Mirror

Day 436

Y'know, I don't consider myself an attractive guy by any means, but I got contacts recently (I've had them before) and it's done wonders for my self confidence. I think I'd forgotten just how much of a negative impact wearing glasses has on my self image. This is an important thing for me to celebrate because anything that makes me feel better about my self image is huge, even if it's a relatively small thing like that. Contacts are inconvenient in some ways for me, of course. They greatly intensify my natural sensitivity to light and they itch for several hours in the mornings--but it's worth it for how they make me feel. I have no logical explanation for why they make me feel better but not having to wear glasses is like having a great weight lifted from my shoulders.

There are lots of little things like that that make me feel better about myself. I've been trying to find ways to emphasize those things to make my days in general less stressful and to allow me to focus more on doing my job and less on worrying about how I appear to others. The impact of things like having clean and unwrinkled clothing ready for me in the morning, fabric softener, and comfortable socks are absolutely enormous. They have a dramatic effect on my mood. I feel like there are so many things that can get in my way and make me irritable. It's behooved me to identify those problems and find ways to correct them. Eliminating the annoyance of glasses is one major step in improving my overall mood.

There are other things that aren't quite so easy to solve, of course. My hair is getting pretty long now and I like that. I've always liked long hair and I think it suits me. My hair is very thick and flowing--but it's at a stage right now where it's quite long, but not long enough to tuck behind my ears. This means it gets in my eyes a lot, which is quite frustrating when it happens over and over during the course of a work day. This is one of those things that I just have to wait out. I keep considering getting it cut, but I do genuinely like the way I feel with long hair, even if it does take more maintenance than a shorter style.

The elephant in the room, of course, is me. I'm the elephant. A big fat elephant. I need to lose weight and preferably a lot of it. This is an incontrovertible fact that I should not be trying so valiantly to avoid. It's easy to face the issue and admit that something needs to be done about it, but another thing entirely to act to solve it. Exercising is this miserable and frequently boring process for me. If I can't play video games while doing something, chances are I won't find the time to do it--unless of course it's writing this blog, which I set aside a small amount of time to do each day. I feel I could do the same thing with exercise, but it's such a difficult thing to start. I can only imagine the dramatic effect it would have on my self confidence though, especially when combined with other measures I'm taking to improve my mood.

I keep thinking that I need to turn it into some kind of game. If I can't actually play a game while running or exercising, I have to make the activity itself into a game. I'm not certain how I'd go about accomplishing this, but I imagine I could incorporate ways to reward myself for completing certain tasks. In times like this I wish I had a personal trainer--or at least a friend who'd be willing to substitute as a personal trainer. Unfortunately, I don't have any close friends that are fitness buffs and fewer still that'd  be willing to go out on a limb for me like that!