The Speeding Ticket Analogy

I am what most people call an overly-cautious driver. I use my turn signal to enter and exit driveways and parking spaces, I never swerve through traffic, and when it comes to the speed-limit I'm usually about 3 miles under. So, when I received a speeding ticket this week, my first ever by the by, it came as quite a shock. In my defense, I was unfamiliar with the area, and I thought the speed-limit on this particular road was 35 - it was a two-lane road with a stripe down the middle and I didn't notice a limit sign - so my going 38 really wasn't that bad. Imagine my chagrin when the officer told me that he pulled me over for going 38 in a 25 zone! Because it was my first speeding ticket, and I was contrite, the officer gave me a warning, so it's on the police record, but I don't have to go to court, pay a fine, nor does it get reported to my insurance.

I learned something from this experience that surprised me. I got the speeding ticket because I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. I was eating my dinner in the car, and adjusting my music, and I didn't look for a speed-limit sign so it's no wonder I didn't see one (there are actually three that I passed that are in plain sight and any responsible driver would have noticed). I knew the rules, I knew I should have been paying attention, I knew I should have been more cautious. But I wasn't. I allowed myself to become so distracted that I was breaking the law, and I didn't even know I was doing it until I was in trouble.

After I cried a little - you would have cried, too, if your nearly 20 year perfect driving record was just tarnished because of a stupid mistake - I started to think about how my speeding ticket could be a warning for my life, and how I'm living it. I know what things I should, and shouldn't, be doing to be happy. I understand that my choices have consequences. But sometimes, OK a lot of the time, I allow myself to become distracted by things that are appealing or easy instead of being steadfast about following the rules. For example, I know that my life would be better if I got more sleep and ate healthier. But I like watching movies and eating junk-food. Instead of giving myself limits on how many movies I can watch in a week (or a day), and how much junk I can eat, I give in to the distraction. I stay up late watching something, or reading something, and eating a lot of things that aren't good for my body. I don't work out a lot because it's hard and it hurts, I allow my excuses to become their own distractions.

In essence, I am giving up the things I say I want the most for things that I want at the moment. I want to be fit and healthy so I can participate and keep up with my students and friends. I want to become more attractive so that the right kind of guys will want to date me. I want to perform more, but I don't spend any of my free time practicing my instruments, or singing. I need to stop letting distractions keep me from my goals. I need to focus and pay attention and read the signs so that I stay where I should be in order to get what I want, and what I know God wants for me.

I'm so grateful that my Heavenly Father saw fit to send me this reminder for my life. I wasn't paying attention, not just that night, but in my life; I wasn't noticing all the things I could and should be doing differently. I need to get back to focusing on what I want. As a wise person, I think it was my grandmother, once told me: Decide what you want, and then do what you need to do to get what you want. I hope that this reminder will help me to remember to pay attention.

Back to school!

For me, the 2012-2013 school year starts in two weeks, August 27th. To be fair, that's when the students come back. I have been working on "the next school year" since the middle of June. I was reading through some of my blog posts from my well-conceived, but ill-achieved, website, and thought it fitting to repost here (see an earlier post about having separate blogs that I can't/don't keep up with).

So, from Academnation last August:

We've all seen those t-shirts that say "I survived..." and there are several things that people have lived through: hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, hottest days of the year, really bad concerts, etc. I was thinking about the first day of school, and how it sometimes feels like a natural disaster, or a really bad concert, sometimes both. As teachers, we spend practically all summer gearing up for the first day of school. We think about what we're going to teach, how we're going to teach it, the rules and expectations we have. We make mental lists of all the things we're going to "do differently" this year. It's exhausting work.


And then comes the actual first day of school. So far, I've survived seven of them, five in the states. I never sleep well the night before, I'm so nervous that my students won't like me, or that they'll break all the rules on the first day. I even have nightmares about coming unprepared, or undressed, or that my students are actually evil cyborgs sent from the future to kill me. It's truly quite terrifying. After the night of unrest, I guzzle some Dr. Pepper and arrive early to face the day of new possibilities.

