Today I started my new fitness routine using Yourself!Fitness. And, oh my goddess!, am I ever out of shape!! I barely made it through my 15 minute work-out, and here I thought I would be able to handle 30 minutes! And jumping jacks, let me tell you that they are not a friend of well endowed women. If you know what I mean. 😉

Seriously though, as I continue to say, I am very surprised by how unhealthy I have let myself become. Doesn’t the Rede say “An it harm none, do as thou will”? Well, letting myself become so unhealthy is surely harmful, and it is well past time to undo that harm. I really like Yourself!Fitness, even though it has reinforced the fact that I am horribly uncoordinated. The “virtual fitness trainer” Maya is friend and encouraging, and I am pretty certain she is not snickering at me because I keep getting the movement wrong. (The same can’t be said for my evil cat Isis, who I’m sure was laughing herself silly as she smugly watch on.) I certainly hope this program will be just what I have needed to get me motivated.

I often feel like I am a creature of my mind, and that my body is here only to drag my brain and soul around. Or rather, my brain drags my body around. It seems as if everything I do is tied to thinking, and very little is tied to being. I will occasionally think about starting some body-oriented routine, like meditation or exercise, but it is very soon replaced with more brain-oriented tasks like reading or writing.

Thinking about it (my brain again), I’m actually disappointed in myself. When I do work with my body, like at physiotherapy, I feel good. The exercise and putting my body right makes my brain feel better too. For such a brain centered person, you’d think that would be enough to get me to pay attention to my body. Perhaps, and perhaps not. I need to do something though, so that my brain isn’t all that I am left with.

Yesterday I signed up for the Change Your Life Challenge. It is a seventy-day program aimed at helping women organize their lives and find more time for self-nurturing. I may be working from home now, but that doesn’t mean that life become a lot more organized. As I said the other day, I can take some time now to slow down when I need to. But paper just seems to be piling up, and up…

I was doing pretty well when I was keeping a to do list, but when I stopped, then things started to get out of hand. Maybe the problem is that I am trying to hard.

In social situations, I am a very quiet person. If I open my mouth to say something, than that general means I’ve thought hard about it and feel that it is important to share. (This doesn’t apply when I’m talking to quanta or my parents. I’m still quiet, but I say any old thing that pops into my head.) I get so very annoyed when I final try to say something and everyone keeps talking over me. It seems so unfair.

Yesterday morning I attended a meeting for the contract work that I am doing. This was the first real business meeting I had ever been too, and it was awful. In seven hours, we made almost no headway. This was another situation where I felt like I hardly got a chance to say anything. I wish I knew how I could make myself heard, not just in business meetings but in all social situations.

I am tired of making what Jennifer Louden calls “criminal promises”. These are promises that you make to yourself even though you know you will never keep them. My biggest criminal promise is that I will go on a diet. I don’t think I will ever go on a real diet. Instead, I need to promise myself I will exercise and eat mindfully, which is something very different.

With that in mind, I recently ordered the Yourself!Fitness program for my Playstation 2. The shipping time given was unbelievable slow given I had to pay for UPS, but I am counting the days until it arrives. I even want to pick up a step and a heartrate monitor to be extra ready.

Now that I am working from home I am feeling so much better. It’s not so much that there is no stress in my life anymore. I’m working on a few important projects, and I often feel stress about whether what I am doing is of high enough quality. It is more like that in the quiet of my day I can actually hear myself. There is no subway rumbling beneath my feet every couple of minutes, or a phone ringing, or a customer at the counter; there is only the noise that I want. Sometimes it is classical music, sometimes it is a meditative recording, or sometimes it is nothing at all.

In some ways time has actually become more of a friend than an enemy, too. I’m not longer watching the clock, counting the seconds until I can go home. Now I can fit my work around some of my needs.

I really don’t know how long this contract will last, nor do I know how long I will be happy working, or staying, at home. But right now I am focusing on doing a good job and enjoying the peace.

I’m lucky in that I don’t suffer from any food allergies, per say. My family is known for growing into a shrimp allergy, and it has been making my stomach feel weird lately, but I love shrimp and I am not willing to give it up just yet. I also avoid camomile tea since I have a ragweed allergy. But today I discovered something interesting… field greens make me feel really ill.

I’ve had field greens, or what I affectionately call weed salad, a few times before with no ill effects. But, late last week I bought a large container of “Organic Field Greens” from the grocery store. I had some that day and yesterday, and both days my stomach bothered me but I couldn’t figure out why. I had another tasty bowl of salad today, and it happened again. Then it came to me–it must be the field greens. There must be some time of leaf hidden in there that just doesn’t agree with me. Probably something that wasn’t in the other field greens I have had.

I’m off to lay down until I feel better. And next time I go grocery shopping, I’m sticking with romaine lettuce.