It’s that time of year again, the time when my son is scared. When the days grow shorter and darker he traditionally develops a fear of – something. One year it was skeletons, one year it was masks, one year it was ghosts, one year it was robbers, this year it’s quite specific, a green skeletal devil with horns.

It all started at the beginning of November (yes, that’s three months ago, almost) when he sat in front of TV to watch something about a zoo. At 5 in the afternoon there was a trailer for a murder mystery. In this trailer there was a tiny blip showing somebody wearing a halloween costume with a green mask and devil’s horns.

The night before was the last night my son has slept in his bed since then. And if that wouldn’t have been unnerving enough he is also afraid of being alone. So when, for example, he is playing in his room, and I’m sitting in the kitchen, and then I want to get something from the basement, and I’d be unwise enough to open the actual door and get down the stairs there would be a wailing child running after me. And when I’d get up again he’d stand there, mad at me and screaming, “How dare you leave me alone? You know I’m scared!” On the other hand he will totally go to the supermarket alone and buy a toy. No problem there. It’s just being alone at the house. Or rather somewhere where he doesn’t see or here another person because we never ever leave him alone at the house.

When he is going to sleep there has to be someone with him in the next room (we have drawn the line at being in the same room) at all times. So I’m no longer allowed to watch DVDs in my very favorite chair in front of our big old TV, no I have to sit on the hard and cold kitchen bench with my laptop who then decides it doesn’t like this particular DVD. After that I go into my bedroom without having talked a word with my husband (who is in the annex, working on his new album) and get to bed, the bed I share with my son. I’m not allowed to turn off the light completely, and I have to push him back to his side of the bed repeatedly and with force because for some strange reason I don’t like to share my pillow. Also, repeatedly through the night there will be a clear, ringing voice calling, “Mama?” in near panic. Which makes me more awake than him and then, just when I have gone to sleep again, he asks again.

My husband and I have been taking turns in “night duty”, and once or twice a week he sleeps at my mother-in-laws place to give us a break. I only really realized how much I feel like being on a leash when yesterday while my son was away with his grandmother I sat in the kitchen knitting, and then wondered what my husband was doing. I sat there for a while and then it hit me: I could just stand up, leave the room and go over into the annex without someone yelling at me! Wow. Sweet freedom.

Now, for those of you not familiar with my son, he is not 18 months old, no, he’s 7 years. He knows perfectly well that he is safe in the house. Ever since he turned three we could leave him playing in one part of the house and go to the annex, at least briefly. He has always been afraid of the dark so he there’s a light in his room, and for quite some time now there had to be someone in the next room when he went to sleep. Once he had fallen asleep whoever was on duty that night could walk out, and then only return when it was time to got to sleep ourselves.

I have a big problem with this. I can’t sleep properly. When I hear anybody scream “Mama?” I have to suppress the urge to slap that child whoever it is. I have told everybody I’ve met for the past three months about this. I’d say I have a problem.

Now, I know that he is really scared. I know that his fear isn’t rational and I remember how it is at that age. That’s why he has a light on while falling asleep, and that’s why there is someone near. But then I also remember that even though I was afraid there were bears in the basement I still went there. Telling myself, “There are no bears in the basement, there are no bears in the basement.” all the time. And you know what? I never saw a single bear there.

My son on the other hand, my son who knows perfectly well that there are no strange devils lurking in the corners of our house, my son ends every talk about how we just please want to sleep again, and how we know that he is scared but that he is perfectly safe with the same sentence: “But I’m scared.” Yeah, we knew that already, thanks.

I bought nice educational books, I elevated his stuffed giraffe to a monster-slaying super-toy (worked for half an hour), bought him a magic slumber mouse (he was set on trying to sleep alone but then he went off to his grandma’s and the next night he was – too scared again).

Everybody we have talked to so far has said the following things:

• every child is afraid of something
• there are a lot of children who still sleep in their parents beds
• this too will pass
• maybe stickers will help
• and the final thing, when we kept on saying, “Yeah, we tried that but it didn’t work.” or “Yeah, I knew that already.” then people say, “You have to get help.”

