My life defined in internet comics.

I find myself thinking of this comic often: This is Why I'll Never be an Adult

I can especially relate to that with my job. I did eight things yesterday! Eight! My goal is only five! That means I don't have to do anything today and then maybe I'll do something tomorrow. And not wanting to email people back for fear of reminding them that they emailed me in the first place definitely sounds familiar.

I've caught myself applying this same methodology to a recent health goal I've set for myself, as well. I've had urinary/reproductive pain/infection/who-knows-what issues for the past 11-or-so years, and occasionally I'll hit a point with it where I decide I'm done living with it and I'm going to do all this research and try all these diet modifications and go find all these supplements and change all these lifestyle habits and ask my doctors all these questions to try and figure out what the cause is, and at least try to minimize symptoms. I'm in one of those phases right now. Since I'm at least aware enough to know that I tend to go through these phases and then take about four pills out of all the supplements I've bought and "cheat" on the new diet plan after about three days, I'm giving myself a couple of weeks to think everything over before impulse-spending too much on things that might possibly have a chance of maybe doing some good.

The only thing I know for sure I am going to purchase is a stock of GladRags cotton pads. May as well wait for the next paycheck before grabbing those, though. Plenty of time before the next time I'll need them. But in addition to (hopefully) being less irritating than disposable (bleached, chemical, plastic) pads, I like that I won't be throwing stuff away several times a day for a week out of every month. I've tried the Moon Cup before, but we just didn't get along.

The latest habit I'm trying to acquire is tracking my food/beverage intake and pain symptoms. It started out awesome for several days with me tracking, by exact minute, every single thing I would ingest, every little twinge of pain and every moment without it, and would even total up my water intake at the end of the day. I was tracking it on Google Docs since the internets are everywhere and I'd never remember to carry around a little note-pad all the time.

Then the weekend came, and the internets weren't everywhere. (See: More Reasons I Really Really Really Want a Droid.) The habit turned into making mental notes and jotting down what I could remember at the end of the day. My mental notebook isn't terribly accurate and it doesn't auto-save. There was a lot of guesswork. When the weekdays started up again, I was defeated by my lack of tracking over the weekend and pictured myself with the cartoony sadface thinking, "Oh. I should write this down. Sigh :(."

I haven't fully recovered.

I have a follow-up appointment with my primary care doctor this Monday and I was really hoping to show him something tangible. More cartoony sadface.

I'll keep trying. All I have to do is remember to jot stuff down. It's easy at work - the internets are right in front of me, all day. I just have to do it.

On a related note, I had been using the pain scale on nutraconsults.com to track the amount of pain I would have from one moment to the next, but I think I like this one better. I had been questioning the "8" I gave them at Urgent Care a couple of Saturdays ago, but no, I think that's about right. And what's awesome is it makes an 4-on-a-scale-of-10 kind of hilarious while it sucks (and while you're simultaneously happy it's down from an 8).