Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More

Not sure why but something about this song speaks to my heart and how it has been feeling lately. Feels sort of nostalgic and hopeful all at the same time.

Joshua Radin-Brand new day

The job search is crawling along slowly with a few leads here and there. My weight flip flops with my appetite. But despite the lack of perfection in my current situation, I feel an overwhelming sense of hope. I think things were once at there worse but every day since then I have been getting better. I know I have a lot of work ahead of me, when it comes to my weight and my career but I am so committed to myself now that it fills me with HOPE!
This song is by one of my favourites Joshua Radin and it totally reflects my hopeful mood.

In need of distractions...

Okay, so staying active is not the problem contributing to my ongoing weight problems. I have grown love going to the gym.
The problem that I can't seem to conquer, is my obsession with food. I had gotten really good at ignoring it before I went traveling and even then I was good in California and when I had the munchies in Amsterdam but ever since I let my guard down to really enjoy the food in Italy I never really went back to ignoring food. I am obsessed with food again. It is where I go to when I am frustrated, bored, lonely, and even to celebrate.
I want food not to matter anymore. I want it to be something fuels me and then I am on my way not spending my days craving all the flavours I am missing. I need to be stronger.... I need strength... or a distraction.
That's the problem on top of the problem. While I am job searching I have way too much access to food. I try to escape to the gym but you can only hide there for a couple hours at a time. I think now that it is not so bloody cold out there, I should go explore this city a little bit. I know I am rather committed to getting the H E double hockey sticks out of this place but it still has some charms about it I do enjoy. I need the fresh air and a friggin' food distraction!

Operation: Suck Less, More - Project: Save the bedroom, save my sanity.

Operation: Suck Less, More

Okay, so I am letting the old bad habit of procrastination ruin the progress of Andrea 2.0. Don't get me wrong I am looking for jobs every day and I have applied for a few but the job market isn't that hot right now. The thing is I really should be doing something productive with this time I have and the truth is besides going to the gym every day, I am doing very little to accomplishing my goals.

Actually that is not entirely true. I made a friend! It is funny how you can go through high school and not know there is an awesome person you totally should have been friends with. Thank sweet Jesus for Facebook! Many of my high school acquaintances have been really supportive of this process of mine and so I decided to get together with a Facebook friend who happens to be an old high school classmate. And it was great and not as awkward as I thought it would be. I was nervous and of course thought of canceling but I am glad I didn't. I had a great time! And after making new friends on the tour, visiting with old college friends over the holidays, being surrounded by amazing family all over the globe, and now making a new friend, I really feel like humanity is luring me back into its good graces.

So now that I am slowly but surely fixing my social life, I think it is time to hunker down with the rest of the details. So ladies and gents welcome to --> Operation: Suck Less, More. My creative (or dorky) way of kicking my lame ass life into shape.

Tomorrow - Organization.

Stay Tuned for more info... you know, if you want...

TV Nerd Alert - How I Met Your Mother Casting Barney's Daddy!

I just read the other day, via my favourite new website www.TVLine.com , that John Lithgow will be playing the part of Barney's thus far unknown father.

Barney has spent most of his life believing that Bob Barker was his father. This season they brought back Barney's Daddy Issues when his half brother, James, found his biological father. This lead to a hilarious episode, where a delusional Barney convinced himself that his brother's African American father was also his Dad.

I have been a pretty major How I Met Your Mother fan for a couple of years now. It is like my new Friends. Personally, I would have liked to torture poor Barney with the whole Who's Your Daddy storyline a little more. I have two reasons for this, the first being the obvious reason that we get to see the vulnerable yet comedic acting of the talented Neil Patrick Harris (someone hand this man his friggin' Emmy already). The second reason being, that it is nice to see a chink in the lady-killer armour of Barney Stinson.

Alas, this is a storyline that the brilliant Carter Bays and his team of writers want progress with and they have now cast the awkwardly funny and sometimes spooky John Lithgow. I am not sure how I feel about this casting as a fan. I have always thought it would be funny if someone ultra-suave and much like Barney would show up, portrayed by someone like Pierce Brosnan. Another, ironic yet funny casting decision might have been Alan Thicke. The revelation of his Canadian heritage would create many hilarious storylines involving, his much mocked Canadian friend and ex, Robin. I am thinking ex-girlfriend hooking up with Barney's newly found Canadian Daddy would be SO funny.

