Prajantr, Thoughts and Wanderings

Still working on the slimming and toning to a healthier and better feeling me.  I’ve reduced my P90X workouts to about 2 times a week, for strength training and cardio rather than following the actual program.  Three other days a week I’ve been going to mixed martial arts class – for fun and for stress relief.

I’ve been holding pretty steady at my current weight for a few weeks but I hope to break the plateau again and start losing some more.

With the end of summer coming into sight I’ve had to admit some of my clothes just don’t fit anymore. (This is kind of cool. LOL) So I’ve been going through my drawers one at a time and ditching anything that hangs all loose and baggy with no hope for a decent fit with my new body shape. I’m realizing that most of these garments are several years old anyway and the only stuff that fits at all is even older.  I didn’t do much in the way of clothes shopping in the last couple of years and what I did buy was only for work!

Yesterday, Hel met up with me for lunch and a walk through the mall. With her coaxing and a pack of helpful store clerks, I ended up getting quite a few fashionable upgrades to my wardrobe. Not something I plan to do often, mind you, because that could be seriously dangerous to my budget. But this one time, it was worth it.

There’s something therapeutic about ditching the old, baggy clothes. It’s more than cleaning out your clothes drawers. A few lingering emotional cobwebs go with them.

Is love enough?

Sometimes it isn’t. Actually, for me, it’s never been enough for happily ever after.

You can fall in love with more than one person in your life. If life gets really interesting, you might fall in love with more than one person at the same time and then you have to make choices.

Me? Once I love, I never stop. It doesn’t just fade away or burn out. Every love is different, with a different taste and texture and feel to it. But what remains the same is that I will feel it always. I’ll hold love in my heart forever. And I’ve made choices.

When a lost love touches my life again, I remember. I love. Have no doubt of that. And right now, I’m free to pursue love if I choose. I haven’t chosen yet.

But there is always the truth remaining that sometimes love isn’t enough for a happily ever after. Just my love hasn’t ever been enough.

And I deserve a happily ever after.

Sat down to a tarot reading this past weekend. It wasn’t a surprise when the 8 of Swords came up.

Overall, the reading was interesting and applicable to both the professional and personal aspects of my life. In either case, it was obvious that I came from some tough places and that things would not be coming easy to me in the future, but that I would learn from it. It was also the interpretation of the reading that I should follow the more impulsive hunches, follow my gut. I’ve never been one to put a lot of stock in such things, but it was interesting all the same.

My friend, Julie, was with me for the reading and she felt that from a personal aspect, I really needed to open up and learn to date, just for the sake of dating. I never dated before meeting my ex. It’s not about learning how to date again, now that I’m single, it’s about learning how to date at all.

Every gesture, every nuance of affection means something to me. Probably means more to me than most people. A hug, a caress, holding hands, a kiss…sleeping with someone. Those are things I just can’t do without being attached, being emotionally invested. I can’t take a guy for a tumble just for the fun of it – it’s just not in me. When I get that close, I’ve given a piece of my heart and risk being badly hurt. I fall in love and fall hard.

I look at the prospect of dating and it frightens me. Just the thought of opening up and being hurt over and over again in the inevitable cycle of meeting and dating, it’s exhausting and terrifying.

In order to learn to protect myself from that, I need to develop a detachment. I can’t care as much, can’t give as much, can’t leave myself as open. But that’s never been me. So my other option is to risk dating, and a broken heart, every single time.

How strong is a person that risks dying every time they try to live? The 8 of Swords, bound by the pain of my past and blinded to the way into my future.

It’s not to say I won’t ever, I’m just not ready yet.

Do you really think about promises when you make them?

I do.

Yakosuku. Promise.

A promise means something to me, probably more than some might think. Breaking a promise, no matter how small, is a break of trust and it tells me something about you.

Then again, there are a lot of broken promises in my past and I kept waiting, hoping he’d keep one someday.  So in a way, I’m a glutton for punishment. Even with the break of trust, I keep hoping, believing the best in people.

My friendship is a promise, from me to you. And it carries with it, more meaning than most might think. My hope is that the promise will support the best in you and let the best in me shine.

It’s an interesting thing when you have no more ties to where you live. I grew up on the East coast, starting in NY and then becoming a Jersey girl. Mostly I stayed because of family, and because there was a comfortable concentration of companies suitable to my career.

Now? My mother lives in Thailand most of the year. My father and his wife plan to retire in a few years and do the same. My little sister lives in Cambridge but may move to California. My little brother is military, currently stationed in Texas but could move anytime in the course of his military career. Family doesn’t keep me in Jersey.