And you know what? They might be right. On the other hand it’s not as if I didn’t know anything about behavior modification or parenting. And our son is really, really stubborn. You know, I’m a pretty stubborn person but that’s nothing compared to him. I talked to a student who happens to have a son the same age as mine about what to do when your son is really rude and threatens to hit you, and he said, “Well, then he has to go to his room until he has calmed down.” And I looked at him, blinking for a couple of seconds with a blank look, and then I said, “And he just goes there?” And he said, “Well, if he doesn’t I make him.” That made me laugh really hard. I can, of course, lift my son up and carry him to his room, and I might even manage to close the door behind him but since we don’t own a key to that door there is nothing to keep him in there. I put him to his room, he comes out again, I put him back, he comes out again, I start screaming, he’s howling, I put him back… One time we spent 90 minutes pulling on opposite side of the door both of us screaming, and then he was only three years old. And when everything fails he just runs off to his grandmother.

Still I have decided not to let him oppress me any longer. He wants to wail behind me when I’m leaving the room? So be it. I also told him that he has to sleep in his room again. He’ll get a sticker for every night he spends in his own bed, and after two weeks we’ll go ice skating. Yesterday he actually fell asleep in his own room. My husband was lying next to him, but still. I went to bed at 11. At 11.30 he started calling me. Then he called again. Some time later he started crying. Then he called again. At 1 o’clock in the night I allowed him to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor of my room…

Tonight we’re signing a contract, both of us. He will either sleep in his room alone without making a noise or he will go to my bedroom on tiptoes without disturbing me and stay in the sleeping bag. When he stays in his room until 6.45 there will be a sticker. 14 stickers equal a trip to the ice skating rink. There will be no discussions , no wailing, no nothing. I might have to add that we have a “no discussions about things I should do or buy for him after 6 in the evening”-rule. This child will have a debate about whether or not he will eat breakfast, come to the table or dress himself for school. I told him he’s free to not eat and walk to school in his pajamas, whatever he wants. Then he yelled at me for no making him stop reading when it was time to get ready. Very funny.

Wish me luck.

I had a bit of a weird week last week. We came back from the trip to my parent’s to a week with almost no teaching. I distinctly remember that there was a lot of laundry and grocery shopping at the beginning of the week.

On Wednesday we all went to a fabulous concert, WeBe3 at the Unterfahrt. It was my son’s first time ever attending a jazz concert. We didn’t have a babysitter, and since he didn’t have to go to school this week too we decided it might be fun to have him with us for the first part. He behaved marvelous even thought the concert didn’t start until his usual bedtime. At first he was a bit disappointed because he had expected to go to a big concert like the rock concerts he has seen on TV in big stadiums but we were at a nice little jazz club. He was very interested (and well prepared, we had been listening to WEBe3 CDs all day long. At one point he said, “I wish this were on CD, and I could listen to it in my bed.” but he didn’t fall asleep. In the break my husband took him back home, and I got to stay and see the second set as well.

I always feel a bit strange at these concerts. I have been to many WeBe3 and Rhiannon (who is a member of WeBe3) concerts over the years. Just that day I met someone who told me he had attended one of Rhiannon’s workshops 12 years ago. I remember being at that workshop with him, and I doubt that it was my first with her. So, I know the singers on stage very well, and I know about two thirds of the audience as well, since there are a lot of singers who come back again, and again.

I know those singers, and I like them but we only meet for the workshops and concerts. It’s not like we were a community or friends or anything. So I get to experience a very familiar feeling, being part of something, and being apart at the same time.

Everything was wonderful until after the concert when I decided to say hello to Rhiannon because this year I didn’t attend the workshop. I waited and waited, and then waited some more, and then got to say hello, and then waited some more, and then talked some, and waited, until I had missed my train by four minutes. Blah.

That experience, combined with PMS and heavy sleep deprivation because I had been up until half past three, only to be woken up by my son at 8, sent me back to a feeling of not being an artist, and not being a real musician, and that crappy familiar mindset.

I decided to not take those feelings seriously, to just write my story for my writer’s meeting on the same evening. Of course I could have written that story two months ago, or one month ago but, as usual, I chose to procrastinate about it until the very last minute. I wrote about half of the story with gnashing teeth, then I hit a wall, and then I had to leave in order to get to the meeting.

That was one of the most interesting writer’s group meetings ever because besides me nobody else showed up. You can imagine how I felt at first, sitting in a café at a table on the sidewalk, waiting for one of my fellow writers to show up so that I could discuss my writer’s block, and general lack of creativity with them, and waiting, andcursing myself for being too busy to send out my usual “I’m coming who else will be there”-e-mail.

