New Year, New Chapter

So, this is it. The last blog post of 2022 (probably). And I even redecorated for the occasion! Like the new color scheme? I had to incorporate bluey-green, because it’s my favorite color, but the brown just takes it to the next level, right?

I also had to update my picture. I haven’t been blonde for a hot minute, which is so weird to me, but fitting. My teens were blonde, my 20s were weird hair colors, and my 30s will be black. I’m like a Pokémon that changes colors as it evolves, and I feel like I’m finally evolving into the most powerful version of myself. I’m about to reach level 30 and become a mighty electrifying Ampharos after spending several levels as a cute, nonthreatening Flaafy.

Now I just need an Ampharosite so I can have badass hair.

This evolution has brought on a lot of changes, many of which I’ve documented in this blog. I stopped drinking entirely, which is wild to me because I love beer (hit me with your best non-alcoholic beer recommendations in the comments, readers!). It just wasn’t serving me anymore and was causing more damage to my body and mind than I liked. In addition, I got formally diagnosed with ADHD and bipolar disorder and started taking the medications I actually need. Those two changes alone have been revolutionary. I’m not the same person I was this time last year by any stretch of the imagination, and it feels good. I wasn’t a huge fan of that version of me. I like this one more.

But the thing about evolution is that it doesn’t stop happening. In order to be the absolute best version of myself, I need to keep working on the most important project I’ll ever be tasked with — Jess J. Salisbury. Me, the person. Not the blog, although that’s a part of it.

The new year is supposed to be a time of setting goals and making resolutions, many of which won’t make it to the end of January, much less the end of the year. I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want to set goals I can easily set aside at the first sign of failure. My goal is to hit the gym at least three times a week. So what happens when I have a busy week and fall off for a few days? Do I just give up? That’s why I don’t like viewing my goals as “resolutions.” Instead, they’re part of a sort of year-long bucket list.

So what do I plan to do? I’m glad you asked! I’ll start with the goal that’s most pertinent to this website.

Two blog posts a week

That’s right. No less than two blog posts any given week. If I screw up one week, I’m challenging myself to jump back on it the next week. I recently wrote a post about the direction I want to take this blog, but feel free to drop more ideas for things you want to see here. I’m thinking more music musings, some book reviews, maybe some more spiritual stuff, and of course, my guide to living with ADHD, as well as the fiction I’ve been working on. There’s no shortage of things I like writing about, so make sure to keep checking back for new content often!

Keep a planner all year

I started keeping a planner a few months back. Surprise! It’s done wonders for my mental health as well as my organizational skills. My initial trick was to get a subscription to a monthly planner, so every month I’d have fresh new pages with new prompts and visuals to keep my attention. But then, the unthinkable happened — my December planner got lost in the move! Thinking quickly, I downloaded an app called Zinnia, which is essentially a journaling app for your phone. And this has been ridiculously helpful for me, since I’m on my phone all the time anyways. I can’t leave it at home. It’s always with me, everywhere, all the time.

Get down to my goal weight of 140

Ah yes, the dreaded weight loss resolution that everyone either makes or makes a blog post decrying. Yes, losing weight for vanity reasons is a slippery slope into nasty things like eating disorders, and I’m first in line to support the body positivity movement. But here’s the thing about being body positive — it only works if you’re treating said body positively. I gained a lot of weight over the last several years, and I’ve realized I can’t blame it all on my psychiatric meds, especially now that I’m taking Adderall, which should balance the antidepressant weight gain out. No, I gained this weight because I’ve treated this temple like a freaking dive bar, poisoning it with copious amounts of alcohol and greasy low-nutrient foods. This extra weight I carry is a physical manifestation of the baggage that came with being a compulsive binge eater in the beginning stages of alcoholism. I’ve cut out those two habits and already dropped nearly 30 pounds. Now I’m adding the habit of working out regularly and staying active, and I haven’t felt this good since I was in high school and in the best shape of my life. By the end of 2023, I should be down to my pre-gain size, and I’m so ready.

