2015 in books!

In December of 2014 I was mortified by the lack of reading I had done. Yes, the summer had been dedicated to writing a novel, but after years of horror stories about teachers losing themselves in their classroom work, I vowed to not lose myself in my work completely, and reading for fun is among my favorite activities. With that in mind, I set a goal to read two books a month in 2015. The goal was not to read 24 books, but read two books a month, so it might sound crazy to find out, while I read 41 books this year, I actually failed in my goal to read two books a month. There were two months, March and April, where I did not manage to set aside enough time to read two books. I am not bummed about it in the least because, well I read 41 books in a year where I also got married, went on a honeymoon and taught full time. In 2007 I began keeping tabs on the amount of books I read in a given year. In 2013, where I did not have a full time job for half the year, I read 43 books. That is the most in a year since I started tracking it. I imagine in my younger and more vulnerable years, I read more than that at least once. I am sure I read a book a week in my early or mid twenties when I was wasting my life away at dead end jobs. I am going to list every book here in a bit, with a rating out of 1-10, 10 being the best. If you would, for some reason, like a longer explanation, feel free to reach out on FB, or here in the comments. I have been keeping track of my books on FB and IG, though I do not intend to do that in 2016. I will probably go back to Goodreads. A few notes:

I read six non-fiction books, the most in any given year.
Only Four Young Adults books this year, and none of them were very good.
Three were re-reads for school, including two of my all-time favorite books.
I did not count the plays I read (Death of a Salesman, Hamlet)
Night Circus is single best book I have read in probably a decade, if not longer. (not counting books I was re-reading)
I read trendy books for pretty much the first time.
Five books I read this year ended up on suggested reading lists for my AP Lit class, for a variety of reasons.

Okay, here is the list of the 41 books I read in 2015:

1. Wild- Cheryl Strayed- 8
2. Big Brother- Lionel Shriver- 3
3. The Martian- Andy Weir- 8
4. Both of Me- Jonathan Friesen - 2
5. The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald- 10
6. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan- 8
7. How I got skinny, famous and fell madly in love- Ken Baker- 5
8. The Love affairs of Nathaniel P- Adelle Waldman- 7.5
9. The Curious Incident of the Dog in night-time- Mark Hadden- 9
10. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil- John Berendt- 6
11. Cartwheel- Jennifer Dubois- 7
12. The House of sand and fog- Andre Dubus- 8.5
13. Candy Girl- Diablo Cody- 7
14. Comeback love- Peter Golden- 7
15. The Imperfectionists- Tom Rachman- 4 (This book took me forever to get through)
16. Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury- 10
17. Life of Pi- Yann Martel- 9
18. Night Circus- Erin Morgernstern- 10
19. Girl on the train- Paula Hawkins- 8
20. Miss Peregrine’ school for Peculiar children- Ransom Riggs- 6
21. How to build a girl- Caitlin Moran- 7.5
22. The Dinner Herman Koch- 5 (might have been the most disappointing read of the year)
23. Lost in the Meritocracy- Walter Kirn- 6 (great concept, poorly executed)
24. The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath- 9
25. The Book of Speculation- Erica Swyler- 7 (an 8 for the first half)
26. Station Eleven- Emily St. John Mandel- 8
27. Brutal Youth Anthony Breznican- 7.5
28. All the Light we cannot see- Anthony Doerr- 6
29. Is everyone hanging out without me?- Mindy Kaling- 7
30. Blindness Jose Saramago- 8
31. A visit from the Goon Squad- Jennifer Egan- 6
32. & Sons David Gilbert- 7 (my most torn on a rating. Some of it is brilliant)
33. This is how you lose her Junot Diaz- 8
34. Big Magic Elizabeth Gilbert- 7
35. Admission Jean Hanff Korelitz- 6
36. Someday, Someday, Maybe- Lauren Graham- 7.5
37. Lexicon Max Barry- 7
38. The Devil in Silver- Victor Lavalle- 4
39. Diary Chuck Palahniuk- 5 (8 for the first 2/3, 3 for the last 1/3)
40. The Average American Marriage- Chad Kultgen- 6.5 (If I had known it was a sequel, I would have read the first one first.)
41. Me & Earl & the dying girl- Jesse Andrews- 5


I admit, the end of my reading year was not so great. In 2016 I am starting grad school in literature, so not sure how much outside reading I will be doing. I am thinking of tackling longer books in 2016. Books that I can read little bit at a time. Or maybe I will just re-read Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and call it a year.

