Day One

the first post is the hardest. i keep asking myself why i should keep a record of what i do and how i am feeling while on this journey and i have to remind myself that if i inspire one person to change the way they live to a more effective way, then i have been a success.

i sing opera. opera takes a long time to build a career in and i am still training. opera is long sighted and plans are made years in advance. each practice session is undertaken with short and long term goals. today i will keep my voice on the tracks and i will learn all the notes in the right order. i am learning this piece because it is part of a role that will go on my resume and will give someone who might want to hire me an idea of who i am as a singer...although that day is years away. today i must love the journey. i love the art form, i love my voice and i love myself enough to take the hour to sing and the time to, unsinging, look over what i am learning. i set goals and the love keeps me in action.

i went to the gym today. it is the first day of my journey in bodybuilding. this is a journey stemming from love. this journey is fraught with my own fears and insecurities that i must love into oblivion. with singing, i am more comfortable. i have experience and a trained voice. i know the ropes. i am a nascent bodybuilder. my body is weak, but willing. my spirit is willing and sometimes weaker than my body. to start this journey i had to make the transition from going to the gym out of shame and a selfish desire to look "bangin" to going out of love for the meatball suit that holds my soul. i am the caretaker of this body and while i haven't been absent, i haven't been pro-active. i would go to the gym out of shame for being bigger than the other girls. mind you, i'm 5'11" so that goes without saying, but shame took me to the gym. i was ashamed that my thighs are big and ashamed that i am not athletic and have no muscles to speak of. i would arrive and see the girls who are fit and shame would take me back home again, broken. my body would give out on me from my shame pushing it past where it could go. then guilt would take over and i would sit at home, marinating in shame and guilt and self-loathing.

one day i realized that i hurt when it gets cold. at 31, i needed to think of the future and how i want to feel as i'm aging. i looked at my injured, malnourished and tired body and there was a shift in my thinking. i came to see that i love my insides and i've shown up to grow and change, but only inside. i knew that the love could and would spill over to my outsides if i would let myself get vulnerable and get into action. get into a space where i didn't know a lot, needed to learn tons, and where i would be challenged to see myself as deserving of a healthy body. from that place of love i found bodybuilding. i've never been sporty, but this is a sport undertaken alone where the person you compete against every day is yourself. i lost all my muscles a couple years back when a car hit me in the crosswalk. i need to build muscles and build discipline and so this seemed like the perfect fit for me.

i have goals on this journey, both long and short term. long term i would like to do a fitness show and have a career singing professional opera. short term i want to show up for vocal practice, give 100% in rehearsals, lessons and coaching...and show up in the gym each day with a plan, go to the pain cave with a joyful spirit and then eat in such a way to support my goals both vocally and physically.

today i memorized words and patterns to the role i am learning in the opera Rigoletto. today i went to the gym and did legs. i could only lift 50 pounds with my legs. next week i will lift more. tomorrow i will do arms and abs and i will put words and notes together.

just for today i will believe in the power of love to put me into action and that the action will serve others as it serves me. today i choose love over shame.