Commitmentphobia, or how I learned to stop being such a douchebag and start acting like an adult

It occurs to me that I haven't really been able to commit to anything lately.  I have been putting in a solid 50% to precisely everything I do.  Putting in just enough to get by, never more.
And it's finally occurred to me why.  I am absolutely fucking terrified of getting hurt again.  I don't want to get burned by a city, or a job, or friends, let alone a guy.  I haven't let that last one close enough to even consider being hurt, but even the other three, I've been holding at arm's length.  I'm Fox Mulder.  I trust no one.
And so if I'm not putting in my full effort, then I can on one hand be not that invested, and on the other, I can blame myself if things go awry.  It feels like I still have control of the situation.  If, on the other hand, I go full out and give it my all, then there's nothing I can do.  Nothing I could have done, if it goes wrong.  I usually hate that.  I usually prefer blaming someone else. 
I think it's that I'm afraid of failing again.  If I don't have real goals, I can't not achieve them.  If I come to this city already planning on leaving, then I don't have to feel weird if I'm not able to put down roots.
And yet, I'm still going through the motions.  Starting grad school.  Buying a place.  Making friends. 

I've been selfish and hedonistic ever since I moved to DC.  I have been utterly unlike myself.  I've been living only in the now, not because I've learned to enjoy the moment, but because I feel like I can't count on the future.

My life is my life.  I gave it up awhile back.  I still can't believe I spent almost four years just completely forgetting to have goals.  I can't believe I was so very willing to just piggyback my life on someone else's.

I can't believe it's been such a process, getting myself back.  And yet, I guess this is life.  It's not that scary if you don't let it be.

I'll say it again.  This is my life.  This is not a stopgap on the way to Seattle.  This is my life, and it can be whatever I want it to be.  I just have to want more out of it.

The detox before the food storm

The start of the holiday season is perhaps not the best time to insist on embarking on a food redo.  But instead of waiting til January 1 this time around, I'm trying to get ahead of the game so I can really hit the ground running in the New Year.
There's that, and the fact that last holiday season was a blur of too many emotions and too many evenings having Oreos and booze as dinner.  There is nothing about that I'd like to relive, which is why I'm trying to get healthier now.
That said, I've had kale as a dinner two nights already this week.  Making an active effort to stay in on weeknights so that I can eat and exercise like a normal person and feel like less of an obeast.

Day 2

The good:  rowed in the morning, stationary bike and a small amount of strength after work.  Had oatmeal for breakfast, salad for lunch.
The bad:  Blondies interspersed as snacks.
The ugly:  Ice cream after dinner, for no real reason.

I cannot have anything delicious in the house, apparently.  The quest here, truly, is to figure out self control and eating til I'm satisfied, not eating til there's nothing left.  Brunch tomorrow is not going to help this.

[He liked that I wasn't a girl who ordered salads.  Is that why I'm like this now?]

Back in action

So here I am.  I'm going cold turkey, or rather, warm chicken, as the thing on my plate may be.  Yes, after six months of hedonism and putting anything within reach in my mouth and working out lackadaisically,* I'm back on the bandwagon.

*This six months of hedonism still involved trying to eat vegetables, regularly taking a multivitamin, training for and running a marathon, and doing a cross training combo of rowing/barre/yoga/rock climbing when I got the chance, but somehow not doing regular two a day workouts makes me feel like a slacker.

So here I am.  Again.  When I "started" this "blog," I was a 24 year old girl living in southern California, trying to figure out how to stay skinny while sweating as little as humanly possible and still eating all the dairy and dessert I pleased.  And now, almost two years later, I'm a 26 year old young woman living in DC, trying to figure out how to lose the weird belly flab I've put on from the drinking and break a 5 hour marathon.  (Yes, I realize this is incredibly slow.)  If I were less lazy, I'd change the title of this blog to "Burgers & Beer & Running & Rowing."  The point, I guess, that I'm trying to make is that when I started this blog, I didn't consider fitness an important part of my life.  It was something I "needed" to do in order to look a certain way.  It's become something I need to do to stay happy and sane.

