It's May! It's May! It's May!
Spring time. Baby animals are being born, flowers are blooming, snow is melting and the days are growing longer. But for me it's also a time of huge upheaval with a cross-country move and searching for work. These are two of life's biggest stress-inducers.
In order to cope I wanted May's monthly virtue to reflect a positive aspect that I could practice and cultivate in spite of the stress. There has been a "happiness bomber" hitting the West End in Vancouver before we left and so I took my cue from them.
Happiness is a choice. We cannot always choose our circumstances or every curve ball life may throw our way, but we can choose our attitude. So for May, I Choose Happy.
Sorry I have to keep this so short, I'm on the road having an adventure before getting down to the business of shelter and gainful employment. But I will be posting pics on my INSTAGRAM page, just click my photo above to check out our journey.
Big hugs.
Shan
I confess... oh yes it's public confession time. I confess that I've been avoiding you. It's not you, it's me. So please don't take it personally. I won't bore you with all the sad sorry details. It's one of the reasons that I hadn't been writing. I was feeling all sorts of negative emotions and I did not want to put that out into the world. I hadn't been ready to come back until today I guess.
First things first - there has been a whole lot going on. At the top of that list has been my heart. It's been ten weeks or so since I've started treatment for an infection in the lining of my lil ticker, this is the first week that I feel almost normal! So that's great news. I have another month to go and then hopefully I'll feel tip top.
As some of you know, when something big happens in your life, if you're used to checking in with yourself, you tend to re-evaluate. It can be any big thing like in my case a health scare, or the death of a loved one, or end of a marriage, birth of a child... whatever... you look at your life and ask: "Am I living the life I want to be living?" In my case, the answer was kind of no. I can't complain. We live in one of the most magical places in the world. If you don't believe me, just check out my Instagram page and you can see Spring blooming in all of her magnificent glory. I have an amazing partner whom many of you know as He Who Shall Not Be Named, and we have a great dog. Still my heart and soul are not entirely fed because of work.
Being a writer, I want to write. You might be asking: "Well then why the heck haven't you been here blogging, for crying out loud?!" I'll get to that in a second, you know how I love to run on.
A few events came together and my beloved and I had a long talk and we have decided to leave Vancouver. We are going to drive across the country next week and make the move to Toronto. I don't as yet have a job out there. There are no guarantees. We don't even have a place. I flew to Toronto over Easter to find a place and it was an epic fail. Suppose that didn't help my sour mood, but I certainly didn't want to come here and moan about it. Hence part of the avoidance.
Doesn't matter. Life has a way of teaching you that there are no guarantees with anything so you may as well live the life you want or at least try for it. Nothing worse than holding a dream that you never really intend to fulfill. That's not me, noble readers. I want to be a working writer. So much of my time has been spent working on a new TV series - a 1900's gangster drama that stars a woman as the lead of all things. It's been all consuming. Still that isn't the reason I haven't been here.
I've been avoiding coming here because just when I felt I'd cleared a space for me, for us, to talk about whatever we wanted, to explore next stages in life, or to even share a short story or two with you (that was my hugest desire and then I became afraid), our girl Tracy Anderson came out with Streaming.
It was all I could do to limit my love of it to one or two posts. Each new class I wanted to run over and ask: "Did you see that?" or "What did you think of this week's class" or "Wasn't that so hard?" or "It was a love week or a hate week." I'd finally gotten myself away from raving about how great The Tracy Anderson Method was and how much I love the woman who created it. In January she totally had me taking over my instagram with pics and posts of her workouts. It's fabulous. I love it, I love the community that's grown up around the practice, but I wanted more from my space and I became terrified that this was just going to become another Method blog all over again. Nothing wrong with that. I'm just trying to keep out of the "obsession" territory that I'd once lived in.
Does any of that make sense? Or does it just sound whack? I know, Whitney is dead, the expression Whack should have died with her.
The thing is, in letting go of the obsession, I have also let go of my diet a bit and I put on some weight, then getting sick I've had to ease off the six days a week - doing live stream every day in January nearly killed me. So I've been feeling poorly all around.
But as luck (or life) would have it, I stumbled onto a great new book. I love a good book, who's with me? You know I have such a soft spot in my heart for Gretchen Rubin, right? She wrote "The Happiness Project." Well she has a new book out called "Better Than Before."
And just picking it up reminded me of her ten commandments and that led me to my own Shamandments, the first of which is: Be Shannon. How had I forgotten? Have any of you forgotten the golden rule of being yourself? We sometimes just need a good old fashioned reminder. And isn't it rather fitting that "Mastering" is in the title? I felt it was a personal wink just for me. I had to take it home.
The book is about habits. Why the bad ones are so hard to break. Why the good ones are so hard to make. Why is it tough to create habits even around things we love? Essentially her first book asked: "Can I be happier?" and in Gretchen's own words this book asks: "But seriously, can I be happier?" I'm only halfway through, but already it's setting my world back to right. I feel more confident in me. Who cares if I can't do all the planks in streaming? Who cares if I'm ten pounds overweight? Who cares if people in Vancouver think I'm insane for leaving? I'm okay with all of it. Okay not the ten pounds but I am working on habits that are going to improve all that.
I'm sorry this post is all over the place. It's been such a long time since I've had to table my thoughts into a consistent line of thinking.
Bottom line is this. I was judging myself. Not necessarily being a hateful meanie to myself, but judgie none-the-less. I felt that you'd judge me too. I became afraid to post anything other than stuff about the Method because that's what we're all so used to. I've been super tired and now I am in the process of uprooting my entire life and driving into a future that is entirely uncertain --- like you do when you're sick and tired right? Lol.
