In the past, I’ve mostly used this as a place to track my workouts, but I’m going to start writing more blog like posts as well.
All my life I used to work in the entertainment industry. From a high schooler working at an amusement park, to working in television, and eventually working in the video game industry. Most recently it was working at a sporting venue. I worked 80, 90, or 100+ hour weeks for 8 months out of the year (I’d work a good 50-60 the other 4 months). I loved what I did, putting smiles on faces, coming up with new and exciting ways to improve what we did. I was just giving up too much to do it.
In the 3.5 years I worked there, I put on 65 lbs eating concession food at events, and fast food in the few minutes I wasn’t working there. I had very high blood pressure from the stress of the events, dealing with unhappy customers, and a boss that was very demanding. The only exercise I got was climbing 101 steps to get to my office on event days, the rest of the time I was sitting at a computer all day. My gall bladder became so clogged with gallstones that my body was literally poisoning myself and had to be removed quite rapidly after several trips to the ER where they didn’t know what was causing my pain. After the surgery, I went home took a nap for about an hour, and then went into work, as there was an event that day, and I was needed. That’s just the way life was there. I lost contact with most of my friends, missed all birthdays, family reunions, weddings, and funerals. In short I missed out on everything that made life worth living. I was so miserable all the time that I ended up on on anti-depressants, and the worse I felt, the heavier the doses got.
When I finally got up the courage to leave, I took some time for myself. What was planned to be a month or two off to get off the anti-depressants, recover, and then find work turned out to be 10 months of looking before I finally found something. During that time my blood pressure returned to normal, I was able to get off all the meds, but while I had plans on exercising, I still didn’t get started.
I finally found work in the “corporate” world, and it’s taken me almost a year now to fully adjust. Every day I’ve gone into work and been grateful for the job, the people I work with, all the extra things I don’t have to do, the extra money I’m getting, and lately the Fitness Center at work, where I have been working out almost daily.
I have been the happiest in my entire life, with the exception of this past week.
This past Sunday I went back to an event at my old place of work. I had a great time seeing everybody again, and enjoyed the event.
Since then however, I’ve been a mess. My mind has been reliving those years, all the good times, and all the bad. Intermixed with these for the first time, are questions about my current job. For whatever reason it’s been really tough there this week, and I can’t help thinking about the events, and how cool it was being a part of them. Yet I know I have made the right decision.
The problem is, I really let my attitude get in the way of things. Monday I quite literally came home and was in bed at 4:30. I thought all day of taking a vacation day on Tuesday. It probably would have been the best thing to do, but I made excuses for why I had to be there, and in a way, almost punished myself by making myself go. Tuesday I went, and didn’t get much done, came home messed around on the computer and went to bed feeling really unfulfilled. All the while I’ve been “Depressed” eating and could feel my gains going away. Today everybody seemed to need my help, all at once, and all insisting their project was the most important. I quite literally, got into work, worked on my project for 7 minutes before the first request on my time was posed, and left work never having a spare second to look at it again.
I was really bummed out and wasn’t going to exercise today either. But really got frustrated and decided to take out the frustrations on the exercise equipment. Looking back on it, I did have a good exercise session but during it I just felt like I wasn’t going fast enough, or wasn’t able to lift as much as I had in previous days.
Writing this all up has been very therapeutic, and I know a lot of that stemmed from getting out and exercising again. It didn’t give me a rush of excitement or happiness or totally flip around my mood, but it was a step in the right direction, and this post is another.
That’s the goal of this blog. One step at a time. I’ll get there. It won’t be easy. Nothing that is worth it is ever easy.
Digg! this story.
