Hurry Up Drag It Out + A Big Reveal

Make-up play. A great time killer if you can handle the somewhat horrifying results. 

My eyes open in the morning darkness but I've been awake. Cookie lies between us, her still head in juxtaposition to the constant probing of her toes, like radar searching my position throughout the night. Piiing... piiing... piiing! Inexplicably- or perhaps obviously if you've been a parent long enough- it's my face that she lands on, a six am wake up call via my nostril. I slide her back to the middle and consider my options. I should go back to sleep. The kids are asleep, I should sleep too... but if I get up now I can have twenty minutes to myself! Wow, that would feel great. Or maybe two. Two minutes is more likely. I'll take it. I get up, start the coffee and breathe it in with the dawn. The quiet stillness envelopes me, a moment of meditation in the digital orange glow of the microwave screen. I dare to daydream a little, losing myself in the giddiness of thoughts to myself. It's only a handful of minutes until preschooler feet on hardwood floor shake me back to reality. Nug rushes me for a hug. Morning has begun.

One the run! Nug and I at our weekly park exercise. There's a doll in my stroller.

7:10am. My heart starts its daily palpitation (is it the coffee?). It's time to hustle for school. Plates of breakfast jockey for position with baby dolls, and often lose. Then clothes go on, and clothes come off, and clothes go on again. Teeth are cleaned, toileting accomplished, altercations soothed, and lunches packed. Yikes, it's 7:45, we gotta go! There's the almost daily plea to stay and play with me! and sorry Honey, there's no time. Then the tumble of a hair brush through knotted hair and whew, we're out the d... wait, what did we forget? As they climb into the back of the car, I catch a discerning glance at footwear. The front seat is piled high with extra gear-- jackets, snacks, diapers, who knows what, and now an extra pair of shoes. I hope we have everything. Ok! Deep breath as I turn around to check seat belts, but there's no time to waste if we want to arrive "on time" (= at the very last minute). I try to act cool, unruffled. Do my loud calming breaths give me away?

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I operate in only two speeds: Hurry Up and Drag It Out. I am either frantically rushing somewhere or finessing time longer; my heart racing with fabricated stress or practically bradycardic with boredom or stillness. Is this just who I am, or is it what motherhood has made of me? Because being at the whim of small children-- little beings who, magically, can play "babysitter" for eight hours straight as if it's just a wink of time-- has got to be the biggest time warp of our lucid lives, right? 

The malleability of my sense of time and urgency makes me feel like I'm never where I actually want to be. It makes it hard to be settled in the present. Alright maybe I'm already goal-driven and never-satisfied, but it feeds into that in a really pathologic and far-reaching way. This was recently confirmed when my Body Back exercise group tasked us to look at our inner critic through an online "inner mean girl" quiz. My results were not shocking (archetype: Achievement Junkie), but still difficult to read.

The Achievement Junkie is the pushy, relentless force that drives you hard to get to a goal you will never reach because the finish line just keeps moving. Her job is to keep you addicted to pursuing goals, by fooling you into believing that there is a magical destination that will indicate you have finally arrived, where you can rest, stop working so hard, and be enough. She makes you exhaust yourself and robs you of receiving the success and happiness from all your hard work. The "instant deactivator": Acknowledge yourself. Stop, drop & celebrate by naming three things you have accomplished already today or this year...no matter how small! 

I cried when I read this. No really, I did. Instant tears. It was so dead-on and crushing and compassionate all at once. It was like a best friend at my doorstep telling me it's time to relax, who then proceeds to massage my head, lie me down on the couch, and cover me with a crocheted blanket (the crochet being integral to my fantasy, yes). 


You can rest. You are accomplished. You are enough. 

I know I've written about self-acceptance before (My 36th Birthday Confession, (S)tumbling Towards Grace). I've promised that this time or the other I had it mastered, and- really guys- I'm good where I'm at... no really, check it out, I'm so enlightened. HA! Ha ha ha. I had been viewing self-acceptance as a set of two choices: happiness in who I am right now (impossible, I'm too driven), or happiness knowing that I am becoming a better me (impossible, I'm too outcome-oriented). As if it were that easy or quantifiable: Just pick and you're done. 

Hurry up or drag it out. 

This cracks me up!

Being present and satisfied is hard, mindful, daily work. And days can be fickle. Mmm hmm they can be fickle (have I mentioned the small children in my life?). If my happiness hinges on a choice that can change daily, my life resembles a rollercoaster. I don't find rollercoasters particularly peaceful. So, what if... instead of declaring that I'm good- that 'I like myself,' or (the exhausting) 'I like who I'm working to become,' what if I find peace in the whole mess of it all? Peace for my hard workout and my Crispy Creme donut. Happiness that I played baby dolls for hours and let them watch television for just as long. Peace in the moment. Peace in the process, even when there is no progress.

There is no magical destination.

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Today I finished six months of the Fit4Mom Body Back workout program. With the 5:30am exercise plus weekend challenges, then meal planning and tracking every. single. thing. I ate, you can imagine that there were many highs and lows. But with my cheesecloth-like memory, I loved being able to track my struggles and accomplishments. It turned into one of the brightest lights in my life, with much to feel proud of. Since I love a bullet list, here are a few of those accomplishments: 

• I went from six pushups in a minute to thirty-three. Rock star, right?!
• My core is strong enough to extract myself from the toddler bed without waking the toddler.
• I can assert myself for time away- knowing how reenergizing it is- without guilt.
• I can wake up at 5am for a workout, I even like it.
• I can resist food that doesn't fuel my body.
• I can hang with the athletes again. Sometimes I even feel like one myself!
• I wear a size medium and lost somewhere close to six inches from my waist.

All of this stuff is so good and motivating in itself, but you know what one of my biggest motivators was? This is embarrassingly misguided, but it was the idea of a big reveal at the end. "The end," as if there is a finish line. As if it is permanent. My happiness was based on a moving target of results. 

Hurry up or drag it out. 

And then, as karma would have it, there was one week, and then a few weeks, with no results. Damnit!... my fans are waiting for the big reveal! Instead of facing a skinnier self in the mirror, I was facing my inner critic, that exhausting Achievement Junkie who likes to rob me of the success of my hard work. Dealing with the pushy, relentless side of me was not pretty and while I was doing so, I got a bit lost in some food-numbing binges. But eventually I picked myself up, and while I'm a little puffier for it, I'm content with the knowledge of the TRUE big reveal. Ready for it? It is not inches lost, but self-acceptance gained. Health is for the long haul, so I'm finding peace in the process, even when there is no progress. 


There is no magical destination, there is only this moment. Let that shit go. You can rest. You are accomplished. You are enough. 

The crux of the issue, right?!

So with a bit of trepidation, I want to practice being right here. I'm not going to hurry up or drag it out; instead I'll let my heart rate rest in peace for once. I'm going to stop, drop, and celebrate the present. 

If you've read this far, here you go... without further ado, the secret Body Back photos I didn't think I'd ever share.