creative.mother.thinking

All journaled out

February 14, 2011 by Susanne Leave a Comment

In my quest for self-improvement I have started quite a few journals: morning pages journal, food journal, practice journal, exercise journal, gratitude journal, writing journal, control journal (for housework), tarot journal, weight journal well, I think that’s about it. Oh, and a notebook to capture my project ideas, and then I also have a general notebook, and a knitting notebook, and a small notebook to carry in my purse, and another one next to the computer. And a record of books I buy and read. And a notebook to jot down musical ideas.

I also have to-do-list software. Then I found myself, after running, checking “running” off in three places. And then I thought that my journaling had gone a bit too far.

I started to record all these things in order to measure improvement. I wanted to achieve certain goals and I started of actually measuring whether I achieved them or not. Otherwise one can think that one exercises at least three times a week only to find that, oops, a week has gone by, and then another. That’s all very valid. I also love my morning pages, so I sit down and write them almost daily. And then I don’t for a few days, and then I go back to them. No problem.

I do love putting my exercise time in my calendar, and with the toggle of a button I can see all the days that I exercised in one place, and then I feel all virtuous.

The food journal, that’s another thing. I have started writing down what I eat many times in my life. And I started again on January 1st. At first I was all good, but then I missed a day here and there, then a whole week, and now I find that I’m really not all that interested in keeping a food journal. I don’t count calories or anything. I just write down “1 piece of toast with almond spread, 1 glass of orange juice, 1 cup of black tea with 1 piece of sugar”. Of course food journaling can help when you want to know what’s going on but I don’t need to write down “ate a whole bag of potato chips because I was bored and angry” to see why I have gained weight. There are people who eat better when keeping a food journal, I’m not one of them. I have food journal entries laying around the house from years ago that go, “Was completely pissed and therefore ate a bag of chips, one bag of gummy bears, half a chocolate bar, and two beers. Feel lousy and bloated. Half an hour later: finished the chocolate.” (Just typing this makes me nauseous these days. I think I have come a long way.)

So I try to be good with the food journaling but what’s the point. It helps to show me that the treats I give myself are not exactly treats because they happen just about every day. These days I’m rather good with food, mostly, and so I will skip the food journal.

But you know, every time I write a paragraph here I remember yet another journal of mine, and add it to the first paragraph. It’s clear that the record-keeping has gone out of hand. I’m not quite as insane as that list of journals implies, though, because there are quite a few of these journals that I no longer keep. But right now I’m on the verge of giving up on record-keeping altogether. These journals were meant to be helpful for me, not something to occupy me all the time. I think I might get rid of one or two.

It’s not like I bought about twenty notebooks one day and thought, “From now on I’ll record everything!” I just bought a morning pages book in 1999, well the first of many. And I’ve had general notebooks even longer than that. I remember going into the one big store in the small town where I lived until 1986 to buy a notebook because my life had reached a level of complexity too high for keeping it all in my head. That was about the same time that I started using a calendar as well. Until then there was the family wall calendar for things like doctor’s appointments and that was it.

Let’s see – the morning pages stay because I like them. Having several general notebooks makes it a bit hard to find things later but still I like it. And I have a system. Sort of. So they stay as well. Also the knitting notebook, and the place were I record my reading. I started cataloguing my books when I had bought the same book twice one day. I hadn’t remembered that I already had it. The gratitude journal didn’t really work out for me. When I read back it only made me realize how unhappy I really was. the control journal for housework never really worked either. I do know that I have to clean the house at least once a week. I don’t really need a checklist because a look at the house itself will tell me what to do.

I’m quite attached to weighing myself daily. I even have an iPod app that gives me progress reports on how I’m doing with weight loss. I think I’ll keep that. Apart from that I think I might take some time off from journals. I have taken a bit of time off from trying to improve myself in all areas at once anyway.

So for now I’ll accept that I’m both journaled out and self-helped out. I take a break. And I won’t create a new task on my electronic to-do-list that’s called: take time off from journaling, repeat daily until further notice. I promise.

