A Year of Significant Change

What a year this has been.

Squirrel cage-iness...

So many areas of my life are in flux, that I must dub this The Year of Change. There are many ongoing processes in my life, specifically: the Financial, the Emotional/Spiritual, and the Physical (read: my expanding waistband!)

At the moment, I want to discuss those last two. They are closely interrelated. As I work through my emotional issues, long buried, reburying and digging them up again, I am gaining a ton of weight. I thought it was just my medication (which is a known contributor, per my Docs) but it's just become ridiculous. I can't wear my clothes anymore, and my dominate facial feature is now its roundness, including my ever-growing second chin. It's just depressing.

I'm in a cycle I can't seem to break. But I've had a breakthrough: It didn't fully hit me HOW closely my emotional/spiritual issues and my weight are tied until just recently. It really sunk in during a conversation about raising our daughter, and the role our behavior has in teaching her, when my partner asked: "What do you do to  vent your [everyday and occasional] frustration? What do you do when you get mad to release that?"

Umm...... nothing..... yep.... thinking some more.... nothing.

Hmm. I eat. Eating/drinking something when I'm frustrated (which is much of the time) makes me feel better.

Other than that, I have no current outlet for my built-up feelings of negativity. I don't have a time in my day when I can run-them-off or work-them-off like I used to. I'm not dog walking or enjoying a vocation that allows me to meditate and physically work off my emotions while getting paid for it. I no longer have a commute to work that forces me to walk in the brisk autumn air and contemplate life as I hoof it to the busstop. And I can't do any of that inner emotional work while I'm doing those regular physical activities I currently have, because I am not able to do that while I am taking care of my daughter at the same time. To do that work, I have to close a part of myself for a time, and I cannot shut that door while I am with her, watching after her, being in the moment with her. That's just how it is.

Something in my everyday has to change, or this cycle won't end. Settling and calming my inner turmoils will not alone be enough to affect my physical being. If it was enough, I wouldn't be in this deep. Something has to change!