Making Concessions To Avoid The Excuses: A Healthy Jaded Update

When I started working out in the spring I had the ideal conditions in which to do so. I could go to an early morning class and be back in time to see my girls off and then get ready for work knowing my workout for the day was done! The summer proved to be even more accommodating, especially with Mari here to keep me on track food-wise. It's been a very productive six months for Healthy Jaded.

Now I've hit some snags that threaten to undo everything I've worked for so far:

1- N goes to a school that's rather far away (for a pedestrian) and in the opposite direction of my job and Ks school, and she has to be there by 7:30am if she wants breakfast or 8am to not be considered late.

2- K got a crazy 1-9 schedule this year (Tech alums will recall that schedule being the longest and most undesirable school day known to teens everywhere) and cannot afford to screw up; this year counts heavily for college admissions.

3- The sun is not up until almost 7am (as opposed to this summer when it was shining by 5:30am), which means in order to work out at the times I have been, I need to travel to these gyms in pitch-black Brooklyn. With a rapist loose in Park Slope. Ummmm...

4- I need to meditate for 20 minutes every morning upon waking.

5- I need to write my morning pages everyday upon waking, too.

Add all this to the fact that N is being sloppy with her school work so far this year (to the point that her dad and I have a meeting with the vice principal on Thursday), meaning I have to supervise Homework Time like a warden, and what you've got is a definite recipe for falling off the wagon and succumbing to the stress by eating my weight in potato chips and Reese's Pieces.

So far in September my fitness priorities have been put on the back burner. It felt as if everything came at me all at once and I've been running on empty without a set plan. It came to a head after getting yet ANOTHER notification that N hadn't done her homework. Shit needed to change (or I was going to snap and kill that little heffa).

I decided that, as unpleasant as it is, I will have to do most of my exercising after work while N begins her homework at the library. I am not willing to give up my meditation practice nor quit my morning pages before I even begin; these are essential to my peace of mind, health and happiness. I also have to put my entire laid back, hippie family on a strict schedule- getting up at 5am, going to bed at 10pm, cooking meals on Sunday for the entire week- until a better solution comes along.

It's important to me to stay on this healthy path I began in April, but it's equally important that my children do well in school and get to live some sort of happy life (all work and no play turns people into republicans). If these changes mean the fun times have to be scheduled down to the minute from Monday through Friday and I run my home like a military school, then so be it. If it means I'm stuck with most of the chores while the girls focus on school work, well, that's just my burden to deal with. I know that a little inconvenience now will yield us some awesome benefits later.

And who knows- in the spring, everything might prove easier to bear.

*smooches...hoping these five months fly by*
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the good news is I can capitalize off this forced discipline by finishing a writing project or two and reading all the books I've had on my coffee table all summer!