Boxing Week Conflicts

Have I ever mentioned that Walmart makes me physically ill? I think I have some kind of hang up about consumerism... I feel guilty for buying things but the consumer inside me is begging to go boxing week shopping.

Usually I don't shop very often simply because the styles I like are either too expensive or not "in style" during the year. Except this last fall. So many nice clothes! Finally! The colours and styles I like and now many of them are 50% off during boxing week.

However, I'm starting to think the higher power is trying to make me choose the greater good over my own vanity. Why do these amazing deals on awesome clothes come at a time when my credit card bill is repulsively high (from Christmas shopping) and when my moral compass is directing me away from the rampant consumerism our society is experiencing?

I figured cleaning out my closet would make me feel better... I'm not sure if it has worked or not.

Tonight I'm cleaning out my closet...

Prior to Christmas I spent a few hours one day watching the first season of Hoarders. I am now fully motivated to organize my room... however I've run into a few problems.

First off is... I'm not a hoarder - and so I have an average amount of stuff and clothes, most of which gets used on a regular basis. This makes it hard to "clean things out". I've managed to fill up one box of stuff to donate.

Second, despite my problem of not having a huge problem like hoarding, I still feel like a hoarder. I look in my closet and feel disgusted. Why do I have so many clothes? Logically I consider that I live in a climate with four distinct seasons which makes it slightly more necessary to have a store of weather appropriate clothing such as shorts for summer and sweaters for fall and/or winter... I can't just get rid of all of it because that would be committing to either a financially unstable future or a physically uncomfortable one.

Thirdly, I am about to enter "the real world" of 9 - 5 working, thus I must have appropriate work attire. So far I have one pair of dress pants (my other pair was a casualty of the dryer and my lack of attention to tag instructions like "dry clean only") and a few decent tops. Most of my clothes are casual... I would like to buy new work clothes but then that would be adding to problem number two.

I've come to the conclusion that my best bet is to wait until I actually start working then slowly replace casual clothes with work clothes... and maybe maintain about a third of my current casual clothes...Why do I feel guilty for having "stuff"? I want to get rid of it all and just start over but obviously that's just silly.

On the flip side of the coin... it doesn't happen very often that my favourite styles of clothing are on sale during boxing week... See next blog for details.

Dear Me.

Dear future self,

Upon reflection of recent past blogs I have come to this conclusion which is important for you to remember if you want to remain sane.

Remember that a healthy relationship is one in which your boyfriend can have a female room mate and you have no fear that anything will happen to threaten your relationship. But how will you know? you might ask. You won't. BUT this is not a reason to be alarmed. This is the knowledge that sets you free. Let go of fear. Trust is a choice. Trust is the knowledge that you can not control others, however you can continue to believe in their reliability and empathy toward your feelings. What YOU CAN control is most important. YOUR love for your boyfriend is what matters most, and to lose trust is to lose YOUR love (regardless of the situation you have no control over where he chooses to distribute his love). The universe accepts love and returns to you abundance. If you withdraw your love you withdraw your chance at a happy relationship. Remember that poster on the wall in grade 8? "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take". True. Love you don't give is love never received and thus never returned. Trust in the universe. Trust in yourself. You are a great person whom good things will happen to. Although unfortunate circumstances happen in life, they are for learning, and to which the good things can be compared and therefore considered better. So remember when you begin to feel angry or down: you hold the key. give your love. choose to trust. and last (and most practical) blog about your feelings because it definitely helps (lol). I feel so much better now. I will now bold the most important words.

So here is my attempt at beggining journaling including thoughts that I usually try and refrain from writing about. Apparently to actually get the benefits of journaling you can't censor your thoughts - good or bad - because the whole point is to figure out how to deal with them better.

First off, I will start by writing that I generally try not to blog about negative feelings because for some reason I feel like I'm going to jinx myself and make them become more real.

Seondly, I need to express the feeling of feeling guilty for having the feeling of needing to express feelings... wow. Anyways, I feel guilty for having non-positive thoughts about my life because they seem silly, like a big WIM story, like I'm taking things for granted. None the less, they still occurr and maybe this is an appropriate way of dealing with them.

