OMG I’m two years old!!!

And this is the last post I’ll do here.

Never fear, I’m not leaving the interwebs, I’m just rebranding.

On January 25, 2010 I started this little journey to lose weight. I’ve definitely lost some weight but I feel a bit like I’ve outgrown Kendra Through The Looking Glass and need to expand my horizons. I want to talk about more than the size of my ass and the things that I do with it. My life is expanding and so should my blog. So, I’m taking most of my archives and moving over to a URL I’ve actually owned all along: http://www.jogginginstilettos.com.

I mean, the name is still just as dorky as my current one but at least it’s a little shorter. Considering my tendency to wear ridiculous shoes and multitask like it’s a sport; it just makes sense. So, here’s what you can expect; everything I’ve always written about plus posts about the whole training to be an opera singer thing I’ve got going on.

There will be more recipes, regular Skanky Tuesdays, Weigh-In Wednesdays, Run Forrest Run posts, but there will also be posts about things I’m trying to achieve in other areas of life.

Most of the content you can find here will be available over at Jogging In Stilettos but there are a few posts I’m going to leave behind. While I try to take risks in my content, some of the things I’ve written without thinking through were just plain awkward or inappropriate. I’d like my blog to be something that I’m not afraid of people finding. I need to be able to confidently stand behind the risks I take. The posts that are straight up “Kendra’s gone crazy” aren’t ones that I can do that with.

I hope that you’ll come over to the new site and join me in my ongoing shenanigans. It’s going to be fun.

2011 was a year of being undone. It feels a bit like I’ve been pulled apart in every way possible, as if the universe conspired to tear away the excess, inauthentic, and confused parts of me and strip me down to my bones. As painful as it may have been, I think that it ultimately enables me to reconstruct myself in a happier and healthier way.

The year that began with a physical death continued on with a hundred other deaths of identity, habits, long held beliefs, and general pattern of being. It’s stripped away all of what I thought I was. I don’t really want to look back at it. Maybe it would be useful but the effects have already set in.

I have what is perhaps a naïve hope about 2012. Having already been stripped and pulled apart, I hope that this will be a year of rebuilding and growing. It seems like the logical next step. This year I want to do just that in a healthy way and focus on overall wellness rather than specific goals of weight loss or feats of fitness. Those will come in time but they will come more naturally if I work toward overall wellness first.

With that in mind, here are my twelve goals for 2012.

1. Weight Loss or Weight Maintenance – I don’t mind staying at this weight for a while to get other things in order but I don’t want to gain any back. By “this weight” I really mean the 215-220 range I was in before the holiday bloat set in. I guess I have a little bit of losing to do but I think that will happen naturally over time if I’m taking care of myself.

2. Regular Exercise – These two goals in order sound suspiciously like code for weight loss, don’t they? I’m putting this in there because running makes me feel really good. Whether or not it helps me lose weight is still in debate amongst the pseudo-scientific community. So, I don’t care what I do but this year I want to make sure that I’m working out at least once a week. I’d prefer three times a week but I’ll work my way back up to that.

3. Continue Music Studies – I started working with a private voice teacher a few months ago and it feels like being back home. This year I want to not only continue this but start either piano again or start guitar. I need to learn the piano for a music major but I really want to know how to play the guitar. Music is going to be one of my primary focuses this year.

4. Continue Therapy – I’m not sure how long I’m going to work with a therapist or how long I even need to but I’m going to commit to doing it for the full year. At the end of this year I’ll reassess and decide about whether I’ve gotten what I need out of it or if I should continue.

5. Invest in Friendships and Community – This year I spent a lot of time doing this and I’m in a much better place than I was the year before. I’ve started to build a great community but I would definitely love to expand it a bit more.

6. Be True to Myself, Whatever That Is – As I said before, this year seemed to be the year of stripping me down to my bones, removing so much of the fake and put on parts of who I thought I was. I’m still not totally sure who the authentic Kendra is but I intend to start finding out. If it doesn’t feel authentic and right, I’m not going to keep acting the part.

7. Money – It might be a bit optimistic to make this goal but I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway with the knowledge that I’ll be happy with whatever I can do here. I’d like to get out of debt this year, or at least get as close to it as I can. I’m not sure if the student loans can be fully taken care of. Let’s see what I can do with this one, though.

