day 3.

I've decided to start a very, very small side project. I'm not even sure it deserves to be called a project. A strategy, maybe. Anyway.

Semantics aside, I have a problem, and I'm going to try and solve it. I get really attached to my clothes. A lot of my favorite items go through a process where I wear them for a while, and then, when I'm bored with them or they're out of season, I send them to my parents' house (ah, the joys of parents with a large house who live nearby). Sometimes, I'll wear these items when I come home and they'll come back to my place at the end of the visit. Other times, they'll languish in my parents' drawers for a few years until I do a big wardrobe purge there and donate my old stuff. Since these clothes haven't been worn in a long time, it's usually pretty easy to let them go.

The same can't be said for my own closet. Clothes don't get worn for months and yet there they remain, taking up prime closet real estate. I've been getting better - I recently filled a large shopping bag to the brim with clothes to be donated, and I've become a lot more discriminating with my thrifting - but my closet is still full. The other day, I realised that all my hangers were full, and a good portion of my clothes were in laundry baskets. Yeah. I need less clothes.

I decided that it was time to keep track of what I actually wear. That day was October 24. On January 24th, whatever hasn't been worn in the past 3 months and is not a special item (i.e. my bikini or my 2 fancy special occasion dresses) must go. I'll start keeping track of which clothing items in my closet are actually worn.

day 2.

Today:
1. I did some art.
Fashion art, even.
This outfit, in real life, is not only pretty but indecently comfy. I might as well be going to work in my pajamas.
Worn two Fridays in a row.

2. Tired at work. Instead of buying a coffee, which is:
A) expensive
B) sometimes nauseating +
C) bad for my stomach,
I had chocolate in small quantities: in some pumpkin muffins, and two little dark chocolates that my boss gave me, spread out throughout the day.

3. Plan for tonight:
-> homemade food (because my husband is sick of road food)
-> cuddles with said husband and cats
-> go to bed early. Too many yawns today.

Not sure if I'm being too gentle on myself with "the project", but am in the midst of a mini-flare. I think rest wins out this time, plus it's a good mental break and will reharge my batteries. Keepin' positive, yo.

Day 1 of "The Project"

It may seem like a strange first step, but today I'm cleaning the house. Doesn't sound like the way to go into remission, necessarily, but consider this: Having a messy house stresses me out. My husband has been away helping my uncle with a long-distance move, and I want him to feel welcome and relaxed when he gets back. I've been a bit of a slob when left here alone to my own devices, and things weren't the cleanest before that, either.

I also read in this month's Men's Health that a study showed that people with clean houses tend to be healthier, probably because they get exercise from maintaining order in their homes.

Anyway, it's back to the brooms for me!

Cheers,
Meg

P.S.: Motivation while cleaning is a problem of mine. I tend to get distracted by phone calls, my laptop, and my cats. A few things that help keep me going: breaks (like the one I'm taking right now) as a reward for a completed task (I just finished cleaning up in the kitchen) and music I love, blared as loud as I want, and dancing along when the urge strikes.

Something important.

It is 4:30am and I can't sleep.

On the plus side, however, as I was laying in bed tossing and turning, I had a bit of a revelation that is going to change my life majorly and for the better. I don't think anything this important and positive has happened since my wedding day. Granted, that was less than two months ago, but still.

The other day at work, I had some time to kill and I found myself wandering from a blog about professional blogging to a site called "Man Vs. Debt". I'm not terribly interested in personal finance as a hobby, but I have significant student loan debt and I was curious to see what this fellow had to say.

It was about more, much more, than debt. It was about changing your life for the better, whether it be in a small way like de-cluttering your garage, or in a large way, like living free of credit cards. It's about aspirations, ambitions, and life goals.

It mobilised me. I started writing lists of things I wanted to achieve, and the words just poured out of me onto the paper. I felt powerful. I felt confident. I felt... trepidation.

It took me until tonight to figure out why. The cogs had been turning in my head for the past two days. I have two life goals, and I've known what they are for a long time, though not how to put them into action. I want to (1) help people and (2) to travel.

In university, I studied International Development Studies. My intent was to go to Africa or somewhere and feed starving children. I knew I wasn't cut out for the medical professions, so I figured that this would be the most concrete way to help people. However, once I got to school, I soon learned that my way of thinking was imperialistic - very "white man's burden". Also, in my third year of school, a very unfortunate housing situation lead to a relapse of my Crohn's disease, which had gone into remission around the time I started university.

After the return of the Crohn's, I suffered a flare-up so severe that it put me a year behind in my studies. My disease had worsened, and it continued to adversely affect my life, and shattered my dreams of travelling internationally to work for non-profits.

What I need to do is get back into remission permanently. The drugs I'm on now are so new that the long-term effects aren't known yet. It would make so much sense for me to shape up and get myself out of this mess.

This is not an easy proposition. Beating Crohn's is going to take lifestyle changes galore. I am a worrier, and stress is my biggest trigger when it comes to Crohn's. I need to remove stress from my life wherever possible and learn to cope with the problems that I can't get rid of. It could mean creative outlets*, meditation, volunteering, research, diets, strict budgeting, or yoga. My goal for right now will be to come here, every day, and tackle this, and write about my results and discoveries for the day. It may take time, but I read somewhere that it's the dull, plodding types who get things done, otherwise the world would be full of serial novelists and Olympic athletes.

I feel like this idea needs a catchy name of some mind. Something that ends in "Project". I'll get back to you on that.

And so my adventure begins.

Cheers,
Meg

*And all this time, I thought I wanted to write a fashion blog? ...well, who knows. Maybe that's a creative outlet right there. :)