Who knows what the future holds, but I think on the other side of this move, I'll be better than before. Or at least that's the hope. My dad says if you aim for nothing, you'll hit it every time. I'm sorry that I abandoned you. The next month or so will be insane, but I'll be thinking of you and snapping pictures all the way across the country to share with you. And because I could use the reminder, here are some helpful Shamandments:
Be (Insert your name here) Shannon
Don't be a hateful meanie to myself (or others)
Just do the bleeding cardio already (Tracy took care of that by sneaking it into the live stream - Tracy we will always have a love-hate-love relationship over that)
Know why I'm doing this -- I think this can be amended to know why we're doing anything that we do.
And Make it your own - on my last blog it was about diet and workout, but I think this rule applies to the lives we live, don't you?
So lets make our lives our own and be really sure that we're living the one we want. Check in with yourself and once again, thanks for checking in with me. I've missed you!
Big hugs.
Shan
PS
Maybe it's time for some new Shamandments. Perhaps that will be the next post.
Oh and I have really got to come up with a new color scheme - I was trying to switch things up for spring, but didn't have a whole lot of time, now it's a hot grey mess! Like me - he he he.
I don't know how it is around your house, but at mine, if you're making the breakfast and you burn the toast? You're eating that charred piece of cardboard. Same goes if you break the yolk. Is it fair that the person who does all the work gets the crappiest breakfast if it happens not to turn out? I dunno, but them's the breaks.
Doesn't it sometimes seem like moms, or just women in general, sometimes get the short end of the stick? I'm very lucky at my house. I cannot make a good breakfast to save my life and He Who Shall Not Be Named, rocks the breakfast kitchen, so generally he makes it and I devour it happily. But I'm not always as lucky out in the real world.
If we were going by statistics, we'd learn that women get less top jobs, we earn less, and we're often doing more because we're just better multi-taskers. This isn't a post to bitch and moan about inequality - far from it. It's a lead up to my virtue of the month.
Last month I was writing about how often I find myself in a position where I am surrounded by people with more experience than I have, or they are better or more successful than I am. In fact quite often it's the case that I am the underdog. My girl Donna commented on how sad it was that we as women don't give ourselves enough credit. So my immediate reaction was to pick "Self-acceptance" as the virtue for March. But hang on a second... Acceptance by its very nature suggests "being received as adequate". Donna isn't adequate, she's exceptional, so why should she have to "accept" herself as if she were flawed? And by that logic, why should you or I or anyone else for that matter?
Most of us here are grown-ups. We're accomplished in our own fields and in fact if we were men, we might even be shouting our own accolades from the highest mountain. Okay perhaps not, but you know what I mean. Men just seem less afraid to speak up for what they want and deserve, less shy about acknowledging their successes, so can we not learn from them?
I believe we can.
I'm not about to post my CV or list my accomplishments so the whole world can pat me on the back, however, I can give myself credit where credit is due. I mean if I was a complete waste of space, I'd have never found myself in meetings or on panels or in places where I am surrounded by all these people that I respect and admire now would I? Nor would you. So how about we decide that we are good enough, that we are worthy, that we are smart, pretty, funny, healthy, whatever else we deep down need to finally see that we are and give ourselves some credit.
So the virtue for March? Self-Credit. Recognize yourself this month even if it's just for the tiny things like having the willpower to chose dark chocolate over milk chocolate, or waking up early to take time for meditation, or getting that big project done on time and under budget - whatever it is that you reached for and got, pat yourself on the back this month.
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Now just as an aside, here's a little story that might make you sit up and say Omigod, I'd probably do that too and how dumb is that?
I've been having health issues for months now, since last June actually. I kept coming up empty. I have a compromised immune and seriously low iron but no one could figure out why.
First off let me say I now know what is going on and am getting treatment and all is well. But here's the story....
He Who Shall Not Be Named and I decided to drive up to Whistler for the day and go for a hike. We arrived, hung out in town, grabbed some tea and set off for the trail. As we parked up, I started experiencing chest pain. Still, I soldiered on and off we went. Not ten minutes in, the pain got worse and we decided we'd better pack it in and head home. I'd been out of town all the previous week working crazy hours on a live show so I was tired. No biggie.
We're on the highway and next thing you know, this chest pain is radiating into my back and my left hand is starting to tingle. Yeah, it's going numb. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? "Holy crap, I might be having a heart attack!" Can that be true? That can't be true....
So we drove on. The further out of Whistler we got, the worse I began to feel. I wondered if I could make it home and just go to bed. Nope, this was happening. But here's the best part as it relates to the virtue.
I had the option of going to emergency in a small town between Whistler and Vancouver, but I wasn't sure I wanted to do that. I didn't want to look foolish. Didn't want to take up the doctor's time or steal a hospital bed from someone who really needed it. And mostly? I didn't want to inconvenience anyone. Are you fucking kidding me? If I was having a heart attack don't you think my death might be a bit more of an inconvenience than a hospital visit?
Yeah. We went to the Squamish Emergency room. It wasn't a heart attack. The thing that had been plaguing me for months had finally caught up with me and was now making itself known. I have a bacterial infection. It got to my wee heart and caused some inflammation. Advil took care of the pain and I was right as rain. I am on a three-month course of treatment for the infection so at the end of the day it's all good. I'm betting I've had this puppy living in me for years slowly chipping away at me and wearing me down, and by the time I get through treatment, I'll feel like my old self again. I hope.
But isn't that so lame? We are just so used to not ruffling feathers, not putting anyone out, not wanting to "bother" anyone, that I was almost willing to chance my health. Dumb dumb dumb.
Give yourself some credit, already, geez.
xoxo
Shan
