Yoga Stress and Other Conundrums

I've talked before about how satisfied I've been with the Pill (none of the side effects some people dread from it, nice weight redistribution), but I have one gripe: in the process of going on/off of placebo week. I get pretty dramatic mood swings. I was on top of the world yesterday, and tonight I specifically avoided all phone calls because I was afraid I'd just end up crying in the unlucky caller's ear. Such is life.  Fortunately the mood swings (for me) are only in the transition days between the placebo pills and the real hormone ones (or actually from no pills to the hormone pills; I never actually bother to take the placebo ones, just take a break from the pack for a week).

I just discovered the blog Eat the Damn Cake, it's pretty awesome.  Definitely my recommendation d'jour, especially this post: This One is Your Real Body.

A friend of mine invited me to go to a power yoga class with her tomorrow morning, and it's given me a maddening amount of stress over what should be a simple decision. The main issues are 1)  is that it's during my normal workout time, and thus would automatically interfere with routine (What! The OCD monster is rumbling to life...), and 2) I also have no idea how it would compare to my usual workouts in terms of energy, which means I don't know how much it could substitute for, whether to count it against my exercise budget (at a time when I'm trying to cut back), how I should time my food intake in relation to it, and a million other calculations/quantifications/evaluations.  Welcome to my brain, watch where you step because it's a mess.  This is really frustrating me tonight, because it's just this kind of bullshit that eventually robbed me of all the team sports I used to be involved in,  Ironically, I couldn't play sports because they interfered with my exercise routines.  Makes a ton of sense, right? Anyway, we'll see.

I blamed the Pill for my mood swings, but it seems as though the fact that I haven't slept for more than 4 hours per night (and never 4 contiguous hours) since sometime last week is probably not insignificant. Hence I should probably wrap this up.  I hope everyone's week is off to a great start.

Baffling Body Works

I have actually had a really great week; my mood was pretty high, despite a few external stressors going on. I was on top of the world yesterday for no immediately discernable reason. I had a pretty kickass session with D. on Wednesday, as mentioned in my last post, and it really lit a fire under me to start tackling some real exercise challenges.  I think I was finally at a point at which I was realizing--and, more powerfully, resenting--just how much those routines really do control my day and rob me of a lot of productivity and life experience. I also think this week was the first time I really started to believe that I can eventually get a handle on this, and that really helped me in putting myself into action mode.

The important part to me is not just to do it a few times to prove that I can, but to make the reduced amount into the new norm. And then work on progressively creating newer norms until things are where they should be.  I am an incredible creature of habit, and making something into routine is really critical for me in 1) remaining compliant and 2) not freaking out.

My body is an enigma to me sometimes.  For the past few days I have been hungry.as.hell.  I honestly don't think I've felt unhungry in days.  I don't just mean that my tummy is a little growly, I mean like "my stomach is going to consume itself from the inside out" hungry. And even though I have not reduced food at all (woot) despite the exercise cuts, my weight has been incrementally down a little bit for the past few days.

All of which highlights the degree to which we're misguided sometimes when we treat body and energy maintenance as a simple "in versus out" equation, especially during the recovery process. As Carrie pointed out on Twitter last night (see her excellent post on the science behind hypermetabolism) when I was whining about the hunger issue, oftentimes if your body suddenly has extra energy available, it will rev up and burn it, and sometimes even burn some extra while it's at it. Bodies are not nearly as passive as we sometimes seem to think.

I went through periodic hypermetabolic stages during earlier weight restoration, and did not miss it. I know the omnipresent "fitness"industry is always advising us to maximize our metabolisms! increase your calorie burn while sitting still! eat these five foods that burn more energy than they contain!, but believe me, it's confusing and frustrating when your body function changes and suddenly your balance is completely disrupted.

Anyway, I'm highly aware that the logical response to being hungry all the time and seeing weight drop is to . . . eat more. Imagine that. As T. pointed out, you're (and by you I mean me) not being fair if you claim to sometimes undereat because you're "just not hungry" and then don't allow yourself a supplement when you are actually famished. I think that if I hadn't been doing the exercise cuts this week I might have been a little more liberal in allowing myself extra calories.  Another factor (which I am obviously using to rationalize my actions, acknowledged) is that I'm going to be traveling away from home for over half the days in February, and am really getting the pre-travel anxiety about how my body will handle all of that, the sort of anticipatory clenching down to pre-compensate. Not by restricting, but just by being terrified to boost anything at all. I don't say that as justification, more of explanation, I guess.  Going to work on that this week.

