Health Month

May has been all about personal growth for me. Setting goals and doing my best to meet them. Some of these goals have been huge like Weight Watchers. However, there are so many smaller goals that I want to achieve but until this month have had to real way to track them. That is, until I discovered Health Month.

Let me backtrack a bit. I am one of those people that constantly think in terms of "shoulds." I should exercise more.  I shouldn't drink so much. I should have known better. What do you do with shoulds? They are completely useless and they just clutter your head with even more useless guilt. And who likes Guilty Gwen anyway?  Problem is, Guilty Gwen and Should-Do Sheila are totally BFFs and are usually found hand in hand.

So what I would usually do is, after hanging out with the girls for awhile (GG and SDS) I would decide that I was going to make changes.  I would make a list of all my shoulds and look at them, then forget about them until I needed to feel guilty again. This in not very fruitful, is it? This has been going on for a long time for me - a really long time. I guess you could say that Guilty Gwen and Should-Do Sheila were more than just occasional guests, they were roommates. I started to think that this was just part of life and I would just have to get used to them being there. Like you get used to that little crack on the wall that no one can see but you. Then along came Health Month.

Health Month is an online game that helps you track goals. Like the name implies, many of these are health  related, but it's not limited to physical health but mental health as well. Actually, it's not limited to anything. Whatever goal you want to set in order to improve your life is game. And, really, when you improve your life you are naturally improving your health. Right?  For me, it's a way to organize Should-Do Sheila and keep her on track preventing Guilty Gwen from ever having a need to come around.

So, it works like this.  Each month there is a kind of contest.  You choose the rules you would like to follow for that month.  These were mine for May:

When you are choosing your rules, choose carefully because once the month starts you can not alter your rules in any way.  You can see most of my rules were pretty easy, but all of them were important to me.  At this time you also choose your "reward" in you win the game and a "punishment" if you lose. I chose to buy a new outfit for myself if I won and to donate $10 to Health Month if I lost. If you do decide to pay, it's a $5 donation to the developer which is cheap and totally worth it in my opinion.

So, now you are ready to play. You start off with 10 life points. Each day you are asked to check in. If you follow all your rules you get game points and fruit. If you don't you lose a life point. If you still have life points at the end of the month you "win" the game. Sounds simple, right? Well, the game itself is simple, but following all the rules was harder than I thought! I lost 3 life points during May but was able to earn new ones as the month went on or purchase one with fruit. While the month isn't over yet, I can confidentially say I won. More than winning the game, though, I have won something much more important - confidence! So much so that I have chosen 20 rules for next month.  How that for confidence?!

In addition to playing this game on your own, you can also choose to be on a team. Teams can compete with each other and other teams making this a giving Health Month a social aspect. Right now I am playing against myself really. It's one thing that I do just for me. It might be interesting to play with someone else or have a team.  Wanna play?

Older, Wiser & Fatter

Today is my birthday and for the first time in a very long time I am actually excited about it.  I have finally come to terms with the fact that I am getting older.  Of course I have always known I am getting older, but now I am okay with it. I think it really hit me last week when we were celebrating March birthdays at work and I asked the girl next to me what year she was born in and it was the same year I graduated from college.  I am old enough to be her dad!  When did that happen?!!  I don't feel like a dad!  Then I thought, what am I supposed to feel like?  The answer is just the way I do.  I am never going to wake up and suddenly be interested in the stock market or talking about whatever it was I thought people my age should talk about.  I still want to dance around my house, giggling and singing at the top of my lungs; shows like "Glee" and "Gossip Girl" will always be my favorites; I will always see wonder in life; and, I will always sleep with a teddy bear when Joey's not here.  I will always just be me.  A new and better version of me, but still me down deep.

I have learned a lot in my years and for that I am grateful.  Some things came naturally over time, like being happy feels a lot better than being a grouch; and, some things came through a lot of trail and error, like knowing that no matter what my intentions, I am never going to be good at drinking alcohol.  (I can drink it, just like everyone "can" sing - I am just not good at it.) I know I am a lot wiser than I was ten years ago and that I will be even wiser in ten more.  I like the person I have become and am becoming with one glaring exception - I am getting fat.  Not chubby, FAT.

Now, I have nothing against fat per se, but when my big boy pants are starting to get tight, I know there is a problem.  They say, "you are what you eat," and I am becoming a big bean burrito with sour cream and extra cheese.  So, with that in mind, my goal for this year it to lose weight and learn to live a healthy lifestyle. How I am going to do this is up for debate, but however I do, I have decided to make it an adventure.

I am lucky to have Joey with me to take on this journey.  Right now we are weighing our options.  There are a lot of diets out there and everyone has an opinion on what works best.  However, we need to find what works best for us.  For the next couple of weeks Joey and I are going to be looking at different plans and will make our decision by mid-April. I thought this would be a good topic to blog about, so I am happy to say I am waking up Cooking With Sean & Joey to document this journey. I am hoping that I can prove you can always teach an old dog new tricks even an old dog like me.

Life is Perfect

Yesterday was an extraordinary day. It's not that anything out of the ordinary happened. The day was quite typical. I got up, had coffee, made the bed, went to work, came home. All the usual things one does during the day. What was extraordinary was my attitude towards life has finally seemed to shift in the right direction. I finally realized that life is perfect the just way it is right now.

I have spent most of my life trying to make to make things perfect. When I played clarinet as a boy I would practice for hours and hours on end because I was never good enough. When I started singing it was the same thing. Hours and hours of practice and I was never good enough.

As a young man I became obsessed with my appearance. I would spend hours in front of the mirror doing my hair, ironing my clothes and making sure the pastel blue of my socks was the exact shade of blue in my shirt (it was the 80s so I get some slack here) and I never looked good enough.

In the 90s I went on this journey of self discovery where I would examine each and every thing that was wrong in my life and was wrong with me. I didn't really do anything about it, I just looked at it. I examined my inner child so closely that my outer adult grew weary. Nothing was good enough.

In my late 30s I started obsessing about the "shoulds." I should be further in my career. I should own a house. I should have these kinds of friends and those kinds of things. Nothing was good enough.

The last year I completely spiraled deep into a little midlife crisis. Now I knew it was me that not good enough and it was too late. For so long I have never been completely satisfied with anything, mostly myself. I was certain I was too old to change and life was what it was - not good enough. I have spent a lot of time regretting the past and looking for more in the future. I have never sat and just enjoyed the present. I mean really enjoyed the present until yesterday.

Last night when I was getting ready for bed I had this new and wonderful feeling - contentment. I don't think I have ever really felt that so strongly or so completely. This really didn't come out of the blue. I have been working on this for a long time and recently I have been working really hard at it. Well, it paid off. This feeling, though, is not what I expected. It's better. I finally know that my life, right now, is perfect. Everything about it is perfect. My job, my friends, my partner, my birds, my home and most importantly me! Everything is as it should be. Right here, right now.

Yesterday really was an extraordinary day. It was perfect.