Fuck your feelings.

It’s the title of a book, and I will say more on that later. For now, a little history…

About a month ago, I was an obese slug with a two-pack-a-day smoking habit. I read books all day long. No seriously, all. day. long. Mostly paranormal romance (vampire and werewolves, oh my!), reverse harem, biker romance… romance. sense a theme here? [There really isn’t some underlying angst to go with the romance theme, I did have a healthy bit of sci-fi and litRPG in the mix, too.] I was reading at least three a day. My Goodreads says that in 2019 I read 1,073 books with an average book length of 271 pages. I’m down in 2020, with only 762 books read so far. Regardless, that’s a lot of trashy romance novels.

About a month ago, my doctor hit me with a whammy. My LDL was high, my triglycerides were high, my blood sugar was high, my insulin was high (are you seeing the trend here?) I’m only 44, I don’t need this litany of poor health weighing me down. It made me feel like dead woman walking.

About a month ago, I decided to change. I started by quitting smoking. I set them down, declared myself a non-smoker, and quit. It’s going (surprisingly) well. I also decided to get out of my lounge chair and put the books down. So I started walking, a lot. Wait, back up, I decided to put the trashy books down. I was only reading as a distraction from life anyway. [On an aside, I recently read a quote that said “Are you really healed or are you just distracted?” I was distracted.] So I started picking up books out of the self-help category. It started with Gary John Bishop’s “Unfu*k Yourself”. I will admit to picking it up because of the title, but it was a worthy read (and let’s just mention that the audible version is read by the, ahem, Scottish author). The recommendations auto-generated at the end of the book led me to Ryan Munsey’s “F*ck Your Feelings“, which was a phenomenal read for neuroscience geeks who want to increase their performance in life. This book was the thing that got me out of the chair.

Now, a month later…I’ve stuck by the changes, but some of this requires a change in personality, and that’s a lot more difficult. I’ve spent so much time distracting myself from the monotony that was my life, that I don’t know what to do. I’m lost looking for my passion in life again. I’m trying not to find things to do just to kill time. I want my life to have meaning again. I want each moment to have meaning again. I don’t want to wake up and just mindlessly fill hours until it’s time for bed.

Time is finite, and I don’t want to waste it.

Tick tock.