It's too late to be writing. Isn't it always? I'm not going to get enough sleep tonight.

Today I did good. Eating was eh, not awful, but eh. The workout was the real victory. I am going to eventually run a 5k. Right now I can walk it in around 45 minutes. One day, I'll RUN it.

Tomorrow my goal is to walk for 30 min on the treadmill after work. If I can stick to that, I hope to do the 5k again on Wednesday, and then another 30 min walk on Thursday. 5k, rest walk, 5k, rest walk.

Emotionally not much to report. I spoke to N today, I miss her. N is the best friend I have, we were roommates for 3 years, and now she lives in Boston with her boyfriend of 7 1/2 years. I think I am going to visit her for Halloween, and she is going to come down the weekend after to see our new apartment. That gives me something to look forward to.

Eyelids are drifting shut. If I go to bed now I can just squeeze in 7 hours.

J

Today was relaxed, so there is not much to report. Yesterday I was good about doing some exercise while I was watching TV, which I think would be a good way to make sure I keep moving and can stop the pattern of living a stationary life. I was not so good at that this morning, but I did do a small workout tonight. 5 minutes on the step machine (which I would like to do daily when I am not doing a longer workout), along with some arm work with resistance bands. I know I feel good when I exercise I just need to find a way to slowly reintegrate it into my life so I do not get discouraged.

Tomorrow is my day to close the building so I will be doing a half hour workout in the office gym. Eating will be a challenge tomorrow but my plan is to bring healthy snacks for the afternoon and evening.

Diet today was so-so. I was at my grandmother's and need to work on not overeating in that situation.

Otherwise, being with my family today was great, especially spending time with my grandmother. She is getting older, and I try not to be morbid, but I can't help but feel the need to spend time with her while I can. Especially now that I am in her neighborhood, I feel that I need to take the gift of being closer to her physically and use it to get closer to her, emotionally.

I am going to be asleep by 10. I need to keep my commitment to sleep.

J

After work yesterday things took a much better turn. I came home, decompressed, had a healthy dinner, and went to meet my dad & sister for a concert in an amazing venue on the upper west side. The music put me in the right place and I came home, finished my current Oscar flick, "The Great Ziegfeld", and got a sold 8 hours of sleep.

I can feel that I am taking hold of my eating habits slowly, which is empowering. I am not as down about the negative choices. Today, I do not feel like I self-sabotaged, even though I used my weekly take-out quota and didn't make the best possible choice, I did not make the worst possible one, plus I ate VERY healthy the rest of the day, did a considerable amount of walking (a few miles), and some toning work.

Beyond food, I am challenging myself this weekend. Both KP and JL are gone this weekend which means the apartment is empty- and I have a dangerous habit of becoming sad and lonely and making poor choices when alone. I could have gone home with my family Friday night but chose to stay here. One needs to be able to function when alone. I have been single for over 4 years now and I still struggle with loneliness. I am trying to use living on my own as an opportunity to strengthen myself emotional (while I am also working on physical strength). I have been reading "Eat, Pray, Love" and while I do find the book generally cheesy, it has me thinking a lot about how important it is to constantly strive to make the mind, body, and spirit stronger. I have begun to cultivate the first two, and have been mulling over how to develop the third. My spiritual journey has taken an interesting turn in the past year. I know I need a new direction, I have just not figured out which path I am going to take yet.

Tonight I am not going to eat anything else and I am not going to stay up too late. Tomorrow I am going to see my grandmother and I have toyed with the idea of doing some meditation in the morning. We will see.

J

Today at work is already shaping out to be the kind of day when I question why I'm here, and I count down the months until I can look for another job. I hate how I feel like I need to walk on pins and needles around everyone, especially my superiors (not T, the superiors above and beyond T). There are so many small, arbitrary nuances, what's ok, what's not ok... And despite the fact that deadlines and quick-turnaround are a normal and necessary part of all fundraising work, every time we have something that needs to be decided quickly I feel like it counts against me. The atmosphere here is not of walking on pins & needles, it's like stomping on sheets of glass and everything depends on not breaking it. I have 4 hours left in the work day and they can not go by fast enough. Today this office feels like suffocating.