So fitness I've got.  Food, on the other hand...when I moved to DC, everyone I know was like, "Be careful, you're going to become an alcoholic" and I was all "A girl can dream."  It turns out they were right, and I'm pretty sure I've been to more happy hours in the past six months than the past 26 years of my life.  I am not complaining in the least.  But my pants certainly are.  I would like to return to my fighting weight, as it were.

The problem is this:  I associate losing weight with being unhappy.  Not that the former causes the latter, but that the former is a consolation prize for being the latter.  To me, unhappy=bored=nothing better to do than cook healthy and work out a lot.  Ever since I moved, I've been crazy busy and so very happy with my life, but I've also been using that as an excuse to overindulge.  What was meant to be a month of first marathon recovery and infinite going away parties back in March somehow snowballed into me pretending everything I know about healthy eating doesn't exist.  And while my clothes still fit (ish) and I don't look horrible, I don't want to let this slope get any more slippery.

Random

I just have this weird belief in the writing of things in public spaces now, I guess.

I just want things to work out however they're supposed to.  And I want to be okay with whatever that is.  Sooner than later.

In which I go on a small self indulgent rant

This is not on the topic of fitness or food and thus does not belong here, but I have nowhere else to put it, so here goes.

I got an e-mail from a friend this morning lamenting the fact that I was not on Gchat so she could regale me with tales of the poor life choices of this girl she knows.  She knew it had been my work Christmas party yesterday, and said something about 'I hope you're still sleeping off epic work party shenanigans.'  I had been still sleeping off something, but that something was deciding a wise dinner was a peppermint mocha-tini and an entire sleeve of Oreos.  Go ahead, judge me, it's cool.

Anyway, the e-mail kind of bothered me on multiple levels.  One, I'm kind of over knowing people just so I can judge them.  Like, if you find this person so vile, stop being friends with them.  If you need to watch someone else's failure so you can feel like a success, maybe that's something you need to work on.  Goodness knows I have suffered from this in the past, but I know it and am working on it.

Also (and this is going to contradict exactly what I just wrote), she was talking about how excited she was for her fiance's work Christmas party, and I realized that in my head, the idea of an 'epic work party' is kind of an oxymoron.  The word epic is getting wildly overused.  There is nothing epic about drinking too much in front of your coworkers and dancing inappropriately or making out with someone or whatever.  But for some people, this is their idea of amazing.  I've recently realized, it isn't mine.

I want an epic life.  For the past way too many years, I've been trying to build the kind of life that a lot of people have, and that I guess a lot of people want - a comfortable life, with nice food and good wine and decent friends and a man who isn't bad to me.  But I want more than that.  I want adventure, I want excitement, I want a life I love, not a life that's good enough.  I want to make a difference in the world, not just in my life.

I also want everyone at work to stop stealing the cookies I've been trying to sell to raise money for Team in Training.  Sigh.

I've got an obsession

One of the best pieces of advice I've ever given was to a friend who was trying to get over a boy.  "Just find an all consuming thing until you find an appropriate all consuming person," I told her.  She recently gave that same advice to me as I've been trying to get over a boy.

It's finally starting to kick in, the running as my thing.  All I care about is running and getting faster and going farther.  I'm considering staying on for the rest of the TnT season and doing a full marathon.  Physically I don't think it'll be a problem, but I am kind of worried about having to raise another two grand.  I've finally been making progress on my fundraising, which is awesome and has restored my faith in humanity, but I feel like I've kind of tapped everyone out so I'm not sure I could ask again so soon.  We'll see.

Anyway, yesterday's 5K was kind of a disaster and I did not run nearly as well as I hoped given that I've been training and eating right and sleeping.  I don't know if that means my 5k pace assessment was a fluke, or if I really just run better on no sleep and a lot of wine.  Sigh.