And I now remember washing a load of clothes on hot. Oops. Might account for shrinkage and the “AGH! WHAT HAVE I DONE!” panic.

Still, I’ve behaved badly lately, and today was stellar. Under 1,900 calories, three 20-minute exercise bursts, healthy food, all my water. This is good. A start. We like. I shall kick ass and take names. Again. In short order.

Really gotta watch that fucking clothes washer, man. Oh, the DRAMA. $1.75 and a cup of detergent can do a number on ya, baby.

Using cold water for clothes washing doesn’t just fight climate change, it saves your therapy bill.

I’ve been getting increasingly stressed out about several areas of my life, just because it’s coming down to the crunch and probably also because I’m incredibly skilled at making things more difficult than they need to be.

As a result, I’ve had sort of the perfect emotional storm that every recovering fatty wants to avoid. I know, all too well, that I’m an Emotional Eater. I nearly got to 300 pounds because I can be a very emotional girl, apparently.

I lost 70 pounds by proving I could overcome that. And then life just kept on coming and slowly I stopped overcoming and just coping.

But the last thing I needed last weekend was the Dad-has-cancer thing. Then I probably didn’t need to distract myself by being The Ultimate Hostess for a chicken pot pie extravaganza a few days ago. I also didn’t need my guests to be the incredibly awesomely generous people they are, and feed me BadnessThatTastesSuchGoodness. Because god knows I’m far fatter this weekend after everything that’s happened this week.

Now I’m taking stock. I’ve been avoiding my emotions, avoiding writing, avoiding people, avoiding honesty.

Shit happens.

I bounce back better when I bottom out. I’m not sure what it is, maybe the riccochet of shitty from hitting bottom HARD gives me the jump I need to effect effective change in short order. When I’m just gradually sucking, I feel like I have time to sort it out. But when I bottom out with style like I feel I have this week, I take a couple days of really digging deep, then I spring into action.

My problem right now is fairly simple. It’s accountability. I lost 70 pounds by KNOWING that EVERY little thing counts — whether it’s another flight of stairs you chose to climb or another pat of butter you chose to eat.

My body — my gut, my ass, my blood pressure — doesn’t give a shit if I have a good excuse to find solace in a cookie. And find solace, I will. I am an emotional eater. I will always be an emotional eater. Any one who claims they can change that about me is lying. But if I eat that cookie, regardless what my heart or soul feels, my body’s going to own that cookie in all the ways I wish it wouldn’t.

I can justify that cookie six ways to Sunday on a shitty day, but it’s science and my body WILL NOT justify that cookie. That cookie WILL expand my ass. Especially when I have 6 of them.

There are times when I’m strong enough to realize that. But maybe sometimes life feels like such a fight that the little things like, say, an easily attainable cookie, a moment of chocolate happiness in the midst of it all, maybe they really do make the difference between the eternal slog sucking or not.

Maybe? Good luck with that. Cookie’s got nothing on real happiness.

I’ve been weak, in every way. I’ve been emotionally at the point where you really just want Mom to tuck you in and say it’ll be okay in the morning. Of course, Mom’s dead, so good luck with THAT, needy girl.

OH, DON’T WORRY. It’s the emotional equivalent of wanting your blankie and wishing life’s problems could be like they were when you were six and Joanna wouldn’t give you back your Smurf figurine, okay? This “grownup” thing wears thin, I’s still a toughie.

But when the cancer thing was thrown into the mix, then the stress of having to pull off a dinner party on a work night, and THEN I got handed tasty wonderful things, well, yes, it’s the Emotional Eating Perfect Storm.

As a result, I’ve eaten badly. I’ve eaten incredibly badly. Add to that the rather-failed-experiment of getting up at 5 to work at 7, for the last month, and how that’s cut into my ability to write, and my tendency to shirk my exercising of late… and, yeah, I’m not in my happy place tonight.

It’s good though. I’m glad I shook up the mix and honestly tried a different schedule to see if that would help things, but the reality is, no. It didn’t. There’s nothing WRONG with me going into work late if it means I work out and write every morning. I can’t AFFORD a life, so why work earlier so I have one? None of that computes.

