After Saturday, there was Sunday.
And on Sunday, the weather was beautiful.
I got out of the house, and out of the neighbourhood. I drove out to Sydney Mines, and walked along Florence Beach.
I stayed devoted to fresh air, to my own deep need to walk in the air, to see the ocean. To hear the beach sounds. To play with light and shadow.
Me, hopeful, before I started trying to curl my hair on Saturday.
I took a break over the weekend from writing these December Devotion posts, because, well, I am human.
And humans need regular breaks from things. Like work. And projects. And other people.
Breaks are good. You could say this is the overarching, reoccurring lesson of my life. From my Big Depression in university in 2007, to just managing the day-to-day needs of human life, breaks are good is something I forget about with alarming frequency. And then, remember, more often than I used to. So at least, I'm learning, somewhat.
And again, I'm human, so that's the best we can do, I think. To learn, somewhat, as we go through this life business.
The weekend was, among other things, an opportunity to re-learn that phrase, "Man plans, God laughs." It was the staff Christmas party at my work. My boyfriend Adam really does not like going out to social events like that, where he's totally out of his comfort zone. You could call him an introvert, you could call him socially anxious, although he doesn't call himself those things. He just says, "No," when I ask him to come out to things. So anyway, I'd been asking him for weeks if he would come with me to this. He's never met my co-workers, and I've been there for a year and a half now. I really wanted him to come. He kept saying, "We'll see," and "I really don't want to go."
"I know," I'd say, "But just this once?"
"We'll see," he'd say.
The night before the party, I asked him to commit. I got upset. I said, "I hate going to these things alone," which is partially true. It's also not: I don't super mind.
We fought. He said, "I've told you all along I don't want to go!"
"Yes, but you also said, 'we'll see'!" I said.
And back and forth like that for a while.
Anyway, long story short, in the end he came with me. But I had had it in my head that we would have this wonderful, date-night-like, sparkly, glamorous evening, where I would look fabulous and we would be in our best couple-shape: cozy, intimate, witty, in love.
And, I had decided to try and do this vintage style with my hair. But my hair wouldn't take the curl, and I'm only very new to using a curling iron anyway.
That afternoon, when I still wasn't sure Adam was coming (even though he had said he would), and my hair wasn't doing what I had wanted it to, I got frustrated as heck, and went for a long walk in the field and woods near our house. I cried. I texted my friend and ranted to her about why life was so unfair at this particular moment. I took some pictures. I cried a bit more. And I realized, I needed to just go with it. So what if I my hair wasn't pin-up-worthy. So what if Adam was grumpy with me, and me with him.
One of the pretty photos I took while out on my walk.
In the end, it was what it was. Adam was there in protest, but he still got along and made jokes with the people we sat with. I looked perfectly fine, even if I didn't achieve my pin-up hair goals. I said a few awkward things, but let's be honest, I probably would have said them anyway. We ate our stuffed chicken breasts, potatoes with gravy, corn, carrots and turnip, and laughed at other people's jokes, and then we left before the dance started. We went home, got in our PJs, and watched hockey (him) and "Gilmore Girls" (me) on the couch, while our cat snoozed on our legs. And it was good.
Anne Lamott wrote, in "Travelling Mercies," which I am reading these days, in a story where her little boy doesn't get to swim out to see some seals, as he was hoping,
"I was desperate to fix him, fix the situation, make everything happy again, and then I remembered this basic religious principle that God isn't there to take away our suffering or our pain, but to fill it with his or her presence."
And I think that's what devotion is about, and what this weekend taught me about devotion. Devotion to a moment, staying devoted to your situation, even when it's not what you thought it would be. Looking for the presence of God in it, anyway.
There was a layer of snow on the field. This one makes me think of the title, "What Lies Beneath," as in, the bones below the snow.
In this piece from 2012, titled "Devotion, stardust & the rewards of showing up: 3 lessons from 12 years of yoga," Alexandra Franzen says,
"DEVOTION is an action, not an emotion.
Want to know what you’re devoted to? Look at your calendar. Examine how you actually spend your time, on the planet.