The first student comes in 30 minutes before the bell to "see the classroom" and the day begins. I meet 28 new students, and about 10 parents. Then I talk, all day: explaining how things are going to be in the classroom, the rules they should know, the expectations I have, etc. We introduce procedures for lining up, transitioning between subjects, asking a question, etc. All the while, I'm trying to gauge their perception of me. I'm thinking things like: "Will they remember all this tomorrow?" "How many times will I have to repeat this rule?" "That girl is drawing, she isn't even listening, how rude!" and "I wonder if they'll like me as much as they liked their last year's teachers." I also start to notice and make judgment on their academic ability. Some students can't cut straight, or their handwriting is atrocious.

By the end of the day, I'm ready for Summer Vacation all over again. I feel like I've been awake for 72 hours straight, and all I want to do is get a lozenge for my tired, sore throat and go to bed. But I can't! I have to get ready for the next day, and the next, and the next. I don't get another break until Thanksgiving! From now, until then, I will be constantly thinking about my students, what they need, how I can help them, and what I must do, or do differently, to make my classroom better for them.

This job that I love so much is not about "playing with kids all day," it's about teaching. And teaching is hard. Every time I see one of those "I survived" shirts, I just want to yell out: "Oh yeah? Well, I survived the first week of school!"

Stumbling Blocks

From my Spark blog Saturday, February 25, 2012

It seems that every time I start on something new, something that I think will be great for my life, that's when life starts throwing me curveballs. It's as if the Universe is saying to me "How much do you really want this?" I know that good things in life don't always come easy, but does it really have to be this hard?

I usually eat pretty healthy foods, I just eat way too much of them, my biggest challenge seems to be exercise. Each time I've begun an exercise plan, something happens that prevents me from carrying it out, usually an injury. I don't know why I keep getting hurt, and it doesn't happen while I'm exercising.

Five years ago, I had a friend who was a trainer, and she started walking with me, setting up a routine that would challenge me. It was really fun, and I was enjoying myself, and I even lost enough inches to have to buy smaller pants. Then I slipped on the ice at work, and broke my ankle. Turns out you can't walk if you have a broken ankle. By the time my ankle recovered enough to walk for exercise again, my friend had moved away. It wasn't fun walking without her, with her little challenging comments, and her plans (we walked somewhere different every day).

Last summer, I rediscovered the joy of swimming. I was swimming about a mile a day 4 or 5 days a week. I wasn't losing a ton of weight, but I was becoming a lot less flabby, and much stronger. Then I tripped and broke my wrist. Turns out you can't swim with a cast on. By the time my wrist had healed enough to be swimming again, it was winter and cold. I've gone a few times since then, but it's hard in the winter.

I was actually starting to get into a pretty good routine with some workout videos at home, and then a few weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night with an extreme pain in my thigh. This thigh has been mostly numb for about 15 years because of a nerve injury incurred during knee surgery. So when I can feel it, it's incredibly painful. I went to a doctor, and she told me that it was probably blod clots. I'd read about that, and was a little scared. I went to another doctor, a specialist, and had some tests done. It wasn't blod clots - whew! - but it was something serious. I have been diagnosed with neurogenic atrophy. Basically this means that because my nerve has been dead for so long, my muscles are starting to die because there is no nerve connection. This condition is, at the current time, irreversible.

There are things that I can't do now, because of the extreme pain. Even walking hurts. I was doing so well! I was losing about a pound a week, I was exercising every day, I was logging my calorie intake, and trying to modify it to be healthier. And then this. I almost feel like something, or someone, doesn't want me to lose weight.

I had just about given up. I had stopped trying to exercise at all, and didn't bother to plan my meals or count calories. "What's the point?" I thought. Then something happened in my heart. Not another medical problem, no, a feeling that I couldn't explain. Something deep inside of me, something my Grandmother told me a long time ago that just came back to me in my hour of need, as it were. She told me "You are worth whatever effort it takes to do whatever you want." I realized that my giving up attitude everytime I came against a wall wasn't so much that it was hard to go on, but that I didn't believe that I was worth the effort. If I believe that I'm important and special enough to have good things, then I've got to believe that the effort of achieving those good things, overcoming the stumbling blocks if you will, is worth it.

So, I am going to use my stumbling blocks as stepping stones. I used my arthritis pain as an excuse not to exercise, now I use it as an excuse to get in the pool even though I look like a great white whale - it's the only workout that doesn't hurt. If I can do that, then I can turn this new pain into something that will help me, rather than something that will prevent me from achieving what I want.

