It has been an exhausting few months since I last checked in with the blog-o-sphere. I ramped up successfully to forty hour weeks, forty-five hour weeks, and then fifty plus hour weeks. Luckily the longest hours were sporadic and not maintained over several weeks. I moved house waaaay out of Seattle so I could save some money. I had forgotten how stressful moving can be but I've got things in a reasonable state and am enjoying the country neighborhood. I'm paying less than half of what I was for rent and utilities but in reality that just means I am able to go to healthcare appts more frequently without using the ol' credit card.
My focus of late has been pain management and stress reduction. I signed up for a mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) course that wrapped up this past week. The biggest thing I learned was that I am a team comprised of a brain and a body. Neither one can do without the other so we (I) need to suck it up and start playing nice. I can't ignore or hate what's going on and expect things to get better. I just put my name down for another course revolving around intuitive eating. My goal is to maintain a meditation practice and come to terms with my situation. Lots of work to do. Practicing compassion towards myself and not letting things overwhelm me are my goals. I experienced fleeting moments of both in the last course so here's hoping I can build on those skills to allow for more of those experiences.
I'm on a modified SIBO diet now which basically means veggies, berries, and trying to eat meat again. No grains at all so I'm gonna have to hit the squash hard for starch. I had a big pity party the other night and cried in front of my new housemates. Super fun. I'm instituting the monthly fasts again as a kickstart to the Stop Freaking Out plan. I haven't done the routine fasts since Autumn because I thought I could handle it and that it would give me more energy.
I started jogging a few weeks ago which is probably one of the worst things to pick given my uptick in joint pain in the last two years and how my knees have always responded to impact. The whole point was to get some cardio (Rule #1), sweat it out, and enjoy the little things (Rule #32) like the fresh air, birds chirping, sunshine, creek gurgles, etc. I was perhaps a little overzealous and went every day for a week. Swollen, achy, angry knees enter stage left. Other than that it was great! I dialed it back the next week and was about to get all excited again when the weather changed. So now I'm checking out saunas in the area because sweating in a wooden hut doesn't require functional knees. Oh, and to make matters more interesting, the latest and greatest blame for the new joint pain is mercury poisoning. I'm not taking any harsh chelating agents so it isn't as bad as it could be but still another eleven pills a day to add to my supplement mountain.
Mental happiness is key so I've been making gaming more of a priority. Board game nights are at least twice a month and I started playing D&D. It is difficult being the only person that has no idea what is going on but it's group story telling in a fantasy world - my preferred reading genre. It is so unlike my mental image of RPG and their players. Some guys from work wanted to start up a campaign so I joined in and couldn't be happier. One character was lost in our first session which was sad and hilarious. My favorite quote from the evening was, "He fought valiantly and died immediately." We wanted to meet weekly but the DM can only do every three weeks. So, what were we to do but start a second campaign that meets more frequently? Our first go is tomorrow. I had help making a character last time and it was a bit of a failure so I'm going to attempt to make a better one myself today. The first thing on my list is having a character with more hit points. I'm terrified my dark elf / rogue / criminal character is going to get slaughtered like the cleric did.
Looking to gain strength somehow so I can get hiking again. I refuse to let another summer of sickness ruin my backpacking plans. I'm hoping that some meal plan ideas will materialize because there's no way I'm packing along three days of fresh veg. Looks like I'll be playing with the dehydrator at some point.
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