Kicking it up a notch

From the moment I found myself back in the pool, I wanted to get myself to 20 laps. My body is a mess of pain, I am incredibly obese and out of shape and I was swimming 10 laps the first week and in order to do those 10, I had to take breaks. It was embarrassing for someone who used to swim on a regular basis and I was good. This is not some bragging nonsense either, I was a pretty good, and fast swimmer. I have always been bigger, but when I was younger, I was in pretty good shape even for a bigger kid. The fight to get myself to 20 laps has been equally as embarrassing for me. I would hit this wall at 16 or 18 laps and my mind would take over and I would crash. The pain would kick in and I refused to fight through the pain. The back injury was a major setback in my progress, and I was starting to feel defeated but that was before my major attitude adjustment this week. I came into this week knowing I needed to kick myself in the ass.

Well the attitude change brought with it my 20 lap milestone! Not only did I hit the milestone, I hit it without any real breaks between laps! Oh, but that is not all readers, today I got up to 24 laps in the amount of time it took me to get 20 on Wednesday. Next week, I am really going to push it and get myself to 30 by the end of next week. I honestly think I could have pushed myself harder today, but I do have a bit of a cold and it was making breathing a bit difficult, and let's be honest, breathing is an important part of the living process. I started this blog on May 10th and began my quest a day or two earlier, and here I am 7 weeks later and hitting my first, of hopefully many, big milestone. It feels great! My body was exhausted, but it was a good exhausted, not the kind of exhausted you feel after wolfing down a Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger.It was not that exhaustion of shame you feel when you ate too much and realize you are tired from eating. I am excited to hit 30 laps next week. My goal is to be at 50 laps before the summer is over. I really believe I can get there.

Keeping with the physical, I had my first dance rehearsal in over a year this week. Our choreographer moves at a fast pace, which I appreciate. For some reason I have always picked up choreography very quickly and I love to move and I love it when a choreographer does not hold back on me because of my weight. The next day I woke up and I could move! This is another huge thing for me. Normally the day after a dance rehearsal my body is a mess of serious pain, stiffness and general sadness, but not this week! I was up the next day, went for a brisk walk and spent the day packing and lifting boxes with minimal pain. This is 7 weeks in and I am seeing the exact kind of results I was hoping to see. Yes, I have hit a weight loss plateau, but I am feeling so great about myself for the first time in a few years.

In terms of weight loss, I have decided not to weigh myself for another week. I do not want to risk getting down on myself. I want to keep this positive momentum flowing. It feels like I burst through a dam and I do not want to stop the gushing water of positive emotions. I need this right now. There are still a few aspects of my life that are freaking me out, and this momentary outburst of pure positive energy is needed to get me through the rest of it.

Happiness is a fleeting emotion. If you find it, you have to do everything you can to hold onto it and remind yourself of that happiness when times get tough. I have a world of things to be thankful for and I am not ignorant of that. I know many of you have great families, but I believe I have the best family in the world. We rally around each other in the face of everything and I have needed to fall back on them many times in my life and never once have they let me fall. My best friend has seen me through so much and seen me at the absolute lowest of emotional, physical and mental health, and he has always told me I deserved better for myself and always reminds me how much I have to offer. I am also lucky enough to have the sweetest, most understanding, most caring and most amazing girlfriend in the world. I apologize, half-heartedly, for the cheesiness, but it is completely sincere. Martina does way more than she probably knows to keep me focused. But most of all, I have myself. I have to control my own happiness. We all have to control our own happiness. We surround ourselves with the people who bring out the happiness. They do not create it or control it, but they help foster it. I have to be in charge of what I let in my body, and who I let in my heart and life.

This journey has taken me so many places already. I have cried quietly in the dark of night as I realized how I caused this in myself, but how I always blamed other people. I have randomly laughed, and cheered when I hit this big introspective realization. I have eaten more fruits and vegetables in the last 7 weeks than I can ever remember, and I have stuck to my plans. I have hated every fiber of my being, and then never loved myself more when I realized what was causing that hate. I am a million miles away from completing this journey, but after 7 weeks, I feel like I have traveled the entire world of emotions. I am exhausted, but energized and am thankful to each and every person who has read and followed the journey thus far. I am unbelievably thankful for the words of encouragement, the suggestions and the positive energy everyone brings to my journey. I am even more thankful to those who have said I have inspired them. I do not want to sound douchey, but it is my life's goal to inspire and if my journey to free myself from the chains of obesity, pain and sadness, can help someone else escape their own chains, that is best feeling in the world.