Fortunately I had taken the book “Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance” by Julia Cameron with me. I hadn’t want to at first because it’s heavy and I was already running a bit late. In fact I had left home with my hair still damp and no make-up in order to catch my train. I didn’t quite know why I wanted to lug that heavy book around but then I got to read for an hour, and I found myself just a bit more grounded, and a bit more optimistic, and I made a plan.

I decided that each, and every day I’d play the piano for ten minutes before switching on my computer. And I decided to, somehow, find the time to write three pages of longhand on something fictional.

I’ve done that two times already and I can say that: a) I feel much better, b) if I do that I don’t have time for doing something on the computer before three in the afternoon, this will be interesting when tomorrow my regular teaching starts again, c) the story I started for the meeting, and that I had wanted to be about 1,000 words long, now stands at 1,800 and has barely started, and d) I’m really excited, and am looking forward to even doing housework.

So, now I’m praying for the strength and discipline to continue with that. I also tackled things that have been laying around for ages, I have weaved in the ends of two lace shawls, and two pairs of socks, some of them had been laying around, finished, since the beginning of the year. I also finished a pair of socks, and finished spinning the yarn for a cardigan. I had started spinning that in August or September of last year.

And the most startling thing that I have been doing was that I helped my husband with moving and turning the compost yesterday. We worked in the garden, all three of us together. You probably can’t imagine the novelty of that, the last time I did any yard work (and that was before my son was born, mind you) my husband took a picture as proof.

When I can go on like this I will be able to ease myself into a new routine. A much happier routine. Because when I start my day with morning pages, and a bit of exercise (I’ve been doing morning pages and a bit of T-Tapp in the mornings before even getting out of bed for a couple of weeks now.), I can face the rest of the world, and life, and everything much calmer.

I wrote this two weeks ago, and never got around to finish it. Well, I’m less depressed right now but busy again, and I need the reminder – so I declare this finished for now:

Last Saturday, when I went to another “day of mindfulness” I had an epiphany, in fact I had several but I won’t write about them all at once. I hope. The epiphany I had was that mindfulness might be the one thing that will save my life.

It’s no secret that I do have a couple of problems, for example just two days ago I told my husband that I really have a problem with my weight, and he said, “You don’t have a problem with your weight, you do have a problem with your eating habits.” Point taken. I’m dealing with depression again, and with hormones, and with depression triggered by hormones, it’s a bag full of fun here. At least I haven’t had an “overdrive”-episode since I started knitting obsessively again. I think.

The realization that cultivating mindfulness is the key to change my unconscious habits is not a new one for me, I have been knowing that for years now. I also have experienced the benefits of being more mindful. It’s only that with my life so busy I keep forgetting to make that a priority. In the drama of everyday life I keep thinking, “I don’t need to sit today, I’ll do it again tomorrow, and anyway, I already know how to do this.”

Well, as with music, knowing this doesn’t really count, you have to keep practicing. And, like with music, it’s not something that you practice for a while, and then you know how to do it, and that’s it for the rest of your life. You have to go back to it over, and over, and over, and over again.

I’m currently reading“The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness again. And I’m finding it very, very helpful. Now all I have to do is practice.

Every time we have a writer’s group meeting somebody says, “I should be writing more.” Most meetings you will hear that sentence uttered several time over the course of the evening, and sometimes every single one of us will have said it at some point. Yesterday even I said it. Only I said, “I really should be writing more, and I definitely should be making more music because being creative is where my energy and happiness come from.” Also I have this feeling that this is my calling as much as I resent it. But that’s not what I wanted to write about today.

We all have these things that we think we should be doing more of, or that we want to do more of. I bet that each of you has a list like:

• write more on my blog,
• write more novels,
• write more songs,
• spend more time with my child/children,
• exercise more,
• clean the house more,
• spend more time with my significant other,
• be more happy,
• meditate more often,
• spend more time with friends,
• lose more weight,
• spend more time in the garden,
• finish more projects
• get more sleep

You all know your own “more of”-list.

And now I’m wondering, what is it that I want less of? Because you can’t always put more and more and more into your days. They are quite crowded as they are, aren’t they?

