Had a riding lesson on Sunday, followed by a 4-hour yoga workshop. It was such a good day. I wore my legs out riding the horse, and at the workshop only did 1 hour of yoga, but both were great workouts and I am sore today. But it's a good sore. I was really tired last night, and fell asleep while watching Arrested Development on Netflix, but I felt SO GOOD.

Horses are amazing. There's something about sitting on that saddle, swaying back and forth as they take their steps, communicating with them by just pulling the reins a little bit, or looking down, or squeezing certain muscles. It's amazing that you can communicate with an animal by making very subtle changes to the way you are sitting on them. They read every muscle twitch, squeeze, or release. They can tell when you are gripping the reins and when you're relaxing your grip. They know which way to move when squeezing your legs a certain way. They know to slow down when you look down because they're trying to be careful. No wonder people rode horses as their primary mode of transportation for a long time. Hell, I'd do it now...If it didn't take so long...And weren't so dangerous.

In my lessons, we've just been walking and trotting, nothing major. But my instructor yesterday had me trot in circles, literally. It's hard to actually keep the horse trotting while going in a circle, oddly enough. He would slow down and get lazy, or sometimes he'd think what I was doing with my body meant he should slow down. You have to be careful about what you're doing, because as I said before, they interpret certain things as commands. But when you do finally have that synchronicity with the horse, you're doing all the right things, and they're responding in the way they're supposed to, it's smooth, and magical. I just love it!

Also, because you are using so many muscles to guide the horse, you are working every part of your body at once. I think swimming is the only other activity that will do that. So my stomach is sore, my legs are super sore, my arms are sore, my shoulders are sore...And doing yoga after riding a horse doesn't help with the soreness factor either. Yesterday evening my legs were shaky, but when I got home, I lounged around and watched shows on Netflix. I felt I had deserved it.

So in case you can't tell, I've been feeling better. I wish I could do that much exercise every day, but I don't know how I would make that work. I also wish I could take riding lessons every week, but I just can't afford it right now, so I go every other week. Being on a horse just clears your mind, even though you are thinking about lots of things at once. It's hard to get carried away thinking about your everyday life when you're on a horse, at least, at first, when you're learning (or re-learning in my case). But I think I could use mind-clearing activities a lot more. Yoga and riding are the perfect combination, it seems.

This article on xoJane has restored my faith in what I am doing with my life.

You should read it, even if you don't read the rest of my post here. It's about fat shaming, not judging a book by its cover, all that good stuff.

The basic gist is summed up really well in the following:

"To paraphrase Marilyn Wann: The only thing you can tell for sure by looking at a fat person is the degree of your own bias against fat people."

"A stance against fat-shaming is not a matter of trying to make anyone feel bad for enjoying exercise/being vegan/wanting to lose weight. After all, there are lots of fat people who enjoy exercise immensely. There are lots of fat people who are vegan. There are fat people who do all kinds of things, because fat people exist in a dizzying variety of perspectives, experiences and lifestyles. Just like not-fat people."

"I choose not to diet, not to try to lose weight...my body’s dramatic response to starvation (and really, that’s what a diet is) makes it impossible for me to lose weight and still have a life that is at all worth living. My priorities are different..."

"Even for those few who manage to beat the odds and maintain a significant weight loss long-term, the price is constant vigilance, and I can’t live with that degree of food obsession and also be at all mentally stable...You may not understand this. That’s cool. We don’t have to fully get each other; we just need to mutually respect one another."

I don't think I'm fat. Sometimes I think I LOOK fat, but I don't think I am fat. I have decided to do what Lesley (the author of the above article) is doing - shifting my priorities to what is healthy, regardless of how it will make me look, and enjoying things in life instead of obsessing over things that distract me from the things in life that I should be paying attention to, like time with friends, or a really awesome piece of cheesecake, or even doing yoga (or writing run-on sentences, apparently).

The one thing that I ask myself is, "Will my body let me do things like yoga, take walks, jog, or hike?" If I am sitting around a lot eating fries and hamburgers every day, it's going to be harder to do the physical things I want to. That is one thing that bothers me about having a desk job; it's like I can feel my arteries withering up from too much sitting.

But in reality, I can do those things, and while I'm still trying to get back into things like jogging and hiking, and it's going slowly, I know I will get there again. And I may not lose a ton of weight in the process, and that's fine. As long as I'm feeling well enough to do those things, I don't really care. I can have a huge pudge and a round ass, as long as I can climb a mountainside without feeling like I'm going to die!

