Peg Kerr's Journal

I started getting back on Sparkpeople.com two weeks ago, and already I'm seeing results. I'm tracking food and starting to exercise again, and already I've lost five pounds.

I've been making a real effort to eat more vegetables, and more vegetarian meals. In fact, I think I last ate meat four or more days ago, can't quite remember.

Today's lunch was so pretty, I took a picture. Open faced broiled veggie sandwiches. I took two pieces of bread, spread them with dijon mustard, and topped with shredded carrots and beets, purple cauliflower and slices of red bell pepper. I sprinkled muenster cheese on top, broiled it to melt the cheese, and then spread some hummus on top of that. Yummy and virtuous.









(You do realize that no one else in my family would touch something like this.)

I've been thinking more about the series of entries I made about decreasing worldsuck. Specifically, I've been thinking about making this a personal project this year. Besides the thinking I've been doing in those previous entries, I've been reading Barack Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father (OMG what an absolutely AMAZING book). I've been really inspired about the upcoming inauguration, and Obama's mission to help people find what they can do to help get the country back on track. My church asked, during the recent stewardship drive, that people commit to donating an hour of time a week to service in their community, as well as the more traditional commitment of financial support. I've been more active on the Sparkpeople.com website in the past week, as I've been thinking about recommitting to getting fit (what a time to get injured, groan) and saw a video about the site's founder, who started and runs it for free, specifically because he wants to make the world a better place. (see two minute video about Sparkpeople.com and the founder's mission, here.) One of the things the Sparkpeople.com site does is let you set your own goals.

Yesterday, I was standing in line at the grocery store. All this thinking collided together in my mind when I saw a poster informing customers that they could take a coupon, for $1, $3, or $5 and give it to the cashier, and then the cashier would add that amount to their bill, and then grocery store would donate that amount to a local foodshelf. "This is something I can do right now to reduce worldsuck," I thought, and I took a coupon and gave it to the cashier. I suddenly thought, well, why not make this an ongoing project?

Suppose I try to find a specific way, each day, to reduce worldsuck. Suppose I keep track of it on Sparkpeople, the way I keep track of calories, workout minutes, calcium, and other goals I'm tracking. I could set up a goal called "Decrease worldsuck" and check it off every day when I do something like, buy a $1 coupon to donate groceries to my local foodshelf, or shovel a neighbor's walk, or . . . or what?

What could I do? Could I find something to do every day? Even just a small thing? Besides the basics of being a good employee, a good parent, a good citizen, there are little ongoing things I do already: pack my lunch in a laptop lunchbox instead of buying frozen lunches in plastic trays. Biking to work in the summer. Microlending at Kiva.org, to help entrepreneurs build better lives for themselves. Recycling. I'll keep doing that ongoing stuff, but can I find other, tangible, specific things, each day? Well, I'll have one week this spring covered, when I go work in an orphanage in Mexico. What about every other day in the year?

Should I report it here, to inspire other people to get involved, too? I'm not sure. I could append a note at the end of an entry, "this is what I did today to decrease worldsuck." (I already post here in my LiveJournal close to once every day anyway.) Would that be annoying, or would it be good because it would keep the idea in front of people? There is a school of thought (a religious ethic if you will) that if you do a good deed, best not to trumpet it about, as if you're praising yourself. Maybe I could keep a running tally in a private entry, dated December 31, 2009, and then when that day comes at the end of the year, I could post the whole thing at once.

How do I see making the world a better place? That's something to think about. Protecting the environment. Helping people who are struggling. Helping support children and families. Helping support the disenfranchised. Helping literacy and education causes. Helping people fight chemical dependency. Helping raise people's spirits. Helping people become involved. Helping people get healthy. Helping foster new businesses.

So . . . thoughts/reactions? Can you suggest tangible, specific things I could do, just on a daily basis, to make the world a better place? What do YOU do? I will probably need lots of ideas, if I'm going to keep this up. Would you be interested in doing something like this yourself this year? Can you suggest LJ communities that are organized around ideas for decreasing world suck? (I can think of one: daily_granola. Can you think of others?)