I get to see M. soon! We tend to have a sort of U-shape in our interactions in between visits--we end a visit on a huge love-high and are really happy with each other, then after a couple of weeks we get cranky, lonely, etc and have a fight, then make up and rise back to the top of the mood-closeness curve in anticipation of seeing each other again.  I think we've been good at making the U a little bit shallower each time, but I'm just glad we both recognize the pattern enough to know that we spend most of the time near the top.

Anyway, I hope everyone has had a great week. Despite the metabolic woes and a few stressful things, I've been feeling really awesome lately. Participatory prompts: 1) Have any morphing metabolism stories to share? 2) Tell me something great that happened to you this week?

Return to D. is Vindicated

I had a session with my dietician this morning, and we did not specifically mention food once the entire hour.  And honestly, it was one of the most productive/thought provoking therapy sessions I've had in a long time.

 The irony abounds, right? I'l take it.

Watermelons and Stuff

I'm starting to get blogger's guilt for not updating for a while, but I haven't really had much to say.  Pretty much 'same old same old' around here I suppose.  I feel like this entire semester is just a holding pattern in which I putter around keeping myself busy while I wait to find out what direction my life will go in next (meaning where I will be moving for my PhD).

Anyway, an unplanned guilt post means you get randoms:

--My sleep has been screwy this week. I am usually one of the world's most consistent sleepers (fall asleep between 11-12, wake up 6:00-6:15 with no alarm), but the other night I randomly just got up and surfed the web, texted with a friend on the west coast, etc from 2:00-4:30, then was wide awake at 5:30 again.  I guess I had a lot on my mind.   That was Saturday, and then last night Match and I had a blow-up fight (we have them infrequently but I hate them more than anything when they happen) that had me up til 1 again.  I feel like I should have passed out by now, as it's almost midnight again, but behold, the wonder of caffeine.

--The fight picked up again this morning, and I am 100% convinced neither of us could have told you what started the spat in the first place, it was that ridiculous.  I think one reason they tend to drag out for us is that we have very different coping strategies.  After we have said what we need to say and are not in inflammatory mode, I *need* alone time to cool off and repair myself (note that this is after we've hashed it out and are aimed towards making up, I don't withdraw in the midst of a discussion). I will definitely get over it, but I need to do that in private, and then I'm happy to re-engage and be back to normal. He, on the other hand, doesn't want to disengage until he's convinced everything is completely fine and happy.  Which, if you are dealing with someone who has to have some recharge time to be okay, is an exercise in futility and frustration on both sides.  I don't think either way is right or wrong, they are just glaringly incompatible when coupled.  Participatory prompt: do you need alone time to get over an argument?


--In evaluating what my lifestyle will probably be like for at least the next few years (lots of time in Third World countries), I've convinced myself that I really need Lasix, for myriad reasons related to hygiene and convenience.  I can't figure out how I'd pay for it, though, and honestly the idea of anyone doing anything to my eyes really scares me.  Participatory prompt #2: has anyone out there had Lasix, and if so how was the recovery, are you happy with results?

--I love that even though my dog is showing his age more and more, he still acts like a puppy when his favorite squeaky tennis ball is brought out.  It's one of those little things that is guaranteed to make me smile no matter what kind of day I'm having. Participatory prompt #3: Tell me something cute that your dog does?  Or your cat, or your kid, or whatever other small animal that might be living in your house.

--I really wish I lived within reasonable visiting distance of any of my friends from college or high school.  I've been pretty lonely lately.

--I got to teach a couple of classes for my adviser when he was out sick last week, LOVED it.  I really get a great feeling from explaining things and convincing bored college students of how kickass my little corner of science is.

--I think it's time for Ryan Gosling to make a new movie, I need a fix.

--According to today's page on my Page-A-Day trivia calendar (nerd alert), it takes 100 gallons of water to grow the average watermelon? Which is approximately how much I always have to pee after eating watermelon...the cycle suddenly makes sense.

--I always, always have a Page-A-Day calendar and at least 2 wall calendars for any given year.

I'm starting to feel at risk of face-planting on the keyboard, so I better sign off.  Hope Monday treated everyone well, love y'all.

"Purposeful Practice" in Recovery

I often catch myself taking lessons, quotes, anecdotes, etc, and drawing analogies to EDs/ED recovery. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, but I think it's probably a pretty normal thing, considering I'm working on recovery with a treatment team and that topic is running in the background of my mind quite a bit.

