Get Going!

“The man who moves a mountain

begins by carrying away

small stones.”

– Confucius

What a tumultuous few weeks it has been! I cannot quite stress enough how relieved I am that Mercury has come out of retrograde! I have been so incredibly weak, ill and demotivated, and its had so many negative more knock-on effects.

I had a client skip town without paying me a sizable amount of money, and since I spent all my time working on their projects, all other pending payments have since dried up. I have given up on hearing from this woman again, but the aftermath has been a real bitch. Due to being financially tight, I have not been able to afford to go to the dentist to deal with the pain that started 3 weeks ago.

As someone with absolutely terrible teeth (seriously, I have been told I look like a crackhead by my loving brother-in-law – thanks for the lifelong complex, champ, love you!), I know that the next visit to the dentist is going to cost me a not-so-small fortune, and what with my empty bank account and piles of debt from my previous medical procedures and surgeries, not to mention the CT scan that was ordered 6 months ago and I still have no idea how or if I am ever going to get it / pay for it …. well let’s just say, if I ever marry rich I might treat myself to the medical treatment I so desperately need.

So I have had to deal with the pain while it has exponentially grown (the last time I counted there were 7 visible abscesses in my mouth) so you can just imagine what my immune system is like at the moment. Food mocks me, painkillers all laugh at me and sleep eludes me. I haven’t been motivated enough to market properly for new clients, nor have I been very good at delivering assignment on time to my regular ones. I am tired, I am in pain, and to be perfectly honest, I am pretty depressed.

I hate being broke. I hate having to beg for my own money. I don’t have immense immediate pressures on me as I’m fortunate enough to live with my parents. They understand that I am limited in my ability to have a traditional career, due to my chronic pain illness and multiple mental health disorders, and I am so incredible grateful for that. Yet I still feel like a lesser citizen 99% of the time, because I can’t afford medical treatment.

Am I less deserving of health or pain relief than rich people? No, but who do I complain that this isn’t fair to? Why is it so easy for me to get a few free drinks at the bar, but not the medication I need? Why is it socially acceptable to say “I can’t join you guys at the bar tonight, I’m broke” and for your friends to say “Don’t worry, we’re sending you an Uber – we’ve got this,” but if I were to say “I don’t need a drink I need a Dr” it would be a whole different and incredibly awkward conversation? So guess what I do? I drink.

& Drinking doesn’t help. It’s not good for my physical health and it sure as shit isn’t good for my mental health. I know this. But I’m trying my best. I’m taking things one day at a time. I am trying to force myself to do little bits of writing every day, even if I don’t complete what I start. I am not going to transform overnight and I know that; but I am not giving up. I’ve been tempted lately though.

So yeah its been a shitty few weeks, but I actually do have good news. I have put on more weight!

So progress, however small, is being made! Oh and if you’re wondering if I figured out how to deal with the toothache, I did. Coconut oil pulling saved my LIFE. I highly recommend it for pretty much everyone.

Slowly but surely, I am getting my energy back, and I hope to be back to my productive self soon.

 

Extraordinary Times Are Ahead!

“Hardships often prepare

ordinary people

for an extraordinary destiny.”

– C.S. Lewis.

Lately every time I update my blog, I have to begin by apologizing for not updating the blog. Did I mention that I just moved house? Also, Mercury is now officially in retrograde and I have honestly just not been having a great time.

That being said, with the number of shit sandwiches I have had to eat over the past 2 weeks, I know that something absolutely unforgettable is about due. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t wait to find out!

Well!!

What a crazy 2018 it has been so far. When our landlords gave us 6 weeks to find a new place as they were demolishing the house we were living in, we were quite excited. Now that we are here in our beautiful new home (one my parents plan on buying), I am so glad that it happened!

A Change is as Good as a Holiday!

A fresh new start is exactly what I needed, & this home is every writer and artist’s dream: a beautiful garden, filled with secret hidden corners and featuring a lovely wooden porch swing. It feels like we are in a vacation home, but permanently! My son loves it, and so does Fats Domino the Jack Russel and Pygmalion the cat. I think we will all be very happy here.

