Armed and Less Dangerous

This is a stock photo. I was too bummed to take a photo of my spill.

A strange thing happened when I tipped a glass of wine on my laptop Thursday night. I didn’t get mad. I didn’t panic. And although it wasn’t the brightest thing I’ve ever done, I didn’t scream and yell and call myself an idiot. I simply assessed the situation with a quiet, “Crap,” wiped up the wine with some paper towels, and went to bed.

The next morning, I called Hewlett Packard (thank goodness for accidental damage warranties), and had a 45-minute conversation with a call center representative located somewhere in Asia. I jumped through a bunch of hoops (yes, I know to plug in the power supply to a working outlet) until the representative decided that my computer wasn’t going to power on and said HP would send me a box in which to return my computer for service or replacement.

While I had predicted the outcome and would rather have spent those 45 minutes doing something more productive, I didn’t stress, at least not in that, “Oh my god, I have to solve this NOW!” kind of way. The coolest part of this not-so-stressed state was that I was able to notice how, during that 45-minute conversation, my mind drifted into thinking it would be a good idea to eat my way through the groceries I’d bought the day before – the hummus and the cottage cheese, the plums and popcorn. I also thought about my last AIM post on what’s different this time, and more of my maintenance story unfolded.

When I started this journey in 2005, I had a one-track mind. I was going to DO it! No matter what! Then I got to maintenance and I was going to DO it! No matter what! But “no matter what” became a divorce and grandchildren and school and additional arthritis issues, and my one-track mind turned into a cornucopia of coping mechanisms.

But what’s different this time is that I was able to identify many of those coping mechanisms and sit with them and not completely fold in on myself. I gained some pounds, but I stopped them from multiplying. Why? Because I finally “get” that I have a “weighted” past and that I have a propensity to gain weight just by looking in a bakery window. I don’t like it, I wish it wasn’t true, but I can wish and not like all I want, but the truth is, I have to pay attention.

AND…and this is most important…I have to care enough about myself to not call myself an idiot when I screw up. Because the reality is: I will screw up and I will respond. But that response doesn’t have to include eating my way through my refrigerator or speaking cruelly to myself. A simple acknowledgment of the screw up will suffice, along with a thoughtful plan on how to improve or solve the situation.

I’m not looking forward to loading all that software back on to my new or refurbished computer, or recreating bookmarks and bookmark folders in Firefox, but I’m arming myself with self-kindness for the task. Self-kindness that involves working out before and probably after, and allowing myself to eat things I’ve identified, for me, as healthy comfort food. Things like hummus and veggies, sardines, edamame (in the shell…finger food!), smoked almonds, Jarlsburg lite, Honeycrisp apples, and roasted asparagus.

And now that I know laptops don’t like chardonnay, I will separate the glass from the computer from now on. Yes, that’s probably obvious to the savvy among you reading, and I’m sure this won’t be my last time around the self-evident block. But I’ll be armed and less dangerous next time.