22 Months later – my next dream

Hello dear followers

It’s been 22 months since my last post, and my goodness what a journey it has been!

This is a long post, with my next big dream revealed, so please bear with me.

Just to put you in context, I started my job with Disney Cruise Line on 27 June 2018, going through the onboarding training called Disney Traditions, and thereafter joining the Disney Fantasy for my first contract as Revenue Analyst.

I will do some separate posts about my experiences so far with each contract (4 in total to date) with the ups and downs they all contained.

My purpose for writing this post today (it is 4am at the moment) is, however, to kick off my next big goal, my next big dream, and just like I set out with the intention to land my dream job with Disney when I started this blog, this is the beginning of making my next big dream come true.  Allow me to explain…

I was born in a city called Pretoria (South Africa), and the memories I have while we stayed there are to this day some of my fondest.  I had a loving family, lots of friends at school and in the neighbourhood, and I got up to A LOT of mischief.

When I was 10 years old, my father changed jobs and it was eventually decided that we had to move to Johannesburg, which was the next city (biggest city in South Africa) about 80km away from Pretoria.  This meant that I had to change schools halfway through the year, and it also meant that I lost all of my friends that I had.  To this day I have not had contact with those friends I left behind, although I often still think of my best friends from back then.

The school that I went to was, to put it mildly, not the best, but a teacher from a much better school in the same general area went to the same church we went to, and got to know my parents, eventually convincing them to put me into this better school.  This meant changing schools for the second time in less than a year, and although the first couple of weeks in another new school was rough, I quickly started making new friends.  I stayed in this school until I went to high school.

I had plenty of really good friends, was a proud member of Voortrekkers (similar to scouts), and although I never really cared to be popular, to an extent I was a little bit.  One of the friends I made was a boy who was not really part of the rest of my friend circle, as he was very unpopular and even at primary school age, extremely overweight, in fact, probably obese by medical standards at his age.

It seemed like it was in the family, as his father was the biggest person I had ever seen.

We became really good friends, and although the rest of my friends did not care much for him, we developed a strong bond, spending weekends and holidays together.

I was never a very sporty or active person, but up until Standard 4, which nowadays is referred to as Grade 6, I was a rather slim, lean and scrawny fellow.  I will never forget one day, my maths teacher, pointed out that I was developing a good belly, comparing me to my fat friend.  It is still in my memory like it was yesterday, bearing in mind that this was 28 years ago.  Things just got worse from there, and I really was putting on a lot of weight and not doing much about it.

Then came high school, where puberty and the first feelings of sexuality hit me like a ton of bricks.  Without going into too much detail, I also experienced my first major heartbreak.  This sent me into a spiral of poor academics, depression and seclusion.  Now each person is different.  Where some people start eating more in circumstances like this, I do the opposite – I stop eating (or rather, I eat very little).  Although this was a difficult time for me, it was good in the sense that I lost a lot of weight, to the point that I was actually scrawny and underweight again.

Then came university where I once again suffered heartbreak and the depression that followed.  I remained scrawny, thin and underweight.

After eventually recovering from that heartbreak and starting my first job, I slowly started to gain weight, but in the form of fat, not muscle.  It has been a long and steady increase of weight since then, to the point that I am back to where I was back in primary school, where I am on the point of being obese according to medical standards.

I don’t want to bore you with the details (perhaps I will go into the details in a separate post), but I have recently experienced another heartbreak and terrible depression.  That, together with being in lockdown/isolation/quarantine due to the COVID-19 outbreak, means that for the last month, I have been a recluse with only my mom as company for the last month, stuck in a small apartment, going to bed any time between 3am and 5am, and sleeping until about 11am, and then spending the day moping around, doing absolutely nothing productive, never mind anything active.

I smoke about a packet of cigarettes a day, and having turned 40 in January, already have had instances of chronic hypertension as well as other health issues directly related to my weight and lifestyle.  Needless to say my self-image is close to zero, which is causing challenges in my social interactions and relationships too.

I feel that I have mentally been going through a complete transformation this last month, and it is as if something just snapped this morning.

• I am tired of being overweight.
• I am tired of not sleeping properly.
• I am tired of not eating properly and eating unhealthy foods.
• I am tired of feeling ugly and unattractive.
• Although I think I still look relatively ok for a 40 year old, I am tired of having the mindset of being “old”.
• I am tired of thinking that I am not able to attract a new partner.
• I am tired of always having negative thoughts and feelings, especially towards myself.
• I am tired of NOT LOVING ME!

So here’s the deal, my next big dream:  Starting today, 24 April 2020, I am embarking on on my new journey, called Transformation 2020.  I am going to lose weight, I am going to take care of my body, and I am going to start loving myself again.  This is not going to be easy, but it’s going to be worth it.  I will set out my goals for the first week below, and then update with new posts on a weekly basis.  The key for me is to make a small but consistent beginning, and build from there.

My 7 goals for this week until 1 May (which happens to be the day that our lockdown restrictions will be relaxed slightly and I will be able to do outdoor exercise) are as follows:

• Start making healthier food choices, in general (like reducing sugar intake), nothing drastic.  This is more of an effort to become conscious of my food choices rather than changing them drastically for now.
• Drink more water and less fruit juice, soda and other unhealthy drink choices.
• Start doing some form of physical exercise, for at least 20 minutes a day for 3 of the 7 days in the week.
• Doing mind exercises, including meditation, positive thinking and mindfulness every day.
• Going to bed earlier and waking up earlier in the mornings – for this first week, instead of going to bed at 3am or later, vow to be in bed with the lights off and ready to sleep no later than 1am, and not sleeping any later than 9am (this gives me the proper 8 hours of required sleep).
• In the interest of getting better sleep, vow not to be on my computer, watch TV or be on my phone any later than midnight.
• Become more conscious of smoking, when I smoke, what my triggers are for smoking, how much I smoke, and what I can do instead of smoking.  Again, this is not reducing how much I smoke for now, just becoming more aware of my smoking habits for now.

I have to point out that each of the above are the starting point.  I know that this journey will not be easy, and there will be some of these that I will be better at than others.  These goals will be evaluated and adjusted each week, to track progress and make changes as i go along on this journey.

If you have made it to this point, THANK YOU for reading!  Would you please give me a shoutout, either by commenting on this post, or by emailing me at martinblaauw@me.com and if you know of anyone else who would enjoy my blog and could support and encourage me on this next journey, please share my blog with them.  I am certainly going to need all the motivation and encouragement and support I can find.

I will do a kick off post tomorrow with my official “before” pictures, measurements and mental evaluation, to establish a benchmark.

See ya soon!