The First Step is a Jerk

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(added) sugar-free, challenges, fitness, health, I Also Have a Life, meditation, real life, yoga

I love old sayings.

Idioms, proverbs, bits of folk wisdom passed down, and basic common sense, they’re all so comforting and familiar, little reminders that other people have gone through similar situations and lived to pass on their advice. Even the ones that are chronically misused – “blood is thicker than water” actually means “screw your biological family, the people you struggle through life with are more important” and “carpe diem” is about not procrastinating – still add to the sense that there’s order in the world, that other people have stood where you stand now.

The problem with the sayings, though, is that no matter how well I think I understand them, now matter how many times I repeat them to myself, by the time any one of them is actually relevant it almost always feels woefully inadequate.

Case in point: “the first step is the hardest”.

It’s a Brand New Me (?)

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(added) sugar-free, changes, fitness, HAIR :(, health, I Also Have a Life, invisible illness, meditation, PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, real life, yoga

This blog is in no way endorsed by Cheerios. In case that was somehow in question.

It seems like I’ve been in some kind of fight with my body for as long as I can remember. I’ve been on the edge of being overweight since high school – in spite of having an eating disorder for two third of my undergraduate degree – and I’m also hyperelastic, with ankles that roll at the drop of a hat.

I can and frequently do trip over absolutely nothing – in fact, I can’t actually remember the last time I tripped on something. It’s always just a smooth flat surface and then all of a sudden I’m face-planting.

I’ve got Ukrainian and Scottish heritage, which means I’ve got hairier legs than a lot of guys I know. Shaving lasts me about three hours, waxing gives me a week and a half, if I’m lucky. On top of that, some of the hair decided my face must be lonely, so I’ve been fighting with a mustache, sideburns, and a goatee since I was fifteen. On the plus side, I’m pretty damn good with a set of tweezers and those do-it-yourself wax kits.

On the negative side … I don’t really have to elaborate on the negative side, I guess, except to say that the whole positive-negative imagery makes it seem like maybe they should even each other out in the end, and if that’s the case, whoever’s in charge of my scale is definitely asleep on the job.

I could go on, and on (and on). I won’t, though, because this really isn’t about trying to feel sorry for myself; it’s the context for what comes next.