 

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I have managed to gain a whole 2.7kg! I had a very bad endometriosis flare up over the weekend, which I self-medicated with some high-grade bud. The resultant munchies have kept me in a continual snacking loop, so it has been rather helpful!

 

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I am very grateful for everyone who reached out with advice about my struggles with anorexia and food allergies – I received a lot of helpful tips and recipes and I really feel like I can get on top of this clusterf*ck.

I was recently introduced to something my mother has actually tried to tell me about my whole life; essential oils.I am not going to list all the benefits in this post, but suffice to say, I am converted! I was so enchanted by oils I even decided to launch my own range of blends (“Samoilz” :p). What do you think?

 

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My mental health has not been in a good place, but I am still not quite ready to dive too deep into that yet. Right now I am focusing on being the best me that I can be, working through the physical and emotional pain and hanging onto hope that one of these days I am going to feel physically and mentally stronger (and then we can burn that bridge when we get to it).

Have a phenomenal week my friends!

Knock Knock…!

…Who’s There? Opportunity!

Life is full of surprises when you approach it with a good attitude and open mind!

 

 

Brace Yourselves…. Here it Comes!

Isn’t it cute how ever since I promised to be more transparent, I have been avoiding my blog like the plague? This has happened for a few reasons. Mainly, because denial is a soft, warm and fuzzy place I prefer to stay cocooned in.

But it isn’t a place of healing, and healing is my mission, so here I am, preparing to unpack.

For now I am not going to dive too deeply into my mental health struggles and epiphanies, I’ll get to those in a later post, right now my focus is on my body and my decision to gain weight.

I mentioned before I would be posting my ‘before’ pics. The reason I made this decision was to hold myself accountable. I keep making “putting on weight” my goal, but for the last 2 years I have only broken the 53kg barrier once, and that was just for a few days. I’m no longer at 48kgs, at which point even I had to admit I looked so skeletal it was very scary, but at 50.5 I am cutting it mighty fine. Clearly, I’m not really making progress, and deep down, I know why.

Goals need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Based.) in order to see any results.

So I need more than an idea, I need an action plan.

• Specific and Measurable: I need to be at a healthy weight for my BMI, with some fat as well as muscle on my bones. As scary as 60kg sounds to me, for my height this is allegedly healthy.
• Achievable and Relevant: I suffer with endometriosis and the IBS that comes along with it, meaning there are a lot of foods I can’t eat. I can’t just pig out and cause other problems, I need to be sensible. I need to also structure my day so that I remember to eat, or make eating a priority. This won’t happen on its own, in order for this goal to be achievable I have to become conscious of what I eat and when.
• Time-Based: I need to set goal-post deadlines and hold myself accountable for them.

That’s pretty much why I decided to blog my process; to hold myself accountable. It’s also the reason I put blogging this off all week. I took some before photos, and looking at them and thought “I don’t look anorexic here, I am overreacting. People are going to say I am looking for attention. Maybe I am looking for attention. There’s nothing wrong with me, I should keep quiet and let the people who have real problems get help, and not bother people with my imaginary problems.”

Thankfully I shared this viewpoint with my mum, who set me straight very quickly…; these are clearly the words of denial. I will most likely continue to see-saw over this issue, and I’ll have to accept I’m not the best person to judge my situation right now because I don’t have objectivity. I also need to remember I am not doing this for anybody else.

That being said, I am at the start of my journey, and here are my before pics. Maybe one day I will look at them and see what everybody else sees.

If you have any weight gain diet / workout tips for me, or words of encouragement, please leave them in the comments, I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts. If you have any questions for me about anything at all, please don’t hesitate to ask!

Drink It In!

“Look past your thoughts,

so that you may drink the pure nectar

of this moment.”

– Rumi

 

I have been getting a lot of feedback requesting me to make my posts a bit meatier. It’s not that I am afraid of writing, I actually freakin’ love it, I am just afraid of oversharing. Truth be told, I love to learn about the virtues of radical acceptance, but I have far from mastered it. I struggle with trust issues, for a variety of reasons which I have gone out of my way to keep very close to my chest.