Become conversational in Arabic

Wallah, I mean it this time. It’s easy to forget in my white British-American English-speaking bubble that nearly half of the world is bilingual, but working at my new job has made me acutely aware of how much I suck as a global citizen. Like, I’m useless in any country that wasn’t once taken over by the Brits. But nearly everyone I work with is bilingual. I live in an area with a pretty hefty Arab population, and most of my coworkers and several of our patients can speak Arabic with ease. I don’t exactly plan on being a diplomat to Egypt or a Quranic scholar, so I’m not holding myself to incredibly high standards here. I just want to be able to say basic sentences and hold a conversation in Arabic. Right now, I know how to say “hi,” “bye,” and “give me bread,” which is useful if I’m ever like, in a dire bread emergency in Lebanon or something, but it would be nice to know some pharmacy-specific phrases.

Do 75Hard AT LEAST ONCE

I tried this already. Remember that? Just one of the dozens of things I’ve started and didn’t finish? I’ve been using the “bUt I hAvE aDhD” excuse for too long. Okay, so lots of successful people have ADHD. They’re not whining about how they can’t finish the thing. They’re out there, taking their Adderall and meditating and doing everything they can to do the damn thing. And that’s what I want to do. So 75Hard is a bunch of arbitrary rules you have to follow for 75 days. But I’m gonna follow them if it kills me, just to prove to myself that I have self-discipline, the thing that has evaded me my whole life. I don’t know when I’m going to do this (although it will probably be in the summer when it’s nicer out and I don’t have to do my daily outdoor workouts in a blizzard like a psychopath), but I want to do it once. Just so I can say that I did it.

Release WUJ 2023

Speaking of things I’ve started and never finished, I’ve been saying new music is on the way since our last release, “If I Stay,” which came out more than a year ago. This isn’t just a “me” thing, since I’m only one member of the band and this will be a group effort, but as the frontwoman, I need to make sure we keep moving in the right direction. I’m tired of stagnating as a musician. I write songs to be heard by others, and if no one’s hearing us, what’s the point of having a band? And speaking of which, I want to be more “on top” of our social media this year. People need to hear us, and if it takes TikTok or Instagram to get our music out there, so be it. The world is changing and so is the music industry. I need to take advantage of modern social media and learn how to use it to get us noticed. And speaking of music, there’s my final, most crucial goal for the year.

Finish my classes with at least a B and get that music therapy degree (finally)

That’s it. The degree I’ve been working toward for literally twelve years is so close to being mine. I started down the road to being a music therapist at 18, when my parents convinced me to change my major from pre-med to music (unlike every other parent ever), but I came to the conclusion that I was too mentally ill and messed up to ever help anyone else. And that’s a fucking lie. I now believe my mental illnesses and neurodivergences will make me a better music therapist because I’ve been on the other side. I will know how my clients’ minds work even better than a neurotypical music therapist would because I’m one of them. And now I have the tools, medications, and coping mechanisms I need to make it through the schooling I need. It’s too late to turn back now. I’m going to get this degree and get a fancy little “MT-BC” after my name, once and for all.

And there you have it. I’m done with being mediocre. Only I have the power to change my life for the better, and this is the year I finally do it.

2023, let’s go.

The Emperor’s New Health Goals

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.

To be fair though, I was *killing* the reading requirement.

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.

Live Hard Day Two: Becoming Steak

When I was in junior high, I briefly had the nickname Bubbles, before my classmates latched onto “Salisbury Steak” and later, simply “Steak.” If you knew me at all in high school, you’d know why a meat-inspired moniker was hilariously weird for a girl like me. I wasn’t particularly muscly or threatening or beefy. I was the Ute and wholesome little blonde-haired church girl who would probably cry if someone said something remotely mean to her. I would have considered myself more of a marshmallow than a steak.

But I digress. The point is, for a very brief time, I was nicknamed Bubbles, after the Powerpuff Girl, natch.

You could have put this picture in the yearbook under my name and no one would have questioned it.

In a lot of ways, I was Bubbles. I was always the adorable, innocent, naive one. I liked cute things and candy and stuffed animals. I had the blonde-hair blue-eyed ingenue look. I could talk to animals (although they seldom talked back to me). And when flanked by my two wildly badass siblings, I looked like an absolute creampuff.

A lot has changed since then. I’ve been through a lot. I’m not innocent by any measure. My style has shifted through the years, but I’m certainly not the tiny blonde Precious Moments figurine I used to be.

Unless that Precious Moments figurine had a late-20s big titty goth gf phase.