8. Get Healthy Hair Again – As my hair’s gotten longer and as I stopped taking care of myself, I’ve had to brush out more and more terrible rat’s nests. Unfortunately my hair’s gotten kind of thin because of it and the ends are terrible. I really don’t want to have to cut it short again because I love it long but I’ve started taking supplements that I hope will help it.

9. Get My Passport and Go Somewhere – I know, this has been a goal for three years now but I haven’t done it yet. I joked with a friend about meeting in Vienna for my birthday so who knows, maybe I will get it done this year.

10. Go Back to School Part Time – Oh look, here’s another one that I’ve neglected for quite some time. This year I’d really like to start taking classes again and make some progress on finishing my degree in English.

11. Setup My Apartment Like a Home – It’s not terrible but my apartment doesn’t feel like home. It’s not terribly cozy and it doesn’t have that “home” feel. I’ve looked at a lot of furniture and accessories and I’d like to get it set up in a way that feels like home.

12. Blog At Least Twice a Week – I spent most of this year hiding from both myself and my blog. Yet blogging has really helped me get through a lot. I’m going to try to be more present this year.

If I can get even half of this done this year I’ll be ridiculously happy. Even making partial progress on each one of these would be awesome. Like I said before, I’m really optimistic for 2012 and I’m feeling so much better than I felt at this time last year. I hope that this year brings growth, joy, and new adventures for myself and for each one of you. Thank you for sticking with my through such a rough year!

Over the past year or so I’ve fallen in love dozens of times; with a moment, a memory, or a feeling. I’ve fallen in love again and again with the new life that my weight loss has afforded me (ironically also contributing to my lack of progress) and the moments that make it up. Yet, the other night I found myself thinking about the moment of decision when weight loss became real.

It went from being the mythical thing I’d someday do to the thing that I was right in the thick of. It was just as much of a fairy tale to me as falling in love with someone and getting married still is. It remained a pretty picture in my head with no concept of the physical manifestation of what that would actually look like.

And then the moment of falling in love happened…

I was so taken by the stories of others and the image in my head of my own weight loss that I knew I had to take the plunge. In the book I’m currently reading, The Three Marriages by David Whyte, he talks about love’s first glimpse and how “falling in love comes through an illogical but real glimpse of a future possible perfection.” He says that “the passion and ecstasy of that experience of perfection act as a kind of indelible foundation in the memory that gives the couple a ground on which to build and shelter through all the future troubles that lie ahead of them.”

Perhaps not so oddly, this turned my thoughts to weight loss and the process through which we seem to go.

It’s that time of year where hundreds of new weight loss blogs pop up, usually of the .wordpress.com or the .blogspot.com variety so that the commitment doesn’t cost anything, and people are excited and hopeful for their “future possible perfection.” Mine popped up just around this time of year two years ago, in fact.

After Thanksgiving with my family, including two of my oh-so-lovely and thin sisters, I couldn’t stand myself anymore. I went online looking for hope and I found it in the form of weight loss blogs. I fell in love with the idea of being one of those success stories, being one of those known bloggers, and remaking myself for all to see so that maybe someone else could benefit from my experience. I fell in love with my “future possible perfection.”

I think that this is what made the difference. I think it’s why I stuck around and why I’m still hanging on. I’m also curious if this is the case for others.

Millions of people are tired of themselves and desperate to lose weight but does falling in love with your “future possible perfection” really make the difference? Maybe that’s what I’ve also been lacking over the last little while. I’ve lost sight of the “future possible perfection” and settled for simply being able to stand myself.

I’ve fallen in love, instead, with the moments, the memories, and the feelings of this “good enough” place and forgotten that once burning passion for what could be.

While the idea came from a naïve place that had no concept of what the reality would look like, much like the idea of marriage (so I’m told) when you take your vows, “the passion and ecstasy of that experience of perfection” really did create the foundation for the progress I’ve made so far. I think the reason that “this time” was different for me was that idea of “future possible perfection.”

In essence, I fell in love with myself and what I could be.

I wonder if this is the experience of others as well. I wonder, if we dig deeper into that event or turning point that made us start losing weight, what emotional process we would find at the core of it. Self loathing is enough to bully yourself into changing your habits temporarily but I suspect that falling in love with yourself is required to make the lasting changes.

For those out there who have been successful, those who are still in progress, or those who are still hanging on like me, does this ring true for you as well? What was the emotional process behind the start of your journey?

I’d really like to hear other people’s experiences and thoughts.