Reflecting on the year that was

It is impossible to reflect on this past year without smiling. I mean, I got freaking married. In my early twenties I convinced myself that was just something not in the cards for me. In my mid-twenties when I went back to school, I had my entire life planned out and it did not involve marriage. Of course, mid-twenties Kyle had not met the weird, hilarious, socially awkward, intelligent, independent, beautiful Martina Sauceda. It would have been gross if he had, because Martina would have been a teenager. This is not a relationship recap or anything, but I have to write a little bit about the wedding, and the first five months of marriage. First of all, wedding are insane. I mean we kinda, sorta, maybe, understand that. We see movies. We hear people talk about them. We attend them. Until you are having one, though, you really have no idea. Luckily, we are surrounded by the best people. As overwhelming as it all should have been, we both knew that even if it was not perfect, we were still marrying each other surrounded by those best people. The rest was icing. It turned out the icing was BOMB. After I proposed and we sat down to plan the wedding, our biggest goal was to make sure our guests had fun. We were going to have fun regardless, because we were marrying each other. The music, the food, and the booze had to be on point. I believe we succeeded. The photos show a ton of people having a blast. It was the beautiful culmination of the first four years of the relationship Martina and I have shared.

Mexico was the perfect place for us to start the next chapter. The honeymoon suite, with a private balcony overlooking the gorgeous ocean, provided a flawless view to wake up to every day we were there. Even the weather agreed with us, providing sun during the day, then sexy storms at nightfall. I got burned because I refuse to listen to Martina. We drank a lot. Lounged even more. Ate two fancy dinners. Celebrated my birthday, and her getting a new job. I read a book on the way, a book while in Mexico, and a book on the way back. She finished the novel I wrote, and we watched Big Hero 6 together on the plane home. Magic is real, folks.

Beyond wedding/honeymoon parties, 2015 was spectacular for the first eight months, then less so at the end of the year. Health wise, I hovered around the same weight all year, give or take ten pounds. I set a goal to avoid candy and chips, and this was the first year I did not succeed in giving up a food for the year. The first seven months were pretty solid. The wedding threw everything off though because we decided to have a Candy Bar. The internet told us to have half a pound of candy per guest, which gave us roughly fifty pounds of candy. What the internet does not say is that when MOST PEOPLE DO NOT EAT THE CANDY, YOU TAKE THE CANDY HOME! We took home a solid thirty pounds of candy. There is still taffy in the coat closet. Candy was consumed in mass quantities from August until now. Chips are a slippery slope, because we decided chips and salsa were okay, mostly because when we do tequila nights, we like chips and salsa. But I did not do a good job of sticking to that. It turns out that chips are a serious weakness for me. I learned that this year.

I read forty-one books (a detailed post about this will happen Tuesday). my goal was twenty-six. Nailed it.

I did not work out nearly as regularly as I wanted. I have beaten myself up pretty good over it too. If I have learned one thing about myself since I began this journey four years ago, it is that I do not cut myself any slack. We are all our own worst critics, and I get that, but this some next level stuff. The thoughts that run through my mind as I decide to sleep an extra forty-five minutes in the morning is abuse. I am still looking for a way out of that fog. The clarity will come. I will fight my way through it. Hell, I have lost nearly one hundred pounds in four years. I can figure this out, and I will. The first part of that is cutting myself some slack. Understanding that I need to start slowly. My brain is ready to run mile after mile, and my body is ready to run...nowhere. It hates me when I even attempt to run. Like everything else, it is a work in progress. Oh! I did a 5K in January. My goal for 2016 is to get myself ready to run one in January of 2017.

2015 also saw my first class of juniors graduate high school. There is no optimism like newly graduated high school kids. I miss them tremendously. It was fun to be at graduation and see all of their smiling faces. We are all expected to graduate so maybe to an adult it does not seem like a huge deal, but I see what these kids go through every day. I know how hard it is. I know which ones lost parents, or which one has to work to keep the lights on because mom and dad are addicts. I see these things. I also started teaching AP Literature which had been a dream of mine since I decided to go into teaching. It has been a blessing. They give me a renewed sense of love for analyzing literature and this is my second time having almost all of them (five out of twenty-eight are new to me), so I am seeing them grow and blossom as writers and critical thinkers. Without fail, one of them will see something in a book or a poem that I have never seen. They have the ability to change my perspective weekly. It has been a life saver this year as I have also hit my first bad class. The rest of my English classes have been challenging to say the least, but I am figuring it out. Our Critical Theory Movie unit went well, and I start the year with Gatsby, so it will not be all bad.