Tomorrow I get to go witness two people who love each other commit to a life together. Is there anything more inspiring than that? I tell you readers, life is a crazy, beautiful, tragic, awesome trip and it is about time I look up and enjoy the damn ride!!

The Toxicity of life

I am finding my summer to be full of activities, which has left me with less time to myself at the computer, so what will follow is sort of a few ideas I have been kicking around since I returned from a family reunion on Sunday.

First off, seeing my entire family was just heavenly. I could easily write a whole post about the feeling I had throughout the weekend, but I will spare you all the cheesiness. I will say this, my dad is the single most focused man I have ever seen. He is on a health quest and has just met and surpassed every goal he has set for himself over the last few years. It is astounding. I can only hope to find that sort of progress in my own life. Also, for a brief moment over that weekend, my mom and I talked about the toxic things in life, in my life in particular. It has had me thinking for the last few days and what follows will be a summary, or meandering word vomit of these thoughts.

I have been doing a good job of cutting all of the toxic food out of my life. I have been doing a pretty good job of upping my physical activity to remove that toxic laziness out of my life. As I have detailed in this blog multiple times, I am working hard on eliminating the negative thoughts that continue to plague this journey of mine. These toxic thoughts lay at the root of everything in my life. I am constantly giving myself new goals, and my most recent goal is to stop being so self-deprecating. I am at a point in my life where I need to take myself and my journey seriously and in order to do that, I have to cut out my jokes at my expense. When you have spent 20 years conditioned to make fun of your own weight so no one else does it first, this is quite an undertaking, but I believe it is vitally important to my progress. Yes, I need to work on getting the thoughts out of my head, but first I need to work on not making jokes at my own expense. If I want other people to take me and my journey seriously, I need to take it seriously. therefore, I am trying to cut down, then eliminate the amount of time I spend making fun of myself. I have done fairly well so far. Try it, it is difficult.

The next part of the toxicity of life is people. I have had many toxic relationships in my life. I had a seriously toxic romantic relationship in my early twenties of which I still feel lingering effects some times. I have allowed myself to carry on extremely toxic platonic relationships out of fear of not having any friends which have done severe damage at times, and I have had a few toxic relationships where the line between platonic and romantic have been extremely blurred. Any sort of relationship can be toxic. Having the strength to pull yourself away from it is challenging. However, I know that I need to expect better of people. I need to make myself expect to be treated better and that starts internally. I am working on removing everything toxic from my life and that includes relationships. Currently, I am working on not carrying all of that baggage from the toxic relationships into my current relationships. I am working on letting go of anger, resentment, sadness and frustration. it is yet another roadblock on my journey. I must figure out how to knock the roadblock over. I can no longer afford to go over it, under it or around it because it invariably pops up again and knocks me on my ass. I am 31 years old and it is time to start dealing with my damn issues! It is never too late to try and fix the things you dislike about yourself.

Onto some random quick hits:

I walked to rehearsal the other night. It was lovely. I am enjoying walking. It allows me to clear my head, and get a nice workout in. However, I cannot forget my knee brace because the difference in my pain level is astounding!

I have hit a weight loss plateau. I have not lost any weight in about a week. Normally this would send me into a fast food binge, throwing up my hands in a metaphorical manner and going back to my old habits. My motives are more clear this time, so I am taking it in stride. I will continue to take it in stride. If I do not lose weight for a week, but I make a break through in another realm, so be it. My life will not crumble around me with a bad health week. (Also, it was not a bad health week, but did not lose any weight.)

I have found my desire for french fries and chips slowly draining. It is nice. I never thought I would live in a world where I thought I would be cool off french fries.

I am still looking for good healthy side dishes. I love salads, but I need something else healthy to eat with my proteins. It is tough to not just whip up some pasta!

Also, my my desire for snacking is not going anywhere, so I am trying to substitute nuts and fruits for ice cream and candy. It is mostly working!

Putting back on my walking shoes

I had every intention of making the title of this post some sort of reference to boots being made for walking. I think we are all better for me not having done that. Today is an errand and chore day. Between my credential stuff, trying to find a place to live and my having ignored life last week to enjoy a week of summer, I have a ton of running around, e-mailing, and paperwork filing to do. Today is a sort of "get the ball rolling" process on a good chunk of it. I have applied for 2 teaching jobs today, which brings my total to 7. I am really taking my time on these applications and of course, spending about an hour per application writing and re-writing cover letters to fit the specific school and/or district. It was a stressful morning and I decided to take my stress out for a walk. In the past, this would have been where I ate a Carl's Jr. burger and watched television, but I know I need to get back out there. My back has been feeling pretty good the last few days, so I wanted to take it out for a test run.

