and now, a rant--it's probably just a phase

so, all you bloggers out there...how do you keep from getting bored with it? How do you keep from reaching that point where you think to yourself "I've said/read everything already"? Are your lives just that much more interesting than mine? Are your attention spans just longer?

Because, as you may have guessed, I'm bored. I'm bored with blogging in general. It's not that anyone has gotten less interesting (well, except me, that is), it's just that I can't seem to care. I've gone from reading 20 blogs a day to reading maybe five. I almost never post anything here anymore. It may be a symptom of this whole extreme lethargy phase I'm going through, or it could be a side effect of being massively disorganized for longer than I'm used to. I just can't seem to get my shit together, I get overwhelmed, and then I shut down. Everything needs to change, so I can't muster up the ambition to change anything. You know?

As for the infrequent posting...I guess it's to be expected. Even when I kept a paper journal, I'd abandon it for months and then come back to it when it seemed fun again. It took me 7 years to fill a 1-year diary. I'm not sure why I thought it would be any different online. And it's not even that I'm not posting that often, either. I've got half a dozen unfinished posts sitting in draft from the past few weeks, but I got bored with the subject matter and just stopped. I thought I'd come back to them later, but then I never did. And now they're irrelevant.

Today, the scale showed me 182. I understand, and yet I don't. How is it that it's taken me 9 months to lose 9 lbs? I know it's better than nothing, but damn! Why can't I get it together? Why can't I stop whining about it, and just fix it?

I guess the bright side is that I am apparently very good at maintaining. I've maintained a 5-7 lb range in the high 170s to low 180s for the past 6 months. If this were in the 130s/140s, I'd be totally happy about this, right? Except that I'm not in the 130s/140s, and I'm so tired of being little Miss Bright Side. Fuck the bright side.

This is not what I want, and the reason that I can't seem to get what I want is that I can't seem to do what it takes to get there. I can't follow a plan. I've tried Flex points, I've tried Core, I've tried South Beach, I've tried calorie counting, and most recently I've tried the "Fuck-it" diet. I've been unable or unwilling to stick to any of them. Why? I guess I've lost some of the desperation I had in the beginning, and the novelty of weight loss has definitely worn off, too. It's been 2 years. I lost 20 lbs in the first 6 months and 16 in the last 18 months. I'm fighting for every pound, and worse, I'm fighting MYSELF for every pound. As soon as I tell myself that I'm not going to eat when I'm not hungry, I want to eat continuously all day long. As soon as I say I'm going to follow Flexpoints, I start telling myself not to count that cup of applesauce in the morning, or that cheese stick in the afternoon--they're on my core list, after all. Except that I'm not doing core, so they should be counted, and then I wonder why I gained again. The same with exercise--I'll be rocking along, going to the gym 3 times a week, then I make up a plan that says I want to work out 5 times a week. After that, I stop going altogether. It's my angels v. my demons, all the time. The demons nearly always win.

I certainly don't think this should be easy, but I know it doesn't have to be this hard. I need to stop sabotaging myself. I need to find my self-discipline, I need to find my drive, I need to find my will. And I need to beat my inner fat girl to death. Because I hate that girl. Seriously.

I think I should write a post on my blog which has a link back to yours with just the word "DITTO" on it. I definately feel your pain, only difference is I haven't had the success you have. This too shall pass.

~M

Maybe it's because yours is the only blog I read regularly (how often "regularly" is changes, depending on work, the season, etc., but still...), but I always like to read what you've written. A small feather in your cap from an utter stranger :)

I'm with you on the "everything or nothing" problem. I still can't seem to consistently grasp that it's moderation that will save the day - eventually. There's something else I do that really pisses me off: I get this from-the-gut, intensely strong feeling that when something is wrong, it will always be wrong. Like, I just moved into a new place and nothing's where it should be and I'm not settled and I have a headache from sleeping badly, so immediately I think that these things will ALWAYS be true. I will never sleep well again, I will always have this headache.

Of course, I know this is not so, but that doesn't usually help.

Are you blissfully free of this foible, or are you familiar?

Sorry for commenting so long after you post, but there's my "regularly" for you...

:P

no, I know what you mean...especially with the "from-the-gut" thing. Even with things that would take a few minutes to fix, if I'd just get around to putting in a little effort. I get into the mindset of "the laundry will never be completely done", "we will never have furniture that doesn't look like dorm castoffs from 1997", "the house will never sell", "we will never have another baby", that it becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

If I'd just take a day to do the laundry, save a little money to fix the house so it will sell, be consistent with the whole TTC process...but I get overwhelmed by the hopelessness of the moment, and don't do anything at all. So yeah, been there. Of course, yours sound like things that are less under your control. :)

Nah, they're mostly things that I can/will fix - like getting the closet organized so I know where my workout stuff is, finishing unpacking all the kitchen stuff so I can start cooking instead of buying frozen meals, putting some kind of soundproofing up in the bedroom so that the neighbor's TV doesn't come right through the wall. But it kind of cycles back to the whole "all or nothing" thing, doesn't it? Since I feel like I can't get it all perfectly organized, I take forever to even start. since I can't run for as long as I wanted to, I'm tempted not to run at all.

my just this minute struggle is not to eat any more candy corn because i allowed myself to have 20 of them ;)

and back to work...