Efficiently inefficient

I have not weighed myself for a few weeks now. I had said the date that I would weigh, and I wanted to get into that a little.

On May 15th my mother and I take off to see her family in Italy, and then we come back on the 22nd. I want to weigh on the 15th, and then the 23rd. I just want to see how my weight does on vacation.

The reason for this is that I usually lose a little or at least hold steady on vacation. We may be eating really good food, and we usually are, but I am moving around a lot. It turns out, I probably should have been a park ranger.

Working fast food and retail at the start of my work career, my feet and legs would be dead after standing at a cash register for hours at a time. A desk job seemed really appealing. At one point though, I noticed how well I was doing on vacations, for both weight and blood sugar, and how much getting out in fresh air cheers me up, regardless of the weather, and yeah, park ranger.

It is a little bit late for me to reinvent myself that much. Most of the things that I am good at, and a lot of the things I love, are things that are done sitting down. What I am trying to do now is to not get into these ruts where I do not move, and to move more, even at times when I don't have to.

Drinking a lot of water can be good for that, because then you remember needing to get up. Also, and this is kind of what the title is getting at, sometimes it is best to be inefficient.

Sure, I could fold all of the laundry, sort it into piles, and then stack the piles and take them to their destinations, and that is faster. Maybe there is more benefit for me in taking things as I fold them, and making many trips.

(I can't make this work for unloading groceries though. There are some weird pride things going on there, where I need to be carrying four bags or it doesn't feel right.)

Sometimes you are simply remembering that one goal (getting the work done) is not your only goal (being fit, being happy). This is why sometimes I have projects I want to work on, but I realize my family needs me, and I watch television with them. Yesterday I came home from getting things done and fell asleep for two hours. It wasn't what I planned to do, but I was exhausted, and I felt better afterwards.

I cherish my accomplishments, but they can't be all I am. I have to have my relationships, and my health, and my balance.

I'm not doing a good job of explaining this, but maybe this will help. I was reading a book about fossil fuel use, and the author's point was that efficiency gets you used up. If you efficiently harvest all the fish or all the trees or all the fossil fuels, that just gets you depleted faster. The inefficiencies that are built in are what preserve the balance. Some fish get eaten, but some escape and breed. The trees die slowly enough for new ones to grow. The difference forces balance each other, and this balance leads to sustainability.

So, I am trying to be sustainable, and that means many different things.