Um… yeah.

That’s the bad news.

I honestly have no idea how much of that is true weight gain and how much is holiday bloat. I guess the next few weeks will tell. I do know that it’ about ten pound heavier than I was just before the holiday. Oop.

I’m ready to be accountable again, though. I’m ready to show up again and be honest.

I gained some weight.

I gained a lot of weight.

It sucks but it isn’t the end of the world. I wasn’t okay and I stopped taking care of myself but I’ve been taking steps back in the right direction and being accountable again is definitely one of those steps that it’s time to take.

What else have I done?

Here’s the good news!

Cooking: I’ve been cooking most of my meals ahead of time like I used to do. It’s always been a great contribution to my success, not to mention to my budget and my taste buds. I have a few new recipes that I want to try and that I might work into my regular routine.

Water: I’ve been making a much greater effort to drink enough water. I haven’t tracked it as neurotically as I used to but I do know I’ve been sucking it down like crazy.

Vitamins: While I’m a pretty staunch believer in getting your vitamins from your food and not from a pill, I’m also a believer in realizing your limitations. I’m just not going to be able to do that from the get go and I want to make sure that I’m getting all the nutrients I should.

Sleep: This one finally became a natural rhythm. I hoped it would eventually but wasn’t all that optimistic. Happily, I can report that my body clock got with the times and I’m getting enough sleep now. I’m also taking the opportunity to nap on my lunch hour which helps me a lot in the afternoon and the evenings.

Still missing?

Focus: Things have been really, “eh, I’ll just do this today” and that never really works well for me. I like to have a schedule, a plan, a spreadsheet, etc. Being really relaxed with my general plan has been necessary for the moment as I was focusing on dealing with my head before my ass but I’d like to get a little more organized and a little more focused.

Exercise: People still do this, right? Yeah, not me. I haven’t officially worked out since… never mind. I have no idea. Today I did the workout that I was going to start months ago and I’m hoping to do this three times a week for four weeks to build strong stabilization muscles before moving on to more challenging workouts. Thank you to Suzanne from Workout Nirvana for not only providing me with this workout for also for not showing annoyance when I promptly ignored it for several months! Incidentally, I also hate you a little bit in the pushups section.

Goals: Because I wasn’t following through with any of my goals they just felt pointless to set in the first place. I don’t make empty threats, promises, or offers so I hated doing this. I needed to take a break from it so that I could actually feel honest when I came back to making goals again.

So, for the first time in a very long time, let’s talk goals!

This Week’s Goals

1. Do the workout three times: It’s a strength training workout for your stabilizing muscles that should get me back in the swing of things without leaving me too sore to function. Apparently I was jumping in too quickly and doing too much and that was why I was so sore or so long when I was doing strength training on a regular basis. I need to lay down the foundation before I start properly kicking my own ass.

2. Get gym things back together and in order: I really didn’t want to cancel my gym membership because I love 24-Hour Fitness but I haven’t gone in months. The last time I was there I ran into the person who raped me in April. I stood there paralyzed and completely unsure of what to do. He smiled and looked excited to see me. I’m now planning on going to a different and brand new club that requires a longer bus ride but prevents such run-ins. I need to get my bag packed again and all my things together so that when I (probably) start running again next week I’ll be ready to go.

3. Plan breakfasts: So, I used to eat those egg cups. Maybe I want to go back to those but I’m not totally sure. I need to look at the nutrition data of some of the options I might choose and make plans based off of that.

So, there we have it. That felt kind of good. What’s the good and bad news in your life? What are your goals for the week?

Set point.

Set point.

Set point.

Set point.

Something about leptin…

Fuck the set point.

So apparently once I’ve lost all the weight I want to lose and I’m in maintenance mode (please come soon…) my body will start pining over the fat it’s lost like I pined over that certain someone. I’m just going to go ahead and say that the two things are equally awesome in that they are both not.

When I started losing weight I was just kind of like, “eh, I’ll worry about that when I get there” but I’m starting to think that perhaps I should take it into account now and try to come up with a smarter strategy to minimize the effect of my needy, less fat, ass.

So, like the shoddy researcher I am, I consulted Google.

At least it wasn’t Wikipedia…

What I found is that no one really knows much about how this works and many theories abound. In other words, I’m fucked.

