Blogs

Wasted Time

admin

I no longer want to waste time in my life.  That doesn’t mean that I want to rush through situations and experiences that are meant to be savored, but I do not want to waste my time on activities and relationships that are no longer fulfilling for the people involved.  

In the past, I have dedicated many years of my life to working hard on marriages and relationships from a one-sided perspective.  What a waste of time. I have also spent countless hours trying to keep my family happy. Also a waste of time.

You see, I’m finally realizing that it isn’t my job to please everyone or become who and what they think I should be.  It is my job to live my life in a way that allows me to feel passionately about how I spend the majority of my time, so that my positive outlook on life can inspire others.  If I can have an impact on just one person with this new perspective, it is worth every single one of the tears I have shed acknowledging the wasted time.

woman sleeping on white bed holding blue pillow
Photo by bruce mars on Pexels.com

So, to define wasted time, let’s get a few misconceptions cleared up.

If I want to sleep in on a Saturday morning and luxuriate in the coziness of my bed, that is not time wasted.  That is a little slice of heaven on 800 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets!

If I want to sit at happy hour with my friends from work and turn happy hour into happy SEVERAL hours, that is the opposite of wasted time.  That’s therapy!

If I want to sit on the couch next to my son while he binge watches a show and I read my book, I will do exactly that.  And I will take these memories, these moments, these snapshots of perfection, and tuck them away in my brain to snack on later.  

While those scenarios are all worth every second of time spent, I have also come to realize that I need to delegate the remaining and less indulgent time in my life to activities that move me towards a more passionate life overall.  Today, I sat with my calendar and my journal, and I planned out the remainder of the month of October. I should have been doing this type of time management all along, but I have not been doing it regularly at all. Hence the two weeks without posting a blog.

personal organizer and pink flowers on desk
Photo by Kaboompics .com on Pexels.com

I want to live more purposefully and more passionately in as many moments as I can, so I have to budget the minutes slated for work time wisely, and I really must stick to the promises I make to myself.  

In an effort to minimize wasted time and stick to these promises, I have decided that I will not spend mental energy and time on people who do not respond in the way that I think they should.  I can still care about them, but their lack of contact or response will no longer occupy emotional real estate within my soul. If I choose to reach out to them for my own peace of mind, I will not go into a psychological tail spin when they do not reach out in return.  It drains my positivity, and it is an enormous time waster.

With these types of adjustments in mind, I am scheduling more time for writing, for taking care of my body, and for activities that bring me pure joy.  Even though I am currently fighting some ailments and injuries, I am going to take the time to eat better, rest more, move my body often, laugh even more than that, and write about all of it.

I hope you all dive into the end of this year realizing that your time is irreplaceable.  We are not guaranteed a single minute of it. It makes me think of water in a desert; you need to let every drop of it swirl around inside of you because it is precious.  

Let’s continue to focus on all of the experiences that are worth our time.

Happy pursuing!

~Chandra

My One and Only

admin

It has been over a week since I blogged, and I can honestly say that life has been unusually interesting during this time.  Right now, though, I think I’d like to escape some of that nonsense and focus on my one and only!

My one and only BODY, that is!  clear-device-diet-53404

Have you ever really thought about the fact that we get ONE body to do this life in on a daily basis?  It’s pretty important that we take care of it! I am not good at this task at all. I have not been great at taking care of my body for most of my life.  When I was young, as in 20 years old and younger, I was 5’3” tall and 108 pounds. I had curves, but they were in the right places and appropriate for my size.  Still, I did not eat well (read: multiple candy bars and frozen burritos each day). I did not sleep an appropriate amount each night (read: less than 4 hours per night).  I did not exercise regularly unless it was tennis season. Overall, I did not value what I had in such a youthful, healthy body.

IMG_3808When I was 20 years old, I was almost seven months pregnant with my oldest son, Eddie, and I was put on bed rest due to early labor.  Up until that point in the pregnancy, I had only gained fifteen pounds and was completely healthy. I had been working in a preschool chasing 4 year old children for eight hours each day and going to school full time in the evenings.  I went from all of that activity to complete and total bed rest! My body rebelled against this inactivity in such a major way! I lost my appetite due to the lack of activity. I slept all day and all night. Every four hours, I had to take a terbutaline pill to stop the contractions from happening, even setting my alarm through the night.  All of these factors meshed together to cause a 75 pound weight-gain over the course of the pregnancy!

SEVENTY-FIVE POUNDS!

After I had Eddie, I got pregnant with Alex right away.  Eddie was only six weeks old. In that six weeks, some of my weight had started to come off, and I didn’t gain anything during the pregnancy, but I was still far too overweight to feel comfortable in my own skin.  Since Alex was conceived while taking precautions, and I was paranoid about becoming pregnant again immediately after I recovered from the delivery, I chose to get the Depo-Provera shot as my method of birth control.  What a horrendous mistake! I was 175 pounds when I received the first shot, and I promise you, I have never weighed below 175 pounds since then! Can you imagine? I have struggled with this weight on my body for over 25 years, even through two more childbirths! 

Now, I know that there were components of that shot that hurt my metabolism and my hormone production in a way that changed me forever, but I have to be authentic and real here:  I have not taken care of myself well this entire time. The closest I’ve ever gotten to feeling really healthy and alive was when I was doing both Weight Watchers and the Jillian Michael’s Body Revolution programs. I committed myself to them faithfully for months, however, I still never reached a weight below 175 pounds. 