I want to feel comfortable in my skin, regardless of what people think. There have been times in my life when my family members have made comments about my weight (fat-shaming, even if they meant well), which was always really hurtful, because I feel like I gained weight very quickly and it just has been a huge struggle to lose it since then. It's like I was a skinny kid one day, then I hit puberty and the next day I gained a bunch of weight. But I'm trying to put those comments behind me and focus on feeling good, whether that means I have curves and or I don't. I also know that my boyfriend would be really sad if I didn't have my curves anymore. But I'm not doing any of this for him or for anyone else, I'm doing it for me. (By "doing it" I mean focusing on my health and what makes me feel good.) I'm not doing it for the media who think I'm not toned enough, I'm not doing it for my mother, I'm not doing it for my sister, I'm not doing it for my father, I'm not doing it for my friends...I'm doing it for me. Trying to find the happy medium where I feel good and balanced, healthy and lively and alive and strong.

Damn girl! That's hot! (Though it makes me sad that the website it was on had an ad for losing weight with Slimband...Totally not the point. By the way, this model is Tara Lynn, and she's like "I don't care what the scale says, yo!" OK, maybe she didn't say "yo," but that was basically what she said.)

I don't know if I can do this anymore. Life, that is. Not when I'm feeling so tired all the time. It was better for a few days, and now it's back.

I think there are a few possibilities here:

1. My medication. I started taking Celexa in 2006, then stopped in 2011 and started Cymbalta. I took that for a year, but I was tired all the time, so I started Celexa again because I never had major fatigue problems with Celexa. I started it again in February 2011, and in March, suddenly started feeling tired and have felt that way since Maybe in the year I wasn't taking Celexa, my body changed somehow so I now have a different reaction to it.

2. I'm understimulated at work. Well, this is something I know already. There are times when I have things to do and I'm engaged all day. There are more times that I am bored, staring at my computer screen, falling asleep. So maybe sitting here so long is what is making me so tired. My body isn't moving enough, my brain isn't working enough, and I'm turning into a puddle of jelly in business casual clothes.

3. I'm not exercising enough outside of work. Yeah, I was doing yoga every day and feeling better. But one thing happens that takes you out of the routine, and it snowballs and soon you find you haven't done yoga in a month. Ok that's not true. I've gone to some classes. But between money problems and being busy, yoga has taken a backseat. Not good. I need to schedule it somehow, just like I would any other activity in my life. If someone asks if I want to get together on Thursday at 6, I say "no, I can't," because I have a date with my yoga mat. I've been thinking about getting a monthly pass at a yoga studio. They offer tons of classes and it's cheaper to do that than it is to keep dropping in at different places. But, then I realized I could pay around $60 for a YMCA or YWCA membership, where they offer lots of classes, and not just yoga, and I could even go there on my lunch break and use the yoga studio when it's not being used. Booya. So that's the plan now.

Sorry this post isn't very controversial or thought-provoking. It's just me whining and moaning about how hard my life is. I saw a video today that was a white, middle aged, middle class guy talking about how white guys should stop complaining so much. He said something along the lines of, "When women are taking all your job and getting paid more than you are, I'll complain with you, I'll be in the front of the line at the protest. But until then, shut up." And it got me thinking about how I struggle almost every day with this fatigue stuff, and other things, and I wonder if I can really justify complaining. I have it so much better than so many people. I have a roof over my head, an income, a great family, great friends, a hot boyfriend, I'm not dying of cancer (that I know of), I have food in my fridge, clean running water, and I can wear whatever I want every day (within reason). But...when you're not feeling well most of the time, it's really hard to be grateful. You just don't have the energy. It's hard to say "I have it so much better than all those starving kids in [INSERT COUNTRY HERE]," because when you don't feel well, it's hard to enjoy what you have. And you may have a roof over your head, but you don't feel well enough to acknowledge it.

Yeah, yeah, I know everyone admires those cancer survivors who are like, "I survived cancer, I can do anything, I'm thankful for every second I have!" And that's great. Good for them. But the reality is that most of us who are struggling can't summon up that much positivity. I feel like my body is breaking down, people. I'm so sorry if I can't be happy sunny shiny all the time. I'm so sorry if that pisses you off or makes you uncomfortable. I'm so sorry that the way I deal with this doesn't match what you think I should do. I'M SO SORRY THIS IS MY LIFE AND NOT YOURS.