So, Lithgow would not be my choice but he is a skilled comedic actor and I am sure the brilliant Carter Bays will make it interesting.

Fat Girl Ramblings...

You know what is weird about dieting? You are supposed to think about what you eat which means you are thinking about food (at least I am) a lot more than I did before. I am always planning head and trying to think about creative ways to be healthy. Another strange problem is occurring during my unemployment... while my lack of schedule is great for the time I can spend at the gym, it also creates a lot of down time and old Andrea habits linger at moments and in down times I tend to turn to food. Not to mention not having somewhere to be everyday messes up your eating schedule!
The world is so strange. Why is that food tastes so darn good but it is so bad for you and yet the gym feels like it slowly killing you at times but it is making you healthier? I wish I knew how to be skinny and I could you know just wake up in the morning and be like a normal person. Not normal in a blah boring way, just in shape. It would be nice to be average in size but never in personality.
Although, I think sometimes I hide behind my personality. I have made the lamest excuses for not attempting to lose weight. "If someone can't love me for who I am and not what I look like than I don't want to be with them." "It what inside that matters." And sure personality is the most important indicator of one's character but so is how one takes care of themselves. And the truth is I have spent 28 years of doing a really shitty job of maintenance on this body.
Just how I realized my happiness and my future lie in my hands, I also realize those hands carry my health too. I have to stop letting fear and procrastination slow me and down and far too often stop me in my tracks.
I really want to be healthy, average sized but not in personality. I hope I can get there. I pray that I get there.
There is that lovely quote said by whom, I am not sure but it says, "It is never too late to start becoming who you were meant to be." I hope that is true.

Dear Diary,

I know many of you who read this blog notice that I am somewhat a terrible writer when it comes to like actual proper grammar; spelling and I usually miss more than one word in an entry. But when I write it comes straight from my heart and the core of who I am.

I got my first journal when I was 11 years old and I was learning about poetry at that time. And that pink journal with a ballet slipper and a lock on it was magic to me and filled with all my lame 11 year old girl poetry and details on my crush of the moment. Then, one day my little brother wanted to know what the big deal was and stole the journal, broke the lock and showed my parents. Looking back nothing in there was terribly personal but I felt violated. So, I ripped up all the pages and later re-wrote one of my old poems on one of the pages left.

I didn't pick up another diary until I was 13 and I found "my world" was ending and I was leaving all my friends and family in Winnipeg and moving to Calgary. That was a really hard time for me and every time I talked to someone I felt like no one heard me and it was frustrating. So I took to writing it all down; every feeling, every want, every goal, and every single bitch, moan and whine. I must say, compared to the mostly happy childhood in Winnipeg, my angst thing really started in Calgary. So, by the time I moved out of my parent's house in 2006 I had written in 51 journals.

Writing things like this blog and very much so in my journals, is home to me. I feel I can more easily communicate who I am when I put pen to paper or fingers to keys. I find it extremely hard to verbalize how I feel to anyone who can listen but I can write a passionate yet insane note or email to all my crushes of the moment. Poor guys.

I used to be incredibly personal about what I wrote in my journal. So, writing this blog is sort of scary but the reason I do it is because I am tired of being alone locked away in pages and words. I want someone to know every insane thing about me and want to be in my life. Because I am tired of being just a shoulder to cry on or some stupid girl who latches on to your every word just to keep you around. I am tired of hiding who I am because I am afraid it will run people of. It turns out the people who run of, aren't really worth that much anyways.

I am taking a leap of faith with myself when it comes to going after two really big and important goals; losing weight and somehow becoming a television writer. But sharing the journey with whomever happens to read this blog is taking a leap of faith with humanity and that seems so much scary than taking a leap of faith with myself.

I feel like this is the part where I should say, "Hello World This Is Andrea!” And so, I did.

Love? and Good news!

