Journaling

I was energized this morning. I wrote in my journal in the Morning Pages fashion. For those of you that are familiar with this style, your write, without taking your pen/pencil off the paper for three pages. It's a stream of consciousness kind of thing and is , for me , a wonderful way to kick start my day. I haven't done it in a long time and didn't realize until this morning how much I missed it. If you want to read more about Morning Pages and how to do them check out Julia Cameron's web site. She wrote the Artist's Way, among other great books.

Why is it that we stop doing the things that we like to do or that are good for us or that make us feel good, but require some effort to do them? I'm not talking about eating hot fudge sundaes here, I'm talking about...exercise, for lack of a better idea. I bet we all have started an exercise program, felt how good we felt doing it and then just stopped it. WHY??? Help me here. I have gone around and around in my mind on this. I do it all the time. I stop what I know is good for me. Exercise, eating lots of fruit and veggies, journaling, meditating; all hit and miss with me. No consistency or discipline.

The cycle starts like this. I get inspired and feel the passion of lets say yoga. I get books and read about it and take a class. I start a daily practice and it's going well. About three weeks into it I've scheduled an emergency dental appointment at 8:30 which will make it impossible for me to do yoga that day, because, of course, I only have the time in the morning. If I wait until the afternoon I will just blow it off so morning is my time, besides, I feel fresher then.

I start again the next day. But in a couple of days I'm thinking how nice it was to be able to sleep a little longer and I'm feeling a cold coming on, so I should take it easy - and I decide to lay off the yoga until I feel better. It takes a couple of years to get back to it. And so it goes... for all my life I have been doing this. I'm sick sick sick of it.

The question is, who is running my life? Who is making me do this circular non-productive, destructive behavior? I think it's an alien who invaded my body at an early age. Surely, no self respecting thoughtful person would perpetuate this kind of behavior with full knowledge of what it is doing to them. So alien it is. Best I have a chat with this thing ASAP, because I've started yoga again and really need to keep at it. My body is yelling to me that unless I do something to stretch out theses kinks I will be in big trouble, and I know my body means it this time.