Oh-So Blessed

Readers, it has been over six months since my last post.

Life has been, to say the least, madness. I have been so incredibly busy with life and school and karate and work that I have been a bit overwhelmed with life.

Recently however, I can say that I have a little less on my plate as far as being spread as thin as I was. I quit one of my jobs over the Christmas break, and just typing that makes the corners of my lips curl up in a slight smile. It feels good to have one less thing to worry about. While I will miss some of my regulars that I get to see all the time, and I will miss some of my coworkers, all in all I am at peace with my decision, and I will shed no tears on this matter.

This past six months have been transformative. Not just for me, but for Sky, our business, and our future as well. I hit the ground running when 26 hit. I was training hardcore for my impending black belt test, we were at odds with the people we were subletting from, and Sky was grappling with some major decisions as far as our business was concerned.

Last summer, we began advertising in Dixie Direct Green Pages. On top of that, we decided to take the plunge and move to our own location with our karate studio. No more subletting for us. Our first month in our new location we made just under $100 more than our rent, but we were determined to grow and make it work. We were paying almost 3x the rent we were paying when we were subletting, but this was a fact we had to deal with. However, we made it work. We got some paint, a whole bunch of cleaner, and some rags and we set to work. We painted the whole studio in a weekend, and did whatever smaller improvements we could over weekends, Improving the studio bit by bit. It wasn't easy, but it was worth it. We started growing. We have over 12 new students that have joined just since we've moved.

In the fall I tested for my black belt in front of five masters, I was certain I was going to pee my pants due to the nervousness. But alas, I passed. I did so well on the written portion I am pretty sure a few people think I cheated. (But I didn't. I'm just awesome on written tests.) I am still in awe that I did it. It was a huge goal that I had and I made it. It took a lot of dedication and work but I made it happen with the help of Sky and my fellow students I tested with.

School has been insane, and it has been a lot of late nights and projects. But I'm loving every minute of it. Last semester I got three As, an A-, and a B+. I feel really proud of myself. This is officially my last semester before I graduate with my bachelor's degree. I can't believe I am actually here. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Life is good. Life is a crazy, messed up, blob of nervousness and excitement, and I love every minute of it. I am lucky to have the love of wonderful people in my life and the experiences that have brought me to this point and made me who I am.

Keep it real readers.

That Greasy Bean

Readers, I have been thinking a lot lately.  About who I am, who I used to be, it's been exhausting, but interesting.

I was thinking back to being an awkward preteen.  I felt like the ugliest girl in the world, or at very least, in my school.  I was covered in pimples, and hopelessly trying to cover them up with way too much makeup, no blush, and hardly any mascara.  I looked like a ghost with greasy hair and terrible teeth.  My boobs hadn't quite come in so I was just weird shaped.  I was like a chubby bean in weird clothes.

Despite my efforts to be funny and friendly (since ugly girls shouldn't be mean), I was a mess inside.  I didn't feel like I was worth anything.  That year I also got my first pair of glasses, and I went from being an invisible dowdy girl to being the dowdy girl with glasses.  I became noticed.  Which in my mind, made everything worse.  I had good friends who cared about me, and I felt lucky, but I always felt like the ugliest girl in the room.  I had one boy that occasionally flirted with me, which always made my whole day, if not my whole week.

I dreamed of growing up, my skin clearing up, finally stop looking like a bean, and figure out the whole makeup thing.  A girl can dream right?

Well, I got a little older, my small C's turned into DD's, and after some serious time with a mirror and makeup over one summer, I finally figured out what color my face was supposed to look like.  However, in my head I was still that greasy bean.

Then my grandmother moved in with us when I was 16.  She told me time and time again how no one was ever going to love me because I was so ugly and so fat.  This went on for over a year, almost every day.  That really takes its toll when you are just starting to date.  How can you get excited about a whole new world of activities you never had the opportunity to explore before when you are told almost daily that you are worth nothing?

Well, fast forward a few more years, I started going to college, and slowly I started gaining a little more confidence.  But I still kept feeling like that greasy bean.

I'm staring my 26th birthday in the face now, and I can happily say my grandmother was totally wrong about me.

I have the love of such an amazing man that my greasy bean days have grown fewer and further between.  I can look in the mirror with no makeup on and feel OK about the way I look.  Not great, not "damn I am one hot chick," but I am slowly getting there, and I hope by the time I have a daughter I can feel that good about myself.  I want to love myself as much as Sky loves me, and I want to teach my daughter and/or nieces that they are beautiful no matter what they look like.  I don't want any girl who I have any influence over to ever feel like they are less than they are.