Tomorrow, I’ll go back to The Way Things Worked. I’ll be up at 6. I’ll work out. I’ll eat. I’ll write. I’ll work later. All good.

I tried to solve my problems the wrong way a month ago — I shook up the mix so much that it shook me up too. Then life shook me up more. To cope, I ate.

And I’m glad. I’m glad it’s all come apart at the seams. I’m glad I’m paying the price. I’m glad there were consequences for going off the wagon. When there aren’t, I get lax and push boundaries further.

None of this scares me. I’m pissed off at myself and in touch with my insecurities all over again, sure, but I’m also angry because I KNOW I can kick this shit. This is exactly like last Christmas when I blew my success all to hell after the arrival of THE BEST FOOD BASKET EVER. (Hull-less caramel popcorn still makes me titter and moan.)

Then I lost 12 pounds in 3 weeks by channeling that anger.

The hardest part of this will be getting off the drinking. I’ve become an emotional drinker, too, and it daunts me. Too much. Far too much.

For me, though, will power is ultimately a switch that gets flicked on and then is very hard to flip off. And vice versa. But I do flip it.

So where am I tonight? Somewhere between pissed as hell at myself, disappointed that old patterns re-emerge in tough times, and exuberantly excited at the knowledge that I’m about to prove everything I know I can prove to myself.

You know what it is? It’s choosing differently. That’s all. All of this — every bit of what troubles me now — all of it, it’s my choice.

I can choose differently.

And I am.

I know, everyone’s sorry, everyone hopes he’ll pull through. Thank you. Let’s not all say it, though. I’ve been to The Cancer Dance before. It ended badly.* I know there have been advances. I know it’s a different time. I know it’s probably an early diagnosis. But I know cancer.

And I know two more things: I know what I’m made of, and I know it’s out of my hands.

As a result, there’s this remarkable calmness in the face of it right now. Don’t confuse that with me feeling good or being satisfied with this news. Sometimes you need to shut the fuck up about life and fight the fights, but don’t live the fight.

Dunno what else to tell you. Besides thinking on that, Halloween, and a couple other things, the last few days have just evaporated. It will be an interesting week. I’m taking some time on The Dad Front next weekend. Between now and then, I have a lot to take care of.  It’ll be quite the rollercoaster week. Aren’t they all?

*I wrote once that, if I could choose between becoming the woman I am as a result of having lost my mother and keeping my mother dead, or resuming the girl I was at 25 before she died and having her be alive again, I, with great sorrow in my heart, would still choose to be the woman her death made me. Wherever this road leads, I’ll be better for it… because that’s the choice I, or you, can make: take something from every thing that happens to you — whether it stomped your heart on the floor or not.  I almost lost Dad twice in the last three years. He’s a fighter. What else can ya do? We fight.

I know I’m PMSing. I’m getting pissed off at obligations, frustrated at my lack of time, angry at the day ahead of me, and I have nothing I can do to really change or improve any of it, other than the plans on tap.

It’s chemicals, man. I’d apologize, but I don’t want to. I didn’t ask to feel like this. I don’t want to feel like this. I also know it won’t be around long. But it’s around now, and there’s not much I can do to shake that.

For now, my life’s pretty consumed with obligation. I’ve got a lot on tap in the next week, and it’s frustrating, because what I really want to do is just get back into a routine. Any, really. I’m stretched too goddamned thin. Still. I’m tired. It’s been a very, very long time of feeling this way. Normally it doesn’t bother me much, I’m used to it, but come PMS time, I get resentful as fuck. I’d like to live on Easy Street. That’d be a nice change of address, if even for a while.

But today is yet the end of another long week, and my workday hasn’t even begun.

Sometimes my life feels infinite and unchanging. I think it’s called winter.

Tomorrow, I sleep in. Then, I make candy for cool people. Then, I party for Halloween at the most unbelievable location ever. Boy, wait’ll you get a load of me.

Then I take a deep breath, deal with my shit Sunday, and then start yet another incredibly long week. This time, without the stupidity of so many early mornings.