Supposedly my body really really really wants me to maintain the weight I’ve gained just in case Mount Rainier does go off and Seattle goes all Lord of the Flies. Look body, didn’t you actually read Lord of the Flies? Don’t you know what happens to the fat kid? I might be able to survive longer off my own fat but other people will also be able to survive longer off my fat and they’ll probably win! Even at a larger size I really can’t take on a hungry mob. Thanks for making me dinner.

Ahem.

In reality, the major thing that seems to be the key is losing weight slowly. This makes me feel SO much better about my lack of motivation or progress this year. I’m not sucking at weight loss; I’m just taking it slow… or something like that.

Here’s the thing, though, with the method I’ve used all along, I’ve never felt hungry or deprived. Rather than tracking the amount of calories I was eating, I tracked the type of foods I ate. I made the decisions about which foods I ate but let my body make the decisions about how much I ate. Rather than fighting my body and my weight, I’m trying to work with my body to get to the right weight (and be ridiculously hot, of course).

There are some things I only want to do once in life; get married, lose a shit ton of weight; get run over… just to name a few. Doing them right the first time is the key.

That, and not finding yourself on the underside of a car.

Okay, so doing this slowly and letting my body moderate the amount of food I eat is the first step but it seems like there HAS to be more to it than that. According to a lot of studies that I’m not going to cite here because I’m too lazy right now (and we’ll talk about them another time for real), it appears that the human body really does know how to moderate weight if we feed it the correct things. Sadly, I don’t think that cinnamon rolls are included in that.

So, I’m making a new plan. No, actually, I’m making a variation of the original plan. It’s always been a good plan but it needs a refresher due to new information. I’m not yet going to talk about what I’m going to do; I’m just going to start doing it.

Maybe the holidays aren’t a very good time to do this but I’m more excited about the new information I’ve gained than I am about the sugary things I could be eating. A few weeks ago I said that I had to get my head back in the game and immerse myself in weight loss-ey things. I did that and now I’m kind of pumped about it again.

And yeah, there’s a small possibility that my excitement might win out over my laziness.

There are some things that are hard to say to people… so I’m told.

Yes, that dress does make you look fat; no, orange is not your color; actually, your boyfriend does suck; and you have something in your teeth. Love you.

You know, just to name a few…

 These things I actually have to trouble saying or being told. Yet, there are a few things that I do have trouble saying. Sitting high atop that list is “I need help.”

Whether that’s needing help to lift a heavy bookshelf, needing someone to take me to the hospital after dropping said bookshelf on my foot and breaking it (my foot, not the bookshelf), or needing someone to talk to about how I feel after the dropping of the purely hypothetical bookshelf on my foot now that I’m so frustrated and it feels like everything is going wrong; it’s hard.

Ah… college memories.

This is a hard phrase to say. It’s a phrase that feels like defeat, and yet…

I need help.

At one point I was so mind fucked that I didn’t care that I was falling apart. It didn’t matter to me if I alienated people because I didn’t have much of a grasp on reality. Now, though, I’m so close to okay. Most days are totally fine and I’m happy. Breakdowns and outbursts are becoming more and more rare. But, now I care.

I’m close enough to be able to see what healthy looks like and it bothers me when I can’t even come close to resembling it. It bothers me that I push people away at the moment I need them most. I’m healthy enough at this point to be able to see in stark contrast when it breaks down.

I’ve been doing a damn good job, though, of recovery and of dealing with all that’s happened (if I do say so myself…) but a wise girl knows when there’s a better way. Just because I can deal with this by myself doesn’t mean that I have to.

This isn’t an “I’m falling apart and need therapy” post, it’s an “I’m going to utilize all the tools that I have available to me” post. It’s an “I’m getting there and want to be smarter about it” post.

So, on Saturday night, when one of those moments hit and a friend who we shall call Cleopatra said, “Kendra, maybe you should talk to someone. I can give you a name,” I was ready.

She’s probably the only one who could have said that to me. The combination of the strength and grace she shows on a daily basis, mixed with being kind of a badass, and having gone through something that led her to a similar point as me; I knew her recommendation didn’t come from a place of judgment. It came from a place of understanding.

I also knew that anyone Cleopatra was seeing had to be okay. So, I called, set up an appointment, had one of those really awkward “here’s what’s wrong with me” conversations, and went in for my appointment. We did all of the usual paperwork and then she asked me for my story. We had already started to discuss it when I called to make the appointment so we picked up where I left off.

