Still plateau'ed since roughly January. I keep vacillating between 2-5 lbs lose/gain.
No new health issues, problems or improvements, though my surgeon is convinced I'm done w/the passive weight loss from the surgery and is strongly urging me to exercise. I can't seem to wrap my brain around it, as anytime I exert myself, I end up paying for it for days in the form of joint pain. So to exercise to the point of sweating and sustaining that just seems counter-intuitive to my joint pain.
I had an a-HA! moment a month ago when I realized what part of my problem (vis-a-vis procrastination) is: my mindset. I am a fixed mindset whereas I need to have a more growth oriented mindset. Problem is, I don't know how to change it. I'm fairly well FIXED and rooted in thinking the way I do, and being the pragmatist I am, I can talk myself out of doing things for fairly legitimate reasons.
For instance, I cannot allow myself to do something if there's even a remote question of whether I'll fail. It's not so much based out of a fear of failure, but out of having JUST THAT MUCH VALUE in my time, my precious commodity. I'd much rather spend my time doing things I love, or things I know I'll excel at rather than vanity tripping or doing what amounts to exercises (excuse the pun) in futility.
I know that my mindset is at the root of what is preventing me from living up to my potential in my career, my life, my health, my happiness. I can and HAVE intellectualized that I need to change, but I get overwhelmed and distracted, and don't have a clue how or where to start with the actual change. In keeping with my personality and this quirk of mine re: potential for pain or failure, it takes a very long time before I act on anything. I am like a terrier with a bone, chewing on it, thinking about it, burying that bone for a while, digging it back up and chewing on it some more, until something new and shiny comes along to distract me.
Dad's birthday was this weekend, and the grief sucker punched me again. I had signed up for a home repair and remodeling class run by the local college, only to find out that it's not hands on (which might as well = TOTALLY USELESS for me, a visual learner) and mostly lecture based.
On top of this misrepresentation (the brochure clearly does not state it's lecture only), the instructor was sub-standard, IMHO, for an instructor at a college. Picture, if you will, Mr. Fucking Magoo. Deaf as a stone. Blind as a bat. Patronizing to all the females in the class. Running thru the inventory of tools everyone needs in their tool box and demonstrating, "This is a hammer. This is a screw driver. This is a tape measure." etc etc.
Allegedly the instructor was a professional contractor (obviously MANY YEARS AGO), and he banks heavily on the fact that at some point in the past he was either ON a radio show or HOSTED a radio call in handyman show. So you would have a reasonable expectation that his tools would be in a tool box or at a minimum a tool belt. Not Mr. Magoo! Oh no. His dust bunnied, cob webby tools were thrown into a shopping basked pilfered from Pathmark.
When one of the two gentlemen of the class stopped him, as he was going into detail to the women about the need for a 25 foot tape measure (so we could hang our drapes, because all women are concerned with draperies, don'tchaknow), the gentleman wanted to know HOW to use the tape measure, or have the instructor tell us what the tick marks on the tape measure indicated, the instructor then suggested the GENTLEMAN show us (um, why then did the gentleman pay $110 + a $5 materials fee* if the GENTLEMAN was expected to teach the class?). Needless to say, it didn't take long after that for the gentleman in question to realize that this class is not what he (or any of us, for that matter) expected, and as respectfully and diplomatically as he could, let the instructor know this before he left the lecture hall.
*Also worth noting, the "materials" consisted of a folder with fasteners (which were not used, because half the hand outs/leaflets were not 2 hole punched) and the contents appeared not to be class materials, but hand outs anyone could get at hardware stores and Home Depot. Allegedly our $5 went towards the "collating" of everything. Um. Yeah.
So for the next 45 minutes, Mr. Magoo was distracted, and constantly trying to move the female students closer around him. We all were sitting in reasonable and expected spots in the lecture hall, but this guy was so controlling, perhaps in part because of his blindness and deafness. Now I must come off as someone who is anti-handicapped, when in reality, I spent $110 of my hard-earned bucks for a class led by an instructor who is incapable of COMMUNICATING. Get a miracle ear, buddy!
And as if all that were not bad enough...
The man stood there with his nose running like a dripping faucet. Literally. DRIP DRIP DRIP. No ubiquitous old man hanky or bandana. Hell, he didn't even use the cuff of his shirt or sweater to blot the drippage. No. He let it drip and let it land where it may... half the time on the front of his shirt... and the other half the time DIRECTLY IN HIS MOUTH. So as if he was not scatter brained and patronizing ENOUGH to distract me from what little viable information he might share, he was disgusting to look at. How am I expected to sit there and be expected to learn anything when the sight of his sinuses leaking directly into his mouth (and causing me to sit there and silently dry heave to myself at the sight of this)?
So with approximately 40 more minutes to go, I couldn't handle sitting there one more moment longer, I excused myself to go to the ladies room. I left my packet of information on my desk, to give the implication I was returning. But the moment I walked out of the lecture hall, I headed directly to my car and promptly called the registrar's office and roundly and thoroughly voiced my displeasure at the class being misrepresented. And of course, a refund was out of the question as I should have dropped the class two days beforehand. An offer was made that I could take another class that started up, yet there I was in my car, without a brochure. So Monday I emailed the director's office to expand on how this class wasn't what anyone expected it to be, only to find out due to the holiday she was out of the office until Weds. I've followed up with another email, but somehow, I know they just don't give a shit. Perhaps I'll check out Yelp and see if I can post a review about this... so I can spare some other poor unfortunate, well meaning souls from taking this class.
Anyway... my reality... how my grief sucker punched me...
I took this class because, sadly, I did not have enough time with my dad so DAD could show me simple things like swapping out electrical sockets or how to remove the elbow joint of my sink to clear a clog etc. I had hoped to reconnect with my dad in that handy way he was. And yet, thanks to Mr. Magoo, that opportunity was taken away. The weekend was just yet another reminder of the profound loss I still feel, at dad's passing. It would have been his 71st birthday (and would have been his grandmother's 121st birthday, too).
I talked at length with my therapist, and tried to get both themes discussed, the mindset a-Ha! and the grief, and how I feel like on some level my grief is sabotaging me, or perhaps subconsciously I'm using my grief as an excuse not to address what needs addressing. (among other themes discussed).
Anyway. Like I said... not much new to report, just apparently, a whole lotta noise.
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