Some people, I’m sure, slide out of their mother’s womb knowing what they want to be when they grow up.  Others, likewise, by age 3 or 4 have discovered a talent that has family members nodding and saying, “that child is destined to be a musician or an artist or a pro sports player or a stoner.” Maybe a few of us made the decision at 10 or 12 to be a doctor or lawyer or a business women that wears suits and high heels and makeup and tells people what to do.

What? Don’t  judge me! I wanted to be all those things.

My logic went a little like this: A. I’m smart B. Doctors are smart C. Doctors make a lot of money D. I want to make a lot of money. Conclusion: I’ll become a doctor.  That is, until I slashed my finger open one day while making lunch for my siblings, and nearly swooned at the sight of my own blood. Being a doctor was CLEARLY out.

I immediately latched on to another, slightly more realistic dream. Again, my logic  A. I have the gift of gab and I love to argue. B. Lawyers talk a lot and have to argue cases. C. Lawyers make a lot of money D. I want to make a lot of money. Conclusion: I’ll be a lawyer. I stuck with that dream until I clerked for a DA during an internship, and a judge for another. I just couldn’t come to terms with maybe accidentally one day sending an innocent person to jail. And civil law literally put me to sleep. Yes, Me asleep, snoring and drooling in the courtroom.

Maybe you, like me got all the way to high school without really knowing what you wanted to do with your life. Maybe you found it hard to conceptualize how to transform a love or skill in writing, or reading, chemistry, history or trigonometry or art into a career.  Especially when one is smart.

When one is smart, one goes to college, period. (At least that’s what “they” say.)

Maybe you aren’t “smart” so you didn’t go to college.  You stay at home and work at the grocery store, or the mall, or maybe you get a job working for your mother’s friend’s dad. Or maybe you have a skill that you’ve picked up over the years that people will pay you for. Or you join the military.

For a second, let’s imagine that you took your smart self to college the way I did. Still not knowing what you wanted to do with your life.

Maybe you, like me, pick a major because it sounds good to the parents. International Business/French, anyone? That is, until you actually get in a French class and BOMB it. Or maybe you select Political Science because you can always decide to go to law school later, right? Until you realize that Poli Sci is just as boring as that civil law internship. Or organic chemistry forces you to reconsider that pre-med major.

Maybe you are an artist or a writer at heart, but “everyone” knows that majoring in Art or Design or Creative Writing or English won’t make you rich.

Maybe you follow your heart and major in English anyway.

Or maybe you discover that you really like some other discipline like Sociology, History, Anthropology or Theology. You decide to major in that and see how it goes.

Or maybe you learned to turn that love of parabolas into a major in Economics. Which later turns into a job in a think tank, or a finance agency or some other economics place.

Maybe you really, really, really are going to be a doctor, lawyer or PhD of something and this BA is just step one. You slosh through, learning the basics, marching steadily towards your destiny.

Then

You graduate, still not knowing what you want to do. You get a job as a teacher or in a bank or as someone’s assistant. And you whine and complain and are miserable. Or Not.

Or

You write your book of short stories, poetry, or the next American novel.  Maybe you hole yourself up in your apartment (or your parents’ basement) and paint your heart out. Riches and Fame ensue. Or not.

Or

College helped you figure out what you are good at.  Maybe it’s leading a group, maybe it’s facilitation, maybe it’s bringing out the best in people—things you would never of found on your own.  Maybe you really want to make the world a better place. You still don’t know how to turn those skills/desires into a career, but you’ve got a start. And you did leave college with some transferable skills and a degree. For some jobs, that piece of paper is enough to get your foot in the door. For a while, you work doing something you kinda hate, getting “valuable” experience (and growing your bank account, hopefully) biding your time before you break out of your cube and do something that you really enjoy.

Or maybe you just say fuck it, and leave college Kanye West style. You discover the internet, and decide to be a marketing guru. Or you learn HTML and become a web designer. Or you self-study something else and find that you’re good at XYZ and convince someone to pay you to do that without a degree. Or you go home and get a job at the mall, grocery store or with your brother’s girlfriend’s mom. Or you go to technical school and become a car mechanic or a plumber.  Or you join the military.

