I thought I’d write a little year-end post to reflect on the past year and to share my plans for 2012.  For those of you who were expecting me to publish my regular “Books of [the year]” series, it won’t be happening this year.  I’ve decided to move my hosting away from GoDaddy (in order to protest their involvement with SOPA) and I will be redesigning my blog.  But I plan on bringing back the series at the end of 2012.

2011 was a crazy year.  I tried a whole bunch of new things and I met a lot of interesting people either by seeking them out or purely by happenstance (filmmakers, athletes, dancers, escorts, refugees, protesters, etc).  I value my interactions with other people over everything else.   It’s often more educational and more interesting to share and contribute with others.  And then you have to take the time to process those experiences.  This year, I met more people that I normally would not have met through my regular routines.. and it exposed me to issues and ideas that I never thought I’d have to consider before.  It opened my eyes and changed my prejudices… because we often think we know it all about a group or type of person, until we meet them and spend time with them and realize that we know nothing.

I took a few business risks and settled on what I knew best instead of the unknown.  I worked my ass off and then realized that I needed more time for myself.  I put some projects aside (like Her Voice) and got rid of others (like OttawaFilm).  It left me wondering if it’s possible to achieve greatness if you don’t live and breathe your passion by working ALL of the time – and then it made me wonder if ‘greatness’ is overrated if it means sacrificing time to learn and to explore and to be quiet.

Financially, I kept investing in index funds and I don’t plan on changing that too much in 2012, though I may buy some stocks in the fall.  I did sign up for the Investment Funds in Canada course (as opposed to the CSC) in order to get my mutual funds license.  Since I don’t plan on ever working for a bank, the IFIC course is cheaper and will give me a greater understanding of the world of mutual funds.  Also, I’ll be tracking every penny in and every penny out.  That’s new for me as I only tend to track money that I’ve saved or spent on bills.  I’m sure it will make me less interested in buying a Starbucks latte every night. 

I also signed up for a university course in Commercial Law, just for fun.  Writing contracts is hard enough when you’re just starting out as a small business owner – it’s going to be very helpful to learn more about everything from contract writing, to tort, to employment law.

Next year, I’ll also be making a greater commitment towards my health and specifically, my nutrition.  I did a great job with exercising regularly in 2011.  That, plus my weekly physiotherapy sessions and bi-weekly massages, went a long way to making me feel more fit.  Now, the challenge will be to adopt a lifestyle that is less indulging when it comes to food.  I’ve decided to incorporate intermittent fasting as part of my routine for the next few months.  I’m giving it until March 1st and then we’ll see if I want to continue.  I’ll be trying out the weekly fast.  So a full 24 hours without eating (tea and water is fine).  I won’t be taking any other supplements (other than my regular multivitamin) since this isn’t necessary, even if it comes highly recommended in most IF plans.  My first day of fasting is TODAY.  So far, so good.  Green tea helps!

I want to blog more next year, too.  I think I’m finally going to setup a blogging schedule.  I have a million and one things I’ve been meaning to share with you but I never took the time to sit down and write.  With a new design, a new host and a regular schedule, this blog should be much more happening in 2012.  I hope you’ll join me in my new journeys and I look forward to hearing your feedback.  I’m thinking of launching a series of Challenges (health, finance, education, etc) so that will be fun. 

I wish you all a very happy New Year!!

I have been debating writing this blog post because to be honest, I feel pretty embarrassed to say that I deal with chronic pain on a regular basis.  I don’t like being limited, especially physically.  So I suffer quietly, I wear the smile as best as I can and I mentally push myself to be “normal”.

And that’s what it all comes down to: being ‘normal’.  That’s what we all want, right?  We just want to be able to as active as possible, whether it be working out or attending social events or being able to go into work each day without a problem.  And the minute you tell people you’re in pain, you’re suddenly admitting that you’re somehow, inferior.  Or maybe not, but that’s what it feels like.

The latest hunch from a specialist I saw is that I may have fibromyalgia.  I have been waiting months to see another specialist to have this confirmed.  If you’re not familiar with this, it involves a whole lot of symptoms but the main one is pain – pain in the connective tissues and muscular pain.  The best way that I can describe it is to pretend that you’re inactive and then suddenly, you go through a really really intense workout.  You know that feeling when you’ve worked out way too hard and then you’re so sore that you feel like you can’t move?  Yeah, that’s pretty much what it feels like… except, all the time.  In my case, there are some points in my body that are worse than others and the good news is that a lot of the time, it’s pretty manageable because the overall pain goes away and I can just carry on like a ‘normal’ person.  But there are times like right now, where it gets really bad.  And the worse the pain, the more I want to sleep.