I am not sure if happened under the bridges in Venice or at the Eiffel Tower but in Europe I fell in love with idea of falling in love again.

The problem is, I sort of hate who I am when I fall in love with someone and that person well no one ever falls in love with her. Losing all this weight and getting Toronto seem so much more feasible to me than having someone fall in love with me. So, all day every day I try so hard to just focus on the goals I think are somewhat attainable to me. But at night alone in my bed it is hard not to want someone to hold me. Ugh.

If the universe somehow miraculously sent me someone to love right now, I am so afraid I will be the old blind lunatic I always turn into when the "crush" of the moments ruled my world. The old Andrea would fall in love with her closest guy friend, put them up on this ridiculous, undeserving pedstal and give up who she was to be something she thought they wanted and it always ended badly.

On a day to day basis that person is so far from who I really am. On a day to day basis I feel like that person could actually be loved, not the crazy lunatic of the past, that bitch needs to be locked up!

I feel like for the first time in a long time I am open to the idea of love. I am open to the idea of someone loving me for me. I do want to be in love but I want be smarter with my heart in the future too. And the next time I fall it would be nice to have someone holding my hand and falling with me. Whether it happens or not, who knows?

I do know I am not going to sit around and wait for it because I have got work to do! Toronto and a sexy and healthy Andrea 2.0 await.

Good news on the working out front. My unemployment payments were bumped up so I can afford to go back to the gym. I am so excited to really give it a trillion percent until I find a job and then it will have to be lowered to just a million percent effort to lose this weight! I am feeling good! I am feeling hopeful about EVERYTHING! 2011 is going to be awesome... I can feel it!

Ain't nothing gonna break my stride

Today I went to the gym after a long hiatus. Unfortunately, besides half an hour of cardio, I went there to see if I could suspend my membership a month or two until I got employment figured out. Turns out the only thing I could do was cancel it and then when I rejoin I have spend the initial $75 fee again. I was sort bummed because I only have two guest passes left and I was sort of on a roll with the gym before I left. And now I am not sure when I’ll be able to afford to back.

Since, I have been back from Europe I have found myself falling into old patterns when it comes to eating, not exercising and being negative. I have been feeling that angst that has been following me since my teens that I thought I was starting to get over.

I was beginning to believe I could be this successful, healthy woman who I was thought I could never be before. When I chose to lose weight in July, for the first time EVER for some reason it didn't seem impossible to be that person I thought it was too late to be. But since I have been back home and realizing how much I have to do to get there, it is bring some of that old hopeless and helplessness back.

So, I stepped on that elliptical trainer not in the best state of mind today, after taking another blow to my efforts towards to a new me. And I began to just move and sweat and cheer myself on. And I even managed to talk myself out of giving up on me and letting old habits drag me back to settling for being fat and goalless. Running on that elliptical trainer made me feel like I had some kind of power in where I was going in my life and who I am becoming.

So as I gasped for breath, listening to the theme song of my new life "Dog Days Are Over", I made a short term plan for my weight loss and cheered myself not to give up on myself when it comes to The Plan.

My financial ruin started about ten years ago, when in another attempt to lose weight I put a rather cheap (yet expensive for me) elliptical trainer onto my brand new shiny credit card. Well because it wobbled a little, once again I gave up on thinking I could ever lose my weight. It has been sitting in the garage for about 9 years now. I am not even sure if that thing works but finding a way to make it work and be able to lose weight while spending time with my lover TV, would mean that I have kind of, sort of redeemed myself... if that makes any sense to you?

Anyways, the point of this whole bloody post is that inspiration I have been looking for the last couple of weeks found me on that sweaty elliptical trainer. In the midst of all the worry over money and employment, I forgot to just keep moving. And if I do, I will get a job, I will save money and get back to the gym and eventually Toronto and I will lose this weight!

Please cross your fingers and toes for me that rusty elliptical trainer in the garage works after all this time. But if it doesn't ... I am not giving up, I will look up exercise videos on YouTube, I will run up and down the stairs, or hell I might even start running on the damn snow and ice out there (seriously last resort). I am not; I will NOT... give up this time. Screw off angst, I have got to keep on moving!