If anything, I’m realizing I won’t write if I’m not at home in the morning. This going-to-work-at-7am-to-free-up-my-nights thing is for the shits. My creative circadian rhythm feels like I threw it in a blender with some speed, caffeine, and a mindfuck, then just hoped for the best. Not so good. Creative on the side of a busy life, now that’s a challenge to maintain over the longterm.

Don’t worry, lowly unpaying blogreaders. I love you. I have not deserted you. I shall remedy this pesky schedule thing. I shall rock the writing soon. We shall be together again.

Meanwhile: BOO! Scared ya, huh? Happy boolicious Halloween.

I’m thinking a lot about blogging today, because I’ve been asked to talk to a couple small groups of keeners tomorrow and talk about why I blog, what my process is. I’ve got some thoughts on that, but, I guess I’m ultimately a little unsure what “blogging” has to do with it.

Me, it’s just writing for an audience I have access to. It’s just writing.

We’re lucky these days. We live in an era where having a thought, having a voice, it means something. The world is literally at our fingers.

A thought doesn’t have to die alone in the dark ever again.

Whatever you can think, you can broadcast. It’s the freedom-fighter’s dream. Rousseau, Hobbes, Rimbaud, and all those shit-disturbing writer-thinkers of ages past, oh, how they would have died to have been here, now, with these vehicles of expression before them.

Naturally, people are harnessing these tools for things contrary to my beliefs and values. But that’s when my voice just needs to ring a little clearer, sound out a little louder.

It’s the World v2.0, people.

But is that why I blog? Take a look at my content. Clearly, no.

Novellist Richard Ford says it best–

“Writing for a living is a privilege, not a god-given right. The opportunities are few, though sought-after by many. There are years of rejection, which serve as a crude winnowing process, after which those left standing are those who simply MUST write.”

Me, I must write.

So much so I never have the time or desire to market myself. I don’t need to be paid for something that’s as profoundly a part of me as the air I breathe. Does this make me some incredible read-worthy author? Fucked if I know. Reading is a matter of tastes.

But.

I know I’m good at it. I know I should market it. I know what makes me original. I know I’m not gonna be original for long. There’s a shelf-life on these things. Never has imitation or plagiarism been so easy or potentially profitable as it is today, after all. Bless you, web 2.0.

Let’s be honest, though. I’m one of those lucky writer types who can write fast, well, and with ease. Is it always good? Fuck no. But it generally isn’t hard. Blogging, for me, isn’t a major time commitment. I never spend much more than 45 minutes all told — writing, editing, re-editing — on my average 1,000-word posts. That’s just me. Some people can balance their chequebook lickety-split and I’m left looking like a fucking moron as I try to figure out the numbers. Again, that’s just me. We are what we are.

So, how I blog, there’s no rocket science there. I’m always the semi-aloof, deep-in-thought person who’s processing the world around me. How I blog, and what I blog about, depends how much time I have when an idea hits me.

Unfortunately, Twitter gets in the way of that now, and much of my quick-and-dirty fun little posts have been turned into soundbites in my tweetstream.

But blogging probably saved my life when I kinda needed some saving.

The winter I started blogging, I nearly died in a scooter accident and was housebound on crutches. The accident was only my fault in that I was probably still buzzed from my night of partying that’d only ended 6 hours or so before. I had a lot on my chest. I filled two notebooks with soul-searching and then realized what a self-obsessed wanker I was being.

Blogging, in 2004, was still pretty new. I could write publicly and have an audience, yet protect my anonymity. Sorta.

The difference between writing on a blog and in a journal was, I had to be good enough to be read. I had to stop being so self-focused and find a way to make that a condition others might relate to. Who gives a fuck about ME, after all?

I was in a pretty dark place then, and the darkness just got heavier over the next three years. Blogging, I think, helped me focus on things in a more objective way, dialing into my journalism training, and looking instead at how my condition wasn’t really just mine — that others could, would, and did relate to much that was happening in my life…

But that would only happen if only I would focus instead on the generalisations around my experience, not the specifics. If you turn that evil fight with a lover into a less-specific event that becomes the doorway to abandonment, a lot of people can understand that. Focus instead on just the fight with the lover, that resonance starts to decrease.

