Let me tell you about my day yesterday. It’s going to sound like I’m complaining, but, in reality, I’m very happy with what the day produced. Yesterday was my day off. I’ve been making a conscious effort to keep a calendar and have a plan going into each day, but I’ve also been challenged by my therapist to keep pockets of time open that are completely unplanned. That is difficult for me. Even when I’m not actually writing my agenda down, I unconsciously plan out my time. For yesterday, I had two things on my calendar. I planned to go to the gym in the morning and I planned on going to Equality Ohio for volunteer night in the evening. Everything else was wide open.
As I was just getting up and getting dressed to go to the gym, I heard the doorbell ring. Unless I’ve ordered a pizza, and I wouldn’t put it past me to do that in my sleep, that never happens. Naturally, I was a little startled, but I went down the stairs and opened the door. I was met with an unfamiliar face on the other side. The man told me that his name was Rick and that he was the new maintenance man for my apartment complex. My first thought was, “Oh. This is nice. I appreciate him coming around to introduce himself. This way I’ll know who he is if I see him around.”
This is where even my sparsely planned day went off the rails. Rick informed me that my downstairs neighbor had a leak in her bathroom ceiling, and he wondered if he could come in to check my pipes. Well, I had been the victim of a leaking room at one of my previous apartments. I know what a nightmare this can be. Of course, I welcomed him in to check things out.
To cut straight to the chase, my hot water heater had a small leak and had apparently been leaking for months. Rick asked told me that he needed to go pick up a new hot water hearted and asked me if I was going to be around. I told him that I had a commitment that I needed to be downtown for at 6:00, but, other than that, I could be around all day.
Now, I’ve talked about my level of organization. I’m one of those people who would say, “I’m not a dirty person. I’m a clutter person.” I think that makes people like us feel better somehow. Given that, what do you suppose the odds are that my apartment was in the condition I’d like it to be when a random man shows up at the door? You’d think that I would have begun cleaning as soon as he was back out and on his way, but my initial reaction is just to acknowledge that I wish it would have been clean and then to categorize it as too large of a task to deal with right now.
Well, immediately after Rick left, I decided to sit down and have breakfast and do some reading. Reading positive things, especially in an area of my life where I’m trying to do some work on myself is good for me. Yesterday, as I was eating my granola bar and yogurt, I got his with this from the Joyce Meyer book I mentioned that I’ve been reading.
“Procrastination is a thief. It steals our time, our potential, our self-esteem, our peace of mind…Procrastination is very deceptive, and we can only conquer it by becoming what I call a ‘now’ person. Be aggressive when you know you need to do something. Don’t put it off and keep putting it off…just do it!”
Well, I got my yogurt container and the granola bar wrapper in the trash and the spoon in the dishwasher. No need to allow them to add to the clutter, and I got busy cleaning as much as I could until I heard a car door shut, and I looked down to see Rick had returned with the new hot water heater in the bed of his truck. When he came up up, things weren’t spotless, but they were much better than they were before. As he started working again, I engaged in a bit of small talk until that felt awkward. Then, I went to hide in my bedroom. I watched a bit of an episode of The West Wing on my i-pad (I know it’s old, but I love that show.). Then I decided that I might as well be productive while I was back there, and I began working on a pile of clutter in one of the corners of my bedroom. After I finished, I stood back and stared at the now empty corner marveling at how much simpler that task had been in reality that it had seemed in my mind.
- Joyce Meyer, Making Good Habits, Breaking Bad Habits
Well, I got my yogurt container and the granola bar wrapper in the trash and the spoon in the dishwasher. No need to allow them to add to the clutter, and I got busy cleaning as much as I could until I heard a car door shut, and I looked down to see Rick had returned with the new hot water heater in the bed of his truck. When he came up up, things weren’t spotless, but they were much better than they were before. As he started working again, I engaged in a bit of small talk until that felt awkward. Then, I went to hide in my bedroom. I watched a bit of an episode of The West Wing on my i-pad (I know it’s old, but I love that show.). Then I decided that I might as well be productive while I was back there, and I began working on a pile of clutter in one of the corners of my bedroom. After I finished, I stood back and stared at the now empty corner marveling at how much simpler that task had been in reality that it had seemed in my mind.
My next thought was, “I didn’t get to go to the gym. Is there anything that I can do to move forward with that goal while I’m here?” I subscribe to the website Daily Burn, and I knew that I could pull up and do one of their exercise, but I would have felt awkward doing that with Rick there. Plus, I needed to know that I was going to be able to get a shower later, and, at that moment, that wasn’t a guarantee.
The Exercise piece has always been easy for me to understand. I feel so much better when I’m exercise, and it helps me to release stress from work and other areas of my life. The piece that I struggle with is managing my diet. I know that this piece has to come into play also because, even working out regularly, I am just maintaining my current weight. I’ve been using a pedometer app on my phone called Pacer that has been helping me make sure that I get enough physical activity during the day. I have tracked my food intake in the past, using online trackers and also doing it in a notebook, but I know that the first time I don’t have a computer or a notebook with me to record what I’m eating, that will be my excuse to stop doing it altogether. I knew that I needed a phone app if I was going to do it consistently.
I began browsing through apps while sitting on my bed, and I came across one that I had apparently downloaded and then deleted form my phone previously. It was called My Fitness Pal. This is only my second day so far, but I was able to put in my current weight of 260 lbs and my weight goal of 190 lbs. When I first moved to Columbus a little less than three years ago, I only weighed 195, and I felt so much better about myself and had a lot more energy. I want that me back, or at least to be much closer than I am now. Anyway, this app allows me to track both my caloric intake as well as any physical activity that I do throughout the day. I am motivated to exercise because I can get additional calories to eat that day if I do, and did I mention that I like food? It does another things for me that I like. It takes all of the food that I eat and breaks down whether those calories come from carbs, proteins, or fat. I like this because my doctor has challenged to to get more protein into my diet and to reduce the number of carbs that I eat. Using this app shows me that I am not where I need to be, but, at least, I now have measure of where I am and I can make adjustments to get myself where I need to be.
Rick would end up leaving my apartment again to get more parts that he needed. When he did, I went on another quick cleaning binge. I’m sure that I burnt more than a few calories yesterday just from cleaning. By the time he got back that time, I actually felt like my apartment looked like a place that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to have friends come to.
When Rick was finally finished, he told me that I needed to wait 45 minutes before getting at shower. At that point it was about 4:30. Since I had to just wait, I decided that I could squeeze in a workout off of Daily Burn. That took me about 30 minutes. Then, I threw some clothes together over the next 10 minutes and jumped in the shower. I was about 15 minute late to Equality Ohio. There was a traffic bottle neck on 71 S near the fair grounds since the Ohio State Fair is now in full swing. I should have thought of that before I left home, but it ended up working out anyway.
So, at the end of the day, my apartment felt much cleaner and a little more organized, I still managed to get a workout in, and I still managed to do some good in the world by getting some volunteering in. Overall, I felt pretty good about the day.
Also, I’m going to begin including my current weight with each post to this blog. It’s a way of keeping myself accountable and motivated. My weight from the scale this morning was 259.6 lbs.
- Culbs
© Joshua Culbertson 2014
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