Winter and Headcolds are so NOT friends!

From my Spark blog Friday, January 20, 2012

I read somewhere once, I think it was in a Reader's Digest, that it's perfectly healthy to exercise when you have a cold, or any other ailment, as long as you are getting enough sleep. I don't think this is true; at least not for serious head colds. I'm not talking about the "I have a little sniffle and a tiny cough" headcolds, no, I'm talking about the "my head feels ready to explode any moment, I can feel my heart pounding in my ears, and I can't breath out of my nose at all" headcolds. Ow! I can barely move, let alone exercise. But, because I'd read that article, and I am not quitting this time, I decided to try exercising today anyway.

Needless to say, that did not go well! I started walking around my block (because we're having weird January weather, for Utah, and it feels like Spring), and had to sit down on the curb three houses down from mine. When the dizzy spell passed, I walked back home. After resting, and drinking a lot of water and a little snack, I decided to try the treadmill. That wasn't so good either. The noise of the treadmill coupled with the heartbeat in my ears nearly brought on a migraine. So, with a total of just barely 15 minutes, if you count the "walk" outside, I gave up, for today.

I think that my lesson for today is that it is important to listen to my body. I didn't feel well, but I pushed, and then I felt worse. However, I need to be careful to not use illness as an excuse. If I have a severe head cold, then I will do some easy stretches and get plenty of fluids. If I have a little sniffle, I'm walking, or swimming, the whole 30 minutes, or more.

I have had a tendency in the past to let one little setback, like this one today, be the end of my grand plans for weight loss and getting healthy. I seem to have the attitude that if I mess up one day, then one more day doesn't hurt. I am working on developing a different attitude, one where each new day is a new chance to start over and be better. Like I said at the beginning of this post: I am not quitting this time!

I will do this, just not while I have a headcold.

Winter is Stupid

From my Spark blog Tuesday, January 17, 2012

At 5:30 every morning my alarm sounds: time to get up! From about mid-April through September, I jump right out of bed (mostly because I have to pee), at get started in on my day. I love mornings. I love to watch the sun come over the mountains (I live in Utah, and the mountains here are incredible), I love to listen to the birds singing, I love how quiet it is on my street before everyone starts rushing off to work. But right around the first part of October, I don't like getting up with my alarm anymore. I've decided that it's winter: it's stupid! I have learned that I only like mornings when I get up with the sun. I DO NOT LIKE GETTING UP BEFORE THE SUN!

There, I said it: early mornings are for days when the sun gets up before the people do, not for cold, dark winter days. I struggle for nearly half the year getting moving in the mornings. My bed is warm, the floor is cold; and the sun's still in bed, I should be, too. The problem is, when I don't get up with the alarm, I don't have time to exercise. When I don't exercise in the mornings, I eat more during the day - I have yet to figure out that correlation - so winter time has come to mean pack-on-the-pounds time. Last month (December) I gained 14 pounds - 14! That is unacceptable.

What I need to do is create my own little sunshine, at least in my mind, so that I can love dark mornings as well as bright mornings. Right now, as one of my little starter goals for this year, I have my alarm set to play music. Music can heal the soul, and tame the spirit, so it stands to reason that it can create sunshine in the mind, as well.

I am a music junkie, seriously addicted to it. I have over 8,000 songs on my i-pod, and something in every genre, it's actually getting kind of ridiculous to keep it all organized. But, I love it! Having said that, it's easy to pick a different "get up and go" song every day. Sometimes I wake up to a rousing "Anvil Chorus" from the opera Il Trovatore. Sometimes I wake to the Quantum Leap Theme song, sometimes I get moving to Duran Duran's "Reach Up for the Sunrise", and other days I start with "Defying Gravity" from the musical Wicked.

Whatever I begin the day with, it sort of sets the mood: I will conquer, I can do anything, every day is new, I can fly, whatever. I'm so glad that I have music to start my days, I know I couldn't do without it.

