This morning I woke up early, got up early for work, had a healthy breakfast, tidied up the kitchen, prepped my work lunch, and had a relaxed time getting out of the house and to work. Feeling very calm, took some notes about mindfulness this morning, and I’m glad that I did.

Last night after writing the previous Exploration post, I took a look at my activity chart. In order to maintain current activity levels, I need to do about 10 activities per day, a task that is well within reach. As an exploration into To-Do Listing, I wrote down each activity that has not yet reached its maintenance frequency (20 for Able, 12 for Accessible, 8 for Challenging, 4 for Hard). Then I wrote down how many more times I’d need to do each of them to keep them in their current categories. It feels very doable, before 9am I’ve already done 9 activities today, so I feel confident that I have a good chance of keeping everything at current maintenance levels.

I weighed myself today, clocked in at 198, very satisfied with that. I want to talk with my doctor and my therapist about this apparent fixation I seem to be developing with activity levels and weight. While I consider it healthy to want to remain healthy, I can foresee a difficulty ahead in the following year if I hold myself to stricter standards than are reasonable.

Had a conversation with my partner last night, and she shared a concern that, in the next year, we may begin to try and start a family. In the midst of this potentially stressful time, it would not be beneficial for me to be preoccupied with rumination and anxiety. She would be interested, as a scientist, with “tweaking the numbers” by playing with different dosages of medications with the aim of reducing ruminating and thought loops.

Paradoxically, I feel very calm now, when last night I seemed to be reaching a sort of ruminatory peak. It’s likely that our conversation helped me process certain emotions which had previously been stuck in limbo. Does processing these emotions discharge the ruminations as well? Perhaps. In any case, I’m very grateful to have a partner who is understanding and willing to have these sorts of conversations, and I seem to be feeling better now.

Something I brought up was a terror that all my progress would slowly slip away, and the revelation that I was not actually changing myself at all, merely riding the wave of the zepbound into a sustained period of more positive mood.

From a meta-analytical view, the cycle which I have just completed appears to be one I’ve identified in the past. I get stressed, I get more stressed, I get too stressed, and then I relax. At each stage, I can identify the progression of stress, and the symptoms of dysregulation in the body and mind are apparent. Awareness of this process as a process has helped me this time around, with not falling too deeply into depression about it. I think there’s space for mindfulness here, by both relaxing my attempts to relieve myself from stress, and simultaneously maintaining tranquility between periods of stress and peace.

This month I said I wanted to move with lightness, appreciation, and equanimity. Lightness in this sense would be not getting too disappointed or anxious about the way a day is going, or trying to place it within a broader context of improvement or regression. Appreciation, in this case will be the recognition that we are halfway through the last month of the year, and the holidays are best appreciated as a time of peace, joy, and togetherness with friends and family. Equanimity in this case would be to approach my daily experience with gratitude, free of judgement or a critical view.