J

Today feels like writing is a struggle, because I am so tired and I want to blow it off. I will not blow it off, I will not say, "I can skip today and do the thing that's best for me tomorrow". That is how I ended up eating a cup of white rice and the last few bites of chinese food my friend offered when she was done with her dinner. I didn't have a great dinner to begin with anyway, but I had damaged controlled- the chinese food was self-sabotage. That needs to stop.

The victory here, which I need to point out, was that I myself did not order chinese food. I am sticking to my dinner-out-only-once-per-week rule, and I anticipate eating take-out tomorrow. Of course, I ate my last ramen and the last of the french fries. Which were not good choices. But now they are gone, and they are foods I will not bring into my home again. I have been on diets like weight watchers where they tell you not to limit yourself and not to "ban" foods, but I need to be more strict with myself. There need to be boundaries. Today I began writing a list of banned foods, and Ramen and French Fries are items #1 & 2.

Outside of food (and I wish I didn't feel like food consumed so much of my life), JL came home at a decent hour today and our friend Dan B came over. I haven't seen Dan B in a long time and it was really nice- he is one of the few friends left over from high school who I still believe in, and I think still believes in me. We have less to talk about these days, but I don't think he minds. Dan B is an only child and lost his mom last year and I constantly think about what it must be like to have no mom and no siblings, and a dad who lives in a foreign country. Maybe that is why Dan B is such a good friend. He was learned, in the most unfortunate of ways, how to appreciate a person while you have them.

I appreciate Dan B, but unlike my plan to one day tell JL how much she means to me, I don't know if I'll ever be able to tell Dan B. I am afraid because of how my friendships with the other boys have failed, and I am afraid that any appreciation I express towards Dan B will be diluted by the fact that I appreciate him so much, in part, because of all those failed boys. He deserves more than such a diluted reverence.

My lids are closing and I do not think I will be able to wrap this entry up with lessons learned or positive thoughts. Today is pensive and a bit melancholy, like the weather. It is so cold and rainy outside. Tonight is a night for reflection without conclusion, and tomorrow we try again to do better.

J

Today was far less emotionally offensive than yesterday. Today was my late day at work so sleeping in helped- I definitely need to go back to being more strict with myself about getting enough sleep. The irony is that I should be going to bed instead of writing this, but for today, the writing will trump the extra few minutes.

Work was a day of victories. I wish I had more in a hand of bringing about those victories, but I will take them, either way. The big Gala Benefit is in less than 2 weeks and man, are times tough for us. This was not the year to enter the fundraising profession. But it was the year I got.

The best part of work today was seeing the relief on T's face. T is my boss and I couldn't ask for much more-- I just worry that this job is not what she really wants to be doing (I actually pretty much know that). I am worried that after this Benefit she will leave. I am just getting used to the school, and the people, and T feels like my only real ally.

Outside of work, today was a calm day. KP is not here. JL got home early from work (before me!) and she and I spent a relaxing evening watching Glee and talking about how mind-boggling it is that we met when we were 11, and now we're 22, which means we've known each other half our lives, and look how far we've come, together. Look how close we still are. I am very lucky to have JL. One day I am going to find the words to tell her this.

I have been thinking about other friends. Not in any particular way, just thinking about them. I have not thought of many of them in a while.

On the final frontier, food, again was a day of some victories and some challenges. I skipped the mac & cheese at lunch. Again, I didn't take the bus. I feel at every moment I made choices that were at their base smart... but then I did things like eat 20 pieces of sushi for dinner, when I only really needed 8 or 12... Balance. I need more balance in my life. That applies to so much more than food.

I am journaling my food. I hope to learn from this.