People don't get it. They don't understand what it's like to be in someone else's body. They can give all the suggestions they want, they can say they understand, they can claim they have some answers, but most of the time, they don't.

I know what I have to do. I know I have to get back into my yoga routine and do more exercise. I know I shouldn't let anything stop me. I just have to keep telling myself that. So please, just let me be frustrated about this in my own way. Understand that I have to sometimes back out of plans we've made. Understand that I can't be as social as I want to be right now. Understand that I'm in a unique situation and that it frustrates me just as much as it probably frustrates you.

I'm frustrated. I don't have cable right now because I can't afford it, so watching the Olympics has been almost impossible. I can find live streams, but those are usually happening when I'm at work. There are NO videos of things after the fact, at least, none that I can find. I have really wanted to watch fencing and the equestrian sports, and because it's not that popular, I haven't been able to find videos. I was able to find a video of the women's gymnastics, another sport I like. Sigh. It seems weird to me when corporations are able to determine when and how you get to see things that are supposed to be international, countries coming together to compete in a friendly way and put aside their differences. Apparently NBC is only showing delayed videos and nothing live. That's just weird.

Of course, the only gymnastics video I found was from an American station, so they're really focusing on the Americans and not on the other countries. I really wanted to see Canada compete, it's the first time they've gotten to the finals, apparently.

I do have to say, though, the Americans are so strong.

Anyway. Speaking of athletes, I read an article saying that a lot of people compare themselves to athletes when it comes to body image and weight loss, which is really not healthy. Athletes are special, not everyone on the planet is going to look like an athlete or be an athlete. They have to eat very specific foods, they train like crazy, they aren't just normal people on the street. Why do we put people on such pedestals and try to be like them instead of just being happy with who we are, what we have, and how we look? (This is more of a rhetorical question...I don't have an immediate answer, except - society and culture. Somewhere down the line someone really screwed it up for people, making image and looks one of the most important things in life, especially girls.)

This is a bit of a random post, and I apologize for that. I hope you are all able to catch the Olympics, unlike me!

I was going to post this picture as a visual of being insecure:

But then I realized they're like "Embrace your shape! Love yourself! But here's a picture of a skinny woman with long legs!" So, you can only embrace your shape if you're THAT shape? Or what?

So I found this instead:

Yeah, that's more like it.

So, the point of this post today is...I am feeling insecure today.

And I know why.

I haven't been doing yoga every day, and I really think that is the reason. When I was doing it every day, my confidence level was HIGH. I also slept like crap last night, and didn't eat the healthiest food yesterday. Insecurity all comes down to how you treat your body, I swear.

The lesson here (for me) is: Even if I'm busy, I have to squeeze yoga in somehow!!! Not to mention good food and good sleep. I have no idea why I slept like crap last night, but the crappy food and the stressful day might have had something to do with it...

I keep waking up in the morning with the intention of doing yoga when I get up. And it just doesn't happen. I wonder what the best way to train yourself to do this is.

Love yourselves, kids. 

(Sorry about the ugly lines...I think it's because I'm using a custom template and Blogger doesn't like it.)

I have to remember that I am important, that I am a priority in my life, that I have a responsibility to be good to myself and take care of myself.

This is something that for my whole life, I have forgotten, or ignored. No wonder I have so many health problems now (seriously).

First and foremost, I have to focus on self care that makes me feel good. I have to keep doing yoga, I have to keep writing, I have to keep going to bed early, I have to keep eating well. Some of these things have been slipping lately, and I can see what a difference it makes. I have been tired and sore for the past week and a half. There could be other factors at play here, but it seems that because I haven't been eating that well the past week and a half or so, I've been going to bed later than I should be, etc., my body is now mad at me.

And I think I need to cut coffee out again. I started feeling really good after I quit coffee. And I think that includes decaf, unfortunately. Argh, it's so hard. Not that I have been drinking caffeinated coffee all that much (ok, I've been doing half decaf, half regular quite a bit), but I hope it hasn't been enough to cut it out again with no major problems (read: HEADACHES). I think I'll go back to just decaf for now and see how that goes.

At least we have a long weekend coming up. I am so looking forward to that. I'm going to get some much needed stuff on my to do list done, I'm going to relax and recharge, and it's gonna be great.

Maybe I'll go to a spa this weekend or something...