If you ‘can’t find the time’ for an hour of yoga, three times a week — or whatever else you say you want to do — that’s fine. Do something else. Check your email. Fly a kite. Learn to crochet. Host a tea party. But don’t kid yourself — it’s tiresome. Be honest about what you’re devoted to."
In this piece from 2013, titled "On Flakiness & devotion," she writes,
"With a modicum of self-inquiry and honesty (“Can I really devote to this? Do I really want this? Can I really afford this?”) we can avoid 99.9% of eventual flakedom.
The next three times I want to flake out … I won’t. (...) Because devotion is wildly sexy."
There I am, in the middle of that photo! Can you see me? I'm seated at an upright bench, in the middle of the gym, in what used to be, for me, the scariest part of the gym, the part in front of the mirrors where all the Serious Weightlifters work out.
And now I lift weights alongside them, and watch my form in the mirror, and I'm actually watching my form and going "damn girl!" instead of feeling super self-conscious about my body and wishing parts of it were smaller.
Part of that is that certain parts have gotten smaller. But part of it is also that now I'm proud of the strength I've built up.
This past year, since June, I've devoted myself to learning to lift weights. (You can read the whole story in this post from last month, about why I started, how I've done it, and how it makes me feel.)
This last month, I've been devoting time to eating better, too... eating as fuel for my lifts. I'll post about that sometime this month, as it deserves its own post.
Does devotion look like a mustard jar? Or a sandwich, at 6:30 am?
Or a bagel with cream cheese?
I think it does. Every morning, I wake up when Adam does at 6:30, and he goes and gets ready in the bathroom. I go out to the kitchen and pour him a cup of coffee. Then I make his breakfast. He comes out of the bathroom and sits down, and eats breakfast, while I make his lunch.
I've been doing this for nearly four years.
I wonder to myself, if and when we have children, will this change? I imagine it will. But for now, it is our daily routine. It is an example of devotion. It is simple, and real, and wholly love.
The idea to do something for December, here on my blog, came to me last month sometime. I don't remember exactly when. I just felt the need to go inward a bit for December, felt the need to do something daily, something devoted.
Then I got a newsletter from the lovely Mara Glatzel, and at the bottom, she talked about a virtual retreat she was holding in December called "Glitter and Devotion." And it was just like, yeah. That's what I need. (So I signed up.)
And the word "Devotion" wouldn't leave me, ever since.
So, I googled it. A "daily devotional" is a publication that provides a specific spiritual reading for each calendar day - which is something I didn't know. Most other links having to do with "daily devotional" are Christian in nature. I am not Christian. I am, however, somewhat spiritual.
So, what the hell. "Devotion" it is! I'm calling it December Devotion. A bit of writing, or art, or something, each day of the month of December, with something to do with devotion.
I want to think about... what we devote ourselves to. What grows, as a result. Why we devote ourselves to things -- what passion, what love?
I also like the idea of daily readings, and may perhaps dip into books in my own personal library for bits of random wisdom here and there.
We shall see! Check back in tomorrow.
xo, Leah
Around this time last year, I went for a routine check-up with my family doctor. She put the blood pressure cuff around my arm and took my blood pressure as usual. She looked a bit worried at the reading, and took it again.
Again, it was high.
She suggested I get a blood pressure cuff of my own, and track my blood pressure. So, I did, for a month, and it was high the whole time. I went back to see her. We looked at all the factors and prescribed some changes: eat less salt, take a sodium pill, and try to lose weight.
I wouldn't call myself heavy, necessarily, but definitely I'm a curvy gal. I'm 5'8" and at the time I weighed 205 lbs, and wore anywhere from a size 15 to a size 18, depending on the store and brand of clothing. I've always been fairly comfortable in my own skin, though, and believe in body-positivity and in all different shapes being beautiful. "Losing weight" had always been one of those "maybe someday, wouldn't that be nice" things, kind of like "going to Hawaii" or "having a $4000 buffer in the bank". Not necessary to daily life, but a someday-sort-of goal that I wasn't really doing anything about.
Anyway, there I was, with high blood pressure, at 30 years of age. Not cool. I already did yoga regularly, and walked on my lunch break sometimes, but there wasn't really much else I was doing to try to lose weight. After several months of this, and no weight loss, I felt frustrated. I thought about it, and realized that I was having such great success with having a business coach, why not seek help with weight loss?
