Finding the Heart in the Heartland

<sigh>  Today.  Is tough.  Yesterday was tough, but today is even more tough.  Today, I feel irrelevant, like an outsider in my own hometown.   Like an outsider in my own family.    I feel like the world has moved on without me, and quite happily at that.  Friends don’t call, they don’t even ‘like’ my posts on Facebook.  So, this is what it’s like to be on the outside, ouch.  It’s not like I haven’t been here before, it was just the other way around.  I was pushing everyone else away.  Now, here in this day, I yearn for friends and human connection and affection and eye contact and hugs and all of the other wonderful things that come along with being human, only to find myself sitting at my keyboard, refreshing my facebook page every 30 seconds hoping that someone has posted a comment on my page or better yet - sent me a message.  Nope.

It’s the kind of day that makes me want to hop into a bathtub full of mashed potatoes and gravy with a spoon and go to town.  

Yesterday was similar.  It was full of recipe development gone south.  I was doing my best to create some new recipes, but my mind kept drifting back to this wicked gooey casserole I make from time to time.  Instead of listening to my body and just making it, I pressed on with recipe after recipe, each one sucking royally.  Ok, not royally, I think I may have conquered the veggie burger yesterday - it was fantastic - and the smoothie was great as well.  The salad dressing was bammer and the asian wrap did NOT turn out well, though.  

I wasn’t focused.  I am out of practice and a little low on self-confidence, which is ridiculous for someone like me.  I am letting things get to me that normally, I would just be able to ‘brush off’, like the kid who hit me up on my facebook page to tell me that my food looks ‘gnar gnar’.  I would normally just flick a little gnat like that so far out into the galaxy he would have no hopes for return, but something about what he said hit home.

I am out of practice.  My palate is off.  It’s no joke and it’s heartbreaking.  Like riding a bike, I haven’t ‘forgotten’ anything, I just got lazy and rusty.  Rather than making food while I was pregnant, I started eating Sunchips and burritos - by the pound and didn’t stop until just recently.  I starting cooking food again - am I really surprised by the results that are showing up?  What should I be expecting to feel right now?  Great?  That would be a miracle.

 What I can expect is to be realistic about life and know that time and perseverance is what it will take at this point to make my goals real.  I have this ‘not cookbook’ project looming over me like a giant mushroom cloud of doom (lol), so many things to accomplish in a day, a limited budget to do recipe development with (unlike that little trustfund bastard, HA!), and - on top of it all - my darling little 5 month old who wants nothing more than to play with her mommy all day long.  Add to it an extra 20-25 pounds and well, it’s enough to make a girl want to eat an entire birthday cake and call it a day.

However, I as much as anyone, know that life is 10% circumstances and 90% what I do with them.  Today will not be another yesterday.  Today, I will conquer my Sunchips demon by making a delicious batch of crackers to go with that mediocre almond cheese I made yesterday.  I will taste all of the food I made again and write down what exactly it is that I find displeasing about the food I created.  Who knows, they could be fantastic creations and I had some sort of mental ‘block’ because I was craving a gooey, melted trainwreck of a dish so badly I could have almost grabbed it out of thin air.  Today I will focus.  Today I will dream and be creative.  I will strap little baby Aya into her baby Bjorn carrier and work it out.  

Today, I will brush the laziness and cravings off like the bad habits they are and not look back.  Today, I will go downstairs and videotape myself looking goofy and jiggly doing that P90X tape.  Today, I will stretch my muscles and appreciate my body for the journey it is carrying me through and I will do everything I can to support it in it’s journey.  Today I will nourish myself and others with the love I desire and long for.

Today I will be unflappable.  Today, I AM unstoppable.

Any successful person’s story I have ever read has been filled with trial after trial after trial, tribulation after tribulation, failure after failure.  It will never get easier, but I can choose my perspective and learn from all of it.  It is the only way up.  I will end today’s blog post with one of my favorite quotes, from Calvin Coolidge:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.  Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.  Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.   Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.  PERSISTENCE AND DETERMINATION ALONE ARE OMNIPOTENT.”