*Yawn and big stretches*

Happy Tuesday everyone!  We survived the great ice storm of 2026 this weekend.  I had a snow day and a half from work and I go in at 10 a.m. today.  Thankfully, we didn't lose power.  We are expecting more winter weather this weekend.

I don't really have much to say this morning - just wanted to say that I'm still alive!

I did some cooking yesterday and I made Oreo truffles to bring to work for my co-workers today because that's the nice co-worker that I am.  I've been window shopping on Shein and putting things in my shopping cart for our vacation to Tennessee at the end of October.

Because I don't have much to say, I'll leave you all with this:

#foodforthought

Things Are Looking Up

Good morning.

I have a few life updates to note in this post today.

Jason and I have paid off some debts with the money that we have come into recently, so we will no longer be living paycheck to paycheck anymore which is a huge sigh of relief after many years of living paycheck to paycheck.  We will now be able to afford to swiftly save for both things we need and want.  In saying this, we will no longer have to clench our butt cheeks together each year to be able to afford a decent vacation once a year.  I have also received my sleep study results back and I do, in fact, have mild sleep apnea.  I will be going to a medical equipment consult this Friday to get fitted for my brandy new A-PAP machine.  All things considering, I hope that the sleep apnea has been the root cause of my autonomic dysfunction, including the high blood pressure, tachycardia, palpitations and anxiety because if we treat the sleep apnea, it may mean that all of these issues will significantly reduce, if not, completely resolve.  I'm also looking forward to not feeling so much chronic daytime fatigue so that I'm able to function better.  On top of all of this, I received a phone call yesterday from my job, extending the job offer to me for Suture Specialist which I excitedly and most definitely accepted!  I officially start on Monday, February 9th!  I worked so incredibly hard to achieve this and I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds with my career path at Arthrex.  Though the pay could be better and career advancement process could be improved for individuals such as myself who sincerely want to invest themselves into the company, overall, it's really one of the best places to work.  I'm truly blessed and thankful to work for Arthrex.

I've been praying so heavily for these burdens to be lifted from me because they have caused me so much stress.  For so many years, I've been struggling severely under a very dark cloud that felt like it was never going to dissipate.  God's been listening and I also think I have some prayer warriors to thank here as well.  God knows what I've endured and I'm finally getting the break that I deserve.  I will not take that for granted.  I'm finally, slowly getting my spark back and I must say, it feels nice.  I have an appointment on March 9th to follow up with the sleep apnea doctor on how the APAP is working.  My tattoo appointment is closely nearing as well.  I can't believe I will be sitting for my first ever full-day session and it's going to take multiple full-day sessions to complete.  I've been waiting to get this tattoo forever as I absolutely adore Alice in Wonderland.  It has significant meaning behind my mental healthy journey.  With my mom coming out at the beginning of August and Jason and I going on vacation at the end of October which already has a deposit slapped on it, I'd say that we are off to a pretty amazing start to the new year!  I've been dabbling into a new hobby of drawing and I will also be getting back into reading.  I want to do more of the things that make me happy.  Soon, I will be working on my overall health better.

When I get my first trip of a lifetime at work, Jason and I are thinking of going to Rome, Italy.  We may also take a day trip to Venice while we are there.  Jason has a long-lost relative that lives about an hour and a half away from Rome, so when the time nears, we want to see if he would be willing to meet up with us and show us newbie international travelers a thing or two.  With the debts that we are paying off, we are going to be saving that money that we would have spent on monthly bills to finally renovate our house.  I definitely owe it to God, Jason, family, friends and my co-workers for supporting me unconditionally through all my shit, both good and bad.  I'm going out with my co-workers this coming Thursday to Texas Roadhouse for dinner and drinks.  Once I start feeling a little better from using the PAP machine, I want to get with my friend Penny who has been nothing but patient with me as I struggled with health which in turn made it very difficult for her and I to get together.  I truly hope that this year and going forward, my life stays on this very positive track because Lord knows it's been very long awaited.

We are getting ready to receive some very nasty winter weather here, starting later this afternoon.  We are not even sure at this time if we will be able to go to work Monday and possibly even Tuesday because they are predicting that the roadways will be impassable due to excessive ice.  They are also predicting that we will have extended power outages for several days with no prediction when the power will be restored.  I went to the stores early yesterday morning and felt like I was in the run of my life trying to get what we needed to get through the storm.  It was almost like a mini black Friday out there!  It took me about three stores to find bread, but other than that, I was able to get everything else that we needed.  Shelves were definitely bare.  I had to pay three times the amount that I normally pay for bread because the only bread I was able to luckily find was Nature's Own Keto Bread but it will suffice.  The first part of the day today will involve getting everything done that requires electricity so that I don't have to worry about those things.  We have food and a gas grill to make food on, gallons of clean drinking water and will charge our phones in our gas-filled vehicles as necessary.  We will be okay!  We have plenty of warm clothes and blankets to keep us warm.

Positive Updates are the Best Updates

Things are finally looking up a little bit so far this year.  Jason and I became a little more financially stable recently and are looking forward to paying off some of our debts so that we aren't living paycheck to paycheck anymore.  Simba and Isabelle are considerably stable with their health issues for now.  My autonomic attacks have reduced significantly in frequency and severity, though they do still happen.  I should be able to work with the sleep doctor a little better once I get my sleep study results back to get relief from unrested sleep which will hopefully in turn reduce my chronic fatigue and my anxiety even more.  We booked our trip to Tennessee for the end of October a couple weeks ago.  My mom is coming out the second week in August to visit and spend some time with us.  I'm in the process of taking leadership and development classes at my job as well as I've had both my phone and in-person interview for Suture Specialist.  I've been filling in unofficially as a specialist for the last three months.  I should hear in a few weeks on whether I got the job or not.

