So Here I Sit in the Fire

So why the delay in getting this latest entry posted? I did have a lot to do at work the last few days, and I have my regular workouts that I have to make, but truth be told, I procrastinated a little. Okay, okay, I procrastinated a lot. I probably could have had this posted by Monday night if I had really put my mind to it, but I kept finding excuses.

It’s because this post is about how I arrived at “the point.” You know, the point where you just can’t take it anymore? I had to stop and think back (cue the “going back in time” harp music) to try to pinpoint how this really got started. If you don’t know where you’ve been, you don’t know where you’re headed, I think. Well, at the very least you don’t know how you ended up “here,” wherever you own “here” is. This is just particularly difficult to write because it takes me back to a time in my life when I felt like an utter failure. Frankly, it sucks to think about it and it made it REALLY easy to put off writing. I know anybody would find it hard to think about a time like that, but I guess I have to make myself do the difficult thing in order to understand how I arrived where I am. So I will. Ugh. Bear with me.

I’ve already admitted that I’m overweight and that I need to make some serious changes in my life. What on earth could be more difficult to write about than something that personal? Well, try the last year that I lived in Chicago, when I felt like a complete failure because I wasn’t succeeding at work. I know, I know. I didn’t rob a bank, I didn’t mistreat a senior citizen, I didn’t kick a puppy, or anything like that. It happens to lots of people every day, so why was it so hard for me? I’m not sure, although I can tell you that I had never been a failure at work before that. Ever. I just made the mistake of letting my work become my life, instead of it being just one facet of my life. Admitting I felt like such a failure is much more embarrassing than admitting I’m overweight. Go figure (pun intended.)

I love Chicago– it’s such a beautiful city with so much to do (and SO many great restaurants, believe me, I know). By the time I left, though, I admit I was beaten down and pretty small (yes, I know, ironic since soon enough I would be feeling way too large). I worked for a large management consulting firm downtown, and for most of the time I was there, I loved it. Toward the end, though, things were pretty rough. The company had gone public, so everything changed drastically from the time I had started working there. Where there used to be a sense of camaraderie, there was competition, and I’m talking absolutely cutthroat stuff. One part of the company’s mission statement when I started was that they hired nice people. One day that sentence just sort of disappeared… funny how as much as they pushed their mission statement down our throats, that little disappearing act was never, ever discussed.

To give you a little bit of background, what mattered was billable hours and bringing in the cash. People used to be fairly generous about sharing projects, but the focus changed and everybody was hogging hours, and generally being really obnoxious about getting on the teams with the biggest budgets. I’m not a cutthroat kind of person–never have been, and I never will be. I didn’t have the heart for it, plus it was really hard to change gears and go from a cooperative work environment to a competitive one. I had always excelled at work, ALWAYS. It was hard to go from having autonomy and being told I was doing good work to feeling like everything, absolutely everything, I did was under microscopic scrutiny and that every little thing I did was constantly being judged by the nit pickiest people on the face of the earth. It felt like if I even breathed wrong, I heard about it. And that’s only a slight exaggeration! Pretty much everything I had done in the past was now wrong. I just didn’t have the enthusiasm I had previously had for the job because the job had changed while I hadn’t. I felt like nothing I did was right. I took criticism of my work as criticism of me, which I shouldn’t have. It’s hard to separate yourself from your work, I know. I try not to do that now and I can’t always do it, but back then I really couldn’t. I worked so many hours and put so much effort into the job that it WAS me. Criticism of my work was criticism of ME. I took everything too personally, and when my work came under fire, I believed that I as a person was under fire. I felt like an abused puppy, always waiting for the next blow to come.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of a support system to help me cope. My friend Lauri had left the company and I really missed her, and my sister’s family had moved to southern California. After a while I realized I felt completely alone in a city of 8 million people. Sure, I had friends, but we all lived so far apart all over the city and the suburbs. We all worked a lot of hours, and we all had to run for our own trains and buses when we could. It was also really hard in the winter– when it’s 20 degrees outside and the wind is howling off the lake, your inclination is to get home as fast as possible, hole up in your own apartment, and hibernate. Oh, alright, MY inclination was to get home as fast as possible and hibernate. There are certain crazy people out there (and you know who you are if you’re reading this) who are so devoted to running that they’re willing to run in the snow and ice. I, needless to say, was not one of those crazy people. Don’t get me wrong, though! I don’t mean to sound as if I couldn’t possibly have made more of an effort to get out and about with friends. I know I could have, but the long hours at work were starting to affect me and (unfortunately) my whole attitude toward life. All I was doing was working long hours, sleeping some, working long hours, sleeping some, repeat ad nauseam.

