Life is what you make of it - to change your life, you need to change your priorities....

How true that is - life is what you make of it.  You, and only you, are responsible for you.  If you work to make a good life for yourself, then you will likely have a good life.  If you always expect to fail, then guess what - you will likely live a life filled with failures.

I have gotten so discouraged over the past 2-3 months when it comes to my personal self.  I haven't been to Curves since early December, and it's starting to show, not just physically, but mentally.  There are various reasons I quit going - haven't felt well, gotten pissed off withe some of the things going on there, they are doing that Zumba stuff and charging extra to do it, and not letting you do your regular workout at the same time. 

I guess the beginning of the end for me with Curves was the night Mom told me they were moving to England.  I was just too emotionally devastated that night to try to get myself together and go.  Then the holidays came, and went, and here we are, 2/3 of the way through January, and I haven't been since the first week of December. 

Besides the physical effects of not working out (losing stamina, putting on a few pounds, being tired all the time again), not working out has had a major effect on my emotional status.  I'm a lot more tense than when I worked out regularly, things get on my nerves much more easily, and I'm just even more emotional than usual.  I need that outlet to get the stress out of my system.

I've decided that I'm going to switch to either Bally's or Gold's, and am going to go with Michael.  He's eligible to join certain gyms at no charge through his insurance, so we are going tomorrow afternoon to check out Bally's.  It's time to get off my ass and get it in gear and meet my goals this year!

And that goes in hand with changing my priorities to change my life.  I have GOT to lose weight, not just for cosmetic reasons and to feel better about myself, but for my health - my cholesterol is slightly elevated, as are my triglycerides, and there is a family history of heart disease and diabetes on both sides of the family that I want to avoid becoming another statistic of.  I also want to get healthy and try to stop the chronic fatigue that plagues me on a daily basis.  Of course it doesn't help that I deprive myself of sleep, not because I have insomnia, but because I just don't allow myself to get the sleep that my body needs.  But I would just love it if there came a time in my life where I got an appropriate amount of sleep, and was able to wake up not feeling drugged, and get through my day without nodding off or feeling dreadfully tired all day.

This also goes hand in hand with the Serenity Prayer that I mentioned in my previous blog - changing what I can, accepting what I can't change, and being smart enough to figure out what is what.  I know I can change my sleeping habits, I just have to make myself.  It's kind of funny to think that when I had my surgery back in April last year, I got probably 14-16 hours of sleep a day for about a week, while the anesthesia and other drugs worked their way out of my system.  Then when Brian started staying over regularly in May, slowly moving in, I would crash out by 9pm most nights.  He would wake me up long enough to take my meds, brush my teeth, and then I'd go right back to sleep.

I was actually getting a pretty good amount of sleep every night, but unfortunately I still felt drained.  I assumed it was because I'd had the surgery and the drugs were still working their way out of my system, and also because I was wearing myself out on the crutches every day.  Then I let myself slide back into the bad sleeping habits, or should I say, staying up til too late at night (kinda like tonight LOL) and still having to get up early for work.

When we were out of work last week due to the weather, I made up for a lot of my sleep, and thought maybe I would feel better and be inspired to stick to a more normal, reasonable schedule.  Nope!  Not me! 

Anyways, I've got some attitude adjustments to do on myself, and some bad habits to break and change, but I will get there.  I always do.