The first Friday in February, I'm starting the process of getting my Alice in Wonderland half sleeve done - finally!  It's going to take about twenty hours of work to complete.  This will be my first time sitting eight hours for a tattoo - a little excited and nervous at the same time.  I've already filed my taxes.  So yeah, I'd say that things are going pretty decent.  Jay's dads birthday is this coming Friday, so we are going over his house Saturday to take him out to eat and have cake with him.  I started back going to therapy this week.  I have plans to go every other week.  My next plan is to develop a self-care plan to work on my overall health.  I haven't been keeping up with my water intake that well lately, so I'm definitely going to be improving that.  I'm thinking about switching my morning breakfast to drinking a Premier Protein shake and watching my carb consumption a little better.  In the next few weeks, I'm going to start incorporating some low-impact exercising throughout the week after work.  I would also like to come up with a dedicated skincare routine.

I'm hoping I can keep up with my blog better, especially to track my progress.  I've been battling keeping up with this thing for years and I'm not sure why.  I love journaling and find it to provide a sense of stress relief.  Plus, my therapist highly recommends regular journaling as a tool to reduce anxiety, depression and stress.  Well, that's all I have for todays post.  I'm going to put my Salisbury meatballs in the fridge, relax for the night and maybe peruse Kindle to see what kind of books I can get into reading.  Not to mention, we have been talking about where we want to go for my first trip of a lifetime benefit at work - definitely out of the country!  I get a trip of a lifetime every five years that I work for my company and each five years, they give you more money towards it.  We are thinking about going to Europe, possibly Rome!

Alright.  Ta-ta for now!

Self-Intervention

It's been a hard few months.

I've been dealing with chronic medical issues all the while trying to come up with a plan on how I'm going to heal.  The biggest person I have let down over the years is myself which led me to face a lot of hard truths.  I've been worried about everyone and everything else other than myself and that has reflected in my current circumstances with both my mental and physical health which has caused issues in my relationship with God, Jason and both my professional and personal life.  This year was definitely the straw that broke the camels back and it caused me to be at my wits-end.  I've had some time to stew on my thoughts and I'm not sure if I lost myself completely at some point in the process or if I've never had the chance to meet my true sense of self to begin with - to be honest, I'm not really sure I know how to tell the difference which I think is the barrier I struggle with in determining which one really took place.  At this point, however, I feel that trying to wrap my head around which one it is, is irrelevant because either way leads me on a journey with the same purpose which is finding myself.  Either way, I have to take time to heal and discover the person I truly am.

As I sit here and reflect, I've come to realize that I have given up a lot in neglecting myself.  I have given up on my health all together, self-care, my worth, family, friends, things that make me happy and at times - my professional life, my relationship with God and Jason.  Because of my lack of self-worth, I've allowed things that I should have never allowed.  Mostly, I let other's and their opinions live rent free in my head causing all kinds of manifestations of negative inner dialogue.  I've felt the incessant need to justify myself to others when it comes to their expectations of how I should be living my life and/or what I should or should not be doing.  I've been over-exerting myself in trying to keep the peace for everyone else that I allowed it to create nothing but total chaos and havoc in my life.  I've reached the point where I can't hold up this facade any longer.  I had to reach deep within myself to realize that I deserve better, to realize that I'm worthy of living my best life just like the next person.  After all I have been through, I deserve at least that much.  My therapist has been an integral part of helping me come to these realizations.  Though medication is still in the trial and error process for me at the moment, it has definitely helped balance me out a bit better and though I still have autonomic attacks from time to time, they have lessened in both frequency and severity which has allowed me the opportunity to think with a much clearer mind and provide me with some form of mental stability.

These issues didn't appear over night, so this journey will be nothing short of the same and that's okay.  After all of these years, I deserve to take this journey of self-love and care.  It's okay to be in a place of brokenness as long as we don't stay there forever.  This turmoil stemmed from early childhood and I've just let it take complete rein over my entire life.  It's time for me to bury the hatchet within myself and begin this journey.  That's not to say that I will not help other's when they are in need and of course, when I'm able, but more so, that I need to set myself as a priority first and foremost.  There are many, many things that I need to allow myself time to feel and heal from.  We live in a world where we really should and need to normalize that it's okay not to be okay and that we may need help at times.  It's nothing to be embarrassed about as we are all human.  With all of this being said, I don't have any specific New Years resolutions because for me, it's not about achieving a specific goal in a certain frame of time.  This journey that I'm about to take isn't something that can be achieved in just a years time - it's something that will unfold over the course of the rest of my life.  However, I will be taking this coming year to focus strictly on myself and the ground work necessary for this journey.

Things that I will be working on going forward:

Relationship with God, Jason, family and friends

Self-love, self-care and my health both physically and mentally

Changing the way I think/talk to myself

Paying off debts and saving money

Professional life

Working on our house

Engaging in things that make me truly happy (blogging, going out more, spending more quality time with Jay, reading, listening to music, painting, traveling trying new things)

Letting go (of my past, letting people live rent free in my head, being a people pleaser, worrying what others think of me, grief of losing my mother-in-law and my father, worrying excessively for no reason)

Allowing myself to feel and be truly happy

Creating a safe space for me in my spare-room where I can have time to myself