Fat Nerd Fit

A little over 23 days ago most people were making their New Years Resolutions.   I was knee deep in a small journey in self-realization that involved a lot of research and confusion. I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, a form of depression that is greatly affective by the seasons.   Because of this new news in my life, I decided not to make traditional resolutions this year.   I’m not setting firm, hard goals that will most likely be abandoned before February is over.   I’m not setting myself up to be disappointed next December when I don’t radically change my life in ways that I’ve been trying- and failing- to change for decades.   This year I’m going on a more spiritual path. 2019 will be my year of Self Care. I’m not going to hide behind helping others, putting myself third, fourth, or fifth in the line of priority. I’m putting myself first and, when needed, second but never less than second this year. Being supportive of the mental health...

Depression is a hell of a thing.   I’m still struggling to wrap my head around all this, but the more I think about it, and the more I investigate it, the more it all makes sense. My family has a history of depression, both diagnosed and undiagnosed. It’s something I grew up around and it was never stigmatized.   I’ve always appreciated that about my parents, but I’ve never fully come to be properly grateful for it until now. Without divulging other people’s personal information, I have several family members and several childhood friends with diagnosed depression.   It’s never been an issue or sticking point with me, it’s just been a part of my loved ones.   But it’s always been something that other people dealt with.   My job was to support them and be understanding. It’s a bit strange finding myself dealing with it while my loved ones are being understanding of me.   I’m not sure if this is something that I’ve always been dealing with, or if i...

I’ve been trying to process what’s been going on in my personal life, and to be honest I still don’t really know how I’m feeling about it, or how to go about handling it. November has been a hard month. My dad has been in and out of the hospital with heart problems. At one point his heart was working at 15% capacity. It all hit out of nowhere. It started out as a trip to the emergency room with an “Eh, we can fix this no problem” diagnosis and some follow ups with specialists. Then it became “Well, this is a bit worse than we thought, but some cardiac rehab and a few meds and we’ll be good to go.” Then it became “Okay, so we’re going do a procedure next week which should fix the issue.” Then that turned into a two week stay at the hospital, several days sedated in the ICU and a probability of in-patient rehab. And we finally landed on getting to go home having home healthcare come in to help him with rehab. This wasn’t my family’s first brush with scary medical situations (my m...

A little over a month ago, I started a food journal. I would jot down what I was eating on a given day to get a handle on what I was doing to myself. I started out just eating normally and got a base line. I didn’t want to make the food journal a chore or something I over-thought, so I literally would just make note of the food, not worrying about serving amounts or calories. I didn’t want to turn it into a science project or algebra problem. It’d be as simple as: Wednesday: Waffles with syrup Black coffee Pasta with spinach and mushrooms Apple Pizza Lots of water It was something I could do once a day, or even be able to keep up with every other day and still get an accurate account of what I was eating. I’d put in there eating habits I was proud of “didn’t eat the brownies in the break room” and “convinced myself not to buy candy from the vending machine”. I also, about once a week, used it as an actual journal writing about what was going on at work, at home, jus...

This week has been insanely frustrating and hectic. WEDNESDAY It started out perfect with a nice kickboxing class. It was practically a private lesson there was just me and one other person in the class. It was like my first lesson with lots of personal attention. It was a great workout and I felt awesome afterwards. Then, I got in my car and it wouldn’t start. It wasn’t even trying to turn over. I just got the battery and the battery cables replaced and I was hoping it was the starter. When I got it to start I drove it straight to the mechanic. We were a little freaked out about the millions of things that could be wrong and the thousands of dollars it could cost so we cancelled our planned trip to Costco and just hung out at home and watched Iron Fist season 2 (which is so much better than season 1, by the way). Meanwhile, our yard is insanely overgrown, and I’ve been messaging our lawn service without getting responses. At this point in our lawn saga, we’ve hired a la...

Monday, I started my new job. Even though I’m just at a different location of the same store there’s a lot to learn and re-learn. I used to work at the Flagship location which is literally 4.5x the size of my new location with 5x the employees. I “knew” this going in, but I know realize I didn’t understand what that meant. Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy I made the change. I know this is the right move for my career, but it’s a bit of a shock of the system. The flow of the store is different. The customer base is different. Plus, I’m now a manager. I’m only two days in, so a lot can change. But so far so good. The best part is my new commute! I have all this free time and, to be honest, right now it’s making me a little fidgety. I’m not quite sure what to do. Over the last year, because my commute made for 12 days, I’d do a week’s worth of household chores in a single day. The rest of the week I’d be too tired, or too time strapped, to do a load of laundry after work or vacuu...

Big changes are coming starting tomorrow. I have gotten a new job. I’ll be with the same company, but I got a promotion that included a move to a different location. The good news is a) I got a promotion b) I get an immediate raise now plus another one after six months and- the one I’m most excited about- c) I am getting back a minimum of one and a half hours back per day! The location I worked at up until yesterday was a forty-five minute with not traffic drive. Because the cardinal rule at this place is DO NOT EVER BE LATE I always left my house an hour and a half early, except on days when I opened when I left two hours early because of rush hour. My new location is ten minutes away with perfect traffic, so I’ll probably allow half an hour. Not only is the commute better, but so are the hours. The store closes an hour earlier Monday-Saturday and opens two hours later and closes three hours earlier on Sundays. I’m not going to know what to do with myself. Actually, I will...