5.12.20

Regimenting. I  feel like that should  be the watchword for  the current
times. I  know everyone and  their cousin  has been talking  about covid
lately, but it  really is such a totalizing situation;  you can't escape
it, even in  escapism. But in times like this,  when everything has been
so uncertain, it's caused  me to realize how out of  touch with myself I
have become. I've  been so overwhelmed by day to  day life, so entangled
with the stresses of work,  expectations and obligations towards others,
and  all those  little stresses  that life  likes to  pile on,  that I'm
nearly a stranger to myself sometimes.  The old patterns, the old habits
(good and bad) have  fallen to the wayside, and what I'm  left with is a
life that rarely feels like my own.

Some  of  this has  been  good,  to be  sure,  I've  been afforded  many
blessings in  all this turmoil and  I try to keep  those in perspective.
But at the same time, I have lost some of the qualities I once respected
in  myself. To  put it  bluntly, I've  grown lazy  with myself.  I don't
excercise as  much anymore, I  don't socialize  with friends as  much, I
don't feel  nearly as in control  of myself and  my life as I  once did.
Lately though, I hve been having  more and more that "something's really
gotta  give" feeling,  and I  can only  hope that  this chaotic  feeling
welling up inside myself will bring me a new order.

To that end, I've  resolved to start a new approach,  and take the reins
back to my  life, at first in little ways:  getting back to excercising,
studying,  eating properly,  finding balance.  Unfortunately, it's  much
easier to pick  up bad habits than it  is to put them down  again, and I
know that  I will optimistically be  half as successful as  I intend. It
feels almost perverse to say that the external turmoil has really helped
me shed  a light  on the  almost spiritual turmoil  I have  been lapsing
into,  but  it is  true.  I've  never been  one  for  setting goals  and
schedules for myself, but I do have intentions (some more abstract, some
more concrete) that should help guide me along this path:

* make more time for myself, to take inventory and reflect inwardly

* stop  gorging myself on  sweets and  "foods of convenience"  and stick
with more regular meals

* get back in the rhythm of excercising daily or near daily

* keep up with my studies so  I can pursue my passions, rather than idle
time wasting

* be  a bit  more stubborn  when it comes  to my  wants, don't  just let
people walk all over meals

I really want  to turn this year around,  and I know that I  can. I just
have to trust in the process, and  trust in myself again. Keeping a kind
of diary  like this phlog is  already making me feel  better, letting me
get things out that I otherwise  wouldn't say to people. So, prospective
reader, thank you for reading my self-therapy session today.

-Vx