Redesigning Me

Being a rather long post about taking a miserable life and turning it into something smashing without the aid of a fairy godmother, a Time Lord, or controlled substances.

I turned 45 this year. Another year of being profoundly disappointed in myself and my life. I’m obese, I have very little money in the bank (despite being gainfully employed), I’m sedentary, I’ve all but stopped writing for fun, and my reason for getting out to do enjoyable things (my niece Rachel) moved to Florida in May. I have no drive and no energy, which is compounded by chronic depression, a disease I was born with (I was diagnosed at the age of four).

Depression colors my entire existence, it informs everything I do or say, every decision, every plan, every thought…everything. So as someone with that disease, deciding to change my life for the better is a bit more complicated than it might be for normal folk. At least I’m fortunate in that I don’t have any physical limitations beyond what years of being sedentary and obese have imposed on me. My limitations are almost entirely psychological.

I think I stopped liking my life after 9th grade, so when I was about 15. There were great things that happened, and I loved being with my friends and family. I was still going out to find enjoyment–seeing The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi when they were first released are highlights for nerdy me! My family were also still taking annual vacations to Hilton Head Island, SC, each Summer. There were highlights, but overall I wasn’t happy.

I didn’t really begin to actively loathe my existence until about 1995. That’s when I had what they used to call a nervous breakdown. I call it dying without your body getting the memo. I don’t think I’m fully recovered from it, even now, but after years of medications and therapy I think I might be almost there. I don’t feel like I live in a dark pit anymore, at least. I don’t have to fake it when I’m expected to laugh at something or smile. Oddly enough, I never lost my own ability to be funny. It seems, the more miserable I am, the funnier I become. Let’s hope the opposite isn’t true.

That’s all I’m going to say about the disease in this post but I’ll probably revisit it in future posts about my personal redesign. Lofty title, isn’t it? What does it mean, though?

Weight Loss

The most important goal I have is to lose the excess weight I’m carrying around. It has caused health problems ranging from high blood pressure to hypothyroidism. I’m constantly tired and have numerous aches and pains. I have no energy to speak of, and it hurts to walk for any distance. I’m only 5’4″ and weighed 245 pounds the last time I stepped on my doctor’s scale. I know how I gained so much weight: I’m a comfort eater and I’ve never been very physical. While my late sister was wanting to play ball outside when we were growing up, I wanted to stay in my room and read a book. Or go outside and read a book. I could often be found in the crook of the willow tree in our back yard, reading a fantasy novel. I have always been utterly a nerd (and proud of it, thank you very much). I didn’t look the part, though: I was slender, yet curvy, had long blonde hair and big green eyes. I also had a big personality, so although I was told the boys in my class thought I was hot, they were also terrified of me.  Still, the light saber battles in the school library and the D&D games were lots of fun. I went to a nerdy school.

Being obese is devastating to my self esteem. I hate shopping for clothes. I hate looking at myself in the mirror: The person I see inside of me isn’t the person looking back at me. I still see 23-year old me and I feel like I’m in my twenties, too. Not physically, mentally. Now I just need my body to catch up. Which is to say, to be healthier, fitter. I know that at 45 my body will never be what it was in my twenties; nature simply doesn’t allow for that.

According to the government, the healthy weight range for a woman of my height, build and age is between 115 and 145 pounds. I’d ultimately like to get back to my high school weight of 135 pounds. Along with that, I want to have better muscle tone and physical endurance. Here’s how I’m going to do it:

• Improve my eating habits. I’ve chosen to follow the American Heart Association’s “No Fad Diet”, which is basically eating healthy, well-balanced meals.
  • This means I need to start planning and preparing meals, something I haven’t really done in years. I used to love to cook and hope that passion will return. I have a tiny galley kitchen in my apartment, which will make it mentally difficult for me to really get into cooking. I like to spread out when I cook, so I may need to get around my kitchen claustrophobia by doing preparation on my kitchen table instead.
  • A good thing is, at work, they’re committed to healthy eating: There are signs in the cafeteria to direct you to healthy choices, and they’ll even deliver fresh fruit to your cubicle! There’s a nurse’s office down the hall from me, too, so I can weigh myself there if I want to. I can also monitor my blood pressure with the machine outside of her office.
  • I need to eat more fruits and vegetables. I’m a carboholic. I love pasta, crackers and bread. I can eat spaghetti. loaded with cheese, every night for an entire week and never tire of it. Just spaghetti. No veg on the side. I love vegetables and fruit but find it hard to incorporate enough of them into my day. It doesn’t help that I have trouble digesting things now that I never had trouble with when I was younger. Salad: Out of the question. Corn: Forget about it. Even my beloved broccoli does embarrassing things to my digestion. According to my doctors, there’s nothing wrong with my intestines, stomach or colon. My primary care physician is pretty sure I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which limits my choices.
• Incorporate activity into my daily routine. The company I work at makes this pretty easy, actually: They have walking trails with signs to tell you how far you’ve walked. There’s even a huge fitness center. I also have a fitness center at my apartment complex, which is free to me as a resident (I’d have to pay for the one at work since I’m a contractor, not an employee). Furthermore, my previously non-walkable neighborhood has since become walkable, with destinations like Whole Foods, Target, and a number of restaurants that have opened up within a mile of my home.
• Set realistic, modular goals. Saying I want to go from 245 to 135 pounds is overwhelming. It’s a massive goal. Saying, however, that I want to lose 20 pounds by year’s end (4 months from now) is more realistic and attainable. That works out to about a pound a week. If I think of my big goal in small pieces, I can mentally grok it, and for me that’s the biggest challenge of this project: Conquering my lifelong psychological obstacles. Anyway, it’s easier to contemplate climbing a hill than climbing a mountain.
• And most importantly to the psychological aspect of this project: Have a diet buddy. I need someone to encourage me, share recipes and, especially, keep me motivated. My diet buddy is my good friend and fellow nerd Helen, across the Pond. She’s a web developer and fantastic cook, who wants to lose the weight she gained after getting married last year. Helen will be doing the Weight Watchers plan, which worked well for her and her husband the last time they wanted to lose weight (it was cute for me on my visit to England to watch Joe very carefully weigh out his precious chocolate to make sure he didn’t go over his points for the day). We will each be blogging our experiences and cross-linking each other’s posts with our own. Here’s Helen’s first post about us being diet buddies on her blog, Helen’s Adventures in Cooking. Come for the diet stories, stay for the awesome cupcake recipes.

Finances

When you fail to see the point of planning for a future that you’re convinced can only be as dull and bleak as the present, saving money isn’t a priority. I’ve always been an “in the moment” kind of a person, living from paycheck to paycheck, never saving up. I even tried having a 401k once, but had to cash it out when I became unemployed in 2009. That’s also the year I filed for bankruptcy and had a car accident that left me with some medical bills that rolled into the bankruptcy, but others that wouldn’t. This year, I’m gainfully employed in a job I love, but the insurance isn’t working out too well. I chose a limited plan, when I meant to choose a better one, and a pair of sleep studies exhausted what Aetna will pay for my healthcare this year. (Don’t get me started on the American health insurance system; we’ll be here all week). I now have about $6000 in medical bills to pay off, $300 per month. Obviously, I can’t keep living like this. I can’t have unemployment wipe me out within a month. I also want to be able to travel at least once a year. I now have relatives in Florida, but I can’t afford to take off work to go down there (my company doesn’t offer paid vacation).

Here are my plans to redesign my financial life:

• Immediate small goal: Save $500 by the end of the year. I expect I can save more than that, since after paying all of my monthly bills, I have more than that left over. However, what I said in the previous section about the positive psychology of setting small weight loss goals applies here. Aim small, hope for big.
• Set up a bank account dedicated to bills. This was Helen’s suggestion and something that has worked well for her and her husband. I plan to pop into my bank sometime this week on the way home from work to set it up.  Of course, I first need to figure out how much I pay out each month for things like rent, utilities, cable, internet, phone (including a robust data plan), medical, food, and gas. I travel much farther to work than I did in my previous job, so the monthly gas bills are much larger than I was used to. I also need to plan for incidentals and emergencies, so the “bills” account will need padding.
• Cut back on the amount of “nest padding” and “comfort” purchases I make in a month. I find I shop when I’m stressed or unhappy (which is most of the time). My nest is lined with books and movies. These are the great loves of my life, so I’m not going to stop buying them. I think that would be asking too much of me, mentally. It’s not too much, however, to ask me to cut back, or rely on things like Netflix, Hulu, or iTunes for movies. I find it costs me less to buy a movie I like on iTunes than it does to buy the DVD from a shop. Furthermore, it’s more portable: I once got stuck waiting an hour in the doctor’s office and spent it watching an episode of Doctor Who on my iPod. (There’s another thing I have to thank Helen for: It used to be her iPod.) I also have a weakness for jewelry, making World Market the bane of my existence. I can’t go into that place and walk out with less than $40 worth of things with beads on them. Me and my beads. And DVDs and books. Comic books, ye gods, I need to cut back. Curse you, Mike Mignola! (And while we’re on the subject of addictions, curse you, Russel T. Davies and Stephen Moffat!)

