It’s been awhile

I’ve not been journalling.

For a while, I wasn’t doing much of anything. My whole world crumbled in 2019 with a number of significant mental health issues, leading me down a dark path including almost losing my job and almost taking my life. With some serious help from my family, friends, and work friends, I made it through.

2020 started out looking better, until mid March and then we were sent home from work and locked down for weeks. Not too long after that, I started having pain under my rib cage, and a CT scan showed something suspicous that lead to a lot more testing that turned out to be cancer. I journaled on carginbridge.org for a lot of that. I won’t revisit it here. I am simply grateful to be cancer free now after chemo and surgery.

2021 has been a year of hard work and healing. It has taken me months to feel more like myself. In fact, it feels like I’ve just gotten my energy back. My mastectomy scars are fading from pink to white. I am having much less pain. I lost 30 pounds in 2020 due to chemo, and gained every pound back.

So, back to journaling. I am working this month on making habit changes, little ones that will lead to more than will lead to weight loss. I’ve been trying to do far too much as far as exercise, and that has led me to exercise less because I’m in pain. Toning my workouts to be in the 70% zone instead of pushing harder and harder has really been the key. I’ve been able to do more. Not quite back to 5 days a week, but have increased to 4 and that feels good. I have intermittently been lifting weights and will get that back soon.

I have been listening a lot to audiobooks about habit change and making those adjustments. I have done a good job (if I say so myself) of attaching a new habit to an existing habit. There’s more to come.

Onward.