Total Fatty

I started writing this post three weeks ago. Here’s where I started:

“I am home in Seattle for a brief spell for Thanksgiving and an extra week before heading back to SF/Oakland for more year-end work madness. Then in another two weeks I’ll come back to Seattle for a little time off and Christmas.

Holy shit. I feel overwhelmed. And I don’t even have kids or travel to worry about.

I have 100 holiday cards to write and mail out. I have an un-touched gift-getting to-do list. You know, the regular stuff.

Most of all, I can see 2017’s garage door slowly closing, and I haven’t really sorted out what I want to do, and who I want to be in 2018.

In years past I’ve had a standing list: lose weight, quit smoking, control my drinking, make more money, sing more in my daily life.

I just Can’t. Write. The. Same. List. Again.”

Re-reading this, I feel physically dragged down by my own blah-ness. Who was that girl whining about having 100 holiday cards to write? Poor Fatty has too many fwends… wah wah.

I know her. I was her about three days ago. The holiday cards are out, but I was just all kinds of anxiety-riddled about work, and feeling just off my game. Some old insecurities surfaced in weird ways and at weird times.

And now I am on a short vacation from Dec 20th-26th, lounging in a beautiful house on the Oregon coast with my husband, and I’ve had some time to mull, meditate and sleep on my revolving door of resolutions pattern, and even a little about my life.

I think I’ve hit a wall in my whole quitting drinking, smoking and dieting schtick. It doesn’t feel like an accomplishment much anymore. It feels like normal life.

When I face ‘normal life’ head on, it feels wrong. My day job (you’re not a professional blogger Fatty???) is as a travel web site product manager, with a specialization in building custom advertising products. Woot. Sexy. I hate pop-ups too.

But here I am another year gone by, and I am wondering why quitting drinking, self-hatred/dieting, and smoking hasn’t opened up some massive chasm of opportunity in a totally different life direction. Like, why aren’t I totally transformed and now living on a farm on an island with goat-friends making linen muu-muus and sleeping long hours and waking with the sun?

I want the chasm of opportunity to just fucking appear. Now. Please.

I must either be afraid of big change – so afraid that I can’t even visualize anything in particular (ahem, except the aforementioned island farm with goats) – or I’m simply not meant for a wild, artistic, musical, passionate and creative life. I’m meant to build online ad products and dream too hard about a home renovation my husband and I have been considering.

But I feel the absence of art and creativity in my life every single day. I feel like my creative energies are going to all the wrong places: creative counter-points to anything my husband says? Check. Creative ways of convincing engineers that building a new ad product for our web site is a great idea? Check. Spending four hours on vacation sketching home renovation ideas while my husband tries to get me to go for a walk on a gorgeous Oregon beach? Checcckkk.

This year I’m going to try something new. Can’t hurt, right?

I’m going to write a list of how I want to feel in 2018 (channeling Danielle LaPorte), and then I’m going to pick a single word of the year (channeling the Booze Free Brigade on Facebook). And then I’m going to tuck this listmaking, dreaming and visualizing exercise to bed for another year.

Why not join me! I’d love to read your “how you want to feel” and “word of the year” in the comments.

How I want to feel 2018:

• Brave: take some risks, learn new things, make room for new narratives
• Artistic: make art of all kinds, sew muu-muus, take beautiful photos, sing and play guitar.
• Open-minded/hearted: truly open my mind and heart to other points of view, learn, grow, let people in even if they aren’t seemingly “my kind of people.”
• Excited: lose the cynicism. Play. Feel hope. Get let down if needed.
• Sexy: time to get fully back in to my body and feel it. God help us all.
• Peaceful: serenity now! 🙂 Find better ways to manage my anxiety.
• Balanced: document (blog) and acknowledge the ups and downs and treasure the yin/yang of all of this shit. Find ways to bring more fun/art into my life in Oakland, and into my marriage. Less work, more play (even at work).

(Hmmm – brave AND peaceful… universe, you have your hands full here.)

Word of the Year: dream

Love, Fatty