April 2017 Updates

Hello everyone!

It has been about 6 months since I’ve last written.  I haven’t forgotten about my blog, just have had a lot of different things going on in my life that have taken up most of my attention.  I do, occasionally, like to add a few updates just to keep it a little lively.

I will start out by saying that nothing major has happened in my life in the past 6 months, but then again sometimes it’s the little things in life that build up to the biggest changes.  It has been almost a year (in June) since I stopped taking Sertraline and the experience for me has been a good one.  At one point in my life, around the time I started this blog, I desperately needed help and at the time, medication was the extra boost I needed.  However, after graduating college and settling into a routine of calm normalcy in a job that pays well and that I’m good at, much of the stress that I had during college and that amplified my OCD has diminished.  I still certainly have OCD.  I still wash my hands far more than the average person does or should.  I take too many showers and dry out my skin.  I go through a shocking amount of lysol wipes.  The list goes on.  What is different now, however, is that my stress level is down to a much more manageable level.  When I realized that, I weaned off the medication and haven’t looked back.  I am down to my pre-medication, healthy weight.  I have TONS more energy and exercise regularly.  My emotions are back to normal (i.e. I’m no longer numb to the world and other’s emotions).  Would I get back on medication?  Only if the need for it was desperate and I was in a state of mind like I had been 5 years ago.

There have been other changes in my life, good changes.  I am nearly finished writing the first draft of a novel.  This has been a dream of mine since third grade.  I may or may not ever publish, but that is not what’s important to me.  Putting those words into a coherent story with a clear beginning, middle, and end, that’s what’s important and that dream is very soon to be realized.  I’m proud of myself.  Never before have I had the motivation or time to write and finish what I was writing.  It has taken a lot of push and dedication, but I’m nearly to the end.

I have totally stopped eating meat since about July of last year and am transitioning to veganism, hopefully totally in the next few months.  It was just the right time and change for me and really just made sense for who I am as a person.  I am learning to eat and cook a wider variety of foods and much healthier foods.  I even learned to make Korean bibimbap!

I was actually asked recently by the Indiana Animal Rights Alliance to write an article on my transition to being vegetarian.  I am actually really honored to have been asked and has kept my anonymity in that article as well.  You can read my article, which I’ve titled A More Compassionate Life here.

Other than those few things, I am doing well and everything is quite routine in my household.  My darling Chester is healthy and cute as always.

I hope you all are doing well and thank you for reading

Megan