11 MONTHS OFF CIGARETTES TODAY! WHAT A MIRACLE!!!

I cannot believe that its been eleven months off cigarettes! Go Chantix and fellow bloggers and blogging! I never would have imaged it...eleven months off of that crap Nocodemon! Nicotine is an addictive substance that it had me strung out for thirty years! I am really grateful to be off of it; one day at a time. I just need to remember that I am a puff away from a pack a day and if I pick up I never know when I will be able to put them down. Kinda like those Wheat Thin Crackers I picked up from the store last week! I am done eating them now an do not plan on buying another box anytime soon!

For those of you who have ever read my blog, the number eleven is super symbolic of change in my life and has been ever since I woke up out of the fog of drugs back in 1987! Nmber eleven has been sending me messages for a long time! Since this is the eleventh month of my quit, I am feeling nostalgic!! Don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to hitting a year on my actual quit date (11/11/09) but I am going to reminise a bit today because I am in the 1th month and yeah, eleven is special to me!

Today when I woke up as well as last night, I am wondering what new direction my life is headed. This time last year was one of the WORST times in my life....really! I would never have chosen to quit smoking during such a stressful period....it was just time! During these last eleven months, I have been pushed to do things I never thought I would do! Because of this I have a true belief in a higher power, all I could think was that I was being directed to someplace in life that I was not sure of. All I could do was keep the faith and just deal with the experience. Believe me, it wasn't easy!

Right when I first started trying to I quit smoking , I knew I could not stay at my job any longer and kick tailed it into high gear to get another one. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was talking about cutting positions while I was busy trying to find one! Then, when I was busy looking for a new job, there was a hiring freeze and I couldn't get a new job or even a transfer to save my life! It ended up working out. I got a new job when the freeze ended which was one day before school started! This experience was super stressful because there were pending legal issues along with the job stuff. At his point, I realized that waiting for change to happen is often more stressful than the actual change! I am so glad that that part of my life is on the right track.

Even thought last year was filled with nothing but change or "Reinvention" as I like to call it, I did some things I never really expected to do. I had to privilege and honor to study under professor Skip Gates at Harvard University. That experience had a very profound effect on my life and taught me to never sell myself short and I can do ANYTHING I want to do! I am following up on my plans for move into a different area of education, most likely social philanthropy. There are so many great programs for people who want to make a difference and change the world! That would be me. I never planned on staying a classroom teacher until I retired even thought I think it is a noble career. I am currently shopping graduate school programs and I will let you guys know what I find! There are a ton of fellowship opportunities and I learned that if you do not apply, you can not get accepted or denied!

Another huge change for me was this summer I went to a "Fitcamp" and was trained by Isabeau Miller from the "Biggest Loser" I wanted to train with someone who KNOWS how hard it is to change your life when it comes to weight loss and exercise and had dealt with the struggle aspect personally. I have had trainers who were pretty much athletes their entire life and I think they have a really hard time understanding the mindset of obesity. I wanted to work with someone who was not physically "perfect" but doing everything that could be done to change the physical as well as emotional self and knows that every day is a challenge and a choice! I got the privilege to work out and train with a ton of amazing people who wanted more for themselves and their lives! The power of having eight or ten people with the same mindset is a really powerful thing! Jimmy Moore and his wife Christine who run a blog called Livin' La Vida Low Carb videotaped the entire journey of all of the fitcamp attendees and posted the videos on Youtube. It was a hard but necessary two weeks for everyone and I learned so much that I cannot even explain how it changed me! I would love to see more people be able to have this experience and a career in philanthropy would allow me to focus on seeing these types of programs get funding. I love that Jimmy provided scholarships for people who really wanted to make changes in their lives. That is the kind of stuff I hope to be able to do one day!

Anyway, while all of these changes were occurring, (there were a TON more I just won't bore you with them) I kept plugging along, reading other people's blogs like Maggie, Mamaflo, Lynda and Brandie and Stan. I would read blogs, post blogs and just not light up. Even when I wanted to smoke with my entire being, I just didn't or I would just delay it until I no longer wanted one. Its funny, when I first started blogging with these people, I seemingly had nothing really in common with them except that we all were trying to quit smoking! We were all different people from different regions....or so I though! Stan and I actually live in the same state, same valley and go to many of the same places (although not together!) The girls I blog with have families and different lifestyles but we are like a little community....and I have to say thank you guys for being so supportive! There are others too that I have met in the last eleven months of this journey....if I did not mention you personally, sorry! (Some of you have blogs in other places, private blogs or different circumstances) just know I really appreciate all the people who have been there for me during my quit!

