OK for once I am actually NOT tired. This has been a good week in terms of fatigue, and that could be due to the fact that I've exercised pretty much every day. Except I may not today. I really need to cook and do laundry. Maybe I can dance around the kitchen while I cook or something.

My life has been good, honestly. But, I warn you, there will probably be some moaning in the paragraphs ahead.

My period is about to start, so I feel like crap. Whenever it's about to start, the day, or two days, before it does, I start feeling reeeeeal bad about myself. I start looking at other girls and comparing myself to them and seeing all my faults. Like today, I feel fat. My stomach is pooching out too much. Woe is me. I also start looking at my own life and finding everything that is wrong with it. "My life isn't going anywhere, my boyfriend doesn't compliment me as much as I wish he would, I don't want to do this job anymore, I wish I could be more flexible in my work, I wish I were a writer, I wish I had more time to write, I don't have enough money to do the things I want to do, I don't have enough time to do what I want to do." Etc. etc. etc. It just spirals down from there.

Then I start thinking about those memes. You know, like this...

...Of course I go on Google trying to find an example and there's, like, nothing. WTF?

OK, like this:

Or this:

OK granted I really like those quotes, and any other day I would be like "yay, I'm going to print that and put it on my bathroom mirror so I see it every day!" (Do I ever do this? No...) But on the day before it's time to surf the crimson wave, I'm like, "FUCK YOU INSPIRATIONAL MEME. YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE ME. MY LIFE ISN'T GOING ANYWHERE, MY BOYFRIEND DOESN'T COMPLIMENT ME AS MUCH AS I WISH HE WOULD, I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS JOB ANYMORE" (insert the rest of my aforementioned list here).

What is up with my hormones? I know this happens to, like, everyone else who gets their period. But for me, it's the day or two before it starts, then I get it and I feel bloated and tired and like I want to eat all the junk food on planet Earth, but I don't feel all bad about myself. It's just the day(s) before. So weird.

Does anyone know what happens to our hormones in our bodies when we're about to get our periods? Would be interesting to find out.

Anyway, right now, I feel like I'm stuck. I'm at a dead end job, and I don't take the initiative to change that (like, sitting down and fracking writing something so I can try to get published). Don't get me wrong, when I have things to do at work, I like my job. But lately, I've been sitting there...staring at the screen, bored...Actually, even if I have things to do, I don't want to do them.

Where's my motivation? What killed it? What do I do about it? I have no clue. It's like the fact that nothing is moving in my life is making me also not move. Oh wait. I think it's the other way around. When I don't move, my life doesn't move. So what am I supposed to do?

I sometimes feel like one day, I just won't come into work, I'll quit silently, never go back, and do whatever the hell I want. (Hands up if you've ever felt like doing this.) I actually have done that in the past. I called in one day and said "I'm not coming in anymore." And that was that. I didn't worry about the consequences, I just did it because I was unhappy being at that job and I had to get out of there. Now, I go, "But my bills! My rent! My cats! My this, that, and the other thing!"

So my conclusion is...I need balance. I've had this idea to work part time and work on writing the other part of the time. I don't know if I can do it financially, and I certainly can't yet, and I don't know if I'll be able to save up enough money to be able to do it in the next year. But, it's something I'm seriously considering. Until then? Finding any spare minute I can to work towards something productive, like a novel, or a screenplay, or something. I want to be my own boss. Well, I should probably start working on that now before I end up 50 and sad I didn't try.

Alright memes. You win. This time.

Is there such a thing as willpower?

We constantly hear that our diets don't work, we can't get ourselves to the gym, we can't do x y and z because we don't have the willpower. But this book my friend told me about a few months ago says that willpower isn't the problem. There are 6 influences in our daily lives that lead us to stray off the path towards our goals...Ourselves, the people around us, the media, etc. The book is called "Change Anything" by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. Yeah, that's a lot of people. But it was a really great book that helped me to start eating better...But then I just kinda stopped doing it. It was really weird.

So, does that mean I don't have strong willpower because I stopped reading the book and doing the "plan" I had set up while reading the book?