And speaking of nausea, it finally got to the point where I was sick to my stomach every morning as I got ready for work. Seriously sick to my stomach. The taste of toothpaste was enough to give me the dry heaves. I was having a physical reaction to having to go to that office every day! How sad is THAT! But even after months of throwing up every morning, I still didn’t get what was going on. I remember I went to see a doctor, and she looked at me and said “You’re not sick, I just think you hate your job.” Really? Wow. I never honestly thought of that. Stress? Sure. Bad days? Sure! But hate my job? Wait a minute… Holy crap, I hated my job, the job I once loved! So after having some sense knocked into me, I decided I wanted to be around my family and back home in Texas.

When I moved back, I did take some time off to rest, but pretty soon I had to go back to work. The goal of taking some time off was to try to rejuvenate and find the old enthusiasm I had lost, but I’m not sure what happened. I guess the last few months in Chicago affected me more than I was willing to admit.  Worse, I didn’t have the right attitude when I did go job hunting. Instead of being patient and waiting for the right job, I took the first job offered to me. I KNEW it wasn’t a good fit the second I arrived for my interview, but I brushed aside my gut feeling to do the safe, practical thing– have a paycheck coming in! I mean, how gutsy would it have been to turn down a job and stay unemployed for who knows how much longer? Pretty gutsy, and I wasn’t feeling gutsy at the time. Remember,  I was still feeling like a failure. I still remember that when I left the interview, if someone had asked me to describe the office, I would’ve said “gray.” Gray everything– I honestly remember the carpet as being gray, the cubicle partitions as gray, the receptionist was gray, the wall color being a pale shade of gray, etc. That right there should’ve been the first big clue, but noooooo, I accepted the job. What a surprise the first day was when I walked in– I must’ve been staring at everything around me trying to figure out where all the gray furniture and carpet went. As it turns out, what was primarily gray in that office was the people. They were dry, dull, unimaginative, humorless drones who didn’t want to do any more work than they were absolutely required to do, and who saved all of their energy for gossiping about each other and stabbing each other in the back. Oh, what an energy drainer! I lasted 6 months before I had to go find another job because I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I hate to admit it, but I did it AGAIN. I was so desperate to get away from the first place, I jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. Yep, right smack dab into the fire, and here I sit today.

To say that I threw myself into my current job is putting it mildly. I was desperate just to prove that I was a good employee. I worked steady 12 hours days, I worked weekends, I worked holidays. I think after the last year of the job in Chicago, I needed to have someone say “you ARE doing a good job.” Unfortunately, the praise and recognition never came. You know what did? The feeling of being a failure, and this time around, POUNDS came along, too. The pounds came because I told myself that I didn’t have time to eat right, that I couldn’t leave my desk to take a lunch break (had to prove my dedication, of course!), and I SURE didn’t have time to work out, because I was at work at all hours from early morning to late at night. The problem is, I never got ahead of all the work and I never will.

It finally hit me about a year ago that nothing is going to change. It’s really not, not ever. I know that rationally, I shouldn’t feel like a failure again because I’ve tried, I really have, but management is not going to get me any more help, and a tough situation is only going to get worse. As it is, that really hit home this last week when we discovered that the wrong information for someone was entered into the payroll system, and the paperwork with the correct info wasn’t in the employee’s file. I didn’t make the mistake, but it’s my responsibility because I didn’t find the mistake and correct it. It kills me, believe me, because even though I want to get another job, I still take a lot of pride in my work and it pisses me off that I didn’t find the error.