Writing

Perhaps you noticed that the last post to this blog before the one you’re reading now was in March. My poor old website also had a good start at a redesign a little over a month ago, but I never finished. These used to be my happy fun time. I loved to write. It’s a hobby I’ve had since I was a child, the perfect companion to my love of books and stories in general. I love telling stories and being told stories. It started with my parents reading to me as a child. They taught me to read when I was three, and while television was the babysitter of choice for other moms, the library was my babysitter. To this day, I can feel my blood pressure drop when I enter a library or bookstore. It was my comfort zone, the place I associated with fun as a child. This is where imagination lived, and I never really left it. I hope I never do.

But my own writing–writing for myself, not an employer–has fallen by the wayside. I read a quote once that said if you only write when you feel like it, you’ll never write. It’s the truth: I haven’t felt like writing, so I haven’t made myself do it. I need to get back to it. I once had 4 online stories going at the same time, posting a chapter a week to each, and I loved it. It was fun, but I let myself slack off, and slacking led to stopping. That ends now.

My writing goals are no less modest than my other goals for the redesign of my life:

• Post regularly to this blog. Whether I post about my life redesign, or about lessons learned as a technical writer at work, reviews of TV shows or movies I’m watching or books I’ve read, my goal is to post something here each evening after I get home from work and have settled down. I need settling after work. I have a stressful job, lots of brain work, lots of problem solving–all of which bring me a geeky sense of accomplishment–but my brain is going a mile a minute. I need to slow it down and force it to shift gears before I can write something other than supporting documentation for test cases or migrations or software releases.
• Don’t just talk about stories that have been knocking around my skull, write them. Put outlines, character and setting descriptions into concrete form. Write enough of the story to have a buffer before posting anything online. Yes, I write stories online, though one day I would love to be published. I don’t have any silly delusions of being the next J.K. Rowling, but it would be neat to be published.
• Push my own boundaries. I usually write fantasy, science fiction, and comedy (in a fantasy or science fictional setting). I’d like to try other genres, even other formats. I’ve traditionally done long form stories, finding it hard to keep my ideas confined to less than a couple thousand words. I’d like to try to write a short story, or even a script. Just something a bit different from my usual. I might also like to try my hand at something my mother might like to read. She hates my usual genres, even going so far as to discourage me from writing. She once suggested I might outgrow it. It was years before I could tell her how damaging that had been. It would be cool to write a book or short story, have it published, and have my mom read it and actually like it. Miracles happen, this would be one of them.

Socializing

I’m a recluse, plain and simple. I interact with people at work and with my family in person, and my friends (mostly) online or via text message. I have one really good friend in town, the others live in other states or countries. I go to work, or shopping. When my niece lived in town, we’d go to the Science Center, the botanical gardens, or the zoo. I don’t even go to the movies anymore unless it’s something I can talk my mom into seeing, which rules out the sorts of movies I usually like. On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of chick flicks I’ve enjoyed but probably wouldn’t have picked out on my own.

I don’t actually like being around people. I may enjoy their company while I’m with them, but, except in rare instances I come away feeling mortified, as if I’d made such an unforgivable fool of myself that I never want to face those people again. I hate parties for this reason. They’re stressful, and I go home feeling like I want to hide under a rock for the rest of my life. The people who know me are often astonished to discover that I’m actually painfully shy; I’m just a pretty good actor and do a good job of overcompensating.

That’s just wrong.

Perhaps continued exposure to people in a social setting will get me used to the idea, and I may actually start to dig it. Therefore, I will join a group. A book club, perhaps, or something to do with movies. Maybe I’ll volunteer at the library and give back for all those years I spent loving their children’s programs. I do love to read to kids. In any event, I will join. I will interact. I even have this silly notion of taking up swing dancing. I can’t even describe how I feel when “Moonlight Serenade” starts playing. I want to be at a 1940′s-themed swing club, dressed up like one of the Andrews Sisters and slow dancing with a cute guy dressed as a G.I. This may be the result of too many World War II movies and a certain Doctor Who episode with pretty people slow dancing atop a spaceship parked against Big Ben (I’ve never wanted to be Rose Tyler so much as just then–or when she was running around time and space in a little blue box with David Tennant, but I digress). Of course, I can’t walk in heels, much less dance in them, so maybe not dancing.

Now, I don’t expect miracles. Unlike my mother, I don’t believe just losing weight and pulling other aspects of my life together will make it all better, but being healthier, more financially secure, and having a solid hobby will certainly help. I already have a support network, but broadening it wouldn’t hurt. The rest is medical, and I have doctors for that.

So wish me luck. The greatest obstacle to my success is me. I’m terrified, but determined. And I have a diet buddy to chastise me if I make quitting noises. Just for good measure, I might rope my local friend Tara into it, as well as my mother, who’s always happy to have something to mother me about. It’s a win-win for everybody!