In my case I have this feeling that I already slimmed my life down to the essentials. I can’t really do less. Of course there are quite a few things in there that I don’t like doing but the consequences of not doing them would be quite unpleasant. Taxes, meetings with relatives, kindergarten organizational stuff (I just spent three days looking for my son’s recorder that got lost, for example. Three days of mentally being tied up with a dumb piece of plastic. I’m glad to say that I found it in the end, but still.)

So, most things that I could do less of involve either things that are really necessary, or things that are really pleasant. The only thing I’m sure I want to have less of in my life is procrastination. It takes a lot of my energy and time, and it’s neither pleasant nor necessary. And I might be able to streamline my time at the computer a bit, and my housework and such. But other than that I’m at a loss. I also know that I will be thinking about this for the next few decades so there is no need to rush it.

What’s with you, what do you want more of in your lives, and what do you want less of?

I have been wanting to write about this since before Christmas, and then I had this feeling that it was too late, since it’s hardly the beginning of the year anymore, and then I remembered my treasured personal motto, “Better late than never.” (That, at least is a fitting motto for a notorious procrastinator.)

This is the third year that I have been choosing a word of the year. In 2007 it was “effortlessness” which made me give up on everything, in 2008 it was “healing” which made me realize that I’m far from healed, and also I got pointed towards therapy over and over again, I don’t know, maybe that’s a sign or something. Nevertheless some things got better, so there was actual healing in some areas of my life where I didn’t even realize I was in need of it, like my marriage.

This year I had the feeling that I needed something different, and so the first word that spoke to me was “discipline”. If you don’t know about the practice of choosing a word for the year, I got the idea from Christine Kane, who wrote about it at least here and here (the second link will lead you to a series of posts, go there – you’ll enjoy them).

So, discipline it was. That’s only fitting since this year seems to be all about getting back on track – again. I already had the feeling that I needed to re-cultivate my “inner parent“. Usually I know fairly well what I “should” be doing but mostly I don’t do it. Which is really lame, and has made me unhappier, more tired, and heavier over the past two years or so. For the whole time that I un-changed all of my new shiny and healthy habits, one at a time, I resolved to get back on track. Every single day. But every single day found myself, knitting in the midst of dirty dishes, dreading the grocery shopping, procrastinating for as long as five days about it. Each week I would firmly decide to do the shopping on Thursday, then Friday, then Saturday, and sometimes it would be Monday until I went and got something to eat for my family.

I know it’s pathetic, and it’s not very good for my self-esteem but I also know that I’m not the only one on the planet doing silly things like this. So, starting on December 27th or so, when I felt like this was about to be my beginning of the new year, I got a bit more no-nonsense about my decisions. So, right now, it’s no question of whether I tidy the kitchen in the evening or leave it until morning, I just tidy it in the evening, regardless of how I feel. Also I do my morning routine which consists of meditation, morning pages, and another round of tidying and cleaning.

For the past two weeks I even have been doing the grocery shopping on Thursdays, and some rudimentary house-cleaning on Fridays. I always want to put off the cleaning (and the shopping) until the weekend, and on weekends I always have the feeling that now is the time for knitting and sewing, and reading, and such. Then I think, “But I can always do it on Monday.” which I then don’t and another week goes by with dust bunnies all over the house.

So, discipline turns out to be a very good word for me for this year. Since I’m not procrastinating as much I have more energy, I’m going to bed on time (again more energy), and I don’t spend all my time and energy worrying about things I should be doing.

When I chose discipline, though, I had the feeling that if I only concentrated on that I would soon feel deprived, and resentful, and so I chose a second word to focus on – abundance. I want to concentrate on the fact that there is enough of everything in the world, even energy and time, that I don’t have to hold on to things I don’t love and need, and that there always will be more.

So far this also has worked very well. While there have been a few students quitting during the past months there seem to be more coming as replacements. When I’m not afraid that there never will be cake any more in my life it’s easier to eat just the one piece that makes me feel good instead of the two or three I usually would be eating.

2008 was not the best of years for me but I have the feeling that 2009 will be decidedly better.

Did you choose a word of the year? Will you? Tell me.

