I have not posted a blog in an incredibly long time. There are many reasons why, but the main reason being that when I was honest about the feelings that were destroying my life . . . everyone was either mad at me, or I heard crickets. My takeaway from that was that no one wants to hear the bad, everyone only wants sunshine and rainbows and inspiration. Even worse, when you pour your heart out about things that are killing you on the inside and have built an indestructible wall between you and the motivation to return to full health, that’s when you discover that most of the people in your life cannot handle the ugly side of life. They go silent. But I know better, those people usually disappear because you have brought up something that hits a little too close to home…and helping you deal with the hurt means they have to face their own.

Well, enough of that . . . here’s what happened in the last year.

My husband’s Grandma Beverly died. My husband’s Uncle Gary died. My Aunt Geri died. My Great Uncle Joe died. My Grandma Freda died. My oldest child left for college. COVID-19 happened. My hamster Minnie died. I officially am able to switch my daycare over to a performing arts style of preschool setting (there’s a good thing!). I binged Tiger King. I started learning the ukulele. I watched the BLM demonstrations all over the country, including right here in my own town. I still hate Donald Trump. And I gained 10 pounds during all this crap — on top of never loosing any more weight since I last blogged.

2020 can go F@$% itself.

This last year, I also began playing horn again with an orchestra back at my college alma mater . . . I really felt like bits and pieces of me were starting return after years and years of not feeling like myself. But then that was all shut down very quickly, I only had the opportunity to play one concert and then it was gone. I tried to keep up my chops during the time we were on the stay-at-home order here in Kansas, but the demands of running a daycare during a global pandemic took over everything and had my mental health hanging by a thread.

I’m not going to dive to deep into any diet plans or weight loss goals in this post, instead I want to pose this one generalized question: when you a repeatedly blocked at every angle on goals and dreams you try to pursue, when do you reach a point where your thinking switches from “I’m just being tested to see if I’m willing to overcome every challenge that gets in my way, proving how much I really want this” to “are these nonstop setbacks all signs that maybe this wasn’t meant to happen for me”? I’m not applying that thought to weight loss, rather just something to think about as I try to find a new normal, a new rhythm, in the crazy state of our current world. Some things just seem like they are never going to happen for me, so do I keep pushing or grieve the loss of that dream and move on?

~~ Amie