P.S. So far, I've gotten 63 people to sign up at SparkPeople. Hey, that's making the world a better place! Anyone else want to join up? Click here:



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Edited to add: This is my soundtrack for today, on endless repeat: American Prayer, by Dave Stewart, with friends. Many, many thanks to blpurdom, for bringing this song to my attention. Yes, you can buy it on iTunes.


( American Prayer )

ETA: What I'll do to decrease worldsuck today: I'll spread this idea to my family. Every day at the dinner table, we go around and have everybody say one good thing about the day. Tonight, I'll suggest that we also report whatever we did that day to make the world a better place. I think it'd be a good thing to get the girls thinking about this, too.

ETA: seagrit drew my attention to the website/blog: www.coolpeoplecare.org ("saving the world 5 minutes at a time"). They have an article every day that lists one thing you can do in 5 minutes or less to make the world a better place, everything from recycling and composting to donating frequent flier miles to the make a wish foundation. I checked, and they have an RSS feed: feed_5mincare. Friend it, and you can read the suggestions on your friends page every day. Thanks, seagrit!

I'm stiff and sore all over. I've been aware lately that my weight has been creeping up, so I've given it some hard thought, contemplating what I'm willing to do to try to get myself into better shape. I'd been letting some of my healthy habits slack off. I stopped weight lifting, for example, when I had the gall bladder surgery, and I never picked it back up again. I'd stopped tracking food when I got down close to my goal weight, and so extra calories started creeping back in.

So: recommitment to healthy living. Push more vegetables into the diet, back to the weight lifting again (I did an upper body weights workout yesterday, which is why I'm so sore), back to the food tracking. I'm also trying to do the summer goals program in karate (do the form 150 times, 1500 slow kicks, 1000 push ups, etc.) I had to miss karate last night since there was a church council meeting, but I ended up at the dojo to clean it at the tail end of class. I was really bummed to see that they had been working on form. That's the class I've been pining to have for the past month--I am not crystal clear on all the folds for Zhang Do Moon, and if I'm going to be practicing my form 150 times this summer, for heaven's sakes I want to do it right.

I've been rather quiet on LJ lately because we do a lot of family get-togethers in the week between Christmas and New Years. Our last hurrah for the holidays is our annual Twelfth Night breakfast; we'll probably take the decorations down after that. (I'd like to make this Twelfth Night cake, but alas, the girls will probably veto it since (horrors!) it has fruit in it. I'll have to come up with something else.)

It turns out Rob's new job will start next week; it took awhile for all the paperwork to get processed. Meanwhile he's getting stuff done around the house that he's been promising to finish for months now.

I've been thinking about New Years and resolutions, as I do every year. My weight took a real jump this past month, partly due to the holidays, of course, and partly, I suspect, due to stress eating--I was really worried about the unemployment coming to an end. I'm not being too hard on myself about it, but I've decided to start tracking my calories again on SparkPeople, and upping my exercise program again, including adding the weight-lifting back in (I'd let it slide when I started biking and especially after the gall bladder surgery, and I never really picked it up again). I think I'll be able to get back down under 150 before too long.

But about self-assessment in general: Kij has been talking to me the past couple of weeks about needing to take a hard look at her own life, trying to figure out what she needs to do. Something she said stuck in my mind, the need to be honest and to face the stuff you've been avoiding. I've been thinking about that this week. What about me, what have I been avoiding facing?

I think the truth that I've avoided saying is that the conviction has been growing in me that I don't think I'm ever going to write a novel again. I don't know why, but the fire I used to have in me to write fiction has gone out. Kij and I talked about it this morning; I said that for so many years I thought of myself as a writer (and for me, that meant specifically a writer of published fiction). Facing this realization means facing the fact that the way I use to identify myself must change--even as I acknowledge a point that several people on my friends list have made to me repeatedly (cakmpls I think, specifically)--that what I perhaps need to do is to quit thinking of myself in terms of what I do (I am a fiction writer, I am a karate student). It's less mind messing is just to accept myself as myself--I am Peg. There are various things I do--I wrote novels in the past, right now I'm studying karate. I may or may not do these various things in the future, but I don't need to let that cause a corresponding upheaval in my own identity.