In 2015 I saw love everywhere. Besides my own wedding, I got to see my best friend (Erik) get married, which was awesome. I was touched to be invited to see it happen. At eleven years together, they found a way to keep it fresh by getting married. Then a few short months later, Erik hosted a killer party to celebrate hiswedding, and he of course, planned an epic bachelor party for me. A month or so before I got married, I got to attend the wedding of a long-time friend. It was a beautiful wedding, even if the weather was disagreeable. I mean it had a Smores bar. Do you really need anything else? Toward the end of the year, I attended my last wedding of the year, seeing someone I have loved for fifteen years get married in a gorgeous ceremony. Another friend got married, one of my best friends got engaged. A few other people I know got engaged, setting up a fun wedding year in 2016.

2012 was the best year ever, until 2013, which was the best year ever, until 2014, which was the best year ever, until 2015. 2016 has big shoes to fill, but I believe it can be the best year ever.

Looking forward to 2016

Next week, I will reflect back on the year that was, and what a year it was! Today, though, I want to focus on the future. In years past, having a plan saved me. Reminding myself of what I am chasing, and how I am going to chase it, is important. Every year I tell my students that having a dream is great, but having a goal, a plan, and the desire to work for it, is better. Dreams are intangible, hazy, unfocused. For decades I dreamed of writing a novel. Then, one year, I sat down with a plan to write one. Guess what? I wrote one. I am currently in the fourth, and hopefully, last draft of it before sending it to agents to pursue this goal of being a published fiction writer. It all started with a goal. 2016 will further the pursuit of personal betterment, in all areas of my life. Here are my 2016 goals:

1. Lose twenty-five pounds. Putting it out in the world is scary. Weight loss has always been a goal. Specific weight loss is rarely an achieved goal. I've always avoided putting a number to it because if I say I am going to lose twenty-five pounds, and I end up losing twenty, then I have failed. It makes that twenty pound weight loss seem unsuccessful. Well, in the last four years, I have lost nearly one hundred pounds, but over eighty of that was in the first two. The last two years have been filled with weight loss, then plateaus, then weight gain. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. It is time to admit to myself that I need to hunker down and get a grip. I will be thirty-six in 2016. In the next few years, I am hopefully going to be a father, and I want to be an active father. I want any kids I have to grow up loving sports, or adventure because I was able to be out there with them. How am I going to lose twenty-five pounds? Hard work. It it time to get back into working out and staying with it. If it means going to sleep early, so I can get up early, I will do it. I have to make the time again. 2016 figures to be a busy year, with teaching, Grad School, novel writing. That is no excuse. I want to start at four days of intense work outs, two days of light cardio, and Sunday rest. I am still looking into what exactly I will be doing.

2. Eat better. This ties to the first one. The last half of 2015 has not been good in terms of food. I got lazy. I got tired. It ends now. I am going to go through 2016 without eating any doughnuts. That is right. 2016 is doughnut free! I also need to go back to no fast food at all. It was such a great year two years ago when I was not eating fast food. 2015 has been less kind. I know I can do it. I want to incorporate more vegetables into my diet. The last few years have taught me that I enjoy cauliflower, parsnips, squashes, etc. It is time to see what else is out there. It will require meal prep, because like I said, 2016 will be busy. It will be easy to turn my car into a trash compacter for fast food bags and boxes.

3. Drink less alcohol. That is a weird thing to type. Until six years ago, I never drank. This school year has been the worst, and it has led to lots of weekend nights with booze. Cutting out booze will, of course, help with the first goal, but it will also help me stay focused and active. if I am not drinking alcohol on a Friday night, I can be a productive member of society, instead of watching Netflix for hours.

4. Write weekly. The only way to get better is to practice. The last four months of 2015 have been amazing in terms of my productivity in writing. I need to push that into the new year, and go even bigger. Writing has helped me process so many of the issues in my own life, but it has also given me an outlet for all the weird stories I think of in my head. Being able to craft stories, has made me happier, and mentally healthier. I would like to get myself to a place where I can do the following two things: Tell people I am a writer in person. Feel comfortable talking about writing with non-writers without feeling like a pretentious douchebag. I love writing, but I feel weird admitting that to people. The big goal is to write the first draft of my new baseball novel.