Tomorrow is payday, I need to be better with my money this month. To help me on many fronts, I am setting goals of eating take-out/pre-made foods only 1x each week. This is reasonable. I will set no other money goals this month. I need to hold myself accountable.

Sleep calls me. I want to fall asleep with pictures of Finn from Glee singing to me. I fall asleep best when I think of being loved.

J

Watching Ruby right now and reflecting on the end of the day. Part win, part not win. Let's not say "lose". Just not win.

I was super hungry by the time I got off the subway, and I had to grocery shopping anyway, so temptation was everywhere in the grocery store. I bought only healthy foods (win) and got a relatively healthy snack (soy crisps, plus I got the small bag not the big one, so win). Dinner was the more iffy period, I made a healthy dinner of chicken sausage with low-fat cheese on corn tortillas with zucchini, corn, and mushrooms... but then I had ramen noodles, which is 400 calories I probably didn't need. But one step at a time, one foot in front of the other, tomorrow I'll do the same thing, minus the ramen.

Another win was walking the extra few blocks home instead of taking the bus, even when it was right in front of me. I have to appreciate the small victories as much as if not more than the amount I berate myself from the mistakes.

As for my non-diet related issues, JL is home at a normal hour tonight and KP went home for the weekend so my stress levels at home are way down. It's been tough with just me an KP home (she was laid off last week) and I could feel myself becoming so unbelievably mean, even when I didn't want to. She is at her parents' for a week so hopefully that will put necessary space between us.

Ruby just ended and now to Biggest Loser, hopefully this will put me in the right mindset to tackle tomorrow.

J

I am once again re-inventing this livejournal, because once again there is a point in my life where it seems writing is a necessary creative outlet. I was conflicted about keeping the friends I had made over a year ago when I last gave this a go, but ultimately I deleted them, even though I immediately wished I hadn't. I don't know if I want this to be a private or public affair. That's one of the problems I'm facing these days, and I wish it was only limited to facebook.

I graduated from college in May and have since then found a job, and moved out of my parents house, which makes me, technically, "one of the lucky ones". It does not always feel so lucky, even though I sincerely wish it did. I have been struggling lately, with the place where I work as well as my new-found total independence. Eventually I will write about those things. Now is not that moment.

As I told N on the phone last night, I just don't know what I'm heading towards. My life has been comprised of concrete goals and next steps. Now I got my job, I got my apartment... what's next? I don't mean to whine but I've been living in this environment that's always encouraged me to be goal driven... and I am goal driven... I just don't know what the goal is right now. I'd like to be looking towards something bigger than my next paycheck or my next weekend. I just don't know what that could be right now.

I have also been combatting the inevitable lonliness that creeps in and out of my life. The pit-of-your-stomach lonliness that sits there like a lead weight and drags down your whole day. I am sick of being lonely, and I hate when that feel comes back and overtakes me for days at a time.

I have been trying to fill my days with "worthwhile" activities: reading through a well-crafted reading list; slowly watching all of the "Best Picture" Oscar winners; rekindling my brief relationship with knitting. But a day of Oscar-winning movies still feels wasted to me. How can I move beyond this?

I have also been trying to reclaim my body and my health. I have slowly crept up 10-15 pounds from 2 years ago and I want to return to the healthy lifestyle I was living. I am looking for motivation. Like so many other things, I can't find it right now.

My hope is for this journal to serve as an outlet and a reminder and a guide.

Today I have (so far) stuck to my small goals: drinking water, eating only the breakfast & lunch provided for me at work. I have a small apple for a snack before I head home at 5 and make myself a healthy dinner. I'm planning on watching old episodes of Ruby before The Biggest Loser, I could use the inspiration and the feel good. I am also thinking of printing pictures of some individuals I aspire to be like: Ruby Gettinger & Kate Dillon being the two who come to mind, being weight-loss related. I think it is time to invest in a bulletin board I can use to track my progress and keep me on track.

/ramblings. For now.

J