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So here's what's on my mind going into this challenge. I finally had some time to try to sort some thoughts out... Escape to Reality, what does that even mean? About 6 months ago, I finally went to see a therapist. I was struggling with depression issues, and addiction issues. I finally admitted I needed help and even though I was terrified, I made the commitment to get help, rather than continue the cycle of depression and denial. Here are some things I learned about myself. I have identity issues. I’m a typical American 40+ year old mother. After college, I put my life on hold, helped my husband through grad school by working (not career related), then we moved, bought a house, I started going back to school, but then kids happened, and somewhere along the way I got lost. I didn’t feel a strong sense of identity anymore. My life for the past 15 years has been a series of reactions to what my family needs, with moments of self-indulgence with no real purpose thrown into the mix. Some wonderful things have happened, and I made some choices when I needed to. On paper, my life is good. But I felt like I lost the opportunity to develop my own personal identity. As a coping skill, I created not just one, but several fantasy identities in my head, definitions of the kind of person I thought I was supposed to be. I was supposed to be supermom – the mother who nurtured and supported her children and husband. You typical 1940s housewife who baked, and cleaned, and tucked her children into bed at night. Made nourishing meals and helped her children flourish. I was supposed to be a bohemian artist, who filled her house with creativity and open-mindedness. Since I couldn’t afford to bring my family to the world, I was going to bring the world to my family through art and culture and a desire to explore wherever my/our curiosity led. I was supposed to be a successful business woman. I am a creative person, so I should be able to make some kind of business out of all the things I produce. Maybe an Etsy store, maybe work craft fairs around the county, maybe have an online business. I was supposed to be able to take all of these wonderful creative and entrepreneurial ideas and build an empire with them to support both my creativity and my family. You can see where I’m going with this. There are at least a dozen more stereotypical identities that I had somehow compartmentalized as defining who I needed to be. The problem was – I wanted to be all of them, simultaneously. My guess is that it’s a common phenomenon for women my age. We work to be supportive, and provide our lives with very little support for ourselves. So I had these false realities tumbling around in my head of the kind of person I identified myself as, and when I inevitably failed to be perfect examples of them, I would get depressed. I developed a coping mechanism of reading to escape. Reading put my depression and my disappointment in myself on hold. For a few hours I could escape into a different world where everything turned out for the best, and happily ever-afters existed. Unfortunately it became an addiction. Every time I would start to feel bad, I would reach for a book and put everything else in my life on hold – my responsibilities, my family, my health….. So after a marathon weekend of reading 5 romance novels, and letting my 11 year old son go hungry, and my house being a disaster, I decided to get help from a therapist. The sessions were raw and ugly and scary, but I finally got to a place where I think I could actually acknowledge how screwed up my thoughts have been. So now I feel like I’m on the very beginning of a quest – to find my true reality. I face the constant battles of falling back into where I was before. I have to constantly challenge myself to ask if how I am feeling is because of something that is real, or because of what my mind wants to be real. I’m working with addiction recovery practices, reading a lot of Buddhist writings, trying to make meditating a part of my life. I’m trying to take life one step at a time and acknowledge moments for what they truly are. I said before that I felt like I lost the chance to develop my own personal identity. But what I’m learning is that my personal identity is already established. It is who I am, in this moment, with everything that has happened to me up to this point. I have refused to look at it; I have refused to accept it because it isn’t what I dreamed of being when I was 18 years old. It’s time to jump down that rabbit hole, and find out who I really am, and what is truly real. So while I start to move forward with all of that, this is what I'm going to focus on for this challenge. I'm keeping it as simple as I can. My goals are a challenging for me in the sense that they are creating new habits that I want to be part of my life, but hopefully not so overwhelming that they can be done with the amount of effort that I can muster. 1.Exercise: workouts 3 days a week. 2. Exercise: try kettlebell swings 1x per week 3. Healthy Eating: prep salads for each day of the week on the weekends 4. Life: chores: 5 dailies and 1 today chore. Every day. One daily must include a minimum of 10 minutes a day in my shop. Loot for A averages 1. moon yoga mat 2. dumbel fractional weight magnets 3. two serving spoons 4. A silk pillow case