If there is anything that I know for sure, it's that it's hard being a girl. But you know what else I've learned? It's even harder being a woman. At least as a girl you have good skin, the future is stretched out for miles ahead, and everything seems possible.
As the clock ticks on, years pass, and you struggle to accomplish all of those goals you so gleefully set for yourself, life can get a little taxing. You can get worn out. But there are many things you can do to counter those feelings. You can eat well, live well, love, move your body, get fresh air, meditate, drink lots of cool refreshing water, copious glasses of wine might seem helpful while you're drinking them but those can have side effects, reading inspiring quotes, learning what those you admire have done and the list goes on.
I have a calendar by my bedside. It's a daily one where you rip off the previous day and you get a new picture for the new day. I generally buy ones with photos of flowers or cute puppies but this year I opted for a quote calendar. So each day I flip the date and get a new thought for the day. Some are silly, some boring, some are great reminders and today was a good one. The message today was: If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.
Wow, that's some serious truth right there.
I've been in transition. He Who Shall Not Be Named and I had decided it was time for a change so we packed up, got in our old red truck and drove across the country to start a new life (ish). It's still us in our life, but a new place, new possibility that kind of thing. We chose to make a bit of a holiday out of it, but being on the road and living out of a bag for over six weeks isn't always what it's cracked up to be. I wasn't getting the exercise that my age requires of me to maintain a good weight. Plus my diet left a LOT to be desired. Pizza, burritos, cake, cookies, chocolate, fried breakfast - oh lordissa how I love a fried breakfast.
Now, two and a half months later, as I sit in my bedroom typing this letter to you noble reader, I feel bad. I feel bad about myself. My weight has climbed up almost to the height it was before I ever started Tracy's 30-Day Method in September 2010. I've gained inches everywhere. Even my skin feels too tight. And yes, I know now that I've moved into my new place and things are settling into a routine I can get back to my six days a week with Tracy and I can try to curb my enthusiasm for everything sweet and carby, do all the stuff I should have been doing on the road but lost the will to do and I'll get back into my skinny jeans - but I feel bad.
But having a keen understanding of the importance of what we think and what we throw out there into the universe, I decided two things needed to be done. One, I needed to come here and confess how awful I feel about myself in order to snap out of it and two, I need to make a public declaration of my commitment to going sugar free. Again. Can you say yo-yo? Can you say merry-go-round? Hey, I didn't quit smoking on the first try either so bear with me.
My plan is two-fold. The first part of the plan is to try and find something about myself that I don't find appalling - so here it is -- I feel good about my arms.
I know it's a bit weak and sort of pathetic but I have to start somewhere and I think my arms are okay.
Next, I am hosting a dinner party for some very dear friends this Saturday, one of whom owns a gelato shop and is bringing homemade gelato. So rather than feel guilty, or decline I am going to have some. I will enjoy it. In fact there is chocolate in my fridge as I type this.
So the deal is - if I am going to kick sugar once and for all why not choose a date that I can keep track of and remember? With Sunday being the summer solstice and National Aboriginal Day - I think that will be the perfect day for a fresh start. I'm not saying it's going to be easy or that I won't fail, but I am going to try and I needed to say it out loud to make it real.
Now I am off in search of some chocolate chipped cookies because if I am going to be giving all this up, I want to be sure I cross the absolute faves off the list in the next few days. What's a detox without a lil pre-tox first, am I right? No I'm not right. These are the ravings of a junkie talking. Anyway thanks for reading.
Love you!
xo
Shan
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.