Or you go study abroad in France because you are DETERMINED to learn French. You like it there and NEVER COME BACK. Wine and baguettes, anyone?

Maybe college isn’t right for you. Maybe it is.

Maybe college is the place that focuses you so that you can figure out how to transform your talents/skills into a career.

Maybe college is the lightbulb that illuminated quickly and clearly what you’re life’s path is.

Maybe college is just another 3-5 years of school, and at the end you graduate still completely clueless. Or you graduate, knowing you’ve got 8+ more years of schooling ahead of you.

You know what?  You get to CHOOSE.

You can choose to go to college or not.

You can choose make a successful life for yourself with or without a degree. Or not. [And you CAN be successful without a degree.]

If you go to college- you can choose to major in something that makes lots of money or not. And may or may not make you miserable.

If you go to college- you can choose to major in a liberal art that doesn’t immediately translate into big bucks or not.

You can graduate and end up in a dead end job or unemployed or not.

You can graduate and do that THING that will make your life worth living. Or not.

You can graduate and continue to figure out what you want to do with your life.

You can graduate, get a job, follow the rules and have a stable traditional career. Or get laid off. Or not.

You can be whiny, complain-y, entitled, and bored, all while you sit on your ass.  All while you do ANY of the other things above.

Or not.

You CHOOSE.

College isn’t the Matrix. Choosing the red or green pill won’t change your life like magic (in most cases). But YOU can change your life like magic. So don’t blame college. Don’t blame your parents. Don’t blame your weed-head roommate. If you didn’t get what you wanted out of college, blame yourself. Clearly you didn’t make the right decision

So now you work your ass off, using what you’ve got. There’s still time for fame, riches and success.

Last week I spent some time in a bridal shop getting a dress altered for a wedding that I’m in. Standing still while letting someone poke straight pins into a garment that you are wearing is awkward and uncomfortable.  The seamstress was tried to engage me in small talk to distract me. All the normal topics were covered; where to you live, where do you work, what do you do, what do you think about this weather, so on and so forth.

As she’s talking, all I can think about is how hot I am, and how much hotter it will be at the wedding. Within just a few minutes, I could feel the backs of my knees starting to sweat, the little rivulets running down to my ankles and pooling in the back of the slingback sandals that are a part of the wedding ensemble.

Finally I cut her off. I could no longer take standing there, feeling the sweat move down my leg but unable to wipe it way and answer her well meaning, but meaningless questions.

I remembered that she told me she lived far outside the city, yet her shop was in the heart Buckhead’s high-end shopping district.  For sure, I said, your commute must be horrible.  Why is your shop here and not closer to home?  She told me how her shop had moved over the years, and how this seemed to be the best location.  It was an entertaining conversation (for me, at least).  Afterward, we lapsed into a comfortable silence.

Her husband, who was sewing in the back, must have overheard my question.  He came to the front of the shop and asked me for my name.  I told him.

He asked, “You want to know why our shop is here?”  I nodded.

“It is here because God wanted it.” He went on to tell me how he and his wife and children had emigrated from Costa Rica 38 years before.  He told me how they prayed for 20 years for a shop of their own.  He told me how they had started shops in several locations, but had moved for one reason or another.

He told me how they prayed for their current location, and how the nice Jewish man who owned the building (his words) had rented to them—for less money—than was offered by the other people who were vying for that spot.  He told me how similar businesses around them are suffering or closing and how blessed they are that their business is still strong.  He is convinced that the shop’s placement and success is solely based on their strong prayer and belief.

He told me how God wanted them in that particular location so that he could help people. He talked about all the people, physically and emotionally hurting, that he gets to meet and pray for.  He showed me the bottle of oil that he uses to anoint people.

Seeing the bottle of oil made me nervous. I know better than the play with matters of the Spirit.  What if he wanted to pray for me? What if he prayed in Spanish and I didn’t know what he was saying? What would he expect me to do? I don’t know if he wanted to anoint me, he didn’t ask and I didn’t volunteer. Maybe he knew that I was willing to absorb his story, but I wasn’t ready to participate in any public prayer.

