The Art & Poetry of Mary Coleman

So I have finished the two figures in my PPE painting. Took me about 3 hours to get them done. I feel pretty good about this painting. The next step is to get the trash bags done. That’s going to be tricky, rendering the shiny plastic and all its wrinkles. I feel good having gone back to this series. It’s what I needed to do.

I wrote 3 poems this week and I liked all of them. Here they are:

Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.

A phase in my life that was difficult to say goodbye to was college. I had been working so hard towards getting my degree that when I finished my postgraduate studies, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt aimless and purposeless. It took a long time to adjust to not having assignments and goals to work towards that were concrete. I had to set my own personal goals for the first time and it was hard to find motivation to work when I didn’t have deadlines to adhere to. I figured it out eventually though and now I am pretty good at setting goals for myself and achieving them without some outside pressure to move me forward.

What I achieved in February…

This February I achieved the beginnings of developing exercise into a habit. I managed to get through the month with only 4 days off so an average of 6 days a week! It’s much easier to do now, much less anxiety around starting. I’m more resigned to doing it when the time comes. I also introduced strength training which is really good for me and I do that twice a week.

I averaged around 1500 calories a day for the month which is fantastic. Longest I have ever gone averaging less than 2000 calories a day (and also most of January too!). Sure I had days where I ate a lot more than 1500, but I balanced it out with days I ate a bit less. Overall a great success!

I started doing social media. It’s not habit yet and one of the weeks I really lapsed on it and had a step backward in habit building, but I picked it up the last week of February and got back to doing it daily. I have 1500 followers on Instagram now and more every day because I keep adding new people.

I started doing creativity every day and I’ve made it to 25 days in a row of doing something creative without a single break. The key is not to do the same kind of creativity every single day. It’s a balance of writing and visual art, so that I switch back and forth to avoid burnout in one or the other.

I have mostly gotten my panic attacks to being very minor, short lived things (30 minutes thereabouts) where they have early symptoms, but do not snowball into full panic. My last significant panic attack was in January. So I am nearly cured. I have kept up with coping strategies most days of the month, including progressive muscle relaxation, a mindful walk with the dog for 15 minutes, meditation with coping statements, daily strenuous exercise, and a daily letter to myself discussing my worries in a gentle way. They really seem to keep anxiety low. It’s been at about a 2 to 4 throughout the day which is down from around a 5 to 8.

I gave up sweets this month. It’s been 13 days since I had any. No cravings so far. Feeling a lot less anxiety throughout the day. Sugar gives me high anxiety, so without it my overall mood is a lot better.

I have been fasting during the daytime most days and eating only one meal a day. It’s still easy to fall off the wagon and snack, but it’s also easy now to get back on the wagon and resume fasting again. It’s mostly habit, unless something really tempting is in the house. I need to learn my lesson about that! Can’t have snack food or sweets in the house at all. Just dinner food.

I lost 7.4 pounds. 17 in total so far.

I started reading poetry again, 3 poems a day. It’s not too anxiety provoking to read just 3 short poems a day.

Anyway, looking over the entire month, I think I have been really successful in working towards my New Year’s resolutions.

March Goals

1. Continue to work on exercise and building it as a daily habit. Try to do it every single day if you can.

2. Continue to eat one meal a day and try to average around 1500 calories a day.

3. Continue to do social media daily and this month start to use Threads more often and building that as a second platform in addition to Instagram. Update Facebook. Do Threads at bedtime. Instagram during the daytime.

4. Continue to do something creative each day. Start to work on formatting and getting your book ready for publishing one day a week. Count that as creativity. Finish your PPE painting and start work on poetry illustrations after that to have a break from doing the same thing. Start another PPE painting after you finish a few illustrations. Try to write 2-3 poems a week.

5. Start reading longer books for 30 minutes in the evening in addition to doing Threads.

6. Continue to abstain from sugary foods.

7. Try to limit takeout to once a week for the entirety of the month. Only 4 times in March. Save as much money as you can. Limit spending on Amazon to necessities only.

8. Lose as much weight as you realistically can, but don’t set arbitrary goals. Just aim to be somewhere in the 120’s by April 1.