(no subject)
Ok, fine. I fail at livejournal. Guilty. I won't even try to catch up on all the minutae of my life since I last posted.
I feel like I have done a lot of growing up in the last year. Right now, I am actually in class, at school. I have been to every scheduled class so far this semester - a remarkable change for me! I think I finally just woke up and realized that my lack of responsibility couldn't last forever. Now, I wake up before 6am every day. I get ready for work and I work a long day. Do I love my job? Sometimes, though this health care reform thing is getting out of hand, and I could do without psycho Republican ASSHOLES yelling at me every day. But I go, even when I wake up and don't want to deal with old people and their crap. After work, on Mondays and Wednesdays, I go to the gym to get a workout in before class. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I go to class first, then gym. It gives me more energy, makes me feel better, allows me to get out some of my aggression. And it used to be that I wouldn't have even tried - too tired, hungry, just want to go home - but I can't do that anymore. There are tons of people, I realized, who are responsible for a lot more shit than I am, who have to work to pay their tuition and who don't have help with anything. I had everything paid for and acted like my life was torturous. I'm not going to blame the depression, but that probably had a lot to do with it. The long and short of it was that I just couldn't bring myself to be responsible for my own affairs.
And, to be honest, it feels pretty good. Instead of living a haphazard bohemian semi-existence, like in Long Beach, Kristina and I can pay the bills on time. We pay the rent on time, every time. We think about things before we spend money, we go to work, we take care of the house. I am, frankly, impressed. Maybe it makes me a stick in the mud, because I say no to costly (but fun) activities and I always want to crunch the numbers before making an awesome impulse buy - but I can't help it. I cannot and, more importantly, will not live hand-to-mouth ever again. I don't want to ever have to write a check I know will bounce or count pennies so I can eat. It is stressful and it is not worth it.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I am proud of myself. I am going to graduate, but it won't be on time because (as usual) I fucked around. I am going to earn enough to keep myself afloat without much help, for the first time ever. I am going to take some ownership of my life and start living better. And every long day where I work and go to school and make it to the gym and still find energy somewhere to cook dinner or put on a load of laundry, I am going to give myself a pat on the back. Not because I've done something so drastically above and beyond the call of duty, but because I've done a lot more than I would've let myself slide by with before.
Anyway. I mentioned the gym. We got a gym membership, which I have lusted after since leaving Oregon with its free student gym and whatnot. Almost 2 weeks ago, we joined 24 hour fitness for a really good price (<30/mo, seriously), and I have been loving it. It has been so long since I really worked out, seriously, that I am bordering on obsession. I would go multiple times a day if I could make time for it. And I need to! I have let myself go in horrific fashion. I thought I'd be able to stop myself from being a yo-yo, but here I am, back up at 240, and realizing that I am only 16 pounds away from being my biggest, again. And that, my friends, is not happening. I have got to stop making excuses, and get it together. I am not buying new fat clothes. I would rather feel like I am being slowly cleaved in half by my waistband than go buy a pair of pants in a size 20 or above. It is not happening. Thankfully, I am finding getting back on the wagon to be much easier than I thought. I kept most of my cardiovascular fitness, I just have to build up my endurance again and get some muscle tone started. Oh, and lose the 75+ pounds I still need to lose.
On a closing note, since class will end soon, I feel the need to express my profound frustration and anger about health care reform. Nothing - not gay rights, not Bush executive power abuses, NOTHING - has made me so angry as the fear-mongering and idiocy being preached by Republicans about health care. I can no longer tolerate the transparently veiled racist attacks on the president, the total disregard for those who are suffering, the ignorance of basic facts. Let me tell you, there are people out there who listen to Fox News. Not just listen, who BELIEVE Fox News. There are people who hear Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly and they believe them, without question, without criticism. And it is those people who call me all day and tell me that if I support health reform, I support infanticide and death panels and free abortion parties and I would kill my own grandmother if I could. Those people are the ones who, while calling AARP to complain about health reform, instead of stating a reasonable point of dissent about the matters of policy (public plan/coop/trigger?), they just start in about Obama this and Obama that, and how can we go along with that OBAMA, and don't we know he's a socialist who hates America? And of course, it's those people who, the whole time, waste their breath trying to hedge their comments, saying "it's not that he's black, I wouldn't care if he had purple spots!", and then go on to tell me about how it's all the Mexican immigrants or the poor black people with their fatherless children who are to blame for the health care crisis. Now, I don't think all Republicans are like that, but they encourage and support the perversion of news media (which is meant to inform) and they use it to indoctrinate people into violent fringe right-wing movements. First it's Tiller the Baby Killer, then what? Then we have mini-O'Reillys buying their AK's before Obama takes all the guns away, picking a perch in DC and trying to make Michelle Obama play catch like Jackie O. Republicans are psycho, and they are going to get the president shot. And they all need to grow up. And you will see a much more articulate rant about the idiocy of the anti-health reform lobby in the near future.
I feel like I have done a lot of growing up in the last year. Right now, I am actually in class, at school. I have been to every scheduled class so far this semester - a remarkable change for me! I think I finally just woke up and realized that my lack of responsibility couldn't last forever. Now, I wake up before 6am every day. I get ready for work and I work a long day. Do I love my job? Sometimes, though this health care reform thing is getting out of hand, and I could do without psycho Republican ASSHOLES yelling at me every day. But I go, even when I wake up and don't want to deal with old people and their crap. After work, on Mondays and Wednesdays, I go to the gym to get a workout in before class. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I go to class first, then gym. It gives me more energy, makes me feel better, allows me to get out some of my aggression. And it used to be that I wouldn't have even tried - too tired, hungry, just want to go home - but I can't do that anymore. There are tons of people, I realized, who are responsible for a lot more shit than I am, who have to work to pay their tuition and who don't have help with anything. I had everything paid for and acted like my life was torturous. I'm not going to blame the depression, but that probably had a lot to do with it. The long and short of it was that I just couldn't bring myself to be responsible for my own affairs.
And, to be honest, it feels pretty good. Instead of living a haphazard bohemian semi-existence, like in Long Beach, Kristina and I can pay the bills on time. We pay the rent on time, every time. We think about things before we spend money, we go to work, we take care of the house. I am, frankly, impressed. Maybe it makes me a stick in the mud, because I say no to costly (but fun) activities and I always want to crunch the numbers before making an awesome impulse buy - but I can't help it. I cannot and, more importantly, will not live hand-to-mouth ever again. I don't want to ever have to write a check I know will bounce or count pennies so I can eat. It is stressful and it is not worth it.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I am proud of myself. I am going to graduate, but it won't be on time because (as usual) I fucked around. I am going to earn enough to keep myself afloat without much help, for the first time ever. I am going to take some ownership of my life and start living better. And every long day where I work and go to school and make it to the gym and still find energy somewhere to cook dinner or put on a load of laundry, I am going to give myself a pat on the back. Not because I've done something so drastically above and beyond the call of duty, but because I've done a lot more than I would've let myself slide by with before.
Anyway. I mentioned the gym. We got a gym membership, which I have lusted after since leaving Oregon with its free student gym and whatnot. Almost 2 weeks ago, we joined 24 hour fitness for a really good price (<30/mo, seriously), and I have been loving it. It has been so long since I really worked out, seriously, that I am bordering on obsession. I would go multiple times a day if I could make time for it. And I need to! I have let myself go in horrific fashion. I thought I'd be able to stop myself from being a yo-yo, but here I am, back up at 240, and realizing that I am only 16 pounds away from being my biggest, again. And that, my friends, is not happening. I have got to stop making excuses, and get it together. I am not buying new fat clothes. I would rather feel like I am being slowly cleaved in half by my waistband than go buy a pair of pants in a size 20 or above. It is not happening. Thankfully, I am finding getting back on the wagon to be much easier than I thought. I kept most of my cardiovascular fitness, I just have to build up my endurance again and get some muscle tone started. Oh, and lose the 75+ pounds I still need to lose.
On a closing note, since class will end soon, I feel the need to express my profound frustration and anger about health care reform. Nothing - not gay rights, not Bush executive power abuses, NOTHING - has made me so angry as the fear-mongering and idiocy being preached by Republicans about health care. I can no longer tolerate the transparently veiled racist attacks on the president, the total disregard for those who are suffering, the ignorance of basic facts. Let me tell you, there are people out there who listen to Fox News. Not just listen, who BELIEVE Fox News. There are people who hear Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly and they believe them, without question, without criticism. And it is those people who call me all day and tell me that if I support health reform, I support infanticide and death panels and free abortion parties and I would kill my own grandmother if I could. Those people are the ones who, while calling AARP to complain about health reform, instead of stating a reasonable point of dissent about the matters of policy (public plan/coop/trigger?), they just start in about Obama this and Obama that, and how can we go along with that OBAMA, and don't we know he's a socialist who hates America? And of course, it's those people who, the whole time, waste their breath trying to hedge their comments, saying "it's not that he's black, I wouldn't care if he had purple spots!", and then go on to tell me about how it's all the Mexican immigrants or the poor black people with their fatherless children who are to blame for the health care crisis. Now, I don't think all Republicans are like that, but they encourage and support the perversion of news media (which is meant to inform) and they use it to indoctrinate people into violent fringe right-wing movements. First it's Tiller the Baby Killer, then what? Then we have mini-O'Reillys buying their AK's before Obama takes all the guns away, picking a perch in DC and trying to make Michelle Obama play catch like Jackie O. Republicans are psycho, and they are going to get the president shot. And they all need to grow up. And you will see a much more articulate rant about the idiocy of the anti-health reform lobby in the near future.