I'm trying to strike a truce with my body. It has been feeling a lot better lately from doing yoga every day. I feel stronger, mentally more "with it," my muscles are getting toned, I'm getting more flexible even in just very small ways, and it's been really good. But today I feel like I've been run over by a truck. My back is sore, my abs are sore, I'm tired, my vision seems all fuzzy, my brain feels like a giant ball of fluff, and I can't concentrate or actually really think at all. I guess everyone has bad days, but this was how I was feeling every day before I started feeling better, and I don't want it to come back!

I get paranoid that my body issues are going to come back all the time. Two summers ago, I started getting extremely bad pain in my knees, my shoulders, fingers, toes, ankles, wrists...But mostly fingers, knees, and shoulders. And it would migrate between those places. I had days where I couldn't walk right and was limping. I had days I couldn't lift my arm over my head. I had days I couldn't lift even moderately heavy things because my fingers or my wrist would hurt too much (or I couldn't turn a doorknob, pull a door open, put weight on my wrist/hand, lift even a glass of water, etc.). I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and I sometimes feel like that was because they couldn't figure out what else it could be.

I get so afraid that is going to come back, and after my first riding lesson here, it did come back for a couple of days. For some reason my knee was in so much pain, and I was limping for a couple of days. It hasn't happen since then. But I get so afraid it will.

Today I don't feel like that kind of pain is happening, but it does remind me that I have this constant struggle with my body. There are days that are better than others, and lately I've been feeling pretty damn good, and I really do attribute it to doing yoga every day. But I feel like this struggle might never end. And it makes me think that it'll just put me on the fast track for being a crippled old lady in a wheelchair. People say "it's all in the mind, you have to will yourself to feel better, erase the negativity and you will feel better." And I think that's true to a certain extent, but a) We can't live without negativity, at least not all the time, that's just not how life works, and b) It's just not that simple. All I can do is just treat my body with "esteem" as my therapist says, and treat it well, and be healthy, and feed it good, healthy food, and on days when I'm really tired at the end of it all, just acknowledge that my body got me through the day and I'm still alive.

So that's what I'm trying to do...Even though I feel like crawling under my desk and taking a nap.

I realized, I haven't written much about yoga.

Yoga is something I love, love, love. (Did I mention that I love it?) It's a moving meditation, it makes us face things we usually ignore, it puts us in touch with our bodies and every aspect of them, it makes us stronger and is a great workout.

I've always had a bit of a problem with the "westernization" of yoga. I took a class about eastern religions in university, and we talked a bit about yoga. Traditional yoga is not soccer moms wearing Lulu Lemon and spouting "namaste" at every chance they get. Traditional yoga has many goals and takes a few different forms, but in general, the yogi is trying to attain spiritual insight while meditating on the concept of divinity. It's also a way to achieve moksha ("release" from this world of suffering and being free of the birth/rebirth cycle). I think there are some yoga classes that touch that in our western culture, but I don't think it's anything like it would be in say, India.

(I don't do this) -

I remember hearing about certain yogis in India who believe the body mirrors the constellations in the sky when doing yoga, so doing certain poses brings you closer to that. I love that imagery, that concept. I also know there are yogis who practice yoga all day long, and they are quite hard on their bodies. But it's all part of the practices I mentioned above.

What I do love about the "westernization" of yoga is that we have made it to be whatever want it to. And I don't see a huge problem with that. I think we should be careful when saying that the yoga we practice is what they practiced in ancient India. We're not practicing that, we're practicing a western version. But, there is so much you can do with it. I have this wonderful teacher who is also a writer, and I adore her class. We do 45 minutes of "yang" yoga (that's "male" energy, getting the heart rate up, flowing through asanas, using our voices to release tension and stress, etc.), then we do half an hour of "yin" yoga ("female" energy) where we hold poses for quite a long time and relax into them to release tension in the body. It's a really great class, and it gets me in touch with my emotions, what's going on inside of me, things I might have been ignoring, and it forces me to face my ego...On Tuesday we did some Qigong with it, and that was really great, and made me feel so powerful.

My dietitian is telling me that I need to exercise more, and I have been trying to go on jogs and walks. But the fatigue I've been feeling is making jogging almost impossible. I feel so tired, so discouraged, and like my body is going to collapse when I do it. It's not normal fatigue from exercising. Even when I do yoga, I feel this fatigue, and it is different from 2 months ago, when my yoga classes were starting to feel too easy. Suddenly, something changed, and now even yoga exhausts me.