Two weeks ago I wrote about some fancy new goals that I had set for myself. I thought I’d try this “public accountability” everybody is talking about these days. Of course I thought I’d be back to report a week later but I wasn’t. Mostly because I had this really annoying persistent cough that made me want to do nothing but stay in bed all day. My goals were:

1. only eat at mealtimes. That is: breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner.
2. exercise at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes. Walking while doing errands doesn’t count.
3. play guitar or piano for at least ten minutes a day.
4. post on my blog 3 times a week.
5. write at least 100 words of fiction every day.
6. meditate every day for at least 10 minutes, and write morning pages.

I did quite well for about five days by the way. I went walking almost every day, I played guitar and piano, I wrote my words, and I was quite consistent with the meditation and morning pages. Meditation and morning pages has been something I have been doing for years, and so it wasn’t that hard to get back into that. Playing music and writing fiction was a bit harder because I found I never got around to it until late in the evening, and so I really only played for ten minutes, and I stopped writing after 120 words or so. But even when I felt like I was much too tired for writing or playing I enjoyed it nonetheless. And a 100 words isn’t much. It takes me less than 10 minutes. Also I never got the feeling that the story was making much progress at that rate. But then I wrote about 700 words on it in five days.

And then I felt terrible because of the coughing, and then, and then, and so I let everything slide. I’m still doing quite well with points 2 and 6. You can see for yourselves that the blog-posting three times a week did not happen. I may have to resign myself to the fact that these days it’s more about twice a week if that.

You might have noticed that I didn’t write about the first goal on my list. Ahem. This is the goal that I didn’t reach once in the past two weeks. Not once. I definitely won’t be making any rules around food and eating for the moment. I don’t stick to them anyway. Which is extremely frustrating. But it doesn’t help if I pretend that it’s different.

So, I’m suspending the setting of goals again. What I did find out about myself was that I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Before setting my new goals I was on the way to get a better grip on housework again, but the minute I concentrated on my new list, I got lax about housework again.

And then I got sick, and then I started knitting a sweater that I want to have right this minute, and that meant I have been doing nothing but knitting for the past week. I started it last Sunday, and if I can go on like I did last week it will be finished by next weekend. And while I really would like to accomplish other things too, there is something very, very nice about sitting around and knitting a warm ruby-red sweater while reading Miss Marple novels. So I’ll just do that for the rest of the weekend.

So for me, obviously, public accountability doesn’t work.

In response to my post about goals PiaPessoa said she wanted to work on exercising two times a week. I’d like to hear how that went. And Anne said that I should strive to reach the point where a new habit is like brushing your teeth. She is totally right with this, of course, and when I strive to form new habits it always helps me to remember how long it took me to brush my teeth twice a day without fail. You know, as a child I was taught to brush my teeth in the mornings only. And I did so for years. Then it occurred to me that brushing them in the mornings and evenings might be a good course of action. I think I tried to bring myself to brush my teeth in the evenings too when I was about eight years old. I never succeeded until I was about twenty. And then I lost the habit again, and had to re-install it when I was about ten years older. These days I never would go to bed without brushing my teeth first. So I finally reached that stage of forming a new habit where I do it every day without fail. But it took me about 22 years to reach that stage. 22 years!

There must be a way to speed that up. Really.

I’ve been thinking a lot about losing weight and changing habits these past days. I even read one personal weight loss story book (“Der Kilo-Killer: Ein Jahr im Schlankheitswahn), and one book about self-motivation (“So zähmen Sie Ihren inneren Schweinehund!”). Since Thursday.

That’s a very common pattern with me, I feel lost, I want to change something, I buy a book. Only this time I’m quite proud of myself because I didn’t buy the books but got them from the library. And I’m glad that I did because while they did help me with the thinking I don’t need to have them here to look things up or anything.

Anyways, I decided to set some goals for November, and so I made another list. For the next week (maybe longer) I will:

1. only eat at mealtimes. That is: breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner.
2. exercise at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes. Walking while doing errands doesn’t count.
3. play guitar or piano for at least ten minutes a day.
4. post on my blog 3 times a week.
5. write at least 100 words of fiction every day.
6. meditate every day for at least 10 minutes, and write morning pages.