Woops, I missed my blog’s fifth anniversary

February 12, 2011 by Susanne 4 Comments

Just about five minutes ago I thought, “Well, if it’s February I should see when I posted my first post. Because of the blog anniversary.” And see, my blog anniversary was February 11th.

So happy belated blog anniversary to creative.mother.thinking. I don’t think the blog will mind that I’m late, it’s quite used to me and my procrastinate ways by now.

Five years is a long time. Especially in blogland. My posts have gotten longer and farther between, I am no longer posting about my son as much as I did before, there is way more knitting on the blog, also the podcast – but then things change, that’s the nature of life.

To be frank I’m never quite sure when my blog anniversary is precisely. I deleted my very first post which I posted about a year before my now official first post. I posted in German disclosing both my son’s name and the town where I live. This blog also wasn’t named “creative.mother.thinking” then, it was “diapers and music”. And it didn’t have it’s own domain.

And when I think about it the most amazing thing is that there are people who have been reading and commenting here for years now. Almost five years. All my imaginary friends who only live in the computer. This is amazing.

Who would have thought that there are so many friendly people out there? I was sitting here, trying to make friends where I live and not succeeding. And then I found communities on the internet. Making it possible to say that I’m not that weird, there are others like me out there. And some of them don’t live that far away and the circle sometimes closes again.

So thank you all for reading, there would not be a blog without you,

Susanne

2010 – year of happiness wrap-up

February 9, 2011 by Susanne 1 Comment

Wow. I can’t believe it’s February already. Well, I have to be late with this because I can’t travel in time yet. So months later I’ll finally write about my “year of happiness”. To recall, last year I decided to attempt a “happiness project” inspired by Gretchen Rubin. Basically you try to become happier by sticking to some rules of your own devising. So doing a happiness project is a very personal thing, and the rules might be different for each of us.

So I set out to achieve happiness (or at least being happier) by changing small things in my life. Not a sweeping gesture, or major life changes, just small, simple changes. The plan was to add a new rule each month but in the end I only had these rules:

Go to bed on time. I already knew that this is a big must for me. The instant I get enough sleep I feel like a different person. The minute I’m sleep-deprived I’m all crazy, befuddled, and I never stop eating. Still going to bed early enough isn’t easy because it doesn’t work well with my work-schedule. Again I find myself needing nine hours of uninterrupted sleep. I can go down to eight if I must but anything less than that has me only half-functional. I get up at six because I need a bit of time to myself before getting my son ready to school. That means I would have to turn out the lights at 9 pm. My son’s time for that is 8.30. I would have to put him to bed, get ready for bed and that’s that. There are quite a few days when I work until 7pm. Get off work, make dinner, eat, put son to bed, and then it’s time for me as well. As a compromise right now I’m aiming for 10 pm. Still gives me eight hours of sleep but I can watch something on TV, or read.
Pick up after myself. Having a tidy, well almost tidy, home not only makes me happy but the rest of the family as well. As an added bonus it’s easier to find things. That bit of kicking myself to not leave my stuff strewn over the house really pays off.
Write 500 words of fiction at least six times a week. Also, surprisingly happy-making. Even if I don’t like what I’ve written, or feel stuck. There’s a small part of me that thinks when I’ve already been somewhat creative just after breakfast it’s a good day. Regardless of how the rest of the day goes.
Think about the things I love about my family, students, and friends. Really, really helpful but surprisingly hard. I still have a tendency to find fault and criticize. But when I manage to concentrate on the things I love about the people around me – I et instant happiness.
Exercise three times a week or more. Also much more mood-boosting than I would have thought. These days when I feel like retreating in a corner with a bag of potato chips and a book under a blanket I try to – again – kick myself, get my running shoes on and run for a bit. Even if it’s only for a few minutes I always feel better afterwards.
Play the piano every day. This I didn’t manage at all. I remember a time when I did, though, and even forcing myself to do scales made me happy over time. Not always while I was doing it. Today I did play the piano, and I really plan to do it on a regular basis again. (You have to understand that the playing I do while teaching doesn’t really count for this. It has to be fun piano playing, playing for me.)
Wear clothes that make me feel good. Definitely important. And I definitely need to buy new clothes soon.
Eat like a sane person who enjoys food. Still working on that one as well. But I can say from experience that eating real food sitting down at a table with loved ones makes way more happier than binge eating while sitting in your bed, hiding your chips under the covers. (Which, by the way, I haven’t done for year and years. I managed to gain all this weight without falling back into my binge eating ways.)