Besides, in doing that, I’m protecting myself. None of you need know the specifics of my life. We’re not about details, as much as we think we are. We’re about thought clouds. We act and feel and believe in generalised ways. Whatever we WANT to think we do, we’re not as sophisticated as we delude ourselves that we are.

“Blogging” seems so… underwhelming. I’d like to think this little literary stop on the web is more than just some wordy trend that every ass with a thought is doing now. But only time will tell.

When I was a kid, about 15, I’d gotten a bit more sophisticated than the “George-Michael-over-every-single-fucking-wall!” method of interior design, and now only had George in a few select spots, as I had begun to fill the rest with Johnny Depp and witticisms I’d cut out of my teen magazines. No, I’m not being ironic. I just had to look really hard.

Like, “One day I’m this way, and the next I’m completely not.”

Said by some forgettable starlet, I’m not really sure why that line always appealed to me. Perhaps because I’m so grounded and so oriented as to who and what I am that I could never be flighty enough to be completely different from day to day.

Not wanting to ever be the same, that’s different. Life’s about moving forward. It’s about getting hit but always keeping moving forward. Rocky Balboa said that.

I always thought, though, that if I was a lesbian, I might like those flighty girls. I keep getting drawn to them. Kind of like how I’ve had more than one close friend who was bipolar, and a million who were ADHD. Probably because I like my people interesting as opposed to boring/ordinary/quiet.

Anyhow. It’s been a long day and I didn’t really mean to drop in and write, but the notion hit about phases, I thought I’d share and explore and get me a bloggin’ twofer for your vicarious pleasures. Am I shifting into yet another mode? I don’t know. Something about tonight feels like that.

I hope so. Not that I’m not content. Content-ish? Well, actually, I’ve been a little bored — but that’s because I’m trying to force myself to write. My thinking is, maybe it’s the existential/literary equivalent of stopping trying to make yourself sleep during insomnia. You can’t sleep, so telling yourself to sleep is a pretty moronic thing to do. Instead, get up and watch that 3am showing of Stripes.

Maybe where I want to take my writing needs a good disruption. Maybe I need to make more effort at balancing my monastic-type life with my alter-ego I’ve kept under wraps too long.

I don’t know. Maybe something completely other than that is about to happen. I don’t know. But that’s half the fun.

Something about tonight feels like the equivalent of sniffing the wind and smelling the weather that’s about to blow in. Something’s about to shift. It feels like it’s for the better. I don’t know. Here’s hoping. :)

Without my glasses on, I still see the heavy torrents splashing down. I’m not particularly keen to shower, then, well, go out into the shower.

There’s a pall that falls over this town come winter. We’re a geographical Jeckyll’n'Hyde.  Partying outdoorsy hipsters in the summer and moody sullen pensive types in the colder seasons. Greetings grow terse and mundane. Vancouver’s Georgia Straight weekly arts paper’s recent “Best in Vancouver” edition asked us all, “Where’s the best place to go in the Vancouver rain?” And the number-one answer? “Home.”

I wish I was self-employed today. I wish I could dally and stretch about. I want to be Pajama Girl: Hero to sloth all around the globe. I can do it! I can slack better than all y’all!

Like the weather, I’m hazy and oppressive today. My thoughts are muddied like the streets, my ideas fast falling and going nowhere fast. It’s the kind of bleak and uncertain day that makes creativity a brilliant endeavour or an unsuccessful but alluring trap.

I wish I could stay home, tapping away at my keys in futility and desperate want. But I can’t. I have a living to go earn, obligations to fulfill, a downtown office awaiting my heavy-hearted entrance.

When the world comes knocking here in Vancouver, come February for the 2010 Winter Olympics, there’s certainly a Vancouver I hope the world doesn’t meet — the one that appears in torrents like these; where everything seems obligatory and the question “Oh, do I have to?” hangs like a cartoon cloud amongst the mist over every Vancouverite’s head. “No, I don’t wanna” is the secret cry you don’t hear.