I’m very tired of thinking about food and being fat all the time. And I’m not even sure if I want to do something to lose weight. So the first goal is my attempt at minimizing the energy I’m spending on thinking about eating. Also it’ll minimize mindless stuffing of food into my mouth.
I know that 30 minutes of exercise three times a week doesn’t sound much. But it’s doable. And by not specifying what I will do I leave room to just go for a nice walk if I’m not motivated to do “real” exercise. By the way, since setting that goal two days ago I already have been going on walks twice.

Playing guitar or piano for ten minutes a day likewise really isn’t much. But I know from experience that I do much better with setting small goals so that I don’t feel like a failure. Often when I sit down to play I will play longer than ten minutes. Actually, once I have started I often enjoy myself very much. Getting myself to sit down and start playing, on the other hand, is quite hard.

I have been struggling with writing on my blog. I feel that three times a week is about the perfect frequency for me both as a blogger and as a reader.But often I spend so much time on the net reading that I don’t sit down to actually write down the blog posts that are floating around in my head.

It’s time for NaNoWriMo again, and it does make me kind of sad to not participate this year. On the other hand I’m also really relieved that I’m not doing it this year. So this is like my “Ersatz-NaNo”. I’m using the same kind of energy to get some writing done.

The last point is something I have been doing for years but I found myself slipping, and skipping more often. So I’m re-installing this habit.
Of course I’m writing this to make myself accountable. You, my dear readers, are the ones who will be helping to keep me on track. I’m doing this because next week will be fall break (yeah, I know there are a lot of breaks around here) which will give me about two additional hours in the day to do what I want.
I’ll tell you how it went at the end of next week. Anything you want to accomplish? You can post your goals in the comments, or on your blogs and I’ll link to them.

Some time ago I have written about starting to journal everything I eat in an attempt to help me lose weight. And then, at the beginning of September, I pulled out a nice, small notebook and started my food journal. If you were to look through it you might be surprised that according to the journal I seem to not eat daily, and on the days that I eat, I seem very often to stop eating after breakfast.

Since I never do that (part of me still thinks that if I miss a meal I’ll drop dead) there’s only one conclusion to draw: journaling my food intake isn’t working. I did find journaling useful when I first started to become more conscious about my eating habits years and years ago but these days it’s not as much about the unconscious inhaling of junk food anymore.

As of this day I release myself from the task of writing down everything I eat.

Phew.

So, now what to do about my size and weight? For the past year or so my motto has been “Eat more, move less.” with rather predictable results. Today in the morning before breakfast and dressing I weighed in at 79.2 kilos (174.6 lbs). That’s about ten kilos (almost twenty pounds) more than I feel comfortable with. Though I have to admit that when I was at that weight for the last time I still had the feeling of being too big. (My height is 1.74 m, a bit more than 5 ft. 8.)

In my head I’m still a lean person that’s just been a bit too heavy for a short time but if I’m more realistic I have to say that I have been overweight for about eight years now with a short intermezzo of being merely slightly too heavy for about half a year or so. In my head I have been on the verge of losing weight again any moment now. For more than a year. While constantly gaining.

And it’s not like I don’t know where it’s coming from, I am the one who, every single day, has “just one more treat”, “just one more sandwich”, or “just this snack”. “Just this once” is not helping me if it’s happening every single day. In the past few weeks there have been times when I stole my son’s candy, and when I broke every single rule about food that I ever made to help myself.

This is not about beating me up. It’s just my attempt at looking at the situation just as it is.

So. I’m heavier than I would like to be, and I’m not as fit as I would like to be. Is this really a problem?

No, really. What if I stayed at this weight for the rest of my life? It’s heavy but it’s not grossly overweight. I’m still fitting into regular sized clothes (thanks to stretch jeans). While I do feel a bit uncomfortable in my bathing suit that doesn’t stop me from going swimming. In fact, my weight doesn’t stop me from enjoying anything I like. The only thing is that I have put off buying a new pair of jeans for months now because I still hope to be able to fit into a smaller one. Any day now. It is as if I were secretly waiting for a visit from the weight loss fairy. One morning I’ll wake up and I’ll look the same as in 1996 again. And everything in between would have been a bad dream.

Why 1996, you might ask? Well, in the summer of 1996 I just had lost weight, and I was in the best physical shape of my entire life. I did step-aerobics, weight-lifting, and walking almost every day, and I weighed something around 65 kg. There’s a picture of me, taken at our annual summer party that year where I look really great. I had that picture of me on my fridge for years as a motivational tool, until I suddenly realized I’ll never look like that again, even if I weigh the same, and exercise the same, because I’m actually 12 years older now.

