Tripping Over My Shoes Ep. 9: Rainy Day Thoughts, A Novel

We've had quite a bit of rainy weather here over the past week. I say week, but it's really been like this off and on for the past month and a half. We get an occasional sunny day, but more often than not it's overcast.
On Sunday I did some cardio for the first time in... a long time. I think it's been a month. I did not do well at all. In my defense, I had just chugged some coffee and eaten when M asked if I'd like to go to the clubhouse with him and work out. Initially I said no, but I ultimately decided just to go since it was better than sitting on my butt and doing nothing. As that silly inspirational poster says, I would still be lapping anyone sitting on the couch no matter how I did.
I couldn't really keep running for too long. Overall I hit 2 miles in 25 minutes. Ouch. I mean to go back and run one of these mornings. I need to remind M to wake me up before he leaves for PT so I can get up and run.
I haven't even been lifting as much in the past two weeks. I don't know if I reached a mental plateau or if I just let my thoughts get a hold of me, but I just... stopped. I continued eating well, but working out just kind of... fell aside. I realized that I'd stopped, so this week I've been hitting it especially hard, alongside keeping a closer eye on my food intake. I was eating right, but I noticed I was reaching for food when I wasn't necessarily hungry. Plus, I would grab way too big a serving for myself and end up feeling sick once I finished the plate. No bueno.
It's rather depressing putting on the same pants I wore for work not 6 months ago. I keep trying to remember if these pants fit so tightly. If I had such a muffin top going. At the same time I somehow think I look better when wearing certain things. There was a dress my parents bought me when they visited last April, to wear at M's graduation from basic. I remember sitting in the changing room back then and thinking I didn't like the little bit of pudge I could see in the stomach area. I no longer see stomach pudge when I wear the dress. Could that mean I've reduced that pudge? Or I've just added to it so it's a more even layer?
Ack, I think too much. I still feel better and am more happy when I look in the mirror. I just don't want to spend money on an entirely new wardrobe so I'm aiming trim down more in my thigh and butt area. That really seems to be my only problem area now. Wow, I'm babbling.

For the past two years I've kept a sort of audio diary of my life. While playing video games I would hook up my mic and load up Windows Sound Recorder and just talk about my life. The other day I put on a few of the recordings and just listened to them while cleaning. I came to realize that in the past year alone I've changed a lot. Even while talking to myself (that sounds crazy, heh), the one person I should be most comfortable with, I used to have such uncertainty in my voice. I was too passive.
Getting promoted to management at my previous job really helped me become more assertive and rethink a lot of stuff about how I interacted with people. I was able to find a balance between being friendly with others and not letting myself get taken advantage of. I started calling people out on inconsistencies in their stories/excuses, cut out people I was unhappy hanging around with, and in general just stopped caring what others thought of me. In doing so, I lost a few friends. I found that losing those said friends didn't really bother me.
Nowadays I wonder if I've gotten too unfriendly. Too uncaring. I worry I come off as too harsh and too, well, honest. I've always been a very cynical person. I was just good at hiding it. Nowadays I don't bother with being nice. In previous times I would always reach out a helping hand to those in need. Now I question said person's motives. Are they just asking for attention? What do they want out of me? It's not that I didn't worry about that before, I just never let it stop me from reaching out. Now it's somehow caused me to build up an even greater barrier around myself, and I'm so confused by it. I thought I hid behind barriers in my weakness before, but my 'strength' is yet another barrier between me and others.
Maybe I'm just reading too much into myself. Maybe the rain is just getting to me. I didn't mean for this to be such a downer, LOL. I would say I want to end this post on something happy, but I feel like that would just take away from my thoughts here. I'll just leave this post as is and work on a separate more happy post, shall I?