I went to bed last night at ten, because despite a nap, I was still tired.  I woke at 12:30, a little too warm, and I paddled to the bathroom for the usual.  I came back to bed, but at best I could enter an odd semi-dream-not-sleeping state.  At 3AM I admitted I was not going to sleep anymore and finished Wonder Boys.  Then I slept from 4:30 until 7.

This is the one day I substitute teach this week.  Thank God it's at the place I taught last year and only half a day.

I think this is the point where I come to Jesus over the fact that my body needs a hard kick in the proverbial patootie.  I am too soft all around.  I have very poor muscle strength.  My eating isn't awful, but it needs to become the epitome of awesome.  I need to make radical changes, and they need to become the new normal.  I have to do this because I just don't function like I should right now, and clearly waiting this out isn't working.

I would say I should wade in, but it doesn't work.  Neither does radical change, though.  I think I need to have an idealized goal of what I will be doing and eating and how I will feel inside my skin, then work towards it for six months, then reassess how realistic the goal was and what I need to change.  Because I can't write sometimes because I"m so tired, but then I can't sleep.  My legs fall asleep when I sit in chairs.  I feel doughy in my middle and my shoulder scream with pain because the muscles are distended from slouching.  

When I was twenty, I hated how I looked because I thought I was fat.  When I was twelve, I thought I was fat.  What I was that entire time was a female with heavy German ancestry of farmers and women who hefted things.  Part of my problem is that my two sisters are both slender and ballet-like in their grace and beauty, and even my brother is rangy.  I always feel like the fat elephant around them, and I translate that to being ugly, too.  This isn't true--we have the same genes, and we're all four quite handsome.  

And I can spot the metaphor here.  What I need to do to my body is make it strong, to allow it to be the strong it actually is well-equipped to be.  I need to change my mind more than my body; my body has been ready to be fantastically athletic since birth.  I think, in fact, that my body is bored.  I think my brain craves sugar for the comfort hit, and my body likes it because it's something to do.  I always feel so good whenever I exercise in any way; it is genuinely a pleasure.  I feel good when I eat well.  But there is a four year-old in my head that is FURIOUS that this is even happening at all, and why the hell does she have to do this?  And I keep letting her win.

I keep trying to do this, but I keep getting derailed by one of two things: either something with writing comes up and I can't bear the idea of taking time away, or I get sick.  If I get a good routine going, it always fails for one of those two things.  I hired a trainer this fall for three sessions, partly in an effort to combat this; I bailed.  Part of the reason this time, though, was the regimen she had me on was so easy I was bored, and it didn't feel like it did much.  It made my shoulders okay.  And when I tried to keep up the gym, on the last day I went it was a nightmare of this woman turning the TV on so loud I could hear it over my headphones.  I felt so much rage at her and then the workout in general that it was good I didn't have a weapon.  Then nanowrimo happened, and I never came back. 

What I need right now is a schedule, and I need energy.  Waiting for it is not working.  I'm going to have to go counter-intuitive and expend more energy to make more.  And I need to buy the four year-old a box of crayons.