I can tell you that following these rules really made me happier. And even more so when I really did those things and a little less when I only wanted to do those things. I’ll get around to that tomorrow for sure, ahem. And I have to add “act the way you like to feel” to the list as well. Excellent advise, and works astonishingly well.

I already knew it but still, small things make a notable difference in happiness. Happiness is not a state of perfect bliss, one big moment like the kiss after saying yes on your wedding day. Which, by the way, is only a moment of true happiness in movies, at least for me there have been many kisses before and after where I felt happier. Many moments where I could focus on the kiss itself as well, not on the fact that two dozen people were watching me plus a video camera.

So the happiness project definitely works and I can only encourage others to try it as well.

The other thing this project brought home to me was that all my mental adjustments, and rules, and stickers, and behavior changes still didn’t cut to the root of my unhappiness. Throughout that year I found out that a big fat part of my unhappiness is – physical. And this time I don’t mean my weight, though I still think that I’m overweight because I’m unhappy. But I’m also unhappy because there are things wrong with my body. And as a wise online friend reminded me a few days ago, your brain is part of your body.

And that is why this year, 2011, I’m concentrating on getting well not by changing my attitude but by getting to the physical reason for feeling unwell. It might seem a bit mundane but still, those rules that you see above aren’t looking that spiritual either. And I already found out some things but I better make that into another post.

The great thing about all this is that one can indeed become a happier person by following quite mundane rules. You don’t need to find the man of your dreams and ride with him on your pink, sparkly pony into the sunset. You can be happy now, in the life you live right now. Don’t need a million dollars, nothing.

Handgemacht/Handmade – Episode 10: First Ever Special English Edition

February 1, 2011 by Susanne 5 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

So here it is after a bit of procrastination because I found that I was a bit scared of talking English in “public”, the über-long special English of my knitting podcast. Complete with German accent that gets worse towards the end, and a few “Germanisms” thrown in for good measure.

I mostly talk about all the projects I’ve been working on since August which you can find on my ravelry projects page. Sorry there are so few pictures.

I mentioned Tini because she gave me the idea for one of the topics, and

the Ouroborous Sweater by Debbie New.

Also there is a lot of mention of Wollmeise yarn.

The Goal

January 30, 2011 by Susanne 4 Comments

So after trying a multitude of things to change my life and me for the better I’m trying to stick to one goal again. The Goal. I don’t do all that well with goals. While deadlines usually help me a lot (if they aren’t too tight.) In my experience I just state goals, get all enthusiastic about them, and then wander off. At the end of the year I often don’t even remember what I started out to do. Goals like: get to bed on time, lose weight, exercise more, become a tidy person get stated on a daily or weekly basis, and then abandoned.

But this year I thought I’d give it a try again. My one (not only but most important) goal for this year is:

Lose 10 kilos of weight or more.

I know. Pathetic, boring, and unexciting goal.

I thought I’d do it properly this time, think about my goal in advance, make it public, hold myself accountable, and such. Well, I did state it in December, I told my husband that this time I was adamant about losing weight, and that I would start January 1st. And I did. I made a few rules for myself because this time I am actually going on a kind of “diet”, and I did pretty well for about, um, two weeks. I will keep on trying, though, because defeat is not an option.

Now you might think why is my weight such a big deal? Well, for one I am heavier than I have ever been in my life. That would be quite okay if I hadn’t gained weight steadily for the past three years. While I might resign myself to be a somewhat overweight person, I can’t resign myself to be a really fat person in the near future.

I did lose weight between 2005 and 2007. My lowest weight in the past years has been about 70 kilos in the summer of 2007. this year on January first I weighed 89.9 kilos. And there were days when my weight was even higher. I could just see myself go over 100 in a few years. (And just for comparison that means that I went from a BMI of 23.1 to one of 29.7 which is quite overweight.)