I have always had a pretty dicey relationship with walking. I actually love to go out with some headphones and walk. My body has always rejected it because of my weight and my complicated shoe issue. Now that the shoe issue has been solved, I am dealing with the summer heat. I am not so versed in the world of walking or running that I have a pouch for water, and carrying a water bottle on my walk just does not work, so I filled my water bottle up and left it right inside the door so I could grab it as soon as I got home and ventured out. After over a week off, I was feeling it pretty early on. I let myself stop for a moment, stretch out my back some more, and take a minute to let my positive thinking battle with my negative thinking. It turned out to be exactly what I needed because once I set off again, I was able to really keep a solid pace and not think about how hot it was or how my back was slowly starting to tighten up. I just powered through the pain, through the heat and through my mind trying to convince me to stop. When I used to play any sort of Marvel video game, I would always choose Wolverine and instead of relying on strategy, or paying attention to the pain meter, I would just run wild through levels hacking at everything. I would move so quickly, that event though I would be close to dying, I would complete the level. This is how I felt today. I was just going to push myself through the end until I got there, no matter how hot it was.

I came home, rewarded myself with a nice glass of water, the most refreshing shower ever, slices of the most mouth watering watermelon and a nice salad. It was the perfect way to clear my mindspace. I would have never guessed in a million years that walking would be something that I would turn towards to help me clear my mind. I still prefer swimming, as does my body, but this walk was exactly what I needed today. When I finished lunch, I went right back to the chores of the day, only stopping now to update this blog. In all actuality, I am not even stopped, I am still organizing things, consolidating things and trying to make it easier on me when I do have to move soon. I am learning how to have the energy to multitask in an effective way and it is of course thanks to all of this stuff I have been changing in my life.

In keeping with the theme of walking, I have this playlist that I used for my walks. It is roughly 100 songs long, and it has everything in it I would look for in a playlist meant for working out. Many people have many different ways of going about music for working out. I know people who just want heavy metal going all of the time. I know people who just want something with an uptempo beat and I know people who listen to the music they would want to have sex to, because it motivates them to look better naked for the having of the sex. I am a BIG proponent of play lists for every occasion. before my last computer crashed I had a series of play lists for everything. I had an opening night play list, first day of school play list and so on. I am constantly looking at what other people use for different occasions as well. I would love for people to use the comments to tell me what music they like to listen to when working out.

I found a list on-line of the top 20 songs the readers of Fitness magazine voted as the best work out songs and number 1 was Sexy/Back from Justin Timberlake. I guess many people subscribe to the whole sex music and work out music. I love all things Timberlake, so I love the choice. I love the idea of the lyrics "I'm bringing sexy back" running through my head as I do my best to make myself healthier. Healthy should make one feel sexy and it is about time I brought my own sexy back. My mind is sexy, My talent is sexy, some have said my writing is sexy and now it is time to make my health and my attitude match that level of sexy.

Shopping with Kyle

I know this blog has been focusing more on the mental health aspect lately, but I guess that is because I have needed to clear my mind of so many of the dark spots that have been hindering my progress over the last so many years. However, I want to focus on eating today. My relationship with food is one with serious complications. I am a live to eat kind of guy. I always have been, but there are so many misconceptions when it comes to fat people and food. People assume fat people hate healthy food. I do not. I love salad, I love fruits and vegetables. I am as happy sitting with a bowl of grapes as I am with a bowl of chips. I just eat the entire bowl of grapes, then eat the entire bag of chips.

I love cooking. I have never been very good at it, but I love it. I just often do not have the time, or all of the ingredients one needs to cook properly. It has always been more conducive to my lifestyle to open a box and put the contents of that box into the microwave, oven or boiling water. It is always better for my wallet. I can buy 4 personal pizzas for 4 dollars. That is four meals at a dollar a piece. I cannot do that with anything healthy. Fresh fish is expensive. Going to the store the day of cooking to buy everything I need is time consuming and time consuming and on days where my day ends at 7 or 8 pm, the last thing I want to do is go to the store. It made more sense to stop at Carl's Jr. Do not think I do not know these are excuses. They are fabulous excuses. Ask any teacher of mine from 7th to 9th grade, I am the king of excuses. I would spend so much time on excuses and fabricating evidence that it would have been easier to just do my work. This brings us to the point of this blog entry.

