Hi friends. Guess what? It’s July!! 

Holy Laughing Cows Cheese Batman, how did half a year go by already? 

I dunno. Guess we blinked and that’s just what happens. 

If you read my musing on a regular basis (Thank you! You’re amazing! I love you forever!!), you know I’ve spent a great deal of this year contemplating what’s next with regard to my writing and frankly everything else in my life. So pretty much just like every other day, week, month, etc. 😂

But seriously, I’ve been in a slump and even writing blog posts at times has felt like a strain on my soul. (So drama!)

So with half a year in the rear view and half just up the road it’s probably a good time for a classic status update. When I say “classic” what I mean is a brief check on all facets of my life. I used to do this weekly on Sundays but after a while determined that ain’t nobody got time for that, including me. 

Some of the regular topics I would report on for sleep, exercise (think step counts), food/eating/diet, relationships, work, and yes, even writing. 

And since I’ve clearly established that my writing has gone down the toilet, I am free to focus on the other areas.

The good news is that this is mostly good news. Let me break it down…

I still wear my Fitbit to bed every night and all day every day to capture my step count. However, somewhere along the way with my sleep struggle I decided to embrace caring about it a little less. Focusing it on it a little less, and more specifically not looking at the stats for my sleep every morning.

In truth, I know better than any statistic how I’m doing on sleep. I know when I’ve gotten a good nights sleep and I know when my sleep has been shit. I know that if I wake up at 2 AM and can’t fall back to sleep and end up being on my laptop for two hours and then try to go back to sleep at four or five or six that’s a bunch of garbage.

That is how I can say for certainty that my sleep is currently much better than my historical norm.

In the last few months, I’ve seen a dramatic improvement. There’s not been a huge change in my behaviors. I’m going to bed around the same time every night on weekdays, about 10 PM. 11 or midnight on the weekends if I can stay awake that late). I still have to get up about six or 6:30 AM and generally wake up slightly before that. The difference, then is that I am staying asleep more often in the middle of the night.

Even when I wake up to go to the bathroom, I am able to fall back asleep, which is my biggest problem historically. I think I can attribute this to two things…

1. The medication I am taking at bedtime to help with migraines.
2. A general overall well-being, and lack of worry about things going on in my life.

Sure, they’re always ups and downs with that second item and can cause a bump in the road at times, but in general, I am embracing the good life that I have found. my family is safe and secure financially, from a financial perspective, and with regards to Health.

So sleep is going good at the moment. Thank the freaking Universe. 

With this great turn, I’m considering doing the same with exercise. When I say the same, I think I mean care a little less about it. Perhaps back off tracking step counts and not looking at it all the time. 

This is a little tougher to do for a couple of reasons. The first is that I am connected to a few friends and family via my Fitbit stats and I know my dad looks at it on a regular basis to see how he’s doing. It’s motivation for him to get his steps in, so he can beat me. Ha! So I suppose at the very least I need to keep wearing it and letting it collect the info.

The second roadblock would be that I have now pulled the trigger on a paid Noom subscription. One of the things the app looks at is exercise, more specifically step count. It doesn’t actually affect my progress in the app (or actually losing 5 pounds), but it still makes me want to beat the target goal that is set each day.

I guess I can keep wearing these health devices on my wrist and just try not to look at it, obsess over it, or whatever. We’ll see.

This leads right to the next topic which is diet and I’m only in my first month of Noom and already kind of over it. I enjoy the lessons but I’m not learning anything that feels new or revelatory. One of the things that’s supposed to be a benefit with Noom is your personal coach and I haven’t really engaged that part of the process at all. I initially lost like 4 pounds within the first couple of weeks, but that was doing the unhealthy thing that I tend to do, which is fast too much and not eat enough calories or nutrition.

When I backed off of that strict abstinence about a week ago and went back to my normal eating behaviors with a few more healthy choices, I immediately gained those 4 pounds back. That yo-yo is super unhealthy and obviously the 500 calorie a day diet is not sustainable.

It’s also really tough to do when there’s so much good food out there and I just enjoy eating. Having an internal fight with myself about it every time. I approach a meal is not fun.

What I need to do is find a sustainable method to lose a little bit at a time and still enjoy some of my favorite things. That’s supposed to be what happens with Noom, but I’ve got bad behaviors baked into my brain that are hard to break. 

Anyway, that’s where that’s at and I’ll keep working on it. Who knows if I’ll stick with Noom. I’m pretty frugal and don’t like paying for something without seeing results. 

I’m almost out of time, but work and relationships are both going the same direction as sleep. Things are getting better and I’m just embracing it. I suppose one of the main challenges with everything going well, is that a person may fear that there’s another bump in the road right around the corner. It’s hard to just enjoy life and not think about all the what if’s. What if something terrible happens tomorrow? 

I better eat all the delicious things today and then enjoy a great night sleep before that next asteroid hits. ☄️ 

OK, so my time is up and I’ve got to cut and run.

Cheers for making it through the first half of the year. Thanks for reading!

Peace and love,

~Miss SugarCookie