5. Get out of the house more. I am a home body. Martina cannot get my out of the house unless it is of great importance to her. I am not a guy who enjoys going out. I would like to change that. I am sure there are nice things in the world, and I am probably missing out on some cool people. My house is safe. It is warm. It is quiet. I like safe, warm and quiet. But, as a writer, I should be experiencing things, listening to people who have experienced things, listening to how people talk, etc. This might be the toughest thing on the list. I want to be more active in the world, less active online.

6. Experience a poem every day. Whether it is reading a poem, listening to one, watching someone perform one, or writing one. My poetry game needs tightening. 365 days of poetry should help in that department.

7. Focus much less energy on the things I do not like. I want to fill my life with the things I like. Time to stop wasting energy on Macklemore, fan fiction, Cosplay, Big Brother, etc. I am aiming to make my personal Twitter a place I go to write nice things, not angry things. Every so often I get this idea that I could be a super optimistic person who strives to enrich the lives of everyone who wants it, then I think about how easy it is to make fun of something, and how hard it is to remain upbeat, then I get sad and dismissive. in 2016, I aim to put a stop to that.

8. Make meaningful, healthy friendships. Time to do some cleansing of people who do not add anything positive to my life, and letting people in who would like to add something positive to my life. This ties to number 5 really. A few of the people I hold very dear to me, think I am stopping myself from making new friends. I worry there is truth to their words. I never thought I still wouldn't have this shit figured out by thirty-five years old.


There you have, eight goals for self-improvement in 2016. What about you, readers? How are you planning to be even happier in the new year?

10 things I am doing in the pursuit of happiness

Hello there dear readers. Today is a rough day. If I can be perfectly honest with you, every day is a rough day this semester. I have a tough group of students this year. Not tough, as in defiant, or aggressive, or anything like that. They just do not work. Imagine putting everything you have into every single day and get met with blank stares and apathy of the likes you have never previously seen. That is what I do Monday-Friday from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon. It is taxing. I refuse to give up on the kids, so every few weeks I have try something completely new. Plans are tossed aside with reckless abandon in favor of developing all new lessons, activities, lesson delivery methods, etc. I have created two brand new units in the last five weeks. And know that next semester I am going to do it all over again. The hard part is, I have no idea what these students know. They do not produce enough work to even know what I need to teach. It is possible many of them are innately good writers, but since they are taking zeroes on writing assignments I cannot even assess them. There are weeks when I question why I am in the teaching profession, something that never really happened in the last few years. Until November, I felt all of that BLEH seeping into other aspects of my life. I was not sleeping well, food did not even taste as good. I became even more of a shut-in than I already am, felt myself snapping in my every day life, and felt like my creative pursuits were failing. I was at a complete loss of personal confidence. Chocolate became my calming force. I felt more unhealthy than I have in four years, and what was worse, was that I felt totally comfortable in it. I was quite content to slide back into the life I was living six years ago because it was easier.

What follows are some of the things I have been doing to shake myself out this. They do not work every day, but in the last month and a half I have felt much better. I am starting to feel more like myself.

1. Cutting myself some slack. This is an on-going battle for me. I want to be the best at everything. When nearly half of your students are failing or near failing, it is tough. You want to spend all day every day trying to fix things are not broken. At some point I had to realize that school life was going to be school life, and home life would be home life. What that means is, I take little home this year. In fact, AP Literature is the only class I bring home anymore. The rest of it can wait. I need to take time for myself. Let myself breathe. My friend Megan, who is also my writing coach/task master, has always, many times through email, reminded me to cut myself some slack when it comes to writing too. If I cannot get as much written as I want, that is okay. I feel like I spend a majority of my day reminding myself that it is okay. It is okay if I give myself a break, and spend hours reading in bed when there are other things I should be doing.

2. Keeping my classroom clean and my desk organized. I prefer my world to be organized. I like structure. My classroom is full of disorganized teenagers who cannot keep track of their own brains. It can become a chaotic hurricane if I let it. I try not to let it. The more organized and clean my room and desk, the more calm I am. I try not to leave school with a mess on my desk because when I get to school in the morning, it starts me off on a bad note. It is similar to the idea of not going to bed with dirty dishes in the sink. If I can start my day in a good mood, I can typically get through the day feeling better.