Sitting there talking about the rape, childhood incidents and issues, losing my faith, and other things, I struggled to not hold anything back and not be sarcastic. Honesty is necessary. It was hard to not worry about how she would respond to what I told her, but I did tell and I didn’t soften anything. She can’t really help unless she knows the real situation.

As I left, she told me to go easy on myself. We scheduled another session and she warned me that after the process she was going to take me through, I would be really tired. She also told me that it would probably remove a lot of the sting of it.

I’m glad that I made this decision. It wasn’t a matter of admitting defeat, it was a matter of doing things a better way. I still believe that I could have gotten through this on my own because I am honest and introspective and I will face even the hard things, but I don’t have to get through this on my own.

At this point it’s no longer about trying to pick up the shattered pieces and put them back together, it’s about trying to fill in the little cracks left from having done so.

How differently can someone feel in one day? 24 hours really shouldn’t make that much of a difference, right? Wrong.

Last night I went home and I cooked some more.

I made some broccoli with chopped garlic.

I cooked all of my thin cut steaks.

I danced around in only my pants, bra, and apron.

Awesome.

I went out for my weekly glass on wine with my mom.

We talked about “what next?”

What next, indeed. Suddenly I feel like I’m at the end of one road and the start of another. It’s just one of those feelings, you know? Inexplicable, slightly annoying, and usually profoundly correct; my intuition seems to be tapping on my shoulder and trying to tell me something.

Hey, wait, this isn’t what I was going to write about today.

I wanted to tell you about how in one day I’m feeling more comfortable in my own skin again, how the bloating has gone away, and how I already have that old energy back.

I was going to make jokes about how I ran today… for two blocks to get back to work on time after my break, but, whatever, it felt amazing to do so.

I was supposed to be all la dee da, I can do this again and weight loss is amazing and I’m probably going to lose a bajillion pounds this week and all that jazz.

Instead, I’m feeling introspective, hopeful, and slightly confused.

I mean, that’s good too, it just didn’t happen to be my intent.

I try to deal with tangible things that I can actually grasp and explain. It’s kind of ridiculous to try and write about things that I don’t know how to articulate.

Let’s just say that I feel a change in the winds and I’m no longer downwind from the dumpster in the alley near my apartment.

I think that a lot of this feeling actually stems from a conversation I had with my mom this weekend. She’s in grad school, learning how to play with people’s heads.

Naturally, she uses me as a guinea pig.

For the record, she’s actually studying Organizational Systems Renewal which is a new fangled term for “how to help people work better with other people and hate themselves less.” It’s not like she’s trying to do straight up therapy on me, that would be unethical and a conflict of interest since everyone bitches to their therapist about their mother anyway.

We went through this exercise she recently learned where we look at patterns. She asks a series of questions, I get annoyed and tell her to answer them herself, she makes me answer them, I stop being a brat and get honest, we go off on a few tangents that we think might be the root before we discover that we’re wrong, we get back on track, and suddenly be come up with a bottom line that makes me start crying.

Oh, I think we’re on to something.

We discovered that I don’t value myself. I rely too much on the validation of others to feel wanted and important. It’s really not that surprising, really, but seeing how many problems in my life stem from that issue, well, that was surprising.

Acknowledgement is empowering. In just the realization of the thing I feel so much better. If there’s a real problem then there’s also a real solution. I’m not sure what that solution is yet, I mean, how does a person just find that intrinsic value? I don’t know.

It’s a starting place, though. While I may not know what the solution is, I am pretty good at finding out these things. Overall, it’s a heartening thought. I have a new task to take on and it feels like a bit on an adventure.

So, here’s the point where I get to the end of my chain of thought and realize that I just came full circle and answered my own question. That new road? It’s finding that sense of value. That feeling? It’s knowing that I will.

I grocery shopped.

I cooked.

I ate some Brussels sprouts.

I might be headed back in the right direction again.

Maybe.

I’ve been thinking a lot about motivation over the past several weeks. I don’t know how to find it. I can’t remember how that first spark felt when I decided to do this thing. It makes me question how you start that flame or how you reignite the flame that’s gone out. I’m not sure.

Maybe at this point it’s a process of slowly doing small things that create motivation for other things. At the beginning I jumped in whole heartedly and it worked but I’m not sure I can do that again.