Of course I had thought that if I just lived a bit better – getting enough sleep, exercise, and eat real food – that my weight might just drop by itself but it didn’t. Even adding running to the mix didn’t do it.

So after a year where I focused on becoming a happier person, I know want to focus mainly on becoming a slimmer person. My rules are:

No alcohol but on special occasions. (Like my husband’s birthday and such. I found throughout this month that there were quite a few special occasions which meant an average of 1 1/1 beers per week.)
No sweets but an occasional piece of dark chocolate.
No crackers.
No potato chips.
No grazing all afternoon or evening.

At the moment I just don’t buy any foods that I tend to binge on. After almost a month of this I did buy some gummy bears for my son again but I don’t get to eat any of them. I used to store some snack foods in my studio for afternoon snacks but I cleared them all out. Now I have to go to the kitchen, get myself an afternoon snack, and that’s it.

And yes, I feel a bit defeated because I need to do this, and when I succeed I want to do it for yet another year so that in the end I might just feel like myself again. Also I want to be able to wear dresses in the summer without my thighs rubbing against each other, and I want to be able to run without my knees hurting. I’m fine so far but of course all this extra weight strains my joints.

I’ll be using this blog to hold myself accountable but I won’t turn this into a diet blog. Just know that as of today I’m weighing 88.9 kilos, on kilo down. When I started this I had told myself that if I didn’t lose at least a kilo by mid-February I would have to join Weight Watchers.

While I’m happy to have lost any weight at all, I also found myself getting lax with my rules after about three weeks. One reason was that in the beginning my husband also didn’t drink any alcohol. But then he went back to his glass of wine in the evening. One reason is that I am obviously not able to stick to any rules for any amount of time. Well, that means I have to forgive myself and do better today. And tomorrow. And the day after that. For the next few years.

I just have to be all “only today” about it, otherwise I’ll be driving myself crazy.

I still long to be a person who just eats, and that’s it but so far it hasn’t worked.

Random Monday

January 24, 2011 by Susanne 6 Comments

I have a kind of blogger’s block because I still think I should have started the year with a “How my year of happiness went”-post, and a “My big goal for 2011”-post. I will do those some time before 2011 ends, but it is starting to get ridiculous.
I also promised to make an English podcast episode, and I will, as soon as I find some space in my head.
We had a very nice weekend, and went to some family brunch thing where we met other gifted families, and it was a lot of fun. But, very pricey, and no housework got done for the weekend.
Which is why my husband have spent the day so far, furiously cleaning all the things. Floors where mopped. With water. Laundry got washed. There is still one load in the washer which I will have to hang up in the next 25 minutes.
I’m typing as fast as I can.
I got a new spindle, and I love, love, love it. Still, to show it I would have to take a picture, and it’s started to snow again which means – no light outside.
I am also a bit grumpy because so far I’ve had my period not once but twice this month. In fact since the beginning of the year I’ve only had a week off.
I went to see a specialist on menopause, and she thought it might be early-onset menopause. Then she asked me if I were okay with that. And what about if I couldn’t have any more children.
I would be totally okay with that if I could please reach some hormonal equilibrum in the near future. Interestingly I’m totally done with having babies, and I don’t think it would make me feel old, and undesirable.
I am quite sure that I have asthma after all. In addition to being triggered by allergies it might be triggered by exercise as well. Fun times! I already have a doctor’s appointment for that the week after next.
I haven’t managed to write much this month either, and that makes me grumpy as well.
It’s snowing like crazy, and I should be shoveling right now on top of everything else.
It was my husband’s birthday last week, and we had a fabulous day, having lunch at an Indian restaurant not far from us, and in the evening we went and had some beer, just him and me. We almost never do this because whenever we go to Munich we think we should be doing something really special, like seeing a concert. But this very low-key celebration was exactly the right thing to do.
I’ll leave you with a bad picture of the spindle. One day, when the sun will come back I’ll take a better one: