Wow! What a year it’s been. Part I

Has it really been over a year since I posted?

So much has gone on in the last year, it’s been too insane to even stop and breathe.

Let’s back up a bit. In February 2022, one of my aunts went a little “crazy” due to low sodium (as we found out later). In April, she got better but was still having some other issues and her husband was having some issues of his own. There was a lot of driving them around to various appointments.

In September, my uncle started having some breathing issues and after several tests. we found out in late October that he had Stage 4 lung cancer. He finally made the decision to go on hospice in early December and he had to be put in a facility because my aunt was unable to take care of him at home as she has her own medical issues and it was just too much. I drove her up there every day to visit him.

At the same time, I had another uncle who was diagnosed with Stage 1 lymphoma. He had already had 3 different cancers that he survived and was expected to survive the lymphoma, which he started treatment for.

In January 2023, my uncle with lymphoma had a complication during surgery. He passed away on January 18 (two days later). My other uncle who had lung cancer passed away the next day (January 19th) at the same time we were on our way up to see him.

You’d think that would be enough, right? But, wait, there’s more to come…

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Today’s Advice: Ban Toxicity from Your Life

This will be a short and sweet one today.

If I could give one piece of advice to everyone, it would be to ban toxicity from your life. Wherever that toxicity comes from, just give it a swift kick in the ass out of your life.

Sometimes, toxicity can come from overthinking things until they stress you out, but most of the time, it comes from others in your life. It can come from friends, family, coworkers, etc. You can’t always avoid being around toxic people in your life, but if you can then do it. If you can’t, try to at least adjust the amount of time your spending around them or how much they affect your life.

Anyone who talks down to you, doesn’t respect you, have YOU make all the effort in a relationship, makes you feel like you’re not worthy, makes judgements on you, tries to control your life, etc. is toxic. You may not even realize it’s happening or you may just ignore it. If you’re trying to live your “best life”, toxicity can’t be a part of it.

There is nothing more freeing than getting toxic people out of your life. It’s so much more peaceful to either surround yourself with people who appreciate you, lift you up. encourage you, etc. or if you don’t have anyone like that, being with just yourself is still a much better alternative than having toxic people in your life.

I’ll share a story later about this, but for now: take care of YOURSELF by eliminating toxicity. It’s a great first step.

Take care.

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Wow! It’s been a minute…or 5 years

Hard to believe it’s been 5 years since I’ve written in this blog. Oddly enough, this post will be similar to the last post I wrote 5 years ago.

I won’t go through what’s gone on in the last 5 years because it’s really pretty boring and irrelevant. It’s been full of ups and down just like it seems to go with everyone. I have learned a lot about what and who I want and my life and what and who I don’t want it my life. Some lessons are hard and take time to finally “get”, but there’s not going back.

I won’t spend time in this post on the negative things in the past few years that have led to this point in my life. It’s the past and it has nothing to do with what’s going on today.

The most important thing I want to say in this post is don’t wait to take care of yourself. It’s OK to focus on yourself. You don’t need a “support team” or encouragement from anyone other than yourself to start focusing on YOU. I mentioned previously that I had previously lost weight then gained it back after my Dad passed away, and then I started to lose weight again, eventually. By 2016 around the time my nephew graduated, I had lost a good 50 pounds. Then, slowly but surely I gained it back. Eating Reese’s peanut butter cups will do that. 🙂

Some things transpired in the years in between that made me just reevaluate things in my life. There are just some behaviors from others that just aren’t acceptable and that I kept putting up with and there was a turning point in 2018 that just showed me I was putting up with it for nothing. Again, that’s another post for another time.

Then the pandemic happened, and I started working from home. It wasn’t until November 2021 that I got to thinking how I could take advantage of my time working from home to really start taking care of ME. I got back on a healthy eating regime. There was no specific diet or anything. I just started concentrating on not eating so many carbs. I didn’t restrict myself other than cutting on sugar (damn, I do miss those Reese’s). I also started focusing more on cooking at home instead of ordering in. Because there is diabetes in my family and my mom has really bad vision issues because of hers, that was one thing I wanted to start focusing on. I had already been borderline pre-diabetes back and forth over the last 8 years or so, but this time I really wanted to make sure I got ahead of it or on top of it.