So I asked the guy at the counter of Downtown Nutrition if he knew of any personal trainers. He in fact did, and he wrote a name of a gal down on a piece of receipt paper. I remember thinking, as I picked up the paper and folded it and put it in my pocket, "This piece of paper is going to change my life."
I messaged the gal. Her name was Stephanie and she lived near me. We agreed to meet at the Tim Hortons by the mall here in North Sydney, to talk about options. We had a great chat, and agreed on so many things: that weight isn't necessarily the important thing, but fitness is; that food is to fuel the body; and that getting outside to work out is fun.
The next time we met it was at the local gym, Platinum Fitness. I signed up to see her twice a week. We measured around my waist, my hips, my bust, one of my thighs and one of my arms. (I'd share these numbers with you but they got lost.) She said most guys measure their necks too, but we would skip that. "For guys it's important, for some reason," she said.
We began each workout with a ten minute warm up, just walking on a treadmill. Then we walked over to the area with all the machines, the racks of weights, and the big muscle-y dudes. It's the area of a gym that scares off most people, and for good reason: it's scary to go to a place you don't know, where there are people who know what they're doing, and in clothes tight enough to show off all your fat rolls, no less!
But with Stephanie there with me, I felt confident, at least enough to give it a try.
And that's all it took: trying. Twice a week. Each week. Following her instructions, and trying out these new movements. Lifting the weights. Being pleasantly surprised by what my body could do!
At the end of each workouts, we'd do some H.I.I.T., or High Intensity Interval Training. It sounds super bad-ass, but it really just means doing cardio in intervals: one minute on medium, one minute on high, on minute on medium, and so on, to get the heart-rate up.
So that was in June, that I started working with Stephanie. By August, when Adam and I went to Chicago (and I took a three week break from working out), Stephanie had moved gyms, to Ascendo Fitness in Sydney. Even though it's in a different town, it's right on my drive home from work, so I happily switched gyms with her. (She's super rad!)
By September, my measurements were: Bust, 43", Waist, 39", Hips, 46", Thigh, 27.5", and arm 13.3" My weight, funnily enough, stayed exactly the same, at 205.
By October, I was ready to work out on my own. (Plus, I'm actually trying to save some money, for that other goal of having a buffer in the bank, haha.) Steph set me up with a program to follow, and suggested I go three times a week: twice for lifting, and once a week for just cardio, 30 minutes of "playing with my heart rate." I'd lost three inches, 1 at the hips, 1 at the thighs and 1 at the arm.
By November, I'd lost another 4.5 inches. (At waist, hips, thigh and arm.) My weight, on the other hand, went up: I currently weigh 217 lbs. But I honestly don't even care, and in some ways am proud: it's muscle I'm building! And it's obviously just a number, as I'm the trimmest and strongest I've ever felt.
Alexandra Franzen has said that everyone has different ways to be motivated, when it comes to fitness, so you need to find your thing and why you like it, in order to keep doing it. I think that's certainly true! And, I have found my "thing". I love the feeling of being powerful, of being strong, of being able to lift those badass big manly weights. I love the clank when I rack the deadlift bar and it falls back into place. I love the feeling of pressing through my heels and feeling my legs engage when I squat in the squat rack. I even love my cardio sessions: I put my music on in my earbuds and I kind of go into another place, almost like meditation, swing-walking on the elliptical, feeling the sheen of sweat come out on my skin.
And, I find that my mood and my creativity is increased as a result. Here it is, November, the time of year when I normally find my mood dropping, and I feel pretty damn good.
My blood pressure? Well, that's dropping too. I'll know more next year about the long-term effects of my working out, but for now it's looking pretty good.
So that's my fitness story, at least the story of the past year! Maybe some other time I will write about how I felt about fitness as a teen (and how I would do anything to avoid participating in Gym class), or about my love for yoga, for hiking and for swimming.
In the meantime, I'd love to hear about your fitness story, and how fitness contributes to your mental wellbeing and creative work, too. Leave a comment below! I'd love to hear from you.