(As an aside, though, this last week taught me something else. It taught me that I shouldn’t keep things internalized and that it’s healthier in the long run to just be honest about things, even if it’s embarrassing. The truth really shall set you free, I suppose. I hadn’t said a word about the situation to anyone even though I had chance after chance. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it because I felt like such an idiot. After keeping it to myself for the better part of a week, a couple of days ago the stress was so bad that I finally ended up just sort of blurting it out to someone who was probably a little taken aback at hearing about it out of the blue, but who (thankfully) listened to me and was honest but reassuring about it. Saying it out loud took away some of the power, I guess. It made it easier to talk to my sister and a couple of friends about it, and nobody’s tried to make me feel like a failure yet. I still feel like an idiot, though.)

So I realized probably a year ago that there wasn’t going to be any fundamental change in the way the company does business, and that I needed to find another job. But I also knew that I didn’t want to interview looking the way I did. I knew I wouldn’t be comfortable, much less confident, interviewing at the size I was.  I’ve known that much for a while, but it wasn’t until a few months ago that I really thought about it and realized something much more important. I had sacrificed my health trying to get something I just wasn’t ever going to get from an external source. It seems so clear now, but no manager, or review, or job was (or is) going to make me feel better about myself. I have to make myself feel better about myself (if that makes any sense whatsoever, but you know what I mean). I wasn’t going to be able to do that, though, unless I started to lose some weight and take back my life. Accepting this (very wrong) job is completely my responsibility. I didn’t ask enough questions about what the job actually entailed, I didn’t ask about staffing and support, and after I was offered the job I sure didn’t ask enough questions about performance reviews and salary increases. That was one mistake I will never, ever, make again, believe me.

 So back in May when I started thinking about what I want, a new job was at the top of the list. I want to enjoy going to work again. I don’t want it to be the center of my life, but I don’t want to feel constant stress about it, either. I want to LIKE my job. SO, the resume rewrite has started. Granted, it’s not finished, because there’s this blog thing I have to write, and my workouts have to remain a priority, and then there’s work. There’s always lots and lots of work. And then more work on top of that. But it will be done soon, and I’ll start looking for another job shortly.

Of course I have no idea how long it’ll take to find another job, but I do know that taking control of the situation has done a lot for my self-confidence. This time I’ll make sure to take time, ask a lot of questions, and in general make sure the job is a good fit for me. I will NOT force myself to fit the job.  So wish me luck on the great job hunt. And by the way, anybody want to be a reference for me?

Changes…

…They are a Comin’

But first some details.  It’s been pointed out to me that anyone reading this blog might want to know the vitals: how much I weighed when this began, what I weigh now, goal weight, etc.  My first inclination is to say “screw you, that’s none of your business,” but that would be rude and I’m not a rude person.  Still, I hesitate to put numbers out here, because hey, it’s a little embarrassing (as if spilling your guts in public isn’t, right?)  I may change my mind and post specific numbers later, but for now I can tell you this: I’m 5′ 3″ and when I began working out, I wore a size 18/20.  Definitely not the largest size in the store, but plenty big for someone my height, okay?  I’m down to a 14/16 right now, and as of last Friday (weigh-in day), I’ve lost 38.6 pounds. Enough about that.  Back to our story:

In the first Half Assed post, I explained that I was snapped out of my doldrums by getting asked out on a date.  After I realized that I didn’t want to continue living the way I was, I had to think about what I wanted out of my life.  What did I want, and with what was I unhappy (to be grammatically correct)?

First and foremost, I was unhappy with my appearance. As I mentioned in my first blog entry, I had allowed myself to gain quite a bit of weight.  Granted, I was extremely lucky that I didn’t yet suffer from any health problems related to my weight, but I couldn’t count on that lasting forever.  I was also lucky in the sense that I seemed to have topped out at my maximum weight, regardless of what or how much I ate. (Now that I think about it, if I were happy at that weight, I could be eating a cheeseburger and onion rings right about now… but I wasn’t, so I can’t!)  Then again, I couldn’t count on not gaining weight in the future, either.  What it really came down to was vanity, plain and simple.  I’ll admit it; I have no problem with it.  I used to be a size 4, and I never had become used to shopping for clothes in larger sizes.  In all seriousness, there is NO thought put into the “design” of plus sizes, not at all.  I haven’t found anything that I truly loved to wear in years because plus size clothes are so damn ugly.  And don’t get me started on the fabrics! I confess I’m a little bit of a fabric snob– I do not wear synthetic fibers.  Unfortunately, the majority of plus-sized clothing seems to be made of polyester.  Frankly, if I wanted to ever feel so much as halfway good about what I was wearing and how I looked, I was going to have to lose some weight.  I also love shoes. Of course, shoes are the one thing you can wear regardless of your weight, but they go with the clothes, you know?  No cute shoe is going to turn a butt-ugly outfit to fabulous.  My shoe collection had sadly been rendered pretty much useless at a certain weight.