Anyway, I read a book this weekend (Bounce, by Matthew Syed) that explored the  "innate vs acquired skill" issue, mostly in regards to highly performance-oriented activities, such as sports and music.  The author's main argument was that skill actually  matters very little, and that top athletes, music "prodigies" and the like are actually most likely the results of two overwhelmingly large factors: 1) hard, progress-oriented practice and 2) external environmental advantages (having access to coaches, being in a supportive family, being born in a country/generation where your race/gender is given enough rights to participate in an activity, etc).

In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that one needs about 10,000 hours of practice to really achieve professional expertise at an endeavor, although work by Anders Ericsson in the '90s was really the first development of the theory. For example, Tiger Woods is often seen as the ultra golf guru and/or child prodigy, but in reality his father started him off when he could barely walk, and he had racked up thousands and thousands of hours of practice by the time he hit adolescence and the magic 10,000 by his mid-teens.  Not to say he had no talent, of course, but if he hadn't worked so incredibly intensely to develop his skills, he wouldn't have been able to perform to such a level as to warrant becoming a sports legend.

One thing that is emphasized, however, is that not just any "practice" counts.  If you go out and run the same laps around a track for an hour 10,000 times, you are not really "practicing" in a progress oriented way. You're just repeating a routine (sounds like my life as an overexerciser, actually).  What all of the psychologists emphasize is that if you're actually going to improve and build skill, you have to engage in focused practice that tests your limits and pushes you to go beyond your current capacity.  It's often painful, and frustrating, and exhausting, but it pays off.  One of my favorite quotes from Bounce: "Research across domains shows that it is only by working at what you can't do that you turn into the expert you want to become."

And it goes much deeper than just pushing yourself through the motions, as author/table tennis Olympian Syed points out (emphasis in original): "Sure, clocking up thousands of hours of purposeful practice ultimately determines how far we make it along the path to excellence: but it is only those who care about the destination, whose motivation...is 'internalized,' who are ever going to get there."

All of this seems directly analogous to ED recovery, as I have experienced it at least.  It's one thing to go therapy, claim to be in recovery, make certain incremental changes to get you to a point where you're not in acute danger of needing medical hospitalization. Coasting along in sub-clinical complacency is a really common issue for people in recovery, especially since ED sufferers are often highly successful in other areas of their life, making it seem like the status quo with their disease is acceptable.

And yet...actually tackling the core of the ED--and its control over your thoughts and actions--is a whole different ball game.  It takes "purposeful practice" that will push you, make you uncomfortable, but also take you beyond what initially seemed possible.  It seems like common sense, of course, but making it happen while you're still caught in a disordered quagmire is actually incredibly difficult.  And you have to have that 'internalized motivation' to make the changes meaningful enough to stick.

Anyway, as I'm really starting to get serious about the exercise challenges I've set with D., all of this was extremely thought provoking for me.  I pride myself in being a hard worker and high achiever in other areas of my life, but when it comes to breaking down ED patterns, I am very prone to just give myself the easy way out, not push myself beyond my comfort zone, and basically roll over and invite the ED to keep kicking my ass.  I cut myself slack that I would never tolerate in my professional life.

And I really, really can't keep making excuses for that.

I did a back-of-the envelope calculation, and I'm fairly confident that I've logged over 10,000 hours of exercise since my ED first developed.  Of all the things I could be an expert in, being a disordered person was never on my list of goals.

Onwards and upwards, right?

What about you? Have you struggled with complacency or spinning your wheels in recovery?  Care to share what finally lit a fire under you to challenge yourself and make progress? I'd love to hear some comments about it.

Era II of Sessions with D. And some bad news.

As I mentioned last week, I resumed sessions with my dietician (D.) this week.  It was nice to catch up with her, and she told me that she always has mixed feelings about seeing clients she likes again--good to see them, but bad that they still need the help.  Anyway, even though I like her a lot and she is friendly, she didn't hesitate to jump into ass-kicking mode.  Which, of course, is why I went back to her, because although I like T. for a lot of things, she is way too easy on me.

No such problem with D.  I think the part of our session that stuck with me the most was this:

D: When do you think this is going to come easy to you? Do you think that if you just carry on complacently, in two weeks, or two months, or two years, you will spontaneously decide that it's okay to cut the exercise, gain weight, and shed the eating disorder? How has that worked for you over the past 12 years?  If you keep just waiting around for that to happen, you will be stuck in this lifestyle for the rest of your life.  Some things are important to do not in spite of being hard, but because they are hard. 

Indeed.