At that time I didn’t have a whole lot going on in my life. It didn’t matter to me what I was doing in the evening because I rarely had plans. Deciding that working out was the event of the evening was easy because there wasn’t much of an alternative. Read or read while working out? Watch TV or watch TV while working out? Crochet or crochet while working out? Yes, I did master that.

The choice was easy.

I’m in such a different place now that it’s much harder. I’m not willing to turn my life upside down and go back into isolation. Hopefully that’s not what it takes to lose the last 80 or so pounds because I won’t do it.

Maybe, though, just maybe I can get myself back in gear without having to do that. Maybe I can take baby steps instead of giant leaps and get there, albeit a little bit slower, but still get there.

Thinking back to how I got in the game in the first place, though, I realized that it started with my head and not my body. Before I tried to make any changes, eat better, or exercise at all; I read. I read a blog which led to me read another blog, and then some more blogs, and then I picked up The South Beach Diet. After a few weeks and a few dozen blogs, I finally started to cut down on my sugar. Then, after all that, I jumped in and committed. Eventually I got around to full throttle effort but there were still a lot of baby steps in the meantime.

So, I immersed myself in the idea of weight loss. I looked at what it would really take and decided on a method. Then I worked on believing that I really could do it. All those blogs with all that sweet weight loss success boosted my confidence in my ability to do what once felt impossible and what feels impossible now.

Going Forward, What’s the Plan?

1. Immerse myself in books and thoughts about weight loss and healthy habits. Get my head in the game so that my ass can follow.

2. Make some of those easy healthy choices so that I remember how much better good food tastes and feels. Cook my favorite meals like I did today.

3. Remove the mental pressure to succeed. When I started this, I thought I was going to fail. I was pretty open about that. My goal, though, was to see how far I could go before that happened. I took away the pressure and little by little realized that I could succeed.

4. Move when I feel like it, don’t when I don’t. Again, this is part of taking the pressure off. At some point, I will feel like it again and then I’ll get all “exercise is fucking awesome!” It just happens that way. I don’t have to force it.

5. Blog again. Blogging has been huge for keeping me in that mental space. I’m not really ready yet to face the scale again. I probably haven’t gained much or any weight but I’m not ready to be held totally accountable again.

So there will be no goals and weekly weigh-ins still for a little while but I’m hoping to little by little get myself back in the game and start making progress again… or at least be amusing in the meantime.

I believe that courage is the first of all the virtues. It doesn’t matter what other values you hold if you don’t have the courage to follow through with them. Courage must come first.

I haven’t always been very courageous. I suppose that’s why my reality is so far away from my ideal. I didn’t have the glue that holds everything together. Perhaps I found that glue yesterday, though, because I took that leap and took a risk for something that was incredibly important to me.

It was my first session back in training for opera. I was scared out of my mind.

Once upon a time I had a teacher that made me feel like I could be something. After working with her for a few years I left for college and had teachers who clearly didn’t think I was good enough. In some people this kind of opposition creates a fight response; they want to prove them all wrong. I didn’t yet have enough faith in myself to think that I could prove them wrong. I thought, until very recently, that pretty much everyone else in the world understood it better than me. People just knew things I didn’t. So, my response was flight.

After leaving college, getting run over, and generally isolating myself from the world; I didn’t think that a voice career was going to happen. I didn’t really think that much in life was going to happen for me. A few years, a blog, and a whole lot of self esteem later; I finally made myself go back.

Waking up yesterday morning, I fought to get out of bed. I wondered if I could really do it or if I was destined to fail. Then I had the Can Vs Will conversation, got out of bed, and kept on with daily life.

You’d think that wasn’t terribly significant, but in days of ole I used to “accidentally” oversleep and ditch out on other obligations because my anxiety about the thing itself would become so strong and intense. Everything else in life would cease as well because I couldn’t handle it.

Going to work itself was an achievement.

So, off I went. I didn’t get myself out of bed on time to shower or even brush my hair (we’ve talked about how long that takes)… I didn’t say I’d reached perfection, but on I went with a plan to make sure I would have everything I needed and get to that lesson on time.

At lunch I went home and grabbed my checkbook and sheet music. Just before leaving work I printed out my bus schedule that I had looked up a week before. I didn’t even eat cheese that afternoon for fear of coating my throat.

I was surprisingly calm.

After work, just before I left, the “oh shit” feelings started to kick in.

I walked to the bus as quickly as I could, fearing that if I slowed down I might think through what I was doing and chicken out. I started to think about courage instead. Standing in the bus tunnel, I realized that this was going to start a whole new chapter. It would put me back on the track I had once thought was my life path.