Throughout all of these years of my life, I have endured multiple injuries, medical conditions, illnesses, and extremely stressful circumstances, with each one being so ridiculous that I am dedicating multiple posts to describe them.  I never realized the importance of self-care during those times.  I just went into survival mode without practicing habits that were going to benefit me in both the long and short term.  I didn’t think I deserved to truly take care of myself when I had so many others depending upon me.  What a life-altering misconception!

I now realize, at the ripe old age of 46, that I need to take care of myself each and every day, and then I’ll be my best for others.  I have become passionate about gathering information and implementing actions that will guide me towards the goal of true health. I am reading Body Love, by Kelly LeVeque, and Sleep Smarter, by Shawn Stevenson, in order to really tune in to what my body needs to function properly.  beautiful-hands-heart-5390

I am currently in the midst of some injuries, as well as some of life’s curveballs (mold in my apartment aggravating my asthma, living in a hotel, trying to find a new place to live, etc.), and I need to really focus on putting my health and well-being first.  I feel as though this might be something I really need to pursue passionately in order to be my best self for the second half of my life.

Are any of you struggling like I am?  Have you found successes in living healthier after YEARS of making poor choices with food, exercise, and sleep?  Let me know in the comments, because I’d love to hear your stories, too.

Let’s get healthy, happy, and live passionate lives!

-Chandra-

What’s Next?

admin

I am a teacher.  Among other roles that I have and hats that I wear, I am a teacher most of my day every single day.  I teach middle school language arts and history Monday through Friday, and I feel very passionately about helping these young humans turn into the best versions of themselves.  While I feel as though this is an exceptionally important task I have been commissioned with in life, I have the overwhelming understanding that I need to pursue a different or additional passion in order to continue feeling fulfilled.  

Has this ever happened to you?  One day you realize that you’re waking up, making coffee, heading to work, and moving through your day by the pace of the clock.  You find yourself working late just to stay caught up, heading home to make and eat dinner, doing some chores, and heading to bed exhausted just to do it all again the very next day.

 You look up and realize that this is not the kind of life you envisioned.

Don’t get me wrong!  There are many times in my teaching day that fulfill me as I watch students grasp concepts they are working hard to learn or make choices to be their very best selves!  I just cannot shake this feeling that I have more to offer at this stage of my life.

As I sat here planning for this post, I knew I could start off by sharing moments from past times in which passion has led me to pursue amazing twists and turns in my life, but what I need to do is work through what I will pursue next.  I have some pressing ideas, but which one to do first?

Reaching out through this blog site is one passion that is speaking loudly to my soul.  I see this pathway as a means to get out there in the world and interact with others. Through this work, I have already met so many positive women and men who just want to encourage me and let me know they appreciate what I am attempting to do!  I feel so inspired by other people’s stories and life lessons, and I am hoping that I can reach at least one other person who needs to hear what I need to say.

Today I’m saying that it is time for me to dive into the pursuit of my next passion.  Teaching will eventually be replaced by the hard work needed to reach out in an effort to inspire and connect with others.  Maybe that connection comes through me sharing different aspects of my life: past, present, and future. I will be open and vulnerable, and I suspect I might make a few people upset about things as I recall details, but that happens in life sometimes.  The need to help even one person by sharing my truths far outweighs any uncomfortable moments I might face.

As I typed that last sentence, I inexplicably felt a very powerful urge to share stories about my personal health.   My body has been through many trials, as well as triumphs. In the next few posts, I’ll share some of those difficult times with you, and I’ll give you a peek into the positive thoughts in my brain that usually help me get through anything.  With that said, I’ve still got a long way to go to achieve true health and wellness. That’s what this blog is about: growth through the pursuit of passions. My growth, your growth, and the need for growth in all of us so we can become our very best selves.

Next stop: Body talk!

-Chandra-

In Pursuit…

admin

Today is the beginning of a new passion:  blogging!

In my lifetime, I have had a variety of goals, which I achieved due to one common factor: passion.  I have had an overwhelming need and desire to reach those goals, often at the expense of my own health and well-being.  I have felt passionately about many areas of life. I dove head first into earning college credits during high school, moving out of my parents’ home as soon as I graduated, attempting to save my dilapidated marriage(s), becoming a teacher, raising wonderful human beings despite hardships, pursuing a relationship with God, and too many other endeavors to count.

I have had no business achieving some of these goals, but the true fire inside of me would not allow me to quit until I felt some sort of success.  Many of these stories in which I will share my pursuit of passion will include nights of complete and total exhaustion as I studied or stayed awake with worry and fear.  Other stories will be examples of opening my eyes and my heart to the passion brought on by new opportunities and allowing the experiences to flow right through me.

Sometimes, though, the fire fizzled right out of me before I was able to see things through to the end.  Or, I was living in too much fear to see the open doors and brilliant paths. Either way, I missed out.

This blog, with its infinite possibilities for topics, is my current attempt at seizing the opportunity to live the life I was created to live and to pursue my current passion of sharing myself with all of you.  I intend to be fully and authentically transparent, telling my hard truths and my amazing journeys along the way.

I am in pursuit. I hope you enjoy the ride!

-Chandra-