And that’s okay. This is not about turning back time. In fact I’m not so sure what this is about but I find that I don’t care about my weight or appearance enough to change my eating habits consistently. That’s the fact. All this talk about “I have lost a pound, hurray!” and “I have gained a pound, drama!” will amount to nothing.

My lack of fitness is the thing that bothers me more. I don’t like being out of breath so easily, I don’t like not being flexible, and I don’t like that beer cases and the groceries seem to get heavier every week. My current fitness regimen of a leisurely stroll every three days doesn’t really cut it. So, again, for about the hundredth time my goal is to do some moving every other day. Apart from my walks to kindergarten and grocery stores.

As for the eating I’m really tired of hearing myself setting goals and announcing the new shiny me only to revert to my old sluggishness immediately afterwards. On the other hand I was mightily impressed by another blogger’s account of how she quit smoking by just seeing herself as a non-smoker, and I’ll try that again.

You know, I don’t really care for sweets. They make me feel weak. And potato chips. Blech. Who would want to eat potato chips for dinner? I always feel so heavy and bloated afterwards. And really, I’m not that hungry. You know, I really have to move. If I don’t exercise for a day or two I’m going crazy.

Well, at least I’m trying.

if you want to lose ten pounds.

Yesterday my husband and I had one of these mornings where we talk, and talk, and talk, about us, and our relationship, and especially the problematic aspects of our relationship.

This, in particular, went on about me not doing housework. Well, not much anyway, and much less than my share. My husband kept asking me what he should do to deal with this. A reasonable approach would be to tell me that he wants me to do certain things, and then I’d go and do them, and everything would be alright. Another approach would be to assign certain work to each of us, then both would do their share, and everything would be alright. Alas, though I know that he’s unhappy with both the state of the house, and the huge amount of work that he has, I keep procrastinating about everything. (Right now, for example, I should have done the kitchen already, made myself a pot of tea, should have written my morning pages, and be on my way to cook lunch. Ahem.)

We both tried everything reasonable, and in the end the housework status between us is little better than about 14 years ago when we moved in with each other. He, of course, like a lot of women do, could just resign to the fact that I’m a lazy chauvinist pig, and do it all himself but then he would have no energy left for his music, something much more important than clean sinks. Unfortunately, we both need to have clutter-free and reasonably clean surroundings in order to be creative.

When he kept asking me what to do, and I couldn’t really say anything besides “I promise to do better.” which isn’t really helpful because I promised the same thing decades ago and about a millions times since then (and I am doing better than that, only this better isn’t very good), I resorted to pulling cards. I figured that might be helpful.

I pulled two cards for myself, one for help with the housework problem, and one to look at my life at general. Well. The solution to the housework-problem obviously is (besides just doing it): Priorities. For everything new something old has to go.

“Current routines, habits and even types of free times must be sacrificed so that you can open up to new energies.” (Sonia Choquette“Ask Your Guides Oracle Cards”)

Duh. That’s where I got my headline from. The book that accompanies the cards, I mean.

Because I still need to lose weight. Another week of beer, beer, Bavarian food, and extra helpings of ice cream, and sweets, thrown together with a definite lack of exercise has somehow failed to produce weight loss. I wonder why that is. Of course I know that I have to let go of, let’s say, eating handfuls of gummy bears at night, only I can’t really grasp the concept that this particular, tiny, innocent looking gummy bear, there in my hand, is the one that makes the difference between weight loss and gain. Surely this particular bite of pork roast can’t be changing anything? If I eat a bit less for breakfast? Please?

Seems like there is still something for me to learn. By the way I pulled a card for my husband too, to find a solution to the “Susanne isn’t doing her fair share of housework”-problem, and his said: Celebration. Seems like there’s still hope.

The card I pulled for my life in general said: Live from Your Spirit, always a nice one. And there it was, saying,

“If you feel that everything you’re doing right now isn’t working, or that every situation you face is working against you, be glad!” (Sonia Choquette: “Soul Lessons & Soul Purpose Oracle Cards”)

What? Be glad. As if. And then it goes on,

“Above all take a close look at how much of your behavior is simply an unsavory, unconscious “goulash” of conditioning acquired from childhood, peer pressure, the media, society, or even past lives, and not a reflection of your true spirit.”