I don’t know what, if anything, that whole exchange means. I am my mother’s child, and events like this are just another day in her life. Special, but certainly not rare.  But it gave me goose bumps as it happened to me. Maybe I’m more receptive to these things since I opened myself to religious and spiritual study and contemplation. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all.

My heart says, “Surely, it must mean something!” I believe that everything happens for a reason. There are no coincidences; there are no chance happenings. I believe the world is full of signs to guide our paths; we just need to keep our eyes and hearts open.  We must be willing to see and believe.

So I’m open, and I’m listening, and now, finally, I think I’m getting my faith back.

These three creatures gnaw at me. An idea for my novel will come to me when I’m supposed to be reading a report for work. A blog post for CU or an idea for a survey will come to me while I’m driving through some town or neighborhood.  Infinite ideas for this blog and other websites come to me as I hurl myself through my day at work, my home life with the GF or while I’m driving, talking on the phone, or cooking dinner. These projects are with me 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Rain or shine, sleeping or awake. They haunt me.

My novel characters talk to me.  I promise them that their stories won’t languish on my virus infected laptop. That one day, I’ll at least compile their various Word documents into some semblance of order, change all the language from 1^st person to 3^rd, upload the whole damn thing onto Google Docs so that A. I can share it with my “editors” my BFF and the GF. (who are both waiting patiently) and B. so that I can work on it from work wherever.

I’m not kidding when I say I have notebooks and Word Docs and Google Docs galore of half-finished blog posts, and pictures on my phone, camera and computer of things I want to put on tumblr and flickr.

Every day at work I stare, (sometimes aimlessly) at the computer screen, absorbing inconsequential tidbits of news. I lament the fact that I’m an internet whore that just won’t quit. That I CAN”T get anything accomplished despite the fact that  I have these three things that are screaming inside my brain for attention. These things that I say I care about, but whom I neglect badly while I read the latest on twitter. I feel guilty. How dare I not spend my free time devoted to my work.

Now I think my subconscious is getting involved.

Over the past few weeks (maybe months) I’ve been having horrible, horrible nightmares. These are not my garden variety nightmares of devils attacking or me running from some unseen terror.  In these new nightmares, I’ve killed (or been privy to) the deaths of my siblings. Repeatedly. In these nightmares, I’ve watched them get attacked by snakes, lizards, a faceless friends, and finally, the unseen terror in the closet.  I’ve had dreams about going to weekend long family funerals, of someone being buried in the backyard, of multiple car crashes.  I had a nightmare that two of my uncles were fighting over money and somehow it was all my fault. Last night, I had two dreams.  In one, I was a dolphin in a dolphin family.  And in the other, I was fighting zombies like Lara Croft.

And those are just the dreams that I wake up and can recount. I have also had several dreams about transporting people in tubes across dimensions of space and time, and about medieval (or 22^nd Century) weapon technology, but I can’t remember all the details.

I, my therapist, and the GF, (bless her heart with infinite patience) have analyzed my dreamscape to death. Thank goodness that the GF is training to be a therapist since she’s had to listen to me talk about all the death and destruction that I go through most nights.

According to Freud, Jung, and the whole gang of therapy experts, dreams are our subconscious trying to tell us something about ourselves and our surroundings. Each part of the dream (even the parts played by other people) are symbolic pieces of ourselves.

After a bit of research, I was relieved to know that I’m not dreaming of the deaths of my siblings.  But I was horrified to know that I’m dreaming of the death or destruction of parts of myself.  I’ve taken some time to think about what part of my personality is represented by my siblings.  The answer came to me a few weeks ago as I stared at the ceiling in the middle of the night, refusing to go back to sleep after having a dream where I watched my sister get choked by an unseen hand from the closet. All of a sudden it hit me, I sat up in bed and using my cell phone light, wrote it quickly in my journal (scaring the GF half to death in the process).  My siblings are my legacy. They are the pieces of me that will live on after I’m dead.

