Well. I certainly didn't plan to be gone for a month. It just happened. Expect this to be a rambling post, and I'm not sure whether it will long or short yet.
I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I run a food blog. About 2 months ago, I decided to take a break and I pretty much made the commitment that I would return after the Oregon vacation. I was just getting back into the swing of things. By the swing of things, I mean that I normally post 3-4 times a week. I'd think I'd posted about a week's worth of work when disaster struck. I was putting the final touches on a post, when I dropped my cup of coffee on the computer. How does one do that? I cursed and ran around the house, but eventually I thought I had it cleaned and dried. The computer worked fine until about 3pm that afternoon when it suddenly died and would not turn back on. It still hasn't ever turned back on.
A. and I ended up driving about 2 hours to get to the nearest Mac store, just to find out that they only stock Mac Book Air's, not regular laptops. We basically drove 2 hours just to order a laptop and be assured it would arrive in 7-10 business days. For the love. So, I was without a computer for almost 2 weeks.
I felt gagged. Binded. No way to release my creativity. No way to write in my journal. I ended up going to bed at 8 pm and dragging my butt from bed at 8 am those days. That's a lot of sleeping time, even for me. I tried to keep up exercise, but I felt lack-luster. Luckily, I kept creating recipes and taking lots of pictures.
The computer finally arrived, and not a moment too soon. I'd begun to receive harassing phone calls from friends and family members wondering why the heck there were no food posts. I was feeling the pressure. A. got the new laptop up and running and handed it over to me to get caught up. I plugged my trusty camera into the new computer and prepared to import the photos.
There were 400. Combine that with 300 from the old computer that I hadn't edited yet. That's a freakin' ton of photos to have on deck to edit. I normally edit shoot-to-shoot to avoid getting overwhelmed, and needless to say this group of 700 photos consisted of about 7 shoots.
I felt buried.
I ended up tackling the photos the same way I do everything. One photo at a time. It took me an entire evening, but I made my way through them. The food blog is caught up, photos are caught up, now what?
I have been feeling a lot better since vacation. I think I've adjusted back to real time. I sometimes wonder how much of an effect our diets have on our mental health and for how long. I ate tons of food in Oregon that I never eat anymore. Stuff that is processed and made with lots of chemicals and preservatives. I'd been feeling immensely better since cleaning up my diet and then boom. 2 weeks of eating dirty and I'm right back where I used to be. Slow. Listless. Hopeless. Angry. Distracted. The opposite of mindful.
Is there a connection? I suspect so, but I'm no scientist. I'm back on my normal "diet". I don't diet (as in watch what I eat for calories) so when I say diet, I just mean what I eat normally every day. I follow an IF (intermittent fasting) lifestyle, which I believe also contributes to my clear head. Most days I don't eat until after 1 pm, usually later. I have coffee in the morning, and I drink water throughout the day, but I don't eat much the first half of the day. IF is not for everyone, but it's something I've accepted after I realized I was following it without knowing it almost my entire life. There are numerous articles out there extolling the benefits of fasting, I can vouch that I feel a lot of them. No, I'm not hungry all day. No, I don't think about food 24 hours a day. Like I said, my body has pretty much been doing this my entire life anyway, I just recognize it now. When I do get to eating, I try to eat mostly clean. One of my favorite afternoon snacks to break the fast is homemade guacamole made with avocados, red onion, cilantro, lime, and a little kosher salt. So good, and mostly clean. Dinner is usually vegetarian, chicken, or fish with LOTS of vegetables. I snack a lot after dinner, eating a ton of fruit. Usually a bowl of peaches, raspberries, strawberries, grapes, kiwis, or watermelon. I usually have a bowl of air-popped popcorn. I always end the night with a cup of chamomile tea and a piece of dark chocolate. I think eating this way clears a majority of the cobwebs that seem to gather in my head.
I'm still up about 2 lbs from Oregon, but I think that will come off eventually. I've trying to get back to my routine of exercising daily, but sometimes it seems that something always comes up. I'm doing my best though, in fact, I ran a straight mile yesterday for the first time in months.
I bitched a lot about my garden in the last post, and most of that stuff remains true. Unfortunately. I'm not going to have a cucumber, zucchini, or pumpkin crop this year. Thanks to Jiffy pots. A word of advice? Those little pots DO NOT decompose, run far FAR away if you see these in the store. I may have some tomatoes, but that remains to be seen. I'm trying to keep the potatoes from death. The plants and leaves all turned yellow with black spots, and just when I was about to throw in the towel and dig everything up, the potatoes began growing new growth. I'm treating them everyday with baking soda fungicide and DE, so we'll see. I began a new pot of cilantro, which is growing fabulously. Other than that, my herbs are growing great. Peppers? Perfection! I'm trying not to be too hard on myself for my garden failures, after all it's only my 2nd year doing it and I've learned a ton. But no Jiffy pots next year. Never again!
The puppy? Almost potty-trained. We eventually had to block off most of the house and only give the little guy the living room to explore. This has led to him always going to the door to be let out.
Reading over this post, I'm reminded of how utterly useless my anxiety is. I worried, and worried, and then worried some more about that Oregon trip. Everything I thought would go wrong at home almost did. But what did that worry help? Everything happened anyway. And everything eventually got cleaned up and put back to normal. Why do I sit and stress about what's going to happen and cleaning it up? Again, what purpose does that serve? I could sit here and examine my anxiety from every angle, and I would still think it was useless. And yet, I would still feel it. I would still have it.
What a rambling post indeed. As I was writing this post, I remembered one other Oregon issue I wanted to talk about. And I don't have the energy to do it now. So, one more vacation wrap-up post and then I'm going to move on those intriguing flowing ideas I get when I'm running or doing yoga :)