I Don't Get the Running

From my Spark blog Sunday, January 15, 2012

I have never liked running. No, really, NEVER! Not even as a small child when everyone else would race just for the sake of racing. I would rather read a book, or watch a movie, or take a nap. Don't get me wrong, I understand the need for running in things like soccer, or baseball, or if a child is hurt, or if you're randomly being chased by the devil. But running, just for the sake of running, really? I don't get it. It isn't fun for me, in fact, it's downright painful. I have no cartilage in my left knee, see, and when I run, my bones clack together in a most excruciating manner. So when my "friends" decided that their New Year's Resolution would be to run a 5K, and they asked me to join them ("It's in April," they said, "that's enough time to get ready."), my response was: "Surely, you jest! Me, a 5K, huh?" I was thoroughly confused as to why anyone would want to run. But, there it is: people love to run. They think it's liberating, it's like flying, they can clear their mind. Whatever. I'm sure it's great. For some people.

And, just as I can't appreciate running, I'm sure there are many people in the world who don't enjoy all the same things I do. Opera, f'rinstance, is not every person's cup of tea, as it were. But I could listen to nothing but for months on end. I would even spend a year's salary to see an opera at the Met, or other world famous opera houses (Sydney, Bayern, etc.).

The problem then becomes, if I'm not planning on running, how on earth do I intend to get this overbearing weight off of my joints. I have problems with aerobics, because of the impact, same with most martial arts, I've a loathing for the cold that rivals any you've ever heard of so skiing/sledding/boarding/skating are out. This pretty much leaves me with swimming. Oh, I hate it when my mother is right. She made me start swimming when I was about 9 years old because the pediatrician said I was too fat. And now, it seems my only recourse. I've tried some other things, too: Tai Chi (I always forget where the apostrophe[s] goes), Yoga, Pilates, dancing (Zumba, as well), water aerobics, a variety of workout videos like Tae Bo, and Turbo Jam. I can't seem to find something that I like, and likes me, I mean doesn't cause a great deal of pain. I know that there are things I can do, like sit-ups and stretches and things, that don't require impact nor pressure on the joints, but I also know that without a cardio activity of some sort, the weight will not come off.

To illustrate my reluctance to swimming, I have made a bad/good list. I know most people call it pros and cons, but I don't want to pay for my habit, nor put them in jail, so I say bad and good.

The bad things about swimming:
1. I am roughly the size and shape of a baby elephant - nobody wants to see that in a bathing suit.
2. It's a little tiring for my shoulders - pretty much the only place I don't have arthritis yet
3. Because of my schedule, I have to do it at the butt-crack of dawn.
4. There are 3-4 days every month that I can't do it.
5. I have to admit that my mother was right

The good things about swimming:
1. It doesn't hurt my knees, hips, ankles, feet, or wrists.
2. It burns tons of calories (nearly 500 for 30 minutes, and that's for moderate effort)
3. I don't have to talk to anyone while I'm doing it.
4. Exercising first thing in the morning is very invigorating
5. I don't actually hate it - hey, it isn't running

So, I will swim, as often as I can. Now I just need to find something else to do on those days that I can't go swimming...

Oh, really?

I'm not very good at keeping up a blog, or a journal, or anything, really, that takes more than about 5 minutes to accomplish. I have had three different blogs: this one, my journal-type one, an academic one, where I've written some things about education and my role there, and a fitness one that I started on Sparkpeople.com. I've decided to consolidate and move all of my blogging efforts to one place. So, the next few posts are copied over from the other sites that I used to use. I have done a little editing, and included the dates, so, hopefully, I can keep them in order.

This is the first blog that I ever posted on Spark: Friday, January 13, 2012

So, you can blog on Spark? I don't see this going well for me. I already have two blogs that I don't update more than 3 or 4 times a year. But I will just start by telling all the complete strangers who care to read this all about my sad, sad life. Oh, "whoa is me" and "my life sucks" right? Well, it a little bit does, and while I'm mostly to blame, it's a little bit not my fault. First up, I'm fat, duh, if I wasn't do you think I'd be blogging on a weight-loss site? I'm not just a little overweight, nor chubby, nor even "pleasantly plump" no, I'm fat, 341 pounds of fat to be exact, I just weighed myself about an hour ago. I think this is the fattest I've been in my entire life. There are two main reasons for me being so fat: I like to eat, a lot, and I don't like to exercise, at all. However, this is turning into a painfully deadly combination. Painful because I have arthritis, everywhere, and the heavier I get, the harder it is to move. Deadly, because I am now pre-diabetic, whatever that's supposed to mean (apparently doctors have decided that there's now a step in between not diabetic and diabetic), and my blood-pressure has started going up.