My siblings are the reason I don’t want children. (And I mean that in a good way) As the oldest, I spent my childhood caring for them; reading to them, keeping them out of trouble, beating up their bullies, helping them with homework, making their lunches over the summers, making sure that they were ok. I consider them as much mine as my mother’s.  By watching my siblings die in my dreams, I witnessed the death of my legacy. Without them, no part of me lives on.

In one of the dreams, my cousin (who happens to be a a loud mouth) gives birth to a stillborn child, while I lay on the hospital bed beside her, unable even to birth the thing I could see moving inside me.  I think the dead and unborn babies refer to the unfinished projects and notebooks of ideas that I haven’t been working to GIVE BIRTH TO. My dreams are telling me that I need to stop talking, and start taking action.  It would be shame if my ideas die before I can do anything about them. I can’t depend on my siblings to be my legacy (somehow my mother thinks it’s cheating to consider them my children anyway). Only I am the master of my legacy.

Crazy, huh? The brain is a marvelous and mysterious hunk of meat.

She had a saying that I still repeat to myself.

“Unless you get hit by a bus, you are going to be ok.  No matter what.”

For two and a half years, all the time I worked with her, no matter what the crisis, the Doc never wavered.

No matter that I broke off my engagement.

No matter that I quit my job to go back to school.

No matter that I have to make friends (or at least TRY to be nice to people).

No matter that I started a new relationship.

No matter that I came out to my mother as a lesbian.

No matter that I wasn’t the smartest and most active in school

No matter that I constantly worried about stuff that probably won’t happen.

No matter what.

Every month she reminded me that as long as I didn’t get hit by a bus, I would survive.

Whenever I get overwhelmed, or frustrated or afraid I try to remember that I haven’t been hit by a bus, so I must be ok.

I can’t remember when I fell in love with Long Island Iced Tea (LIT). Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that my late teens and early twenties are such a blur, but it seems that I quickly graduated from sipping my mother’s strawberry daiquiris, to having someone order my rum and Cokes or Margaritas, to buying my own cheap boxed Merlot for the dorm room and ordering LIT out in public.

I’ve decided to blame the drugged environment of the fine dining restaurant where I worked in college. We had a couple of amazing bartenders that loved nothing more than push alcoholic beverages in my face and watch my face light up with their yumminess.  I remember my 21st birthday, and the dismay on the general manager’s face when he heard my age because I’d been drinking there for years.

Aside: I experienced a number of firsts in that restaurant- my first scotch and water, my first sashimi, my first rare steak, my first cigar, my first LEGAL drink, the first job I loved, probably my first LIT. It’s likely that working in that restaurant from age 19-22 years laid the foundation for debaucherous decade that has become my twenties.

The LIT has certainly played a starring role during this decade. For whatever reason, in spite of all the other drinks that I’ve come to love: the Grey Goose Gimlet, the Tangeray Gin and Tonic, Jack and Ginger or Coke, or if I’m feeling sophisticated, a nice spicy Cabernet, or girly; a sweet Riesling….. I most often order a LIT.  You just CAN’T go wrong with an LIT.

As I approach the twilight years of the decade, I’m blessed to have a guide. The GF is a few years older and infinitely wise in the ways of making it successfully past the big 2-9.  As my twenties disappear she tells me how this body part stops working and that one starts to creak, and you can’t do that like you used to and, so on and so on. Because I’m hardheaded, I’m slow to listen to her advice.

In my mind, my body is ageless, timeless, immortal. The normal rules of aging do not apply to me. And I’ll kick anyone in the face that dares to disagree with me. And because normal aging rules do not *cough* apply to me, I have, on occasion, continued to behave as I did at 22.  And at the end of those nights, the GF makes sure I have a small hamburger, 4 Advil and a big glass of water. (Gosh, I love her.)  Still, more often than not, on those cursed hungover mornings after, the GF turns to me with a smirk and says, “How old are you again?”

This past weekend, after (MY LAST, I SWEAR) brutal hangover after drinking mostly Sangria, followed by one JUST one LIT, I finally started to understand. My 28 year old body does not metabolize (ugh, I hate that word) alcohol the way that 22, 25 or even 27 year old Monica did.