3. Cutting down on idle time. I have been trying, and mostly succeeding, in cutting down on time where I am sitting around doing nothing. My current unit at school is a film unit, so there is a ton of passive time during movie watching. Instead of sitting around watching the same movie all day, or sitting around looking at nonsense on the internet, I am writing letters of recommendation, doing research for grants, grading papers in a timely fashion, researching units, and starting to look at stuff for my grad program. At home, I cut down dramatically on the number of television shows I am watching and I do not binge watch anything anymore. Sunday for the Redzone channel in the only time I sit in front of the television for multiple hours.

4. Getting moving. This feels self explanatory, but this is a blog, so I am going to explain it anyway. I spend most of my day standing in front of a class, or circulating the small classroom area. That stagnancy can be a pain. At the moment, I am finding that I am too tired to get myself up early enough to work out on a daily basis, so I am making sure that during every break, lunch, or prep period I have, that I leave my classroom, and walk around a bit. My classroom is not the best place to be stuck all day. It is small, dingy, with spray-painted over windows, closed off, and sad. It brings people down compared to what I was working with last year. This walking around not only gets me out of that classroom, it gets me talking to other people and keeps the blood flowing. Even a five minute walk around a few buildings leaves me invigorated.

5. Talking. I am talking to my friends more. I am communicating with the world more. I am still pretty much a shut-in unless Martina makes me go somewhere with her, but I am keeping in touch with important people more. Yesterday I spent a lovely ninety or so minutes with one of my best friends. Monday, Martina and I went out to dinner and to a movie. On campus I trying to talk to other teachers more. It is not natural for me. I am not social by nature. I am content to sit in my own bubble. I like my bubble, but I find, that when my bubble is not the happiest place, that talking to those I love, helps me fill my bubble back up with positive air.

6. Reading and writing. Man, do I love words. I have filled my time with words. I am reading them, writing them, consuming them as often as possible. But more than that, I am talking about reading and writing. I am sharing my books with my students when they ask. We discuss books at length AP Literature. Megan and I trades texts about our writing projects, and I am feeling less self-conscious about calling myself a writer. I am talking to people more about what I am writing, how I write, why I write. I am proud of how much I read and I am proud of what I have written. I will never say I am a great writer, but I love doing it. I am getting more comfortable with the idea of people reading my writing, as personal as much of it is. That is another thing, I am trying to be fearless in my writing. I want to put myself into the world, and the only way to accomplish that is to be truthful. No matter what I do, I want it to be full of me.

7. Loving unabashedly. I am trying to express the love I feel for people on a more regular basis. This has always been easy with Martina, as we tell each other "I love you" multiple times a day, but I am trying to be more free with the love I feel for my non-romantic life partners. I find that when you love without limits, and express that love without fear, those people often love you back without limits, and make you feel safe. Feeling safe allows me to take risks because I know that those people will be there to catch me should my risk taking hurt me. Expressing feelings has never been something at which I excel. I prefer the written word for that, but in the last month or so, I am seeing a difference.

8. Living for myself. If anyone ever called me selfish, I would consider it the absolute worst thing. I have never done anything specifically for myself. I am known the world over for putting other people first, even at my own detriment. It is probably my worst quality, something with which I am still struggling, but I am getting better at living for me. If I want to write for a day, I do not put it off if someone else wants something. I applied for grad school knowing that it would limit my time in every other aspect in my life, but I wanted it. I wanted it for me, and only for me. It is weird when you start living for yourself for the first time.

9. Focusing less on things I do not like. This is actually a super difficult one for me, and I fail at it as often as I succeed, but I keep pushing myself to focus on talking about the things I like, and ignoring the things I do not like. On Facebook I desperately try to talk about the things in my day that are good or funny. On Twitter, I am less successful. I do tend to talk about the things that bother me, instead of the things that lift me up, or that I like. Coming out of the final Hunger Games movie, I felt disappointed, but I told myself to focus on the aspects of it that I liked, so while I am able to critique the film for its shortcomings, I try to spend more time thinking about the aspects of it I did like. I will always be a critical person, but I can acknowledge the weaknesses without it taking me over.

10. Putting down my phone. I have to admit, this is the one with which I struggle the most. However, I recognize I feel better when I am more present in moments. The addiction to that device is real, and it is a problem. One of my goals for 2016, which I will lay out in this blog, is to spend less time attached to devices, and spend less time on social media. I have taken great pains to try to rid myself of the people who make social media less fun, but I know, deep down, that I need to stop spending so much time attached to the digital world. When I let myself get lost in the world, life is better. Last night I picked up a book at around 7:35, and finished it without ever checking my phone, checking the time, etc. It was awesome. I need more of that in my life.