Next, I knew that I wanted to find another job, but I was procrastinating because I knew I wouldn’t feel confident interviewing.  It hit me pretty hard that I’ve been putting up with a less than ideal work situation just because I don’t want to interview while I’m fat.  Don’t get me wrong; I like what I do, and I’m lucky that I truly like my coworkers.  Right now there isn’t one wacko in the group I work with every day (although I suppose I could be lying since some of them know about this blog!).  I know that not everyone can say that they genuinely like their coworkers.  The issue with my job is the volume–without going into too much detail, the vast majority of companies the size of the one for which I work would have one person each responsible for the three areas I have responsibility for.  I do have an assistant, but she’s on the phone all day answering employees’ questions.  I’m lucky to have her at all; it took two years of pleading just to get her job into the budget.  The fact is, I have way too much work to do, and prior to this summer, I was working steady 12 hour days just trying to stay ahead.  I told myself that I was way too busy to work out, or go out, or do anything because I had to work.  Part of the life re-evaluation was accepting the fact that regardless of how hard or how long I worked, nothing at the job was going to change, so the change would have to come through me.  I no longer work 12 hour days.  I still don’t take a lunch break, but I don’t work until 8:00 every night.  Depending on what’s going on, I’ll work late if something absolutely has to get done, but staying very late is no longer routine.  Besides, what did working 65-70 hour weeks ever get me except a fat ass and a lot of stress headaches? It certainly didn’t get me any decent raises, that’s for sure.  Now I work out two mornings a week before work and I get here when I get here, and I work out 3 nights a week and leave at 5:30 to get to my workout on time.  Guess what happened after I started working on my own schedule? Nothing… there’s still too much work to do, we’re still not caught up, but I feel a lot better and I have more energy (on most days, anyway). I know that finding another job in a tough economy will take time, so I’d better get started now.  I’m not anywhere near my goal weight, but at least I’m smaller than I used to be. 

As much time as I devoted to work, I gave very little to friends.  I sincerely regret that.  I hate to think how much I missed because of my self-doubts and lack of confidence.  Part of it was that I felt that I was too fat to see anyone.  I don’t know why I assumed friends would judge me; I certainly wouldn’t have judged them.  In any case, I never went anywhere or did anything because I felt horrible.  One of my goals is to be a better friend, to go out and see people, and to be there for someone when they need me to be.  I’ve made an effort to reach out to old friends, and I’m happy to say that we’ve been able to get together a few times and catch up on the last twenty or so years.  I don’t want the get-togethers to stop. And I’m so happy to say that I made a new friend this summer– here’s a shout-out to ah… we’ll call her Jessica Simpson, or JS, who’s been incredibly encouraging while I debated starting a blog. Thanks!  

My sister has also been incredibly supportive of the changes I’m making, and I want to thank her too.   Yet another goal is to be a better sister to her, as well as a better aunt to her kids.  It’s difficult when you live in different states and you’re both busy, and the kids need to be driven everywhere, and our bedtimes are so different, blah, blah, blah.  But she’s going through her own changes this year and I want her to know that I love her and I intend to work on being a better sister. Well, I guess I could say it to her, couldn’t I!  Hey, if you’re reading this, I know you’re going through some tough stuff right now, and I guess that as the older sister, I think of you as always having everything under control.   I shouldn’t assume, and just know that I love you very much and the shovel is always at the ready should you need my help.

I still can’t decide whether to tackle the next subject or not; stay tuned while I debate with myself.  Thanks for reading!

and last, I admit I’m not 5′ 3.” I’m 5′ 2 and 1/2.”

