It’s been a pretty productive few weeks. I know I keep saying I’m going to get my shit together and write daily or at least every other day. I swear I’m not just flat out lying. I’m actually working on the character flaw I have that is full of good intentions and lacks follow through. I know that person exists in me and I am working hard one step at a time to get her on a level playing field where every good intention is followed through with.
For now, the follow through I have been focused on is with my health- physical, mental, and internal.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been doing a gut reboot. If you don’t know about gut health yet, allow me to introduce you to the basics. Your gut, also known as your second brain, is full of all kinds of bacteria good and bad. When the good bacteria is thriving so can you. Your skin can become radiant and healthy. Your mood can be balanced. Your sleep can be restful. Your stress level can go down. You can be in complete symbiosis. When the bad bacteria are in charge you can experience mood swings, breakouts, bloating, gas, restlessness, inflammation, a feeling of never feeling good.
I’ve been working on the food I allow into my body for a while now and while I haven’t always been completely successful at it, I thought I was doing a good job, until now. Now, I realize that while the small steps did help in some way, the two big steps that I needed to take were actually the ones that would ultimately end up making the biggest difference in my life.
It’s been 4 weeks since I quit eating processed sugars and dairy. There are other things I’ve removed from my plate the last few weeks, but those two groups are the ones that I believe have made all the difference. Was it easy? Nope. But you know what? It’s getting easier. I’ve been able to focus more. I’ve been more in tune with my body. And I’ve lost 10 lbs and 10 inches. So I’m pleased so far. The “official” measurements will happen on Sunday. If you don’t already follow me on Instagram and you are curious to see the results (just in case I’m still slacking over here) you can follow me at @rouletteweekend. I share all kinds of stuff over there in way smaller bites than you get here.
So, since I’ve been focused on that, I know I’ve been slacking on writing here. But I haven’t been slacking altogether. I’ve done a little bit of writing on a new book that I’m working on. I haven’t quite ironed out the details, but as soon as I do, I will share. I am releasing a book of poetry that has been sitting on hold since February 2020. It’s a very personal piece of work for me. It brings lots of emotions that are way in my past back to the present, but I think it could be important for someone else to know that there are other women in the world repeating stupid mistakes until they can’t do it any longer.
I have the cover, the edit has been done, and I’ve gone to a studio to record the poems. I just need to hire someone to do the edits and get it audible ready and then I’ll have some sort of virtual release party or something.
But with every up, there is inevitably a down side. The same week that I was focusing on creating this book of poems and getting them recorded, someone managed to get their hands on my bank debit card and spend $600 ish. Fortunately, my bank was on top of it and sent me a message as soon as they realized something fishy was going on. I was able to get a stop put on my card and I’m still waiting for the stolen money to make its way back into my account.
Here’s two things I’ve learned in my life, sometimes when things go wrong, you have to change the way you look at them. For me, yes it sucked that someone got a hold of my account and stole my money. The upside, I actually had money in there for them to steal and waiting for it to be put back has not put me in a financial bind with any other bills. I think when you come from a place of “why does bad stuff always happen to me?” It just breeds more bad stuff to happen.
When I was younger, it was like when one bad thing would happen, it would be followed by 12 more. A baker’s dozen of shit donuts, if you will. And then one day, I remember it like it was yesterday, I had just turned 26 years old. I had just had a baby, my third child. I don’t think he was even a month old. I wasn’t working yet. His father was not around. He barely made it to the delivery and hadn’t been back to see us since the day our son was born and he had only come to the delivery because I told him that if he didn’t show up there, the baby would have my last name. So he showed up to name our son. I had no income besides the government food program I was enrolled in and the WIC program. I woke up one morning and the electric was off. I still had gas on the stove, but no lights, no heat, no hot water. All I could do was cry and pity myself. “Why does this always happen to me?” And when I say I cried, I was sobbing, like on my knees, “why God why” sobbing. I had to heat up water on the stove to pour into the bathtub to give my kids a bath that day. I left the oven on and opened the door to heat our shitty little apartment. After I got the kids to bed that night, this thought hit me out of nowhere.
Nobody was coming to save me. There wasn’t going to be some Knight in shining armor. There wasn’t going to be some Richard Gere millionaire from Pretty Woman. The movies were a lie and it was up to me. The kids didn’t ask to be brought into the world. The shitty choices in men that I had made led to that exact moment in my life and I had to decide whether I was going to continue to follow in the steps that I had learned growing up and teach that to my children or if I was going to change the story.
I decided my story would be different.
RouletteWeekend 