Finally! I get to get back to me!  Most of the boxes are emptied, and organized.  I just need to work on office area, and get some storage.  (Still poor and jobless, because the lady I thought that I was going to work for, couldn’t afford to pay me).

I talk to Abui about everything, talking the way I do at a fifteen-miles a minute” Caribbean-California-Kami pace.  Abui listens, occasionally reminding me to slow down because I for some reason these days skip words, reverse phrases.  I’m a mess.  Again she handles it all.  After about 20 minutes of my detox-vent, we get down to business.  How to get me looking fitness model awesome…

We are closing in on the New Year, for this life-coaching thing and me it means a completely different location, job, house, outlook, and approach.

She emails me foot strengthening exercises that I am to do because I still hobble a great deal, but I function better than I did before the 30 Day Leg Challenge.  In addition she has me do this weird thing called a Summation, I personal summary of what personal definition for words mean.  For example, Health has many different meanings, depending on the industry and person.  Abui wanted to know my personal definitions for the above word and more.

From I wish we could to "GO!!"

We have to move!

Being mentally and physically isolated for 4 days because of my schedule is one thing but then to be mentally isolated, due to lack of funds (which my friends agree is a huge issue in the rural South) for another 4 days is all a person can take.  Praying all the time for a miracle, for months, may have led to an answer.  Lance and I are going crazy…

I have only 2 weeks before the Holidays arrive, and even less time to move.  I texted Abui and we agree to hold off meetings so that I can move.  I endured my rotating schedule of four days of work and four days off.  Those off days I spent trying to pack up a 2 bedroom, 2 bath our trailer.  (Please note:  in the South trailers can be the dumps seen on tv for the stereotype poor or gorgeous pre-fabricated mansions.  We lived in the first one; with a roach infestation that the landlord never told us about or fixed.  No amount of bombing and pest control helped).

Long story short, found a new job (need to move up there, before we can set up  work date), I gave my 2 weeks-notice, did the mail-forwarding, and  few days later we moved our things to the new house.  I spent my last 6 days on my friend’s floor, because I needed a place to sleep after work and motels are expensive when you don’t have any money.  

My friend’s empty room didn’t have heat, so that even with a small portable room heater (blankets were at the house and no creature comforts were offered), I would wake up with the temperature being 22 degrees at midnight and doze in and out of sleep until it was time for work.  IT WAS HORRIBLE!  (Still thanking God all the way because sleeping in the car would have been harder).

These three weeks were so stressful for me that I basically stopped talking, and went into auto-pilot to save energy.

We have set up short term and long term goals.  This is nothing new to me.  I have spent countless hours in the Self Help (now known as the Self-Improvement) section.  Better to spend 1-2 hours scanning and buying books than to spend hundreds on one-on-one-PhD. therapy.

Long and short term goals are nothing new.  I am no longer excited, and almost deflated with the idea.  Abui hears this and asks, “Why isn’t this something you are interested in doing?”  I tell her that I am very familiar with short/long term goals.  If they worked for me, I wouldn’t need the assistance now.  She says some stuff, as usually my brain starts to daydream and I say okay, because that is what people like to hear.  (I sound like a jerk, I know.  But… eh… no one’s perfect).  Yet something about this feels different.  Through all of these sessions, nothing has seemed to change and yet some iota of me has.

What changes may come…  Another assignment…GREAT! (sarcasm) but if I do it, I get to talk to my friend and cousin... so I do.

For those of you still with me, Abui and I meet every Friday.  It’s the only thing I look forward to in a week.  Having moved from Silicon Valley, to the deep rural South, hasn’t been easy.  It’s like the 1950’s but it has the technology of the present.  Some people have the mindsets of the 1800’s, 1970’s, and the present.  (Lance and I don’t match age or color-wise and the looks we get are the full spectrum we received in CA from others, regardless of other factors).

The only thing that reminds me that I am not lying are a few people with great hearts, and minds who constantly help the assimilation process by nicely saying, “This be da Souf darlin’. An right her’ is what’s called, The Trap. Good luck getting out.”  Others have been so sweet I am astonished that haven’t left.  They stay for a plethora of other reasons.

