Getting Back to the Journey

So I realize it's been over a month since I last blogged and for that I would like to apologize.  I promise though it was not for lack of trying.  I started a new job a little over a month ago and I've been working full-time, but instead of sitting down all the time like my last job, I was on my feet a lot more which as I had mentioned, really affected my feet and I was dealing with a lot of pain from them.  The other side effect, being absolutely exhausted at the end of the day, was a result of a combination of running around a lot more than I was used to and trying to learn a lot of stuff in a short amount of time.  So I would get home from work, eat, feed my dogs and cats, and pretty much crash.  I did try to blog a few times and inevitably woke up several hours later with my cheek pressed against the keyboard and a long string of letters and numbers filling my screen.  So to an extent, I guess I gave up.  So where am I now?  Well, I haven't lost a ton of weight, a little under 10 lbs actually.  I've been quite disappointed with myself for not doing as well as I would like.  Part of the problem is that I went really hard at it in the beginning and I think I basically burned myself out.  So to an extent, I'm starting over, but at a slower pace.  Losing weight is a marathon, not a sprint.

The other struggle I've realized over the last week or so is that I'm struggling a lot with the depression again which I realized has been getting worse due to my job.  I have a good job, I'm a bank teller at a well-respected bank, but it's a high stress job, you're dealing with people's money, their livelihood.  I'm afraid of screwing up and costing the bank or a member a lot of money.  I also have a ton of stuff to remember.  The bank I work for isn't a big international bank like Wells Fargo, it's smaller so that means that the tellers do a lot more work that at the bigger banks, tellers don't have to worry about.  So that means I have twice as many things to keep straight as they do.  And there's the "selling" part as well.  I'm not good at selling people stuff, never have been.  If I'm trying to sell something and you say you're not interested, I'm like, Okay, cool, no problem.  I'm not good at pushing people to get something and that's something that I have to do.  When I was hired I was unaware that tellers were required to "sell" a certain number of services a month.  Basically, I have to get a certain number of people a month to open a checking account and a certain number of people to at least meet with our financial adviser.  Needless to say, thus far I have not succeeded and I've been informed that I really need to do that or there could be issues.  They're very nice about it, of course, but it is a requirement that they have and one that I'm expected to meet.  So with all that, my stress level has been at an all time high and, like I said, I've been really struggling with the depression again.

So, that's the bad news.  On the other hand, though, I do have some good news.  While I haven't necessarily been making a ton of progress weight-wise, I have been making progress, I guess, mentally or emotionally.  I'm sure I've mentioned in the past that I think I'm about as unattractive as you could possibly get.  I look in the mirror and say "Ew!", exclamation point and all.  I feel fat and disgusting and that's how I feel I look.  So in order to make myself feel marginally better, I wear several layers of shapewear - tight, hot, uncomfortable things that made me look maybe an inch thinner, if that.  Though I guess I should say that I used to wear those.  My first big mental/emotional breakthrough?  Getting rid of those things.  They were not only uncomfortable, but they also made me physically sick.  The way they would compress, for lack a better word, my stomach left me feeling sick and nauseous every time I ate, even if I didn't overeat.  I eventually just got to the point where I just didn't care what people thought about how I looked anymore and stopped wearing them.  It's been a little nerve-wracking since then, at times, but overall I feel better and I feel more comfortable in my own skin.  That doesn't mean that I stand in front of the mirror and think I look like a star, cause I don't, I still hate the way I look, but I'm learning to not hate myself quite so much.

My other breakthrough:  going dancing again.  Before my ex and I broke up and even before we were dating, we used to go swing dancing with a group of friends every Tuesday night.  It was so much fun and I loved it.  I got pretty good too.  After my ex and I broke up, one of my guy friends and I started going, but after a while he had other commitments and we stopped.  After that I convinced a few of my girl friends from church to go with me.  We had fun overall, but without any guys going with us regularly, we didn't actually get to dance a whole lot.  So we eventually stopped going too.  When I went back to college, I took a ballroom dance class, which I loved, and I ended up going swing dancing again with a few of my classmates one Tuesday night.  But up until two weeks ago, the last time I had been dancing was with them and that was a good two or so years ago.  So that first night going back, I was terrified.  If you're a big girl, you don't generally get asked to dance.  The guys all want to dance with the skinny little twig girls regardless of how good or bad they are.  I also knew there was a fairly good possibility that my ex would be there.  So my memories of the place weren't exactly great.  But one of my best friends was going to be there and he had convinced me that I should go.  So I went, and I had a lot of fun overall.  There a number of people that I knew pretty well there so I ended up talking to them quite a bit.  I only danced a few times and then only with my friend since he was the only guy to ask me, but I had fun.  It made me look back and think about how different my attitude used to be.  In the past when I'd gone, I wanted to dance every single song, and I would get upset and hurt if no one asked me to dance.  Now, I was cool with it, maybe because I expected it, but I like to think that I've matured to the point where I'm fine admiring the dancing skills of others around me which I sit or stand and watch.

I went again last week which was doubly terrifying because my best friend wasn't going to be there and I was meeting up with a few people I didn't know quite as well.  Turns out it was even more fun that the previous week.  I actually attended the swing lesson they have and found that I had totally forgotten a number of the basic turns I had learned when I first started dancing, so that was fun.  And, again, I only danced maybe three times the entire night, but I had the opportunity to chat with people and at the end of the night during the last song, one of my friends and I jammed to the song by ourselves, something I never would have done in the past.

So now I'm going to get back to starting to work at losing the weight again and getting back into a routine.  I got a new phone yesterday which I'm excited about, not just because it's new but it also came with a very cool fitness app that has a built in pedometer which seems to be fairly accurate.  I won't be able to use it at work unfortunately, but after work, I definitely can.  I'm excited to start being able to use that.  And even though I haven't made as much progress as I would have liked in terms of losing weight, I am proud of how far I've come mentally and emotionally with how I feel in my own skin.  Even with that, I'm still frustrated that I don't feel like I've made a ton of progress, but I have a feeling that maybe I've made more progress than I know.