Gotta run, I am off to celebrate with a mani/pedi!

Diva

You Never Know What You Will End Up Doing In Life...

If you would have asked me when I was 20 what I would be doing when I was 40, I would have told you I would have been dead. I am not being sarcastic or looking for sympathy when I say that...I am really just telling the truth. As many of you know, I never really thought I was going to make it past 21 or 22 and lived my life like a rock star so to speak...until I hit the bottom and I managed to get cleaned up. Even after cleaning up, I have continued to do stuff like smoke cigarettes even thought I knew the consequences and continue to eat badly. In the last year, I decided to work on some of that stuff and have seen great results just by being willing or at least a little bit willing to do some things differently and not think that I know it all. Does this mean I totally have it together? Not even close! I am more willing to change than I ever have been who knows what the future holds for me.

Anyway, as I was told every week by this one professor that I took classes from last year was "You never really know what you will end up doing in life so live it like there is some sort of purpose and try to learn as much as you can." This guy Dr. Foster used to tell us that he never in the world thought he would be teaching people about art (or how to get some common sense but that is a whole other blog!) He used to tell us that he was just was willing to take advantage of whatever opportunities that arose when he was offered an opportunity to grow and he learned stuff he needed to retire early and create his own business and help people at the same time. He basically told us that most people never go for what they want and sit around thinking that opportunities are going to come to them, not the other way around! He bluntly told us a few times to get off our asses and make something happen if that was what we wanted and quit putting everything in life before ourselves. He was like, "How can you be a good teacher if you are so stressed out you can't function?" or "How are you supposed to be able to give anything to kids if you treat yourself like you should be last?" I had to really think about that. Many people in caretaker positions, like teachers and moms are usually so busy doing stuff for others that they do not really take care of themselves and a lot of times they they can't figure out why they are so tired or burned out. I spent a year out of my life drawing pictures because Dr. F said it would bring down the stress levels and would be like meditation. I never could draw and had no real desire to learn and at first I really thought he was completely insane! He is one of those types of individuals that you either love him or ya hate him, there is no in between! I wasn't really sure what to think I just figured that drawing would be better than writing YET another paper which is why I didn't want to go back to school and take classes or get another degree. Besides, I realized that it didn't matter what I wanted at that point I really needed the salary points to move up on the pay scale. I had been teaching for a lot of years and was still at one of the lowest places you could be on the salary scale! In that year, I really heard a lot of truths sitting there drawing pictures...stuff like why it was important to invest in 403B's, have an emergency fund and how to write off all these expenses on my tax return! I also learned how much money I had lost by not going back to school sooner and just by avoiding taking classes I was making a lot of people happy because I was going to do the same job whether I took classes or not. He used to tell us that if I didn't care how much money I made, why should the school? (When you are a teacher your salary is directly linked to how much education you have and how many years you have worked) Anyway, this guy made us think about the reality of the situation and it was one one the best things that happened to me. It made me get off my ass so to speak and think about the future and be willing to go for what I wanted in life. I mean, truthfully the only person who cared if I got a raise was me....so it was up to me to go back and take the classes I needed to take...tired or not.

Speaking about going for things, I recently applied for a couple of summer fellowships and was accepted for one through a historical institute and will be studying at Harvard University in Boston this summer. I am actually still amazed about the whole thing. I applied never thinking I would be going but figured what the hell, the most that can happen is I am denied. I filled out the on-line application and sent it off. I never really thought that I would be accepted because anything that has to do with studying at an Ivy League school with their professors is super competitive! I just went online, applied and figured nothing would really come of it. Amazingly enough, I was accepted and I am going to study with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. who has done all of this amazing research about genetic lineage and "has been the host and co-producer of African American Lives and African American Lives 2 in which the lineage of notable African Americans is traced using genealogical resources and DNA testing." (Wikipedia oneline) I saw the series on PBS and was simply blown away! I am really interested in the new technology used in genealogical research so it really is a great opportunity. If anyone out there knows anything about what to do in Boston, let me know.

Peace,
Diva