Every journey starts – not with a first step – but with a decision to take that trip. Sometimes, the decision is easy and made in a snap. Sometimes, it takes weeks or months of planning. And then there are the times when we know it’s a great decision, but we can’t bring ourselves to get started.
For me, losing weight falls into the latter category.
I’d piled it on over a few years, and while I was increasingly uncomfortable, I’d only made a few haphazard attempts to shed it again. Only to discover the yo-yo effect many people know painfully well. At that point, I stopped, determined not to fall into that trap.
But what other option is there?
I found it while decluttering.
I’ve been journalling or writing diaries for large parts of my life. While I was decluttering my office, I went through my stack of journals and noticed that I tend to write them most when I’m in a reasonably positive frame of mind. When life really gets rocky and I’m struggling, I tend to hide out writing fantasy fiction and sci-fi rather than my journals. And looking at the entries made me realise why.
With my number one strength being context, I always look to the past to work out what’s happening in the presence. That means re-hashing old trauma over and over, analysing it from every angle, trying to find my way through and out.
But, of course, that’s not how trauma works.
All it did was make me disconnect emotionally and make me deal with the trauma on a purely intellectual level – which didn’t help me process anything. On top of that, rehashing old trauma would pitch me right back into the mire I’d just climbed out of. So it’s no wonder that I move away from journalling when I’m struggling.
I could trace that habit of climbing out of the pit, trying to work out how to leave it behind, and pitching myself right back into it to my school days. And standing between half-packed boxes, I suddenly realised there was no reason to keep doing something that wasn’t helping me. Neither was there a reason to hang on to all the iterations of things that had gone wrong. So I grabbed up all the journals and diaries and tossed them into the bin. And then I packed my boxes with things I wanted to take with me: unfinished stories, notebooks filled with ideas and plot bunnies, and photo albums of the good times.
I felt unbelievably lighter once the bin men had been and there was no chance for me to retrieve my diaries. As if I’d finally cut the cord to a weight I’d been dragging around with me for decades.
And with that new perspective, I noticed something else: a raft of thoughts that started “once we’re in Northumberland I’m going to-“
But why wait?
Even if our move goes quickly – which, given the current economic turmoil initiated across the Atlantic isn’t very likely – we won’t move before the summer. And between now and the summer, I can shed a great deal of weight. I can extend my walking range, and even finish a book!
There really is no reason to wait to do any of that until we’re settled in Northumberland. Because doesn’t it make much more sense to ditch all things I don’t like about myself and my life before the move, rather than drag them with me into our new adventure and start work on discarding them there?
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