Hmm... I was TEMPTED to say "everything y'all said except the part about working full time or having friends..." ;P But for me, for a long time now, my problem has been intention.
I know from experience that I can do a lot when I want to... but for a long time lately, I'm not sure what I want. I am working to lose weight right now for basic reasons... health, fashion... but I don't have the image in my mind of what I am really working for. Last time, a few years ago, it was to be as healthy as possible before a summer Disney trip... I wanted to feel confident stepping on that scale before the horse ride at Fort Wilderness, to be carrying less weight around as we walked the parked in the late-June heat... and while I never got down to the magic "healthy" BMI number, I felt good, enjoyed the meals and treats at the park because I felt I had "earned" them, and it was nice fitting in lots of cute clothes. I had a goal, I had a date to reach it by, and I had a reward (the trip.) It fell apart around the time of the eclipse because we stayed with my in-laws, who eat small portions of highly processed high carb food which was the exact opposite of "lots of fruits and veggies and lean proteins" that was my pattern. Without a goal in mind, I had no reason to get back on the wagon, so to speak.
It's kind of an over-arching theme with me lately. Truth be told, I'm pretty content with my messy life, I am lucky that what I do have feels like "enough," and I have worked hard to accept that *I* am enough, so then to tell myself "nope, you need to change," that contradicts all that and it is a rough road.
And, on a random note, today I think I'm going to make sausage! DD13 has been campaigning for me to make Chinese dumplings, so I bought a huge pork butt the other day intending to divide it up and freeze most of it for tamales and carnitas and wontons and and and… and then I realized already had half of one frozen from the last time I had this grand idea. So I thought since I have a bunch of this meat and I have to break out the grinder anyway, why not experiment with bratwurst and breakfast sausage? I'm not using casings, just making patties for the breakfast sausage and the filling for the bratwurst (I mostly use that to make English sausage rolls, for which I take the meat out of the casing anyway.) Maybe some day I'll find a perfect bratwurst recipe and try going the extra mile to make the actual links... but not today. At the store they sell bratwurst patties that you just grill like burgers and serve on hamburger buns... so I suppose I could make some of those, but we shall see.
So it looks like I am planning "breakfast for dinner' tonight, hopefully featuring homemade sausage patties. (LOTS!) more rain in the forecast for today and the next few days, so cooking and shopping and housework and reading appear to be on the agenda...