The contents of a normal Kyle shopping cart over the last 10 years:

- 2-5 Totinos personal pizzas
- 3 hot pockets
- 3-6 boxes of PastaRoni
- a bag or tortilla chips
- a bag or two of Doritos or Lays
- bacon, eggs milk
- 2 bricks of extra sharp cheddar cheese
- sodas, Rockstars
- loaf of white bread
- Pasta noodles and extremely unhealthy sauces
- potatoes
- Froot Loops or Frosted Flakes
- At least one box of Mike and Ikes
- Ice cream

The picture at the top of this blog post represents what I bought at a local market yesterday. it is $25.00 worth of fruits and vegetables (one of these days Pineapple will no longer intimidate me and I will add that to my collection). These are things you would never find in my shopping cart previously. Some of the other things you can find in my shopping cart now that you could not before include frozen chicken, nuts (instead of chips) and whole wheat bread. Most of the things on the above list are nowhere to be found these days. I am slowly figuring out how to think ahead to cook. I am figuring out how to cook more than I need so I can eat the rest of it for another meal, and more likely, take it with me to eat the next day. I am eating more salads, and making fruit salad to have as a snack or side dish. I have not bought boxed pizza in over a month which is unheard of for me. I no longer make giant plates of nachos. I definitely do not eat 2 or 3 bowls of Frosted Flakes in the morning.

This drastic change has come at a bit of a price. I am spending more money on groceries, but less on eating out, so I believe it comes to a balance. I might still be spending a bit more on food now than I was. Is it worth it? Sure, it is. I still maintain that people with large families and limited budget do not have the luxury of eating healthier, and if you want that debate, I am open to it. I am not totally comfortable with this change, if I am being honest. I still miss the crappy food. If someone could make a salad that tasted like nachos drenched in chili and sour cream, it would make my life. Whole wheat bread makes my sandwiches taste less fun and I miss eating giant bowls of pasta covered in sauce. I will probably always miss it.

I am still learning to like chicken. I am only cooking it one way at this point, so I am going to have to branch out eventually and find other things to do with it that are healthy. I need more food options in general. I am not the kind of guy that is terribly comfortable eating the same 4 or 5 things every week. That is going to be a problem. For some reason I am perfectly okay eating the same breakfast every day, but switching between salad, fish and chicken is going to get old fast. I need to learn more culinary tricks.

Oh one last thing, when I first started this journey, soda was a big topic. I had a soda at the movie theater the other day, which was too bad, but I am doing much better. I forgot to bring a drink with me and I am not going to pay money for water, so I bought a soda. In my regular life though, I have found something that makes me miss soda a bit less. It is called Sparkling Ice. It has no sugar, no calories and appears all healthy, but it has the fizz I loved in soda. They cost me a $1.00 each, but it takes away the monotony of drinking water all of the time.

Slogging through the remnants of a broken shell

Well readers, here I sit, still on bed rest from this back injury. I have about 70% of my motion back. It no longer hurts in the standing up position, but if I am up for too long it hurts. It mostly huts in the transition from sitting to standing, but it is still causing me too much pain to be terribly physical. As a result, I am in a funk. I am kind of a mess tonight. Do not get my wrong, I have loved playing hours of video games, watching the entire first season of SUITS, reading 2 full novels and watching movies. It has been a nice start to summer vacation, but it is not how I envisioned my summer starting.

If you know me pretty well, which some of do, and some of you are learning, you would know I am a man who lives and dies by plans. I love plans. I love to have my entire week planned sometimes. It is a sickness, but it calms me down, especially when so much of my life right now is up in the air. Will I have a job in Sept? Where will I be living in 2 months? I have no clue, but I can tell you what I will be doing Friday afternoon at roughly 3:30 in the afternoon and that calms me down. With Martina having been gone the last 5 days, I had a whole routine planned out to keep me moving forward without her here to help. She may or may not know it, but her constant support keeps my wheels turning on days that are rough. I knew I would keep to this routine, because I like routines, but after cleaning the whole house on Saturday my back gave out and my entire routine went away. So instead of just not knowing about a job and a house, I was now worrying about how I would recover from this extended lay off. Do not tell me it is silly or that I think too much, I already know that. I am the one lives inside of this brain 24/7. I am the one who used to debate calling any friend of mine for 25 minutes before making the call because I was sure that person did not want to talk to me, or would only answer because he or she felt obligated. No one would really willingly talk to me.

