Day 346 Don't Sleep and Write and Bend Without Breaking

Day 346

Don't Sleep and Write and Bend Without Breaking

OK. This isn't really where this post began. It really started last night after several hours of severe weather coverage at the radio station. It started with “when I was a kid...” Oh boy, nothing can get me started like “when I was a kid...” The problem? I was half asleep. I never really know what will inspire me to write, where I'm going with something until I'm already on my way. I have a hard time saying “I'm just going to do a quick post!” If inspiration hits, I can't help it. Unless I'm falling asleep and struggling to intertwine two wonderful points about determination, focus, and simplifying this wonderful road we're on. I was getting somewhere, but was just too tired to pull it all together. I was sound asleep by the first line of the third paragraph. I hit the wall. Waking up and finishing the post, forget about making it make sense, was not happening. It's 5:40am now. I'm headed to the studio for the morning show. Here's my half-asleep attempt at making some profound points:

When I was a kid I use to dream of being a meteorologist. I was completely fascinated by weather and the television weather coverage on stormy Oklahoma days and nights. I was born and raised right in the middle of tornado alley. One of my most vivid childhood memories happened at four years old. It involved my grandparents, mom, and aunt all jumping in the car in the middle of a hail storm with the tornado sirens blasting. A vehicle is the last place you really want to be during a tornado warning, but we were headed for shelter with screams and tears and my grandpa instructing “everybody shut up and calm down.” If he was scared, he certainly didn't show it. He was a man that served in World War Two on a battleship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He had to live and survive kamikaze pilots and fierce close range gun battles. It was going to take more than a tornado to shake him. Nothing was going to stop him from getting his family to a proper shelter. He was completely focused. This memory was burned in my brain at four and led to a healthy fascination with weather. In my pre-teen years I read every book on tornadoes and hail stones, I was completely hooked. Then at around the age of 13, somebody told me that becoming a meteorologist was really hard and involved a bunch of super complicated math. Hard? Really? I was immediately deflated and heart broken. I hated math, always struggled with it, feared it really. If math was standing in the way of my dream career as a TV meteorologist, I'd pick something else to obsess over. I immediately gave up that dream because somebody told me it was hard to accomplish. And I completely believed it.

My entire life I've heard that losing weight was hard. Often times the thought of it being so hard would leave me heartbroken and deflated, completely hopeless. I believed it. Many people believe it. Losing weight is hard, everybody says it, it must be true! Whenever something became hard to do, I would simply not do it anymore. It was much easier to pretend like I didn't care and eat whatever and how much ever I wanted. Finally the day came in my life when I had to face my weight problem or give up and let it eventually kill me and my family. I had to get focused. I had to get us to shelter. I had to change the way I thought about losing weight. 346 days ago I knew that I had to get over this perception of losing weight being hard. I had to simplify the process. I had to make it easy. I had to believe it could be easy. If I made it complicated, we were doomed.

Eating less and exercising more would drop the weight, but I had done that before and gained it all back. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Yep, totally gone. Isn't that cute? Could you see where I was so desperately trying to go with all that?

I'll give you the quick rundown for Wednesday: Courtney had to go to the doctor last evening with flu-like symptoms. Irene took her as I went back to work for weather coverage. It completely changed our dinner plans, our workout plans, and my blog reading and writing plans. But sometimes we have to adjust on the fly. We have to be flexible enough to bend without breaking.

Courtney is going to be alright. She's on antibiotics and bed rest. It's not swine flu, although she had all the signs! Thank goodness!

I'm sure we'll get back to normal of some sort today. I certainly hope so. Goodnight, or uh...Good morning and...

Good Choices,
Sean


My grandpa during World War Two