Anytime any major self-improvement project comes along in my life, unless I am really into it, I need a motivator. I can handle the career improvements and educational improvements on my own, but unless I basically have someone slapping my ass and telling me to "GO GO GO!" or unless I have a really good reason to do something exercise or health wise, I probably won't do it.
As it turns out, being an expectant mom is quite a motivator. Yes, I should do these things for myself, but part of my problem is that I like to help people and by eating better and exercising, I'm helping my baby and then once the baby's born, I can set a good example by continuing to eat healthy and lose weight. I'm weird, but hey, I'll take what I can get.
While browsing my favorite bookstore, I stumbled upon two books that are quite helpful so far in my self-improvement quest "What to Expect When Expecting" and "The 50 Best Jobs for Your Personality". Along with common sense and a changing appetite, my diet has thoroughly changed over the last month and a half. "What to Expect" helped guide me along into learning exactly what I need to make sure I need to get in my system and how much of it to help my baby, but even before I got the book, I started to find myself leaning towards eating better snacks, better meals and drinking different items. Its tough. I had to give up my freaking coffee (because there is no freaking point in drinking Decaf, i might as well just drink hot water and tea, which helps with nausea, my freaking mortal enemy right now), I am trying to get myself to drink more milk everyday to increase my intake of calcium, which is not one of my favorite drinks. One of my bestestes' favorite meals includes yogurt, granola and fruit and I've been tearing it up! (OH MY GOD, Strawberries are awesome right now!) Salads have become a daily part of my life and I'm learning about the good fat I need to intake to help the baby grow. The worst part of all of this right now has been the nausea, which leaves me not wanting to eat at all and having to work past it so that I don't starve myself or the baby, but i don't make myself sick.
I started Yoga! It kicked my ass. I found the DVD at Wally World for 9 bucks and after reading and talking to my baby doctor, I went ahead and started working it out. I had to take a break a few times the first day I did it to get a better idea of what position I was doing and also because I am not the flexible yet (which leads me to worry about how i'm going to do this at 6 months when my belly is popping out more and my balance is not nearly as good). But I felt so much better stress wise and health wise. I'm going to have to find another DVD to watch because I think I'm going to get bored doing the same thing after a month or so and once the temps warm up around here (which should be within the next week to two weeks), i'm going to go walking around the lake near my house every other day and mix that up with the yoga. I'm impressed with my motivation right now and am totally running with it for all its worth. (Haha.)
Career improvement is so hard right now. I can't believe i'm saying that! But there is nothing more frustrating than going on job interviews at a temp agency, only to find out you are competing against 30 other people for a job! Its hard to be optimistic. I've also come the conclusion that I need to come up with some back up plans for future careers I can have in my life, but I have such a hard time coming up with stuff for myself, because I've been in such a rut the last several years that I don't even know what to do anymore. So while I was walking around the bookstore this weekend, I stumbled up "The 50 Best Jobs For Your Personality" and immediately grabbed it and ran home. In it, it tests your personality traits and breaks down where your interests lie in terms of realism, artisticness (?), research and 3 other categories. Its really helped me to start think outside the box in terms of things I might like to do in this next stage of my life. I still think I would like to find a job I can do from home for the next 5 years or so, so that I can raise the baby and get the experience all the cool stuff, so I've been doing research and trying to get through all the crap and scams and hopefully I'll find something legitimate soon.
Organization/ Minimization is going ok. The boy is pretty positive that I am never going to actually minimize my life down because I have a tendency to keep certain things that remind me of certain times of my life. I'm emotional and this is not my fault, it makes me a well-rounded person, damnit. But I have thrown out a lot of stuff. I think its going to be a constant work in progress until we move out. Whatever, I'll be happy if I get organized to where I know where my stuff is at.
Education is being turned on its head constantly. I have my two books that i'm reading through and my baby doctor gave me three different magazines which are giving me all kinds of ideas and knowledge on the little munchkin inside me. I'm pretty positive that I'm going to end up going back to school, which I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to do, except hoping that I'll be able to take a lot of my classes over the internet. A girl can dream, right? I dunno. We'll see how things go.
I have to say though, that I think my progress is way awesome considering its only a month and a half into the year. Onward and upward!
Hate me all you want, but I live at the beach. No seriously. I love the beach. After recent developments in my life, I've discovered I will never leave this area unless I am moving to another beach, because I want the new person in my life to be a total beach bum, just like me. But, I love snow. It makes everything magical. This is a picture of my front yard a couple weeks ago, covered in 8 inches of snow! I loved it! Oh joy! And it'll be another 7 years before we get a snow like this again, which is the beauty of living at the beach. But I digress.