I’m starting to think that maybe a few people are onto something, that maybe holding it all in doesn’t really serve me. I know that all my relapses have been preceded by a period of me insisting that I’m fine. I’m usually not fine, but that comes out when I’m in hospital.

To be honest, I am sick of hospitals. So maybe it’s time to start unpacking all this baggage. The trauma, the health issues, all of it. It has occurred to me that it might help me in my fight against anorexia. So I’ll start with that. I am going to share my weight journey – all the ups and downs (or lacks thereof) – and deal with what comes up along the way.

It’s going to get pretty gory (I guess will have to change names to protect the guilty), so fasten your seatbelts, dear readers!

Thanks for your ongoing support, each and every one of you mean so much to me!

Don’t Be Caught With Your Pants Down!

They say that hindsight is 20/20. Indeed, we tend to do the majority of our learning from our mistakes – it’s all part of the human experience. For example, my sister recently learned the hard way that getting car insurance quotes is something you should do BEFORE you get into a car accident.

You see, my sister Nikki is one very busy lady. She is a very successful business owner, wife and mother of 2 – with yet another baby on the way, due any second now. As you can well imagine, with so much on her plate, and with the looming expense of another new baby to contemplate, insuring her Audi was on a bottomless to-do list that never quite got checked off.

While nobody can blame her for being distracted – pregnancy brain is a very real thing! – and let’s be honest, most people feel that car insurance is a grudge purchase anyway; far less important than more pressing matters, right? Well that’s where she was so very, very wrong!

In a rush to get everything done that needed to be done in preparation for the new incumbent, as well as to try and keep her salon stocked and meet all her back-to-back client appointments, Nikki wasn’t paying attention in traffic and found herself T-boned. Thankfully she was bruised but OK, and the baby was fine. Unfortunately, her car and the other driver’s car were a mess, and both had to be towed away. In shock, Nikki began to panic, as the reality of what could have happened sank in. Once she calmed down, relieved that no serious injuries were sustained, she did what she should have done months ago – she went looking for insurance quotes.(Well, she got her hubby to, anyway).

What she didn’t realise at the time was just how far this regret would trickle down into every aspect of her life. Without transport she could no longer drop the kids or fetch them from school. She can’t go shopping or buy supplies without her hubby, even getting to doctor appointments is now a hassle. Uber is fantastic, but it is by no means free.

Her oldest son, who has just started grade 1, has had to stay in aftercare for the day. The school didn’t want to accept him into aftercare as they were fully booked, but they made an exception due to extreme circumstances. So there’s Uber, towing and aftercare that have been unexpectedly added onto the budget. Then there’s the matter of the Audi repair. Current tentative estimations are R20000, but they are expecting it to be much more. As for the other driver’s car repairs, that’s yet to be revealed.

Still think that car insurance is a luxury? There’s a saying that goes “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” It is so scary to contemplate how life can change in an instant. No matter how careful we try to be, we can never know the future – we can only do our best to be prepared.

As a parent and business owner,  I have learned time and time again that the more you have, the more you stand to lose. Unexpected expenses that come from car accidents go further than spray jobs; medical bills, loss of income and emotional trauma can not only put a dent in your business, it can end it!

The story has a happy(er) ending. Nikki’s hubby found a car insurance company that exceeded his expectation, and since they have two cars they even receive a 20% discount! These guys even have plans that offer decreasing premiums (what?!). Whether you are insured or not, you should definitely check out King Price Insurance – you only stand to gain!

Hang In There!

“Success

seems to be largely a matter of

hanging on

after others have let go.”

– William Feather

Be Notorious!

“Forget safety.

Live where you fear to live.

Destroy your reputation.

Be notorious.”

– Rumi

 

I have been hit with a major depressive episode and have been mostly hiding in my room for about a week now. When it gets bad like this, sometimes the scariest thing in the world can be my own thoughts. Then again, when you can conquer the fear in your own mind, what is there really left to be afraid of?

Get Yours!

“A great attitude becomes

a great day

which becomes

a great month

which becomes

a great year

which becomes

a great life.”

– Mandy Hale