There you have it. There are other things I need to add to this list, specifically going back to cooking more/eating more healthy food, and of course, sleeping better, but they will come. Little things make a b ig difference, and many of these changes allow the slightest shift in my own perception of the world, which makes a tremendous difference. What are some things you do in the pursuit of happiness?

My decision to return to school

After I finally graduated from Sac State in 2009, only 11 years after high school graduation, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a high school English teacher. My undergrad work was geared directly to that end. When the time came to apply to a Teaching Credential program, I only applied to one school. It was Sac State. However, at that time, I also applied to San Francisco State, Cal State Fullerton, and Sonoma State, for various Master's programs. I thought of myself as a long shot for all of them except the Teaching Credential. It turned out that I got accepted into every single program for which I applied. The decision to choose the Credential program was, at the time, a no-brainer. I needed something that I knew would generate income, and, more importantly, it was what I set out to do originally.

Cut to 2012. I am a credentialed teacher with no job. I am back working at movie theaters, the same job I had in high school, and college. I see the dream slowly slipping away. I get an interview to be a long term sub, I get offered the job, then get it yanked away from me. I turn my attention back to the idea of a Master's program. Nothing better than going back to school when you want to run away from reality.

Cut to July 31st of 2013. I am a credentialed teacher with no job. In June of that summer I interviewed for a teaching job in Aptos. Martina and I talk about the possibility of living apart for a year or so. I get offered the job in Aptos, only to see it yanked away less than 24 hours later. I wake up on July 31st determined to stop looking for high school jobs and begin looking at Graduate programs. As soon as I fire up my laptop to begin my search, I get a call from a principal of a school where I interviewed in early June. He tells me the job came down to me and one other person, and the other person seemed a better fit for that job, but that another English job opened up, and they wanted to talk to me about it before opening up the search again. A few days later, I was offered the job, and a full week later I had my first signed teaching contract.

As Martina and I grew as a couple, and talked about what we ultimately wanted from our lives, both independently and as a couple, there was this idea gnawing at the back of my brain. I had been deferring this particular dream since I gained acceptance into every Master's program to which I applied in 2010. It turns out, that as much as I love teaching high school, and I do love it. I want more. I want to teach literature. I also want more freedom to pursue creative avenues. More importantly though, I crave more learning in a formal environment. I always loved school, especially specialized programs full of people like me, who want to learn the same things.

As we thought about the next steps for us, the reality of a relocation began to materialize. Martina also has specific things she wants to do, and those specific things may take us to New York, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, or the Bay Area. I searched for Master's programs in all of those cities and the deferred dream was pushing itself to the front of my brain. It was getting impossible to ignore. Ultimately Martina decided to put off her next step for a another year, which has allowed us to know that for one more school year, we will be staying in the Sacramento area.

With that knowledge, I figured my plans for my further education would be put on hold as well. Until I got an email letting me know that Sac State's deadline for spring 2016 admissions was approaching. I was unaware they were doing spring admissions and I sprung into action, getting my application in the day of the deadline, thanks to a friend loaning me some money for the application. I did not have high expectations for getting in because the application was rushed, and the second set of transcripts I had to send in would arrive after the deadline. I was not checking my email daily hoping for admission.

When I got my acceptance I realized: This Is Happening. I am going to be a full-time teacher and a full-time Grad student in Literature. I am going to be reading multiple books a week while teaching a full load. The next step is here. When I was 16 I never would have thought my life would still be in such a transitional period in my mid-thirties. Of course, in the search for happiness, transitional periods are the only constant.

I register for classes in four days, and it looks like I will be taking a Minority Voices in Literature from the smartest professor I ever had in my undergrad, and 19th Century Sex and Literature from my all-time favorite professor, and then a course centered around the works of Henry James, an author about whom I am totally unfamiliar. Life is going to get a different variety of exciting!

My family and I at my Sac State graduation

Allow me to reintroduce myself

Hello blogosphere! Did you miss me? I missed you. I missed you something fierce. I tried to quit. I succeeded for a while, but I have to admit, I was longing for you. So I'm back, with a twist. Where as this blog did, at one time, serve one true function, to write about my health journey, it is now, oh so much more. I will blog about my health journey, which has been renewed for the 100th time. I am still hovering around 100 lbs lost in the last 5 years, and I still want another 100 lbs of weight loss, possibly more. At the moment I am more concerned with feeling better, than I am with weight loss.