I started to shake a little bit as anxiety swelled within me. I could still go home. I could cancel and start next week. I could run away. But, no, I stood there and hummed Che Faro Senza Euridice, trying not to think about the fact that I was about to sing that very song for someone soon.

This was what I really wanted. Why does it have to feel like such a battle? Why do the things that really matter scare me so much more?

As the bus pulled up I held my breath. I knew that once I stepped on the bus I’d follow through. I walked toward it clutching my sheet music to my chest. I only paused for a moment before stepping on.

An hour later, as we were doing vocal exercises that sound like they ought to be coming from a psych ward, I felt at home. For the first time in a few years I felt fulfilled in that deeper place.

After the lesson I was practically floating on air. I got more out of one hour with this teacher than I did the entire two years I did at school. Not only that, but she still had a letter from my previous teacher that she wrote about all of her students. She wrote about me “I believe in her and her talent.”

I think I do too.

Besides the ever important fact that today is Cranky Thursday (as is every other Thursday), today is kind of a big deal. It’s a big deal in the “things are about to change” way, not the Ron Burgundy way. Today I’m starting training again with a private teacher.

I’m going back into the world of opera and performance.

It’s been too long.

I’m scared.

I’m not sure if I can do this.

Wait…

This morning I was lying in bed and in between dozing off and having nightmares about orange cleaner (I hate it!) I was thinking about this whole thing. I’m nervous and I don’t feel prepared. I’m worried about the cost and time involved. I’m scared that the teacher I want to work with will tell me that I’m not good enough. Can I actually do this?

Then, it hit me. It’s not a matter of “can I,” it’s a matter of “will I.” There are so many areas of my life where I ask “can I.” Can I finish losing the weight? Can I actually handle this job? Can I continue to get my ass out of bed on time every day? Can I learn to be less shy and more authentic? Can I muster the courage and discipline to become what I really want to be? Can I actually be an opera singer?

I’m asking the wrong question and it changes the whole picture.

It’s not a matter of whether or not I have the ability; I do, it’s a matter of whether or not I have the discipline; I might.

Back when I went to church and didn’t make jokes about going to hell because I eat bacon, I was taught many times that perhaps the reason my prayers weren’t being answered was because I was asking the wrong question. At the time, that sort of response just pissed me off and made me feel guilty. Now, though, I realize that there’s something to the whole “am I asking the right questions” thing. That’s still a shitty context to use it, but in other areas I think it makes sense.

While the questions “can I” absolves me of any real responsibility, the questions “will I” puts it squarely back on my shoulders. I think that’s why “can I” is such a comfortable fall back. If it’s a matter of simply not having the ability, the failure isn’t my fault. I mean, who’s going to blame me for the fact that I can’t sprout wings and fly away. That is a “can’t.” You may blame me, though, for the fact that, over the last several months, “won’t” has been the modus operandi for me not eating the right things, not getting out of bed to run or do strength training, not getting to sleep on time to do so, and so many other things.

“Won’t” in the form of fear is why I haven’t been working with a teacher.

It isn’t just about where the responsibility lies, though; it’s also about how I perceive myself. The “can I” question implies that I am not the capable, intelligent, young woman that I am. It implies that I’m inevitably prone toward failure (something I’ve always believed about myself). The “can I” question strips me of empowerment and tells me a story about myself that isn’t true.

The reality of it all is that unless it defies natural laws, “can I” is a moot point. The answer is always yes. The question that really matters is “will I.” It’s in the “will I” that the trajectory of my life is determined. It’s the choices that I make, moment by moment, that make up the illusion of “can I” and the reality of “I can.”

I guess I’m choosing to take on both the personal responsibility and the empowerment. The result of doing so looks a lot more exciting and fulfilling than the alternative. I’m not sure how I was content for so long with the result of the “can’t” and “won’t” but I’m not anymore.

While I haven’t been making much progress lately on weight loss, I have been working hard on the internal and emotional issues. I’m not positive that I’m ready to care again, yet, about losing weight or the number on my scale, but I’m getting close. I’m starting to crave the feeling of running and broccoli sounds a lot like comfort food again.

Today, though, my focus isn’t on that. Today I’m focusing on the “can” and “will” and following through without focusing on the list of hypothetical disasters that could come as a result.