by Tish MacWebber | Dec 8, 2017 | Trust Your Gut
The names here may or may not reflect the person’s real name. If someone wants to remain unknown, we will choose a different name for that person’s story. The goal is to help people, and anonymity is a valid personal choice for contributors. I will use a person’s name only if they give permission to do so.
This week I am pleased to share another of my own stories.
Here is Trust Your Gut: Tish’s Story; Part 41
I have so much going on in the next 48 hours I was almost not sure what to write about. I figured it out, just now. I am both attending a potluck and hosting a 2 hour long party tomorrow. So I thought about it, and this week I am going to write about how to handle those situations.
I love a good potluck. I love food. Especially food that is not good for me, because that is what makes it so good, right? As a person that loves to eat, a potluck can be really dangerous.
How do I handle it?
First of all, I am going to only fill my plate once, unless there is so much that I need to visits to try all of the things. Inevitably I will get full. The goal is to be sensible, and comfortably full.
How am I going to manage that?
One trick is to not be ravenous when you show up at a potluck (or at a party.) You can prep for this at home, if you are home before going to the event. It will be a little harder at work because I can not whip up something healthy and filling like a smoothie an hour before I go.
The second tip is to make something that you know is a healthy choice for you. I am bringing BigMac Salad. I know I love it so there will be something for me to eat. People at work are always looking to see what I am eating for lunch if it is not an ordinary looking meal. The salad is a meal that has had a lot of curious people asking about it, so I am bringing it for them to try tomorrow.
The third thing is to use common sense. You don’t have to eat ABSOLUTELY everything that is there. Be picky about what you put on your plate. If you have to try the brownie (I hope there are brownies) then just have a small one. If there are other salads, start there, and fill your plate with the healthy food first. My rule of try one of every colour of candy in the bag and walk away is not exactly the best rule for the potluck, but it does help me in other situations, to have a sample, not the whole bag.
I chose 7-9 pm with my Municipal Liason for NaNoWriMo for several reasons. I will need down time after work. I will need scramble time for final party preparations. I will need time to eat something for supper (I made that tonight, I will have leftovers tomorrow for supper, right after work). I also picked that time and made a plan as to what we will have for the party refreshments.
I took control of the party so that it is not a free for all with junk food and meals. Timing means snacks. I will provide some of them, and those will be decently healthy choices. I bought a box of clementines, and some cheese and crackers. Nothing extravagant, but a little better than ordinary. I got fancy cheese. It was on sale, and I will cut the cheese (LOL!) tomorrow when I get home from work.
With these few tips, I may go a little off track tomorrow, but I take comfort in the fact that I am planning ahead to make sensible choices. I will not need weeks to recover from going way off course, it will be nothing but a minor detour that I can easily find my way back from.
How do you handle the temptation to indulge too much when you are at a party or a potluck? Do you have any other tips or tricks that can be shared? If so, please feel free to comment below.
#TrustYourGut
by Tish MacWebber | Nov 14, 2017 | Treasure Seeker Tuesdays
Confused yet? I was. On Remembrance Day, 2017, I spent a few hours contemplating things. The people that are currently serving their countries, the people who are now at home as veterans, and the people that did not get to go home. I thought about innocent victims of war, both people, and animals. I thought about heroes, and my own grandfather, who is no longer alive but lives on in my heart and fond memories. He came home a veteran and lived for many years with his family. Not everyone was as lucky as he was. I thought about people that I know, including one of my cousins, currently serving our country and a colleague that often shares memories with me on breaks at our day job.
When my internal alarm clock, also known as my bladder, woke me up on Sunday morning, I knew that I was going to have to find my pen and notebook. Inspiration found me in the early morning on November 12th, and I know better than to let it be without writing it down. My early morning thoughts can be lost if I trust them to my memory alone.
I found my book and pen and started writing. The final result of my early morning scribbles are polished to share with the world, now, but it took me a few days to figure out how to get my message out in the right format.
I looked online to see how to submit it to local and online papers. That is harder than I thought it would be, and one had the restriction of no political letters. I asked for advice, and everyone said to put it on my blog. I wasn’t sure. To be honest, I didn’t even know if I should sign it before putting it out in the world, because as sad as it may be to read, and therefore write this, my message may not be taken as seriously when I sign my name at the bottom. I hate to admit it but being a woman with a message that needs to be delivered may not get the attention it deserves because a woman wrote it. I see it in publishing, and many female authors have pseudonyms or pen names to have a fair chance of publishing success. Others choose to use an initial instead of their whole name, and there are plenty of examples of this in the publishing industry.
My point here is not that I am fighting for equality. That is for another day, along with environmental issues, violence, abuse to oneself or others and a variety of things that are wrong in the world that we live in today. My letter was written to achieve a request for World Peace.
Do I believe it could happen? Yes, with prayer, guidance and humility. Humanity has the greatest potential to make changes that affect all of these things. Cynics will laugh and say it is not going to happen. I refuse to sit back and watch the world end without trying to do something to make it better.
Enter my blog. I am making my own world a little better every time I write. Especially when I have a plan, and surprisingly, even when I don’t. Sometimes I don’t have any ideas before I sit down to write, but I sit down anyway. I have three regular categories I am writing in every week, now, and I don’t want to let myself or my followers down. I just write. I make it important because it is important to me to keep building this blog up to be at its fullest potential and then break the next milestone with something even better. It lights me up, gives me something to look forward to, and makes me feel proud to hit that publish button.
World Peace is achievable, and it is an attainable goal. It wouldn’t be an easy thing to get the whole world to agree to stop fighting in wars, I am not kidding myself about that. It would be an extremely complicated thing to do, not that it would have to be that way. The reason it would be so complicated is that so many people would be involved in making it happen. They all have demands, rights, and opinions. It is hard for me to even imagine some of my friends at the same party together, but if I could make them all get along, I would love that. Essentially, that is the end goal. We don’t all have to like everyone all of the time, but we all would be better off if we could just all get along with each other.
World Peace is something that I pray for every day. It is something that matters to me and is close to my heart. I am asking you to read my letter below, and if it makes sense to you as something that more people need to see, then do not keep it to yourself. Share it wherever you can, as many times as you like. I believe that if people just read this, and stop for a minute to think about it, changes could happen. This blog has grown to be so much bigger and better because I am constantly working to make it that way. Think of what we could do if we work together on a project like this. We can take this letter, and make sure it goes where it needs to be. I know this in my heart, and I am trusting that after you read my letter, you will feel the same. I have to get this message out, I am counting on all of you to help me do that.
If you would like to share just the letter in a separate PDF file, it is here:
An Open Letter to the Leaders of the World
Thank you for reading, and for sharing if you choose to do so.
#TreasureSeekerTuesday
Treasure Seeker Tuesday: Photo by Tish MacWebber; Photo Edited by Noa Price