I hate to report that the LIT and I have broken up. I’ve resigned myself to stick with the occasional glass of wine, or the single liquor drink. (oh how it pains me to say this)

But, there are just some things I’m not willing to put my body through. Killing my feet in high heels is one of them, ridiculous all day hangovers is another one.

When you get this feeling, this…. sensation… your spirit, your VERY SOUL is pulls you in 8 different directions, your toe is tapping and your web browser has, like, 35 tabs open. And if you’re anything like me, your computer just ISN’T fast enough to keep up with you.

You probably have not been sleeping well because as soon as your head hits the pillow, your mind starts thinking all these crazy ideas, and you have to get up and write them down because you’ll never remember them all in the morning. But if you get up now, you’re going to spend another hour writing, then another 30 minutes or so calming back down (warm milk or tequila helps).

And you probably have a dull headache because you’re sleepy, you’ve been sitting too close to the computer and you forgot to eat lunch.

Welcome to my week.

Maybe it’s excitement of 3 of my favorite “non-related to me” women having birthdays (go Aries!), maybe it’s the reverence in the air with Holy Week, Passover, and the Spring Equinox all converging, or maybe the tutonic plates which are my life are coming together in a way that is not unlike an earthquake.

I don’t know what the f*ck is going on, but I’m feeling a little crazy.

Have an AMAZING weekend! May you feel the excitement, the change, the expectancy that I feel at this moment.  May it play over your skin like musical notes. May it be in the very air you breathe. My it fill you like water. May it carry you forward towards your dreams.

I have several half written blog posts that *one day* will make here for your reading pleasure, but today I’m just going to share a few posts that  resonated with me in a very special way. So without further ado.

Blogs that made my day.

Being by Doniree:  Found via (Genpink): I love this post so much that, not only do I want to print it and read it lots, I also want to copy it.  Not word for word, but I want to copy the style of it and create my own “I am” piece.

You Already Have Everything You Need by Jenny Blake: I’m not sure whether I have a humongous girl crush on Jenny or if this is just hero worship but I love her.  This post is the answer to all of my angst filled “why can’t I just get over myself and do something” posts.

How To Be Creative At Work by Penelope Trunk: She kind of lost me in the middle with all the high brow vs low brow commentary, but the last paragraph sums up the trouble that I think I have finding work in organizations and how I feel today about the work I’m not allowed to do at work. Sometimes our pre-conceived idea of what is acceptable or what we need causes us to miss out on the gems that are amazing but don’t quite fit what we’re looking for.

Empty Spaces (and Moving Past Loneliness by Jenny Blake: (Told you that I love her!) I love this post because I can relate. Moving to Atlanta was incredibly hard. I left a lot of my “I’ll be at your door in 15 minutes” friends in NC, and haven’t really filled that space yet. So now when the GF and I are involved with different things, and I can’t get someone on the phone, I find myself really alone for the first time ever. It’s f’ing scary and I hate it but those times teach me to be comfortable with and by myself.

Rescued by a Social Justice Christian by KT_Writes: As I struggle to reconcile my spirituality with the other parts of my personality, I crave wisdom from other people who succeed in that endeavor. Kristin is a great example of Christian done right. And this post exemplifies points about Christianity that many Christians fail to remember. Jesus is about service and helping others and feeding the poor. And that’s all social justice is.

Kevin Powells “Open Letter to Black America” by Sista Toldja: I really like this letter.  It speaks to several issues: Spiritually, Health, Community Economic Development, and Urban land development issues that I care deeply about and that I worry don’t get the “air play” that they deserve. I also believe that while this letter was aimed specifically at Black folk, there are a lot of poor Asian, Hispanic, Latino and other folk who need to read/hear/see it as well.

We tweeting briefly and she asked me what’s been going on in my life lately. And I replied like a smart aleck,“I’m full of angst as usual. Trudging upstream. Surrounded by mediocrity”

I thought Holly would laugh it off, or commiserate before moving on to the next topic.  She didn’t.  Instead she asked me what I’m going to do to change it.