 

Every day I thank my mother for ingraining into me what others thought was dead.  Especially when twice in one week, I was stopped by one old “redneck” and later in the week a “country boy” who asked me if I needed a lift somewhere.  This is actually code for let’s have sex, because any (black) lady walking down the road with her dog has to be a prostitute.  (Welcome to the rural South).  Later, a friend told me of one lady that is a prostitute that walks over 5 miles daily.  She too is black.  I know. I know.  One case doesn’t mean every, but this is the rural South.

 

So it’s time for another meeting and the name of the “game” is what I need to do in order to do all that I want and oh joy, another list.

 

We officially decide that I am going to have to move.  Jobs are very scarce out here.  Job security is based on whether or not you are working with your family (extended family, and people who have known you your entire life).  Even with my degree and two minors, the best job I could find only wanted to pay me minimum wage and I took it: thank God for the people I have met and the benefits (tons of down time) and other benefits (401K etc.)!

It’s a strange thing when a person asks a question.  Regardless of how easy it may seem to answer the answer can be the resonating point to so much else 

This is my second session and I still don’t know what to make of life coaching.  As of now it still seems to be a great deal of question and answers, in order to clear out the brush: clear, distinct goals, ideas, and agendas.  We asked me a question about how I am feeling?  I am not Bruce Lee, I don’t feel every minutia of a sentence.

The scholar in is me is distracted from what the true message is.  Abui, rephrases and I have to sit, register the sentence as color (I love colors), and then match that color to what I think the correct response is.  BLAH!!!

Abui is good at this.  There are so many banner words and phrases, words that have meanings that are hard to define but cannot be argued, that I use and she nicely peels back to layers of each word or phrase that she may question in order to better understand what I/we are addressing.  As we talk, so many of my goals over-lap and are so inter-twined that there is a ton of unraveling to do.

Once more thoughts, childhood dreams, and all of those unfinished projects are coming to mind.  By this time the session is over and I am off the Feel-Train.  Once more, I realize that I have and continue to have so much that I want to do in life and that I only started it in 2012: enter panic attack 498,527,356.01.

I knock the feelings of overwhelming anxiety away because I have more homework. 

Baby Steps of an introduction:

I have been told numerous times by bosses that I am one of the most unlucky people ever seen.  A former supervisor once told me, “Kamilah, I wish I had three more people like you, and I would be a success.”   So why am I NOT a success?

I have some idea as to why I am not a success: I am not mentally lazy, but physically… I need help.  I excel in academics because Geek-dom is where I am most comfortable and it runs in my family.  Physically speaking…  I have a tendency to run out of motivation after maybe about a month.  So that’s me in a nutshell.  I am a self- proclaimed nerd trying and failing year after year to be something else.  That something else you ask is to be a fitness model!

Yes, beneath my neurotic, over-achieving nonchalance exterior is a fitness model trying, waiting and begging God for help, and after whining and complaining and praying, the Universe saw it fit to say, “Here you big baby!  Now what?!”  And this is where you find me; on the brink of a new world and a new life…  Now what?

It started with a phone call:

 

The Call

From out of the blue, is a phone call from an old friend and my cousin, or at least I thought she was a friend, until she never called and after years of grappling with the why, I realized, she was just a quiet person.  Anyway, we hadn’t spoken in dude-man-dog-years, which is code for, “several lifetimes” or fifteen years, give or take.  We all have friend like that: people in whom time and space are meaningless because their heart and loyalty have been forged from methril, anumantium, vibranium, love, and compassion.  As the conversation progressed we that she would offer me her services as a personal trainer and life coach, and I would blog it for the world.

Okay…  I have a heard about blogging from the television, when I saw the movie, Julie and Julia, but what I am going to say?  Who wants to read about my crazy, journey into fitness?  Talking this over with my boyfriend of eight years, Lance, he said, “Who wanted to read, about a lady learning to cook from a cookbook?  Everyone!  So, because you like to write all the time, and you already working on songwriting, why not give this a try as well?  I dare you!”  I responded like any sane person would, “WHAT! You don’t know me son! What!? What?! I got you!  It’s on!”  (Yes, we are that kind of couple: awesome!) 

So there you have it, my long story as short and un-jumbled as I could unravel it.  All of this is what I consider to be my past, now I am heading toward my future: fitness model glory with my Metamorphose Trainer, Abui Beckley by my side!  Onward!!