A far cry from the passionate and outdoorsy non-stop-busy people we are in the sunshiney months.

I find myself taking a breath today, accepting that it’s time to don my moody alter-ego’s costume. It’s time to be pensive, torn writer girl, caught in the downpours and encouraged to cocoon against world.

Except for when the cold, damp reality of commuting to an office job interrupts the heroic antics of Pajama (Writer) Girl, that is.

[insert reluctant-superhero theme here]

Bring on the Goretex, bitches. [snarl]

My muse, she ain’t faithful at all. Nuh-uh. She out there all friendly and wanderin’. Ain’t never ’round when I needs it.

That dilemma has been two-fold for me of late. You see, I wanna write a book. In fact, I know kinda what I want to write. You, my friends, need not know this beyond the “it’s autobiographical” nutshell.

I was out walking and chatting with someone the other day, bemoaning my struggles to get this bitch started. All I really care to do right now is write an outline. I want some idea of structure. Basically just an idea of what I need to work with. I said exactly that, that I didn’t know where to start. He said, “Start at the beginning.”

Okay, so… which beginning? The beginning after when I almost died on my scooter in ‘04 and had a fun head injury and stuff? The beginning after I lost my job in ‘05, had 2 unstable years in varied employment? The beginning after I had a complete depressive onslaught in ‘06 from stupidly suppressing my period with birth control, ie: hormone-fucking? Or the beginning after quitting a job that had me gaining 20 pounds in ‘07, descending back INTO depression, and then led to me losing 70 pounds and changing much of my life for the better? (Clearly that story’s unfinished. There’s so much of me that needs to improve or heal yet. Like I’m alone?)

Well, I’ve written on my blogs, here and my old blog, The Last Ditch, the equivalent of probably 350,000+ words; about 2,700 big postings. This blog alone, as a compressed text file, is well over 4mb. Somehow I have to wade through both for the last three or four years and find relevant bits to build on for the book.

Let’s face it, I had a serious head injury. I smoke a lil’ somethin’ somethin’. Between the two, there are memory lapses. My blogs are a HUGE part of a life that’s kind of mentally fragmented for me now. I remember snippets. Phases. Eras. Great moments. Horrible moments. And very little of the in-betweens.

So thank god I’ve written so much of it. Especially in the last year.

Twitter is fantastic as an ongoing record for anyone who’s ever had memory issues or brain injuries, man. Use it right to record the minutae of your life and it could make reaching 70-something in a few decades a whole lot more entertaining. “I wonder what this day was like in 2011? I should check my Twitter stream.”

Let’s address the brain injury for those joining us more recently: No, I’m not stupid now. I’m not slow in conversation. In fact, you’d never even suspect I can’t remember 6 months of my life because I flew off a motorbike and landed on my head. But me, I know it. How I process things is different. Retention has changed. How I have to be/feel, that too has changed. You, though, you’d think I was mostly tickety-boo. I’ll take it.

All of this, however, combines to make it really difficult for me to figure out how the fuck I want to start this book of mine. Where, what, yada-yada-yada. Couple into that the emotional tightrope I have to walk to “go there”, and yes, I’m a little blocked here.

And I’ve been SO overwhelmed by it. For WEEKS now I have tried setting aside time EVERY WEEKEND to try and get some progress on this. Total so far? ZIP. NADA. ZILCH. Motherfucker!

Tonight, here I am, staring down the bittersweet mountainside of a three-day weekend. Two calling for extreme rain. Me, virtually no plans other than visiting friends tomorrow. My god, I have to try writing this cunt AGAIN?

Oooohhhhh. [big heavy sigh] Not too keen, I thought.

Then it hit me: Maybe the method is the problem. Maybe I’m feeling overwhelmed by this screen and the commitment of kilobytes and characters to the feeble ideas of just what might be a good place to start. Oh, it’s all so SIGNIFICANT when you actually type something into a screen. God, the ever-daunting permanence of Facebook fuckups has taught us the importance of being mindful of any typing we do nowadays, hasn’t it? The freedom of writing on a computer isn’t quite what it used to be, for me.