Okay, way off topic. Wow, where was I? Yes, my routine. It did not go as planned. I did a pretty good job of my goal to still eat better. Yes, after spending roughly 48hrs alone with my thoughts, I caved and ordered a pizza and drank a liter of soda. But I did not drink the second liter and I only ate half of the pizza. I told my roommate to eat the rest. I did not beat myself up too badly for the soda, which is certainly progress. However, these 5 days of basic isolation from the world have given me time to think long and hard about my life and how I ended up this way. I have been really thinking about my life and the people in it and the decisions I have made. I have been trying to find points of my life to which I can trace some of these issues. Has anyone else ever done that? I mean, wow, that a crappy, brutal, sad process. I truly believe it is necessary, but it can really bring you down. When you really sit back and examine some of the choices you have made in life, it can be more than an eye opener, it is like your entire brain explodes and rebuilds itself with this new understanding.

it hurt. It is still hurting. I know there are quotes about blowing things up to put them back together, and I guess that is what I am doing. I have to explode the shell of who I have been, or who I have tried to be and who everyone sees me as, and find a way to rebuild myself into someone I can look at in the mirror and be proud of. the last few days I have really tried to think about the last time I could say I was truly proud of myself. It is sad that I went through this teacher program, graduated from college, got great roles in theater, and I cannot think of the last time I was actually proud of myself. It was a shocking realization. I have become so crippled in my life by my own self doubt, my "monsters" as I have been referring to my self doubt as, that I have not been proud of these very big accomplishments. It has been an interesting few days inside my head.

However, the metaphorical light at the end is that I realize this now. I am aware. Self-awareness is always a blessing and a curse, but I can make the changes now that I see it. I know that I have to be less hard on myself. I have spent so much time beating myself up before anyone else could get to it and it is not going to fly anymore. I feel like this blog has really been more of a chronicle of my journey to mental health, which is not at all what I intended, when I started. I think I am much more mentally unhealthy than I realized when I began this process.

The best thing to happen to me over the last few days was getting Erik back. Since his own life change partially inspired my desire to like myself more, it is really great to have him around. His constant support has helped me in so many situations over the last 7 or 8 years that I know he is going to be there through this as well. Plus, no one knows my predilection for awful self thoughts more than he does and he knows to tell me when I am being ridiculous.

Tomorrow I am going to try and get back in the water for swimming. Tomorrow I am going to try and wake up and remind myself that I have some pretty damn good things going on and I would not have these great things if I was not deserving of them. Tomorrow I am going to wake up and remind myself that this is a daily life change and when you attempt to change your entire life, and your entire routine, it is going to take time and that is okay. Tomorrow I am going to wake up and tell myself 5 things I like about myself and 1 thing I love about myself. I suggest anyone having a tough time do the same thing. I have people who love me, so I must be doing something right. Now, to get out there and love myself. (Shockingly, I do not mean that in a dirty way.)

My reluctant weekend of relaxation

I just powered through the last week of school, which puts me at the end of the most emotional 9 months of my life. it was stressful, amazing, depressing, exhilarating and every emotion in between. Yes, I have arrived at the end of my student teaching. Well, technically I have one more day, but I am essentially done. In accordance with that, my body is RUNDOWN. I have been in a constant state of go, go ,go for 9 months and my body senses the end. However, I pushed myself this week. I walked for an hour in circles at a mall on Tuesday, even though I was beat, I swam without any breaks one day and I did not sleep that well on top of it. Because of it, I have suffered my first injury. I have strained some muscles in my back. I have not sought help, but I have suffered this once before and this is exactly what it felt like, so I am making a bit of an assumption. Therefore, I am deeming this weekend, a weekend of rest. It means I will not be swimming, walking, or running. I need to let my back heal, so I can hit the ground running when I am up to it.

There is a part of me that wants nothing more to just revel in this rest. I love video games, books, movies and lounging in bed. It suits who I am as a mostly indoor type person. However, I have this momentum and now it is stalled. I am worried that in two of three days, I am going to fall right back into the old habits of my life. I am going to get so comfortable playing video games for more than an hour a day, or enjoy watching an entire season of some show and when I feel better, I am going to not feel like I want to get out there in the heat and continue this journey. of course, the biggest reason I am trying to make this change is so that I am not hurting as much. I know this injury is mostly due to the weight I am carrying. However, in order to lose the weight, I have to be up and moving all of this weight. It is no wonder people give up. It is no wonder why I have given up every single time I tried. Hell, one time I lost nearly 75lbs in a little over two years, and instead of continuing, I gave up. It just got too hard. My body ached too much. I was not seeing the results enough and it was just too easy to stop.

