The night before a challenge… just exciting as the night before Christmas. Probably more exciting because the magic of Christmas gets lost in adult hood. However, the magic of constant change and unlimited possibility lights up my soul like no other. Admittedly, it’s been a while since my soul has been this lit.
All through the pandemic, it’s been pretty dark for me. In an attempt to prepare for this challenge, I re-read last year’s challenge blog (which was the same eating challenge). It was so funny to me to read what I was up to approximately one year ago. I was at my former job and I wrote about how much it sucked and how much I disliked it. I don’t think even after getting out in August, I fully realized how awful that job was IN ADDITION to the freaking pandemic. I want so much to go back to myself from 2020 and shake her conscious and get her out of that. This past year has been the most difficult by far for me as well as for so many others.
After I lost that job, I was immediately looking for another. The job market was bleak, the pandemic was in full force, I took a job at a restaurant to get by and hopefully make my life easier. Turns out I picked the wrong restaurant. The restaurant drained me. I mean, just completely took my already lifeless self and bled me dry. It was awful. People have been a nightmare. People don’t tip. People don’t let me be human when I am their server. People can fuck right off.
Between an awful set of managers (not all of them but the majority) who thought yelling and public berating of other employees was the ideal management style and the worst clientele I’ve ever experienced and that is with the average cast of restaurant workers – drug addicts, alcoholics, drama queens, sensitive, aggressive and every other shade of personality. Needless to say it was a mess and it was hard, hard, hard work. Luckily, I’m done there too!
As of last week I got a new job! It’s a work from home job and already that seems like half the battle is already won. There are definitely some drawbacks to working at home, however after the past year I am so exhausted from people draining my energy that I am fully excited to embrace this new lifestyle. I’ve never worked full time from home before and I couldn’t be more excited.
The past week has been spent building a home office and then cleaning and organizing the rest of my home. Naturally, I bit off way more than I can chew and what I had planned to do in two days (pause for uproarious laughter) has taken me about 2 weeks so far. Lol. Just chipping away. Although, I did have a tummy bug last week and that knocked me off my feet for a few days. I think it was the mix of the bug and being incredibly depleted and on negative fuel, my body left me no choice but to sleep and be the main accessory on my couch for a few days. I started my new job on Wednesday and it was tough even to sit up for 9 hour days, had I had to go into the office there is no way I could have made it. The power of slippers, sweat pants and a work appropriate top.
So tomorrow, April 12th, I start another 30 day challenge. I don’t have it all quite figured out yet. The food challenge will be another round of Whole 30. It’s better than Paleo because you get to eat white potatoes. I can not tell you how much of a game changer that is – it’s like a built in cheat. The potatoes really are filling and settle the junk food cravings.
In addition to the food challenge, I am going to start going to the gym! Yay. Obviously, I am not going to go to the gym 30 days in a row, so tomorrow I will figure out a goal/plan. I have a small issue with my left foot/achilles heel and so I don’t want to push it but at the same time I’m not planning on running or jogging so hopefully the walking will be fine. I think my daily or weekly goal will be some sort of step count. That is my biggest concern with working from home is going back to an even more sedentary lifestyle than what I had before the restaurant. As much as the restaurant kicked my butt, I will miss the miles and miles of walking in circles bringing people unlimited sodas and salt… and lemons… and a spoon… and salsa… and extra napkins… and one extra cup of ice because they like to have a perfect soda to ice ratio that I am not capable of producing.
I would like to add some sort of creative challenge to my month but I’m not sure what that will involve because 1) I’ve been feeling pretty creative lately and that has come out in the form of writing, painting, epoxy-ing, drawing and blogging 2) Don’t know how to make an actionable 30 day plan on the 16 different projects I’m currently working on. I would like to spend 1-2 hours a night working on my projects, but I’ll talk more about tomorrow.
I’m planning to spend my time at the gym tomorrow morning assigning challenges to myself for this month. The ultimate goal is to get back on track to living a life that I want, that I’m happy with, that I’m proud of. I have wasted so much time in my life, doing a number of meaningless and bullshit things. For a number of reasons but definitely some out of fear of failure. Well, I’ve failed. I’ve failed a bunchhhhh. You know what? Who cares. It is what it is and it is time to move one. This is a snake challenge, because I am in the middle of shedding a skin.
Last year’s challenge went really well and I loved that it made me feel really good. That’s what I am aiming for right now – to feel really good. This is going to be a crazy new month with a lot of changes, but I think it’s going to be wonderful and I hope you stay with me through it all!
See you soon. x
Adventures of the untoward 