What is normal?

I said yesterday that I want things to go back to normal.  That got me thinking about what I really want normal to be and what (small things) it would take to make me happy (and what it will take to get there).  Again, I’m talking small things.

1.    Lose weight.  A year ago this month, after six months of working really hard to do it, I had lost about 50 pounds.  Then I slacked off, and I’ve put almost 20 of those pounds back on.  They need to go away.  I just need to do a few small things every day.

a.    Exercise.  Do it every day!  Just get out and run!  It’s not that hard.  I don’t need to stress over a training schedule for the 5K we’re registered for, I just need to get outside and move.

b.    Eat right (and less).  This is easy when I go to the grocery store regularly, but I get lazy and say I’ll go tomorrow and then the next day, and in the meantime,  we don’t have anything healthy in the house, and we get lazier and eat out.  Eating out does not help me lose weight.  Go to the grocery store!  Maybe making shorter trips more often (like more than once a week) is the way to go.

c.    Sleep well.  Sleeping well makes it easier to get up in the morning to exercise, and exercising every day makes it easier to sleep well.  I feel better in the morning when I actually get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, so I need to make that happen.  Maybe ask John to use a booklight instead of his lamp to read by.

2.    Clean house.  John will have all kinds of sarcastic remarks about this one, but I’m going to ignore them.  I really do feel better, more relaxed, when the house is picked up, uncluttered, and basically clean.  I’m totally okay with it looking like we live there (I’m not aiming for magazine-perfect), but we still have stuff that doesn’t have a place to live.  Not just books, either.  We’ve been doing a pretty good job of getting rid of stuff, but we could do better.  And we need more bookshelves.  And (aside from buying bookshelves), that’s all free!

3.    Stable job.  Maybe that’s asking too much.  I’m not asking for a guarantee that I’ll be employed forever, but I would like to know if my next position (that starts in a little over two weeks) is only going to be for three months or not.

Okay, so maybe the last thing isn’t that small.  And it’s something I have no control over, so it really doesn’t belong in this list.  But the other things are so easy for me to do that it’s stupid not to do them.  And that’s what I’ll tell myself when I try to slack off.  “Don’t be stupid!  It’s so easy!”  Maybe I should find a more positive way of saying that.

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