After I gasped in shock and horror, I scrambled for a reply. I wanted to reply in a way that didn’t make me look like the lame asses around me that I deplore but I wanted to be truthful and not say something that could come back later and bite me in the ass. So I replied with an only-slightly BS line about “working on some things and making some connections” when in reality I spend most of my time lamenting the fact that I’m not writing much, and watching TV on Fancast and Netflix.

But having been posed that question by Holly, I started to really think about the things that I dislike about my life and all the stuff I’m not doing to change it.  And I realized something. I’m incredibly lazy and beset by inertia.

Inertia, according to Wikipedia, is the resistance of an object to change its state of motion.

“The vis insita, or innate force of matter is a power of resisting, by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavors to preserve in its present state, whether it be of rest, or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line.”

Before I get all over my head in science world, basically this means that as much as I think I’d like to change certain aspects of my life (or even myself) at least a part of me is comfortable here.

A less science-y example:  This past weekend in Atlanta was gorgeous. 74 degrees, sunny. It was an amazing glimpse of Spring and I loved every second of it. But over the past few months, I’ve gotten used to wearing a coat, gloves, scarf and hat and walking around outside in just my regular clothes and a small sweater made me feel exposed and incomplete.  And I HATE bulky winter outerwear.

But it just goes to show you how easily behaviors and mindsets can become ingrained and how things, even the things that we hate, can become the norm.

There are lots of things I want to do, but every time I make a little progress, something (usually my own negativity) pulls me back into inertia.

I don’t have a solution to my inertia problem; if I did I’d be 50 pounds lighter, have written a book or two and would be chilling in Costa Rica. I know you are probably thinking (like I often do) Why don’t you just get off your ass and DO something.

I only wish it were that easy. Inertia is a powerful thing. You see, not only does the power of inertia state that an object will remain in its current state of motion, it also states that only a greater force can cause the object to change.

Last summer I was hit by a greater force. I graduated from MPA school with no prospects for employment. I was given the chance to change my life and break away from the power of inertia. I was living with the GF in a stable environment that could have been a breeding ground for creativity, self-discovery and entrepreneurship. Mostly it wasn’t. I wasted my tine trying to get back to where I was most comfortable. Working for someone else.  I dabbled in starting my own business, but I don’t think I took it as seriously as I should have. I didn’t push as hard as I should have.  Now I find myself, basically in the same place that I was in before I went to graduate school, except now it’s worse.

When I look at some of my peers, I see them as these brilliant rockets blasting off into the outer spaces of life and success and I wonder what drives them so.  This reminds me of a quote I heard during one of my Philosophers’ Notes that says that

“the majority of fuel used by a rocket is  used during take-off when the rocket is trying to breech the Earth’s gravitational pull.”

Hmmm.

Physics (Gravity and Inertia) shows us that the hardest part is getting started. Maybe, if I can just start moving and build some momentum, I can shift my inertia from one of standing still to one of constant movement. Maybe it only takes a push to propel myself (figuratively) into the air. Maybe then getting to and staying at cruising altitude will be relatively easy.

Telling, or deciding who and when to tell has been one of the most anxiety-ridden thing I’ve had to do in regards to my lesbian identity. I had to make decisions about my mom, my siblings, other family members, my friends, acquaintances, church members, co-workers, everyone.  Even the strangers we meet in the streets automatically make judgments or assumptions about our (homo and hetero) relationships, gender and sexuality. I had to decide how I wanted to deal with it all.

In graduate school, I was neither in nor out. I was the queen of DADT.

Of course, there was that one favorite classmate of mine who figured it out almost immediately. I would neither confirm or deny, but for him, the cat was out of the bag.  We shared a wink and a smile, and both went back to whatever conversation we were originally having. I will always love him for that. And it felt good to know that if wasn’t that big of a deal.

In talking about the GF, I simply said my significant other, my partner or the asexual “them”.  However, it didn’t take my closest classmates very long to realize that the only reason a person would use those particular words was if they had something to hide. And I am reminded of a particular raucous, tequila filled night where I slipped up and said her. I hoped that no one noticed.