But, then, I’ve always found that paper-and-pen was a more organic way to go and thus isn’t really my style, as much of my writing is linear only in that “this leads to that which leads to that”, in my Stefflike six-degrees take on the world at large. I have a definite cadence on the screen, yes, but I’m able to freestyle ideas — but not write — a little easier on paper. I haven’t worked with paper much at all in recent years, since I have an idea and I run with it. I don’t often need to flesh out how an idea expands into bigger things; with a book, one must.

Obviously, Google Documents hasn’t exactly been unlocking the heart of Steff of late. No. Now we turn to the Hilroy 3-Subject Notepad. Surely salvation lay within?

Holy hell, Batman, it does! Apparently $2.97 for a chunk of dead tree is a whole ‘nother kind of creative experience. There’s a lot to be said to the basic brainstorming method that I learned from Mrs. Potschka in Grade 4.

Suddenly, I’m able to jot point-form ideas about some of the worst experiences of my adulthood. Nothing, you know, heavy — just quick and dirty. “The breakdown that day I was alone at X office.” Boom. Absolutely fucking horrible experience, briefly captured… but in the familiarity of my handwriting, not the cold, intimidating and clinical feel of fonts on a screen.

And maybe sometimes that’s all we need — the tactile experience of a book inhand, a pen between our fingers, and the comfortable scrawl we’ve seen almost daily our whole lives.

Because I’m onto something. Praise be. The failure week-in, week-out of the last couple months has really been crippling me and leaving me feeling like a creative hack.

Truth be told, I suspect I just wasn’t ready, psychically/emotionally/whatever. I’m not too big on diving headlong back into my recent past. I’m loving where these days are leading… and I’m proud of all I’ve gotten past. But I haven’t owned it enough to wade back on through. Not then. Not yet?

I’m ready to open the door, I suppose. The thing about it is, acknowledging that it ALL exists doesn’t mean I have to make it all my focus. I just need to get the lay of the land then decide which of the landmarks is most worth heading toward. Because something is. Something always is.

I’m not much of a reader anymore, though, so the book has woefully sat there in the pile of “things I really do want to do, but wish I had the time to get around to” and NOW is the time. Some 25 pages in, I’ve scanned over the book, and while it may not be something _I_ will sit down and read in one sitting (let’s face it, it isn’t Harry Potter), I think it covers a fantastic range of topics and I’m really looking forward to being inspired by the way she tackles some of them.

So far, I think Herbenick hits all the right notes that most women need to understand about sex — it’s not just “well, if you put this here, it’s great”, but it’s not rocket science either. It’s mostly about overcoming your shit, being comfortable with your body, and being more confident about what sexuality is and requires.

Basically, it’s about reading books like this and learning more about yourself. I’ve found myself nodding about 20 times, just in reading the little I have and scanning the rest of the book. I’m pretty comfortable in thinking it’ll be one I’m happy to recommend. Too many sex books focus on too few areas, and too many expansive ones don’t talk about things in an accessible way. I think this falls in the middle.

Which, when it comes to sex, I find is a pretty good place to be. Let’s see where it goes. Instead of a traditional “review” posting, I’ll be writing a few posts based on the book in the coming weeks, and will review aspects of it in each.

Meanwhile, I’m off for Thanksgiving turkey! Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!

What a FANTASTIC day. Beautiful, sunny. I’m going into work and kissing ass to have a short day. It’s fantastic working for women who understand that the here-and-now is as important as the year-end fiscal, and life is to be lived, not missed. Great bosses! Yet another thing I’m thankful for as Canada’s Thanksgiving weekend rolls into play.

Today is all but guaranteed, they think, to be the last day of unseasonable weather — tomorrow, the temperature drops like the NYSE after a Madoff scandal.

Oh, the difference a year makes. Every coloured leaf I admire makes me appreciate how far this year has taken me.

Last year at this time, it was just sinking in that I had done something horrible to my back. Had you told me then that I would be facing 9 months of rehab, the first three spent crippled, medicated, and in misery, well, the odds are I would have had a total mental breakdown, and come January or so, I pretty much did.