I grew up spending a lot of time wishing that I looked different.  I would spend countless minutes staring in the mirror thinking about how much happier I would be if I was actually one of the pretty girls.  I don't want that for anyone else.  Life is too short to spend time hating yourself because you don't look exactly right.

Readers, take a minute to love yourselves today.  Do something nice for yourselves.  You earned it.

Keep it real readers.

New Year, New Challenges

Readers, as always, It has been too long.  However, I think three months isn't as bad as some of my other gaps in bloggery, but nonetheless I really need to step up.

November was great.  Thanksgiving was delicious, and I had three of them.  Well, we did.  Christmas was awesome, I was completely spoiled beyond words, and I spoiled Sky back.  I got in an argument with my mom that lasted a few days, so basically yeah, it was a holiday.

The week after Christmas always makes me a little blue.  It has as long as I can remember.  As a kid, it meant Christmas was over and I would be returning to school soon, so the remaining days of vacation always felt a little hollow after that blessed day.  As I got older, the hollowness took on a different tone.  Instead of dreading school back in session, where I would show off my latest score of new clothes and gadgetry, I was becoming acutely aware of the passage of time.  I was getting older, and those precious days that I had left of my life were diminishing slowly.  What was I doing with this time?  What was I doing with my life?  Was I doing anything worth while?  Did I do anything worth a damn this past year?

It is a pensive time for me, this week after Christmas.  I also get it the week after my birthday, but that post will come in June.  After feeling sorry for myself for not "living" the way I had hoped to (traveling, meeting new people, doing something that makes a difference, volunteer more, accomplish a huge goal, yada yada yada), I finally, around December 30th, get this newfound feeling of hope for the upcoming year.  I promise myself that I will at least take one trip that is purely for fun or to see someone that I care about that I don't see enough, or I will find a new goal and accomplish it, or I will lose 50 pounds, or I will join a cause and make a difference.

This year is black belt year.  I am being evaluated for my final review next month, and dammit, I am scared as hell.  Do I know my material?  Yes, mostly.  Can I handle the physical strain of the test?  I like to think I can, but I should really work on my cardio endurance.

Then what am I so afraid of?  I am working almost every night on something, whether it be techniques, knowledge, or just doing sit-ups in my jammies, I am doing something.  I am becoming stronger every day.

But something inside me keeps telling me I suck.

I had a long, serious talk with Sky about it last night, and I have found this new fight inside me.

I don't suck.  I may be chunky and kinda wobbly, but I don't suck.  I have to keep reminding myself of this, and I will as long as I need to.

I have started counting my calories every day with the help of an app on my phone.  Because of that, I have lost four pounds since the first of the year.  It's not much, but it's progress, and progress is progress.

Sky and I are also planning on starting a new self-defense class.  As someone who has been sexually assaulted as a teenager, and having such shitty self-esteem that I have let others take advantage of me a number of times, I am deeply passionate about self-defense.  I feel like everyone should have a basic knowledge of it, and hopefully they will never have to use it, but they will feel empowered to never let themselves be victims at the hands of another person.

So this is my year ahead.  Get my black belt, go to my cousin's wedding, teach self-defense, and take better care of my health.  I think I have covered all my bases.  Hell, maybe I will feel so good about my progress I will decide it's time to make a baby.  Maybe.

Anyway, keep it real readers.

New Things, New Thoughts, Empty Wombs

Admittedly it has been far too long.

Readers, I am on the precipice of testing for my black belt.  I'm less than a year away from entering the hallowed halls of testhood, and join the exclusive club of black beltdom.  I'm not going to lie, the prospect is exciting, but it is also terrifying.  I've seen terrible things at those tests.  Terrible things.

Sky and I both started school this past August.  This, by far, has been my favorite semester.  Evenings hulled up in our apartment, both doing homework, have been magic to me.  It makes me incredibly happy to see him working to better himself and our situation.  No lie, it is also really hot.  I know it sounds weird and perverse, but watching him pouring over his books and writing his English papers just gives me a total lady boner.  He has been working so hard and making me so proud.

Sky comes from a family where you work by the sweat of your brow, and hard work will get you places and eventually, after paying your dues, you will get your cushy job, or you will still be working yourself into the ground, but making a decent wage.  But we made the decision that if we both got our college degrees, we would not only be providing a better life for our future family, but we would also be showing that getting a college education is not just an option, but it is important and will raise the standard of living to a level that it has never been.  We want to be able to travel and see the world, and expose our future little ones to that world.  We want to see things in real life that we have only actually seen in textbooks or in movies.

