Run over...

Unfortunately, dear readers, I must report that this past week I feel as if I did not work on my own muchness rather I let someone else run me over with theirs.  Have you ever felt as if you've been thrown under the bus or run over so many times that you must have permanent tire tread marks (if not all over your body) on your forehead?  I'm only asking, because that's how I feel right now.  I have allowed these other people to make me feel this way so I know deep down that I am partly to blame.  I'm just kind of tired of feeling like road kill...  I don't want to be road kill anymore.

After one such incident this week, I actually had someone at work ask to see my back to see if there were tire marks left behind.  There were no actual marks there however I could (and still do) feel as if they were present.  I know that I've written before that I need to learn how to either stand up for myself more effectively or not allow these types of things to bother me -- I really need to make this a priority in my life in order to bring balance to my days.  While it's been of my own doing, I'm tired of feeling emotionally as well as physically exhausted all of the time and I need to find some way to make all of this stress melt away or I'm going to end up making myself sick...

Yesterday, in an effort to put "life" on hold for a few hours, I went whale watching again.  After talking to my Dad the other night (he contacted me via FaceTime while he was sitting in a restaurant -- it was really cool to feel as if I was right there with him!), he suggested that I take myself on a whale watching adventure in order to de-stress.  It's good to know that even though I'm "all grown up," my Daddy still knows just the right thing to say to help me out!  This time, we actually got to see a whale!  Not just any whale, we saw a humpback!  This particular humpback decided to hang out and play alongside our boat for a good 30 - 45 minutes and I got some photos that I didn't expect to capture while using the camera on my phone.  After awhile, I put the phone away and just allowed myself to enjoy the experience rather than worry about attempting to capture photos.  Yes, it's neat to have the photos to look back at and enjoy but it's also fun just to sit back and enjoy the experience (since the whole point of going was to enjoy myself).

I think that (along with all of the other things) something for me to focus on along my quest is I need to learn how to just sit back and enjoy the experience.  I often find myself so stressed out about things that I have no control over that I miss out on enjoying the little things (even if the one little thing that I could have enjoyed in my day was seeing joy on a child's face and I missed it because I was worried about something else).  I think all of this stress has caused (in part) for me to be unmotivated along my the journey of meeting my weight loss goals.  I have had certain particular goals in mind but have not even started to focus on them because I'm either 1.) worried about too many other things; 2.) too tired from over working myself in order to work out; 3.) unmotivated to focus on myself after spending all day worrying about all of the other things I feel other people want/need of me.  No more.  I need to focus on me now.  I need to remind myself (even if it's a moment by moment reminder or a day to day reminder) that I am entitled to tell other people no and I am entitled to focus on myself.  It's allowed.  The world will not implode if I do this.  Or at least I don't think that it will...

Once again I am reminded about the phrase that was drilled into my sister, brothers and I growing up -- "poor planning on your part does not make an emergency on mine."  I am going to work on using this phrase at work when certain individuals want me to drop everything I'm working on in order for them to get their work done or for me to complete said task for them.  We'll see if this works or not.  I would like to avoid becoming road kill this week if at all possible...