On Diversity Day we watched a series of skits designed to inform us of all the ways we could look like racist, prejudiced a-holes, even when we don’t mean to be. While I was visibly awkward and disturbed by the display of We Love Everyone –even the Blacks, the Jews, the Homos and Women– propaganda, I was NOT going to use that moment to tell my professors and classmates of my super minority status.

It wasn’t until our second year when a group of us were thinking of renting a house together that I thought, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should come clean.  And with the eight of us standing in a Kroger parking lot discussing the pros and cons of a communal living arrangement, I in full dramatic fashion, proclaimed myself a lesbian. My friends just looked at me with silly grins, as if they A. Needed a warning and B. Didn’t already know.

Even if they didn’t care, I felt good about it.  And I felt good about waiting to share. In entering graduate school, I made a conscious decision not to be the token lesbian. I wanted to be liked and judged on the merits of my character, wittiness, drinking ability, and intellectual prowess, not on the sex of the person with whom that I share my life.

And waiting helped me accomplish that.

I have to start this post by telling everyone that I’m not just getting fatter. I hope to GOD that I’m not getting fatter, since I pay 50 bucks a month for a gym membership and I spend 3+ hours several days a week working out and dealing with all the stuff that goes along with working out (travel, showering, etc)

Since starting to work out last year, I’ve toned up tremendously (I have thighs and buns of steel) but I haven’t seen the scale budge.  Honestly, I haven’t seen a difference in (most) of my clothes. It takes a huge weight gain before my clothes let me know that I’ve started gaining.  The latest weight gain took place during the two years that I was in MPA School drinking beer and exercising little (none in the first year, sporadically in the second year).  I’m just (in the past 6-8 months) starting to notice and, only recently, try to do something about it.

Because I’m something of a yo-yo weight loser I have about 3 different sizes of clothes.  The first (lowest sized) clothes are tight now, and I’ve moved on to the next largest size.  These clothes are supposed to fit.

So I was surprised last week, when, after only a few hours at work I realize how uncomfortable I am. I realize that my clothes are tight. And of course, as soon as I START to think about how the waistband of my pants is digging into my stomach, I can’t think of anything but my bloated stomach.

So after a couple more hours of labored breathing and hurting stomach, I vow that as soon as I get these clothes home, they are going into my “goodwill” pile.

Later, I get home; chuck the pants and the shirt (good riddance!) away, put on my favorite sweat pants and finally starts to breath normally.  When the GF get’s home, I, still sore from the day of poor circulation around my middle, tell her about giving the pants away.

And she asked me which pants I’m giving away because I’m not allowed to give any away until she made sure that they aren’t the pants she liked to see me in.

*Shrugging*.  What am I going to do with her?

The story continues….

It has been unseasonably cold in Atlanta this winter, so I’m learning how to layer (Don’t judge me, I’m southern.  I shouldn’t have to layer).  I was wearing a button-down shirt under a sweater.   Somehow two of the shirt’s buttons have come undone, it’s tight around the shoulders and the sweater is itchy on my skin.  And I think I shrunk this sweater last time I washed it because it is RIDING UP along my stomach.

Not happy times.

Guess what?  I have more items for my “goodwill” bag.  (Yay for somebody.)

I think I need to go on a diet.

I’m also going to think about fundamentally changing the way that I dress.  Three out of five days a week something I wear to work makes me uncomfortable. I hate pants, shirts, and boots. I can’t wait until summer when I can wear skirts, dresses and flip flops. I NEVER feel this uncomfortable in a skirt (unless I’m cold).  I felt more uncomfortable yesterday than I did in 4^th grade gym class when I had to turn flips in a shirt without showing my ass. I need flowy pieces, tunics, elastic, cotton, things that breathe (so that I can breathe).

I need to go shopping.

And on a semi-related note…

Dear Mother Nature, Can I get some sunshine and 78 degree weather so that I don’t have to wear all these clothes? Puh -Puh -Please?