Dear Reader:

Because it is now that period of winter in which I must use ALL of the powers of my imagination and fortitude to believe that there will, again, be spring and the bleakness and bone-chilling cold (yes, I know, Midwestern friends - I am a total infant when it comes to cold - I remember those dark days living in the upper Midwest.  Let's not talk of those times) will give way, eventually, to days in which the weather does not cause me to want to curl up in a fetal position and tell everyone and everything to go away, I am glad to be posting tonight.    This might help warm me up, metaphorically speaking.

I am still holding fast at 25 pounds lost.   I know that this is a very significant achievement, but I am having to exert great effort not to get discouraged at the amount of weight that I have yet to lose to be at a healthy place.    The good news is, however, that I am going to have a session with my physical trainer tomorrow morning and she is going to re-do some measurements for me that were last done in October, which I think (keep those fingers crossed) will give me some sense of progress in a way other than watching the scale.   She is also going to start circuit training with me tomorrow.   Apparently, this only sounds like a medieval torture method, and will involve bursts of cardio between strength training sets.   I'll update you in Monday's post.  Pray for me.   Ha.

See the extreme effort I'm making to be all cheery even though the thought of stepping outside the confines of this warm blanket in which I am currently wrapped to do any sort of actual living and working tomorrow fills me with dread? I had a day in which, as usual, my empathy meter went totally haywire - I've got to get that thing fixed - and I said and did a couple of things that I now wonder if I should have said and done because I was feeling off-balance and filled with other's issues and struggles as well as my own.   Who knows?   Maybe they were things I needed to say and do.  The thing is that I felt quite stressed when I got home after a major lay-down-on-the-ground-in-the-parking-lot-in-sub-zero-temps-and-kick-your-mother-and-tear-her-tights-and-refuse-to-put-on-your-seatbelt tantrum with my girl.   I managed not to yell (victory).   I managed to tell her that I loved her while maintaining eye contact (victory).   I managed to not be cold and distant and stop hugging her (victory).   And, she did tell me that she was "very, very, very mad at me and really wanted to not love me."   Which I think is much better than the soul-crushing - "I don't love you any more" chestnut that can sometimes rise up in these special times (victory).   And, I came home, made dinner, packed lunches, laid out clothes for tomorrow, got on the treadmill (even though I had had an hour walk around campus (twice) this afternoon with my friend).   And, I did not eat through my stress.  Choices.   Good ones.   I'm still trying hard.

Sometimes, I think this quality of mine - the empathy and the emotional radar - can really sabotage me sometimes.   A rich inner life is, without a doubt, a source of comfort and joy.  However...it can cause problems.   I think that this wellness and health journey that I'm on is ultimately about integrating my inner and outer lives so that they don't feel like they are separate entities.   After writing that last sentence down, I realize that I need to ponder that for a while.  I think there is something there.

One of the reasons that I love the works of Virginia Woolf so much (stay with me here, I realize that this was the most abrupt transition in the history of blog post transitions) is that she writes about the inner life of her characters in a shockingly intense way.   After I read "To the Lighthouse" for the first time, I thought - "How can she be inside my head this way?"  It's remarkable.  Then, of course, I remember how she ultimately took her own life and think - well, maybe all of that inner reflection is not so great?  Yikes.   But, here is an example of a passage from "To the Lighthouse":

"But what have I done with my life? thought Mrs. Ramsay, taking her place at the head of the table, and looking at all the plates make white circles on it.  They had that - Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle- she, only this - an infinitely long table and plates and knives.  At the far end, was her husband, sitting down, all in a heap, frowning.  What at?  She did not know.  She did not mind.  She could not understand how she had ever felt any emotion or affection for him.   She had a sense of being past everything, through everything, out of everything, as she helped the soup, as if there was an eddy - there -and one could be in it, or one could be out of it, and she was out of it... And meanwhile she waited, passively, for some one to answer her, for something to happen.  But this is not a thing, she thought, ladling out soup, that one says."

******

Seriously, dear reader, can you imagine documenting those thoughts that might pass through one's head while ladling out soup?   The whole novel is like that.   And, I don't know many authors that can capture those kinds of fleeting states of mind so incredibly well.   But, it's also exhausting to be in those characters' minds.   And (here's where I bring it round to the point), it is sometimes exhausting for me to be in my own mind.   And, so, I think it a hopeful and healthy thing that when I felt that way today, I went to the treadmill and started walking.   Instead of trying to push those inner voices in my head into silence by feeding myself a Hostess cupcake.   (Victory!)

During my walk with a friend today, I had a wide-ranging discussion that included:  the advantages and disadvantages of being single (and never having been married) in your 40's, the uncomfortable themes of change and flux in life and Ovid's Metamorphoses, the merits of being famous for your work during your lifetime as opposed to having future generations laud your achievements (see Beethoven and/or George Bernard Shaw), Sherlock, and the dissection of moments of social awkwardness.   So, that's a win.   I think, eventually, I might have more to say about being single and a mother and the effect of my body image issues on my willingness and or desire to put myself in a position to have a "romantic" relationship at this point in my life.   But, I might need a bit more courage before I post about that, so maybe when spring returns, and I am feeling wildly optimistic about life again.  We'll see.

Meanwhile, here are the stats for today:

Total calories consumed:  1535
Total calories burned:  514

Breakfast:

Lunch:

Dinner:

And, here's a shot of some winter evening light:

I'm hoping, dear reader, that I will be back in emotional equilibrium when I meet you next.  If I start quoting Dostoyevsky, you'll probably need to call 911.   In fact, it would be rather fun to have a chart with levels of psychological equilibrium:   Red is Dostoyevsky or Chekov.   Orange is Virginia Woolf. Yellow is Charlotte Bronte.   White is Jane Austen (no need to worry here!).   Yes, that would be amusing.   But, maybe only to me?   Ah well, that's why this is my blog.  :)

Thanks for reading.