But, I think I am going to do a 30 day yoga challenge. Every day, I will do at least 15 minutes on my yoga mat (on the days I'm taking a class anyway, it will of course be longer). No matter if I'm hungover, tired, angry, sad, sleep deprived, whatever. I am going to do it every day. Maybe it will help me with my help esteem, and I'm sure it will help me mentally in other ways. And of course, I'm going to blog about it.

Stay tuned for more on my yoga adventures!

(My yoga looks more like this) -

I had a dream that "Tom" and I were back together, and that everything was really good.

I also had a dream that I was back in university and didn't want to be and was sobbing my eyes out.

Totally weird dreams. I wonder if they had anything to do with each other.

About the "Tom" one - I miss him. And I know he's probably going to look at my blog at some point, but he already knows that I miss him. I know where we went wrong, and the biggest problem is not being able to go back in time to fix it. Le sigh.

One part of our problem was my self esteem, my ability to NOT see my relationship as my identity and to NOT have my self esteem based on what kind of relationship I'm in. Whatever I'm doing about my self esteem, it seems to be working, somewhat. I mean, it's a long row to hoe, but I'm working on it. I think it's eating better and seeing results from that (though yesterday, for some reason, I was starving all day, and woke up with my stomach feeling totally empty this morning...don't know what's going on there). My pants are feeling looser, which is a nice bonus, but I also just feel healthier. The fatigue is still there, but not as pronounced.

That could also be because I have been going on short walk/jogs, and doing only as much as I feel I can without overdoing it. I should be hearing from the sleep specialist this week...Hope hope hope.

Anyway, about dreams...I realized that I don't really have any anymore. How depressing is that? Doesn't everyone have dreams? The only thing I can think of now is that in the next 5 years, I'd like to work on owning a place, a condo or townhouse maybe. The (North) American dream...I don't even have dreams of writing a screenplay, or making a movie, or publishing a novel, or any of that stuff. I feel like I'm finding the joy in writing again (it was gone for a while), so maybe I just need some time.

(The cow jumped over the moon...Way to go, cow!)

What are your dreams? Silly, serious, whatever...What are they, if you don't mind sharing?

"Thank you for calling Your Relationship, please hold..."

Tom, formerly known as my boyfriend, and I have decided to put our relationship "on hold." That basically means we are broken up until further notice. He was going through some issues, and I am going through some issues. He and I are on different pages in terms of what we want out of a relationship. He wants to date around, and I've gotten that out of my system. It's not that I don't want to date around, but I'd be ok with developing a more serious relationship with someone, and that's not where he is at this point on his life's path.

Maybe we'll get back together in the future. Maybe we won't. It could take him years to get to the point where he wants to be more serious with someone. By that time, I might not be even in the picture anymore. I may have found someone else, or there are a whole myriad of other things that could happen. (Though, I do have to say, if we did come to a point where we thought we could be in a relationship again...Thank the universe for polyamory, right? That is, if that's where I am at that time...) There may be no possibility of having that kind of relationship with each other.

And strangely, I'm at peace with that. Normally I would be freaking out, really depressed that this didn't work out, I would wonder what's wrong with me. I'm not doing that, not right now, at least.

We talked about still keeping in touch, because we do really care about each other and want to see the other get better. (Without giving away too many details, an event in his life triggered some emotional hardships and kind of shook him up; I am dealing with health problems of various sorts, depression, anxiety, and self esteem issues that go back really far and are very deep rooted). At this point, I think we could even get together in between and just be friends and check in with each other. That thought actually makes me happy.

I have to admit, though, there is a little bit of hope inside of me that this could work out someday. He said last night that he thinks hope always has an expectation. I don't actually agree. I think hope is leaning more towards the possible positive outcome, but knowing that there is an equal chance of it not happening that way. I mean, we say, "I hope I don't miss my bus," but we know there's an equal chance that we will. Or, "I hope we can get back together in the future," but there's an equal chance that we won't. Or maybe I'm just pessimistic and seeing this in a pessimistic way, but it makes sense to me.

Either way, it's time for me to focus on my life and the things I need to change and work on. It's time to see my friends, meet new friends, write (every day!), work on my crafts with a friend of mine, meet with my pagan group, get healthy, exercise, raise my self esteem (or at least learn to treat myself with esteem, as my therapist says), lose weight, and be in the friggin moment.

That's right. The friggin' moment. Booyah.