We are both officially registered for spring semester, and after getting STRAIGHT A'S this semester, I am a shoo-in to have my financial aid reinstated.  I am all kinds of nerding out about my classes, and I'm loving it.  I love having a buddy, a school buddy, that is not only a friend, it is my hot sexy lover man.

Sky has been nominated to host next year's WTSDA Region 2 tournament.  He is the youngest studio owner in the region, and the youngest host I think ever.  He has been chosen!  This sounds like nothing, but this is a huge deal.  When we pull this off without a hitch and with BITCHIN' t-shirts to boot, then he will likely get his invitation into the extra super exclusive club that is the MASTERS' clinic.  That means rubbing elbows with the greats of the association, invitation to test for his 4th degree, and then invitation to test for his master's belt.  This is huge, and if anyone can do it, it is TEAM FREAKIN' GUBLER!

Now on to the empty womb.  Yes, Sky and I have been married for about 2 1/2 years now, and we don't have any tiny people or tiny people on the way.  No, we aren't trying.  No, we aren't having any "issues" with trying.  We want to be done with school and we want at least one of us to have a job that is solid and has insurance so we can take care of our children ourselves and not rely on the state to take care of them for us.  We love kids, we want kids, and we are excited to have kids, but we are waiting until we are prepared.  We also have a 26-year-old man roommate who is currently inhabiting our second bedroom, so space, needless to say, is lacking for a nursery and a tiny person to be in it.  Yes, we are doing it the right way.  It is happening when we are prepared.

Well, it's late.

Keep it real readers.

shrinking, Shrinking, SHRINKING!!!

Take a moment to take in the irony of my title, readers.


Love it.

Anyway, yes, I have begun a new weight loss project.  It is called "Project KA."

I should explain the name.  Sky has this t-shirt from our honeymoon from when we went to the Cirque show "KA."  It is a small men's medium, and Sky, in all his awesome manliness, has begun to outgrow it.  It is still a bitchin' t-shirt though, and I decided that it would be awesome to be able to fit into it.

So as of the first of the year, changes started happening.  I stopped eating late, I cut out sweets (except for Girl Scout cookies, but who can say no to those?)  I started pushing myself harder in karate, especially since while my foot was broken I happened to gain eight pounds.

I felt like a bloated, puffy, sad version of myself.  I felt uglier than my usual amount of feeling ugly, and I needed to stop these feelings.

The end of February rolled around, and after an old coworker of mine told me that this nodiet.com stuff actually worked for her and a few of her coworkers, I decided what the heck.  I'm going to try it.

I started taking it a week ago, and I have to tell you, it does actually work.  I lost an inch and a quarter off my waist alone.  In ONE WEEK.  I'm trying to slim down so that I can start more high impact supplemental exercise without worrying I'm going to blow out my knees or my back.  (example:  running impacts your knees and feet with 5x your body weight with every step)  Plus, a sweaty average-to-thin person looks considerably less pathetic than a sweaty fat person, right?

Right.

I feel like this is something I can do.  It's something I can control, since I have so little control everywhere else in my life.

In other news, my mother gave art back to me today.

For the longest time, I wanted to be an artist.  I wanted to see things that I had made hung up in various places, that I could take pride in.  I wanted to explore my own experiences and emotions and share them with others in ways that words couldn't.  But alas, as a child, Richard was the artist in our family.  He would draw all day and his work would end up on the refrigerator.  Then we got to be older.  I won a few little contests in my classes for drawing contests and coloring contests, and I thought I was pretty good.  Then Robert brought home his first welding sculpture.  Now Robert was the artist, and all though high school, and now in college, Robert is the artist in the family.  He is studying art photography, and he is currently the artist in residence at Zion National Park.  I went from the singer, to the violinist, to the brain, to the martial artist, to the married one.  Never the artist.  All this despite the fact that the artist in our family still asks MY advice on his work on how to make something better.  When I mentioned I thought about being an artist, I was laughed at by multiple family members, and told that I could never do anything worthwhile with it.

"It's more of a hobby.  You should major in something you can make money in and then do art in your spare time."

I didn't realize how badly those words hurt me, and led me down a path of eight years worth of indecisive undergrad work, because I had to find something I could "make money doing for a living" that wasn't going to suck the life out of me.