We set some concrete exercise reduction goals, stepwise fashion.  Funnysad moment: she suggested an increment to decrease, and I agreed to do that the first week...but then she clarified that she wanted it done the first DAY. My bad...

I chickened out of compliance the first two days, but I actually stepped up and did it yesterday.  I chewed all of my fingernails off in the process, but I survived and didn't compensate by cutting food. In reality, I know that it wasn't a very meaningful amount, energy-balance wise.  It's amazing how that doesn't really seem to matter, I still get anxious in an OCD way.

 I have my first session with T. since before the holidays today, so I guess I'll go over all of this with her.  D. also wants me to get labwork done, so some bloodletting is in my near future, joy.  I will probably gripe, but I honestly don't think I would make much progress on some things without seeing her regularly again.  My mom agreed to help me pay for sessions (she fell all over herself to do it. #baddaughterguilt), so that is taken care of, although I still hate to have to ask.

This morning brought some pretty depressing news: Match didn't get into any of his PhD options that are within. 10 hours of any of the ones I am still considering.  Fuck.  He literally called me in tears when he found out.  We are both very aware that doing this distance thing for another 4-5 years, including periods when I am out of the country for 4-6 months at a time, could be a game-changer...or a game-ender.  We are taking it a day at a time, but there is definitely a shadow over things now.

Breaking Down Eating Disorder Stereotypes

If you haven't yet discovered Arielle's "Wednesday Warrior" videos, then you are missing out.  They are all great, but this week's video, challenging common stereotypes about eating disorders, is so important that I just wanted to give it a shout-out.  I think it's really useful for both ED sufferers and anyone who knows/is close to someone with an ED.

I personally have dealt with a lot of frustration and shame about struggling with an ED for so long (literally half my life now), partly because of everything that it has taken from my life and partly because the issue can so commonly be seen as a shallow, selfish problem.  This latter assumption is not true (it's always so much easier to say that objectively than to apply it to yourself), and I really, really think it's important to broadcast that message.

Philosophy, Addiction, and Recovery

There are some striking parallels between eating disorders and other addictive behaviors, like alcoholism or drug addiction. Both an eating disorder and an addiction are issues that can start out innocuously, grow into a much bigger problem than you realize in real-time, and makes it hard to acknowledge and/cease behaviors that, somewhere deep down, you know are destructive. Some research has suggested that a family history of these issues may predispose individuals towards developing an ED, and that substance addictions are often comorbid with EDs.

For me personally, the issue of recovery that I continue to struggle with the most, overexercise, certainly feels more like an addiction/OCD issue than anything else.

So although this column in the New York Times focused on alcoholism and drug abuse, I thought that it seemed extremely relevant to ED recovery also.  Snippet:

What had perhaps started as fun and harmless use begins to grow troubling, painful and difficult to stop. The alcoholic becomes chained to alcohol in a way different from others who “drink normally.”

In various scenarios of addiction, the addicted person’s fixation on a shadow reality — one that does not conform to the world outside his or her use — is apparent to others. When the personal cost of drinking or drug use becomes noticeable, it can still be written off or excused as merely atypical. Addicts tend to orient their activities around their addictive behavior; they may forego friends and activities where drinking or drug use is not featured. Some may isolate themselves; others may change their circle of friends in order to be with people who drink or use in the same way they do. They engage in faulty yet persuasive alcoholic reasoning, willing to take anything as evidence that they do not have a problem; no amount of reasoning will persuade them otherwise. Each time the addict makes a promise to cut down or stop but does not, the chains get more constricting.

Read the whole thing here; I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Back for More

I'm seeing my nutritionist tomorrow, for the first time in 18 months. I was really glad she was so friendly about taking me back, and I'm actually looking forward to talking with her.  There is definitely a taste of humility in coming "back for more" after quitting last year (although there were some extenuating circumstances in that; I was temporarily living 5 hours away).

I have learned that nutritional therapy really amounts to what I'm willing to put into it.  I have to be honest on food records, to take advice seriously, and actually be willing to put recommendations and plans into action instead of just nodding my way through sessions and then going back to the same old routine when I'm home.  I love that this person focuses on the relationship with food and how it affects overall lifestyle and cognitive state rather than just trying to tally exchanges for me, and I need to take advantage of having someone like that available for the last few months that I'm living here.

I'm really nervous about running into my old therapist--they work out of the same practice.  I don't think she'll necessarily be uncivil, it's just ultra-awkward.  Oh well.

