Over it

WARNING:  This is not going to be a positive, feel-good post!

I just need to vent for a second.  Everything, I mean, EVERYTHING seemed to suck right now.

I am totally over trying to lose weight.  I worked out more than I have in months this past week and the result was a one pound weight gain!  I know that I could be building muscle and all...but I am so over it.  I'm tired of constantly thinking about food and exercise.  I'm tired of reading about everyone else exercising for amazing amounts of time at ridiculous paces.  I'm just tired of trying and not getting the results that I am striving for.  It's exhausting and stressful.  I am eating exactly what I should be eating...I am exercising as much as I possibly can...and I'm just tired.

I want to just give up.  I mean...I don't want to go crazy and eat with reckless abandon or anything (though I did decide to have tortilla chips and salsa as my morning snack)...I just want to stop thinking about it.  I want to not worry about the results and the process...I just want to live and see what happens.  It sounds so simple...but my type A doesn't let me live that care free. 

Now, let's move on to my dissertation.  I am so sick of getting up every morning and reading these stupid books and taking notes and not feeling like I have made any progress.  This "paper" seems so overwhelming and I feel like I am doing it on a topic that was not my interest (but my advisors) without much guidance or help (except for my wonderful Damian).  I want to be outside going to festivals...I want to be working out...I want to be watching mind-numbing TV...and cleaning my house...and painting my family room...and cleaning out my gym...I want to be selling all the junk in my house and de-cluttering my life. 

But instead, I am sitting on my couch reading about crap that I don't plan to use in the future.  Stressing over a deadline that I have to meet or else I will NEVER get done with this program.  I wanted summer to come so badly, but after one week, I am miserable.  I told my co-worker the other day that I would rather be teaching than on summer break right now (which in the teaching world is a huge statement). 

Then there is money.  My husband is a student and I am the main bread winner for the family.  It's a topic that I don't talk about a lot...for fear of judgment from my friends and family.  Though we definitely get by and have been blessed to live in a house with a very affordable mortgage, I sometimes get so frustrated about when we will actually have excess money to do things...like fix up the house...go shopping for things we want not just things we need...buy a new car...landscape the yard...replace the deck...finish the upstairs bathroom...all things that are not an emergency...but things that I desperately want to do and have wanted to do for a long time. 

I know that I should be happy with my life...my weight...my dissertation...my financial situation.  None of these things are in dire peril.  I'm just tired of "wanting."  It is so stressful to always want.  I don't know how to just be appreciative for what I have...I struggle with being patient...I don't know what it feels like to just be content.  I am always wanting...wanting and waiting.  It's just not fun.

I ordered a book this morning called Bringing Your Yoga to Life:  The Every Day Practice of Enlightened Living.  I plan to read it on my honeymoon (which is in exactly four weeks).  I think...or at least I'm hoping that it is what I need to bring me some peace. 

In the past, I have found that books on yoga philosophy (not just ones on asanas, but actual daily practice in life) help me to focus better on what is truly important.  I thoroughly enjoyed Happy Yoga, enLIGHTened, and Living Your Yoga.  I find these books so much better than self-help books.  The yoga philosophy speaks to me...centers me...enlightens me.   I don't enjoy the yoga books that are too heavy.  I enjoy the ones that are lighter...that inject a little humor every now and then (Steve Ross does this a lot...I love him and I still desperately miss INHALE). 

 Anyway, Bringing Your Yoga to Life got a lot of good reviews.  Hopefully, it will help. 

Well, enough bitching and tears for my Sunday morning.  I actually feel kind of better after writing (which is giving me second thoughts about ending this blog...something that I often contemplate).  As long as it is positive and helpful, I guess I will keep it around.

Back to my dissertation hell...

carla