goodThen I went, and spent my precious money on pizza. Then I spent more on pita bread, and frozen soybeans. When I got home I wasted time on the net instead of getting anything done. Then I ate, an apple.
Isn't this EXCITING? No it isn't I know that.
My sister called, and what is unusual is that she was actually calling for me. Normally she calls for mom, or dad. I guess it isn't surprising then that she called because she wanted a favor from me. But we had a long fun talk, and after I drove way back across town, and helped her she made me dinner which was nice. I ate too much, and I ate chocolate truffles, and a fortune cookie that said "You have inexhaustible wisdom and power.", and ice cream. I watched a bunch of tv too.
Normally I would feel bad about having a day like that unless maybe it was a day I decided ahead of time to be a day off. I'm trying to rebuild my life, and that takes a lot of will power. I tend to be mad at myself for not getting enough done to change my life. Recently though I came to realize that my feeling bad about things was making it difficult for me to start. I wouldn't want to do anything that felt like work because I felt bad, and I would feel bad because I didn't get anything done. I realized that it was a self defeating cycle. I started just saying to myself you don't need to feel bad you haven't done anything wrong feel good about life, just start working for a few minutes, and then you will feel like a success too. It keeps working better, and better. The more times I use it. Partly because when it works I believe it more.
I've had some success recently in other significant changes to improve my life. I cut out caffeine completely. Most of the the time I manage to avoid things like soda pop, and hot chocolate with refined sugar in them too. Instead of going to bed around 6AM, and getting up in the afternoon very groggy I am getting up around 6AM feeling refreshed, and ready to start my day, and that is even without an alarm. I'm eating more fresh fruits, and vegetables, and less starches, and sugars. It is getting easier to keep my hands out of the cookie jar when I know something is in it. I get exercise almost every day. Often even enough so that sweat is dripping off of me. I'm trying to reduce foods I know aren't that good for me, and replace them with better ones. It's so hard.
One more thing I am trying to change, and so far I feel like a nearly complete failure at it. I want to reduce how much TV I watch a week. For more than one reason actually. The obvious reason is just the time that it takes up that I could be using for better purposes like getting ahead in life, or socializing. Far too often I find myself in a room with family, or friends, but instead of talking we have our eyes glued to the tube. What a waste. We could be bonding, or helping each other out with our problems, but instead we are having our thoughts drained by push media. It is bad for schedules too. I don't want to do anything else until my program finishes. Another thing firmly in my mind about it is something I think I read in "parade magazine" about how the commercial breaks not only break the stream of the show they also break our concentration. Instead of our ability to concentrate being reinforced, and strengthened it becomes hazardous to concentrate because we will just end up disappointed. Think about how a little kid carefully building something with toys will go into a temper tantrum if disturbed. That is how we should rightly feel when a commercial break comes on. I don't think I am giving his theory justice, but in any case I have problems with concentration so I think I would benefit from the lack of disturbing influences like that. I don't feel like I am succeeding because I watched more than an hour every day this week already. Including the whole Oscars thing even though I didn't even feel that entertained. I was just addicted. Why? I don't get it. I need to break my addiction like I did with caffeine. I kept thinking to myself that I would try quitting for a whole week. I don't know if I can do that. I think I can cut back though. I can maybe make a schedule of programs that are allowed this week, and cut a few next week.
Besides all of that I am fretting because my birthday is only about two weeks away, now that I look at the calender I guess it is exactly two weeks away. I'm down about that because I had planned to be living near my girlfriend by then instead of over 1000 miles away. I don't really feel that much closer to doing that. I guess though that I am over a lot of the emotional barriers that were keeping me from making progress there. There were a lot of them so I guess I really have made a lot of progress.
Wish me luck.