In January 2022, I saw a telehealth doctor on Doctor on Demand that I had been seeing for a couple of years for refills and other things. I told her my concerns about diabetes, and I did lab work. By then, I had also lost about 25 pounds or so. My labs came back and my A1C was 10.6. Yikes! She put me on Glimepiride and Metformin Extended Release. Fast forward to this week when I redid my labs. My A1C was…ready for it…5.5! That is a NORMAL level. Even the doctor was shocked. She said in 20 years of her being a doctor, the most she has ever seen anyone drop their A1C within 4 months is by 2 points and mine jumped down by 5.1 points.

I have now, as of this writing, lost a total of 55 pounds. I’ll hit my personal “first” goal after I’ve lost another 10 pounds and then I’ll choose another goal after that. I am focusing on NOT restricting myself (minus sugar), but just watching portions and carbs. I’ve found substitutes for my sweets, which is working just fine. I don’t really even have cravings for sweets anymore. Oh, and I drink a LOT of water, at least a gallon a day. I also don’t let the scale get me down if the number goes up on it. I just keep pushing ahead.

In addition to these things, I’ve gotten some dental procedures done and went for my annual eye check (had to do that anyway since my glasses broke).

During all of this, I never had a support team or anyone I called or texted to “celebrate” these things with.

You can be your OWN cheerleader. You don’t need anyone else’s help or encouragement. You just have to get off your ass and decide to do it for YOURSELF.

Surviving Reality is what I named this blog many years ago when I started it, and that’s exactly what life is about.

Sidenote: Go see Top Gun: Maverick if you get a chance. It’s even better than the original! I saw it 3 times in the last 4 days. Haha

Take care of yourselves and God bless.

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New Year…now what?

It’s always so interesting to me how much toward the end of one year, people get so excited about a ‘new year’ starting.

Some look at it as a new time to start over. Some look at it as a way to try to wipe away the bad things of an old year. Some look at it as a time to make those stupid resolutions that end up lasting MAYBE a week or 2.

Why do people wait until the new ‘year’ to decide to make changes in their life? Why do people think ringing in a new ‘year’ means a new start? Because 2016 is over, does that fresh-startmean more celebrities won’t die? Does that mean nothing bad is going to happen in 2017? Does that meant 2017 is going to automatically be BETTER than 2016. No. Everything is not defined by what YEAR it is.

Every DAY is a new time to start over. You don’t have to wait for one year to end to make your life better or to make changes. It’s not the year’s fault that celebrities died or that people had hard times. That’s just life. It happens no matter what year it is.

At the end of 2015, I decided I wanted to get back to eating healthy and lose weight again Before my Dad died in 2008, I had lost a lot of weight and was so depressed for a long time afterward that I didn’t care anymore. So, I decided in 2015 that I wanted to get back on track. Did I wait for the year to end before I did it? No, I started the change in early December. I even lost 15 pounds that month alone. Could I have waited until the new ‘year’ started? Yes, but to me that would’ve been just another way to make an excuse for putting it off and not starting right then. In the past year, I lost a total  of 60 lbs and I’m glad I didn’t wait until January 1st to start doing it.

People need to change their mindset. Life happens every DAY not every YEAR. Don’t use the excuse “Oh, I’ll do that next year”. Do it NOW. Life doesn’t wait until a new year comes to get good or bad. Each DAY is either better or sometimes worse than the day before. One DAY at a time is how I think we should take things. Not one YEAR at a time. You may not have another ‘year’…

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Self-Respect

Self-respect cannot be hunted. It cannot be purchased. It is never for sale. It cannot be fabricated out of public relations. It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when e suddenly realize that, knowing the good, we have done it; knowing the beautiful, we have served it; knowing the truth we have spoken it. ~Whitney Griswold

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