On Saturday I went out with my friends but afterward on the way home I started to feel very angry. A familiar feeling of being hurt (before it happens) occurred and I traced it's origins back to my boyfriend telling me that his new room mates whom he previously thought were a couple were actually not. He told me this several times and I had this poking in my brain start... what if he's telling me this because he's trying to get me jealous by suggesting that the girl is single? Also, he said he had met them but he had only told me what the guy looks like... in my past experience, men have had this strange tendency to place immediate judgement on girls they meet and are not attracted to but when they didn't it translated as some kind of general attraction... or maybe that is just the pattern of untrustworthy males of the past... I knew my feelings were just old scars getting poked by a new but all too familiar situation (new female with too much unsuperised access to my man!). I knew I was acting crazy. It was almost like I couldn't control it though... my throat started to close, I could feel tears tensing behind my eyes and my stomache get queazy. My boyfriend called me and asked if I was coming over and I was like a demon speaking from my body "if you want me too. maybe you'd rather hang out with your room mate." I was met with "why are you turning all bitchy" with which I tried to correct the situation by suggesting I was angry from the boredom of my night out. I tried to hide the sharpness of my voice. On the way to his house my mind was racing. A fight between emotion and logical thinking ensued and I was almost brought to tears a few times. I felt like I was going crazy. I kept thinking I should see a counsellor. Why do I feel this way? Hastely answered by a recount of all the things he had said and their possible secret meanings... the potential for something to happen. When I got to his house I couldn't hold my tongue. I told him my feelings and why I felt that way.... at first I was met with anger, "well maybe you should just leave then. If I had known you would be all crazy...." (I don't remember how that sentence ended). I tried so hard not to cry. I apologized and said I felt like a crazy woman had come out of me from somewhere. The discussion was short lived and seemed to be resolved after some discussion about how his room mate was much older than him and overweight and thus I had nothing to worry about. I felt better - and worse at the same time. Now... the jealousy problem seems easier to work on, but it's been replaced by the fear that he will never trust me again... thinking that I don't trust him (I do trust him... I was temporarily overwhelmed by a swell of primal emotion). I feel like I have to forever hold my tongue and neer suggest I am jealous ever again or he will be so angry and leave me.

The end result is somewhat of a depression I have fell into. I feel sad and afraid - and for no apprent reason. For things I have thought up that don't exist.... Why have I done this? What is wrong with me? My logic brain keeps trying to find a solution... research has told me that my jealousy is evidence of insecurities.... and maybe its true. But if good people I know and beautiful celebrities get cheated on what makes me so sure it won't happen to me? I'm trying to find a way to feel better...

Bzzz beep bzz shhsss An error has occurred.

This is the sound of my brain right now as it reaches maximum information consumption. I'm in the home stretch of school - finally. Today was the last exercise physiology lab, possibly the most time consuming lab reports I have ever done... they constantly pushed me to my limit (mostly of focus) and I felt very frustrated by the end, especially knowing another one would need to be started in the next three hours. I literally felt like I was doing some kind of lab marathon... ironically most of the information was about metabolism related to sports performance (thus the reference to "maximum information consumption" earlier). I've decided to compare how my brain feels to exercise physiology. So I pushed really hard in the last few days to complete big lab assignment. I was pushed to work above thinking threshold 2 where rate of mental work (fatigue) is equal to rate of recovery. This caused me to accumulate fatigue (probably explaining why I am writing this blog and drinking a huge hot chocolate right now) since recovery rate was less than mental work. This is okay once in awhile because it's like training for speed or doing interval training - push really hard and improve rate of mental work to time available. However, the greater mental work capacity you have, the higher the workload before you reach thinking threshold 2. Work capacity is influenced by your coping abilities (stress reduction strategies, time management, etc.). A mental marathon requires this base to put forth the best work in the shortest amount of time. But coping strategies can only be practiced if 70% of training is below thinking threshold 2 or even below thinking threshold 1 (where recovery time exceeds mental work - aka relaxation). If a person was to be chronically exposed to interval training they would burn out. Their capacity to endure the mental marathon would be reduced. This my friends, is why you shouldn't procrastinate.