Beyond my healthy journey I am going to blog about my career (teacher), I will probably blog about going back to school at 35 years old to chase a Master's in English Lit. I will also use this blog to dive into things I like, whether it be books, movies, television, HAMILTON, or some toher aspect of popular culture that catches my attention. I may, on occasion delve into politics or current events, but I tend to tread lightly. I have transformed this into a lifestyle blog.

I am not more skilled at the aspects of blogging that do not involve the written word. My format is not unique, I will not have exciting pictures, and I will be pretty much GIF free. No, the written word is the weapon I yield, and I enjoy yielding it.

The goal is to update twice a week. I may start with more, and I imagine during Christmas break, I will have more time. It may take me a bit to get my blogging legs under me, as I have been doing all fiction writing lately. Who knows, maybe I will feature excerpts from original works-in-progress.

For any new readers, I encourage you to go back and look at what this blog was in its former life. There are a lot of posts about the struggles of weight loss, and the struggle for sustained happiness. Those posts will still be here. My quest for sustained happiness drives pretty much everything I do. Happiness is not tangible so the chase of that abstraction keeps me moving on a daily basis.

So for now, I just want to say, welcome. I hope you'll join me again, or join me for the first time. I am excited to be back, I hope you are excited to have me back.

Sugar we're goin' down swingin'

At the start of this year, I accomplished a major goal; I ran a 5K. Three years ago I wrote “Do a 5K” on my list of yearly goals. I did not do it. So I put it on my list of yearly goals two years ago, last year and of course, this year. It finally happened and the feeling of completing it was amazing. The run sucked. It flat out sucked. Why anyone would choose to do their first 5K in the city of San Francisco with all of its stupid hills, is beyond me. I guess, that is who I am. I go big, and then I go home and weep for hours.

A week after my 5K, I weighed myself and I was down 90 pounds from when I started this journey four years ago. Four years ago seems like a lifetime ago at this point. When I started this journey, I was never honest with anyone about just how much I weighed. I think that was always part of the problem for me. I was insecure about my weight loss because I always would think people would see me and think I should be a lot thinner than I really am after losing 90 pounds. Instead of being thrilled about the weight loss, I worried about what other people would think, which is weird for me. It started to bog me down, in a major way.

In the midst of that mental and emotional turmoil, I stopped losing weight. That in and of itself, is not the biggest deal in the world. However, I also felt like I stopped trying because I had hit a plateau. Getting up at 4:15 in the morning to work out was starting to have an adverse affect on my teaching day, and on my personal life, as I would have to be in bed before 8:30 at night. Yet, I was not eating enough to have the energy to work out after I got home from work either. It led to an incredibly awful February. I am pretty sure I was no fun to be around. I needed something to jolt my system.

This led to the best/worst idea ever.

In December of last year Martina embarked on a 21 Day Sugar Detox. Here is the link to the Detox:
Martina had great success with the Detox (which is unsurprising because my fiancée is a BOSS.) I sort of, kind of, in a way, joined her, but not really. I ate all of the delicious food she cooked, and I cooked some of the delicious food, but outside of the house, I was still consuming my regular amount of sugar.

Martina reported that she felt better, slept better lost some weight and learned things about her body. Well, I wanted to feel better, sleep better, lose weight and learn things about my body, so I posed the question to her about me undertaking the detox. Because Martina believes in me for reasons passing understanding, she was totally enthusiastic about it. She was going to join me, and our friend Megan was going to do it for the first time as well. I have to say, I am fairly certain I never would have made it through this if I was doing it alone. Having Megan around to share in my irrational rage, was comforting in every way.

What follows is a recap of the detox:

First off, I made it. I went 21 days without the sugars/sweeteners to which I am so accustomed. I lost 9 pounds in 21 days, and for the most part, felt better, slept better and learned a ton about myself.

The hardest part of the detox was not what I thought it would be. I thought that I would have an unbearable time not eating ice cream, or fruit, or drinking a sweetened iced tea from Starbucks. But that was not the case. The hardest part of the detox was that I had to have a plan for every meal of every day. SUGAR IS IN EVERYTHING! If you want to go out to eat, you need to know the menu ahead of time, and you need to know about food. I did not know about food. Embarking on a 21 Day Sugar Detox requires precise planning of meals. Some days I was in the kitchen for three or four hours cooking two different meals. Then I would have to clean the dishes to get prepared for the next meal. Most meals required way more prep work than I was accustomed to. If I was tired after a long day of teaching, I could not simply order pizza and call it a day.

