The mind runs on tracks. At least, that’s how my psychologist put it to me many years ago. Some tracks are positive, some are not. We get stuck. Well, maybe you don’t, but I definitely do. I believe that it’s especially easy to get stuck on on the same track when you have an obsessive mind. There is no question that my mind likes to get on a track until forced off of it. I’ve worked hard to destroy old negative tracks and to build healthier ones. But sometimes I build a track that starts off positive and ends up dragging me down to the ground like a thick swamp that smells of death and never-brushed teeth.

I’ve been on a track that started out therapeutic and ended up completely repetitive and unhealthy. The one where I drink late at night listening to music that charges up emotions from a dark place of the past and regurgitates them. Over and over again. It’s gotten to the point where I forgot how to write anything else. I didn’t see it coming until it was a problem and was making me uncomfortable with myself.

Time for new tracks. Please feel free to substitute the word “tapes” for tracks. Same thing. No more late night writing. No more drinking while writing. No more music while writing. At least not the kind that brings me to that place I need to stop hanging out.

I also have gotten right back to where I began with my weight. I’m not happy. I know that I will never feel okay about myself where I’m at now. It’s more than body weight, it’s a huge psychic weight. It undermines all the progress I try to make. Obviously I’m in a pretty tough place with this. In order to lose the weight I have to cut down on drinking by at least 3/4. One of the things that makes me drink the way I do is feeling anxious and also feeling disgusting in body. Low self esteem. I’m in a catch 22 situation where my self loathing and my drinking are the perfect co-conspirators to this stasis.

I’ve been spending a lot more time in my garden. It’s been wonderful. I think it’s part of what has renewed my hope that I can, after a decade of not making an inch of permanent progress, resume my efforts and actually get somewhere without falling backwards to the starting line.

I rode my bicycle to work today and then on my break to go get coffee. That felt good.

It’s time I came back to my blog for the mundane and the daily pep talks. It’s an important but long neglected part of my own self care. It’s time to record the little things I’m doing that I enjoy, the small triumphs, the stupid stuff, the silly stuff. I don’t want to start a new blog. I don’t want to re-invent myself. I just want to reclaim myself. I’ve got all the tools, I just need to use them.

I’m off to eat some home made minestrone, clean my kitchen, and then watch something on tv I’ve already watched a hundred times.