I also can in no way afford to pay for the nutritionist (tomorrow's session will have to go on credit), but I haven't had the courage to ask my parents to help me with it yet.  I don't know if courage is the right word.  Maybe it's more accurate to say that I'm ashamed to have to ask and haven't swallowed my pride enough to do it.  There's no way they will get angry with me for asking for help for this, I just have immense guilt about the amount of money they have sunk into my treatment over the years, just to have me continue to be a freak over 12 years after they first dragged me to a psychologist.  I pay for my own sessions with T., because my insurance covers 80% of that, but I don't get any coverage for nutritional therapy.

In other stressors, I have been sunk deep in thought for a few days doing major assessments, analyzing, and over-analyzing about certain aspects of my personal life, and I'm wondering if a dramatic change might be in the immediate future.  I just don't know.  I wish I did.  I wish I just didn't care, but I do.

Despite all that, I have high hopes for this semester, both professionally and personally.  I actually have a fairly full social calendar this week, and am hoping that will help distract me from the loop of introspection about other things.

Controlled Experiment in Perception

I am very much aware that my perception of my own size/shape/general physical being can be significantly skewed.  It can vary day to day, and some days at weight X I can feel huge, while other days I'm happy with myself at the exact same weight. I can feel like I look fine, then see a picture of myself from that day and wonder how I even let myself leave the house looking like that. Go figure.

So the issue of how I percieve *other* people's weight has always been fascinating to me, because obviously I never see anything except through the Cammy Lens.  It is my impression that my view of other people's bodies isn't nearly as skewed.  I can look at a woman with a nice figure and think "damn I wish I had her body" even though I *know* she probably outweighs me by double digits and I would have a heart attack if I reached her weight overnight.  

But still, for a time I did have major envy issues when I saw someone that might possibly be thinner than me.  I don't think I even processed whether it was attractive or not, it was almost like a challenge to my legitimacy in some sad, twisted way.  If I wasn't the thinnest person in the room, then who was I?  

Fortunately, those days are passed, I could probably write more about that whole issue but I don't feel like it right now.  Being Not the Thinnest Person in the Room doesn't phase me anymore, and I've noticed more and more at the gym that not only have I lost my envy for the emaciated, but I'm starting to see how it truly is way more attractive to be healthy than to be WowSkinny, and it's still sort of a novelty when I realize I have no desire to be a lower weight.

The incident that sparked this post: it turns out that a girl I have met through a local volunteer organization has an identical twin.  Now this girl is ultra-fit: she runs half-marathons, is training for a triathalon, and can out-bench press me almost one-handed (we use the same gym).  She isn't an obsessive orthorexic gym addicted type of ultrafit person, as far as I can tell after getting to know her over a few months, she just loves to run and workout and seems to nourish herself in the right ways to enable the enjoyment of that.

I saw the girl and her twin together for the first time at the gym today, and it was a fascinating case study in the whole "skinny isn't better" issue.  Basically the closest type of "controlled experiment" situation you can get outside a lab beyond just seeing photos of the same person at different weights, I guess. Her twin is significantly thinner than her (they are much shorter than me, so I wouldn't really know how to estimate the actually # of pounds less and probably wouldn't share that even if I did), so superficially you essentially see two different versions of the same person, one at weight X and one at weight Y.  

And you know what? Twin #1, at the higher weight, is SO much more attractive.  I don't think that Twin #2 is necessarily unhealthy and am not in any way saying she has an ED (I had never met her before today and know nothing about her habits).  But to be honest, if I had to choose which one I would want to morph into to maximize my health/hottness/overall appearance ratings, it would definitely be Twin #1 at the higher weight.  In my opinion at least.  Maybe not everyone would think so.  But I'm glad I'm in a place where I do.

The downer part of this story--another girl came over and the first thing out of her mouth was "Wow, your twin is so much smaller than you!" #facepalm

I don't want this to come off shallow and overly appearance focused.  I'm NOT saying Twin #2 is absolutely unattractive because she's thinner.  Or that even if she were, she would be somewhat less of a person for that.  Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer dontthinkI'mabadperson.  I really don't consider myself to be an appearance focused type (my make-up routine takes under 90 seconds....on the days I even do it. I own more pairs of hiking socks than high heeled shoes, and I use the "scrunch and go" method on my hair instead of ever bothering to wrestle with it in the mornings). And I don't actually go around analyzing everyone's size and shape all the time (although I won't deny that I do it sometimes just out of fascination, not to be judgmental. I think it's common for recovering EDers. It's almost like an anthropological interest in Normal People).  I think that I'm just finding it interesting, freeing, and just overall significant to notice how my perception of very thin people has shifted from immediate jealousy to actual recognition that having the lowest scale measurement isn't always the most desirable state of being.