This realization feels quite sad, although I am, of course saying never say never. Maybe a great novel idea will mug me when I'm in my mid-fifties that I'll absolutely have to write.

But where I am right now, I don't really see it happening.

So I'm putting it out there. The most absurdly neurotic part of myself wonders if there will be a mass unfriending as a result ("Peg says she's not going to write fiction anymore??! My god, why have I have been wasting my valuable time reading her stupid blathering journal? *Defriends immediately*") But fortunately the wiser and mature part of myself realizes that this fear is neurotic; in fact it's absolutely ridiculous. If you were going to defriend my journal because I'm not producing publishable fiction, you'd have done it months ago. Heck, it's been blindingly obvious for months now that's not what this journal is about anymore anyway.

So we simply continue on as we have before. I write essays here. I go to karate. I try to cook dinners my family will deign to eat. I garden. I face the dark and try to reach for the light. I make wry observations. I natter on (and on! and on!) about my extremely silly obsessions. I try to be a better person--wiser, more empathetic, more thoughtful, more politically aware.

I live my life. And it's a pretty good life. I tell you about it. Or as least as much about it as Elinor Dashwood wants to share.

You read. Or not.

Your choice.

Walkertracker.com, for recording steps if you wear a pedometer every day. Found it through SparkPeople.

As of today, I've dropped a total of twenty pounds. It's nice to be able to look in the mirror and think, damn, girl, you're really starting to look pretty good.



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Edited to add: here is a comment I added below, and I might as well add it here.

One must see the beauty within at any weight. There were things I definitely liked about myself at a higher weight--my hair, my hands, my arms and legs.

But as I've lost the weight, it is as if the true lines of my face are being slowly revealed, the way that Michelangelo said that he saw the angel within a block of marble, and all he had to do was to cut away the extra marble. It is important to acknowledge that the angel was always there--I simply think it is more visible now. I like the curve of my jawline more at a lower weight. I prefer the way I fit into my clothes. I prefer my stomach at a lower weight. I prefer the fact that I feel lighter at my feet.

For those of you, like me, who are trying to get healthier (hey, all you SparkPeople!), I have found an interesting website called The World's Healthiest Foods. I have set up a syndicated feed for it, at whfoods. It has very detailed nutritional information on these foods, with recipes to suggest so you can incorporate them into your diet. Criteria for inclusion:

1. Most nutritionally dense
2. Whole foods
3. Familiar foods
4. Readily available
5. Affordable
6. Taste good.

Also you might find the Food Advisor on this site to be interesting, a survey you can take which suggests foods you might want to incorporate into your diet, based on your age, gender, personal lifestyle and individual health needs.

Interesting site. It is set up as a non-for-profit, to enable them, they say, to maintain an independent perspective on nutrition research. Worth checking out.

from my SparkPeople blog:

I went to one of my favorite restaurants for dinner last night, The Birchwood Cafe, which serves organic locally grown produce, including many vegan and vegetarian dishes. (It's a little tough to track SparkPoints when I eat there because many of their dishes are so unusual that there is nothing to compare them to in the nutrition tracker. So tracking things eaten there is pure guess). When I had finished eating, I told them to send word to the cooks: I had ordered the Golden Beet Risotta, which included carnaroli rice with roasted golden beets, arugula, grand padano cheese, heirloom tomatoes, chevre, purple basil chiffonade, and pine nuts. "Tell them that it was so good I almost cried. It was the best meal I've eaten in a couple of months. Tell them I had to stop myself from making orgasmic sounds as I ate, for fear of scaring the other diners."

I love eating at the Birchwood because it's a terrific example that healthy food can be absolutely delicious. I had gone a little bit high on calories for the day before I had gone there, which was part of the reason I chose that restaurant: I knew that I could find a reasonable calorie option that would be a memorable dining experience.

Here is my SparkPage at SparkPeople.

If you sign up there, too, let me know.

There is a Livejournal community, too: sparkpeopleslj.