Exercise = Happiness??

WARNING: this is an actual journal/diary entry... I need to get stuff off my mind.

Today I woke up in a bad mood, I think it was caused by a dream I had. The dream pretty much was based on actual events in my life (plus some random nonsense) and brought my subconscious thoughts about the given situation to my conscious. It was a very uneasy feeling, and I woke up wishing my life wasn't the way it is. This happens from time to time, and usually I am good about bringing myself back to reality and appreciating all the positive I have in my life. Don't get me wrong, I still appreciate every little aspect of my life, with no regrets (well, kind of), and I really have nothing to complain about, I just had a hard time shaking the deep emotional feelings I got from my dream. All day long.

Anywho, I also woke up realizing that I had a homework assignment due tonight, which entailed reading a lot of pages from my textbook. Being a slow reader of books that I enjoy sucks; when it comes to textbooks, I take that slow reading pace and multiply it by a million, so it literally takes me ~10 minutes to read one page from my textbook. So that stressed me out a lot today. I had maybe close to 80 pages to read, so basically I ended up skipping around the chapters getting the gist of the info. Ended up completing my assignment around 12:30am. Not bad.

THAT MEANS, I had no time to work out today. My body feels like crap, my mood was crappy, everything was poop. I have noticed that no matter what mood I am in before I work out, I always leave the gym with an immensely positive outlook on life, and I feel great about my body. So I wonder if I am relying my happiness too much on exercise, or if I can use exercise as a positive outlet to relieve stress in my life. The thing is, I have worked out every day for the past week at least, so today was my first day off from working out and my day was shitty. I don't want to HAVE to work out every day, just so it's a good day. I want to WANT to work out because I just want to get healthy. Maybe I'm becoming addicted, because even looking at myself in the mirror today made me want to punch someone... in the face... hard. Not really, because honestly I'm a wuss and my fist would probably shatter before I bruise someone's face... and I'm not really a violent person. But you understand; I was feeling inadequate and had negative thoughts about my physical appearance. Which is strange for me, because usually my self esteem is semi-high/average, even when I'm out of shape; and I'm currently in the best shape that I've been in in easily over a year or two, yet I just feel... not good enough.

And back to my dream again. It left me wanting more out of my life. I feel like I am doing a perfectly good job of going through the motions of becoming something; I'm currently working on my master's degree and working on loving my husband the best way that I know how to. Yet, I still feel so unhappy and unsatisfied with the direction I see that my life is headed. I used to have hopes and dreams that would make me intrinsically happy (if that makes sense), but I feel like I have pushed those dreams so far down into my subconscious so that I can obtain the false, shallow happiness, to the point that I just have no real meaningful purpose anymore. Yet I am so afraid of changing my current situation to obtain my internal happiness. Besides, by bringing the things I want into my life would be selfish and unfair to my husband. I won't explain what they are, but don't get any crazy ideas. I want to make my husband happy, yet I am struggling internally. So, there's my painfully boring dilemma.

I'll stop blabbing, now. I'll just blame my crap day on my stupid dream. And maybe because of my awkward sleep schedule. Going to bed at 3:45am and waking up at 12:45pm can't be good for my mental health. I need to learn to push my sleep schedule forward a few hours. But at the same time, I don't want to. I enjoy staying up late. I have no reason to wake up at 9am every day. I don't have a job!! Meh.

Ok, really... I'll shut up now. I apologize to everyone who just wasted 5 minutes (or 20 minutes, if you read like me) of their day to read about my pItY pArTy. I really just needed to vent.

Good night!

Apologetically,

Lauren