Therefore, my goal over the next week is to not let myself quit. I need to let myself rest this weekend and until I feel comfortable moving again, but I need to keep my mind focused. I think a big part of that will be making sure I still eat healthy this weekend. If I can keep part of my routine going, I will have a better shot and getting myself back into the swing of things. See, the big thing here is, I am not sure how much healthier I am physically right now. I have lost nearly 20 lbs in the month that i have done this, but I am feeling rundown. I am hurting. However, emotionally and mentally I in the best place I have been in years. I am having life altering realizations about how I have lived my life. I am making healthy changes in who I am as a person and how I relate to myself. I am not waking up every day hating everything about myself and feeling like the only way to get validation is to get it from outside sources. I am doing things for me. I am making healthy life decisions. And it is all connected, so I know that even if the weight is not coming of like I want, or if I do not see any change in my appearance, I know it is helping in other aspects and that it will all eventually work together to make me the best version of myself I can be. I can be the version all of my loved ones have told me I can be, but never believed myself.

But for today, I rest. I watch episode after episode of SUITS, or maybe go rent a movie, and definitely play a multitude of video games. Hopefully, I will feel up to going shopping for fruits and vegetables later, but as of now the pain in back is so severe, leaning down to fill my water bottle nearing caused me tears. Oh to be healthy.

The stupidity of insecurities

Today I went to the pool to swim. When I arrived the with my girlfriend and her roommate there were two guys at the pool. They were not swimming, but they were in the pool area. Both of these guys were good looking and trim and one of them was in incredible shape. What is about to follow in this blog follows absolutely zero amount of logic and I understand that.

From the moment I took off my shirt to get in the pool, these guys were judging me. Everything they whispered was a comment about how gross I am, how stupid I look when I swim and how foolish it is I even attempt to lose weight. Every laugh made me cringe because I knew without question they were laughing at me. I was the sole subject of their conversation and it completely psyched me out. The entire time I was swimming, I was not even remotely paying attention to the fact that I did a good amount of laps considering I am on the verge of a death sickness hovering and considering I had not done any swimming in almost a week. No, all I could focus on was these two guys judging everything about me. Of course, the probability that they were actually talking about me is incredibly low. Why would I register on their conversation? And even if they did mention something to each other, why the hell should I let it get me down? My own insecurities of course. I believe these things about myself to the point where I become obsessed with them and I assume everyone else is obsessed with them as well. When you have a tiny zit on your face, you assume everyone is looking at it, or commenting on it quietly as you pass by. Well, my insecurities are a giant zit and I cannot seem to pop it and rid myself of these ridiculous thoughts.

It is the same reason I never go into a gym. I like the idea of having a place to go and get everything I need in terms of a work out, but the minute I step inside a room at a gym, I immediately assume everyone stops what they are doing to comment on how ridiculous it is that this extremely fat guy would even attempt to get into shape. It is like I am infringing on this secret hideout of fit people and they want me to gone as quickly as possible. Even worse is when I start to use a machine and every single person is laughing at me using it incorrectly. They judge the speed, the incline, the reps, the amount of weight, the way my clothes do or do not hide my fat. It is crippling. It is seriously crippling and I wish that it fueled my desire, but it does not. It causes me such serious anxiety I feel like I make myself ill. it is silly because most of the people I know who are in shape are incredibly kind and helpful to me. But, these people who are judging me do not know me. They do not know me and think I am cool, or honest or whatever the quality my friends see in me is. No, they are faceless, charmless people who only exist to ridicule my attempts to better myself.

How can I exist in a world where I think strangers are constantly mocking me? Honestly, it is tough on some days. These days where the insecurities take such hold that I truly believe I can do nothing write no matter how hard I try. I know this is silly. It does not make it any less "real." On these days, I have to learn to better look to the people who care about me. I have to realize that even if there are people who mock me, those people do not matter. The people who want us to succeed are who matter and I have plenty of those people on my side. I have people on my side that I would have never thought would be interested in my life. It is an exciting thing, and it is incredibly helpful on days like this when the insecurities leave me just a bit more crippled than usual.

So after I got out of the pool, and got my first sunburn of this summer season, I ate a good lunch, but did not over eat. I drank Iced Tea instead of soda and for dinner I steamed some vegetables, and ate some delicious fish. I did not let myself feel crippled for the entire day and I did not fall back on the things that brought me such faux comfort. In the end you can say that I handled these insecurities in the most positive way I ever have and as I finish writing this and go to sleep, I feel incredibly good about that.

What happens to a dream deferred?

I am currently sitting in my first period classroom with no students because they finished school on Friday, but I have to be here in case any of them forgot something. There are two Juniors in the classroom cleaning it up because my Mentor Teacher is retiring and they just finished asking me what I am doing next year and telling me they hope I teach here and teach senior English again and that they can transfer to my class. it was a really sweet moment for me. Earlier this morning I had a senior drop by to give me a sweet thank you card and a Gatorade. This whole year has been such a whirlwind of emotions, that I would be remiss if I did not reflect in some way.

