In my post-derailment funk I’ve mostly lived on Whataburger, Fazoli’s, McDonald’s breakfasts, popcorn, crackers, nuts, chocolate-laced granola bars and  . . . . (Be strong, Sharon!  Admit you have a problem!) . . . candy corns.

Tonight I was settling in for another repeat of Whataburger when I found myself cruising down the street, thinking “Yeah, I could eat Whataburger, but the food I’m eating right now is so limiting . . . ”

Some part of myself recognized that thought for the miracle it is, and I drove past Whataburger in a daze.

Limiting.  A week of my favorite foods is limiting.  It’s boring, repetitive, and heavy.

Wow.  I no longer enjoy a steady diet of crap food.

My meal plan has been derailed again. I don’t know why I feel surprised, the term “meal plan” is a synonym for “failure” where I’m concerned. Today’s failure came in the form of sugar snap peas.

The grocery experience was probably doomed before I ever walked into the store.  I’ve been fighting a urinary tract infection for over a week and, as a result, I don’t have much energy.  I don’t want to cook.  I mean, I never want to cook, but this time I’ve been sapped of all spare energy. I want to lie in bed and watch cooking shows while eating Goldfish crackers.

After eating a depressing fast-food meal in the Chick-fil-a parking lot and dragging myself into the store I realized I had not checked my list against the contents of my pantry.  This put me in danger of buying salmon, walnuts, cashews, cornstarch, and other assorted foods I potentially already owned!

Then my grocery store betrayed me by failing to order enough sugar snap peas to meet customer demand.  I almost cried.  I looked at my Mealime app, then back at the “Out of Stock” message, then back to the app.  The app didn’t hold any answers for me.

It was THAT EASY to derail my meal plan. I stood in the middle of the produce section with a blank look on my face, blocking traffic and fighting tears.  Trying to come up with a new plan.  In the end I went with the SCREW IT plan, where I threw a bunch of no-cooking-required food in my cart.  Yogurt, crackers, avocados, spinach, tortilla chips, granola bars, limeade . . . . snack foods and salads.  As a sign of the ultimate failure, I tossed a bag of Brownie Brittle into my cart.  I managed to ask the checkout person pry it from my hands as I whimpered, which is a lame bit of success as it should never have entered my cart in the first place.  I’m so pitiful I even told the brownie brittle goodbye as I left the store.

So I’m not going to cook anything for a few days.  Yes, it’s a failure.  It’s a major slip-up.  But I’m not going to beat myself up over it, because it’s not as much of a slip-up as this past weekend, when my illness persuaded me that grocery shopping at the drugstore made perfect sense as I was at the drugstore already for Azo tablets. I had a weekend filled with frozen pizzas, popcorn, Goldfish crackers, and an entire bag of Brach’s chocolate sea salt candy corns.  (Freaking delicious, if you’re curious.) I’m also not going to beat myself up about the weekend before when I was on vacation and ate whatever I wanted, excepting the free hotel breakfast. (Breakfast was free and adequate, but not delicious.)

No wonder the doctor’s scale said I had gained five pounds.

So what have I learned from this?

1. I’m depending too much on meal planning apps.  I need to have at least three meals I can turn to when the store/technology fails me.
2. On the same note, I need to study the recipes in depth before shopping. If I know the recipes I can make substitutions, or buy enough ingredients for 2 out of the 3 recipes the app had generated.
3. I should have made the app give me a new meal plan.  The app can do this, but I suspect I’d lose all the custom grocery items I had added to the list.  Now that I’m away from the pressure cooker known as the grocery store I realized I could have screen grabbed the list, THEN made a new meal plan without sugar snap peas.
4. I need to go to the doctor when I first realize an illness is a problem.  Toughing it out is not an option!  If I had headed this infection off at the pass last weekend’s binge wouldn’t have happened.
5. THURSDAYS are the best night to shop at my favorite local grocery.  Not Monday.  Wednesday is their big night.  On Thursdays the crowd has left, but the store is stocked.  In my weekly calendar, Wednesdays are for planning, Thursdays are for shopping, and Fridays are for quick dishes and for prep.  Saturdays and Sundays are my big cooking days. Mondays and Tuesdays are about other things.
6. I need a support system on ice.  I need a freezer with a backlog of food I can use when I’m ill, or when I abandon my meal plan to visit my parents.  My tiny apartment freezer isn’t large enough to hold everything.

Now we’ll see if I can implement any of these lessons.  Cross your fingers for me.

Mealime wins again.  I ate a meal where beans played a starring role, and much to my surprise I wouldn’t mind eating the meal again!  Their Southwestern Black Bean Cakes were good, especially when slathered with guacamole.  The leftover portion is freezing now, and I’ll be glad to have this on hand the next time I have a spare avocado.  It’s doubtlessly better for me than a bag of tortilla chips.

I did tweak the recipe slightly and added three strips of bacon.  While the addition invalidated the whole “vegetarian” concept, knowing there was bacon in the dish made it easier for me to take a bite.  The next time I make this I’ll go full throttle and skip the bacon.

Beans have been a nemesis food for a long time.  They’re on my Top Ten Foods I’m Most Afraid Of Eating list.  I made the list several years ago when I started trying to transform my eating habits.  I’ve made some headway.  The foods in italics are foods I’ll now eat without much of a fuss.

Top Ten Foods I’m Most Afraid Of Eating

1. Spinach
2. Beans (including humus, tofu, etc.)
3. Mushrooms
4. Cantaloupe
5. Kale
6. Broccoli
7. Bananas
8. Olives
9. Asparagus
10. Sea vegetables

Obviously I still have work to do, but I’m a step closer to liking beans.  It’s progress.  I’m moving in the right direction, even if my waistline doesn’t yet illustrate that point.

Ten years ago I wrote every day.  I had a public blog, a private diary, and a work journal.  I wrote about my house, my lack of a love life, my career, and my family.  Sometimes, like the monkeys with typewriters, I churned out something interesting; but usually I wrote crap no one could ever care about.  It seemed like it would never end.  The words were always there, writhing beneath my skin, begging me to pound the keyboard and let it all out.

Today I seldom write.  I do have short bursts of intense writing, like the one I’m doubtlessly experiencing now (Or like the one that persuaded me to buy yet another domain name and start this blog, for crying out loud!) but today it isn’t uncommon for me to go weeks without writing.

I thought maybe I wrote less because I’m older.  I thought I was less willing to risk myself emotionally.  Maybe I’m smarter, and I’ve (finally!) learned from the occasions where I’ve written myself into trouble.

Those are the lies I’ve been telling myself.

Today, though, I realized for me writing is an expression of hope.  I write about the person I want to become, the plans I have for the future, and about things in my life that are exciting and interesting.

I’m not hopeful any longer.*

My career seems to have flatlined.  My only social contacts are my family, who live three hours away. Love is sawdust. I have no energy. I’m in debt.  And I’m still fat.

I’m ashamed of the sad little life I’m living, and I don’t find much joy in anything I do.

No wonder I don’t write.

But what if I could change my life by writing again?  If I put myself under a microscope again will I re-learn how to be interesting?

Habitfork is about the choices I make and the habits I establish.  Investing in my happiness by changing my (non) writing habit seems like something I have to do.  After all, if I won’t blog, why own a domain?

* Except I am going on vacation soon, which makes me happy.  Then again, escaping my daily life is about avoidance, not about hope.  So no, vacation-generated excitement doesn’t count.