at the very least and I am becoming slightly less uncomfortable with my raw emotions everytime I just sit down to contemplate and breathe.

I am back on the exercise wagon and have done something active everyday for the last three weeks. Sometimes it is a quick half hour going gung ho with kickboxing, sometimes its a run or a long walk, other times its yoga and on days that I am tired, it might be a simple 10 minutes of some ab work. But doing a little everyday is suiting me a lot better than going insane three or four times a week and utterly dreading it. And it all balances out to around the same amount of time (4-5hours) a week – its just that I actually enjoy it this way.

Last, but not least, I am trying to keep myself busy with the to do list I make every morning. 8-10 things to accomplish during the day so if I’m at a loss at what to do I can just look at my notebook and see that, “oh yes, I wanted to practice three sections of that piano piece” or “I almost forgot tidy my room.”

Hopefully by my next post, I won’t feel so homicidal. I’m off to nurse this headache and watch some Dr. Who.

Biting The Bullet

In my life thus far, I can firmly say that moderation and I do not mix. I have previously mentioned my tendency to be very all-or-nothing in my thinking – and my behaviour is generally not that different. When I was told to reduce wheat (I was on a wheat free diet for four years) and, later, caffeine (I was caffeine free for just over a year) the easiest thing for me to do was to abstain completely. One cup of coffee led to another and on slice of pizza led to six. A diet was a starve, an overeat was a 2 day binge and a workout session lasted until over 600 calories were burnt and in the end, this led to my own little brand of non-purging bulimia.

This attitude has its bright sides – I have a strong work ethic and tend to persist vigilantly with a task until I am satisfied it is of a high standard – but it means that the whole “a little everyday” motto doesn’t work for me.

I wrote in my resolutions that I wanted to forget fear. This initially came from the realisation that I tend to insult and mock the people I am starting to get close to – and that I do this as a defence mechanism – that I am afraid of being abandoned. When I got a-thinking, I realised another thing – I had long known that sugar is my downfall when it comes to food issues, but until now I had been too afraid to let this comfort go. Now I think I might just be able to kick the sweet tooth for good.

Sugar affects the same part of the brain as opiates do and in certain individuals can lead to an addiction of sorts. These people tend to be hyperglycaemic (blood sugar spikes,) be unable to stop eating once started and have poor sleep and sore throats on a regular basis. Ding ding ding, guess who has all three?

Today is the first time in over 6 years that I have gone 24 hours without eating anything containing sugar. My head hurts, I am a bit tired and lord knows that I may be an utter gowl for the next few days… But I have to do this if I am going to kick compulsive overeating. I gave up purging, I can give up sugar.

I just need to get my head in the game.

 

Goals, Motivation and a Lack Thereof

I write a lot of lists. I make a lot of charts. I theoretically plan my life and times quite some bit. Often through the year, I will undergo a fit of zeal for change that the typical human only feels in the final days of December.

Sometimes these plans work. Little plans such as writing more often, practising piano and studying usually work flawlessly. Big life changing spiels, which are all too usually the basis of what I want to achieve, don’t tend to go so well. And because my mind tends to separate things firmly into black and white, the subsequent perceived failure tends to demotivate me even further.

This, I tell myself, is why I have gained 4 stone in one year, why I still do not have my teaching diploma, why I do not have a steady income and why my moods tend to become erratic when stressed. This is the mind frame of a demotivated little girl, who days from this realisation will start in on a brand new plan to: get a job, lose weight and become a happy little bunny.

As a triumphant finish on my immaculate new set of goals for the year, I present this final set of tips.

Working through Demotivation

Difficulty – 3

Thinking you’ve failed can be mind blowingly difficult and a bad reaction can cause even further setbacks. Even 16 months into eating disorder recovery, I regularly find myself engaging in compulsive overeating, the creation of unrealistic starvation plans and lusting for the days when I was so meagre I would regularly collapse into the arms of my then-boyfriend. Moments life these make you sting and smart, begging for a reason as to why you have put yourself through all this distress if your life is seemingly still dictated by such a heinous habit.

For the following steps, do as I say, not as I do. Although I pride myself as being a logical person, when it comes to my addictive nature, I am painfully dictated by my own emotions and have an extremely low tolerance for unpleasant thoughts in my head. So as part of my own goals, I hope to follow these steps as well as I can myself.

1. On the third day, do it – no matter how inconvenient. You may recognise this as one of my commandments and it comes courtesy of Gretchen of the Happiness Project. Basically, whatever your goal is, do not let yourself avoid it for more than two days. If I work out on Monday, and I skip Tuesday and Wednesday, I am getting myself out for a run on Thursday. If I spend two days binge eating, the third day should absolutely be an effort towards normal eating. This way you can avoid a week of something that you know will upset you in the long term.
2. Reassess, change, reassess – Okay, so your attempt at running everyday didn’t work out. But what did you achieve, two runs and a yoga session. Maybe your original goal just wasn’t realistic. Reassess and start again – with the confidence that you are learning with every mistake and that permanent change takes time.
3. Take note of the little changes – Lets be honest, I can’t just bang out a five mile run any more. I can’t squat 80kg any more. But does that mean my new attempt at renewing my fitness routine is an utter failure? No. It means I’m back at the beginning. It should be humbling, not depressing. I’ve been in recovery for quite a while now and am still not “better.” Have I failed, should I return to my cycle of binge/starve again, should I go back to wanting to die every time the scale went a pound up? No. Because I have made progress. My moods have become more stable, my normal bodily functions have returned, I am more social and outgoing, my binging has decreased in severity and my compensatory starving has pretty much disappeared. I would even go so far as to say my initial self hatred has gone – of course, everyone has their off days – and that I am truly enjoying my life. So no, now is not the time to give up.

