Workin' for A Livin'

Today was the first real day at work since Easter that I was really able to catch up on things: filing, replacing and tossing catalogues, entering data, sending out memorial receipts. My desk looks so much cleaner and things are more organized, and I feel so much better.

Part of this is because I realize my vacation is coming up June 11 and I've got to get this office in tip-top shape for my fill-in so she doesn't walk into utter chaos. In fact, she's coming in tomorrow for her first day of training, and I didn't want her coming in and thinking, "Look at this mess! This is going to be a disaster!"

I have one of those jobs -- and every job I've had for the past 10 years has been like this -- that involve a plethora of duties. When I start making a list of all of them it takes a couple pages. I've got something to do with pretty much every single thing that goes on in this church, and I know at first it was pretty overwhelming. I had a notebook full of directions that broke down daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual things I must remember to do. While my predecessor gave me some of the notes, I remember writing tons more, trying to notate specific directions and where things were located on the computer or in the office.

In the first couple months I was constantly going to these notes, terrified I was going to forget something important. I would leave notes for myself and have to consciously go through each responsibility in my head at the end of the day to make sure I remembered everything.

Over time my job has become second nature. I have fallen into the weekly routine at work like my dental hygiene habits at home -- I do it without really thinking about it. With some job duties, I've found different ways to complete them that work better for me or have streamlined it to make myself more efficient. Once in a while something will slip my mind, but it's rare.

I realize that I'm going through a similar thing now with Intuitive Eating. Right now I'm in hyper-vigilance mode -- I have to make a special effort to tune in to why I'm hungry (emotional, physical?), concentrate hard on the eating experience to truly savor it, and pay intense attention and listen to my body to figure out when I'm satisfied or comfortably full. I am constantly deprogramming myself against the diet mentality; most of my internal thoughts right now are either convincing myself I can eat what I want, that I don't need to weigh myself and that I'm able to handle my daily stresses without food.

I'm clutching and referring to my IE books like I used to rely on my work duty notes. But I realize that eventually, with practice and time, this will become second nature just like my workday is. I won't have to pay so much attention to hunger and fullness because it will become natural to me. I won't spend so much time thinking and rethinking about food, eating and weight because I will have finally absorbed the IE mentality and can get on with other things in my life.

This thought makes me so happy, because it means that while this IE work is hard, the dedication I'm giving to it now is going to pay off in spades in the near future. I can't wait for my pay day -- a life of recovery.