Maybe I need to set up a "plan" to start living according to my Change anything plan again. That sounds like a vicious cycle.

When I was using the book, I was really making progress. My goal was to eat mindfully for every meal unless I was with other people at a restaurant or party or potluck. Eating mindfully means not doing anything besides eating, really tasting every flavour, smelling every smell, feeling the textures with every bite. It causes people to actually stop eating when they are satisfied, it stops them from overeating, and it reduces cravings. It was really wonderful when I was doing it, but I guess life got busy and I found it harder and harder to eat mindfully when I was always rushed.

So I guess you could say one of my outside influences is my schedule, and my work. Unfortunately, those can't go away right now, so how can I work around them? That's the ultimate question with everything right now. I want to be doing some kind of exercise every day, I want to be writing every day, I want to be able to balance everything better every day. For some reason, that is so freaking hard.

Is there anyone out there who is able to balance their lives well? What's your secret?

Strangely enough, I'm pretty good at balancing poses in yoga. I guess I have to just somehow apply that to my daily life...In yoga, you stare at a spot that is not moving in order to keep your balance, and you try to feel every corner of your foot on the ground or floor, and you keep a little microbend in your knee so that you have more of a solid foundation and your muscles in your balancing leg are keeping you up. Maybe that can be seen as a metaphor for reaching a goal...Your goal is the fixed, unmoving point you are staring at. Your feet are what bring you forward to that goal. You have a solid foundation - a plan - for getting to that goal. Voila. Metaphor. Hmmmm...

More and more, I'm starting to crave living without all these rules and restrictions.

It's Monday. I wake up to my iPod blasting music, and my cat rubbing against me. I'm also drenched in cold sweat (good old sleep problems, they never let you down in the discomfort department). Despite that last part, I want to turn my iPod off and stay in bed. Who doesn't, right? But I roll out of bed, and feed the cats, and sit down at the computer and eat a yoghurt.

I really want to go back to bed.

The 5 day work week is something I thought I wanted. I thought I wanted structure throughout the week and all that good stuff. More and more, I've been wanting to leave it all behind.

It's not something that is particularly possible right now, since I need to work full time to apply for permanent residency. But maybe in the future. I love the thought of being my own boss.

I actually don't mind getting up early. I don't mind being busy. But the thought of rolling out of bed, getting all ready for work, and getting to work only to sit down at a desk again makes me just want to crawl back into bed and never get out of it. It's so BORING.

The problem is, I don't know what I would do to have an income, except writing. And that is something I should in theory be working on outside of my job so that I can finally present something to a publisher or an agent or something. But I haven't been working on writing, except blogging. Blogging is great, but I don't think it's something I can quit my job for.

The other option would be going back to school to do something that can be more freelance, or without the restrictions of Monday-Friday, 9-5, sit at your desk until you rot. I've been seriously considering going back to school for journalism, but that's on hold until I get permanent residency. I'm not allowed to work and go to school at the same time with my work permit.

Back to writing - how do I get that great idea that I can sit down and hammer away at? Do I want it to be a novel, or a screenplay? Lately, working on my TV show that I started, like, last year is like pulling teeth. I sit down and draw a blank and feel totally unmotivated.

I feel like the joy of writing somehow disappeared for me. I used to write about anything, not caring if I finished it, not caring if it was good or not. I just loved writing and creating stories and characters. Then again, I was in high school, and I went to a school where I could choose what t do with my day instead of someone choosing for me. So I had a lot of free time to write. I don't have that now.

And it makes me want to quit my job so I can have more time.

Looks familiar...

Other options to make this possible: Find a sugar daddy (or mama?). Become homeless and wander the land. Move back in with my parents. Take out a mortgage but not actually buy a house. Save up like crazy for the next 10 years (because living in this town, that's how long it would take). Kill someone in my family so I can inherit their money.

OK I'm totally kidding about those, except maybe the saving up for 10 years.

(I just searched on Craigslist for "sugar daddy," out of curiosity. Now I really, really don't want to do that. Gross.)

If you have ideas, please, share them. I am all ears (eyes?).

"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.