When I was a kid all I wanted to do was be a teacher. I have no idea why, but I always just wanted to teach people. I loved helping my peers with school work, I loved learning and teaching things in church activities and as I got older, that desire for teaching never went away. Whether it was coaching basketball, or helping younger people with homework at rehearsals, I wanted to help people learn. However, when I hit high school, the concerns from outside sources started to override me. Teachers do not make any money, they have so much work outside of school, is it really worth it? Blah blah blah... I got away from my childhood dream for years and years and there I was from 19-25 years old drifting around in an abyss of nothingness. Yes, I had jobs. I was rarely without work, but I was just meandering from job to job, house to house, and what's worse, paycheck to paycheck. From being a cashier at a clothing store, to working in a warehouse of a paint store, I was truly miserable. Life was kicking me in the ass without me fighting back (does that sound familiar on this blog?).

One day while at lunch my dear dear friend Taylor, she asked me what it is I always wanted to do. I thought about it and realized that deep down I still desperately wanted to teach. The dream I had at 9 years old came rushing through like water bursting through a dam. Of course! I would go back to school and be a teacher. Here I am 5 years later, knocking on the door of a dream realized. It was a long, stressful, fulfilling journey that has left me with lifelong memories, incredible new friendships, and a teaching credential. For the last year and a half I have gone through Sac State's credential process. It was a 3 semester program where my responsibility to young people built each semester. I spent class time with the same group of would-be teachers for these three semesters and now that is over, I am left with more of a desire to teach than ever before. The reasons being two-fold. First off, my fellow cohort members. The passion, laughter, hugs, tears, stress and drinks we have shared over the last 18 months only fueled my fire to be as idealistic, passionate and knowledgeable as they are. Second, spending time in a classroom has only strengthened my desire to do this. No matter how many teachers, administrators, or random people tell me how impossible it is to find a job, and how awful it is to be a teacher, and how the students are just getting worse, I know deep in my heart, I want to be a teacher. I have something at 31 years old that I did not have at 19: confidence in my decision making abilities. I know now what is right for me in my life. Yes, I am aware that teachers do not make great money considering how many extra hours they put in, and I know that budgets are tough and finding a job is going to be tough, but what really worth doing comes easy?

In the fall of this year I started teaching in an 8th grade classroom and it was not an easy start. I had a rough group of students who made my life difficult, but when I left that school, I left with great memories of smiling students, great stories of my teaching, and all of this new knowledge of how to manage a classroom. Then I moved over to a high school this Spring and my entire world changed. In fact, it was because of my senior students that I decided I needed to make changes in my life. If you are my friend on The Facebook, or follow me on The Twitter nonsense, you have read the stories of how great my students were and how much fun we had and all of that great stuff, but it was more than that. I work at a school where the percentage of people who live with both parents is under 30%. I work at a school where my students had to fight to get everything and so many of them did it. I have a student who moved to America when she was 10 and became fluent in English in a year because she worked hard, taught herself and took every opportunity for help. One young man in my class has two parents and two step parents, none of whom speak any English, he has two older siblings who flunked out of high school and he is going to Cal Poly with insane amounts of scholarships for academic and athletic excellence. These are just two of the unique, inspiring stories from the students in that class.

My life has not been perfect, but it has been pretty nice. I have two extremely loving and supportive parents and three great loving siblings. I am smart, but I was lazy in high school. If these students can pull themselves out of these incredible hardships, what excuse do I have to not make myself better? Simple, I do not have an excuse. These students showed me every single day that life is exactly what you make of it. If you want to complain all of the time, then that is your life, but why not try everything you can to make it better? There was a group of 4 students who sat towards the front of the class, and are the best group of friends. When one young man's brother was killed over a weekend, he came to school on Monday because school is where he had structure and where his 3 best friends would be there to comfort him. School is where he felt safe. In my classroom he felt safe. Is it not my duty to be the best version of myself in order to best help these young people? Is it not my duty to be the best version of myself so when I tell my students to be the best version of themselves, I can feel like I am practicing what I preach? Yes, of course I do and I have these amazing students to thank for showing me that we all have a duty to make life be the life we want and not sit around and be complacent in some unhappy version of life.