More updates soon, things are starting to get exciting around here in several ways.  Major news on the PhD front, and I'm re-establishing treatment with my nutritionist on Monday.  Also, I did ZERO formal exercise yesterday due to travel, and was surprisingly non-anxiety freakish about it.  Could have done better with food, but could (no, WOULD, in the past) have done a lot worse.

Hope everyone is having great weekend, love y'all!

Holiday Roller Coaster

Hello there, it's been a while.  I hope everyone had a great holiday break.  I'm way, way behind on reading/commenting blogs, apologies. This is my first day back to "normal routine" in about two weeks, it's been kind of a long haul.  I think I did pretty well with food over the break--which involved being at both of Match's parents houses, my family's house, and then back at my house with M. for a week.  Eating didn't go ideally all the time, but decently enough to act (mostly) human and not lose weight.

It was sort of a roller coaster of a holiday, honestly. My brother (age 18) was dumped by his girlfriend right before Christmas and was an emotional mess most of the holiday--and has the personality that means that if he's unhappy, he makes sure everyone else is unhappy.  My mom is under a lot of school/job stress and had a meltdown on all us "kids" on Christmas Eve, which freaked me out because she is my best friend in the world and the incident resulted in both of us in tears for a big chunk of the evening.  And my dad automatically takes her side even when he doesn't understand why she's mad, which is frustrating and sweet at the same time. That was the family stuff.  Aside from those things, though, it was a great Christmas.  Everyone made up and cheered up, and we had a horde of people over for Christmas dinner and all of that went smoothly.

Match and I got into an awful fight on the phone while we were both on 8 hour drives (from different directions) to meet at his mom's house, which was sort of a low point, with much sobbing and snotting and second guessing.  We've both been under enormous stress this semester and I think it really took a toll on "Us". There were some other tense moments, especially when we first got back to my place after Christmas and were sorting ourselves out.  It was the first time he's ever really lost his temper with me for stressing about food stuff. That hurt, in part because I was just as frustrated with myself as he was with me.

But we got ourselves sorted out the second day or so and had a strong visit the rest of the week. It turned out to be extremely relaxing. I think when he left this morning it was the hardest either of us have cried on any of these partings.  And I think that it was partly anxiety on both of our parts about how well we'll hold it together during the upcoming semester.   It's just hard to judge how things are going when you know there are so many external pressures at play.  How do you know how to weigh whether you're getting less happy over time if you are inevitably feeling more emotionally intertwined over that time, for better or worse, just as part of being together? Does that make any sense at all?  We'll see what happens I suppose, can't do much besides take it a day at a time, right?

Okay, so that was all the stressful stuff.  There was definitely a lot to love about the holidays this year, though.  I got to be with my family and bond more with Match's, the weather was absofuckinglutely beautiful, and I was successful in being a sufficient degree of non-crazy required to relax with the people that I love. I enjoyed Christmas Eve mass, a family tradition that I really value even though I'm not Catholic (or religious at all) anymore. I was undefeated in the traditional family Scrabble tournament, and Match and I kicked ass as a team at Trivial Pursuit. I found a new way to mess up the Christmas cookies (inevitably happens every year, I am NOT a chef) and we laughed about it and ate them anyway. One night I laid  in front of the fireplace talking to my teenage brothers so late into the night that all three of us fell asleep on the living room floor.

And Santa brought me an electric Snuggie.  You might judge me, but I, for one, shall not get hypothermia this winter.

I think back to previous holidays, when I was just one big walking stress hormone because of the messed up routines and mandatory family meals and EDness consuming my brain, and I both resent and pity that creature.  I never want to be that again.

I think that 2011 was a rough year in places, but a pretty durn good one in others.  I'd settle for that in 2012, but am going to try to proactive in making it even better.  It will definitely be a significant year, with me finishing my MS, moving to another part of the country, starting a PhD program somewhere, and likely starting research and learning a new language on a continent that I've never been to before.  Right now just finding out where that will be is the next milestone in sight.

I hope that everyone, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, had a great holiday break and is starting off 2012 with strength and hope.  I think my mantra for this year is going to be that every day you have the chance to make decisions that will affect many, many more days in the future--and that can be for better or worse, so it's important to consciously try to make it for the better.

Happy 2012, love y'all.