I have been overweight since before I can remember properly. I don't ever remember being small enough to wear my friends clothes. But I really ballooned in size when I stopped swimming, which is what my mom made me do when the pediatrician said I was too fat for my age. When my parents divorced (don't even get me started on the emotional trauma there, but believe me, the divorce was a good thing), my mom couldn't afford swimming clubs anymore, so I got to quit! But I didn't quit eating like I was swimming for two hours a day. When I graduated from high school, I weighed a cool 220 pounds. I was proud of myself for that, because junior year was spent hovering around 260. When I went away to college, I dropped to almost 175. I was poor, see, so the freshman ten didn't apply to me because I couldn't afford to eat, I had to make my roommates' moms' leftovers last a week! Smaller portions and walking on campus, the weight came off. Then I switched schools, and went on a scholarship that included a meal plan. So junior year I put on the freshman ten, and the sophomore twenty, and the junior thirty. When I graduated from college, I was the heaviest I'd ever been: 320 pounds. I went to Taiwan for a couple of years, dropped down to 280. But when I had to come home and take care of my mom (she became disabled after a staff infection from a surgery ate away most of the muscle tissue in her legs, and caused her to have several strokes), the depression that I'd been fighting for years, since before the divorce, set in, and I was overcome with an emotional need so strong that it became a physical need. There was nothing and nobody to share my needs with. I was alone, I was lonely, nobody understood what I was going through. I thought I had finally escaped the nightmares of my past, but here I was, living in the same house where most of those nightmares had taken place. I couldn't take it.

At first I tried to stick with the routine that I'd come up with for myself in Taiwan. But fresh vegetables and fruits are so much more expensive here. Also, I can't walk outside when the temperature is below freezing, especially if there is ice on the ground (all I need is to break more bones, and get more arthritis pain). I soon gave up and didn't do anything to further my health. The weight piled back on, and more so. To add insult to injury, I can't seem to be in any good relationships. Not just with men, although that's what I wanted the most, but I don't get along very well with anyone. People are always saying they need me to do things for them, but gues who never gets invited to parties? And don't give me that "well, why don't you have your own parties and invite them?" crap. Really, you think that never occurred to me. After a year of throwing parties (all sorts, holiday, theme, last-minute get togethers, you name it I tried it), it was too depressing to try anymore. I was tired of spending all day making treats, or cleaning house, just to find myself alone with enough food for 10-20 people. So, you know what? I ate that food, usually in one sitting, and the weight kept coming.

Well, pretty soon, because I had no friends, I began to turn to food for comfort. When I'm bored, lonely, scared, tired, sad, or angry, one of the first things I do is think about what I have in the kitchen. One of the first things I do when I come home is open the cupboards to see what I can eat. Well, now I'm 341 pounds. I have some friends now, a few teachers that I work with are really very nice to me, and even invite me to do things with them. So that's good. But I still can't tell anyone about my nightmares. And I'm still living in this house. I am working on this problem. I know that I can't truly escape my past until I am not having nightmares practically every night. I am buying a house that will allow me freedom from the past, but still keep me close enough that I can take care of my mom. In the mean time, I have set some very simple goals for myself that include drinking enough water every day, and walking 10,000 steps every day. I even got myself a pedometer - woot! One of my friends turned me onto this site over a year ago, and I never did more than "check it out." (This is the sparkpeople.com site, it's pretty awesome, I just don't have the time to keep it up.)
Maybe this time will be different. Maybe this time I'll be able to stick to it. Maybe this time I won't quit on what I want because I'm afraid of the consequences. Did you know that some people are afraid to lose weight? Yeah, that's right, afraid to lose weight. Well, I knew that, because I'm afraid. What if I lose weight, and I still can't get a date, and I still don't get invited to parties, and I still don't have very many friends? What does that say about me? Deep down I know that I'm a good person, and I have a lot to offer, but I'm afraid that people won't like me. If I lose the weight, then I don't have the shield. Now I have an excuse that throws all the hurt on the other person: they're a jerk because they don't like me only because I'm fat, if I was thin, they'd treat me differently. But if I don't have the fat to protect me, how will I deal with the rejection. I don't even know. All I know is that I don't want to hurt every time I move any more, and I don't want to die before I'm old enough to retire. So, now is the time to do something about it.