So here I am, 31 years old and on the verge of achieving a dream I first had when I was a child. Yes, the dream got hazy and I let people distract me from my dream and worst of all, I let myself put the dream aside. How foolish of me and how foolish of any one who tells someone not to chase a dream. What kind of life would we live if people stopped chasing there dreams? Every major work of art, every major advance we have made as a people come from people who chased their dreams. it took me a long time, but I finally chased my dream down, and now it is my dream to make sure every student I have continues to chase their dream in the face of anyone who says it is foolish. If every students chases their dream and a few of them actually hit their dreams, imagine how wonderful a place the world can be. My other dream is to not lose my idealism as a teacher. I have spent too much time around teachers who have been turned bitter or callous, or unhappy. I know days will be rough at times and I know I will have bad students, bad classes and even bad years, but I truly believe that being a teacher means something and that I can mean something to someone somewhere. I believe I can help the people who can change the world and I never want to lose that. And it starts with me getting myself physically, emotionally and mentally healthy.


So to answer the question of my all time favorite poet, A deferred dream lingers in the back of your mind until one day it wakes up, screams at you to stop ignoring it and fuels you when you finally realize that dream is what makes life worth all of the crap that comes at you.

My Batman Shirt or a celebration of happy things

A little over a year ago I bought a Batman T-shirt. I bought in the 3X which is the size of all of my shirts, but it was a tad bit more snug than the other shirts, but it still fit, so I wore it out and about. Pretty soon after I bought it, I started to put a lot of the weight I lost two years ago, back on. Quickly that shirt became one that I put in the back of the closet never to be been seen again. My girlfriend still thought it looked good on me, but I did not feel comfortable in it. I was always worried that my fat was going to come creeping out from under the shirt and scare small children, or swallow puppies. Away it stayed for months and months. I would wear it around the house on laundry day, but it was never to see the outside again. I would never say that it was my goal to be able to feel comfortable in that shirt again, because it feels silly to have that as a goal, but it has been on my mind these last few weeks. This last week was a bit nuts with trying to finish class with my seniors and make sure they all passed and could graduate, so I fell behind on laundry and found myself staring the Batman shirt in the face. I put it on and it fit very much like it fit when I first bought it. This is progress. It still does not fit as nicely as I would like, but I wore it out in public and did not worry about feeling super uncomfortable. it is about the small victories, right?

And now celebrating positive things, as this blog has focused on the darker stuff lately:

I have yet to feel the pain of my tendinitis on any of my walks over the last two weeks. It has been glorious to be able to walk around without that particular pain weighing me down. I am not sure if it is due to me being more active on a regular basis or because of the accessory I purchased when I bought my shoes, but either way, it is an incredible feeling.

I have had 1 8 ounce cup of soda in roughly 3 weeks and I have not had a single Rockstar since I decided to cut them out.

Most of the need for the energy drink has been eliminated due to having more natural energy because I am not eating such crappy food.

I have really cut back on my snacking. I have been snacking on healthier foods, but I have been trying to cut back on snacking and so far it is working.

For so many years I just accepted my lack of will power as the rule in my life. I have had a terrible time fighting off my cravings for bad food, and have had a terrible time turning my life into a series of good habits. It turns out that it was about owning my will power. While Erik has been just killing it health wise in Oregon, he knew he could not force me into changes. The person has to be ready to really make the change, and for whatever reason it was not until recently that I felt ready. I think you can switch out "ready" for "worthy" and it makes more sense in my particular situation. I know Erik still wants me to fully embrace his Primal lifestyle, but he has not been pushing it and I appreciate that. I actually appreciate it from everyone. People have been incredibly supportive, and offered advice, but no one has been incredibly forceful. I know I have to figure out what is best for me personally. Every person is different and for me, I think a patchwork lifestyle change is one that is going to work best. Just call me Tarantino. I take existing parts and change them, rewrite them, reshoot them and make them their own work of art. Okay, that might among the most douchey things I have ever said.

I am about to come to the end of a very fulfilling journey and embark on the next phase. Student teaching has been the single most rewarding part of my life and now I am heading into the world of looking for a teaching job. I am also getting ready to look for a new place to live and currently trying to find summer work as well. The stress of all of this would normally launch me into an emotional tailspin, but I am getting my emotional health into a much better place. I am actually finding that getting my emotional health right has been much tougher, yet much more helpful in getting the rest of my health right. So many of my food issues are tied to emotional issues.

I am going to ask a question here and I hope to get enough responses either as comments or facebook, or text, or wherever, but would it be okay if occasionally I used this blog to write about something other than my health? I have this desire to write a blog post about my time as a student teacher, but do not want to turn readers away, and do not really want to start a whole other blog. It is perfectly okay to say "no" as this is lifestyle change blog.