So, as part of my “Jess needs to suck less” plan, I’ve been meditating a lot. One of the tools I’ve been using for this has been tarot cards. Yes, I know it’s silly and kind of woo-woo, but meditating on the meanings and symbolism of the cards really puts me in a focused headspace.
And being ADHD, that is a hard headspace to get into.
One of my newfound habits has been drawing cards every morning and trying to relate them to my life somehow. Strangely enough, a lot of the time, they make a crapton of sense. Like, maybe God and the universe are telling me I’m wasting my writing and music talents by doing nothing but playing The Sims all day.
Today, I did a morning spread that asked a bunch of questions, like what I need to keep in mind today, and I can have the best day possible. One of the questions was “What do I need to let go of?” The card I drew? The emperor.
What?
If you don’t know much about tarot, the emperor usually represents all good things: stability, structure, healthy masculine energy. It’s the “fatherhood” card of the deck. Was my deck saying to let go of my daddy issues? Because like, my dad’s the freakin’ bomb.
But I did a little digging into the meanings, particularly the implications for health, and oh man, did it hit me. According to the website The Tarot Guide…well, I’ll let it speak for itself.
I mentioned in a few previous blog posts that I was attempting the 75 Hard challenge. Basically, two 45 minute workouts a day (one outside), follow a diet plan, drink a gallon of water a day, and read 10 pages of a nonfiction book daily. And it was going fairly well…for a while.
The cracks started to show though. The water was making me pee literally every half hour, taking away valuable time at work. Intermittent fasting was working (I lost ten pounds!), but I found myself half-dead by the time I was able to start eating for the day. And the workouts. OH GOD THE WORKOUTS. I kept having to restart my 75 day counter because I couldn’t keep it up. I spent so much of my energy unpacking and getting the new apartment in order, I barely had the motivation to even move by the time my workout times rolled around.
In short, I wasn’t listening to my body, and my body was protesting HARD. I remembered this time I got really into working out last year. I was also in the midst of being a guinea pig for an experimental treatment for chronic hives. This required regular blood work. One morning, after a night of going hard at the gym, I went in for my routine blood draw. Later that afternoon, I got an urgent call from the doctor. My blood had a whole lot of something it wasn’t supposed to have.
In short, I almost gave myself rhabdomyolysis.
I should have learned right then and there not to push myself over my body’s limit. I’ll get to a point where I can work out twice a day for 45 minutes, but I need to ease into it, for the sake of my own health and well-being. It’s not worth killing myself to finish some internet challenge.
Besides, I’m done with “challenges.” Challenges are temporary. I don’t want to go hard for 75 days only to fall back into bad habits. I want to change my lifestyle entirely. I want to learn to care for my body like the gift it is. I want to eat things that nourish me, stay active (but not, ya know, almost give myself a fatal blood condition), and dedicate my time to learning to be my best self for me.
Maybe I’ll do the 75 Hard challenge someday. But now is the time for self-care.
JESSA JOYCE 