Over the years I have eliminated soda, energy drinks, and fast food from my diet. There was a time when I was eating 2 or 3 meals a day from fast food, and consuming gallons of soda a week, and downing two energy drinks before 9 am. I have will power. However, I also have a job that requires an insane amount of energy, and I have limited amounts of time to put food in my system during the day, and most snack foods go against the detox, so I could not have an apple, or pretzels to munch on while I taught. I had to have small meal portions during the small breaks of my day. I was microwaving leftovers during the passing period, and eating a few bites while I took roll and my students were doing their bell work. Leftovers are essential. Make enough for two or even three meals.

You find ways to manage. We had a birthday party for Martina during the detox, and I avoided all of the usual snack foods. I cooked chicken wings for the party, and made sweet potato fries. Martina made buffalo chicken egg muffins for on-the-go breakfasts. I ate more things with carrots in them than I ever had in my entire life. The food was good. The detox was hard, but all of the elements of the detox were tasty.

I learned that foods I figured would be safe, were not. I learned to read labels on everything, and I learned that there are roughly 5,000 words that mean sugar. I learned to pay better attention to what I was putting in my body. It is so unbelievably simple. Really it is. The entire detox was simple. Except, it was also hard because of what my body is used to me putting in it. Before the detox I was eating healthier than I ever had in my lifetime. Still, I put tons of crap in my body because I like the ease of it, and I crave the sweetness. I crave sweetness after every single meal. Though, I am in month four of not eating candy, and only miss it when I think about Jelly Belly jelly beans. So, I know that I can best my cravings. The ultimate goal of the sugar detox was to tweak my taste buds and maybe, just maybe curb some of those cravings.

This left me with conflict. I wanted it to work. Seriously, I did. Except, I totally did not want it to work. I want to crave ice cream because I have an emotional reaction to ice cream (read ALL FOOD). I am an emotional eater, and have been for as long as I can remember. When something great happens, I want to eat the foods of my people (my people= fat people). When I have a stressful day, my immediate reaction is to eat nachos, or pizza, or ice cream to calm those emotions down. All of the food of my people is excluded in the detox. I had to learn how to deal with emotional situations without the crutch of food.

This was, by far, the most revealing aspect of the detox. It is not like I did not know that I am an emotional eater, but it revealed to me, how often I went to those foods. It was not even only in times of extreme emotions. If I had a bad part of a day, I thought about ice cream. I associate any emotional up or down with food. I talk about food tons. I think about food all of the time. These issues were always there. The detox flushed them to the forefront of my mind. I was forced to confront why I am an emotional eater. I am still wrestling with the why. Who knows if I will ever figure it out, but the fact that I am able to have that look inside myself is helpful. By the way, emotional toxins are even worse than actual toxins. My sugar detox was also a nice emotional toxin cleanse.

Yesterday I went to Starbucks for my usual sweetened black iced tea, and opted to have half the pumps of sweetener that I usually get. It was enough. Yesterday my baker student brought me a cupcake to eat after lunch. I had to eat half of it later because it was slightly too sweet. Last night I got frozen yogurt and I got the tiniest bit I have ever had, and got the least amount of toppings I have ever put on it, and it was enough. My desire for sweet things has not deteriorated at all, but I need less of it to have that craving quenched.

I am not sure this is going to jump start my system back to losing weight, but it definitely has got me thinking about trying to eat even cleaner than I was before. It also reminded me how much I enjoy cooking. I get tired of cooking the same things over and over, and the detox got me out of that rut. Martina has two books of recipes full of healthier foods and it time I stop talking about it and start being about it.

I have no idea if I will ever meet my goal weight. I have no idea what that goal weight will look like, so who know if that is even the right goal weight for me. I do know that the journey has been monumental in helping me figure out who the hell I am. This journey, while far from over, is already the most important thing I have done in my life. I wish I did not need it. Seriously, I wish that this was not something I had to undertake, but I got myself into this, and it is up to me to get myself out of it.

Over the last 4 years I have accomplished so many things I never would have thought possible. I can add this 21 Day Sugar Detox to that list. I am proud that I did it. I am proud that I found a way through 21 days without the things I have grown to love, and feel like I needed. Of course, I never loved those things, I thought I did. The ultimate goal to remember that I do not love ice cream, I feel like I need it. It is something from which I need to break free. I am getting there. It would be much easier if Phish Food did not exist.