May!?

Wha happen'? How did I get here???

Bet you thought I was dead, right? If I've retained my reader, well, thank you for sticking it out.

See, what happened is that in November I was appointed to a task force at work. Everything after that is a blur. Well, that's not entirely true. But I was consumed here at work, with both my job and regular, lengthy and very intense meetings. I rarely logged into my computer at home, barely checked email, and essentially couldn't do anything too taxing at the risk of exploding my brain.

The task force completed its charge last week, so I've had a little time to think and reflect and feel normal.

One of the problems while doing the task force was the tremendous amount of stress. I don't say this lightly, amigos. I tend to handle stress well, not take things too seriously, put things into perspective. But this, this was different. I'm not going to go into details, the bottom line is this. We're going to be restructuring here, and it's up to the task force to plan it. May sound simple, but we are talking about evaluating the workflow and livelihood of over 20 people, some who have been doing the same thing (literally and figuratively) for over 25 years (the university is known for the longevity of its employees). I didn't want to be on this committee, I didn't volunteer. I was appointed and in no position to say no.

Anyway, it wasn't really a problem, just intense. Intense enough to invade my dreams (and if that happens, you KNOW you've got a problem).

How was my eating in all this, you ask? Not good. The meetings we had were fueled by caffeine and chocolate. I rarely made my own breakfast or lunch. I ate all the wrong things when I got home, in an effort to stuff all the stress and get it to shut the hell up, and in an effort to keep things simple.

Now, again, I didn't resort to my pre-WW behaviors in the area of drive through, or donuts. But that doesn't mean I ate well.

I did put on some weight. 25+ lbs or so. I can't lie. I WANT to lie, but I can't. But...I didn't stop going to my meetings. I faithfully attended, got on the scale (most weeks) and took my lumps.

Now that the TF is over, I've been able to evaluate, come down, calm myself. Last week I started to live like I normally would. First off, no meetings means no chocolate. It's not like I independently eat a ton of chocolate, but if you put it in front of me I'm going to eat it. AND, the TF was occurring during the BIG sweets times: Christmas, Valentine's and Easter. Lots of sales, lots of chocolate. AND, M and Ms are now available with pretzels. So...you figure it out.

But last week, I started to get real. And this week, I AM real. Brought breakfast, made my own coffee, at home. Have a thermos of water right here. I have leftovers for dinner, I have a grocery list. I'll get there amigos. It was a rough, rough patch, I won't lie. But it was a patch, it wasn't the rest of my life. THIS is the rest of my life. So hopefully, starting this week, I'll be able to start posting losses, and I'll let you know when I get to that big 3 digit number again.

See ya!