Then today, my mom was looking at a piece that I had done in one of my art classes a few years ago, and asked me something that jarred me to my very core.

"Did I take your art away from you?"

Tears welled up in my eyes as I realized that I never felt more passionate about my studies than when I was making art.  I stopped taking art because I felt like, as the "brainy" one, I had to get a degree in something scientific or lucrative in order to gain or maintain any respect from my family.  I had to "buckle down," and "stop having fun and get serious."

She told me that if it was something that I was passionate about, then I should go after it.  Money wasn't an issue as long as I was chasing my passion.

I feel so free, and so conflicted now.

Keep it real readers.

Hate, Venting, Self-Loathing, Etc.

Well readers, I admit it has been far too long since my last post.  As all of my postings are, they are too few and far between.

I've been lost in a sea of my own thoughts, and I find that if I immerse myself too long in the slow, lazy waves of that huge sea of introspection, I have a tendency to get all kinds pruney in the form of wrinkly introspection.

I find myself looking in the mirror for a ridiculous amount of time.  Why?  Why do I do this?  Why do I have to stand and analyze the different things about my face and my body?  I don't necessarily look at the things I would change, or the things I hate, or even the things I like about myself.  I just....stare.

Geez I sound so self-absorbed.  It seems the time I get the most self-loathing done is during times when I can't actually see myself.  Lying in bed, showering, driving, checking the mail, just random times like that.

This is the asinine truth of it all.  I hear at least once a day from random strangers that I am beautiful.  I have beautiful hair, deliciously smooth skin, a wonderful smile, a nice rack, I've literally heard it all, and continue to hear it on a regular basis.  I think I was an ugly, chubby little girl, and then an ugly, awkward teenager for so long, that when I finally grew up and my acne cleared up and I started to curve out, I guess I missed it.  I would have loved nothing more than to have woken up one day and noticed it all.

I suppose when you are teased and your life is made miserable by multiple people over the course of several years, you just start thinking that well, maybe their right, and no amount of makeup or silly clothes or loud laughter or batting eyelashes will change the way you feel about yourself.

I kind of hate that I hate myself.

I hate how people feel like they have to be defined by something about them.  People go to conferences and workshops to be with people who are defined by this one thing.  I have cysts on my ovaries, that hardly means that I will attend conferences so I can embrace this single facet of who I am.  I know I could stand to lose a few pounds, but that hardly means that my feelings of self worth are wrapped up in a few digits that flash on the scale I'm standing on, and I have to sit in a circle talking about the things I eat every day.  I have reddish hair, but that doesn't mean I have to attend a ginger convention.

I am a complex human being.  I don't believe in participating in certain activities merely because they have to do with a singular fact about me.  Why can't I just enjoy who I am, and do things that maybe have nothing to do with me just for the sake of doing them?  Why do I have to pretend to be interested in every crash diet that some girl comes to me bragging about because she lost four pounds of water weight in three days and she feels like it's actual fat?  I'm sorry I don't feel this sense of sisterhood with other overweight women.  I just don't.  I never have.

Alright, I feel like this post is going nowhere.  I just had to vent somewhere about what has been going on in my head so I can feel a sense of relief from what has been inside me for a little too long.

Keep it real readers.

Operating On Partial Cylinders

Well readers, as most of you know, I broke my foot over conference weekend.  It's a hairline fracture on the 5th metatarsle bone near the base.  In normal people speak, it is on the pinky side of my foot.

Anyway, when I found out, I cried.  A lot.  On Sky's shoulder.  I was devastated.  I've never had anything quite like this happen to me before.  It's my first serious injury.  Don't get me wrong, I've gotten hairline fractures before, but they were in my wrist.  Not in the foot I normally use to drive.

So, the last few weeks Sky has been my driver, my wheelchair pusher when we go shopping, and all-around Godsend.  It's times like these I know that I definitely made the right decision marrying him.  He helped me take my first few baths (as stipulated by the doctor because I am not allowed to put any weight on it for the first two weeks I'm in the boot.), he helped me figure out how to get around in this stupid boot I'm stuck in.

Seriously, I think it weighs like 10 pounds.

The plus side to all of this is I am finally catching up on my housework and homework, since I still have about 5 more days before I am cleared to work on my feet (limited) and hobble around campus again, I have a little more free time than usual for the next little while.

Well, an important stipulation for me healing is plenty of rest, so I guess I'd better hit the hay.

Keep it real readers.