I’d Rather Kick Myself

How a Fat Girl Decided to Change Her Life

Let me begin this blog by getting something out of the way.  I’m fat.  I. Am. Fat.  Got it?  I admit it—I’m overweight.  Now, I’ve been overweight for the last ten years or so, but I’ve been seriously overweight for about the last five.  The detail on how I became this way can wait for another blog entry.  Let’s get to the good stuff—what made me decide one day that I’d had it with and that I wanted not only to be healthier than I had been in a long time, but happier, too?  It wasn’t a health scare or a warning from a doctor that I’d better change the way I was living.  In fact, not one doctor ever said a word to me about being overweight.  I swear to you, they didn’t.  Really!  To a person, they were of the opinion that as long as my cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure were fine, then I was fine.  By that definition, I was fine.  Always had been, and probably would’ve been for a good long while.  No, it was nothing as dramatic as a health scare that got me out of my fat rut.  Instead, this story begins, as (sigh) so many do, with a man.  This man came into my life unexpectedly a few months ago and inadvertently turned it pretty much upside down.  It’s because of him that I started thinking seriously about my life—well, the quality of my life, anyway.  What on earth did this one man do to make me stop and think about changing?  He asked me out.  I know, I know!  The absolute nerve of this man, asking me to dinner!  Yep, he asked me out on a date, but I said no.  Now, I said no primarily because he was not yet officially single,* but I also said no because my immediate reaction after he asked was “I can’t.”  Not “I don’t want to,” or “hmmm, sorry, I just don’t think we’d get along that well,” but I can’t.”  Even as I thought the words I knew how ridiculous they were, and just as quickly as I said no, I realized that I really wanted to say yes. (Although, hello! I am NOT one to go out with the Almost Single.  Only the Definitely Single.  Okay, there was that one really good liar, but that’s a whole other story.) 

You see, this man and I hadn’t ever met in person, we knew each other only through a correspondence.  It began as a casual thing, the “hey, how are you today” kind of emails that people typically exchange, but we started discussing more serious topics, exchanging emails more frequently, getting more personal, and we started a real friendship.  The problem was, when he asked if we could actually meet, I panicked.  There was no freaking way I wanted him to see me.  Big deal, we’re friends, right?  Sure, but I was just not comfortable with who I had become.  You know the phrase “she’s really let herself go?”  That was me—I was the very definition of that phrase.  I had gained a lot of weight, I no longer bothered to dress well because of it, and I wasn’t even bothering to wear makeup anymore.  I can’t believe I just admitted that.  Anyone who knew me 5 or 6 years ago would be shocked to hear that.  I was never a clothes fanatic, but I was always put together—hair, nails, makeup, and of course, always the right shoes to go with whatever I was wearing.  Always.  Now I was (I hate even typing the word) frumpy.  Me!  Frumpy!  But I was, sensible shoes and all (shudder!).  Now I know there are plenty of overweight people who are truly at peace with who they are and how much they weigh.  More power to them, I say, if that’s how they want to live their lives.  I, however, am not one of those people, and it really hit home when I was asked out on a date.  I realized I wasn’t happy.  I wasn’t happy being fat, I didn’t like not being able to find clothes that fit that I actually liked, and I was way too good at avoiding looking in the mirror.  Worse, I even avoided seeing friends for fear of what they would think of me.  For years I had even refused to let anyone take pictures of me (so don’t ask, they don’t exist).  I don’t know exactly how it happened, but as large as I was, I had disappeared.

That’s why back in May, one simple request for a date got me started thinking about my life, something I had become really good at avoiding.  I realized that yeah, I did mi ss dating, seeing friends, and just having fun.  I realized that I wasn’t really living, I was merely existing.  I wanted to be able to say yes without hesitation if someone asked me out, or if friends asked me to go out and do something.  I wanted to feel good about myself again.  Therefore, it was time for a serious change.  Do you remember the movie “How to Make an American Quilt?”  There’s a line from that movie that I’ve decided should be my new motto.  In the movie Maya Angelou’s character tells Wynona Ryder’s character “I’d rather wonder than kick myself .”  Ryder’s character responds “I’d rather kick myself.”  I decided that day that it was time to stop to stop wondering “what if,” but to start risking maybe having to kick myself after trying and possibly failing at something.  So yes, the impetus for the drastic changes was a man, but rest assured I didn’t make any changes FOR him (please, let’s not give him a bigger head than he already has).  You’ll hear more about him later, but next: the changes themselves.  

 

 

*a story that may or may not be detailed later in this blog.  Oh, who am I kidding? Of COURSE I’ll explain that later.