Friends? Most of my friends are scattered up and down the east coast from NY to DC and even farther south. I’ve got some very close friends in Michigan and several in California. What with the internet – keeping in touch with friends doesn’t require as much face to face time as you’d think and I’ve become closer to some of my far away friends than I have to friends that live 10 minutes away.

Career? I love my job and I’m good at it. I plan to continue to develop so that I grow with my job. Luckily, it’s been flexible and in fact, my company has mentioned that it might be an advantage to have me stationed on the West coast. There are pros and cons to be considered of course, both with the current company in mind and future positions outside the company. I’m pretty young, there are a lot more things to consider in my future career. But California does have a solid concentration of pharma companies to support my career. I’d say my chances at job security are about as solid on the West coast as the East coast.

What’s good for me? A massive change to environment would be good for me. There’s a lot of people from both my professional and my personal worlds that think the West coast would be a good environment for me, particularly San Francisco. I dunno – I need to get out there and get a feel for the city and surrounding areas. On the other hand, the East coast has a lot of opportunities and I could just hop out of state.

There’s complications of course – I’d have to sell my house (not as easy a task as some might think) and I’d have to figure out how the dogs would adapt to much smaller living space. No way could I own as much land on the West coast, it just doesn’t exist. Darren-kitty would do fine, he’s moved so many times that it’s a non-issue. I just won’t let him help me drive there.

Bottom line, though, is the basic decision: Stay here or go someplace else?

I’m not in a rush to decide, but the question is definitely something I’m keeping in mind.

There are a couple of key things everyone seems to like to say to me:

• You’re strong. This will make you stronger
• Learn to be alone

I work from home every day that I’m not at a client site, alone. I spend hours after the work day ends, alone, and mostly just working some more because I don’t notice it got dark outside. I go to bed every night, alone.  I wander off to walk, alone, or with the dogs which are company but not quite.

The advice of “you should go out to eat alone” is good. I do that. I travel for business, alone. This means I eat out, alone. When I’m home, I cook in and eat alone because it’s less expensive than eating out.

Trust me, I’ve got alone covered. And, mostly, I’m ok with being alone. Going off to B&N for a change of scenery is still me being alone, working on stuff alone. And after a few rounds of thanking you for your advice and telling you about how I do take that advice, I would hope you’d know that I’d appreciated it.

I’m not that person sitting home alone waiting for people to check on me. I go about my day, my week, my life. I reach out when it’d be good to get out and do things. This would be because I believe in balance.

But when I say hey, what are you up to or let’s grab drinks…and everyone’s instantaneous reaction is “you should try going out alone”. (You know, because you think I really need to learn to be alone.) You don’t realize how close I am to being so ok with being alone that I don’t ask anymore.

Everyone all trying to teach the same lesson at the same time is like too many doses of medication. It’s like people trying to give me a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down when you all know I have hypoglycemia. Best intentions, right? You know if you give a hypoglycemic too much sugar, they crash and could slip into a coma. Whoops.

Trust me, alone is looking better and better all the time.

Ah yes, the kitteh stretch, otherwise known as the kitteh finger. Occasionally, I feel both are applicable to my mood when I’m working out – maybe I get a little aggressive.

It’s been about a month since I started P90X. I’ll admit, I’m not the poster child for this program for damned sure. There hasn’t been a week where I’ve done every single workout every single day. Nope, not a one. But seriously, there hasn’t been a week that I’ve done less than 3 workouts a week either and that’s a significant improvement on my previous workout performance. Above and beyond that, there hasn’t been a week where I wasn’t sore somewhere depending on what workouts I’m doing. So yeah, it’s still working.

How’s it going for me? Well, so far in the Lean version Month 1, there’s only been one workout that involved pull ups. I used the modified exercise with tension bands instead. The Ab Ripper still kicks my @$$. But the other workouts are doable.

In other progress, it’s a little odd but you have to know my dad to understand. He sees the world through very odd tinted glasses. So when Daddy tells me that he could really see the weight drop off in the first couple of weeks and that my butt looks smaller, he’s not being creepy. He’s telling me, in his awkward daddy way, that he’s seeing progress. W00t for progress!

My main feedback for this workout? Warm up, cool down and most definitely stretch properly. If you don’t, this workout is so dynamic that you’re highly likely to damage a shoulder or knee or twist an ankle. Um yea, and I don’t recommend doing the Yoga X workout with an 86lb German Shepherd Dog in the room. He knocked me over…a lot.