Pain numbs your mind.  It’s exhausting to deal with and it’s exhausting to pretend it isn’t there.

Which brings me to the point of this post: what’s the art to managing pain?  One of the major failures of our health care system is that no one teaches you how to manage severe pain.  They prescribe you narcotics, tell you to ‘take it easy’, but there’s hardly anyone out there who will teach you how to manage real life while you’re going through this.  So, I find myself taking pain killers at night, passing out on the sofa, getting two to three hours of sleep, wandering around, sleeping a bit more and then being completely useless during the day.  I am absolutely lucky to have a workplace with a very flexible work environment – I can stay at home, take a nap and get my work done.  If it weren’t for this, I don’t know what I would do.  How would someone be able to keep a job if they didn’t have this flexibility?

I suppose I’m writing because I don’t know the art of dealing with this.  I don’t know because it’s only been around for about a year and everything has been trial and error.  What I do know is that a lot of it is mental.  I can either let myself succumb to it or I can push through.  Or do both.

Most of the time, I’m in denial – I prefer to think that nothing’s wrong and then I end up making matters worse.  “Slow down, get some sleep.”, I hear this over and over again from my physiotherapist.  Maybe it’s time to listen to someone other than myself for a change.  Slowing down, what a concept.

Please let me know if you have any tips – I’m open to feedback or to hearing your stories about how you deal with pain!

I’ve been implementing a lot of changes in my life as of late.  Sometimes, I keep screwing up.  Like in the way I eat.  Sometimes that chocolate or that soda is just so appealing that I give in.  Sometimes, I give in too much.  I’ve written already about my teenage years, when I was a complete jock.  But as an adult, I lost my interest in sports and slowly, I started to lead a pretty sedentary lifestyle.  I work in IT.  Everyone is pretty sedentary.  And we tend to do what everyone else does: sit, get up for a washroom break, sit, eat lunch, sit.  Life revolves around sitting for 8, 9, 10 hours a day.

Last year, I became extremely ill.  I’ve written a lot about that already, too.  And I won’t get into it again.  But my physiotherapist and I were talking about preventative care today.  I’m reading a book about aging and about how we can take care of ourselves to increase our chances of growing old and living a long, long time instead of just decaying.  So we had a good talk while she worked on my back and legs.

I do physiotherapy because being healthy is now a huge priority for me.  I could shake it off as just aches and pains and live off painkillers.  But I don’t want that.  And trust me, the cost of paying out of pocket for physio and massage therapy is really, really high!   While some people might view it as an expense, I view these costs as an investment.

Last year, when doctors were trying to figure out what I had, none of them asked me how I ate or if I exercised or if I did drugs or if I drank all the time.  They ran diagnostic tests and tried out different kinds of meds.  Why hadn’t they asked me about my lifestyle?  Blood tests would probably determine if I had nutritional deficiencies but it would still be worthwhile to ask about how I spend the bulk of my day.  I would have answered: “I sit.  I sit all the time.  I eat junk food.  I don’t do much else.”

Diseases and conditions aren’t always caused by lifestyle choices, but how we live our life can help prevent those conditions from appearing in the first place.  And proper nutrition and exercise and getting a lot of sleep will help most people, with or without diseases.

I just wish that medical practitioners made this more of a priority.  I wish they included it in their practice in the first place.  Tell obese people that they need to lose weight.  Some conditions ARE caused by obesity – we have to stop just prescribing pills and help people lose the weight, help them make better choices, encourage them to walk.  That’s all, just get people to walk more.  And if you’re overweight, don’t take offense to the suggestion for gawd’s sake.  I’ve been there, I’m still there.. I know what it feels like to have sore knees just because of weight.

It was my physiotherapist last year who finally suggested to me that I should walk, that I should stretch and that I should make better nutritional choices.  And I started feeling better and needed less medication.  Simple, simple changes.  I’m a woman of science – I believe in medical advances and empirical evidence and the role of medication in treatment of conditions and treatment of pain.  But we have got to start asking our medical professionals to become more holistic, to refer patients to nutritionists and physiotherapists when the evidence shows that proper nutrition and movement is extremely beneficial to treating so many conditions. I just wish that my doctors had encouraged me to do make these changes in my life earlier.  So my advice to anyone going through pain or an illness: ask your doctor if any nutritional or exercise and movement therapies might help.  And if so, get a referral.  It’ll be worth it.