And that, kids, is it for this years edition of setting a load of goals to change my life. I hope 2012 treats you well and I’ll be back soon to talk about something completely different.

Setting Goals That Actually Work

First off, go read the original article over at No Meat Athlete.

Now let get down to business.

Setting Goals That Actually Work

Difficulty – 2

The premise of this is that to set goals, we must be inspired by our goals. We must want it so much that we will stay motivated. We pick the things that are REALLY important to us.

Step 1

Under four headings (Personal, Physical, Spiritual, Financial) write down everything you want in life. Everything. You have decades to achieve all this. Think big.

Personal

• Become competent in French
• Visit all the countries in Scandinavia
• Overcome compulsive overeating
• Record an album worth of songs
• Get a teaching diploma in both singing and piano
• Get a performance diploma in both singing and piano
• Let go of fear
• Get a First Class Honours Degree

Physical

• Complete a 10K
• Complete a Half Marathon
• Commit to yoga
• Commit to a healthy vegetarian diet

Spiritual

• Explore different religions and philosophies
• Explore personal spirituality and meaning
• Develop healthy coping mechanisms
• Develop a regular habit of meditation

Financial

• Get a secure job
• Move out of home
• Start a savings account
• Get out of debt
• Get paid for a solo gig

Step 2: Prioritise

Write a one next to the goals you want to achieve in the next year. Aim for 6-12 goals.

1. Overcome compulsive overeating
2. Forget fear
3. Become competent in French
4. Develop a regular practice of meditation
5. Commit to yoga
6. Get out of debt

Step 3: Write down the whys

Why do I want to overcome compulsive overeating?

I want to live contentedly and fully and to add onto the progress that I have already made in recovery. Now that my compensatory behaviours have diminished, I am inspired to work to overcome COE in the same way and regain a healthy body and mind. By doing this, I will become a better nurse, a better daughter and a better friend.

Why do I want to forget fear?

My fear of failure and abandonment is holding me back and keeping me from making strides in my recovery, my relationships and my personal growth. To fully recover and be happy, I must face my fears head on – by working through discomfort, by being kind, open and honest and by becoming a more trusting individual.

Why do I want to become competent in French?

Other than my love of French culture and language, being able to speak French well would mean that the option of working in France or Francophone areas of Canada is a more realistic goal – and both have two of the best health systems in the world.

Why do I want to start meditating regularly?

In the past, meditation has helped me deal with my stresses in a healthy manner. As well as this, meditation is a way to explore my own attitudes, behaviour and spirituality. It also helps me plan my day and quiet my mind.

Why do I want to get out of debt?

I want to feel financially secure for the coming year and depend less on my parents for support. The long term goal would be to move into my own house and have a regular job but being debt free is the first step towards this.

Why do I want to commit to yoga?

Yoga calms my mind as well as relieving the pains I get in my hips and legs. There are countless mental, physical and spiritual benefits to yoga and it is a practice which I keep returning to.

So there it is. My big goals for the new year and why I want these things in my life. Review the whys on a regular basis for maximum success

Pave Your Life Roadmap: Part 2

So we left off yesterday with a pretty big list of passions and a far more organised group of values. Now to the next step.

Step 3: Set the Situation

For each theme you came up with in Step 2, we are going to come up with five indicators to do with that category. One of my values is education.

“If I had a life filled with Education, I would……”

1. Become competent in French
2. Work towards a First Class Honours Degree
3. Achieve my Teaching Diploma in Classical Singing
4. Read once a day
5. Approach everything I do as learning opportunity.

Do this for each of your themes

Step 4: Visual Report Card

Looking at your indicators, how well are you incorporating these aspects in your everyday life? Give yourself a score out of five for each category. In education, I give myself a 2/5 – I want to work on French, my Teaching Dip and consistent reading.

Remember my spider webby thing I promised I’d explain:

This is my visual report card.

Step 5: Action Plan

For each indicator you want to work on, come up with an action plan of how you are going to improve.

To read more consistently, I will make a list of ten books I want to read and set aside at least 30 minutes each day to do this.

To become competent in French again, I plan on reading an article in French everyday, as well as doing a grammar topic and a vocabulary list once a week.

To achieve my teaching diploma, I will spend 30 minutes each a week on my essay, presentation and performance for the exam.

Write these action plans in an achievable manner – I tend to put things in blocks of thirty minutes because it is creating a habit without becoming overly daunting. If you find you need an hour a day or ten minutes a week to start working towards your goal, then do it. No one can make these decisions for you.

SO, that is it, dear readers. If you do spend the time to commit to this exercise, you will reap the rewards. Although it was probably the most difficult exercise to complete, I now have a list of small achievable tasks and activities to work towards my overall goals.