It said I should eliminate overthinking and bad habits. Oops. (In German I’d say, “Treffer, versenkt.” that hit right between the eyes.)

I’m at a point where I don’t have much hope left that I’ll be able to do it. On the other hand I refuse to remain stuck in my old habits. If only they weren’t so comfortable and familiar.

It’s funny because if you back into my archives and look at what I wrote in the beginning of this blog you’d see that at that point I was quite hopeful that I could conquer my old bad, unconscious habits and build new, healthy, shiny ones. Now I’m telling myself that I can do it again, and again, and again, regardless of how long I’ll have to practice, and how often I will have to start over. All the while my poor husband will be suffering. And all this about things like cleaning, and eating.

What would you do in our place?

I have been reading “The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size” by Julia Cameron. I like the book very much. If you have read this blog for any time at all you know how much “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity” changed my life. And since I love writing the idea to “write myself right-size” holds a lot of appeal for me.

So far I only read the book once, and – I’m sad to tell you – reading the book doesn’t really change much. I will have to change my behavior. Again. But that’s not what I want to write about today. I want to write about one of the first tools that she gives you, right after the Morning Pages and Daily walks, both things I have been doing almost daily for the past nine years. That tool is that you keep a food journal. It is for recording what you eat, and when, and how you feel, and sometimes for writing instead of eating.

I have found myself strangely reluctant to start this food journal despite the fact that I already bought one, and have been carrying it around in my purse for the past week, and despite the fact that I think it’s a great idea, and will help me a lot, and despite the fact that I unearthed food journals that I kept in 2001 and 2003 and found them very interesting to read. Or I might say insightful and a little disturbing. So, despite all this I was reluctant and kept telling myself I’ll start the journal tomorrow, or maybe next week, or maybe in September.

Then I thought about that for a bit because that’s what I do, I sit there and think, and I found that my reluctance partly stemmed from the multitude of journals that I’m keeping. I can scarcely look anywhere without stumbling over a journal of mine, and journaling already consumes quite a bit of my time. This is what I have so far:

1. Morning Pages journal (That’s three pages written by hand every day)
2. Practice journal (A notebook where I write down when I play music, what I played, and sometimes how I felt, or ideas for songs)
3. Quicken (In theory I record every cent earned and spent. In real life I have a high stack of bank statement and receipts sitting on my desk waiting to be recorded. I haven’t done that for about six weeks already.)
4. A gratitude journal (Every evening I sit down and write down five things I am grateful for.)
5. A general notebook (Filled with bits and pieces, phone numbers, ideas for blog posts, stories, notes on PTA meetings, everything.)
6. My “notebook” on ravelry (All the details of everything I have knitted since last summer.)
7. Flylady control journal (In theory this is where I keep track of housework and such, in real life I haven’t opened it for ages and, instead, transferred all the really important reminders to my PDA’s to-do list.)
8. And, not the least of them, this here blog.

So, self-improvement is a nice goal but right now I’m not sure if maybe I’m trying a bit too hard. Also who wants to keep a special nice journal just to record things like “Ate a whole bag of potato chips, and two candy bars because I was angry. Afterwards I felt bloated and still angry. Waited for fifteen minutes and ate a whole bag of gummy bears.”

I know there are people who change their behavior in order to not have to write down things like that. I also know that there are people who cheat when keeping a food journal. There also are people who are too lazy to get out the notebook for a handful of almonds and so they don’t eat the almonds. I’m not one of them. In the past I have written down minute detail of everything I ate and why and how I felt afterwards but it never kept me from eating still more even when I wasn’t hungry at all.

On good days I think about all these notebooks and journals as my legacy and hope that some future scholar will gain insight in the everyday life of our times (though that insight might be a bit warped). On bad days I imagine my poor son reading hundreds and hundreds of pages that his parents wrote. Every single day recorded. Poor thing. I better tell him that he can give that all away without ever looking at it.

So. Do you keep journals? Food journals? Do you think it will help?

(And, on a completely unrelated note, please remember to send me posts you read or wrote for the Just Post roundtable until August 7th. If you haven’t heard about that yet, just click on one of the little birds down on the right sidebar.)