Intermission

So so much to talk about today as I feel like my mind is so full with thoughts, energy and ideas. It’s not a bad thing at all! First of all, with very little ado, I began a plant-based diet on Monday. I am eating eggs this week, which I believe is the only non-plant thing I consciously put in my diet. The goal is to get off dairy and animal fats which some say are a catalyst to inflammation in the body, which wreaks havoc on many of our body’s systems. Whether or not you believe it, I wanted to try it to see if I can feel better. I have discovered this: When I change my way of eating with the end goal of looking better/ self-esteem boost, I fail every single time and I am hyper-focused on what I can’t have and then it becomes a battle in my head about how much I really care about how I look/ how much importance I want to give to the external. Now that my goal is to see if I feel better physically ( and maybe wishful thinking but I’d love to get rid of this sun allergy) I am not struggling at all. I am getting to eat things I haven’t allowed myself to eat in a long time because I was always concerned with how many carbs they had. Potatoes, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, all the fruit I could care to eat… For dinner last night I had a taco stuffed tomato complete with vegan chicken substitute, nutritional yeast instead of cheese (OMG it tastes so cheesy I want to eat it out of the container and it’s good for you) and vegan sour cream. It was so good that I’m not even ashamed to say I licked my plate clean after. I was worried that I would be feeling hungry all the time but I really am not even thinking about food that often at all. Now I know there will be challenges, especially when we go out to eat on the weekends, but I will learn to get through those times. I will likely opt for fish if available or pasta etc. This is not an all-or-nothing for me, I’m not doing it on principle but to see if it improves my health. There will be times when I eat things that won’t be a part of my regular menu. I absolutely love pepperoni pizza and we order that a couple times a month. It will be interesting to see how that makes my body feel after not eating dairy for a bit. I suspect my body has been so used to feeling one way that it doesn’t recognize what’s not right. It may be coincidence or maybe because I am tending to my spiritual needs more these days, but I feel like I have more energy, more spark! That is very welcome! Today I am thinking deeper about all the stuff that’s dividing us : politics, masks, conspiracy theories; the way we disagree with people and the way everyone wants to let everyone else know how they feel about these things. I have had customers at my work unload their opinions on me about politics and masks and it’s like the brow is furled and they are shouting about their opinion and whether or not I agree with their stance the fact that they are trying to shove it down my throat without knowing me or where I stand makes me irritated beyond belief. I work in a medical clinic so it’s really inappropriate in the first place, but just to do that to a stranger…what have we become? And it’s just as bad if not worse online with all the ridiculous memes. It affects me, and then the fact that it affects me affects me. This morning I envisioned the last lady who did this to me at work. She was upset that her husband’s glasses were taking longer to come in than she wanted and she unloaded every issue she’s ever had on me over the phone and I was already at a bad place that day and I told her that she needs to stop shouting at me because she asked a question and I couldn’t even respond because she was shouting at me. She apologized, saying she woke up in a really bad mood and wanted someone to yell at. Lucky me. It turns out her husband’s glasses were being delivered that day and when she came in to pick them up, instead of apologizing for her behavior she got on a political rant complete with her armchair diagnosis of the mental health condition of the candidates involved. She was very tight and closed off and if the visual of what was happening inside was imaginable, I think it would look like a black ball of cancer encompassing her heart. I do not engage in conversation or dispute about politics at work, it’s not professional. I simply told her that it makes no sense to get all caught up in the drama of all this because in 4 more years we will feel this way about someone else and it always keeps changing. She kept ranting, unable to let it go. I guess she did wake up in a bad mood. I was happy when she left that I wasn’t going to be her scapegoat at least for the rest of that day. It made me realize that when I allowed her energy to affect mine, I was myself a disservice. I kept my cool outwardly but it bothered me so much that I ended up complaining about to my husband and my coworker and it really was me spitting out that black goop from my own self that I agreed to take on from her. So in a way, I was passing that negativity onto others instead of stopping it. So my thought this morning was that I have a choice not to allow other people’s negative energy into me. I can find a place to be OK with someone telling me their opinion and observe it without having an emotional reaction to it. It will take training myself but I can do it. The more I do that, the less complaining I will do and the more peace I will have internally. This idea ties in nicely to the video I watched in the Chasing the Present summit interviews this morning, video 3. I will talk about this in my next post so this blog doesn’t get too long.