Still, I find myself feeling like Bubbles quite often. Even though I’ve been hardened by age, I’m still quite sensitive and wishy-washy and admittedly kind of a crybaby. Perhaps it’s the Pisces in me. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m the youngest. All I know is I don’t want to be that way anymore. I know I have badass potential. Enter my Bubblevicious moment. If you don’t remember that particular episode, let this jog your memory:

Sometimes you need to decide to be badass, and that’s where I am. I know what I’m doing isn’t working for me. I don’t have the mental or physical strength I want to have.

Enter the Live Hard challenge.

I’ve said in my previous post that I’m not a huge fan of Andy Frisella for reasons that should be pretty obvious, but I’m also not a huge fan of throwing the baby out with the bath water. And frankly, his Live Hard program is legit. I’m on my second day of following the 75 Hard ruleset, and I already fee significantly better. Because I am ADHD as all hell and need to keep myself accountable somehow, I decided to post my updates on here. Here are my observations so far:

1. Stick to a diet.

This is probably the hardest one for me, because the diet I chose is intermittent fasting, and I work weird hours. I decided on noon to 8 p.m. for my eating window, and I’m just going to pray every night that my coworkers didn’t bring in a pizza to share. So far though, I’m doing alright. I got a little antsy toward the end of my fast earlier today, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Plus, my Adderall makes me crave food less. I’m allowing unsweetened coffee and tea during my fasting hours as well, so that’s helping a bit, although I didn’t realize consuming caffeine on an empty stomach wreaks this much havoc on your digestive system.

As in, this entire post so far has been written on the toilet.

2. No alcohol.

This is probably the easiest one because I quit drinking a few months back. In fact, I’m officially almost four months sober. Small victories, y’all.

3. Two 45 minute workouts a day, one being outside.

This has been probably deceptively easy so far, and I’m no doubt going to eat my words in a few days when DOMS sets in.

Not the kind of doms I’m referring to, but you could argue that it, too, hurts so good.

I’m already starting to feel some of the delayed soreness in my arms, so I’m trying to keep my vision of Badass Jess in my head. This pain will eventually become muscle, and then I too can become an intimidating dominatrix— I mean, a completely wholesome but buff woman that definitely does not engage in BDSM.

Except my Bible Study/Discussion Meetings.

My workouts so far have been a half hour of biking following by fifteen minutes of weight training for the indoor portion, and a 45 minute walk around the neighborhood for the outdoor portion. My wife has been very much on board with taking daily walks, and our talks during these lengthy walks have been doing wonders for both of our mental health issues and our relationship as a whole. I’ll probably want to up the ante in a while to something a bit more strenuous, like biking or jogging, but I’m kind of loving these little walks with my girl.

4. Read 10 pages of nonfiction/self-help/something that will make you suck less as a person.

Ah, yes, my favorite part of the challenge, and a big reason I decided to take it on. I love this idea, and I went above and beyond assembling a set of books to navigate through in the next few months. I’m starting by alternating between two titles that are relevant to my struggles with ADHD — Decluttering at the Speed of Life by Dana K. White, and You Need a Budget by Jesse Mecham. So far, I’ve been killing this part of the challenge, reading more than required daily just because I’m hooked. Honestly, I forgot how much I love reading, especially nonfiction books, and these particular titles are helping quite a bit already. I’ll probably review them on here once I’m finished with them. Next up on my list is How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age by Dale Carnegie and The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, although I admit I cheated a bit and parsed through parts of them already. I guess it’s better to read too much than not enough.

5. Drink a gallon of water.

I lied. This is probably the easiest part of the challenge for me, and strangely enough, it seems to be the hardest for everyone else. I don’t know why I just drink so much water naturally. Was I a camel in a past life? Who knows.

6. Take a progress pic daily.

I’ve taken my pictures, and I’m not gonna lie, I always remember to do this when I’m about to jump in the bath and have already disrobed. So my first two days are a bit NSFW. I’ve already exceeded my spicy limit for this post, so I won’t be sharing them here. That’s for my OnlyFans.

I’ll take a clothed progress pic tomorrow probably and share it here eventually. But the official first and second day pics are for my eyes only. Gotta leave something to the imagination, ya know?

So that’s a quick rundown of how things are going. I’ll continue updating everyone on my progress, if only to keep myself accountable. But honestly, I’m excited to become less of a Bubbles and more of a Steak, and I think I’m off to a good start on my journey to beefy goodness.