I enjoyed exactly 0% of last year’s autumn, and it broke my heart. I’m making up for it this year!

I spent this day last year medicated out of my mind, lying on a hardwood floor, eating pizza and cereal, drifting in and out of consciousness, in more pain than I’ve ever felt in my life. Cockroaches were having a field day in my kitchen, and I was pretty much at one of the emotional low points of my life. Debilitating pain and injury can do that to you. The fear is crippling in and of itself, especially when you’re too broke to do the things it needs you to do so you can heal.

This year, I’m cycling, stretching, working out, taking pictures like the one you see here snapped last night on a ride, and basically feeling awesomely optimistic and curious about where my life is going. Life is fucking great — as great as it can be when you’re a writer chick catching up on old debts, living the broke life. Some of us do it well. And some of us can experience gratitude even when we can’t afford shiny new toys and big things.

Tonight, I have a special “me, and me alone” date. I’m cooking myself the kind of dinner I know would get me laid — and THEN some, baby. And I’m not sharing it with ANYBODY. Fuck all y’all. Greed is good!

I’ll be smiling a lot to myself tonight, smugly enjoying how far I’ve come, how much I’ve replaced almost all of my fear with hope in the space of a year, and with very good reason to do so.

I’ll be writing, savouring the difference a year brings, taking some time to remember the fear that crippled me as much as the pain during that injury — because my back kept getting WORSE for the whole first week, which takes us to Sunday.

Ironically, this weekend is Thanksgiving here in Canada.

I *KNOW* what I am thankful for. Do you?

Oh, god, how scared I was a year ago today. My eyes well up just thinking about it. I was so, so, so scared. In a space of three weeks I went from climbing & descending a 30-floor highrise in about 24 minutes and having lost 50 pounds, to being in absolute agony and taking THREE MINUTES just to stand up off the floor.

I didn’t know what my future held. Would my back heal? How long would it take? Would I ever be fit? Would being injured cause me to gain all my weight back? What the HELL was gonna happen?

[grin]

And here we are. DONE, baby. I’m not 100% in my back. Still, not. I’m probably 90%, but in the course of rehabbing it, I’ve gotten rid of my chronic neck, shoulder, and headache issues. My posture is a million times better, I can walk distances without pain for the first time in my adult life… I mean, who knew, right? Maybe, without my back injury, I never would have overcome those things — because they all still plagued me even after my 50 pounds I’d lost last summer.

Sure, I’m not pain-free or completely absolutely fit, but you know what? I’m still stronger than I’ve ever been, almost as fit as I’ve ever been, and I have fewer injuries over all to bog me down. I’m pretty confident in my body, and I’m more confident in myself.

Today, I’m thankful for who I am as a result of that injury. I’m thankful I know how much further I have to go, and that I appreciate my ability to get there. I’m thankful for the friends I have who have been patient with me during my hard times, and more thankful I now know who not to count on when times are tough. I’m thankful for the people I can count on, and do count on, more than ever.

All in all, it has been the hardest year of my life. Harder than my mother’s death. Harder than my spiral into chemically-induced depression in ‘06. Harder than anything, because all my previous “hard” years just required surviving — this time, I’ve had to fight every damn day to get past all this. Serious rehab makes you dig deep when the threat is, “this or chronic, lifelong injury”. This weekend, this holiday, it symbolizes all of it coming to an end.

My “hard year” has been settling down, adversity-wise, for quite some time now, so much so that I feel I’m done with adversities. Yes, life’s still chaotic and crazy, but it’s chaotic and crazy because good things are happening for me and I’m working hard on getting to where I want to be. That’s a good chaotic and crazy. It’s all good!

And I’m real fuckin’ thankful.

And… if you’re not where you want to be this Thanksgiving? Make it YOUR year to change, because I’m telling you, the feeling you get on the other side of those hard-fought waters, baby… if I could bottle and sell this, I’d be the drug-dealer of the century. What a fucking high!

Happy Thanksgiving weekend, Canada. Happy, happy, happy.